Much of the sustained attention on pandemic preparedness has focused on the ethical justification for plans for the “crisis” phase of a surge when, despite augmentation efforts, the demand for life...

In Italy, during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Italian Society of Resuscitators and Pain Therapists (SIAARTI) and the Italian National Bioethics Committee (CNB) published ethical guidance on the allocation of scarce intensive care resources. In this paper, we outline and compare these documents in detail, highlighting differences and similarities. In particular, we argue that major differences exist with respect to the principles and values underpinning the documents and the normative allocation criteria proposed. Conversely, similarities can be traced (...) with respect to a functional rather than substantial endorsement of the age criterion, the importance of transparency, and the consideration over healthcare professionals’ responsibility regarding allocative decisions. In conclusion, we argue that Italy has lacked a comprehensive and publicly-accountable policy articulating principles and operational criteria geared to strengthen the “ethical preparedness” of the country in dealing with current and possible future public health emergencies. (shrink)

Certain characteristics of childhood immaturity (e.g., infantile facial features) may have been favored by natural selection to evoke positive feelings in adults. We propose that some aspects of cognitive immaturity might also endear young children to adults. In two studies, adults rated expressions of mature and immature thinking attributed to children. Immature thinking in which children expressed a supernatural explanation elicited positive affect reactions, whereas other forms of immature thinking, which made no attribution to supernatural causation, were responded to negatively. (...) This pattern was found for parents and others, males and females, American and Spanish college students, and for target children 3 to 9 years of age. We suggest that persistence of supernatural thinking in adulthood causes people to view the expressions of such thinking in children in a positive manner, fostering nurturance of young children who display them. (shrink)

Traditional Informed Consent is becoming increasingly inadequate, especially in the context of research biobanks. How much information is needed by patients for their consent to be truly informed? How does the quality of the information they receive match up to the quality of the information they ought to receive? How can information be conveyed fairly about future, non-predictable lines of research? To circumvent these difficulties, some scholars have proposed that current consent guidelines should be reassessed, with trust being used as (...) a guiding principle instead of information. Here, we analyse one of these proposals, based on a Participation Pact, which is already being offered to patients at the Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, a comprehensive cancer hospital in Milan, Italy. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Background. Since the nineties, policymakers and theorists working across several disciplines started to entertain the notion of directly engaging the public in matters of public concern. Accompanying this was the attempt to resort to deliberative democracy in order to make such an involvement effective. Seizing on its intrinsic dialogic nature, some scholars proposed the application of public deliberation to the realm of public bioethics. Drawing upon the theory and practice of deliberative public bioethics, the purpose of this paper is to (...) shed light onto the figure of the bioethical expert and its role in public bioethics, and relatedly, to investigate how deliberation may be implemented in a public bioethics context. Methods. We set up a large-scale experiment to investigate whether, and to what extent, different moderation styles impact on participants’ moral preferences. The study combines a survey of a representative sample of the general population with a laboratory experiment based on a random sample of students that ex-ante has identical attitudes to the general population.Results. Findings show that: i) different moderation styles can significantly influence deliberative outcomes; iii) the effects of deliberation are not necessarily immediate, but may be revealed after the end of deliberative session; iii) participants tend to better appreciate a bioethical expert acting as “passive moderator”, namely as someone who acts in order to ensure non-domination and non-interference, thus allowing the creation of basic conditions for equality within the deliberative setting.Conclusions. Our experiment represents an example of how deliberation can be employed in public bioethics. (shrink)

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As one of the most important ethicists to emerge since the Second World War, Alan Gewirth continues to influence philosophical debates concerning morality. In this ground-breaking book, Gewirth's neo-Kantianism, and the communitarian problems discussed, form a dialogue on the foundation of moral theory. Themes of agent-centered constraints, the formal structure of theories, and the relationship between freedom and duty are examined along with such new perspectives as feminism, the Stoics, and Sartre. Gewirth offers a picture of the philosopher's theory and (...) its applications, providing a richer, more complete critical assessement than any which has occurred to date. (shrink)

The Search for the Legacy of the USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee is a collection of essays from experts in a variety of fields seeking to redefine the legacy of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The essayists place the legacy of the study within the evolution of racial and ethnic relations in the United States. Contributors include two leading historians on the study, two former United States Surgeons General, and other prominent scholars from a wide range of fields.

