This article reviews the practices and differing sets of attitudes North Americans have taken with respect to fairness in international trade and proposes a set of common considerations for ongoing debates about these matters. After reviewing the asymmetrical relations between Canada, the United States, and Mexico and the impact of multilateral trade agreements on bilateral trade between these countries, the article looks at four typical normative views with respect to trade held by North Americans. These views variously emphasize concerns for (...) protectionism, liberal fair play, distributive justice, and dissent in the name of the environment or the working classes. Acknowledging that the debates over what is fair are not likely to be easily resolved, we call for open political processes that allow these debates to proceed, and we identify five common points of reference that might usefully inform these debates. These comprise (1) respect for flexibility, (2) the importance of institutions, (3) greater attention to the commutative justice principles for fair exchanges and corresponding guarantees so that all countries possess basic power to bargain on their own behalf, (4) the need to find fitting balance between local, national, regional, and international trade, and (5) more concern for the ways false pricing and abusive transfer pricing distort international trading relations. (shrink)

Recent discussions of the nature of mind, emotion, and self have often intersected with renewed interest in the sources of morals and morality. In this article I examine proposals on these matters by Charles Taylor and two of his interlocutors, Thomas Wren and Justin Oakley. I describe and compare the “holistic” epistemological approaches of these three in their searches for the “moral self,” and then evaluate the adequacy of their correlative ontological proposals. Finally, I discuss the meta-ethical implications of (...) these emotive views of selfhood in terms of the objective or subjective status of moral values to determine whether these views meet the philosophers' own criteria for moral plausibility. (shrink)

Recent discussions of the nature of mind, emotion, and self have often intersected with renewed interest in the sources of morals and morality. In this article I examine proposals on these matters by Charles Taylor and two of his interlocutors, Thomas Wren and Justin Oakley. I describe and compare the “holistic” epistemological approaches of these three in their searches for the “moral self,” and then evaluate the adequacy of their correlative ontological proposals. Finally, I discuss the meta-ethical implications of (...) these emotive views of selfhood in terms of the objective or subjective status of moral values to determine whether these views meet the philosophers' own criteria for moral plausibility. (shrink)

Mathilda Percival, libre de couleur, quitta Saint-Eustache, une petite île sous domination hollandaise, entre fin 1859 et début 1860. Elle s’embarqua pour une nouvelle vie sur l’île de Saint-Thomas, située aux Antilles danoises. Cet article s’appuie sur sept lettres de Mathilda à son mari. Elles font la lumière sur la vie et les difficultés des ouvrières émigrées au xixe siècle aux Caraïbes. Elles montrent que son expérience recoupe celle des employées de maison émigrées à cette époque, auxquelles l’émigration offrait (...) l’occasion d’éprouver un sentiment d’autonomie et d’émancipation. Si les motifs économiques étaient certainement l’une des motivations principales du départ de Mathilda pour Saint-Thomas, les raisons de son exil définitif sont probablement beaucoup plus complexes. Il semblerait que son travail lui ait donné satisfaction. En outre, alors que l’historiographie sur la migration des femmes caribéennes porte principalement sur le xxe siècle (après la construction du Canal de Panama et s’accélérant après 1960), on sait peu sur l’émigration des femmes au milieu du xixe siècle, après l’abolition de l’esclavage. On en sait encore moins sur les Caraïbes non britanniques, constamment négligées par la recherche – une lacune à laquelle tente de remédier cet article à travers l’étude de ces lettres. (shrink)

Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure makes ironically secular use of the imagery of the New Jerusalem and of unregenerate Babylon in the Book of Revelation. His purchase on the text is mediated both by Bunyan's Pilgrim’s Progress, a childhood favourite, and hymns such as ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ translated from Bernard of Cluny's De Contemptu Mundi. Avoiding the traditions of anti-Catholic interpretation, and of explicitly political readings which identify Babylon and the mysterious ‘number of the beast’ with particular historical adversaries (...) and tyrants, Hardy uses the biblical text sardonically to demonstrate the inadequacy of escapist dreams and institutional religion and to explore problems of poverty and ambition complicated by sexuality and its cynical exploitation. (shrink)

