The editors of the lead tablet recently excavated in Tongres conclude that it was a curse tablet, primarily because of its lead medium and because all four of the later, but similarly designed tablets, are or seem to be curses. In this essay, however, I argue that the Tongres tablet was, in fact, an amulet for a house or a workshop. The archaeology provides three important bits of evidence, because the tablet was nailed up on a wall, exposed to the (...) open air for a good deal of time and displayed in a commercial or domestic context possibly in the midst of wooden buildings. I further my argument by discussing three issues unaddressed by the editio princeps: (i) the shared syntax of three of the five tablets, which ask a deity to “give” or “grant” some abstract quality to a person or persons, a popular request on amulets, but not on curses; (ii) the importance of two underappreciated parallels to the Tongres tablet (a second-century lead disk from Bordighera and a drawing in a papyrus recipe for a tin amulet); and (iii) the shape of a shrine or aediculum at the very center of the design, which points to a Greek tradition of house amulets in the shape of little shrines. (shrink)

A hexametrical couplet from Aristophanes' lost Amphiaraus has in the past been interpreted as a fragment of an oracular response.

Scholars have traditionally interpreted Hipponax fragment 128 as an epic parody designed to belittle the grand pretensions and gluttonous habits of his enemy. I suggest, however, that this traditional reading ultimately falls short because of two unexamined assumptions: that the meter and diction of the fragment are exclusively meant to recall epic narrative and not any other early hexametrical genre, and that the descriptive epithets in lines 2 and 3 are the ad hoc comic creations of the poet and simply (...) refer to the table manners of a glutton or a parasite. I argue instead that this fragment in several ways reflects the language, the meter and the performative goal of hexametrical chants or incantations designed to expel harmful famine demons or to escort human scapegoats from the city. I also suggest that the vivid and somewhat comic descriptions of the enemy in fragment 128 probably do not aim at his personal eating disorders, but rather they are drawn from two interrelated and generic features of archaic Greek thought: a tradition of describing famine-demons as insatiable eaters, and a popular theme in Greek invective which demonizes political enemies as rapacious pests who threaten to gobble up the commonwealth of the city and who therefore must be expelled from the community, precisely like a famine-demon. (shrink)

Une gemme en agate peu étudiée provenant d’Anapa, datée de la période impériale, présente un grand intérêt, dans la mesure où elle diffère de la plupart des gemmes magiques par sa forme sphérique, sa grande taille et son contenu : elle commence par une référence aux rituels traditionnels grecs d’expulsion et se termine par une liste des parties de la tête humaine semblable à celle que l’on trouve dans un manuel médical hippocratique. La gemme ne serait pas une amulette, comme (...) les éditeurs précédents l’ont supposé, mais plutôt un manuel miniature contenant des instructions pour la fabrication d’amulettes. (shrink)

La réutilisation des haches néolithiques (également appelées « celts » ou « pierres de foudre ») comme des amulettes à l’époque romaine est aujourd’hui sous-estimée. En conséquence, la date ancienne des deux petits exemples inscrits du British Museum (BM nos 1* et 504) est maintenant remise en doute, en raison d’une évaluation négative qui découle de l’utilisation insuffisante de comparanda. En comparaison avec le corpus croissant de pierres magiques, les médias de ces deux petites haches (jadéite ou serpentine), leur poli (...) et leur forme semblent en effet suspects et difficiles à évaluer comme gemmes en soi, mais quand on les compare à d’autres haches néolithiques inscrites et anépigraphes trouvées dans sites romains et plus tard, il s’avère que les deux pierres à Londres appartiennent à une catégorie bien définie de « pierres de foudre » réutilisées comme amulettes. (shrink)

