Introduction: The present study was conducted to verify a promising experimental setup which demonstrated an inversed Stroop-effect following a mismatching tone. In the matching condition, which was an almost exact replication of the original study, participants were required to indicate whether word color and word meaning were matching, whereas in the response conflict condition, instruction was the same as in a classical Stroop task and required the participants to respond to the word color. As in the original study, each trial (...) was preceded by a sine tone which was deviant in pitch in 20% of the trials.Results: The main result was that the Stroop effect was not inversed after deviant tones, neither under the matching task instruction nor under the response conflict task instruction. The Stroop effect was unaffected by the previous “conceptual mismatch.”Conclusion: The current study failed to replicate the astonishing concept of “conflict priming” reported in previous work and does not open the doors for a new window on sequences of conflicts. Nevertheless, the failed replication is valuable for future research, since it demonstrated that “Conflict Priming” as a facilitation of processing of conflict trials following deviant tones, is not an confirmed finding. (shrink)

This book develops an Aristotelian account of the virtue of practical intelligence or "phronesis"--an excellence of deliberating and making choices--which ...

In this volume of newly commissioned essays, leading moral philosophers offer a comprehensive overview of virtue ethics.

1. Happiness, then and now -- Happiness, eudaimonia, and practical reasoning -- Happiness as eudaimonia -- Happiness and virtuous activity -- New directions from old debates -- 2. Happiness then: the sufficiency debate -- Aristotle's case against the sufficiency thesis -- 3. Happiness now: rethinking the self -- Socrates' case for the sufficiency thesis -- Epictetus and the stoic self -- The Stoics' case for the sufficiency thesis -- The embodied conception of the self -- The embodied conception and psychological (...) well-being -- The Stoics' case against the embodied conception. (shrink)

Daniel Russell develops a fresh and original view of pleasure and its pivotal role in Plato's treatment of value, happiness, and human psychology. This is the first full-length discussion of the topic for fifty years, and Russell shows its relevance to contemporary debates in moral philosophy and philosophical psychology. Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life will make fascinating reading for ancient specialists and for a wide range of philosophers.

The human and mouse genomes are complex from a genomic standpoint. Each cell has the same genomic sequence, yet a wide array of cell types exists due to the presence of a plethora of regulatory elements in the non‐coding genome. Recent advances in epigenomic profiling have uncovered non‐coding gene proximal promoters and distal enhancers of transcription genome‐wide. Extension of promoter‐associated H3K4me3 histone mark across the gene body, known as a broad H3K4me3 domain (H3K4me3‐BD), is a signature of constitutive expression of (...) cell‐type‐specific regulation and of tumour suppressor genes in healthy cells. Recently, it has been discovered that the presence of H3K4me3‐BDs over oncogenes is a cancer‐specific feature associated with their dysregulated gene expression and tumourigenesis. Moreover, it has been shown that the hijacking of clusters of enhancers, known as super‐enhancers (SE), by proto‐oncogenes results in the presence of H3K4me3‐BDs over the gene body. Therefore, H3K4me3‐BDs and SE crosstalk in healthy and cancer cells therefore represents an important mechanism to identify future treatments for patients with SE driven cancers. (shrink)

Many libertarians believe that self-ownership is a separate matter from ownership of extra-personal property. “No-proviso” libertarians hold that property ownership should be free of any “fair share” constraints, on the grounds that the inability of the very poor to control property leaves their self-ownership intact. By contrast, left-libertarians hold that while no one need compensate others for owning himself, still property owners must compensate others for owning extra-personal property. What would a “self” have to be for these claims to be (...) true? I argue that both of these camps must conceive of the boundaries of the self as including one's body but no part of the extra-personal world. However, other libertarians draw those boundaries differently, so that self-ownership cannot be separated from the right to control extra-personal property after all. In that case, property ownership must be subject to a fair share constraint, but that constraint does not require appropriators to pay compensation. This view, which I call “right libertarianism,” differs importantly from the other types primarily in its conception of the self, which I argue is independently more plausible. (shrink)