Perception purports to help you gain knowledge of the world even if the world is not the way you expected it to be. Perception also purports to be an independent tribunal against which you can test your beliefs. It is natural to think that in order to serve these and other central functions, perceptual representations must not causally depend on your prior beliefs and expectations. In this paper, I clarify and then argue against the natural thought above. All perceptual systems (...) must solve an under-determination problem: the sensory data they receive could be caused by indefinitely many arrangements of distal objects and properties. Using a Bayesian approach to perceptual processing, I argue that in order to solve the under-determination problem, perceptual capacities must rely on prior beliefs or expectations of some kind. I then argue that perceptual states or processes can help ground knowledge of the world whether the ‘beliefs’ necessary for perceptual processing are encoded as sub-personal states within a perceptual system or cognitive states, such as person-level beliefs. My argument has two main parts. First, I give a preliminary argument that cognitive influence on perception can be appropriate, and I respond to three lines of objection. Second, I argue that cognitively influenced perceptual states can be instances of seeing that p, which makes the relevant states well suited to help ground knowledge that p. I conclude that a cognitively penetrated perceptual state or process can help ground knowledge under some circumstances. (shrink)

Recently a great deal of attention has been paid to conflicts of interest in medical research, and the Institute of Medicine has called for more research into this important area. One research question that has not received sufficient attention concerns the mechanisms of action by which conflicts of interest can result in biased and/or flawed research. What discretion do conflicted researchers have to sway the results one way or the other? We address this issue from the perspective of selective inertia, (...) or an unnatural selection of research methods based on which are most likely to establish the preferred conclusions, rather than on which are most valid. In many cases it is abundantly clear that a method that is not being used in practice is superior to the one that is being used in practice, at least from the perspective of validity, and that it is only inertia, as opposed to any serious suggestion that the incumbent method is superior, that keeps the inferior procedure in use, to the exclusion of the superior one. By focusing on these flawed research methods we can go beyond statements of potential harm from real conflicts of interest, and can more directly assess actual harm. (shrink)

Vance Kasten; Manipulation and Teaching, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 53–62, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1.

This is a new release of the original 1926 edition.

"One of the expected fruits of Descartes' philosophical enterprise is "the highest and most perfect moral system," a system which, organically developed from its metaphysical and physical foundations, will provide the moral agent with direction and purpose in each of life's contingencies. Yet, Descartes' published work contains no such moral system, and commentators have generally agreed that Descartes "has entered the history of philosophy as perhaps the only systematic philosopher of the first rank who failed to provide any methodical treatment (...) of moral problems."" "Through a careful investigation of primarily Descartes' Correspondence and his final treatise, The Passions of the Soul, Vance Morgan here constructs the framework of a working ethical system, consistent with the spirit of Cartesian metaphysics and physics. He finds that while Descartes' metaphysics are remarkable for their insistence on indubitably clear and distinct principles, his ethic is equally remarkable in its conclusion that indubitably certain, inviolable principles are not available in the realm of morals and human activity. Virtue is not defined with reference to the results of one's actions, nor to one's faithful adherence to a set of rationally derived moral directives. Rather, virtue consists in the moral attitude with which one lives one's life, the psychological conviction that one has always resolutely acted upon the best intellectual activity of which one is capable."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

1. Sometimes perceptual experience is crystal clear, as when one inspects an object close-up in bright light with corrective lenses. But experience can be less clear. To illustrate how experiences...

In this paper, I consider Augustine’s attempted solution of the problem of divine foreknowledge and free will. I focus on two distinct notions of God’s relationship to time as they relate to this problem. In Confessions XI, Augustine develops an understanding of time and foreknowledge that cIearly offers a possible solution to the foreknowledge/free will problem. I then turn to On Free Will 3.1-4, where Augustine conspicuously declines to use a solution similar to the one in the Confessions, rather developing (...) a response that demands a very different conception of foreknowledge. I subsequently argue that in On Free Will, Augustine’s argument requires that God’s foreknowledge, when considered in light of events involving human freedom, must be in a real sense dependent on the results of free choice. (shrink)

When we see objects blurrily, in the periphery, or in dim light, we often experience their features unclearly. This paper argues that perceptual clarity is a dimension along which experiences vary, distinct from their distal contents. Drawing on models in perception science, the paper accounts for clarity by using the probabilistic notion of precision. The account’s first part is ecumenical: it says that experiences carry information about the precision of the representations from which each distal content of experience was selected (...) and that this precision information accounts for perceptual clarity. The account’s second part entails that experiences carry the relevant precision information in the manner in which their distal contents are represented. The precision account of clarity is shown to conform to common intuitions about experiences’ contents and accuracy conditions. And it is used to illustrate how experiences could assign probability distributions over distal possibilities, even while experiences’ contents are non-probabilistic. (shrink)

