It is commonly assumed that teasing is restricted to encounters among intimates or close acquaintances. As a result of examining initial interactions among speakers of English, however, this article shows that teasing also occurs between persons who are becoming acquainted. Analysis reveals that tease sequences unfold across three actions that constitute the tease as an invitation to intimacy: a teasable action on the part of the target, the tease proper and a moment of interactionally generated affiliation. Given teasing is one (...) way of criticising another, it constitutes a potential breach of tact or interactional propriety. In initial interactions, however, participants can construe this potential impropriety as an invitation to intimacy, as it involves the proposal of a shared ironic stance that may be either accepted or declined by the target of the tease. (shrink)

A social partner’s emotions communicate important information about their motives and intentions. However, people may discount emotional information that they believe their partner has regulated with the strategic intention of exerting social influence. Across two studies, we investigated interpersonal effects of communicated guilt and perceived strategic regulation in trust games. Results showed that communicated guilt mitigated negative effects of trust violations on interpersonal judgements and behaviour. Further, perceived strategic regulation reduced guilt’s positive effects. These findings suggest that people take emotion-regulation (...) motives into account when responding to emotion communication. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida’s and Gilles Deleuze’s philosophies of justice share many similar features. For both, justice involves an overturning of law by extralegal means, made possible by an “undecidability” in the judgment-making process. To distinguish their conceptions of justice, we examine their implicit modes of non-classical reasoning with regard to “otherness,” building from Routley and Routley and Daniel Smith, to conclude that Derrida’s thinking on justice is at least paracomplete (or analetheic) while Deleuze’s is just paraconsistent (or dialetheic).

Smiles provide information about a social partner’s affect and intentions during social interaction. Although always encountered within a specific situation, the influence of contextual information on smile evaluation has not been widely investigated. Moreover, little is known about the reciprocal effect of smiles on evaluations of their accompanying situations. In this research, we assessed how different smile types and situational contexts affected participants’ social evaluations. In Study 1, 85 participants rated reward, affiliation, and dominance smiles embedded within either enjoyable, polite, (...) or negative (unpleasant) situations. Context had a strong effect on smile ratings, such that smiles in enjoyable situations were rated as more genuine and joyful, as well as indicating less superiority than those in negative situations. In Study 2, 200 participants evaluated the situations that these smiles were perceived within (rather than the smiles themselves). Although situations paired with reward (vs. affiliation) smiles tended to be rated more positively, this effect was absent for negative situations. Ultimately, the findings point toward a reciprocal relationship between smiles and contexts, whereby the face influences evaluations of the situation and vice versa. (shrink)

Several authors have claimed that mechanisms play a vital role in distinguishing between causation and mere correlation in the social sciences. Such claims are sometimes interpreted to mean that without mechanisms, causal inference in social science is impossible. The author agrees with critics of this proposition but explains how the account of how mechanisms aid causal inference can be interpreted in a way that does not depend on it. Nevertheless, he shows that this more charitable version of the account is (...) still unsuccessful as it stands. Consequently, he advances a proposal for shoring up the account, which is founded on the possibility of acquiring knowledge of social mechanisms by linking together norms or practices found in a society. Key Words: causality • social mechanisms • interpretation • anthropology. (shrink)

