Ethical analyses, professional guidelines and legal decisions support the equivalence thesis for life-sustaining treatment: if it is ethical to withhold treatment, it would be ethical to withdraw the same treatment. In this paper we explore reasons why the majority of medical professionals disagree with the conclusions of ethical analysis. Resource allocation is considered by clinicians to be a legitimate reason to withhold but not to withdraw intensive care treatment. We analyse five arguments in favour of non-equivalence, and find only relatively (...) weak reasons to restrict rationing to withholding treatment. On the contrary, resource allocation provides a strong argument in favour of equivalence: non-equivalence causes preventable death in critically ill patients. We outline two proposals for increasing equivalence in practice: (1) reduction of the mortality threshold for treatment withdrawal, (2) time-limited trials of intensive care. These strategies would help to move practice towards more rational treatment limitation decisions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 16 Heft: 1 Seiten: 179-214.

What role should legislation or policy play in avoiding the complications of in-vitro fertilization? In this article, we focus on single versus double embryo transfer, and assess three arguments in favour of mandatory single embryo transfer: risks to the mother, risks to resultant children, and costs to society. We highlight significant ethical concerns about each of these. Reproductive autonomy and non-paternalism are strong enough to outweigh the health concerns for the woman. Complications due to non-identity cast doubt on the extent (...) to which children are harmed. Twinning may offer an overall benefit rather than burden to society. Finally, including the future health costs for children in reproductive policy is inconsistent with other decisions. We conclude that mandatory single embryo transfer is not justified and that a number of countries should reconsider their current embryo transfer policy. (shrink)

Are there some newborn infants whose short- and long-term care costs are so great that treatment should not be provided and they should be allowed to die? Public discourse and academic debate about the ethics of newborn intensive care has often shied away from this question. There has been enough ink spilt over whether or when for the infant's sake it might be better not to provide life-saving treatment. The further question of not saving infants because of inadequate resources has (...) seemed too difficult, too controversial, or perhaps too outrageous to even consider. However, Roman Catholic ethicist Charles Camosy has recently challenged this, arguing that costs should be a primary consideration in decision-making in neonatal intensive care. In the first part of this paper I will outline and critique Camosy's central argument, which he calls the ‘social quality of life (sQOL)’ model. Although there are some conceptual problems with the way the argument is presented, even those who do not share Camosy's Catholic background have good reason to accept his key point that resources should be considered in intensive care treatment decisions for all patients. In the second part of the paper, I explore the ways in which we might identify which infants are too expensive to treat. I argue that both traditional personal ‘quality of life’ and Camosy's ‘sQOL’ should factor into these decisions, and I outline two practical proposals. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccine requirements have generated significant debate. Here, we argue that, on the evidence available, such policies should have recognised proof of natural immunity as a sufficient basis for exemption to vaccination requirements. We begin by distinguishing our argument from two implausible claims about natural immunity: natural immunity is superior to ‘artificial’ vaccine-induced immunity simply because it is ‘natural’ and it is better to acquire immunity through natural infection than via vaccination. We then briefly survey the evidence base for (...) the comparison between naturally acquired immunity and vaccine-induced immunity. While we clearly cannot settle the scientific debates on this point, we suggest that we lack clear and convincing scientific evidence that vaccine-induced immunity has a significantly higher protective effect than natural immunity. Since vaccine requirements represent a substantial infringement of individual liberty, as well as imposing other significant costs, they can only be justified if they are necessary for achieving a proportionate public health benefit. Without compelling evidence for the superiority of vaccine-induced immunity, it cannot be deemed necessary to require vaccination for those with natural immunity. Subjecting them to vaccine mandates is therefore not justified. We conclude by defending the standard of proof that this argument from necessity invokes, and address other pragmatic and practical considerations that may speak against natural immunity exemptions. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

We often ascribe possibility to the scenes that are displayed by mental or nonmental sensory images. The paper presents a novel argument for thinking that we are prima facie justified in ascribing metaphysical possibility to what is displayed by suitable visual images, and it argues that many of our imagery‐based ascriptions of metaphysical possibility are therefore prima facie justified. Some potential objections to the arguments are discussed, and some potential extensions of them, to cover nonvisual forms of imagery and (...) nonmetaphysical forms of possibility, are endorsed. (shrink)

