This paper examines the practice of using predictive systems to lengthen the prison sentences of convicted persons when the systems forecast a higher likelihood of re-offense or re-arrest. There has been much critical discussion of technologies used for sentencing, including questions of bias and opacity. However, there hasn’t been a discussion of whether this use of predictive systems makes sense in the first place. We argue that it does not by showing that there is no plausible theory of punishment that (...) supports it. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers' phenomenology remains important today, not solely because of its continuing influence in some areas of psychiatry, but because, if fully understood, it can provide a method and set of concepts for making new progress in the science of psychopathology. In order to understand this method and set of concepts, it helps to recognize the significant influence that Edmund Husserl's early work, Logical investigations, exercised on Jaspers' formulation of them. We trace the Husserlian influence while clarifying the main components (...) of Jaspers' method. Jaspers adopted Husserl's notions of intuition, description, and presuppositionlessness, transforming them when necessary in order to serve the investigations of the psychopathologist. Jaspers also took over from Wilhelm Dilthey and others the tools of understanding (Verstehen) and self-transposal. The Diltheyian procedures were integrated into the Husserlian ones to produce a method that enables psychiatrists to define the basic kinds of psychopathological mental states. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 8.4 (2001) 327-329 [Access article in PDF] Husserlian Comments on Blankenburg's "Psychopathology of Common Sense" Osborne P. Wiggins, Michael Alan Schwartz, and Jean Naudin In this essay, Wolfgang Blankenburg sketches his influential view that some of the disturbances of schizophrenia in particular can be interpreted as a pathology of common sense. We think it important at the outset, however, to avoid possible misunderstandings (...) of Blankenburg's point. It is perhaps unfortunate that this point is expressed by use of the phrase, "common sense." As Blankenburg's own essay shows, even among the learned, "common sense" has no definite or univocal meaning. Therefore, it is entirely possible to find many people who, under some conception of "common sense," appear to lack common sense and yet should not be deemed schizophrenic. Consequently, it is probably best to avoid the ambiguous phrase "common sense" altogether and seek to comprehend Blankenburg's point in other terms. That is precisely what we shall attempt here. We do endorse Blankenburg's view. Moreover, we shall pursue his suggestions that a Husserlian phenomenology of our experience of the life-world may provide the basis for developing the kind of psychopathology he seeks. Our ultimate aim, however, is for this phrase "common sense" to vanish into the Husserlian phenomenology we offer, so that all the other meanings of common sense will not threaten Blankenburg's position with misunderstandings.Our comments must remain a mere sketch. Since, however, Husserl's phenomenology is not well known, we shall have to devote some time to outlining those features of it that we deem relevant here.For Husserl, every mental process is an awareness of something. In his terminology, it is "intentional." No mental process occurs in isolation, however. It rather occurs within a concatenation of many other mental processes. Some of these co-occurring mental processes intend the same object; they intend other aspects of the object. For example, a woman may be aware of the color of a dress she is considering wearing. Hence, one process in her mental life is (visually) aware of the brown color. But another process in her mental life may be intending it as a "party dress." And yet another process in her mental life may be (tactually) intending the texture of the cloth. Because all of these mental processes (and many others) intend the same object, namely, the dress, Husserl says that they are synthesized with one another. "Synthesis," then, connotes a multiplicity of mental processes united with one another through intending the same object.Now Husserl believed that it is because the many processes occurring in our mental lives [End Page 327] synthetically intend the many objects we encounter that we experience ourselves as inhabiting a world of objects. If these syntheses failed to occur, we would not experience the world or ourselves as parts of this world. These syntheses make it possible for us to experience objects and events as related to one another in the manifold spatial, causal, temporal, social, political, religious, and other relationships that we do in fact experience. Husserl thus contends that our mental lives "constitute" the world for us. Mental life can accordingly be viewed as "world-constituting." Mental life is thus the condition for the possibility of there being a world of objects for us, to modify Kant's phrase. Husserl thought his notion of world-constituting consciousness sufficiently similar to Kant's for him to appropriate the latter philosopher's concept of "transcendental." Husserl also then spoke of "transcendental consciousness" and the study of this consciousness as "transcendental philosophy."Husserl made many distinctions among kinds of mental processes and their correlative objects. We shall here explicate only one such distinction. Mental processes must be distinguished as those that are actively generated by an ego and those that are not produced by an ego. The latter kind of mental process occurs automatically or, as Husserl writes, "passively." Husserl calls the first kind of mental process "active." Having mentioned him, however, we should also briefly characterize the "ego... (shrink)

