Structural Injustice has become a hugely important concept in the field of political theory with the work of Iris Marion Young central to debates on what it is, what motivates it and how it should be addressed. In this article, I focus on a particular thread in Young’s account of structural injustice which I argue is all too often overlooked - the untraceability of structural injustice. This is not only a constant theme in Young’s account of structural injustice, it is, (...) in fact, a defining feature. By ‘untraceable’, Young means that structural injustice is distinct from other sorts of injustices for which there is a traceable agent at fault – these sorts of faut-based injustices fall under what Young calls the ‘liability model of injustice’. For the purposes of exploring the concept of structural injustice, I follow the logic of the claim that structural injustice is untraceable to see where it takes us in conversation with Young’s critics. I conclude that Young’s account is not only defensible with some clarification and development but vital politically. That said, I also find Young’s account of political responsibility for structural injustice wanting and accordingly I propose a way of understanding what I see as a dynamic transition from structural to fault-based injustices which I argue Young’s more ‘static’ account fails to accommodate. This is important, I suggest, for thinking about the ways in which responsibility for different forms of injustice operate and change. _Contemporary Political Theory_ (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-023-00634-4. (shrink)

Focusing on the debate between resource egalitarians and capability theorists, with particular attention to gender equality, this article rejects the prevailing assumption that the ‘capability approach’ to equality, as outlined by Amartya Sen, is better able to respond to important empirically identifiable inequalities than its resource egalitarian alternative, as developed by Ronald Dworkin. Developing and expanding upon the often overlooked Dworkinian ‘principle of independence’, the article contends that resource egalitarianism is capable of identifying and responding to a complex set of (...) structural inequalities that remain outside the purview of the capability approach. Key Words: capability approach • Dworkin • egalitarianism • equality • gender inequalities • Sen. (shrink)

Dialogue is promoted by its supporters as a pluralising force capable of accommodating the moral disagreement inevitable in every sphere of human society, but this promise is widely and vehemently challenged. How are we to determine the principles upon which the dialogical exchange should take place? How should we think of ourselves as interlocutors? Should we associate dialogue with the desire for consensus? How should we determine decision-making? What are the gender dynamics of dialogical politics and how much do they (...) matter? This book brings together internationally recognised expert authors from the fields of political and social theory, political philosophy and international relations to consider these controversial questions anew from a range of theoretical positions. The differences of opinions and clashes of views make for a fascinating and highly informative read. (shrink)

Responsibility has become a central concept in AI ethics; however, little research has been conducted into practitioners’ personal understandings of responsibility in the context of AI, including how responsibility should be defined and who is responsible when something goes wrong. In this article, we present findings from a 2020–2021 data set of interviews with AI practitioners and tech workers at a single multinational technology company and interpret them through the lens of feminist political thought. We reimagine responsibility in the context (...) of AI development and deployment as the product of work cultures that enable tech workers to be responsive and answerable for their products over the long and short term. From our interviews, we identify three key pain points in understanding the distribution of responsibility between actors and developing responsible design and deployment practices: (1) unstable business ecosystems and AI lifecycles, which require an approach to responsibility that accounts for the dynamic nature of these systems; (2) the issue of incentivizing engineers to take responsibility for the mundane maintenance practices essential to the functioning of AI systems and (3) the need to overcome individual and structural barriers to taking ownership over AI products and their effects. From these findings, we make three recommendations based on feminist theory: (1) organisations should move from a static model of responsibility to a dynamic and ethically motivated response-ability; (2) companies need to revalue care and maintenance practices; and (3) firms must move away from individualistic ideas of responsibility towards fostering wider cultures of responsibility. (shrink)

The subtitle of this work better indicates its content than the lead title itself. The author is more interested in those social and political structures which promote the common good than he is in the concept itself, although the text is not lacking in philosophical analysis. In a first chapter Cicero is allowed to frame the issues which Miller subsequently explores in the thought of Pitt, Abercromby, Pownall, Rutherforth, Brown, Priestley, Locke, Hume, Price, and in the thought of many others. (...) Liberty, law, security, patriotism, colonization, toleration, and the role of religion in promoting the common good are topics frequently addressed by the eighteenth century authors considered. The level of political discourse in eighteenth century Britain is shown to be serious, achieving a depth rivaling ancient Rome itself. (shrink)

How holographic patterns of information underlie our physical reality.