Visualizings, the simplest imaginings which employ visual imagery, have certain characteristic features; they are perspectival, for instance. Also, it seems that some but not all of our visualizings are imaginings of seeings. But it has been forcefully argued, for example by M.G.F. Martin and Christopher Peacocke, that all visualizings are imaginings of visual sensations. I block these arguments by providing an account of visualizings which allows for their perspectival nature and other features they typically have, but which also explains how (...) we can visualize things without thereby imagining visual sensations. (shrink)

Land-based climate mitigation schemes such as REDD+ imply the creation of ‘rights to carbon’ for actions that enhance carbon sinks. In many cases, the legal and normative foundations of such rights are unclear. This article focuses on special rights on the basis of improvement. Considering improvement in relation to carbon sinks requires asking what it means to ‘improve’ an environmental resource. Our answer departs in two significant respects from the standard conception of improvement, namely by reconceiving action in relation to (...) ecosystem services, and accordingly, making the case for a counterfactual baseline to be used to compare an improved and unimproved state. Our modifications potentially allow for a variety of agents to claim special carbon rights on the basis of beneficial interactions with land-based carbon sinks. We give three archetypical examples of agents who may claim pro tanto special rights to carbon based on their interaction with carbon sinks. (shrink)

Dominic Scott compares the Republic and Nicomachean Ethics from a methodological perspective. He argues that Plato and Aristotle distinguish similar levels of argument in the defence of justice, and that they both follow the same approach: Plato because he thinks it will suffice, Aristotle because he thinks there is no need to go beyond it.

Can identity be vague? More exactly, can there be objects x and y such that it is vague whether x = y, and the vagueness is due to the objects themselves as opposed to vagueness in language used to denote the objects? The question has been extensively discussed since Evans (1978) where it was claimed that an affirmative answer was a necessary condition for the thesis that there could be vague objects. A recent, ingenious argument in Pinillos (2003) seeks (...) to establish the negative and show that it cannot be de re vague whether x = y. The argument depends crucially on count claims concerning objects whose identity conditions are de re vague, and so we must learn how to count such objects — clouds, persons and much else besides. When that has been accomplished we can see a way out of Pinillos’s argument, and claim that de re vague identity remains coherent. (shrink)

We present two prudent semantics within Dung's theory of argumentation. They are based on two new notions of extension, referred to as p-extension and c-extension. Two arguments cannot belong to the same p-extension whenever one of them attacks indirectly the other one. Two arguments cannot belong to the same c-extension whenever one of them indirectly attacks a third argument while the other one indirectly defends the third. We argue that our semantics lead to a better handling of controversial arguments (...) than Dung's ones. We compare the prudent inference relations induced by our semantics w.r.t. cautiousness; we also compare them with the inference relations induced by Dung's semantics. (shrink)

Clinical guidelines summarise available evidence on medical treatment, and provide recommendations about the most effective and cost-effective options for patients with a given condition. However, sometimes patients do not desire the best available treatment. Should doctors in a publicly-funded healthcare system ever provide sub-optimal medical treatment? On one view, it would be wrong to do so, since this would violate the ethical principle of beneficence, and predictably lead to harm for patients. It would also, potentially, be a misuse of finite (...) health resources. In this paper, we argue in favour of permitting sub-optimal choices on the basis of value pluralism, uncertainty, patient autonomy and responsibility. There are diverse views about how to evaluate treatment options, and patients’ right to self-determination and taking responsibility for their own lives should be respected. We introduce the concept of cost-equivalence, as a way of defining the boundaries of permissible pluralism in publicly-funded healthcare systems. As well as providing the most effective, available treatment for a given condition, publicly-funded healthcare systems should provide reasonable suboptimal medical treatments that are equivalent in cost to the optimal treatment. We identify four forms of cost-equivalence, and assess the implications of CE for decision-making. We evaluate and reject counterarguments to CE. Finally, we assess the relevance of CE for other treatment decisions including requests for potentially superior treatment. (shrink)