In recent times the question of whether or not there is such a thing as nonconceptual content has been the object of much serious attention. For analytical philosophers, the locus classicus of the view that there is such a phenomena is to be found in Evans remarks about perceptual experience in Varieties of Reference. John McDowell has taken issue with Evans over his claim that "conceptual capacities are first brought into operation only when one makes a judgement of experience, and (...) at that point a different species of content comes into play" (McDowell 1994: 48). In contrast, he proposes that "A judgement of experience does not introduce a new kind of content, but simply endorses the conceptual content, or some of it, that is already possessed by the experience on which it is grounded" (McDowell 1994: 48-49). Ironically, in light of the ambitions of Mind and World, this sits very happily with the firmly embedded views of many traditional classical cognitivists. It has been a long-standing article of faith that, even in its most basic forms, perceptual content must be conceptual. But those who adopt this position have a heavy burden when it comes to explaining the origin and development of concepts (cf. Peacocke 1992a: 9). In line with the proposal that at least some primitive concepts must be innate, theorists like Fodor make appeal to the intrinsic character of such concepts to explain more complex conceptual contents and their essential characteristics (Fodor 1998: 130). Primitive concepts and their properties as simply assumed because of an explanatory need despite that fact that making this assumption has a paradoxical consequence --which, in this case, is revealed by Fodor's claim that all concepts must be acquired inductively (cf. Fodor 1998: 130-132). The good news is that if we opt for a nonconceptualist approach then we need not assume that any concepts are innate. There is a plausible programme afoot, initiated by Cussins, which hopes explain "the construction of cognitive properties out of non-cognitive properties" (Cussins 1990: 374). He encourages us to suppose "that the mind/world distinction is a phylogenetic or ontogenetic achievement" (Cussins 1990: 409). However, some advocates of nonconceptual content believe that providing this explanation will be a relatively straightforward, although clearly difficult, task given that a contentful base of nonconceptual informational states, of the kind Evans envisioned, is presupposed. My aim is to defend Evans but if if nonconceptual content is to play the important role assigned to it of helping to explain the development of concepts then we must explicate the nature of such content in such a way that does not presuppose that it is truth-conditional. We must also be able to say exactly what part nonconceptual responses play in judgement making and conceptual development. It is the burden of this paper to provide a sketch of how both these ends might be achieved and to offer some reasons for thinking the project is a viable one. I do this in two stages. The first is to advocate a modest biosemantic theory of nonconceptual content and the second is to show how this can shore up a Davidsonian understanding of the possession conditions for concepts. (shrink)