The idea that the womb moved freely about a woman's body causing spasmodic disease enjoyed great popularity among the ancient Greeks, beginning in the classical period with Plato and the Hippocratic writers and continuing on into the Roman and Byzantine periods. Armed with sophisticated analyses of the medical tradition and new texts pertaining to the magical, this essay describes how both approaches to the wandering womb develop side by side in mutual influence from the late classical period onwards. Of special (...) interest will be the tendency in both traditions to imagine both demons and errant wombs as wild animals and to use fumigations to control both. It concludes with a discussion of the historical development of and consequences for the idea that women alone possessed an internal organ that was variously interpreted as a mechanically defective body-part, a sentient and passionate animal, and then finally a demon with malicious intent, who bites and poisons the female body. It also argues against the hypothesis or assumption that midwives or wet-nurses were the original source for the idea of the wandering womb, suggesting that the syndrome never fit comfortably into the category of gynecological illness, because the womb was not the site of disease, but rather a cause of spasmodic disease in other areas of the body. (shrink)

This essay argues that the Nestor's Cup Inscription is not a joke, but rather a magical spell designed to work as an aphrodisiac. It is divided into two parts, the first dealing with the hexametrical couplet and the second with the opening line. In the first section the author argues that the hexameters comprise a bonafide magical incantation, pointing out that: the two hexameters take the semantic form of a conditional curse well known from oaths and proprietary inscriptions of the (...) archaic period and from the earliest extant magical texts; hexametrical verse was commonly used as early as the classical period-and probably much earlier-in magical incantations; prosaic words in the inscription that do not appear elsewhere in literary hexameters, but are used in the Greek magical tradition, may in fact be terms of a quasi-technical nature that survive from a very old, but poorly documented, tradition of metrical incantations; and the deictic pronoun in the second line of the inscription signals the use of performative language common in magical spells. The second section of the paper turns to the opening line of the inscription, arguing that instead of introducing some sophisticated intertextual joke, this line can be best understood as a label or rubric of the sort frequently used to signify authorship or ownership in archaic inscriptions and other early texts to "seal" a writer's name to his œuvre. In later magical texts such rubrics boast a legendary author of a particular incantation or ritual. The author concludes that this inscription records an erotic spell traditionally spoken over a cup without any recourse to writing, and that its appearance on the cup from Pithecusae resulted from a random and ultimately unsuccessful experiment to transfer and transform an oral incantation into a written one in an age of incipient literacy. (shrink)

Theocritus divides his second Idyll into two roughly equal sections, each punctuated by ten refrains: in the first half, a courtesan named Simaetha describes an ongoing erotic spell that she and her servant are performing and at the same time she enacts it by reciting a series of short similia-similibus incantations; in the second half, she speaks to Selene in the night sky and tells her the story of her brief affair with and betrayal by a handsome young athlete named (...) Delphis. Literary scholars have written much about this poem, but they are more often concerned with the second, confessional half, with its complicated narrative layers and its charmingly naïve and unreliable narrator. Historians of religion and magic, on the other hand, have focussed most of their energies on the first half of the poem, using as comparanda the much later evidence of Roman-era curse tablets and late antique magical papyri to make sense of what Simaetha does and says during her long ritual, an approach that was enshrined by Gow in the middle of the last century, when he argued that, because of the conservative nature of these later magical spells, there was little risk of serious anachronism in using them for comparison. (shrink)

I argue that despite criticism from some disability rights organizations, aid in dying is morally permissible. First, I suggest that disability-related concerns can be classified as emerging from one of two kinds of harm: person affecting, and personhood affecting. Second, I examine whether person affecting harm has occurred within those jurisdictions that have legalized aid in dying. I conclude that despite suggestions to the contrary, there is no evidence to demonstrate that people with disabilities have been adversely impacted by legalized (...) medical aid in dying. Third, I entertain these same arguments as a matter of principle and conclude the principled objections should not give us reason for concern. Fourth, I explore whether we have evidence to suggest the presence of increased personhood affecting harm where aid in dying is permissible. I suggest, through a focus on disability support services, that no evidence of social attitudes that diminish the moral worth of disabled people is present. Fifth, I examine whether we ought to have a principled concern with personhood affecting harm emerging from medical aid in dying. I conclude that to the contrary, to deny people with disabilities access to aid in dying constitutes a morally egregious form of personhood affecting harm. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus among philosophers that hope is a moral virtue: the virtuously hopeful person experiences the right amount of hope for the right things. This moralization of hope presents us with a puzzle. The historical consensus is that hope is a passion and hope is a theological virtue, not a moral virtue. Thomas Aquinas, the philosopher who wrote most extensively on hope, offers an explanation for why hope is not a moral virtue. The aim of this paper (...) is argue that Aquinas is right in thinking that hope is not a moral virtue.1. (shrink)