There are not enough solid organs available to meet the needs of patients with organ failure. Thousands of patients every year die on the waiting lists for transplantation. Yet there is one currently available, underutilized, potential source of organs. Many patients die in intensive care following withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment whose organs could be used to save the lives of others. At present the majority of these organs go to waste.In this paper we consider and evaluate a range of ways (...) to improve the number and quality of organs available from this group of patients. Changes to consent arrangements (for example conscription of organs after death) or changes to organ donation practice could dramatically increase the numbers of organs available, though they would conflict with currently accepted norms governing transplantation.We argue that one alternative, Organ Donation Euthanasia, would be a rational improvement over current practice regarding withdrawal of life support. It would give individuals the greatest chance of being able to help others with their organs after death. It would increase patient autonomy. It would reduce the chance of suffering during the dying process. We argue that patients should be given the choice of whether and how they would like to donate their organs in the event of withdrawal of life support in intensive care.Continuing current transplantation practice comes at the cost of death and prolonged organ failure. We should seriously consider all of the alternatives. (shrink)

This paper builds a three-part argument in favour of a more transcendentally focused form of ‘postphenomenology’ than is currently practised in philosophy of technology. It does so by problematising two key terms, ‘constitution’ and ‘postphenomenology’, then by arguing in favour of a ‘transcendental empiricist’ approach that draws on the work of Foucault, Derrida, and, in particular, Deleuze. Part one examines ‘constitution’, as it moves from the context of Husserl’s phenomenology to Ihde and Verbeek’s ‘postphenomenology’. I argue that the term (...) tends towards different senses in these contexts, and that this renders its sense more problematic than the work of Ihde and Verbeek makes it appear. Part two examines ‘postphenomenology’. I argue that putatively ‘poststructuralist’ thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze may be better characterised as ‘postphenomenologists’, and that approaching them in this way may allow better access to their work from a philosophy of technology perspective. Part three argues for a ‘transcendental empiricist’ approach to philosophy of technology. In doing so, it argues for a rewriting of contemporary philosophy of technology’s political constitution: since an ‘empirical turn’ in the 1990s, I argue, philosophy of technology has been too narrowly focused on ‘empirical’ issues of fact, and not focused enough on ‘transcendental’ issues concerning conditions for these facts. (shrink)

Given its brevity, Plato's Meno covers an astonishingly wide array of topics: politics, education, virtue, definition, philosophical method, mathematics, the nature and acquisition of knowledge and immortality. Its treatment of these, though profound, is tantalisingly short, leaving the reader with many unresolved questions. This book confronts the dialogue's many enigmas and attempts to solve them in a way that is both lucid and sympathetic to Plato's philosophy. Reading the dialogue as a whole, it explains how different arguments are related to (...) one another and how the interplay between characters is connected to the philosophical content of the work. In a new departure, this book's exploration focuses primarily on the content and coherence of the dialogue in its own right and not merely in the context of other dialogues, making it required reading for all students of Plato, be they from the world of classics or philosophy. (shrink)

When is it permissible to allow a newborn infant to die on the basis of their future quality of life? The prevailing official view is that treatment may be withdrawn only if the burdens in an infant's future life outweigh the benefits. In this paper I outline and defend an alternative view. On the Threshold View, treatment may be withdrawn from infants if their future well-being is below a threshold that is close to, but above the zero-point of well-being. I (...) present four arguments in favor of the Threshold View, and identify and respond to several counterarguments. I conclude that it is justifiable in some circumstances for parents and doctors to decide to allow an infant to die even though the infant's life would be worth living. The Threshold View provides a justification for treatment decisions that is more consistent, more robust, and potentially more practical than the standard view. (shrink)