Drawing heavily on Aristotle, Tabensky attempts to establish ‘an ethic that flows from the very structure of our being’, but he also calls on Davidson’s arguments about the essentially social character of rationality to shore up Aristotle’s claim that we are essentially social beings. This much of his project, I argue is successful. However Tabensky takes this a step further and proposes a pluralist ethic on the grounds that a ‘fully’ or ‘properly’ instantiated account of the ‘ideal’ conditions for (...) rationality requires encountering innumerable other points of view. Firstly, while confronting alternatives is essential to truth-seeking it hardly follows that an unconstrained pluralism represents an ideal condition for this kind of inquiry, since such an approach risks falling into mere clash of perspectives on practical grounds. Secondly, it is unclear how confronting more and more perspectives is supposed to help in enabling us to lead our lives well. In conclusion, picking up on this theme and looking again at Aristotle, I give reasons for questioning that the kind of rational choice involved in leading the good life, for reasons in part highlighted by Tabensky, benefits from analogy with the modes of conceptual rational inquiry in other domains in any case. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reading Karl Barth, Interrupting Moral Technique, Transforming Biomedical Ethics by Ashley John MoyseJoshua DanielReading Karl Barth, Interrupting Moral Technique, Transforming Biomedical Ethics Ashley John Moyse NEW YORK: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2015. 263 PP. $100.00Reading Karl Barth, Interrupting Moral Technique, Transforming Biomedical Ethics by Ashley John Moyse is a work in fundamental theological bioethics. Rather than an applied approach that attends to particular dilemmas or issues—which falls prey to the (...) "moral technique" that is Moyse's main target—the author articulates an embodied ethical practice of postures, grounded in Karl Barth's theology, which promotes conversation over solitary reflection and plurality by way of particularity. Beyond usual complaints about contemporary biomedicine and bioethics, Moyse's subtle point is that standard bioethics, trapped in the totalizing grammar of common morality theory, functions as a technique, a tool to produce decisions more efficiently from the abstracted, disengaged stance of an impersonal agent. Hence, bioethics itself mimics the very technologies that provoke bioethical perplexities in the first place. What's needed, according to Moyse, is less a new theory than a new catechesis that can interrupt and transform standard bioethics at the level of embodied practice. [End Page 221]After an introduction that outlines the book's argument and perspective, the first chapter gives an account of bioethics' grounding in common morality theory (specifically, Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, and Bernard Gert). Ultimately, common morality is judged to be sinful, presuming that the proffered moral mastery of bioethics can secure the human good. Over the next three chapters, Moyse articulates, on the basis of Karl Barth and ancillary others, three postures of human flourishing involving dispossessing ourselves of moral mastery, each aligned with a theological virtue. First is the posture of openness or embodied solidarity, understood as a combination of the availability of our full attention to the other, with the fidelity to remain so available. Theologically, this aligns with love as self-surrender to the other and relates to Barth's account of humanity as cohumanity, existing essentially in encounter and community. Second is the posture of agency, understood as the freedom to act recognizant of the particular and provisional character of our decisions. This aligns with hope and is grounded in Barth's account of God's command as permission discerned through conscience and with others. Third is the posture of respect, which is a coalescence of openness and agency in view of our temporal finitude, consisting of reverence for the life we're given and resolve to live it in the face of illness and death. This aligns with faith and relates to Barth's account of God's command to live as the freedom to will to live within limitations. Moyse concludes with an illustration of how these postures might be exercised not as an application to a particular dilemma or issue but as a catechetical re-envisioning of our common moral space.Moyse makes a convincing case that Barth is a profitable theological resource for transforming bioethics, particularly in terms of shifting ethical attention from principles and rules to actual persons. While the exposition of Barth is excessive, much of it simply shoring up the book's theological credentials, what Moyse builds from it is salient. Still, he might have theorized the concept of posture more. The term is provocative in its corporeally concrete implications but vague as an ethical category. Moyse differentiates postures from Aristotelian habits yet doesn't clarify how postures differ from virtues. That Moyse aligns his postures with theological virtues only sharpens the problem. Relatedly, this reviewer wishes Moyse had engaged Edmund Pellegrino's medical ethical work: their shared discontent with principles-based bioethics but divergent intuitions of what bioethics should be (Pellegrino favoring a more philosophical, virtue-ethical, and humanistic perspective) would have helped define Moyse's contribution more sharply. Ultimately, these dissatisfactions are testimonies to this reviewer's appreciation for the substance of Moyse's own ethical voice and desire to hear it more clearly. [End Page 222]Joshua DanielUniversity of ChicagoCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This article interprets the logos Christology in the fourth gospel within Ewe-Ghanaian cosmic setting. The article employs a combination of the exegetical and mother tongue biblical hermeneutics as its methodologies. The article compares the concept of the logos in John 1:1–5, 14 with a similar concept in Ewe cosmology with the aim of finding their points of convergence and divergence. The article also identifies linguistic and theological gaps in the Ewe rendition of John 1:1–5, 14 and proposes a new translation (...) that addresses it. A translation of the logos in Ewe cosmic perspective renders the term nyagbe, the intelligible word which dwells with the female pair of Sogbe-Lisa and manifests itself from the absolute state of existence [ logo ] to the embodied state [ logosu ]. When nyagbe journeyed from the eternal state of existence to the embodied state of existence, it manifests itself at five different levels of existence until it reaches the final state where humans exist. Although believed to be the epitome of all creation, human beings are at the same time described as being at the shore of ignorance and therefore must continually climb the ladder of knowledge in order to free themselves from it. It is for this reason that humans constantly petition the cosmic forces for their salvation. The article therefore, identifies a soteriological gap created in the Ewe soteriology and concludes that the only soteriological response to the Ewe cosmic cry for deliverance from the state of ignorance is the logos incarnate in John 1:14. Contribution: The article contributes to the academic knowledge on the logos Christology in the prologue of the fourth gospel (John 1:1–5, 14), specifically in the use of mother tongue in biblical hermeneutics in Africa. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Two Sonnets DANIEL GALEF Thales to Thratta (spoken by “The Astrologer Who Fell into a Well”) All things are full of spirits. So said I, who plumbed the well of science, saw the sun made black and tracked its course across the sky, who, armed with muscle, wrote the river’s run. Where is my spirit? Thratta! I feel cold and wet. This well is deep. The world is (...) wet and cold. The world I knew was filled with gold and fire.... How quick the Olympic sun has set, how quick my words rewritten, and my land made palimpsest. The sea has left Miletus, the shore on which I walked and lectured—and the wise men who walked with me, whom I taught. The boundless sea, whose tides once rose to meet us has changed its shape, moved on. But I cannot. arion 27.2 fall 2019 Eudemus to Apollonius (spoken by the dedicatee of Apollonius of Perga’s first books of the Conic Sections) I write this note in the sand because I know the waves will wash it clean, and you won’t see it. Like the circles we traced here so long ago, our footprints fade from Pergamum. So be it. Your book was well-received. As was your son; his seems the echo of your dimming face. How did my thoughts, which like an hour-glass run, once hold the eternal laws of boundless space? The beach bends on forever. How might a man reckon every mote, each grit and grain? The universe of truths seems greater than could ever fit within the human brain— Yet love, which binds over such a greater span, all mortals its completeness can contain. 104 two sonnets... (shrink)