Giubilini and Minerva argue that the permissibility of abortion entails the permissibility of infanticide. Proponents of what we refer to as the Birth Strategy claim that there is a morally significant difference brought about at birth that accounts for our strong intuition that killing newborns is morally impermissible. We argue that strategy does not account for the moral intuition that late-term, non-therapeutic abortions are morally impermissible. Advocates of the Birth Strategy must either judge non-therapeutic abortions as impermissible in the later (...) stages of pregnancy or conclude that they are permissible on the basis of premises that are far less intuitively plausible than the opposite conclusion and its supporting premises. (shrink)

This paper offers a new argument against raising and killing sentient non-human animals for food. It is immoral to non-lethally impair sentient non-human animals for pleasure, and since raising and killing sentient animals for gustatory pleasure impairs them to a much greater degree, it also is wrong. This is because of the impairment principle: if it is immoral to impair an organism to some degree, then, ceteris paribus, it is immoral to impair it to a higher degree. This argument is (...) structurally analogous to Perry Hendricks’s impairment argument for the immorality of abortion. However, the argument is more defensible applied to the raising and killing of sentient nonhuman animals for food because of the sentience of the non-human animals involved. I explain how the argument is distinct from other pro-vegan, pro-vegetarian arguments. (shrink)

Would the virtuous person eat animals? According to some ethicists, the answer is a resounding no, at least for the virtuous person living in an affluent society. The virtuous person cares about animal suffering, and so, she will not contribute to practices that involve animal suffering when she can easily adopt a strict plant-based diet. The virtuous person is temperate, and temperance involves not indulging in unhealthy diets, which include diets that incorporate animals. Moreover, it is unjust for an animal (...) to be killed for food when this is unnecessary. By contrast, I argue that the virtuous person in an affluent society would eat animals, at least sometimes. I explain how the very virtues thought to motivate “virtuous modest veganism”—compassion, temperance, and justice—motivate the virtuous person to consume some animals. (shrink)

Accounts of practical deliberation tend to overlook any possible role for hope. I offer an argument showing that hope sets the ends of our practical deliberations and is thereby necessary for practical deliberation. It is because I hope to summit the mountain by midday that I deliberate about how to do so. Absent this particular hope, I could not deliberate about how to summit the mountain by midday.

If non-human animals have high moral status, then we commit a grave moral error by eating them. Eating animals is thus morally risky, while many agree that it is morally permissible to not eat animals. According to some philosophers, then, non-animal ethicists should err on the side of caution and refrain from eating animals. I argue that this precautionary argument assumes a false dichotomy of dietary options: a diet that includes farm-raised animals or a diet that does not include animals (...) of any kind. There is a third dietary option, namely, a diet of plants and non-traditional animal protein, and there is evidence that such a diet results in the least amount of harm to animals. It follows therefore that moral uncertainty does not support the adoption of a vegetarian diet. (shrink)

In ‘Dilemma for Appeals to the Moral Significance of Birth’, we argued that a dilemma is faced by those who believe that birth is the event at which infanticide is ruled out. Those who reject the moral permissibility of infanticide by appeal to the moral significance of birth must either accept the moral permissibility of a late-term abortion for a non-therapeutic reason or not. If they accept it, they need to account for the strong intuition that her decision is wrong (...) as well as deny the underlying normative principle that killing a viable fetus requires good reason, and not wanting to care for the child when the child could be easily placed for adoption is not a good enough reason to abort. If they reject the moral permissibility of the late-term abortion, they need to explain why her decision is wrong. Doing so, however, will undermine their own project of denying infanticide by appeal to birth. Walter Veit argues that the dilemma relies too much on intuition and does not live up to biological continuity. We explain why his criticisms are unconvincing. (shrink)

