The relationship between intimacy and honesty seems a paradoxical one. While intimate relationships would seem to demand a high level of honesty, this same intimacy might make us more likely to shield the other or protect ourselves through benevolent lying or the withholding of information. It would seem that honesty may not always be the best policy in intimate relationships. The purpose of this article is to examine the tension between honesty and intimacy in Kant’s duty of friendship, and it (...) will highlight the limitations of Kant’s expectations of friendship. At the same time I will use Kant’s own appeal to the autonomy of moral agents to delineate an appropriate role for the obligations of honesty and self disclosure in friendship. (shrink)

The present study examined whether strategy moderated the relationship between visuospatial perspective-taking and empathy. Participants undertook both a perspective-taking task requiring speeded spatial judgements made from the perspective of an observed figure and the Empathy Quotient questionnaire, a measure of trait empathy. Perspective-taking performance was found to be related to empathy in that more empathic individuals showed facilitated performance particularly for figures sharing their own spatial orientation. This relationship was restricted to participants that reported perspective-taking by mentally transforming their spatial (...) orientation to align with that of the figure; it was absent in those adopting an alternative strategy of transposing left and right whenever confronted with a front-view figure. Our finding that strategy moderates the relationship between empathy and visuospatial perspective-taking enables a reconciliation of the apparently inconclusive findings of previous studies and provides evidence for functionally dissociable empathic and non-empathic routes to visuospatial perspective-taking. (shrink)

(2013). Multiple paths to transfer and constraint relaxation in insight problem solving. Thinking & Reasoning: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 96-136. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2012.742852.

Over the course of the last four decades, William Leon McBride has distinguished himself as one of the most esteemed and accomplished philosophers of his generation. This volume—which celebrates the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday—includes contributions from colleagues, friends, and formers students and pays tribute to McBride’s considerable achievements as a teacher, mentor, and scholar.

Most contemporary discussions of institutional ethics take contractual rather than fiduciary relations as the model for describing moralresponsibilities, leaving institutional boards with few resources to support and critique their moral behavior. I argue that institutional fiduciary relationships cannot be characterized as contracts, either in fact or function. Each form of relationship privileges a different set of behaviors and values that are far from interchangeable.

ABSTRACTThe health‐care reform promised by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of March 2010 continues our dependence on a central feature of the American health‐care system: employer‐sponsored insurance . In this article I will criticize the assumptions regarding market and welfare concerns on which this dependence is based and argue that efforts to mandate ESI ignore both the dynamics of the employment relation and the nature of health‐care needs. A comparison between investing in employee education and investing in employee (...) health will reveal the pragmatic challenges to ESI and the covert appeal to employer beneficence on which ESI rests. This paper argues that relying on ESI to guarantee appropriate care for a significant segment of the population is undesirable and unsustainable from both market and moral perspectives. (shrink)

Previous research in North America has supported the view that male involvement in committed, romantic relationships is associated with lower testosterone (T) levels. Here, we test the prediction that undergraduate men involved in committed, romantic relationships (paired) will have lower T levels than men not involved in such relationships (unpaired). Further, we also test whether these differences are more apparent in samples collected later, rather than earlier, in the day. For this study, 107 undergraduate men filled out a questionnaire and (...) collected one saliva sample (from which a subject’s T level was measured) at various times across the day. As in previous studies, men involved in committed, romantic relationships had lower salivary T levels, though only during later times of the day. Furthermore, additional analysis of the variation among unpaired subjects indicated that men without prior relationship experience had lower T levels than experienced men. Finally, while paired men as a group had lower T levels than unpaired men, those men at the earliest stage (less than six months) of a current relationship had higher T levels than unpaired men as well as men in longer-term relationships. These results suggest that variation in male testosterone levels may reflect differential behavioral allocation to mating effort. (shrink)

Life expectancy and health differ greatly between emerging and developed countries and within countries. Global dependence on fossil fuels contributes to health inequalities through air pollution, the geopolitics of scarce resources and probable climate change arising from global warming. Substituting for fossil fuels (C), hydrogen (H2), as vector and store of energy produced from low-carbon and/or renewable sources could reduce health inequalities by improving the environment. It is unlikely that the global market would initiate such a change. Nation-states would not (...) act alone and would need to cooperate in leading it. Global recession might be the incentive that is needed to restructure a C-economy into an H2-economy. Yet, the transition would carry high costs, which would have to be borne by the developed countries in order to achieve a new treaty that included emerging countries. H2 for C is thus not only a technical fix, but also a global-ethical choice. (shrink)