The rapid dynamics of COVID-19 calls for quick and effective tracking of virus transmission chains and early detection of outbreaks, especially in the “phase 2” of the pandemic, when lockdown and other restriction measures are progressively withdrawn, in order to avoid or minimize contagion resurgence. For this purpose, contact-tracing apps are being proposed for large scale adoption by many countries. A centralized approach, where data sensed by the app are all sent to a nation-wide server, raises concerns about citizens’ privacy (...) and needlessly strong digital surveillance, thus alerting us to the need to minimize personal data collection and avoiding location tracking. We advocate the conceptual advantage of a decentralized approach, where both contact and location data are collected exclusively in individual citizens’ “personal data stores”, to be shared separately and selectively, voluntarily, only when the citizen has tested positive for COVID-19, and with a privacy preserving level of granularity. This approach better protects the personal sphere of citizens and affords multiple benefits: it allows for detailed information gathering for infected people in a privacy-preserving fashion; and, in turn this enables both contact tracing, and, the early detection of outbreak hotspots on more finely-granulated geographic scale. The decentralized approach is also scalable to large populations, in that only the data of positive patients need be handled at a central level. Our recommendation is two-fold. First to extend existing decentralized architectures with a light touch, in order to manage the collection of location data locally on the device, and allow the user to share spatio-temporal aggregates—if and when they want and for specific aims—with health authorities, for instance. Second, we favour a longer-term pursuit of realizing a Personal Data Store vision, giving users the opportunity to contribute to collective good in the measure they want, enhancing self-awareness, and cultivating collective efforts for rebuilding society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Parenting Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders Through the Transition to AdulthoodAnonymous One, Anonymous Two, Lorri Centineo, Anonymous Three, Virginia Clapp, Catherine Cornell, Nancy Coughlin, David McDonald, Mark Osteen, Laura Shumaker, Julie Van der Poel, Anonymous FourMy Son's Life with Autistic Spectrum DisorderAnonymous OneThis is the story of how my son, David, has tried to become independent. David is now 25–years–old. His immediate family is his (...) dad, a brother (age 22) and myself (his mother). He was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when he was 13. We looked up all the information and decided not to make a big deal of it. Looking back, he displayed all the classic signs of a high functioning autistic disorder. Would he have been diagnosed with the new DSM 5 guidelines? He probably would have. His life would be much, much different if he had been diagnosed at an early age.I'll start with David at age 13 when he was able to harness his big interest in computer science into a career for himself. He was expelled from middle school for threatening some kid that had been picking on him all year. He had a meltdown and wasn't able to communicate his side of the story and that was it.During the summer of that year he took classes in computer engineering (Microsoft) and became an engineer when he was 13. At that time it was quite an accomplishment because he was the youngest person in the United States to do so at such a young age. (By the way, the administration of the school that expelled him sent him a congratulatory card when he was written up in the paper).His father and uncle are in business running a computer company so David had a ready–made job waiting for him when he graduated from high school and was able to keep it during difficult times. David finished high school (mainstreamed special education as emotionally disturbed) and he also received another engineering certification (Cisco).I have to mention here that I truly did not understand what it was like for my son until one day when he was in high school, as I was lecturing him again for some stupid reason, he said, "You don't know how hard it is for me to not sit in a corner and rock every day." Think about that. ASD individuals get up and keep going every day when they know they are going to be misunderstood and picked on. They all deserve a medal for bravery.David became really upset that he had never had a date and that girls were not even interested in talking to him. He started cutting himself and shaving his head. That got him some attention from the stoner group. He had someone to sit with at lunch anyhow. Parents, I think it's better to have no friends than the wrong friends. They introduced him to drugs.We did not mention any trouble David was having to any relatives. We had lived 800 miles from our families in a very unspoiled part of northern America. In hindsight this was not good either. [End Page 151]Another thing, and I think every parent will agree with this—teachers, school staff, health care industry staff, doctors and every one that comes into contact with an ASD individual—take the time to get to know them. It may be difficult and some may appear non–caring and rude. You must overlook this and look to the person underneath. They are great people. They have been through stuff and it means so much to them. Like I said—parents, you know this. Please remember it when times get tough.During David's senior year he started work release so he could start earning money to buy a car and move out as soon as he turned 18. Things were made easy for David since the company was owned by his father and his uncle and I worked there also. David enjoyed the work but had the occasional meltdown and had difficulties fitting in with other employees. He wasn't able to communicate... (shrink)