Abstract Jeffrey Koperski claims in Zygon (2008) that critics of Intelligent Design engage in fallacious ad hominem attacks on ID proponents and that this is a “bad way” to engage them. I show that Koperski has made several errors in his evaluation of the ID critics. He does not distinguish legitimate, relevant ad hominem arguments from fallacious ad hominem attacks. He conflates (or equates) the logical use of valid with the colloquial use of valid. Moreover, Koperski doesn't take seriously the (...) legitimate concerns of the ID critics, and in doing so, commits the straw man fallacy. In the end, I show that no one disagrees with the criticism of improper use of fallacies as methods of evaluation. But what constitutes proper, relevant evaluation of the ID theorists and their motivation is a matter of dispute. And sometimes attacking a person as a method of evaluation is justified, and thus is not fallacious. The definition of ad hominem arguments as either a “good way” or a “bad way” rests on justification, which I argue ID opponents have. The basis for these good objections relies on the motivation many Christians have to share their faith with non-Christians, which they call the “great commission.”. (shrink)

Hope is important in Thomas Aquinas’s account of the emotions: it is one of the four primary emotions and the first of the irascible emotions. Yet his account of hope as a movement of the sensory appetite toward a future possible good that is arduous to attain appears to be overly restrictive, for people often hope for things that are not cognized as arduous. This paper examines Aquinas’s reasons for limiting hope to arduous goods.

Prabhpal Singh has defended a relational account of the difference in moral status between fetuses and newborns. Newborns stand in the parent-child relation while fetuses do not, and standing in the parent-child relationship brings with it higher moral status for newborns. Orphans pose a problem for this account because they do not stand in a parent-child relationship. I argue that Singh has not satisfactorily responded to the problem.

Although populism is an ideologically fluid political vehicle, it is not one that is intrinsically anti-business. Indeed, different varieties of populist parties may encourage business activity for utilitarian ends, but with their own ideas on what businesses should be doing. This reality implies that initiatives not related to national greatness or priorities as defined by the populist leadership may be viewed as redundant. Key among such initiatives would be corporate social responsibility (CSR). In a populist environment, it is possible that (...) firms may divert resources away from broad-based CSR under pressure from populist governments. This article explores the relationship between populist governance and CSR with an econometric examination of over a thousand firms in 13 countries under both pro- and anti-business populist governments at varying times from 2012 to 2020. Using dynamic panel data methods, we find strong evidence that firms substitute away significantly from CSR under populism. This effect grows significantly larger under anti-business populists. (shrink)

Recent discussions surrounding the conceptualising of disability has resulted in a stalemate between British sociologists and philosophers. The stagnation of theorizing that has occurred threatens not only academic pursuits and the advancement of theoretical interpretations within the Disability Studies community, but also how we educate and advocate politically, legally, and socially. More pointedly, many activists and theorists in the UK appear to believe the British social model is the only effective means of understanding and advocating on behalf of people with (...) disabilities. This model, largely reliant upon materialist research traditions, contends that disability is a form of social oppression and hence, is a phenomenon that should be conceptualised in social terms. Individual properties such as impairments are disregarded as they are viewed to be unimportant in the analysis of the social causes of disability. Concurrently, many bioethicists and philosophers have embraced what Tom Shakespeare has classified as an ‘Interactional Approach’ to disability—that “the experience of a disabled person results from the relationship between factors intrinsic to the individual, and the extrinsic factors arising from the wider context in which she finds herself”. I intend to demonstrate that the benefits of the British social model are now outweighed by its burdens. I suggest, as Jerome Bickenbach has, that while it may be somewhat churlish to critique the social model in light of its political success, taken literally, it implies that people with disabilities require no additional health resources by virtue of their impairments. Despite the eloquent arguments that have preceded me by interactional theorists, none have been accepted as evidence of fallacious reasoning by British social model theorists. This article is an attempt to clarify why it is that the types of arguments British social model theorists have been offering are misguided. I suggest that the British social model, unlike an interactional approach, is unable to provide a realistic account of the experience of disability, and subsequently, unable to be properly utilized to ensure justice for people with disabilities. (shrink)