Thomas R. Flynn - Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflection in Camus and Sartre - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 46.1 179-180 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Thomas R. Flynn Emory University Robert C. Solomon. Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflection in Camus and Sartre. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. ii + 241. Cloth, $35.00. This study in existentialist thought is a collection of (...) essays, some previously published, in defense of the thesis that existentialist thought, at least in these works, is the articulation of our pre-reflective experience that yields an immediacy and a richness often sacrificed when one turns to abstract reflection—as Solomon believes Sartre does in Being and Nothingness in.. (shrink)

In this article the author discusses aspects of the existence of New Atheism. It states that the idea of New Atheism was started by anti-religious books such as "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason," by W. W. Norton, "Breaking the Spell," by Daniel C. Dennett, and "The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins. Furthermore, it says that there is no New Atheism, and all that Norton, Dennett, and Dawkins have done was repackage arguments against religion that (...) already existed. (shrink)

When Charles Péguy asserted boldly “c’est une renaissance catholique qui se fait par moi”, he was speaking as one ahead of his time. As others caught up, and following a prolonged period of sterility, the first stirrings of renewal began to be felt. A “Catholic renaissance” was emerging. Enlivened by the original work of a brilliant generation of philosophers, a surprising fermentation began in theology, philosophy, literature, and history. In the rich flowering of Catholic theology that followed, the leading French (...) Dominicans and Jesuits of Le Saulchoir and Lyon-Fourvière respectively played a dominant role, but the movement also embraced Belgium and Germany. The objectives of the present paper are, first, to exhibit those philosophers, notably Blondel and Maritain, who were concerned to prioritise the person in society, what became known as ‘personalism’, and will consider their profound impact on the ressourcement generation. Secondly, it attempts to provide an account of how French “Catholic philosophy” at mid-century shaped theology and profoundly influenced the course of church history in the intervening period. Thirdly, it considers again Jean Daniélou’s innovative contribution to philosophy and culture. (shrink)

Philosophy as a way of life -- Becoming an individual -- Humanism : for and against -- Authenticity -- A chastened individualism? Existentialism and social thought -- Existentialism in the twenty-first century.

Deliberative democracy entails a commitment to deciding political questions on their merits. To that end, people engage in an exchange of reasons in a shared endeavour to arrive at the right answer or the best judgement they can make in the circumstances. Of course, in practice a shared judgement may be impossible to reach. Yet while compromise may seem a natural way of dealing with the disagreement that deliberation leaves unresolved – for example, some deliberative theorists argue that a willingness (...) to compromise manifests respect for the considered views of others, even as we continue to disagree with them – the relationship between deliberation and compromise is not as straightforward as one might think. To explain why, this paper contrasts conflicts of judgement with conflicts of preference, interest and value to show why greater attention needs to be paid to the character of the decision to be made. (shrink)

Since the early 1970s, internal power sharing has remained central to the attempt to reach a political settlement on the constitutional structures for governing Northern Ireland. Even in the face o...

Although the idea of the public interest features prominently in many accounts of deliberative democracy, the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest is rarely spelt out with any degree of precision. In this article, I identify and defend one particular way of framing this relationship. I begin by arguing that people can deliberate about the public interest only if the public interest is, in principle, identifiable independently of their deliberations. Of course, some pluralists claim that the public interest (...) is an implausible idea, which casts doubt on the idea that there might be something for people to deliberate about. Yet while, following Brian Barry, we can get around this problem by defining the public interest as an interest in which everyone shares qua member of the public, what still needs to be explained is why people should be prepared to privilege this particular capacity. I argue that the account of political equality with which deliberative democracy is bound up offers a compelling explanation of this sort, even if it also gives rise to some difficult questions of feasibility. I conclude by considering the charge that any political scheme that framed the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest in this way would be undesirable. (shrink)

In this essay I contrast Kant and Hegel on the so-called right of necessity, or distress. The contrast is significant because it summarizes succinctly the difference between their respective philosophies of right. Furthermore, I take the difference to indicate what in Hegel’s philosophy of right makes it preferable to Kant’s. In sum, the issue between the two is whether or not the concept of justice is determined in part by what I term in the paper the vicissitudes of making a (...) worthwhile living. (shrink)