ObjectiveTo compare techniques for computing clustering and switching scores in terms of agreement, correlation, and empirical value as predictors of incident cognitive impairment.MethodsWe transcribed animal and letter F fluency recordings on 640 cases of ICI and matched controls from a national epidemiological study, amending each transcription with word timings. We then calculated clustering and switching scores, as well as scores indexing speed of responses, using techniques described in the literature. We evaluated agreement among the techniques with Cohen’s κ and calculated (...) correlations among the scores. After fitting a base model with raw scores, repetitions, and intrusions, we fit a series of Bayesian logistic regression models adding either clustering and switching scores or speed scores, comparing the models in terms of several metrics. We partitioned the ICI cases into acute and progressive cases and repeated the regression analysis for each group.ResultsFor animal fluency, we found that models with speed scores derived using the slope difference algorithm achieved the best values of the Watanabe–Akaike Information Criterion, but with good net reclassification improvement only for the progressive group. For letter fluency, different models excelled for prediction of acute and progressive cases. For acute cases, NRI was best for speed scores derived from a network model, while for progressive cases, the best model used clustering and switching scores derived from the same network model. Combining variables from the best animal and letter F models led to marginal improvements in model fit and NRI only for the all-cases and acute-cases analyses.ConclusionSpeed scores improve a base model for predicting progressive cognitive impairment from animal fluency. Letter fluency scores may provide complementary information. (shrink)

The Virginia School's economics of natural equals makes consent critical for policy. Democracy is understood as government by discussion, not majority rule. The claim of efficiency unsupported by consent, as common in orthodox economics, appeals to social hierarchy. Politics becomes an act of exchange among equals where the economist is only entitled to offer advice to citizens, not to dictators. The foundation of natural equality and consent explains the common themes of James Buchanan and John Rawls as well as (...) Ronald Coase and the Fabian socialists. What orthodox economics treats as efficient racial discrimination violates the fair chance entitlement to which people consent in a market economy. The importance of replication stressed by Gordon Tullock, developing themes from Karl Popper, is another expression of natural equality since the foresight of replication induces care into research. The publication of previously unpublished correspondence and documentation allows the reader to judge recent controversy. (shrink)

Memory, mother of the Muses by Zeus, has nurtured culture for nearly three millennia while her nemesis, forgetfulness, has been demonized as an agent of destruction. In the modern age, however, memory has grown increasingly burdensome, opening the way for a more positive assessment of forgetfulness. Nietzsche praises animals for an inability to remember that preserves their innocence and happiness, and Freud documents the discontents of a civilization that cannot forget. ;In tracing the recent development of these issues, the dissertation (...) focuses primarily on Walter Benjamin, Hans Blumenberg, and Thomas Pynchon. Benjamin and his anguished "angel of history" show the destructive psychological effects of trying to use human memory as a secular form of redemption. Blumenberg's philosophy of history makes it possible to trace memory's responsibility for redemption to the modern age's inflated notion of the subject. Blumenberg's work also emphasizes the importance of metaphor and narrative in mediating and creating historical understanding, and this aesthetic distance weakens memory's redemptive relation to the past. Pynchon's protagonists, too, find that their desire to make historical meaning fully present is overshadowed by their fear of such presence. By reconciling themselves to a profane aesthetic distance from the past, Blumenberg and Pynchon redeem themselves from the melancholy engendered by an overly ambitious memory. ;Thus the dissertation attempts to recover a more modest and less oppressive memory by understanding it as a way to distance rather than redeem past injustices. This reconception of the function of memory helps establish an equilibrium between the pensive memory of Benjamin's "angel of history" and the innocent oblivion of Nietzsche's animals. ;In addition to the three major figures named in the title, the dissertation devotes sections and excursuses to Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, Virginia Woolf, Ernst Robert Curtius, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Michel Foucault, and Thomas Kuhn. Translations of two essays by Blumenberg, "Pensiveness" and "Being--A MacGuffin," and a comprehensive Blumenberg bibliography are included as appendices. (shrink)