Private law theory must confront the plurality of values that inform the problems that private law addresses in practice. We consider Hanoch Dagan’s and Michael Heller’s The Choice Theory of Contracts as a case-study in the promise and perils that embracing plural values poses for private law theory. We begin by arguing that private law theory cannot ignore value pluralism and identify three approaches that theory might take to pluralism. We call these approaches capitulating to, leveraging, and embracing value pluralism. (...) We illustrate each approach and assess its strengths and weaknesses. Theories that capitulate to pluralism simultaneously limit their scope and hamper their persuasiveness even within their restricted domains. Theories that leverage pluralism limit their domains more dramatically still. And theories that embrace pluralism are difficult to operationalize in practice without abandoning their pluralist roots. We briefly illustrate the drawbacks of capitulating to and leveraging pluralism with examples from recent contract theory. We then take up theories that embrace pluralism in greater detail, by studying Dagan and Heller’s approach. We argue that Dagan and Heller do not solve the deep problems that operationalizing their embrace of pluralism inevitably engenders. (shrink)

Decision making is a key activity, perhaps the most important activity, in the practice of healthcare. Although physicians acquire a great deal of knowledge and specialised skills during their training and through their practice, it is in the exercise of clinical judgement and its application to individual patients that the outstanding physician is distinguished. This has become even more relevant as patients become increasingly welcomed as partners in a shared decision making process. This book translates the research and theory from (...) the science of decision making into clinically useful tools and principles that can be applied by clinicians in the field. It considers issues of patient goals, uncertainty, judgement, choice, development of new information, and family and social concerns in healthcare. It helps to demystify decision theory by emphasizing concepts and clinical cases over mathematics and computation. (shrink)

The modern science of judgment and decision making began to emerge in the 1950s, and was thus unknown when Abraham Flexner wrote Medical Education in the United States and Canada (1910). This did not stop Flexner from highlighting the unique challenges facing the physician as a decision maker, as part of his effort to press for requiring some college education as a prerequisite for medical school:The engineer deals mainly with measurable factors. His factor of uncertainty is within fairly narrow limits. (...) The reasoning of the medical student is much more complicated. He handles at one and the same time elements belonging to vastly different categories: physical, biological, psychological elements are involved in .. (shrink)

Delaware case law has rendered the tender offer obsolete as a method for purchasing a company whose directors oppose the acquisition. A potential acquirer facing target opposition today must run an insurgent director slate, in the expectation that its directors are more likely to sell. The Delaware courts have not justified their preference for elections over markets as the preferred vehicle for implementing changes in control. Informal scholarly analyses ask transaction cost questions, such as whether proxy contests are more costly (...) than takeovers. This article attempts to break new ground by asking whether there are systematic differences in the performance of elections and markets in the corporate context. Recent models of voting processes, we argue, strongly suggest that elections are inferior to markets. Proxy contest elections sometimes can be won by incumbent managements when a transfer of control would be efficient, a conclusion consistent with the sparse data; and the proxy election process aggregates information regarding the sale decision less well than markets do, thereby implying that proxy voters are less well-informed. Theory and data thus suggest, at the least, that the intellectual burden of proof should change: the task now is to justify using elections to transfer control despite their apparent deficiencies. The article briefly considers the policy implications of this change in perspective. (shrink)

The present article proposes an integration between cultural psychology and developmental science. Such an integration would draw on the cultural-psychology principle of culture-psyche interactions, as well as on the developmental-science principle of person↔︎context relations. Our proposed integration centers on acculturation, which is inherently both cultural and developmental. Specifically, we propose that acculturation is governed by specific transactions between the individual and the cultural context, and that different types of international migrants (e.g., legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, crisis migrants) (...) encounter quite different culture-psyche interactions and person↔︎context relations. We outline the ways in which various acculturation-related phenomena, such as acculturation operating at macro-level versus micro-level time scales, can be viewed through cultural and developmental lenses. The article concludes with future directions in research on acculturation as an intersection of cultural and developmental processes. (shrink)

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It appears to have been established that it is not possible for us to harm distant future generations by failing to adopt long-range welfare policies which would conserve resources or limit pollution. By exploring a number of possible worlds, the present article shows, first, that the argument appears to be at least as telling against Aristotelian, rights-based and Rawlsian approaches as it seems to be against utilitarianism, but second, and most importantly, that it only holds if we fail to view (...) moral agents as individuals. The article also concludes that the argument has profoundly counter-intuitive implications. (shrink)

Response to Ernest Partridge's paper 'The Future - For Better or Worse' in this issue of Environmental Values.

