Revenge has been a subject of concern in most intellectual traditions throughout history, and even when social norms regard it as permissible or even obligatory, it is commonly recognised as being more counterproductive than beneficial. In this book, Kit R. Christensen explores this provocative issue, offering an in-depth account of both the nature of revenge and the causes and consequences of the desire for this kind of retaliatory violence. He then develops a version of eudaimonistic consequentialism to argue that (...) vengeance is never morally justified, and applies this to cases of intergroup violence where the lust for revenge against a vilified 'Them' is easily incited and often exploited. His study will interest a wide range of readers in moral philosophy as well as social philosophers, legal theorists, and social/behavioural scientists. (shrink)

This book takes a philosophical approach to questions concerning violence, war, and justice in human affairs. It offers the reader a broad introduction to underlying assumptions, values, concepts, theories, and the historical contexts informing much of the current discussion worldwide regarding these morally crucial topics. It provides brief summaries and analyses of a wide range of relevant belief systems, philosophical positions, and policy problems. While not first and foremost a book of advocacy, it is clearly oriented throughout by the ethical (...) preference for nonviolent strategies in the achievement of human ends and a belief in the viability of a socially just—and thus peaceful—human future. It also maintains a consistently skeptical stance towards the all-too-easily accepted apologies, past and present, for violence, war, and the continuation of injustice. (shrink)

Explores the possibilities and limitations of a "virtue ethics" relevant to our times, within the theoretical framework provided by historical materialism and the critique of ideology.

Plagiarism is a problematic issue in universities across the globe (Curtis & Vardanega, 2016 ). This study explored the relationship between negative emotionality and positive attitudes toward plagiarism through the mediation of academic self-efficacy and self-control. Negative emotionality was examined as three components: stress, anxiety, and depression. Self-report surveys were completed by 454 university students to investigate the relationship between negative emotionality and positive attitudes toward plagiarism, as well as the mediating role of academic self-efficacy and self-control in this relationship. (...) The hierarchical multiple regression found that negative emotionality significantly predicted positive attitudes toward plagiarism over and above age and gender (i.e., where male students and younger students were more likely to plagiarise). Furthermore, three mediation analyses showed that academic self-efficacy and self-control mediate the relationship between positive attitudes toward plagiarism and each component of negative emotionality. Considering these results, subsequent research should investigate whether implementing strategies that alleviate stress, anxiety, and depression could increase academic self-efficacy and self-control, which in turn, could then reduce positive attitudes toward plagiarism. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to extend the semantics for the kind of logic of ground developed in (deRosset and Fine, 2023). In that paper, we very briefly suggested a way of treating universal and existential quantification over a fixed domain of objects. Here we explore some options for extending the treatment to allow for a variable domain of objects.

Oregon is the only state in the United States where a physician may legally prescribe a lethal dose of barbiturate for a patient intending suicide. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act was passed by voters in 1994 and came into effect after much legal wrangling in October of 1997. At the same time, a cabinetmaker named Pat Matheny was struggling with progressive weakness from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. I met with Pat and his family for a lengthy interview in (...) October 1998 in Coos Bay, Oregon, for a television news report on his decision to get a lethal prescription. Below is an extract from that interview. On the day this introduction was written, 10 March 1999, Pat took the prescribed lethal overdose of barbiturates and died at home. His illness was taking his voice, he could not move his hands or legs, and breathing was becoming very difficult. His mother told me he knew that was for him. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the semantics for the logics of ground that derive from a slight variant GG of the logic of (Fine, 2012) that have already been developed in (deRosset and Fine, 2023). Our aim is to outline that semantics and to provide a comparison with two related semantics for ground, given in (Correia, 2017) and (Kraemer, 2018). This comparison highlights the strengths and difficulties of these different approaches.

Confidence ratings have often been integrated into reasoning and intelligence tasks as a means for assessing meta-reasoning processes. Although it is often assumed that eliciting these judgements throughout reasoning tasks has no effect on the underlying performance outcomes, this is yet to be established empirically. The current study examines whether eliciting CR from participants during a fluid-reasoning task influences their performance and how this effect is moderated by their initial self-confidence in their own reasoning abilities. In a first experiment, we (...) found that participants performing CR during Raven's Progressive Matrices significantly outperformed a control group who did not provide ratings. Additionally, a second experiment demonstrated that CR only facilitated performance in participants who have a high level of initial self-confidence in their reasoning ability, whereas they were detrimental to participants low in self-confidence. (shrink)