Authority is an important feature of military life. Political and military superiors claim the power to give binding orders to their subordinates. If they have the authority they claim (and that many citizens and soldiers take them to possess), then the subordinates are morally required to do as commanded. Tadros’ To Do, To Die, To Reason Why challenges the authority claims that political and military superiors make in giving orders: the kinds of considerations ordinarily thought to underpin their authority – (...) in particular, the instrumental benefits of authoritative decision-making in politics and military life – cannot justify it. Tadros’ claim is not that subordinates are never required to do what their superiors order. Trivially, superiors may order subordinates to do what they are anyway required to do. (The captain orders the privates not to kill the prisoners.) Less trivially, superiors’ orders may change the subordinates’ factual or epistemic circumstances, which results in their having duties that they would otherwise have lacked. (The captain orders a private to jump into the sea. His order startles a child on the shore so it loses its balance and plunges into the water. The private may now have a duty to jump in to save the child, and he may have that duty because the superior gave the order.) Yet this way of changing the subordinates’ duties is not, for Tadros, a genuine exercise of authority: authority brings about normative change directly, rather than by changing the subordinate’s factual or epistemic circumstances. It is authority so understood that, according to Tadros, military and political superiors claim and yet lack. Tadros offers two complementary arguments for this anarchist conclusion. First, he argues that superiors have practical authority over subordinates only if the subordinates have duties to obey (or follow) the superiors’ orders, rather than merely to conform with them (by doing something which happens to be what they were ordered to do). There must be a suitable link between order and action. But, Tadros argues, soldiers don’t have a duty to obey their superiors’ orders. (Call this the Obedience Claim.) So military superiors lack practical authority vis-à-vis their subordinates. (Call this the Authority Claim.) Second, Tadros argues that authority is either unjustified or otiose. Exercises of practical authority, by imposing duties, restrict their subjects’ freedom. Moral duties are difficult to justify precisely because they are freedom-restricting in this way; and only certain kinds of considerations suffice to make an action morally obligatory. Tadros argues that there are sufficient reasons for a superior to have and exercise the power to make ving morally obligatory by issuing a directive only if there are already sufficient reasons for ving being independently morally obligatory. (We call this the No Duty, No Authority Claim.) We challenge both arguments. Sections 2 and 3 show that, even if the Obedience Claim is true, it does not entail the Authority Claim. Section 4 casts doubt on the No Duty, No Authority Claim. (shrink)

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

Enhancement technologies may someday grant us capacities far beyond what we now consider humanly possible. Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg suggest that we might survive the deaths of our physical bodies by living as computer emulations.­­ In 2008, they issued a report, or “roadmap,” from a conference where experts in all relevant fields collaborated to determine the path to “whole brain emulation.” Advancing this technology could also aid philosophical research. Their “roadmap” defends certain philosophical assumptions required for this technology’s success, (...) so by determining the reasons why it succeeds or fails, we can obtain empirical data for philosophical debates regarding our mind and selfhood. The scope ranges widely, so I merely survey some possibilities, namely, I argue that this technology could help us determine (1) if the mind is an emergent phenomenon, (2) if analog technology is necessary for brain emulation, and (3) if neural randomness is so wild that a complete emulation is impossible. (shrink)

A pioneering work in the philosophy of mind, Content and Consciousness brings together the approaches of philosophers and scientists to the mind--a connection that must occur if genuine analysis of the mind is to be made. This unified approach permits the most forbiddingly mysterious mental phenomenon--consciousness--to be broken down into several distinct phenomena, and these are each given a foundation in the physical activity of the brain. This paperback edition contains a preface placing the book in the context of recent (...) work in the area. (shrink)