Art works realize many values. According to tradition, not all of these values are characteristic of art: art works characteristically bear aesthetic value. Breaking with tradition, some now say that art works bear artistic value, as distinct from aesthetic value. I argue that there is no characteristic artistic value distinct from aesthetic value. The argument for this thesis suggests a new way to think about aesthetic value as it is characteristically realized by works of art.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Matter and Mathematics: An Essentialist Account of the Laws of Nature by Andrew YOUNANDominic V. CassellaYOUNAN, Andrew. Matter and Mathematics: An Essentialist Account of the Laws of Nature. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023. xii + 228 pp. Cloth, $75.00Andrew Younan’s work situates itself between two opposing philosophical accounts of the laws of nature. In one corner, there are the Humeans (or Nominalists); in the (...) other, the Anti-Humeans (or Platonists). The goal of the book is to find an explanation for the orderliness of the natural world that avoids falling into the difficulties of the two opposing philosophies. For example, the Humeans treat “events” as fundamental, and the laws of nature follow from these “events.” For the Humeans, reality is essentially random, with any order being something of our own contrivance. Whereas for the Anti-Humeans, the laws of nature are fundamental and are treated as causing events, turning the effect of necessity into the cause of material [End Page 166] characteristics. Looking to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Younan proposes the recovery of a third option, the Essentialist position. This Essentialist position understands substances, that is, individual beings, as fundamental and all else (for example, events and laws of nature) follow from these individual beings. The thesis of the book, generally understood, is that Essentialism evades the critiques that the Humeans and Anti-Humeans put against one another while retaining what is right in each approach.The book is divided into two parts. The book’s first part deals with general objections and replies and is divided into three chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 address the two opposing accounts of nature mentioned, while chapter 3 argues for the benefits of recovering an Essentialist position. Chapter 1 examines the objection that Aristotelian natural philosophy is incompatible with modern science, an objection raised by Descartes. Chapter 2 addresses the objections of the Humeans, namely, that natural philosophy and, with it, causality and induction have been debunked. Chapter 3 looks at the fathers of quantum theory, specifically Heisenberg, and argues that a return to Aristotle’s understanding of nature would benefit the modern scientific project. The book’s second part is an argument for the Essentialist position and is divided into three chapters. Chapters 4 and 5 are the foundation for chapter 6. Chapter 4 is an abstractive account of mathematics, differing from Descartes and his conceptions, which draws on the texts of Aristotle and Aquinas’s Division and Methods. Chapter 5 situates necessity and its role in Aristotelian natural philosophy. Chapter 6 is the author’s attempt at defining what it is to be a law of nature.Younan argues that adopting an essentialist understanding of nature in a system where all knowledge begins in the senses has three significant “payoffs.” The first is that it avoids governance language, that is, it avoids making laws themselves causes of necessity; the second is that it avoids the assertion of a priori knowledge; the third is that it understands individual things as the fundamental primitives in nature, restoring the substance to its proper place as the thing that “stands under” accidental being.The book is concluded with an appendix that explores and rearticulates Thomas Aquinas’s fifth way under the consideration of everything the author had argued for in the book’s main text. Taking as established by the rest of the book that necessity and teleology go hand in hand, Younan argues for a creator God who establishes a universe freely but within certain parameters that follow upon being itself. Younan concludes, with Thomas Aquinas, that laws of nature are “ordinances of reason” that must come from a rational mind. To be as consistent as they are, the laws of nature must be promulgated by God, and they are discoverable within the nature of matter itself.Younan’s book often engages its interlocutors on the big-picture scale, frequently giving generalizations and not going into details to avoid getting bogged down in the weeds. The author is very aware of what he is doing. [End Page 167] It is appropriate since engaging the multiheaded hydra of the schools of thought that Younan... (shrink)

This article offers a prolegomenon for an African feminist philosophy. The prompt for this as an interrogation of Oluwole’s claim that an African feminist philosophy cannot develop until identifiable African worldviews that guide the relationship between men and women have been established. She argues that until there is general agreement about the nature of African philosophy itself, African feminist philosophy will remain impoverished. I critique this claim, unpacking Oluwole’s argument, and examine the contested nature of both African and Western (...) philosophy. Drawing from the work of Mignolo and decolonial thinking, I then argue for the possibility of “epistemic disobedience” concerning the emergence of an African feminist philosophy. Engaging with precolonial African examples which disrupt modern normative gender assumptions and looking at the project of decoloniality, I issue a call for an African feminist philosophy unfettered by the falsely universal claims of modernity/coloniality. My call is for an African feminist philosophy from African loci of enunciation, rooted in the epistemes and experiences of African women. (shrink)