. This article argues that within the retail setting any aesthetic influence employed by the retailer is ultimately going to result in utilitarian outcomes for the clientele of that store. Indeed, that in pursuing such an aesthetic appeal, the retailer can be perceived as akin to an artist with his or her primary responsibility not to the larger society but to the store and the statement that it makes. This argument is re-inforced by the historical experience of department store operators (...) in pre-war Nazi Germany. The article also contemplates Alan Gewirth’s Theory of Justice, and argues that it is only applicable in a retail setting. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, (...) affective autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societallevel analyses. At the individual- level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub- dimensions and two sets of values dimensions. At the societal- level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For (...) each society, we report the Cronbach' s? statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency as well as report interrater agreement analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country span sp. (shrink)

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to (...) the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B. We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?". (shrink)

Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions ; both big and small ; have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you (...) even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice ; the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish ; becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice ; from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs ; has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make."--provided by publisher. (shrink)

What is the basis for arguing that a volunteer army exploits citizens who lack civilian career opportunities? How do we determine that a doctor who has sex with his patients is exploiting them? In this book, Alan Wertheimer seeks to identify when a transaction or relationship can be properly regarded as exploitative--and not oppressive, manipulative, or morally deficient in some other way--and explores the moral weight of taking unfair advantage. Among the first political philosophers to examine this important topic (...) from a non-Marxist perspective, Wertheimer writes about ordinary experience in an accessible yet philosophically penetrating way. He considers whether it is seriously wrong for a party to exploit another if the transaction is consensual and mutually advantageous, whether society can justifiably prohibit people from entering into such a transaction, and whether it is wrong to allow oneself to be exploited. Wertheimer first considers several contexts commonly characterized as exploitive, including surrogate motherhood, unconscionable contracts, the exploitation of student athletes, and sexual exploitation in psychotherapy. In a section outlining his theory of exploitation, he sets forth the criteria for a fair transaction and the point at which we can properly say that a party has consented. Whereas many discussions of exploitation have dealt primarily with cases in which one party harms or coerces another, Wertheimer's book focuses on what makes a mutually advantageous and consensual transaction exploitive and analyzes the moral and legal implications of such exploitation. (shrink)

Ethical consumerism -- Caveat emptor -- The consumer as causal agent -- The consumer as complicit participant -- Toward a practical consumer ethic.

In Arendt's Judgment: Freedom, Responsibility, Citizenship, Jonathan Peter Schwartz claims that Arendt's theory of political judgment formed the core of her political thought, and that understanding it correctly makes it possible to grasp the systematic thread that runs through her diverse body of work.

“Business,” wrote a professor of marketing in 1929, “is the work of the world, humanity's chiefest task.” On the doorstep of the Depression, Prof. George R. Collins was selling business, by which he meant the business economy, an economic order based on the systematic management of money. I do not intend to enter the volatile controversy between Collins and those like Aldous Huxley who accused business people of being venal and crass. Rather, I intend to trace one likely path by (...) which many in 1929 had come to regard business as a redemptive activity and the business person as a redeemer. (shrink)

During the Renaissance, the su was regarded primarily as a source of light which gave form to all things*; during the Enlightenment, paradoxically, the sun was regarded primarily as a source of heat. Paracelsian chemistry of the 1500s introduced salt as a third principle which embodied the other two, mercury and sulphur; salt was that universal mediating presence which represented earth. By the late 1700s salt was no longer a metaphysical principle but an acid-base compound, and volatile salts aroused most (...) interest. These changes in scientific perceptions of sun and salt ran parallel to one another: beginning as transcendent sources of form, sun and salt came to be considered manipulable sources of energy. Our r-;odern approach to energy derives from a period during which Europeans gradually lost their belief in the creative agency of two essentials to human life. (shrink)

Mathematics professor from Brown University uses colorful illustrations and cartoons to display the concepts of infinity and large numbers.

With its answers to questions such as What is time? and What is space?, this clear, nontechnical treatment makes the principles of relativity more accessible to the general reader. The author gradually introduces Einstein's theory in terms of familiar concepts from high school-level geometry, utilizing more than 60 drawings to illuminate profound yet often simple ideas.

Digital transformation doesn't just raise ethical issues, it-in itself-is an ethical shift. Business leaders today are struggling to manage conflicting imperatives, those of the emerging digital world and those of the bureaucratic world of the past. The act of digital transformation requires a deep change in the moral outlook and ethical assumptions of a business. But how do we get there? Enterprise strategist and author Mark Schwartz shows how we need to learn to think differently about relationships with customers (...) and employees. That the ethics of digital transformation is a matter of cultivating and applying virtues rather than applying rules. Ethics is not just a matter of refraining from doing bad things. It's a matter of building the world we want, and it's the job of company executives. Featuring a chapter on bullshit, a handy chart of excuses for bad behavior, and Schwartz's typically paradoxical blend of deep insight and pasta jokes, this book guides business leaders as they struggle to adapt their bureaucratic framework of ethics to the emerging landscape of the digital world. By the end of the book, business leaders will rethink what it takes to be an ethical organization. (shrink)