We show that there are Π5 formulas in the language of the Turing degrees, [Formula: see text], with ≤, ∨ and ∧, that define the relations x″ ≤ y″, x″ = y″ and so {x ∈ L2 = x ≥ y|x″ = y″} in any jump ideal containing 0. There are also Σ6&Π6 and Π8 formulas that define the relations w = x″ and w = x', respectively, in any such ideal [Formula: see text]. In the language with just ≤ (...) the quantifier complexity of each of these definitions increases by one. For a lower bound on definability, we show that no Π2 or Σ2 formula in the language with just ≤ defines L2 or L2. Our arguments and constructions are purely degree theoretic without any appeals to absoluteness considerations, set theoretic methods or coding of models of arithmetic. As a corollary, we see that every automorphism of [Formula: see text] is fixed on every degree above 0″ and every relation on [Formula: see text] which is invariant under the double jump or under join with 0″ is definable over [Formula: see text] if and only if it is definable in second order arithmetic with set quantification ranging over sets whose degrees are in [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of (...) cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. -/- Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

The pessimistic hypothesis is the hypothesis that life is bad for us, in the sense that we are worse off for having come into existence. Suppose this hypothesis turns out to be correct — existence turns out to be more of a burden than a gift. A natural next thought is that we should stop having children. But I contend that this is a mistake; procreation would often be permissible even if the pessimistic hypothesis turned out to be correct. Roughly, (...) this is because we are often in a position to know that future people will approve of having been created, and their approval will not be inappropriate even if they are worse off for having been created. And our respect for the attitudes of future people can permit us to create them. (shrink)

Sometimes, learning about the origins of a belief can make it irrational to continue to hold that belief—a phenomenon we call ‘genealogical defeat’. According to explanationist accounts, genealogical defeat occurs when one learns that there is no appropriate explanatory connection between one’s belief and the truth. Flatfooted versions of explanationism have been widely and rightly rejected on the grounds that they would disallow beliefs about the future and other inductively-formed beliefs. After motivating the need for some explanationist account, we raise (...) some problems for recent versions of explanationism. Learning from their failures, we then produce and defend a more resilient explanationism. (shrink)

Simon May has argued that the notion of a principled compromise is incoherent. Reasons to compromise are always in his view strategic: though we think that the position we defend is still the right one, we compromise on this view in order to avoid the undesirable consequences that might flow from not compromising. I argue against May that there are indeed often principled reasons to compromise, and that these reasons are in fact multiple. First, compromises evince respect for persons that (...) we have reason to think of as our epistemic peers, and acknowledgement of our own finitudes as moral reasoners. Second, compromises are often made morally necessary by the shortfalls that unavoidably separate democratic institutions from democratic ideals. Third, compromises express a desirable form of democratic community. And fourth, compromises are often justified from a consequentialist point of view, in that they allow for the realization of values that would not be realized as well by the failure to compromise. (shrink)

This book seeks to bring together the pragmatic theory of 'meaning as use' with the traditional semantic approach that considers meaning in terms of truth conditions. Daniel Gutzmann's new approach captures the entire meaning of complex expressions and overcomes the empirical gaps and conceptual problems associated with previous analyses.

Examines the lived experience of social encounters drawing on phenomenological insights.

Infallibilism is the view that a belief cannot be at once warranted and false. In this essay we assess three nonpartisan arguments for infallibilism, arguments that do not depend on a prior commitment to some substantive theory of warrant. Three premises, one from each argument, are most significant: if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then the Gettier Problem cannot be solved; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then its warrant can be transferred (...) to an accidentally true belief; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then it can be warranted and accidentally true. We argue that each of these is either false or no more plausible than its denial. Along the way, we offer a solution to the Gettier Problem that is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

Supererogatory acts—good deeds “beyond the call of duty”—are a part of moral common sense, but conceptually puzzling. I propose a unified solution to three of the most infamous puzzles: the classic Paradox of Supererogation (if it’s so good, why isn’t it just obligatory?), Horton’s All or Nothing Problem, and Kamm’s Intransitivity Paradox. I conclude that supererogation makes sense if, and only if, the grounds of rightness are multi-dimensional and comparative.

iterations of REA operators, as well as extensions, generalizations and other applications are given in [6] while those for the ...