There are a number of cases where, collectively, groups cause harm, and yet no single individual’s contribution to the collective makes any difference to the amount of harm that is caused. For instance, though human activity is collectively causing climate change, my individual greenhouse gas emissions are neither necessary nor sufficient for any harm that results from climate change. Some (e.g., Sinnott-Armstrong) take this to indicate that there is no individual moral obligation to reduce emissions. There is a collective action (...) problem here, to which I offer a solution. My solution rests on an argument for a (sometimes) bare moral difference between intending harm and foreseeing with near certainty that harm will result as an unintended side-effect of one’s action. I conclude that we have a moral obligation to reduce our individual emissions; and, more broadly, an obligation to not participate in many other harmful group activities (e.g., factory-farming). (shrink)

Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, is a technology which has been receiving considerable attention as of late. It is a fairly simple technology involving radio wave communication between a microchip and an electronic reader, in which an identification number stored on the chip is transmitted and processed; it can frequently be found in inventory tracking and access control systems. In this paper, we examine the current uses of RFID, as well as identifying potential future uses of the technology, including item-level (...) tagging, human implants and RFID-chipped passports, while discussing the impacts that each of these uses could potentially have on personal privacy. Possible guidelines for RFID’s use, including Fair Information Principles and the RFID Bill of Rights are then presented, as well as technological solutions to personal privacy problems, such as tag killing and blocker tags, as well as simple aluminum foil shields for passports. It is then claimed, though, that guidelines and technological solutions will be ineffective for privacy protection, and that legislation will be necessary to guard against the threats posed by the RFID. Finally, we present what we believe to be the most important legislative points that must be addressed. (shrink)

When making decisions, humans can observe many kinds of information about others' activities, but their effects on performance are not well understood. We investigated social learning strategies using a simple problem-solving task in which participants search a complex space, and each can view and imitate others' solutions. Results showed that participants combined multiple sources of information to guide learning, including payoffs of peers' solutions, popularity of solution elements among peers, similarity of peers' solutions to their own, and relative payoffs from (...) individual exploration. Furthermore, performance was positively associated with imitation rates at both the individual and group levels. When peers' payoffs were hidden, popularity and similarity biases reversed, participants searched more broadly and randomly, and both quality and equity of exploration suffered. We conclude that when peers' solutions can be effectively compared, imitation does not simply permit scrounging, but it can also facilitate propagation of good solutions for further cumulative exploration. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Augustine’s attempted solution of the problem of divine foreknowledge and free will. I focus on two distinct notions of God’s relationship to time as they relate to this problem. In Confessions XI, Augustine develops an understanding of time and foreknowledge that cIearly offers a possible solution to the foreknowledge/free will problem. I then turn to On Free Will 3.1-4, where Augustine conspicuously declines to use a solution similar to the one in the Confessions, rather developing (...) a response that demands a very different conception of foreknowledge. I subsequently argue that in On Free Will, Augustine’s argument requires that God’s foreknowledge, when considered in light of events involving human freedom, must be in a real sense dependent on the results of free choice. (shrink)

Simone Weil wrote in her notebooks that “Friendship, like beauty, is a miracle.” This paper investigates her discussions of friendship in the larger context of her understanding of the mediation of opposites, modeled on the Pythagorean and Platonic models of mathematics. For Weil, friendship was not only miraculous, butalso a key to understanding the relationship of the divine to the human. Convinced that friendship and love create equality between parties where none exists naturally, Weil concluded that friendship “is full of (...) marvelous meanings with regard to God, with regard to the communion of God and man, and with regard to men.”. (shrink)

This study presents the results of an empirical analysis of the relationship between managerial thinking style and ethical decision-making. Data from 200 managers across multiple organizations and industries demonstrated that managers predominantly adopt a utilitarian perspective when forming ethical intent across a series of business ethics vignettes. Consistent with expectations, managers utilizing a balanced linear/nonlinear thinking style demonstrated a greater overall willingness to provide ethical decisions across ethics vignettes compared to managers with a predominantly linear thinking style. However, results comparing (...) the ethical decision-making of balanced thinking managers and nonlinear thinking managers were generally inconsistent across the ethics vignettes. Unexpectedly, managers utilizing a balanced linear/nonlinear thinking style were least likely to adopt an act utilitarian rationale for ethical decision-making across the vignettes, suggesting that balanced thinkers may be more likely to produce ethical decisions by considering a wider range of alternatives and ruling out those that are justified solely on the basis of their outcomes. Implications are discussed for future research and practice related to management education and development, and ethical decision-making theory. (shrink)