In the beginning was the night. All light, shapes, language, and subjective consciousness, as well as the world and art depicting them, emerged from this formless chaos. In fantasy, we seek to return to this original darkness. Particularly in literature, visual representations, and film, the night resiliently resurfaces from the margins of the knowable, acting as a stage and state of mind in which exceptional perceptions, discoveries, and decisions play out. Elisabeth Bronfen investigates the nocturnal spaces in which extraordinary events (...) unfold, and casts a critical eye into the darkness that enables the irrational exploration of desire, transformation, ecstasy, transgression, spiritual illumination, and moral choice. She begins with an analysis of classical myths depicting the creation of the world and then moves through night scenes in Shakespeare and Milton, Gothic novels and novellas, Hegel's romantic philosophy, and Freud's psychoanalysis. Bronfen also demonstrates how modern works of literature and film, particularly film noir, can convey that piece of night the modern subject carries within. From Mozart's "Queen of the Night" to Virginia Woolf 's oscillation between day and night, life and death, and chaos and aesthetic form, Bronfen renders something visible, conceivable, and comprehensible from the dark realms of the unknown. (shrink)

In The Novel and the Modern World I tried to explain the three factors that account for the special characteristics of the modern novel—the breakdown in community of belief about what was significant in experience, new notions of time, new notions of consciousness—with reference with changes to the social and economic fabric of society, for I was writing in the heyday of “social” thinking about literature that affected so many of us in the late 1930s. But I soon came to (...) feel that this explanation was too slapdash and that a much subtler kind of relationship existed between literature and society than the one I tried to present in 1938. That is why in the new addition of the book I substituted for some of the larger generalisations about society a closer reading of aspects of individual novels. But I have never given up my belief that there is a profound relationship between literature and society and that what might be called the heroic period of experiment and innovation of the novel on both sides of the Atlantic reveals something of that relationship. And in the years that followed the original publication of the book I have found no reason to abandon my general theory, but have applied it, with more subtlety , to a wider range of writers. David Daiches, professor of English at the University of Sussex, is the author of numerous books and articles. Among them, New Literary Values, The Novel and the Modern World, Virginia Woolf, and Literary Essays were pioneering studies in modern literature. He is currently working on Was, a book on the nature of memory and the relation of imagination and language. (shrink)

The narratives studied by schema-based models or story grammars are generally simpler than those found in literary texts, such as short stones or novels. Literary narratives are indeterminate, exhibiting conflicts between schemata and frequent ambiguities in the status of narrative elements. An account of the process of comprehending such complex narratives is beyond the reach of purely cognitive models. It is argued that during comprehension response is controlled by affect, which directs the creation of schemata more adequate to the text. (...) Several properties of affect that make it appropriate for this model of narrative are discussed. A short story by Virginia Woolf is analysed in the light of the proposed model. A study with readers of the story is described, which illustrates the process of schema formation: Shifts in the relative importance of story phrases across the reading and the comments made by readers point to a process of schema creation under the control of affect. It is argued that affect may play a more productive role in cognitive processes than is generally acknowledged. (shrink)

This study reflects on the ways in which children, during pandemic times, expressed themselves and came into contact with their teachers and classmates through Image-Letters, ways of saying and saying themselves to the world through audiovisual media. Sensible sharing of their daily lives were revealed by these media and made us think about the diverse childhood of this time. The theoretical framework that supported this work had the contribution of De Certeau regarding studies on everyday life, Walter Benjamin with his (...) writings on childhood experience, Sandra Corazza and Walter Kohan with their contributions to studies on contemporary childhoods and Virgínia Kastrup who supported us on to the cartography method, a methodological approach that allowed us to follow the research process. The objective of this work was to observe the ways in which children communicate through verbal-visual media and what type of content and everyday fragments they choose to share their experiences during the pandemic period.with the school institution. It is important to highlight that the dissemination of the images was authorized by the children and their guardians through a free and informed consent term, in compliance with the ethical principles of research with images of children. Furthermore, the images are available through QRcode and can be accessed through a smartphone camera. (shrink)