When subordinates have suffered an unfairness, managers sometimes try to compensate them by allocating something extra that belongs to the organization. These reactions, which we label as managerial Robin Hood behaviors, are undertaken without the consent of senior leadership. In four studies, we present and test a theory of managerial Robin Hoodism. In study 1, we found that managers themselves reported engaging in Robin Hoodism for various reasons, including a moral concern with restoring justice. Study 2 results suggested that managerial (...) Robin Hoodism is more likely to occur when the justice violations involve distributive and interpersonal justice rather than procedural justice violations. In studies 3 and 4, when moral identity was low, both distributive and interpersonal justice violations showed similar relationships to managerial Robin Hoodism. However, when moral identity was high, interpersonal justice violations showed a strong relationship to managerial Robin Hoodism regardless of the level of distributive justice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virtue as "Likeness to God" in Plato and SenecaDaniel C. Russell (bio)In The Center Of Raphael's Famous Painting"The School of Athens," Plato stands pointing to the heavens, and Aristotle stands pointing to the ground; there stand, that is, the mystical Plato and the down-to-earth Aristotle. Although it oversimplifies, this depiction makes sense for the same reason that Aristotle continues to enjoy a presence in modern moral philosophy that (...) Plato does not: quite simply, Plato's ethics looks too fantastic. And Plato's ethics never looks more fantastic than in the claim that our highest good is to be like God.We find this view, in various forms, in the Phaedrus, Timaeus, Laws, Republic, and Theaetetus, as well as in the Phaedo and Philebus,1 and the ancient Platonist Alcinous in his Handbook of Platonism tells us that likeness to God () is Plato's "official" position on our final end.2 Nonetheless, this view receives very little press today: many philosophers are unaware of it; some have simply ignored it or dismissed it as an idle metaphor; and most of those who have taken it more seriously have also tended to find it too otherworldly to be of much relevance to us. This latter response is due in large measure to viewing likeness to God from the perspective of the ancient Neoplatonist Plotinus.3 But there is certainly no guarantee that Plotinus's perspective on likeness to God gives us an especially accurate reconstruction of Plato's view; indeed, the interpretation of this idea was a matter of considerable controversy among Neoplatonists, some of whom offered far less other-worldly interpretations than Plotinus's.4 [End Page 241]In any event, unraveling likeness to God in Plato requires a fresh approach that makes the greatest sense of it within Plato's larger moral philosophy. And in fact we find just such a promising understanding of likeness to God when we take a fresh look at it through Stoic lenses, and through the lens of Plato's Philebus: in both we find the idea that virtue is part of the divine realm right alongside the down-to-earth idea that virtue is rational activity in relation to the world as we find it. This is not to suppose that the Stoic conception of likeness to God is an interpretation of, or descended from, Plato's conception.5 It is simply that the Stoics also found it helpful to think of virtue as likeness to God, and it will be enough if the Stoic conception opens up the range of possibilities for understanding such an idea, allowing us to see philosophical alternatives that might take us some distance towards interpreting Plato, and that may have remained otherwise out of view. Such an understanding of the idea that virtue is likeness to God as we find in the Stoics, I argue, offers just this sort of promising and unexplored alternative in Platonism.One thing that is quite clear is that Plato means for likeness to God to offer us some insight into the nature of virtue. We see this in the Timaeus, where Plato offers a model of the three-part soul, in which mastery of the parts is justice (42 a-b) and happiness (90b-d), and is what likeness to God comes to (42b-d, 47a-c); clearly, then, the virtue in question is moral virtue. Rather curiously, Plato depicts this constitution of soul as a sort of motion which is of the same kind as the motion of the universe itself (90c-d):6 as the universe consists in orbits which are orderly and reconciled in their motion, so the human soul consists in the different orbits (44d) of reason, passion, and desire, which are out of harmony when we start life, but become more orderly as we mature (43a-44d). Although this is difficult talk, it is clearly meant to depict a self-mastery of the whole soul under [End Page 242] the leadership of reason (43a-44d), which is the same as justice, and which consists in the reconciliation of one's inner motions by reason (42b-d).7 Thus we "stabilize the... (shrink)

Virtue ethicists sometimes say that a right action is what a virtuous person would do, characteristically, in the circumstances. But some have objected recently that right action cannot be defined as what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances because there are circumstances in which a right action is possible but in which no virtuous person would be found. This objection moves from the premise that a given person ought to do an action that no virtuous person would do, (...) to the conclusion that the action is a right action. I demon‐strate that virtue ethicists distinguish “ought” from “right” and reject the assumption that “ought” implies “right.” I then show how their rejection of that assumption blocks this “right but not virtuous” objection. I conclude by showing how the thesis that “ought” does not imply “right” can clarify a further dispute in virtue ethics regarding whether “ought” implies “can.”. (shrink)