This paper intends to focus once again on the Roman legal document which is improperly called the “Edict of Milan”. The approach and arguments put forward here are not necessarily new or original. Nevertheless, it seems that this umpteenth return to this issue is useful, after several international scientific events were organised on the occasion of the supposed 1700th anniversary of the proclamation of this document by Constantine. We will see, in particular, that the title of edictum dates back to (...) an error in translating from Greek to Latin. We will also be interested in the legal nature, as well as the historical significance and interest of the text that Eusebius of Caesarea and Lactantius have given us. (shrink)

Is it ethical for doctors or courts to prevent patients from making choices that will cause significant harm to themselves in the future? According to an important liberal principle the only justification for infringing the liberty of an individual is to prevent harm to others; harm to the self does not suffice.In this paper, I explore Derek Parfit’s arguments that blur the sharp line between harm to self and others. I analyse cases of treatment refusal by capacitous patients and describe (...) different forms of paternalism arising from a reductionist view of personal identity. I outline an Identity Relative Paternalistic Intervention Principle for determining when we should disallow refusal of treatment where the harm will be accrued by a future self, and consider objections including vagueness and non-identity.Identity relative paternalism does not always justify intervention to prevent harm to future selves. However, there is a stronger ethical case for doing so than is often recognised. (shrink)

this paper offers a new interpretation of Phaedo 96a–103a. Plato has devoted the dialogue up to this point to a series of arguments for the claim that the soul is immortal. However, one of the characters, Cebes, insists that so far nothing more has been established than that the soul is durable, divine, and in existence before the incarnation of birth. What is needed is something more ambitious: a proof that the soul is not such as to pass out of (...) existence. According to Socrates’s initial response to Cebes at 95e8–96a1, giving such a demonstration requires a thorough investigation into “the reason for coming to be and passing away in general” (ὅλως γὰρ δεῖ περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς τὴν αἰτίαν διαπραγματεύσασθαι 95e9–96a1). This leads Socrates to the passage with which this paper is concerned. He mentions several changes of different sorts and nominates some purported “causes” that he and other theorists used to accept, but which he now finds scarcely intelligible. He then expounds his own mature view that the Forms are causes. The existing literature on this passage is vast and highly sophisticated, so much so that one might reasonably despair of saying something new at this stage. Nevertheless, I think some of Socrates’s remarks on philosophical methodology in our passage have not yet been appreciated as deeply as they should be. In particular, there has been little work showing how well-integrated they are with his positive proposals about causes. I also think that there are metaphysical models available to modern philosophers, not merely coherent with but actually suggested by Socrates’s methodology, which give a more satisfactory picture of those positive proposals than others available in the contemporary literature. That, at any rate, is what this paper aims to provide. (shrink)

Cooperation towards public goods relies on credible threats of punishment to deter cheats. However, punishing is costly, so it remains unclear who incurred the costs of enforcement in our evolutionary past. Theoretical work suggests that human cooperation may be promoted if people believe in supernatural punishment for moral transgressions. This theory is supported by new work in cognitive psychology and by anecdotal ethnographic evidence, but formal quantitative tests remain to be done. Using data from 186 societies around the globe, I (...) test whether the likelihood of supernatural punishment—indexed by the importance of moralizing “high gods”—is associated with cooperation. (shrink)

The sorites paradox is the name given to a class of paradoxical arguments, also known as little by little arguments, which arise as a result of the indeterminacy surrounding limits of application of the predicates involved. For example, the concept of a heap appears to lack sharp boundaries and, as a consequence of the subsequent indeterminacy surrounding the extension of the predicate ‘is a heap’, no one grain of wheat can be identified as making the difference between being a heap (...) and not being a heap. Given then that one grain of wheat does not make a heap, it would seem to follow that two do not, thus three do not, and so on. In the end it would appear that no amount of wheat can make a heap. We are faced with paradox since from apparently true premises by seemingly uncontroversial reasoning we arrive at an apparently false conclusion. (shrink)