During 1992, academic bioethicists celebrated the 30th anniversary of bioethics. Some like to date the origin of modern secular bioethics to the advent of transplant technology that began with kidney transplantation in the early 1960s in the Seattle, Washington, area. This is certainly a good candidate for a starting point. Another might be the work of Joseph Fletcher in the New York area with the Euthanasia Society of America and with clergy training. Still another candidate for the origins of secular (...) bioethics would be the trial of physicians at the University of Virginia for transplanting a kidney at which the same Joseph Fletcher testified. At that trial, the alteration occurred in American law from a definition of death that focused on the cessation of heartbeat to one that focused on the cessation of brain function. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Living Alone:Solipsism in Heart of DarknessDavid Rudrum"... As if I could read the darkness."Philosophical Investigations, §635We live, as we dream—alone."1 This, Marlow's most eminently quotable aphorism, encapsulates a theme central to the outlook of modernism: what Virginia Woolf called "the loneliness which is the truth about things."2 This loneliness derives not from the absence of others—Marlow is surrounded by friends when he makes this assertion. It is a (...) deeper condition brought about by recognizing the limits of selfhood, by confronting or being confronted by them. This condition is central to Marlow's narrative predicament: he attempts to fathom the enigmatic self that is Kurtz, to understand "the tempestuous anguish of his soul" (HoD, p. 246); he is led, by this attempt, to question the nature of his own self; and, finally, he tries to relay the impenetrable essence of both these selves to the "other minds" of his narratees on the yawl Nellie. As we shall see, Marlow concedes defeat in all three of these struggles. Heart of Darkness, then, is a novel beset by the limits of subjectivity.It is also a novel which foregrounds the limits of language. Marlow concludes that we live in isolation from one another after musing on the failure of language to communicate adequately, to facilitate intersubjective understanding: "it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence" (HoD, p. 172), he says. [End Page 409] Conveying the meaning of his narrative to others is repeatedly written off as unattainable, and on numerous occasions Marlow, presumably wrestling with sheer wordlessness, falls silent.3 Indeed, Marlow's narrative is peppered with words highlighting the limits of language: words like "inconceivable" and "unspeakable," which F. R. Leavis famously dismissed as "overworked."Leavis described Conrad's "adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery" as "worse than supererogatory," "tending to cheapen the tone" to a point "little short of disastrous." He concluded that Conrad was "intent on making a virtue out of not knowing what he means."4 That Leavis—a critic who fetishized "the concrete presentment of incident, setting and image" through the concrete use of words—should have failed to grasp and to value the novel's brush with wordlessness, is unsurprising (Leavis, p. 208). Nor is it surprising that two of the episodes in the novel that most clearly encounter the limits of language—Kurtz's last words and Marlow's lie about them—were written off by Leavis as examples of Conrad having a "bad patch" (Leavis, p. 208). Yet it is nevertheless instructive that a novel that insists on its linguistic and communicative limits should thus have been misread.This article reads these two issues of the limits of language and the limits of subjectivity together. To do so is to invoke a philosophical position in which language, selfhood and worldhood are interrelated, and their limits coterminous—a position found in the early thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein.ILike Marlow, Wittgenstein also sees the self as essentially isolated from other selves, and language as demarcating its limits. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the interconnected remarks "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" and "I am my world" delineate Wittgenstein's rethinking of the "egocentric predicament" in which, to paraphrase Marlow, we all live alone.5 This position entails a close relationship with solipsism: as Wittgenstein says, "what the solipsist means is quite correct" (TLP, 5.62)—which is not, of course, to suggest that solipsism itself is correct. The grammar of Marlow's assertion encapsulates this point. The card-carrying solipsist would assert "I live alone," but the loneliness that Marlow and Wittgenstein envisage is a [End Page 410] condition of our subjectivity that we all have in common, but cannot share. It is a transcendental solipsism.Nearly 300 years before Heart of Darkness was written, a poem by Robert Herrick anticipated some aspects of Marlow's assertion of transcendental solipsism:Dreames Here we are all, by day; By night w'are hurl'd By dreames, each one, into a sev'rall world.6This poem makes explicit something left implicit in Marlow's... (shrink)