Cognitive control of physical activity and sedentary behavior is receiving increased attention in the neuroscientific and behavioral medicine literature as a means of better understanding and improving the self-regulation of physical activity. Enhancing individuals’ cognitive control capacities may provide a resilient means to increase physical activity and reduce sedentary behavior. First, this paper reviews emerging evidence of the antecedence of cognitive control abilities in successful self-regulation of physical activity, and in precipitating self-regulation failure that predisposes to sedentary behavior. We then (...) highlight the brain networks that may underpin the cognitive control and self-regulation of physical activity, including the default mode network, prefrontal cortical networks and brain regions and pathways associated with reward. We then discuss research on cognitive training interventions that document improved cognitive control and that suggest promise of influencing physical activity regulation. Key cognitive training components likely to be the most effective at improving self-regulation are also highlighted. The review concludes with suggestions for future research. (shrink)

The various aspects of Christian Liberty and of the life of the Christian in the world are linked in a singular way in Paul’s pronouncements on marriage, as is found in 1 Cor 7:1–7 ff. Our choice of St. Augustine in the numerous contemporary scholarly attempted hermeneutics of 1 Cor 7:1–7 is that he adopts and elaborated an already existing tradition on sex and marriage. Moreover, this text in the New Testament is the only one that speaks explicitly of the (...) significance of conjugal intercourse. The interpretation of this text or passage has to an extent determined the development of the church’s tradition. Thus, the importance of the passage has to be considered. In Cor 7:1, Paul starts answering the questions the Corinthians put to him. Verse 1 reads: “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote”. The first of these questions concerns marriage. According to the superscription of this work, Augustine’s interpretation of 1 Cor 7:1–7 has implications for Christians in the contemporary world. In as much as it raises numerous problems to our contemporary understanding of marriage and sexuality, the problem of sexuality characterized our society today. (shrink)

The system GLS, which is a modal sequent calculus system for the provability logic GL, was introduced by G. Sambin and S. Valentini in Journal of Philosophical Logic, 11, 311–342,, and in 12, 471–476,, the second author presented a syntactic cut-elimination proof for GLS. In this paper, we will use regress trees in order to present a simpler and more intuitive syntactic cut derivability proof for GLS1, which is a variant of GLS without the cut rule.

Nonverbal signals color the meanings of interpersonal relationships. Humans rely on facial, head, postural, and vocal signals to express relational messages along continua. Three of relevance are dominance-submission, composure-nervousness and trust-distrust. Machine learning and new automated analysis tools are making possible a deeper understanding of the dynamics of relational communication. These are explored in the context of group interactions during a game entailing deception. The “messiness” of studying communication under naturalistic conditions creates many measurement and design obstacles that are discussed (...) here. Possibilities for their mitigation are considered. (shrink)

Critical Realism and Marxism addresses controversial debates, revealing a potentially fruitful relationship; deepening our understanding of the social world and contibuting towards eliminating barbarism in contemporary capitalism.

Publication date: 11 June 2018 Source: Author: Jude Nwafor Eze, Umar Aliyu, Abdulmalik Alhaji-Baba, Muhammad Alfa This research evaluates the farmers’ vulnerability to climate change in Niger State. Strategies for reducing the effect of climate change have regularly been made without experimental foundations and adequate information on farmers’ vulnerability to climate change in the study area. Thus, integrated farmers’ vulnerability assessment approach was employed by classifying socioeconomic and biophysical indicators of vulnerability into adaptive capacity, sensitivity and exposure to determine (...) the farmers’ vulnerability to climate change. This is based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s definition of vulnerability. The study adopted a survey design and the method utilized for the study was questionnaire administered to 400 households in the study area. The results indicate that the farmers’ vulnerability was low in zone A with a mean index of 2.86, very low in zone B with a mean index of 3.74, and high in zone C with a mean index of 1.95. It is recommended that measures should be taken to integrate climate change adaptation into Niger State development process. These measures should include improvement in adoption of good agricultural practices. (shrink)

