Does the seller of a house have to tell the buyer that the water is turned off twelve hours a day? Does the buyer of a great quantity of tobacco have to inform the seller that the military blockade of the local port, which had depressed tobacco sales and lowered prices, is about to end? Courts say yes in the first case, no in the second. How can we understand the difference in judgments? And what does it say about whether (...) the psychiatrist should disclose to his patient's girlfriend that the patient wants to kill her? Kim Lane Scheppele answers the question, Which secrets are legal secrets and what makes them so? She challenges the economic theory of law, which argues that judges decide cases in ways that maximize efficiency, and she shows that judges use equality as an important principle in their decisions. In the course of thinking about secrets, Scheppele also explores broader questions about judicial reasoning--how judges find meaning in legal texts and how they infuse every fact summary with the values of their legal culture. Finally, the specific insights about secrecy are shown to be consistent with a general moral theory of law that indicates what the content of law should be if the law is to be legitimate, a theory that sees legal justification as the opportunity to attract consent. This is more than a book about secrets. It is also a book about the limits of an economic view of law. Ultimately, it is a work in constructive legal theory, one that draws on moral philosophy, sociology, economics, and political theory to develop a new view of legal interpretation and legal morality. (shrink)

An important feature of some recent jurisprudential writings is the tendency to reject the precept of liberal individualism which affirms the priority of the principles of the "right conduct" over the substantive conceptions of "the good". This rejection, explicit in a recent book by Rogers M. Smith, and implicit in a recent work by Guido Calabresi, leads to strikingly illiberal consequences; hence, this provides indirect confirmation that the priority of the right over the good constitutes the most reliable defense of (...) individual liberty against majoritarian oppression. In Smith, an attempt to replace this priority with the principle of "rational liberty" leads to the disappearance of the guarantees of minority rights against orthodox majorities; in Calabresi, the doctrine of weighing and balancing competing moral principles of "the good" fails to provide an explanation for the strongly held moral intuition that some external preferences have to be disqualified at the outset, before they enter the forum of moral bargaining. (shrink)

Twenty years after the outbreak of the threat posed by international jihadist terrorism, which triggered the need for democracies to balance fundamental rights and security needs, 9/11 and the Rise of Global Anti-Terrorism Law offers an overview of counter-terrorism and of the interplay among the main actors involved in the field since 2001. This book aims to give a picture of the complex and evolving interaction between the international, regional and domestic levels in framing counter-terrorism law and policies. Targeting scholars, (...) researchers and students of international, comparative and constitutional law, it is a valuable resource to understand the theoretical and practical issues arising from the interaction of several levels in counter-terrorism measures. It also provides an in-depth analysis of the role of the United Nations Security Council. (shrink)

Standards of reasonability play an important role in some of the most difficult cases of rape. In recent years, the notion of the “reasonable person” has supplanted the historical concept of the “reasonable man” as the test of reasonability. Contemporary feminist critics like Catharine MacKinnon and Kim Lane Scheppele have challenged the notion of the reasonable person on the grounds that reasonability standards are “gendered to the ground” and so, in practice, the reasonable person is just the reasonable man (...) in a gender neutral guise. These critics call for the explicit employment of a “reasonable woman” standard for application to the actions of female victims of rape. But the arguments for abandoning a gender-neutral standard are double-edged and the employment of gendered standards of reasonability is likely to have implications that are neither foreseen by, nor acceptable to, advocates of such standards. Reasonable agent standards can be dropped, in favor of appeals to the notion of a “reasonable demand (or expectation)” by the law. However, if reasonable agent standards are to be retained, gendered versions of such standards are not preferable to gender-neutral ones. (shrink)

Standards of reasonability play an important role in some of the most difficult cases of rape. In recent years, the notion of the reasonable person has supplanted the historical concept of the reasonable man as the test of reasonability. Contemporary feminist critics like Catharine MacKinnon and Kim Lane Scheppele have challenged the notion of the reasonable person on the grounds that reasonability standards are gendered to the ground and so, in practice, the reasonable person is just the reasonable man (...) in a gender neutral guise. These critics call for the explicit employment of a reasonable woman standard for application to the actions of female victims of rape. But the arguments for abandoning a gender-neutral standard are double-edged and the employment of gendered standards of reasonability is likely to have implications that are neither foreseen by, nor acceptable to, advocates of such standards. Reasonable agent standards can be dropped, in favor of appeals to the notion of a reasonable demand by the law. However, if reasonable agent standards are to be retained, gendered versions of such standards are not preferable to gender-neutral ones. (shrink)