It will be useful to consider briefly how the ideas surrounding “form” work in practice. Such ideas rapidly developed to a high stage of sophistication, subtlety, and complexity, but they did not, I believe, stray from the foundations I have tried to indicate for them. Let us consider the example of Wilhelm Worringer, who, like Alois Riegl, found it preferable to discuss ornament rather than images because ornament is a purer expression of form and therefore provides a less encumbered view (...) into form’s spiritual meaning. Concerning interlace ornament of the first millennium in Northern Europe, Worringer wrote that it is “impossible to mistake the restless life contained in this tangle of lines”; it is “the decisive formula for the whole medieval North.” The “need for empathy of this inharmonious people” requires the “uncanny pathos which attaches to the animation of the inorganic”; the “inner disharmony and unclarity of these peoples … could have borne no clearer fruit.”4 Here forms—mostly lines and edges and their relations—are compared to a natural outgrowth, a fruit, and are interpreted in such a way as to permit the characterization of all peoples among whom artifacts with such forms were made and used. The range of formal style becomes coextensive with the range of the deep principles of the worldview of races, nations, and epochs.It is not necessary to follow the ideas of form and expression to quite the hypertrophied consequences Worringer did, although many authors have done so and many more have done so less systematically. The important thing for my purposes is the pattern of inference from form to historical statements and conclusion. 4. Wilhelm Worringer,ion and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, trans. Michael Bullock , p. 77. David Summers is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the History of Art at the University of Virginia. The author of Michelangelo and the Language of Art and The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics , he is currently writing a book to be titled The Defect of Distance: Toward a University History of Art. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Living Alone:Solipsism in Heart of DarknessDavid Rudrum"... As if I could read the darkness."Philosophical Investigations, §635We live, as we dream—alone."1 This, Marlow's most eminently quotable aphorism, encapsulates a theme central to the outlook of modernism: what Virginia Woolf called "the loneliness which is the truth about things."2 This loneliness derives not from the absence of others—Marlow is surrounded by friends when he makes this assertion. It is a (...) deeper condition brought about by recognizing the limits of selfhood, by confronting or being confronted by them. This condition is central to Marlow's narrative predicament: he attempts to fathom the enigmatic self that is Kurtz, to understand "the tempestuous anguish of his soul" (HoD, p. 246); he is led, by this attempt, to question the nature of his own self; and, finally, he tries to relay the impenetrable essence of both these selves to the "other minds" of his narratees on the yawl Nellie. As we shall see, Marlow concedes defeat in all three of these struggles. Heart of Darkness, then, is a novel beset by the limits of subjectivity.It is also a novel which foregrounds the limits of language. Marlow concludes that we live in isolation from one another after musing on the failure of language to communicate adequately, to facilitate intersubjective understanding: "it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence" (HoD, p. 172), he says. [End Page 409] Conveying the meaning of his narrative to others is repeatedly written off as unattainable, and on numerous occasions Marlow, presumably wrestling with sheer wordlessness, falls silent.3 Indeed, Marlow's narrative is peppered with words highlighting the limits of language: words like "inconceivable" and "unspeakable," which F. R. Leavis famously dismissed as "overworked."Leavis described Conrad's "adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery" as "worse than supererogatory," "tending to cheapen the tone" to a point "little short of disastrous." He concluded that Conrad was "intent on making a virtue out of not knowing what he means."4 That Leavis—a critic who fetishized "the concrete presentment of incident, setting and image" through the concrete use of words—should have failed to grasp and to value the novel's brush with wordlessness, is unsurprising (Leavis, p. 208). Nor is it surprising that two of the episodes in the novel that most clearly encounter the limits of language—Kurtz's last words and Marlow's lie about them—were written off by Leavis as examples of Conrad having a "bad patch" (Leavis, p. 208). Yet it is nevertheless instructive that a novel that insists on its linguistic and communicative limits should thus have been misread.This article reads these two issues of the limits of language and the limits of subjectivity together. To do so is to invoke a philosophical position in which language, selfhood and worldhood are interrelated, and their limits coterminous—a position found in the early thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein.ILike Marlow, Wittgenstein also sees the self as essentially isolated from other selves, and language as demarcating its limits. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the interconnected remarks "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" and "I am my world" delineate Wittgenstein's rethinking of the "egocentric predicament" in which, to paraphrase Marlow, we all live alone.5 This position entails a close relationship with solipsism: as Wittgenstein says, "what the solipsist means is quite correct" (TLP, 5.62)—which is not, of course, to suggest that solipsism itself is correct. The grammar of Marlow's assertion encapsulates this point. The card-carrying solipsist would assert "I live alone," but the loneliness that Marlow and Wittgenstein envisage is a [End Page 410] condition of our subjectivity that we all have in common, but cannot share. It is a transcendental solipsism.Nearly 300 years before Heart of Darkness was written, a poem by Robert Herrick anticipated some aspects of Marlow's assertion of transcendental solipsism:Dreames Here we are all, by day; By night w'are hurl'd By dreames, each one, into a sev'rall world.6This poem makes explicit something left implicit in Marlow's... (shrink)