In many forms of severe acute brain injury there is an early phase when prognosis is uncertain, followed later by physiological recovery and the possibility of more certain predictions of future impairment. There may be a window of opportunity for withdrawal of life support early, but if decisions are delayed there is the risk that the patient will survive with severe impairment. In this paper I focus on the example of neonatal encephalopathy and the question of the timing of prognostic (...) tests and decisions to continue or to withdraw life-sustaining treatment. Should testing be performed early or later; and how should parents decide what to do given the conflicting values at stake? I apply decision theory to the problem, using sensitivity analysis to assess how different features of the tests or different values would affect a decision to perform early or late prognostic testing. I draw some general conclusions from this model for decisions about the timing of testing in neonatal encephalopathy. Finally I consider possible solutions to the problem posed by the window of opportunity. Decision theory highlights the costs of uncertainty. This may prompt further research into improving prognostic tests. But it may also prompt us to reconsider our current attitudes towards the palliative care of newborn infants predicted to be severely impaired. (shrink)

Is it OK to lie to Siri? Is it bad to mistreat a robot for our own pleasure? Under what condition should we grant a moral status to an artificial intelligence (AI) system? This paper looks at different arguments for granting moral status to an AI system: the idea of indirect duties, the relational argument, the argument from intelligence, the arguments from life and information, and the argument from sentience. In each but the last case, we find (...) unresolved issues with the particular argument, which leads us to move to a different one. We leave the idea of indirect duties aside since these duties do not imply considering an AI system for its own sake. The paper rejects the relational argument and the argument from intelligence. The argument from life may lead us to grant a moral status to an AI system, but only in a weak sense. Sentience, by contrast, is a strong argument for the moral status of an AI system—based, among other things, on the Aristotelian principle of equality: that same cases should be treated in the same way. The paper points out, however, that no AI system is sentient given the current level of technological development. (shrink)

This article is the first in a series of four articles that engage critically with the arguments of two recent and significant additions to the literature on critical realism, namely Bhaskar’s ‘Enlightened Common Sense: The Philosophy of Critical Realism’, and Bhaskar et al.’s ‘Interdisciplinarity and Wellbeing: A Critical Realist General Theory of Interdisciplinarity’. Using the method of immanent critique and focusing mainly, but not exclusively, on the arguments of Enlightened Common Sense, I identify, and propose solutions to, a range of (...) problems pertaining to the concepts of depth, emergence and transfactuality. In identifying and resolving these problems, my aim is to clarify and develop the categories of original critical realism and thereby ensure that critical realism as a whole is as effective an underlabourer for science as it can be. (shrink)

Is it OK to lie to Siri? Is it bad to mistreat a robot for our own pleasure? Under what condition should we grant a moral status to an artificial intelligence system? This paper looks at different arguments for granting moral status to an AI system: the idea of indirect duties, the relational argument, the argument from intelligence, the arguments from life and information, and the argument from sentience. In each but the last case, we find unresolved (...) issues with the particular argument, which leads us to move to a different one. We leave the idea of indirect duties aside since these duties do not imply considering an AI system for its own sake. The paper rejects the relational argument and the argument from intelligence. The argument from life may lead us to grant a moral status to an AI system, but only in a weak sense. Sentience, by contrast, is a strong argument for the moral status of an AI system—based, among other things, on the Aristotelian principle of equality: that same cases should be treated in the same way. The paper points out, however, that no AI system is sentient given the current level of technological development. (shrink)

I present an immanent, and explanatory, critique of reflections on the nature of politics and of power within political science. I argue that these reflections are problematic, to the extent that they presuppose an actualist conception of the political, and that this is generated by an empiricist way of thinking on the one hand and a constructivist way of thinking on the other. I show how re-defining politics, power, and the political on the basis of a dialectical critical realist ontology (...) resolves these problems and, thereby, allows us to understand the conditions for social change and the relationship between the political and the economic. My argument has two, important implications: first, that the proposal that those who study politics professionally should celebrate philosophical diversity is dangerous–at least if it makes it difficult to sustain a distinct, emancipatory form of political inquiry; and, second, that the nature of social reality justifies the need both for specialized forms of inquiry, such as politics and economics, and integrative forms of inquiry, such as political economy. (shrink)