Standards of reasonability play an important role in some of the most difficult cases of rape. In recent years, the notion of the ``reasonable person'' has supplanted the historical concept of the ``reasonable man'' as the test of reasonability. Contemporary feminist critics like Catharine MacKinnon and Kim Lane Scheppele have challenged the notion of the reasonable person on the grounds that reasonability standards are ``gendered to the ground'' and so, in practice, the reasonable person is just the reasonable man (...) in a gender neutral guise. These critics call for the explicit employment of a ``reasonable woman'' standard for application to the actions of female victims of rape. But the arguments for abandoning a gender-neutral standard are double-edged and the employment of gendered standards of reasonability is likely to have implications that are neither foreseen by, nor acceptable to, advocates of such standards. Reasonable agent standards can be dropped, in favor of appeals to the notion of a ``reasonable demand (or expectation)'' by the law. However, if reasonable agent standards are to be retained, gendered versions of such standards are not preferable to gender-neutral ones. (shrink)

For three decades the writings of Jaegwon Kim have had a major influence in philosophy of mind and in metaphysics. Sixteen of his philosophical papers, together with several new postscripts, are collected in Kim [1993]. The publication of this collection prompts the present essay. After some preliminary remarks in the opening section, in Section 2 I will briefly describe Kim's philosophical 'big picture' about the relation between the mental and the physical. In Section 3 I will situate Kim's approach on (...) the larger philosophical landscape, vis-à-vis various other approaches frequently discussed in contemporary philosophy of mind. This comparative discussion will further illuminate Kim's own position, and also will serve as groundwork for subsequent discussion. In Section 4 I will point out certain persistent internal tensions in Kim's philosophical position on the mind--body problem, tensions that emerge especially clearly against the backdrop of Section 3's comparative discussion of Kim's position relative to various competing positions. In the remainder of the paper I will focus on two issues at the heart of his position, with particular attention to what he says about them in some of the more recent papers and the postscripts in Kim [1993]. First, how should a materialist understand the notion that the mental is 'determined' by the physical? More specifically, what role, if any, should be played by the concept of supervenience in explicating this kind of determination relation? Kim's views on this matter have recently changed, and I will discuss the issue with particular attention to his own latest remarks on it. This is the business of Section 5. Second, need a viable materialism assert that mentalistic psychology is reducible to neurobiology? More specifically, should a materialist insist on reducibility, despite the currently influential line of argument used by non-reductive materialists, the 'multiple realization' argument? On this matter too, Kim's views have changed somewhat; again, I will discuss the issue with particular attention to his recent thinking. This is the business of Section 6. (shrink)

Most contemporary theories of action maintain that there are basic actions. A basic action is something that one does intentionally without doing anything else intentionally as means to that end. Most contemporary theories of action also maintain that there are non-basic actions that are mistakes in performance, where a mistake in performance is a case of mucking up what one meant to do, without the failure being the result of prevention or abnormal interference. But most contemporary theories of action deny (...) that there are basic mistakes in performance: stretches of activity that would be basic actions were they to succeed, but are in fact mistakes in performance. I argue that we have reason to think that there are basic mistakes in performance, and if there are, then we must give up a key commitment common to much contemporary action theory. The commitment is that every particular imperfect expression of the will is grounded in some particular perfect expression of the will. Giving up this commitment has important metaphysical consequences for how we think of the will as a power of agency, and implies that causal deviance perhaps isn’t the main problem that causal theorists of action ought to worry about. (shrink)