‘There is no place in the phenomenology of fully absorbed coping’, writes Hubert Dreyfus, ‘for mindfulness. In flow, as Sartre sees, there are only attractive and repulsive forces drawing appropriate activity out of an active body’1. Among the many ways in which history animates dynamical systems at a range of distinctive timescales, the phenomena of embodied human habit, skilful movement, and absorbed coping are among the most pervasive and mundane, and the most philosophically puzzling. In this essay we examine both (...) habitual and skilled movement, sketching the outlines of a multidimensional framework within which the many differences across distinctive cases and domains might be fruitfully understood. Both the range of movement phenomena which can plausibly be seen as instances of habit or skill, and the space of possible theories of such phenomena are richer and more disparate than philosophy easily encompasses. We seek to bring phenomenology into contact with relevant movements in psychological theories of skilful action, in the belief that phenomenological philosophy and cognitive science can be allies rather than antagonists. (shrink)

Researchers have documented the dominance of intensive mothering ideologies and their impact on mothers and their families. However, the effect of these ideologies on childless women has received little attention. I draw on interview data to examine the parenting ideologies of childless women with electively frozen eggs. I demonstrate that incorporation of and commitment to intensive mothering ideologies affect fertility decision making among these childless women. I find that concerns about the heavy burdens of intensive motherhood, coupled with unsupportive partners (...) and workplaces, produce ambivalence toward childbearing and a strategy of fertility postponement. I extend the literatures on intensive mothering, reproductive decision making, assisted reproductive technologies, and elective egg freezing by identifying egg freezing as an expression of the gendering of fertility risk and as a means of “doing security.” Participants view egg freezing as a means of managing risk in two primary ways: as a means of securing access to biogenetic motherhood by managing biological risks of infertility and fetal genetic abnormality, and as a means of enabling intensive parenting by managing temporal risks inherent in coordinating careers, relationships, and childbearing. (shrink)

According to Socrates, as he is described in Plato?s Phaedo, the definition of a true philosopher is a wise man who is continuously practicing dying and being dead. Already in this life, the philosopher tries to free his soul from the body in order to acquire true knowledge as the soul is progressively becoming detached from the body. Centuries after it was written, Plato?s Phaedo continued to play a role for some early Christian authors, and this article focuses on three (...) instances where Christian women mirror Socrates and/or his definition of philosophy. We find these instances in hagiographical literature from the fourth and fifth centuries at different locations in the Roman Empire - in the Lives of Macrina, Marcella and Syncletica. These texts are all to varying degrees impacted by Platonic philosophy and by the ideal of the male philosopher Socrates. As women mastering philosophy, they widened common cultural expectations for women, revealing how Christian authors in certain contexts ascribed authority to female figures. (shrink)

It's widely supposed that unification is an epistemic virtue: the degree to which a theory is unified contributes to its overall confirmation. However, this supposition has consequences which haven't been noted, and which undermine the leading accounts of unification. For, given Hempel's equivalence condition, any epistemic virtue must be such that logically equivalent theories must equally well unify any body of evidence, and logically equivalent bodies of evidence must be equally well unified by any theory. Yet the leading accounts of (...) unification in Bayesian terms, or those in terms of argument patterns, cannot satisfy these constraints conditions. The reason for this runs deep: these accounts of unification make unity depend on factors that vary between equivalent theories: the probabilistic relations of their components, or their relations to argument patterns. The solution is to abandon such accounts and instead adopt an account of unity based on worldly relations such as causation, rather than inferential relations. Such an account effortlessly satisfies the equivalence conditions, and so may describe the epistemic virtue of unity. (shrink)

How do concert pianists commit to memory the structure of a piece of music like Bach’s Italian Concerto, learning it well enough to remember it in the highly charged setting of a crowded performance venue, yet remaining open to the freshness of expression of the moment? Playing to this audience, in this state, now, requires openness to specificity, to interpretation, a working dynamicism that mere rote learning will not provide. Chaffin, Imreh and Crawford’s innovative and detailed research suggests that the (...) key to this skill is a declarative mental roadmap aiding musical performance. This hypothesis is neatly and unintentionally summarized by professional pianist Imreh, who states when learning a new piece of music “My fingers were playing the notes just fine. The practice I needed was in my head. I had to learn to keep track of where I was. It was a matter of learning exactly what I needed to be thinking of as I played, and at exactly what point. . .” (Chaffin & Imreh 1997, p.326). (shrink)

Confucian ethics as applied to the study of business ethics often relate to the micro consideration of personal ethics and the character of a virtuous person. Actually, Confucius and his school have much to say about the morals of the public administration and the market institutions in a more macro level. While Weber emphasizes the role of culture on the development of the economy, and Marx the determining influence of the material base on ideology, we see an interaction between culture (...) – specifically Confucian business ethics – and the economy. In this paper, we are going to study this interaction in several crucial stages of development of Confucianism. The paper concludes by postulating the relevance of Confucian business ethics to the global knowledge economy. (shrink)