Recently, significant research effort has focused on using Twitter to investigate mental health at the population-level. While there has been influential work in developing ethical guidelines for Internet discussion forum-based research in public health, there is currently limited work focused on addressing ethical problems in Twitter-based public health research, and less still that considers these issues from users’ own perspectives. In this work, we aim to investigate public attitudes towards utilizing public domain Twitter data for population-level mental health monitoring using (...) a qualitative methodology. The study explores user perspectives in a series of five, 2-h focus group interviews. Following a semi-structured protocol, 26 Twitter users with and without a diagnosed history of depression discussed general Twitter use, along with privacy expectations, and ethical issues in using social media for health monitoring, with a particular focus on mental health monitoring. Transcripts were then transcribed, redacted, and coded using a constant comparative approach. While participants expressed a wide range of opinions, there was an overall trend towards a relatively positive view of using public domain Twitter data as a resource for population level mental health monitoring, provided that results are appropriately aggregated. Results are divided into five sections: a profile of respondents’ Twitter use patterns and use variability; users’ privacy expectations, including expectations regarding data reach and permanence; attitudes towards social media based population-level health monitoring in general, and attitudes towards mental health monitoring in particular; attitudes towards individual versus population-level health monitoring; and users’ own recommendations for the appropriate regulation of population-level mental health monitoring. Focus group data reveal a wide range of attitudes towards the use of public-domain social media “big data” in population health research, from enthusiasm, through acceptance, to opposition. Study results highlight new perspectives in the discussion of ethical use of public data, particularly with respect to consent, privacy, and oversight. (shrink)

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) are unique spaces that defy materialist interpretations of space and place. In drawing upon Edward Soja’s work of spatiality, CVEs can be considered as thirdspace, a space that has as much relevance as that typified by our physical, or ‘real,’ existence. Virtual space undermines the rigid polemic of the ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ by revealing lived experience as a combination of both real and imagined experience. The virtual illuminates experience as a relativist combination of perception and interpretation (...) that inhabits both the corporeal and the virtual realms. Using the example of Second Life’s Lost Gardens of Apollo this article will illuminate the fluidity of real and imagined place through an environment of rich visual experience. Inaddition, such spaces will be discussed as places of potential social and political reconfiguration by challenging the traditional socio-cultural and historical aspects of space. (shrink)

This paper addresses the past, present and future aspects of African leadership and organizational ethics that have, are and will be key for any organization to sustain its systems and structures. Organizational ethics revolves around written and/or unwritten guidelines, ethical values, principles, rules and standards, that are drawn from the harmonious coexistence with the biosphere and it is how these elements are applied that dictates the style of leadership and the ethical thinking of the leaders. Africa has a wide range (...) of complexities which are compounded by, inter alia, tribal divisiveness, selfish leadership, wealth inequality, and massive unemployment. Africans tend to draw their leadership and ethical practices and reflections from the events in the environment with which they have interacted for many years. However, in order to fully address and understand the African perspective in leadership and organizational ethics, a broad comprehension of the African diverse and complex landscape is needed through unravelling of the three dimensional existence of the people. African ethics, developed over time, unifies organizations and leadership since it is part of life and is practised, sub-consciously or unconsciously, by the people as they transform from one practice to the other, and during intergenerational transitions. Globalization, liberalization, technological changes and advancement, and market changes are rapidly transforming the environment in which organizations operate. In such a situation, an effective and true leader cannot be rigid but should be flexible, with the ability to use different leadership styles whenever the situation calls for it. Only those leaders with a three-dimensional perspective live inspiring lives, live with a cause and adopt organizational ethics and leadership styles that will stand the test of time. Despite Africa being the cradle of humankind, leadership and organizational ethics is still in its infancy and wanting, even with the new generation of young leaders. The future outlook of African organizational ethics and leadership is to be found in the intersection of changes in technology, life style, demographics and geopolitics with new trends emerging in global polity and economy. (shrink)