Negative campaigning is a central component of political campaigns in the United States. Yet, until now, most evidence has suggested that negative campaigning has little effect on voters. How can we reconcile the findings of a plethora of empirical studies with the methods of political elites? This book cuts through to the central issue: how such advertising influences voters' attitudes and their actions during campaigns. Focusing on U.S. senatorial campaigns, Kim Fridkin and Patrick Kenney draw from surveys, experiments, facial expression (...) emotion tests, content analyses, and focus groups. They develop the "tolerance and tactics theory of negativity" and demonstrate the divergent effects of tone and content on voter outcomes. Using their new framework, they find that harsh messages seen as relevant to the opponent's ability to govern are indeed likely to be noticed and acted upon. (shrink)

Terraformer les planètes lointaines pour les rendre aptes à porter des vies humaines nourrit sans doute des imaginations littéraires, mais ce que nous appelons « vie » reste pour le moment étroitement attaché à notre planète Terre.

We study Kim-independence over arbitrary sets. Assuming that forking satisfies existence, we establish Kim's lemma for Kim-dividing over arbitrary sets in an NSOP1 theory. We deduce symmetry of Kim-independence and the independence theorem for Lascar strong types.

Despite thermodynamic, bioenergetic and phylogenetic failings, the 81‐year‐old concept of primordial soup remains central to mainstream thinking on the origin of life. But soup is homogeneous in pH and redox potential, and so has no capacity for energy coupling by chemiosmosis. Thermodynamic constraints make chemiosmosis strictly necessary for carbon and energy metabolism in all free‐living chemotrophs, and presumably the first free‐living cells too. Proton gradients form naturally at alkaline hydrothermal vents and are viewed as central to the origin of life. (...) Here we consider how the earliest cells might have harnessed a geochemically created proton‐motive force and then learned to make their own, a transition that was necessary for their escape from the vents. Synthesis of ATP by chemiosmosis today involves generation of an ion gradient by means of vectorial electron transfer from a donor to an acceptor. We argue that the first donor was hydrogen and the first acceptor CO2. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper explores and reevaluates the place of Plato in the history of liberty. In the first half, reevaluating the view that he invents a concept of ‘positive liberty’ in the Republic, I argue for two claims: that he does not do so, insofar as this is not the way that virtuous psychological self-mastery in the Republic is understood, and that the Republic works primarily with the inverse concept of slavery, relying on entrenched Greek ideas about the badness of the (...) status of being a slave and the actions and dispositions associated with it. Turning in the second half to seek Platonic innovation not in the domain of ‘positive liberty’ but in reflection on liberty as a political value, understood as the liberty of action of citizens within the laws, I argue for two further claims: that as such a political value, liberty is limited and reshaped in both the Republic and the Laws to be compatible with obedience to rule / willingness to be ruled, ideally willing obedience; and that for this limited and reshaped value to be secured, such obedience must be manifested not only in regard to a constitution’s laws, but also to the magistrates who hold office within it. (shrink)

Children and adults from theus and China heard about people who died in two types of narrative contexts – medical and religious – and judged whether their psychological and biological capacities cease or persist after death. Most 5- to 6-year-olds reported that all capacities would cease. In theus, but not China, there was an increase in persistence judgments at 7–8 years, which decreased thereafter.uschildren’s persistence judgments were influenced by narrative context – occurring more often for religious narratives – and such (...) judgments were made especially for psychological capacities. When participants were simply asked what happens to people following death, in both countries there were age-graded increases in references to burial, religious ritual, and the supernatural. (shrink)

In this essay I describe two of the accounts that Peirce provides of personhood: the semiotic account, on which a person is a sequence of thought-signs, and the naturalistic account, on which a person is an animal. I then argue that these disparate accounts can be reconciled into a plausible view on which persons are numerically distinct entities that are nevertheless continuous with each other in an important way. This view would be agreeable to Peirce in some respects, as it (...) is modeled on his theory of perception, incorporates his categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, and is in harmony with his objective idealism. But it diverges from Peirce in one important respect, viz. its rejection of the idea that some groups of human beings count as persons. (shrink)

In this paper, Neal Lane describes some lessons he learned about science and politics from his seven years in Washington, serving in the Clinton Administration, first as Director of the National Science Foundation and then as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