In this article, we analyzed the effect of various factors on moral judgment and ethical attitudes of working persons. It was found that the effect of various socio-demographic factors on ethical attitudes varied between the two different categories of ethical issues under study, issues which involve explicit violation of laws vis-à-vis issues which involved social concerns. Our results did not support the implication of Callahan’s hypothesis that males are more sensitive to rule-based ethical issues while women are to issues involving (...) social concerns; it was found that females have a lower acceptability of unethical behaviors related to both categories of issues in Hong Kong, whereas gender effect was not statistically significant in Mainland China. University education also had no significant effect on ethical attitudes. Religion played an important role in affecting ethical attitudes, however, its effect varied with different types of religions; Christianity was found to be most favorable to higher ethical standards, but people of traditional Chinese religion had a higher acceptability of unethical behaviors involving social concerns compared to people with no religion. Our finding also indicated that employees in state-owned enterprises, private employees, employees in foreign-investment firms, and employers in Mainland China all had a higher acceptability of unethical law-breaking behaviors compared to workers in collectives, throwing doubt on the validity of convergence theory in Mainland China. (shrink)

In recent decades, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has become a powerful forum for trade liberalization and regulatory harmonization. OECD members have worked to reconcile divergent national regulatory approaches, applying a single framework across sovereign states, in effect determining whose knowledge-making practices would guide regulatory action throughout the industrialized world. Focusing on US regulators, industry associations, and environmental groups, this article explores the participatory politics of OECD chemical regulation harmonization in the late 1970s to early 1980s. These efforts (...) were conditioned by differential institutional access and resources among stakeholders who sought to shape regulatory knowledge rules. Facing competing European and US approaches to chemical data—a minimum “base set” of test data versus case-by-case determinations—OECD members chose the European approach in 1980. However, US regulatory politics shifted with the election of President Reagan, prompting industry associations to lobby the US government to block the agreement. Examining the micropolitics of these standards in the making, I demonstrate that while long-term structures advantaged industrial actors, ideological alignment with the US government precipitated their decisive influence. The case illustrates the importance of attending to the distinctive politics of international harmonization and the effects on transnational knowledge-making and regulatory intervention. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have recently become receptive to the idea that, in addition to scientific or causal explanation, there may be a distinctive kind of metaphysical explanation, in which explanans and explanandum are connected, not through some sort of causal mechanism, but through some constitutive form of determination. I myself have long been sympathetic to this idea of constitutive determination or ‘ontological ground’; and it is the aim of the present paper to help put the idea on a firmer (...) footing - to explain how it is to be understood, how it relates to other ideas, and how it might be of use in philosophy. (shrink)

It is my aim in this paper to show that the contemporary assimilation of essence to modality is fundamentally misguided and that, as a consequence, the corresponding conception of metaphysics should be given up. It is not my view that the modal account fails to capture anything which might reasonably be called a concept of essence. My point, rather, is that the notion of essence which is of central importance to the metaphysics of identity is not to be understood in (...) modal terms or even to be regarded as extensionally equivalent to a modal notion. The one notion is, if I am right, a highly refined version of the other; it is like a sieve which performs a similar function but with a much finer mesh. (shrink)

This article addresses a still unsolved puzzle in private law regarding the proper explanation of cases in which courts make substantial awards of damages to claimants whose rights have been infringed, but who appear to have suffered no factual loss in consequence of the infringement. The paradigm examples tend to involve awards of ‘user’, license fee or ‘hypothetical bargain’ damages in cases involving interference with property rights. It suggests that existing explanations of such cases are all unsatisfactory in one or (...) another respect and posits a new and potentially more powerful explanatory thesis, drawing on Hohfeld. Such awards, it argues, compensate right-holders for the loss of legal powers associated with their primary claim-rights—in particular, the loss of powers they are accorded by the law to ‘prevent’ the infringement of certain types of primary claim right ex ante. Legal powers are thus to be regarded as assets or amenities, the loss of which is amenable to monetary compensation. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between ethics and income among individuals of different religions in the HKSAR of China. The presence of both traditional Chinese religion and Christianity from the West makes our study particularly interesting. The content of ethical beliefs varies with religion and thus the effect of ethics on income may also vary across religion. Furthermore, a reverse causal relationship may run from income to ethics. Since culture and taste affect the consumption behavior of a person, depending on (...) the religion of the person, a person with a higher income may or may not like to ‘acquire’ more ethics. Our empirical results find that there is indeed a simultaneous relationship between income and being ethical so that a single equation estimation of income on ethics and vice versa generates biased estimates. Using a two-stage instrumental variable estimation, our study finds that being ethical contributes to higher income for Christians and the non-religious group, but lowers it for people of traditional Chinese religion. On the other hand, an increase in income increases the likelihood of a person’s being ethical for both Christians and the people of traditional Chinese religion, but reduces it for the non-religious group. (shrink)