Publication date: 15 October 2018 Source: Author: Jude Nwafor Eze, Coleen Vogel, Philip Audu Ibrahim Flood is known to cause devastating livelihood impacts, suffering and economic damages. To reduce the impact of floods, it is very important to identify and understand the socio-economic factors that determine people’s ability to cope with stress or change. Consequently, the study assesses the social vulnerability of the households to floods in Niger State, in order to provide the empirical evidence necessary for flood adaptation (...) policies and strategies in the state. The data for the research were obtained from the household survey and Dartmouth Flood Observatory. The data obtained were analysed using descriptive and statistical analysis. The results show that flood events in the study area were caused by heavy rainfall, compounded by the opening of the Shiroro dam gate to release the excess flood in the reservoir. Moreover, results of Student “t” test and One-Way Analysis of Variance on socio-economic characteristics show that households’ major economic activities, educational status, household size, income distribution, and membership of cooperative society were significant at p 10, do not belong to cooperative society and earn less that N21000 per month have higher mean frequency, thus, the predominant households were, therefore, farmers, illiterate, have large family size, poor, and have no access to loan. Thus, the socio-economic characteristics of the households in the study area contribute to their vulnerability to floods by reducing their coping capacity. Based on the results of the assessment, it is recommended that measures are taken to mainstream flood adaptation into the development process. (shrink)

Professor Brown describes and criticises the major classical model of rationality and offers a new model of this central concept in the history of philosophy and of science.

When recalling events that one personally experienced, sometimes one sees oneself in the remembered scene: from an external, detached 'observer perspective'. In such cases one remembers from-the-outside. Remembering from-the-outside is a common yet curious case of personal memory. This book disentangles the puzzles posed by such memories.

Social relationships are constructed by and through the relational communication that people exchange. Relational messages are implicit nonverbal and verbal messages that signal how people regard one another and define their interpersonal relationships—equal or unequal, affectionate or hostile, inclusive or exclusive, similar or dissimilar, and so forth. Such signals can be measured automatically by the latest machine learning software tools and combined into meaningful factors that represent the socioemotional expressions that constitute relational messages between people. Relational messages operate continuously on (...) a parallel track with verbal communication, implicitly telling interactants the current state of their relationship and how to interpret the verbal messages being exchanged. We report an investigation that explored how group members signal these implicit messages through multimodal behaviors measured by sensor data and linked to the socioemotional cognitions interpreted as relational messages. By use of a modified Brunswikian lens model, we predicted perceived relational messages of dominance, affection, involvement, composure, similarity and trust from automatically measured kinesic, vocalic and linguistic indicators. The relational messages in turn predicted the veracity of group members. The Brunswikian Lens Model offers a way to connect objective behaviors exhibited by social actors to the emotions and cognitions being perceived by other interactants and linking those perceptions to social outcomes. This method can be used to ascertain what behaviors and/or perceptions are associated with judgments of an actor’s veracity. Computerized measurements of behaviors and perceptions can replace manual measurements, significantly expediting analysis and drilling down to micro-level measurement in a previously unavailable manner. (shrink)

Jude Edeh ABSTRACT: The challenge faced with the proliferation of various kinds of cognitivism is the difficulty of providing a straightforward characterization of moral realism and antirealism. In light of this tension, I identified a problem in Sayre-McCord’s way of specifying the criteria of moral realism. Furthermore, I provided a framework that characterized the moral ….

Edward Pols long ago established himself as a philosopher of first rank. His carefully wrought studies have succeeded each other with regularity, The Recognition of Reason, Whitehead’s Metaphysics, Meditation on a Prisoner: Towards Understanding Action and Mind, and The Acts of Our Being: A Reflection on Agency and Responsibility. While clearly within a tradition that can be traced through modernity to the middle ages and to classical philosophy, Pols is no slave to the past. He recognizes the perennial character of (...) fundamental philosophical problems, their complexity, and the challenge they offer to the contemporary investigator. This perspicacity does not lead him to deny the worth of past efforts, but positions him to frame old problems in a new way. His insight is rooted in a profound grasp of the processes of human knowing and in a rare metaphysical sense. (shrink)