Some argue that procreation is immoral due to its negative environmental impact. Since living an “eco-gluttonous” lifestyle of excessive resource consumption is wrong in virtue of the fact that it increases greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact, then bringing another human being into existence must also be wrong, for exactly this same reason. I support this position. It has recently been the subject of criticism, however, primarily on the grounds that such a position (1) is guilty of “double-counting” environmental impacts, (...) and (2) that it over-generalizes to condemn other clearly permissible behaviors, such as saving lives, or certain instances of adoption and immigration. Here, I will defend the environmental argument against procreation from these criticisms. I will do this, first, under the assumption that our individual consumption and emissions cause significant harm. I will then address the problem of causal impotence, and argue that, even if our individual contributions to environmental problems ultimately make no difference to the amount of harm that occurs, procreation is still immoral for many, if not most, of those living in the developed world. (shrink)

The title of this critical notice is provoked by a remark Professor Armour makes in Chapter IX, “Metaphysics and the Resolution of Conflict,” ofBeing and Idea. If we become Spinozists, “Perhaps the concept of God will emerge clearly and orient our lives, or perhaps, on the other hand, we will be able to see how to make God go away and leave us alone”. As the title indicates, I shall argue here that Armour's book achieves the latter, and not the (...) former, end. (shrink)

In this installment of the Faculty Authors Series, Vance Morgan (Philosophy, Providence College) discusses his newest book, "Freelance Christianity: Philosophy, Faith, and the Real World.".

In this paper I provide a novel argument against the claim that classical genetics is being reduced to molecular genetics. Specifically, I demonstrate that reductionists must subscribe to the unargued and problematic thesis that molecular genetics is 'independent' of classical genetics. I also argue that several standard antireductionist positions can be faulted for unnecessarily conceding the Independence Thesis to the reductionists. In place of a 'tale of two sciences', I offer a 'heroic' stance that denies classical genetics is being reduced, (...) yet sees classical and molecular genetics as fundamentally unified. (shrink)

L'incompétence esthétique pas plus que la perte du public de l'art ne comptent parmi les effets nécessaires de la constitution progressive d'un champ artistique autonome. Habermas, Jauss, Dufrenne font voir que l'incompétence esthétique, comme l'exclusivité de l'art sont des scories de la modernité et davantage des effets d'un type d'organisation sociale, en particulier de la domination d'un seul modèle de réception esthétique.Neither aesthetic incompetency nor Art's loss of its public count as necessary effects of the progressive establishment of an autonomous (...) field of art. Habermas, Jauss, Dufrenne show that aesthetic incompetency like the exclusivity of art are to be seen as residues of modernity and as the effects of social organization, especially of the dominance of a sole model of aesthetic reception. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Although the writings of Thomas Reid are very fertile and interesting, his life is biographically barren in comparison to such seventeenth - and ...

Moral perceptualism is the view that perceptual experience is attuned to pick up on moral features in our environment, just as it is attuned to pick up on mundane features of an environment like textures, shapes, colors, pitches, and timbres. One important family of views that incorporate moral perception are those of virtue theorists and sensibility theorists. On these views, one central ability of the virtuous agent is her sensitivity to morally relevant features of situations, where this sensitivity is often (...) spoken of in perceptual terms. However, sensibility theorists have often not been careful to specify how to understand their claims about moral sensibilities as perceptual. In this paper, we distinguish between what we call Attentional Moral Perception and Contentful Moral Perception. We argue that sensibility theorists should endorse Attentional Moral Perception, because it has very powerful empirical evidence in its favor, and it can play all of the explanatory roles that the sensibility theorist needs in her theory of moral sensibilities. (shrink)

"_Weaving the World_ is a well-written and lucid overview of Simone Weil's writings on science and mathematics. This book will be of great benefit for anyone who wishes to pursue Weil's thought in depth." —_Eric O. Springsted, President of the American Weil Society_ "_Weaving the World_ is a detailed account of the philosophy of science and knowledge of Simone Weil. It is a very useful contribution to our understanding of one of the deepest and most incandescent thinkers of the twentieth (...) century." —_Martin Andic, University of Massachusetts, Boston_ This clearly written book introduces readers to Simone Weil’s philosophy of science and mathematics. Weil held that, for the ancient Greeks, the ultimate purpose of science and mathematics was the knowledge and love of the divine. Her creative assimilation of this vision led her to a conception of science and mathematics that connects the human person with not only the physical world but also the spiritual and aesthetic aspects of human existence. Vance Morgan sketches an outline of a metaphysical foundation for mathematics and science that, according to Weil, opens the door to a reinvigorated discussion among science, philosophy, art, and religion. (shrink)