:In this essay I examine restrictions on labor as takings of property: a liberty to work is property, and restrictions of that liberty are takings. I set property in one’s labor within a unified framework for all forms of property, understood as a social institution for balancing two freedoms: freedom to act even if it interferes with someone else, and freedom from interference. As such, property includes not only possession but also use and disposition. To restrict use or disposition is (...) to alter those freedoms, which is a taking of property, including property in one’s labor. I understand such takings to be justified insofar as they benefit the persons whose freedoms are altered, taking up the question of when restrictions on use and disposition of labor are to the benefit or the harm of excluded workers. Appreciating that labor is property, and that restrictions on labor are takings, reframes the justificatory burden that restrictions on labor must bear. And where that justification is lacking, this approach reframes the nature of the wrongs that unjustified restrictions perpetrate, especially against the most vulnerable workers. (shrink)

Virtue ethicists sometimes say that a right action is what a virtuous person would do, characteristically, in the circumstances. But some have objected recently that right action cannot be defined as what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances because there are circumstances in which a right action is possible but in which no virtuous person would be found. This objection moves from the premise that a given person ought to do an action that no virtuous person would do, (...) to the conclusion that the action is a right action. I demon‐strate that virtue ethicists distinguish “ought” from “right” and reject the assumption that “ought” implies “right.” I then show how their rejection of that assumption blocks this “right but not virtuous” objection. I conclude by showing how the thesis that “ought” does not imply “right” can clarify a further dispute in virtue ethics regarding whether “ought” implies “can.”. (shrink)

How can an ideal of human flourishing reveal what attributes are virtues, as eudaimonism aspires to do, when not all virtuous lives flourish? The standard answer is that even if circumstances prevent one from attaining that idealized life, still one’s life approximates to the ideal the more one’s character approximates to the ideal. However, exploration of methods of idealization reveals that “approximation” is ill-suited to contexts in which factors interact, as virtue and circumstance do. Instead, eudaimonism helps us understand the (...) distinctive excellence of humans by providing a perspective on what is distinctly human about a distinctly human mode of life, namely practical intelligence in making use of one’s circumstances, whatever they may be. This is an alternative understanding of the method of idealization in eudaimonism about virtue, and so the chapter ends with reflections on some uses and limits of idealization in virtue theory. (shrink)

Rosalind Hursthouse wrote in 1999 (On Virtue Ethics, pp. 5-7) of a gap in virtue ethics in the shape of the virtue of justice. Many years on, that gap persists. Our aim is to make a beginning on that virtue, but here we find an obstacle in its treatment by Aristotle, whose thinking about the virtues we otherwise find so rich. Whereas Aristotle took the virtue of justice to be concerned exclusively with one’s treatment of others, we begin instead with (...) the idea that justice also concerns how one treats oneself. Like Hursthouse, we think virtues are corrective of human failings. We argue, first, that being unjust to oneself is a failing that is not only perilous but all too frequent in human experience. The idea that justice is strictly other-regarding gets going only on the assumption that the way humans are prone to fail in their dealings with others is in taking too much interest in their own welfare. Taking inspiration from the work of Jean Hampton, we argue that a pernicious type of self-abnegation—what Hampton called “the loss of self”—is also a common failing among humans, both in their relations with others and in their own practical reasoning about their lives. This failing—a failing of giving persons their due—is a failing for the virtue of justice to correct. We then examine Aristotle’s rejection of the possibility of being unjust to oneself, in Nicomachean Ethics V. Aristotle’s arguments rest on demonstrating the impossibility of committing injustice against oneself in any of the forms characteristic of strictly interpersonal injustice. Rather than arguing that Aristotle begs the question, though, we argue that his approach rests on its starting assumption that the failings for the virtue of justice to correct are failures to give others their due. But considering the human proneness also to self-abnegation, we heirs of Aristotle’s should hope for an understanding of the virtue of justice that is rich enough to include giving oneself one’s due as well. Lastly, we outline the virtue of justice understood as correcting the failure of not giving persons their due, including oneself. Our approach centers on the idea of advocacy, focusing on the duty that parents have to advocate for the fair treatment of their children and, as those children mature, the transference of this duty to those children to be advocates for themselves. We conclude by exploring the extent to which such an account would fit an otherwise broadly Aristotelian approach: the sense in which such a virtue is a “mean,” the emotions and desires with which it is concerned, and its status as a particular virtue as opposed to virtue as a whole. We hope to honor Rosalind Hursthouse by continuing in her philosophical spirit, confronting Aristotle where we are surprised to find ourselves disagreeing considerably with a philosopher we generally find insightful, on an issue we find deeply important. -/- . (shrink)