" Qualia " is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us. As is so often the case with philosophical jargon, it is easier to give examples than to give a definition of the term. Look at a glass of milk at sunset; the way it looks to you--the particular, personal, subjective visual quality of the glass of milk is the quale of your visual experience at the (...) moment. The way the milk tastes to you then is another, gustatory quale, and how it sounds to you as you swallow is an auditory quale; These various "properties of conscious experience" are prime examples of qualia. Nothing, it seems, could you know more intimately than your own qualia ; let the entire universe be some vast illusion, some mere figment of Descartes' evil demon, and yet what the figment is made of will be the qualia of your hallucinatory experiences. Descartes claimed to doubt everything that could be doubted, but he never doubted that his conscious experiences had qualia, the properties by which he knew or apprehended them. (shrink)

In this book by the award-winning author of Just Healthcare, Norman Daniels develops a comprehensive theory of justice for health that answers three key questions: what is the special moral importance of health? When are health inequalities unjust? How can we meet health needs fairly when we cannot meet them all? Daniels' theory has implications for national and global health policy: can we meet health needs fairly in ageing societies? Or protect health in the workplace while respecting individual liberty? Or (...) meet professional obligations and obligations of justice without conflict? When is an effort to reduce health disparities, or to set priorities in realising a human right to health, fair? What do richer, healthier societies owe poorer, sicker societies? Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly explores the many ways that social justice is good for the health of populations in developed and developing countries. (shrink)

In Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute, Daniel Andrés López reassembles Lukács’s philosophy of praxis on a Hegelian basis, as a conceptual-historical totality, both defending him and proposing an unprecedented, immanent critique that raises problems for Marxian philosophy as a whole.

Culture in Mind is an ethnographic portrait of the human mind. Using case studies from both western and nonwestern societies. Shore argues that "cultural models" are necessary to the functioning of the human mind. Drawing on recent developments in cognitive science as well as anthropology, Culture in Mind explores the cognitive world of culture in the ongoing production of meaning in everyday thinking and feeling.

The rapidly increasing numbers of elderly people in our society have raised some important moral questions: How should we distribute social resources among different age groups? What does justice require from both the young and the old? In this book, Norman Daniels offers the first systematic philosophical discussion of these urgent questions, advocating what he calls a "lifespan" approach to the problem: Since, as they age, people pass through a variety of institutions, the challenge of caring for the elderly becomes (...) the prudent allocation of public resources among the various stages of people's lives. Using this philosophical approach, Daniels addresses specific public policy issues such as the allocation of medical funds, the adequacy of long-term care, current Medicare cost-containment measures, and the equitable distribution of income support over the lifespan and between generations. (shrink)

The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, (...) the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

Supererogatory acts are those that lie “beyond the call of duty.” There are two standard ways to define this idea more precisely. Although the definitions are often seen as equivalent, I argue that they can diverge when options are infinite, or when there are cycles of better options; moreover, each definition is acceptable in only one case. I consider two ways out of this dilemma.

Part of the ingenious quality of LEGO is that it is a system of play, fundamentally based on interconnecting sets of parts and open‐endedness. Nowadays, themed and specialized LEGO playsets far outnumber the more free‐form building oriented sets we might see on store shelves. Everything from the themed LEGO Space and LEGO City to extensions of the imaginary franchise universes of Star Wars, Harry Potter, and The Simpsons suggest a kind of play experience where purely imagination‐driven building becomes secondary to (...) the kinds of storytelling and narrative play that LEGO playsets encourage. The different kinds of play—LEGO playset building compared to LEGO video game playing—can be thought of as ludus (more structured, goal‐oriented play) and paidia (exuberant, spontaneous free play). LEGO in many ways serves as a helpful analogy for how philosophical thinking can lead people toward new connections between their thoughts and ideas. LEGO and philosophy invite them to question the nature of play. (shrink)

The central question in contemporary ethics is whether virtue can replace duty as the primary notion in ethical theory. The subject of intense contemporary debate in ethical theory, virtue ethics is currently enjoying an increase in interest. This is the first book to focus directly on the subject. It provides a clear, systematic introduction to the area and houses under one cover a collection of the central articles published on the debate over the past decade. The essays encompass a wide (...) range ofaspects: the difference between virtue ethics and traditional duty ethics; present arguments for and against virtue ethics; the practical implications of virtue ethics and the Aristotelian and Kantian attitudes to virtue ethics. (shrink)