For over four decades, Richard Schwartz has engaged with two ethically rich ways of living that, as he charts in this book, he came to appreciate in middle age: Judaism and veganism. Having been born into a secular Jewish family, it was his marriage and an increasing commitment to social justice that propelled him to study and rediscover the essence of his Jewish faith. That sense of social justice further raised his awareness of the environmental movement, and, ultimately, to (...) animal rights and veganism. In Vegan Revolution: Saving Our World, Revitalizing Judaism, Schwartz shows how, now perhaps more than ever, veganism offers a pathway for all of us of whatever faith (or no faith) to reduce hunger, conserve the environment, save water, reinstitute justice, and care for animals and the Earth. It is no coincidence, as Schwartz demonstrates, that many of these ideas are mandates in Jewish scripture, and that reincorporating a care for the world (tikkun olam) can itself reinvigorate the spirit of a faith and galvanize its practitioners to act. (shrink)

Explores language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. Gold Winner for Philosophy, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards To commemorate the 2015 centenary of the birth of Alan Watts (1915–1973), Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice have assembled a much-needed collection of Watts’s scholarly essays and lectures. Compiled from professional journals, monographs, scholarly books, conferences, and symposia proceedings, the volume sheds valuable light on the developmental arc of Watts’s thinking (...) about language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. This definitive collection challenges Watts’s reputation as a “popularizer” or “philosophical entertainer,” revealing his concerns to be much more expansive and transdisciplinary than is suggested by the parochial “Zen Buddhist” label commonly affixed to his writings. The editors’ authoritative introduction elucidates contemporary perspectives on Watts’s life and work, and supports a bold rethinking of his contributions to psychology, philosophy, and religion. Peter J. Columbus is Administrator of the Shantigar Foundation in Rowe, Massachusetts. Donadrian L. Rice is Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia. Together they are the coeditors of Alan Watts—Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

This paper lays out the basic structure of any view involving coincident entities, in the light of the grounding problem. While the account is not novel, I highlight fundamental features, to which attention is not usually properly drawn. With this in place, I argue for a number of further claims: The basic differences between coincident objects are modal differences, and any other differences between them need to be explained in terms of these differences. More specifically, the basic difference is not (...) a difference in sort. A number of recent defenses of coincidence, which share the basic structure I outline, misidentify what, in their accounts, plays the basic role of addressing the grounding problem. More tentatively, I argue Coincident entities differ only in these modal properties, and properties they entail. In particular, they do not differ in properties like ‘being a tree,’ ‘being a statue,’ or aesthetic properties, and finally in light of how the account of coincidence offered addresses the grounding problem, the grounding problem provides no reason to prefer monism to pluralism. (shrink)

Explores the philosophical dimensions and implications of integral theory. Dancing with Sophia is the first book of essays to focus on the philosophical dimensions and implications of integral theory. A metatheory that organizes first order theories and disciplines into higher order modes of knowing and insight needed to address the complexity of today’s world, integral theory has already impacted a wide range of disciplines, from psychology to business to religious studies to art. Included here are perspectives by scholars in the (...) continental, comparativist, and process traditions who dive into integral theory’s postmetaphysical claims in order to mine, extend, and critique its philosophical merits. On the verge of its own emergence, integral philosophy promotes modes of creative critical thought oriented toward the multidimensional flourishing of planetary well-being, and Dancing with Sophia will be of interest to scholars in philosophy; religious studies; transpersonal, developmental, and humanist psychology; and more. “Integral theory is a bold and provocative endeavor. It challenges one to think past the norm, to sail beyond the horizon and risk encountering the Scylla and Charybdis of what is academically acceptable—or at least familiar—and what is possible, in ways that only are now beginning to dawn on both thinking and dwelling. If it is nothing else, integral theory is the movement beyond the purely intellectual into the lived experience. This is its ‘meta-’ dimension properly understood.” — from the Foreword by Brian Schroeder. (shrink)

-- volume 2. The philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

We only see Mars from Earth's perspective in the first season of The Expanse, but Season 2 changes that by introducing Gunnery Sergeant Bobbie Draper, a Martian Congressional Republic Navy (MCRN) marine. Mars as seen by Martians resembles our Mars: ruddy, rocky, dusty, inhospitable, and cold. This chapter focuses on Draper and the Mars Congressional Republic (MCR). What is striking about the culture of the MCR is how naturally it flows from contemporary visions of space exploration, especially those from the (...) Apollo era forward. For somewhat more specific examples, the chapter considers the “Statement of Philosophy” of the National Space Society, another well‐known space advocacy organization in the US. The MCR's commitment to terraforming Mars demonstrates that its future depends “upon the progress of science and technology.”. (shrink)

Open Judaism is an invitation to the spiritually seeking Jew; a clarion call for a pluralistic, inclusive Judaism; and a dynamic comparison of the remarkably wide array of thought within Judaism today.