In virtue of what does a sign have meaning? This is the question raised by Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations. Semantic dispositionalism is a (type of) theory that purports to answer this question. The present paper argues that semantic dispositionalism faces a heretofore unnoticed problem, one that ultimately comes down to its reliance on unanalyzed notions of repeated types of signs. In the context of responding to the rule-following paradox—and offering a putative solution to it—this amounts to simply assuming a solution to (...) the problem in one domain and using it to solve the same problem in another. Given, moreover, the level at which the rule-following paradox undercuts dispositionalism—the level of the notion of a sign's repetition—the objections made to the view also rule out causal/informational theories of meaning as well as communitarian/assertion-theoretic ones as potential solutions to the rule-following paradox. (shrink)

Most academics agree that emotions and moods are related but distinct phenomena. The present study assessed emotion-mood distinctions among a non-academic population and compared these views with distinctions proposed in the literature. Content analysis of responses from 106 participants identified 16 themes, with cause (65% of respondents), duration (40%), control (25%), experience (15%), and consequences (14%) the most frequently cited distinctions. Among 65 contributions to the academic literature, eight themes were proposed, with duration (62% of authors), intentionality (41%), cause (31percnt;), (...) consequences (31%), and function (18%) the most frequently cited. When the eight themes cited by both academics and non-academics were rank ordered, approximately 60% overlap in opinion was evident. A data-derived summary of emotion-mood distinctions is provided. These data should prove useful to investigators interested in developing a clearer scientific distinction between emotion and mood than is currently available. (shrink)

Paulin and Cahill‐Lane explore the origins of event processing and event prediction in animal evolution. They propose that the evolutionary benefit of being able to predict and thus to quickly react to anticipated events may have triggered the evolution of the earliest nervous systems.

The essays collected in this volume address a range of issues that arise when the focus of philosophical reflection on identity is shifted from metaphysical to practical and evaluative concerns. They also explore the usefulness of the notion of narrative for articulating and responding to these issues. The chapters, written by an outstanding roster of international scholars, address a range of complex philosophical issues concerning the relationship between practical and metaphysical identity, the embodied dimensions of the first-personal perspective, the kind (...) of reflexive agency involved in the self-constitution of one’s practical identity, the relationship between practical identity and normativity, and the temporal dimensions of identity and selfhood. In addressing these issues, contributors engage with debates in the literatures on personal identity, phenomenology, moral psychology, action theory, normative ethical theory, and feminist philosophy. (shrink)

New B-Theorists of language, while conceding the untranslatability of tensed sentences by tenseless sentences, deny that the ineliminability of tense implies the reality of tensed facts. Thus, New BTheorist Nathan Oaklander explains, For a variety of reasons, ... recent defenders of the tenseless view have come to embrace the thesis that tensed sentences cannot be translated by tenseless ones without loss of meaning. Nevertheless, recent detensers have denied that the ineliminability of tensed language and thought entails the reality of temporal (...) properties. ... Tensed discourse is indeed necessary for timely action, but tensed facts are not, since the truth conditions of tensed sentences can be expressed in a tenseless meta-language that describes unchanging temporal relations between and among events. (shrink)

This article rejects the claim made by other scholars that Plato in the Statesman, by employing the so-called ‘architect’ (ὁ ἀρχιτέκτων) in one of the early divisions leading to the definition of political expertise, prefigured and anticipated the architectonic conception of political expertise advanced by Aristotle. It argues for an alternative reading in which Plato in the Statesman, and in the only other of his works (Gorgias) in which the word appears, closely tracks the existing social role of the architektōn, (...) who was designated as such only in virtue of appointment by a city to a role that was crucially defined as epitactic, involving overseeing the workers on site engaged in constructing some civic building works. It is this epitactic dimension of the role on which Plato relies in the Statesman, as opposed to the kind of claim to overarching integrative expertise that Aristotle would use the figure of architectonic political knowledge to make. (shrink)

The paper asks what is living in political state-of-nature approaches, and answers by way of considering recent epistemic uses of state-of-nature arguments. Using Edward Craig's idea that a concept of knowledge can be explicated from the need for good informants, I argue that a concept of authority can be explicated from a parallel need for good practical informants. But this need not justify rule of a Platonic elite. Practically relevant epistemic advantages are more likely to be secured by the political (...) creation of institutions. In conclusion it is suggested that this approach can explain a problem of justification which arises for Joseph Raz's account of authority. (shrink)