This article explores at least two dominant critiques of assisted dying from a disability rights perspective. In spite of these critiques, I conclude that assisted dying ought to be permissible. I arrive at the conclusion that if we respect and value people with disabilities, we ought to permit assisted dying. I do so in the following manner. First, I examine recent changes in legislation that have occurred since the Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel on End-of-Life Decision-Making report, published in (...) this journal. I suggest that these changes are likely to only strengthen opposition to assisted dying from disability rights activists and people with disabilities. Second, I focus on respect for people with disabilities and in particular, respect for their autonomy and decision-making abilities. Third, I explore the opposition to assisted dying that focuses on risk and the vulnerability of people with disabilities. Here I suggest that this risk ought not to be of special concern. Ultimately, I conclude that upholding respect for the disabled requires the legalization of assisted dying, rather than the denial of access in a misguided effort to protect people with disabilities. (shrink)

This unique interpretation of Alfarabi's thought stresses the ways in which the tenth-century Arab philosopher self-consciously broke the metaphysical tradition that began with Plato. By examining Alfarabi's work as more than an extension or continuation of Greek philosophy, Colmo rethinks what medieval philosophy is and challenges almost universal assumptions about the origins of modernity.

Smajdor’s Reification and Assent in Research Involving Those Who lack Capacity claims, among other things, that ‘adults who cannot give informed consent may nevertheless have the ability to assent and dissent, and that these capacities are morally important in the context of research’.1 More pointedly, she suggests we can rely upon Gillick competence, or that ‘it is worth thinking about why the same trajectory [as children] has not been evident in the context of [adults with impairments of capacity to give (...) informed consent (AWIC)]’.1 I argue that her likening assent in AWIC to assent in children is problematic for at least two related reasons. First, direct comparisons between AWIC and children run the risk of perpetuating or reinforcing infantilising stereotypes against people with disabilities. Second, I argue that people with disabilities are vulnerable in ways that most children are not, and thus, are dissimilar in a morally relevant manner. The infantilising of people with disabilities is quite widely documented and thought to be deeply problematic.2 Not only are people with disabilities often thought to be infantile in regard to particular …. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas divides the sensory appetite into two powers: the irascible and the concupiscible. The irascible power moves creatures toward arduous goods and away from arduous evils, while the concupiscible power moves creatures toward pleasant goods and away from non-arduous evils. Despite the importance of this distinction, it remains unclear what counts as an arduous good or evil, and why arduousness is the defining feature of the division. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I argue that an arduous (...) object is one that is difficult and important for the creature. Second, given this proper understanding of arduousness, I highlight the shortcomings of the standard interpretation of Aquinas’s argument for the irascible-concupiscible distinction and suggest an alternative. I argue that Aquinas grounds the distinction in the distinction between useful and pleasant goods. I explain how these distinct goods allow arduousness to be the defining feature of the irascible-concupiscible division. (shrink)

Theory and practice, reason and revelation, ancients and moderns are the key themes running through the eighteen studies of the literature of political philosophy in Reason's Inquisition. Alfarabi is a pivotal figure, but the range is wide, from Plato and Thucydides to Shakespeare and Hobbes, extending to such contemporary figures as Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 7, Page 53-55, July 2011.

Societal pressures, accreditation organizations, and licensing agencies are emphasizing the importance of ethics in the engineering curriculum. Traditionally, this subject has been taught using dogma, heuristics, and case study approaches. Most recently a number of organizations have sought to increase the utility of these approaches by utilizing the Internet. Resources from these organizations include on-line courses and tests, videos, and DVDs. While these individual approaches provide a foundation on which to base engineering ethics, they may be limited in developing a (...) student’s ability to identify, analyze, and respond to engineering ethics situations outside of the classroom environment. More effective approaches utilize a combination of these types of approaches. This paper describes the design and development of an internet based interactive Simulator for Engineering Ethics Education. The simulator places students in first person perspective scenarios involving different types of ethical situations. Students must gather data, assess the situation, and make decisions. This requires students to develop their own ability to identify and respond to ethical engineering situations. A limited comparison between the internet based interactive simulator and conventional internet web based instruction indicates a statistically significant improvement of 32% in instructional effectiveness. The simulator is currently being used at the University of Houston to help fulfill ABET requirements. (shrink)