Idealizations help us understand the world by simplifying it. When factors make discrete contributions to an outcome, leaving factors out can make it easier to identify the contributions of factors that remain. But typically in economics, factors are not discrete but interact; how can isolating some factor X from some factor Y help us understand a reality in which X’s contribution depends on what Y contributes? I argue that Ronald Coase’s method in ‘The Problem of Social Cost’ illustrates how idealization (...) can aid our understanding of a world in which factor Y (transaction costs) has an effect on factor X (transactions), by making plain precisely that effect, and so making it easier to see features of the actual world that obtain because of that effect. ‘Coasean’ idealization is therefore especially useful for understanding targets in which factors are not discrete but interact, as is so often the case in economics. (shrink)

Daniel Haybron’s recent book, The Pursuit of Unhappiness, includes a defense of a normative notion of well-being. Haybron’s main contribution is to argue that a central component of well-being is the fulfillment of one’s “emotional nature,” that is, fulfillment as a unique individual who is such as to find happiness in some things rather than others. We argue that the contrast he draws between his view and “Aristotelian” views of well-being is problematic in two ways. First, Haybron says that (...) unlike the self-fulfillment theory, Aristotelian theories of well-being are “perfectionist” theories; we argue that Haybron’s concerns about “perfectionism” should be distinguished from Aristotelian eudaimonist theory. Second, Haybron’s self-fulfillment theory makes an individual’s well-being wholly dependent on that individual’s make-up, and we argue that that is a bad fit with our considered convictions about well-being. (shrink)

A recent article in this journal described practical and conceptual difficulties faced by public health researchers studying scabies outbreaks in British residential care facilities. Their study population was elderly, decisionally incapacitated residents, many of whom lacked a legally appropriate decision-maker for healthcare decisions. The researchers reported difficulties securing Research Ethics Committee approval. As practicing healthcare ethicists working in a large Canadian research hospital, we are familiar with this challenge and welcomed the authors’ invitation to join the discussion of the ‘outstanding (...) ambiguities and further questions’ that their experience uncovered. We propose a Power of Attorney for Research as one substantive solution to help address the problems they identified. Although we acknowledge the familiar shortcomings associated with Advance Directives in the clinical context, we believe that Powers of Attorney for Research Participation, accompanied by Advance Research Directives, may increase the likelihood of gaining deeper understandings of potential participant’s values and priorities and how they might apply to foreseeable research opportunities. (shrink)

This is a contribution to a Book symposium on The Limits of Free Will: Selected Essays by Paul Russell. Russell provides replies to three critics of The Limits of Free Will. The first reply is to Robert Wallace and focuses on the question of whether there is a conflict between the core compatibilist and pessimist components of the "critical compatibilist" position that Russell has advanced. The second reply is to Angela Smith's discussion of the "narrow" interpretation of (...) moral responsibility responsibility (as defended by R. Jay Wallace) and how best to respond to it. The third and last reply is concerned with Christopher Bennett's criticism of Russell's views concerning "motivational scepticism" and the possibility of pure practical reasons. (shrink)

The argument and discussion in this paper begins from the premise that Hume was an atheist who denied the religious or theist hypothesis. However, even if it is agreed that that Hume was an atheist this does not tell us where he stood on the question concerning the value of religion. Some atheists, such as Spinoza, have argued that society needs to maintain and preserve a form of “true religion”, which is required for the support of our ethical life. Others, (...) such as D’Holbach have argued that religion is not only false it is pernicious and it should be eradicated. This paper argues that Hume rejected both these proposals, on the ground that they rest, in different ways, on excessively optimistic assumptions. The sensible, practical form of atheism that Hume defends has a more modest and realistic aim, which is simply to restrict and limit the most pernicious forms of religion. Understood this way, Hume’s practical atheism is very different from the forms of “old” atheism associated with Spinoza and D’Holbach, as well as from the “new atheism” of thinkers such as Dawkins and Dennett. -/- Reprinted in Paul Russell, "Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy: Selected Essays" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021): 340-383. (shrink)