This paper examines the iconic conception of aesthetic education in the work of Friedrich Schiller, with the aim of elucidating Schiller’s unique innovation of this notion in understanding i) the relationship between aesthetic and ethical value and ii) the transformative possibilities within a collective, social dimension of aesthetic experience. The paper provides an overview of the Kantian origins of Schiller’s aesthetic programme (Section 1). It then considers Schiller’s critique of the perceived failings of the Kantian and Enlightenment republican models of (...) ethical value and political emancipation (Section 2) before turning to his positive alternative aesthetic programme (Section 3). The paper concludes (Section 4) with some evaluation and reflection on Schiller’s original contributions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:632 Feminist Studies 42, no. 3. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Nikki Lane Bringing Flesh to Theory: Ethnography, Black Queer Theory, and Studying Black Sexualities As Dorothy Hodgson tells us, the most common features of an ethnographic project involve “talking to, participating with, and observing the people who produce... texts, exploring the contexts of their ideas and actions, and often studying how their situations, ideas, and actions (...) change over time.”1 Practically, this often involves spending months, and more often years, in a particular field site, where one develops relationships with members of the group, community, or institution being studied. Ethnographers are positioned in a place to observe, but also place their bodies on the line—participating, when possible, in the quotidian practices of the group. This observation and participation is captured in the form of “field notes” that may relay in the form of “thick description,” what the ethnographer sees as she observes and participates in various cultural and social practices.2 As such, ethnography requires reflexivity because the ethnographer must constantly consider how her body is affecting and is effected by the communities and institutions in which she is embedded. The benefit of this reflexive ethnographic approach is that, as Faye Ginsburg notes, it “has the capacity to reveal the fault lines in 1. Dorothy Louise Hodgson, “Of Modernity/Modernities, Gender, and Ethnography,” in Gendered Modernities: Ethnographic Perspectives, ed. Dorothy Louise Hodgson (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 17. 2. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973). Nikki Lane 633 communities, social movements, and institutions, which frequently run along class, race, and generational lines, and that might easily be missed by more deductive and quantitative methodologies.”3 MarlonM.Bailey’s ButchQueensUpinPumps, Jafari S. Allen’s ¡Venceremos?, Mignon Moore’s Invisible Families, and Mireille Miller-Young’s A Taste for Brown Sugar represent an exciting trend within an interdisciplinary body of research that I am referring to as Black sexuality studies. What links these projects is their use of ethnographic methodologies to understand how Blackness informs racialized gender and sexuality in the everyday experiences of their interlocutors. In relying on ethnography, to varying degrees, they are in conversation with and expand upon methodological trends within Black feminist studies and Black queer studies. Further, the Black sexuality studies projects reviewed here question the (hetero)normative bent within the field of African American studies, the normatively white subject position that exists within queer theory, and the lack of attention to issues of sexual pleasure within Black feminist theory. They also challenge theorists of race and sexuality to move 3. Faye Ginsburg, “Ethnography and American Studies,” Cultural Anthropology 21, no. 3 (2006), 492. Books Discussed in This Essay¡Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-making in Cuba. By Jafari S. Allen. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit. By Marlon M. Bailey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women. By Mignon Moore. Oakland: University of California Press, 2011. A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography. By Mireille Miller-Young. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. 634 Nikki Lane in the direction of interrogating the flesh, because they go to the site— the place where the body acts, feels, and engages the world—asking the simple question articulated best by E. Patrick Johnson: “What is the utility of queer [or feminist] theory on the front lines, in the trenches, on the street, or anyplace where the racialized and sexualized body is beaten, starved, fired, cursed—indeed, where the body is the site of trauma?”4 In my discussion of these texts, I will focus on how each utilizes ethnographic methodologies in distinct ways. I will argue that regardless of how they employ ethnography’s methods, they make two very important contributions to fields of Black feminist theory and Black queer theory. First, they add information about the lived experiences of Black sexual subjectivity to the ethnographic record. By adding these experiences to the record, they become part of the limited but growing body of available knowledge about the everyday experiences of Black people within the African... (shrink)