In the quantum-Bayesian approach to quantum foundations, a quantum state is viewed as an expression of an agent’s personalist Bayesian degrees of belief, or probabilities, concerning the results of measurements. These probabilities obey the usual probability rules as required by Dutch-book coherence, but quantum mechanics imposes additional constraints upon them. In this paper, we explore the question of deriving the structure of quantum-state space from a set of assumptions in the spirit of quantum Bayesianism. The starting point is the representation (...) of quantum states induced by a symmetric informationally complete measurement or SIC. In this representation, the Born rule takes the form of a particularly simple modification of the law of total probability. We show how to derive key features of quantum-state space from (i) the requirement that the Born rule arises as a simple modification of the law of total probability and (ii) a limited number of additional assumptions of a strong Bayesian flavor. (shrink)

This article suggests that those individuals typically acknowledged as vulnerable during public health crises, such as pandemics, are often-times doubly so. I suggest that individuals can be vulnerable in a person-affecting way as well as in a personhood-affecting way. I suggest that the former notion of vulnerability coincides with many existing accounts of vulnerability and that subsequently, many of the more standard arguments for moral and justice-based obligations to minimize such vulnerability, hold. I also suggest that the latter notion of (...) vulnerability adds another layer of vulnerability to those that we typically view to be at risk. I argue that personhood-vulnerability constitutes a novel interpretation of vulnerability than expands our ideas of the kinds of harm that emerge during public health crises. (shrink)

This essay surveys some of the problems facing theories of public deliberation that are “exclusivist” insofar as they account for good participation in terms of a citizen’s refusal to use certain kinds of reasons. It then argues for a more promising alternative: one that focuses on citizens’ character rather than the content of their reasons. More specifically, it is possible to distinguish good participation from bad by considering the extent to which the citizen possesses and demonstrates the virtue of reasonableness. (...) This virtue-based account avoids the problems facing exclusivism, while still providing a basis for evaluating civic participation. (shrink)

According to QBism, quantum states, unitary evolutions, and measurement operators are all understood as personal judgments of the agent using the formalism. Meanwhile, quantum measurement outcomes are understood as the personal experiences of the same agent. Wigner’s conundrum of the friend, in which two agents ostensibly have different accounts of whether or not there is a measurement outcome, thus poses no paradox for QBism. Indeed the resolution of Wigner’s original thought experiment was central to the development of QBist thinking. The (...) focus of this paper concerns two very instructive modifications to Wigner’s puzzle: One, a recent no-go theorem by Frauchiger and Renner, and the other a thought experiment by Baumann and Brukner. We show that the paradoxical features emphasized in these works disappear once both friend and Wigner are understood as agents on an equal footing with regard to their individual uses of quantum theory. Wigner’s action on his friend then becomes, from the friend’s perspective, an action the friend takes on Wigner. Our analysis rests on a kind of quantum Copernican principle: When two agents take actions on each other, each agent has a dual role as a physical system for the other agent. No user of quantum theory is more privileged than any other. In contrast to the sentiment of Wigner’s original paper, neither agent should be considered as in “suspended animation.” In this light, QBism brings an entirely new perspective to understanding Wigner’s friend thought experiments. (shrink)

In _Discrimination Against the Dying_, Philip Reed argues, among other things, that ‘right to die laws (euthanasia and assisted suicide) also exhibit terminalism when they restrict eligibility to the terminally ill’. 1 Additionally, he suggests ‘the availability of the option of assisted death only for the terminally ill negatively influences the terminally ill who wish to live by causing them to doubt their choice’. 1 I argue that on scrutiny, neither of these two points hold. First, we routinely limit a (...) course of treatment to only those for whom we believe the treatment might provide a benefit. Typically, we do not think hastening death provides benefit when an individual is not experiencing a terminal illness. Thus, I conclude, either all treatments are discriminatory, or medical aid in dying is not. Second, I argue that permitting individuals to refuse or remove life sustaining care may very well cause... (shrink)