One of the challenges of modern healthcare ethics practice is the navigation of boundaries. Practicing healthcare ethicists in the performance of their role must navigate meanings, choices, decisions and actions embedded in complex cultural and social relationships amongst diverse individuals. In light of the evolving state of modern healthcare ethics practice and the recent move toward professionalization via certification, understanding boundary navigation in healthcare ethics practice is critical. Because healthcare ethics is endowed with many boundaries which often delineate concerns about (...) professional expertise and authority, epistemological reflection on the relationship between theory and practice points toward the social context as relevant to the conceptualization of boundaries. The skills of social scientists may prove helpful to provide data and insights into the conceptualization and navigation of clinical ethics qua profession. Empirical ethics research, which combines empirical description (usually social scientific) with normative-ethical analysis and reflection, is a way forward as we engage and reflect upon issues which have implications for practice standards and professionalization of the role. This requires cooperative engagement of the descriptive and normative disciplines to explore our understandings of boundaries in healthcare ethics practice. This will contribute to the ongoing reflection not only as we envision the professional role but to ensure that it is enacted in practice. (shrink)

This paper defends a normative basis for entrepreneurial ventures, and draws the conclusion that any enterprise, insofar as it is reasonable, has in final analysis to be a (free) gift to promote good. Building on Herbert Simon's idea of "satisficing" and developing it in line with axiological insights of the new classical natural law theory, this paper makes the argument that a choice to proceed reasonably in any entrepreneurial venture will be guided by rationality that is bounded. Bounded rationality entails (...) that the various end-values or goals of the venture will be incommensurable, and this implies that (1) the enterprise need not be locked in on promoting merely one value, such as profits, and (2) a choice to aim at one or more goals will be a personal (free) gift, which is ethically valuable. This paper has appeared in Spanish translation as El don personal en las empresas sanas: racionalidad limitada, valores incommensurables y agencia economica in Revista Empresa y Humanismo, Vol. XI no. 1 (2008), pp. 67-88, published by the Institute for Business and Humanism, University of Navarra, Spain. Permission granted to reproduce/publish the original English version here and elsewhere. (shrink)

According to the Desiderative Lockean Thesis, there are necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in the terms of decision theory, for when one is truly said to want. What one is truly said to want, it turns out, varies remarkably by context—and to an underappreciated degree. To explain this context-sensitivity—and closure properties of wanting—I advance a Desiderative Lockean view that is distinctive in having two context-sensitive parameters.

The seventeenth century was a period of extraordinary invention, discovery and revolutions in scientific, social and political orders. It was a time of expansive automation, biological discovery, rapid advances in medical knowledge, of animal trials and a questioning of the boundaries between species, human and non-human, between social classes, and of the assumed naturalness of political inequality. This book gives a tour through those objects, ordinary and extraordinary, which captivated the philosophical imagination of the single most important French philosopher of (...) this period, Rene Descartes. Deborah J. Brown and Calvin G. Normore document Descartes' attempt to make sense of the complex, composite objects of human and divine invention, consistent with the fundamental tenets of his metaphysical system. Their central argument is that, far from reducing all the categories of ordinary experience to the two basic categories of substance, mind and body, Descartes' philosophy recognises irreducible composites that resist reduction, and require their own distinctive modes of explanation. (shrink)

You want to see the concert, but don’t want to take a long drive (even though the concert is far away). Such *strongly conflicting desire ascriptions* are, I show, wrongly predicted incompatible by standard semantics. I then object to possible solutions, and give my own, based on *some-things-considered desire*. Considering the fun of the concert, but ignoring the drive, you want to see the concert; considering the boredom of the drive, but ignoring the concert, you don’t want to take the (...) drive. (shrink)

In recent years, campaigns across the globe have called for the removal of objects symbolic of white supremacy. This paper examines the ethics of altering or removing such objects. Do these strategies sanitize history, destroy heritage and suppress freedom of speech? Or are they important steps towards justice? Does removing monuments and renaming schools reflect a lack of parity and unfairly erase local identities? Or can it sometimes be morally required, as an expression of respect for the memories of people (...) who endured past injustices; a recognition of this history's ongoing legacies; and a repudiation of unjust social hierarchies? (shrink)

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle examines the nature of happiness, which he defines as a specially good kind of life. He considers the nature of practical reasoning, friendship, and the role and importance of the moral virtues in the best life. This new edition features a revised translation and valuable new introduction and notes.