A new reading of Plato’s political thought Plato famously defends the rule of knowledge. Knowledge, for him, is of the good. But what is rule? In this study, Melissa Lane reveals how political office and rule were woven together in Greek vocabulary and practices that both connected and distinguished between rule in general and office as a constitutionally limited kind of rule in particular. In doing so, Lane shows Plato to have been deeply concerned with the roles and (...) relationships between rulers and ruled. Adopting a longstanding Greek expectation that a ruler should serve the good of the ruled, Plato’s major political dialogues—the Republic, the Statesman, and Laws—explore how different kinds of rule might best serve that good. With this book, Lane offers the first account of the clearly marked vocabulary of offices at the heart of all three of these dialogues, explaining how such offices fit within the broader organization and theorizing of rule. Lane argues that taking Plato’s interest in rule and office seriously reveals tyranny as ultimately a kind of anarchy, lacking the order as well as the purpose of rule. When we think of tyranny in this way, we see how Plato invokes rule and office as underpinning freedom and friendship as political values, and how Greek slavery shaped Plato’s account of freedom. Reading Plato both in the Greek context and in dialogue with contemporary thinkers, Lane argues that rule and office belong at the center of Platonic, Greek, and contemporary political thought. (shrink)

This book is part of the growing field of practical approaches to philosophical questions relating to identity, agency and ethics--approaches which work across continental and analytical traditions and which Atkins justifies through an explication of how the structures of human embodiment necessitate a narrative model of selfhood, understanding, and ethics.

While ethical and moral issues have been widely considered in the general areas of marketing and sales, similar attention has not been given to the impact of strategic account management (SAM) approaches to handling the relationships between suppliers and very␣large customers. SAM approaches have been widely␣adopted by suppliers as a mechanism for managing␣relationships and partnerships with dominant customers␣– characterized by high levels of buyer–seller inter-dependence and forms of collaborative partnership. Observation suggests that the perceived moral intensity of␣these relationships is commonly (...) low, notwithstanding the underlying principles of benefiting the few (large, strategic customers) at the expense of the many (smaller customers and other stakeholders), and the magnitude of the consequences of concessions made to large customers, even though some such consequences may be unintended. Dilemmas exist also for executives implementing strategic account relationships regarding such issues as information sharing, trust, and hidden incentives for unethical behaviour. We propose the need for greater transparency and senior management questioning of the ethical and moral issues implicit in strategic account management. (shrink)

Western feminists, physicians, and ethicists condemn the traditional genital surgeries performed on women in some non‐Western cultures. But coming to moral judgment is not the end of the story; we must also decide what to do about our judgments. We must learn to work respectfully with, not independently of, local resources for cultural self‐examination and change.

Rousseau argued forcefully for the superiority of a life lived in accordance with "the simplest impulses of nature," but his complex (some would say contradictory) understanding of the relationship between humans and "nature" is rarely cited as a source of inspiration by those seeking to reform the human relationship with the natural world. We argue that the complexities of Rousseau's political thought illuminate important connections between his works and the programs put forth by deep ecology. In Part One, we explore (...) the theoretical connections between Rousseau's account of the human fall from nature and major works of radical environmentalism. In Part Two, we offer suggestions for a reconsideration of Rousseau's work that may illuminate the paradoxical political requirements of deep ecology's recommendations for a more ecological human life. We hope to illustrate how a careful reading of Rousseau's work may serve as the basis for fruitful questioning of environmentalist thought. (shrink)

This is the second of two papers that examine Charles Peirce’s denial that human beings have a faculty of intuition. In the first paper, I argued that in its metaphysical aspect, Peirce’s denial of intuition amounts to the doctrine that there is no determinate boundary between the internal world of the cognizing subject and the external world that the subject cognizes.In the present paper, I argue that, properly understood, the “objective idealism” of Peirce’s 1890s cosmological series is a more general (...) iteration of the metaphysical aspect of his earlier denial of intuition. I also consider whether Peirce continued to deny that there is a definite boundary between the internal and external worlds in the years after the cosmological series. (shrink)