Scholars have emphasized that decisions about technology can be influenced by philosophy of technology assumptions, and have argued for research that critically questions technological determinist assumptions. Empirical studies of technology management in fields other than K-12 education provided evidence that philosophy of technology assumptions, including technological determinism, can influence the practice of technology leadership. A qualitative study was conducted to a) examine what philosophy of technology assumptions are present in the thinking of K-12 technology leaders, b) investigate how the assumptions (...) may influence technology decision making, and c) explore whether technological determinist assumptions are present. The research design aligned with Corbin and Strauss qualitative data analysis, and employed constant comparative analysis, theoretical sampling, and theoretical saturation of categories. Subjects involved 31 technology directors and instructional technology specialists from Virginia school districts, and data collection involved interviews following a semi-structured protocol, and a written questionnaire with open-ended questions. The study found that three broad philosophy of technology views were widely held by participants, including an instrumental view of technology, technological optimism, and a technological determinist perspective that sees technological change as inevitable. The core category and central phenomenon that emerged was that technology leaders approach technology leadership through a practice of Keep up with technology (or be left behind). The core category had two main properties that are in conflict with each other, pressure to keep up with technology, and the resistance to technological change they encounter in schools. The study found that technology leaders are guided by two main approaches to technology decision making, represented by the categories Educational goals and curriculum should drive technology, and Keep up with Technology (or be left behind). As leaders deal with their perceived experience of the inevitability of technological change, and their concern for preparing students for a technological future, the core category Keep up with technology (or be left behind) is given the greater weight in technology decision making. The researcher recommends that similar qualitative studies be conducted involving technology leaders outside Virginia, and with other types of educators. It is also recommended that data from this or other qualitative studies be used to help develop and validate a quantitative instrument to measure philosophy of technology assumptions, for use in quantitative studies. (shrink)

Can we ever truly answer the question, “Who am I?” Moderated by Alex Voorhoeve (London School of Economics), neuro-philosopher Elie During (University of Paris, Ouest Nanterre), cognitive scientist David Jopling (York University, Canada), social psychologist Timothy Wilson (University of Virginia),and ethicist Frances Kamm (Harvard University) examine the difficulty of achieving genuine self-knowledge and how the pursuit of self-knowledge plays a role in shaping the self.

When feminist philosophers first turned their attention to traditional ethical theory, its almost exclusive emphasis upon justice, rights, abstract rationality, and individual autonomy came under special criticism. Women’s experiences seemed to suggest the need for a focus on care, empathetic relations, and the interdependence of persons.The most influential readings of what has become an extremely lively and fruitful debate are reproduced here along with important new contributions by Alison Jaggar and Sara Ruddick. As this volume testifies, there is no agreement (...) on the important questions about the relationship between justice and care, but the debate has deepened and enriched our understanding in many ways. Justice and Care is a valuable collection of readings—an essential tool for anyone studying the state of feminist thought in particular or ethical theory in general. (shrink)

Whether we should respect international law is in dispute. In the United States, international law is dismissed by the left as merely promoting the interests of powerful states. It is attacked by the right as irrelevant and an interference with the interests and mission of the United States. And it follows from the arguments of many liberals that in the absence of world government the world is in a Hobbesian state of nature and international law inapplicable. This article reviews the (...) thinking of Kant, Locke, and Rawls, among others and shows how arguments against respect for international law can be answered. It questions arguments based on the analogy between states and individuals, and between international law as it has developed and law based on an ideal social contract between individuals. It then turns to the ethics of care, a recent addition to moral theory, and examines its major characteristics and recommendations. It considers how the ethics of care would view international law and the guidance this moral approach could provide for international relations. The article shows how the ethics of care is compatible with various current trends, and how thinking about globalization and greater international interdependence would benefit from greater attention to it. The article argues that the ethics of care would clearly support respect for international law as it has developed, but that it would even more strongly support addressing current problems in ways that would, in the longer term, make appeals to law and its enforcements ever less necessary. Keywords: international law; the ethics of care; moral theory; political theory; social contract; states; groups; Hobbes; Kant; Locke (Published: 16 September 2011) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 4 , No. 3, 2011, pp. 173-194. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v4i3.8405. (shrink)