In the following study we shall investigate the ancient Greek ‘(all-)day runners’ (ήμεροδρόμοι) 2 from a historical as well as from a modern physiological perspective. Hemerodromoi were of some importance in Greek interstate communication, in particular in military long-distance communication, and are, accordingly, a subject of some interest for the study of interaction in the ancient Greek city-state culture. The investigation begins by considering the ancient evidence on these ‘(all-)day runners’ and moves on to a physiological consideration of this evidence, (...) with particular reference to the feat of the Athenian hemerodromos Pheidippides 3 who ran from Athens to Sparta in 490 BC, shortly before the famous battle of Marathon. (shrink)

Dickert et al. (2020) effectively address how factors such as time limitations, stress, and illness severity in acute conditions warrant a deeper evaluation of how current consent processes serve patients. While data suggests that patients “prefer to be asked for permission upfront rather than waiving consent” (2), consent forms themselves “are frequently long and technical, follow rigid templates, and contain language that appears to prioritize institutional protection” (1). Such findings elucidate patients’ valuation of personal agency over settling for the “benefit (...) of the doubt” that physicians and the consent forms they provide are acting in the patients’ best interests. In response, the authors recommend revisions to consent forms in terms of content, structure, and tone to better facilitate patient understanding beyond the mere conveyance of information. We aim to build Dickert et al.’s discussion of how “consent processes serve functions beyond facilitating an informed, autonomous decision” (2), but with a broader focus on an underrecognized purpose of the consent process: namely, reaffirming a patient’s status as a capable, rational agent. Specifically, we argue that patients can exercise this agency when they thoroughly understand the consent process, per Grimm’s (2012) conception of understanding. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 107-109.

This paper distinguishes two kinds of realist issue -- the issue of whether the propositions of a given domain are factual and the issue of whether they are fundamental. It criticizes previous accounts of what these issues come to and suggests that they are to be understood in terms of a basic metaphysical concept of reality. This leaves open the question of how such issues are to be resolved; and it is argued that this may be done through consideration of (...) what grounds the facts of a given domain, when fundamentality is in question, and what grounds our engagement with the putative facts, when factuality is in question. (shrink)

A letter protesting the publication of a homophobic rant in the Proceedings of the APA.

This paper deals with the truth-Conditions and the logic for vague languages. The use of supervaluations and of classical logic is defended; and other approaches are criticized. The truth-Conditions are extended to a language that contains a definitely-Operator and that is subject to higher order vagueness.

This paper analyses the ethical performance of foreign-investment enterprises operating in China in comparison to that of the indigenous state-owned enterprises, collectives and private enterprises. It uses both the deontological approach and the utilitarian approach in conceptualization, and applies quantitative and econometric techniques to ethical evaluations of empirical evidences. It shows that according to various ethical performance indicators, foreign-investment enterprises have fared well in comparison with local firms. This paper also tries to unravel the effect of a difference in business (...) culture and competitive market forces on ethical performance by comparing the behavior of foreign-investment enterprises with that of the indigenous state-owned enterprises and collectives on the one hand, and with that of the indigenous private enterprises on the other. (shrink)

In the late eighteenth century, the Ecole vétérinaire d'Alfort was renowned for its innovative veterinary education and for having one of the largest natural history and anatomy collections in France. Yet aside from a recent interest in the works of one particular anatomist, the school's history has been mostly ignored. I examine here the fame of the school in eighteenth-century travel literature, the historic connection between veterinary science and natural history, and the relationship between the school's hospital and its esteemed (...) cabinet. Using the correspondence papers of veterinary administrators, state representatives and competing scientific institutions during the French Revolution, I argue that resource constraints and the management of anatomical and natural history specimens produced new disciplinary boundaries between natural history, veterinary medicine and human medicine, while reinforcing geographic divisions between the local and the foreign in the study of non-human animals. This paper reconstructs theAncien Régimereasoning that veterinary students would benefit from a global perspective on animality, and the Revolutionary government's rejection of that premise. Under republicanism, veterinary medicine became domestic. (shrink)