How is feminism changing the way women and men think, feel, and act? Virginia Held explores how feminist theory is changing contemporary views of moral choice. She proposes a comprehensive philosophy of feminist ethics, arguing persuasively for reconceptualizations of the self of relations between the self and others and of images of birth and death, nurturing and violence. Held shows how social, political, and cultural institutions have traditionally been founded upon masculine ideals of morality. She then identifies a distinct (...) feminist morality that moves beyond culturally embedded notions about motherhood and female emotionality. Examining the effects of this alternative moral and ethical system on changing social values, Held discusses its far-reaching implications for altering standards of freedom, democracy, equality, and personal development. Ultimately, she concludes, the culture of feminism could provide a fresh perspective on--even solutions to--contemporary social problems. Feminist Morality makes a vital contribution to the ongoing debate in feminist theory on the importance of motherhood. For philosophers and other readers outside feminist theory, it offers a feminist moral and social critique in clear and accessible terms. (shrink)

Part of the appeal of the biological approach to personal identity is that it does not have to countenance spatially coincident entities. But if the termination thesis is correct and the organism ceases to exist at death, then it appears that the corpse is a dead body that earlier was a living body and distinct from but spatially coincident with the organism. If the organism is identified with the body, then the unwelcome spatial coincidence could perhaps be avoided. It is (...) argued that such an identification would be a mistake. A living organism has a different part/whole relationship and persistence conditions than the alleged body. A case will be made that the concept ‘human body’ is a conceptual mess, vague in an unprincipled manner, and that an eliminativist stance towards dead bodies is the appropriate response. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In this book, the author examines the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence systems as they integrate and replace traditional social structures in new sociocognitive-technological environments. She discusses issues related to the integrity of researchers, technologists, and manufacturers as they design, construct, use, and manage artificially intelligent systems; formalisms for reasoning about moral decisions as part of the behavior of artificial autonomous systems such as agents and robots; and design methodologies for social agents based on societal, moral, and legal values. Throughout (...) the book the author discusses related work, conscious of both classical, philosophical treatments of ethical issues and the implications in modern, algorithmic systems, and she combines regular references and footnotes with suggestions for further reading. This short overview is suitable for undergraduate students, in both technical and non-technical courses, and for interested and concerned researchers, practitioners, and citizens. (shrink)

As a continuation of the work of the third author in [5], we make further observations on the features of Galois cohomology in the general model theoretic context. We make explicit the connection between forms of definable groups and first cohomology sets with coefficients in a suitable automorphism group. We then use a method of twisting cohomology (inspired by Serre’s algebraic twisting) to describe arbitrary fibres in cohomology sequences—yielding a useful “finiteness” result on cohomology sets. Applied to the special case (...) of differential fields and Kolchin’s constrained cohomology, we complete results from [3] by proving that the first constrained cohomology set of a differential algebraic group over a bounded, differentially large, field is countable. (shrink)

Virginia Held assesses the ethics of care as a promising alternative to the familiar moral theories that serve so inadequately to guide our lives. The ethics of care is only a few decades old, yet it is by now a distinct moral theory or normative approach to the problems we face. It is relevant to global and political matters as well as to the personal relations that can most clearly exemplify care. This book clarifies just what the ethics of (...) care is: what its characteristics are, what it holds, and what it enables us to do. It discusses the feminist roots of this moral approach and why the ethics of care can be a morality with universal appeal. Held examines what we mean by "care," and what a caring person is like. Where other moral theories demand impartiality above all, the ethics of care understands the moral import of our ties to our families and groups. It evaluates such ties, focusing on caring relations rather than simply on the virtues of individuals. The book proposes how such values as justice, equality, and individual rights can "fit together" with such values as care, trust, mutual consideration, and solidarity. In the second part of the book, Held examines the potential of the ethics of care for dealing with social issues. She shows how the ethics of care is more promising than Kantian moral theory and utilitarianism for advice on how expansive, or not, markets should be, and on when other values than market ones should prevail. She connects the ethics of care with the rising interest in civil society, and considers the limits appropriate for the language of rights. Finally, she shows the promise of the ethics of care for dealing with global problems and seeing anew the outlines of international civility. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)