Chris Armstrong argues that attempts at justifying special claims over natural resources generally take one of two forms: arguments from improvement and arguments from attachment. We argue that Armstrong fails to establish that the distinction between natural resources and improved resources has no normative significance. He succeeds only in showing that ‘improvers’ are not necessarily entitled to the full exchange value of the improvement. It can still be argued that the value of natural and improved resources should be distributed on (...) different grounds, but that the value of improvements should be conceived differently. (shrink)

This paper proposes a description of the moral obligations of economic agents. It will show that a threefold division should be adopted to distinguish moral obligations applying to their interactions in the market, obligations applying to their interactions inside business firms and obligations applying to their interactions with agents outside the market. Competition might be permissible in the first case since markets are special patterns of social interactions (called adversarial schemes). They produce their benefits when agents try to satisfy exclusive (...) preferences at the expense of others. However, moral obligations inside the firm and moral obligations outside the market are of a different nature. This argument will be developed in the two first parts of this paper. In the third part, it will outline the relevant strengths of that account in relation with two popular views of economic agents’ moral obligations: the shareholder primacy view and the stakeholder theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, the second of a series of four articles that engage critically with the arguments of two recent and significant additions to the literature on critical realism (Bhaskar’s E...

[Open Access.] Perceptual experiences have presentational phenomenology: we seem to encounter real situations in the course of visual experiences, for instance. The current paper articulates and defends the claim that the contents of at least some perceptual experiences are inherently presentational. On this view, perceptual contents are not always forceless in the way that, say, the propositional content that 2 + 2 = 4 is generally taken to be, as a content that may be asserted or denied or merely supposed; (...) rather, there are perceptual contents such that any mental state or episode which has the relevant content must be one in which things seem to the given subject to be a certain way. Intuitive motivation for the view is presented and an explanatory line of argument in support of it is developed: it is argued that the recognition of inherently presentational perceptual contents allows us to explain certain representational limitations to which ordinary visualizations and other forms of perceptual mental imagery are subject. Some potential objections to the position are explored, leading to further elaboration of it. (shrink)

The link between justice and climate change is becoming increasingly prominent in public debates on climate policy. This clear and concise philosophical introduction to climate justice addresses the hot topic of climate change as a moral challenge. Using engaging everyday examples the authors address the core arguments by providing a comprehensive and balanced overview of this heated debate, enabling students and practitioners to think critically about the subject area and to promote discussion on questions such as: Why do anything in (...) the face of climate change? How much do we owe our descendants – a better world, or nothing at all? How should we distribute the burden of climate action between industrialized and developing countries? Should I adopt a green lifestyle even if no one else makes an effort? Which means of reducing emissions are permissible? Should we put hope in technological solutions? Should we re-design democratic institutions for more effective climate policy? With chapter summaries, illustrative examples and suggestions for further reading, this book is an ideal introduction for students in political philosophy, applied ethics and environmental ethics, as well as for practitioners working on one of the most urgent issues of our time. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor has argued that a modular mind must include central systems responsible for updating beliefs, and has defended this position by appealing to shared properties of belief fixation and scientific confirmation. Peter Carruthers and Stephen Pinker have attacked this analogy between science and ordinary inference. I examine their arguments and show that they fail. This does not show that Fodor's more general position is correct.

Jerry Fodor has argued that a modular mind must include central systems responsible for updating beliefs, and has defended this position by appealing to shared properties of belief fixation and scientific confirmation. Peter Carruthers and Stephen Pinker have attacked this analogy between science and ordinary inference. I examine their arguments and show that they fail. This does not show that Fodor’s more general position is correct.

The idea of ‘community’ dominates politics in Northern Ireland in both popular and political discourse and in academic writing, policy and legislation. Depending upon particular understandings of the notion of community different arguments are made about the policies that need to be implemented to develop the peace process. This has had a fundamental impact on areas such as legislation over parades and the development of a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland. This essay critically looks at understandings of ‘community’; how (...) it becomes used in political discourse and in policy development and the character of its relationship with ideas about safety and security. (shrink)

The actions of pregnant women can cause harm to their future children. However, even if the possible harm is serious and likely to occur, the law will generally not intervene. A pregnant woman is an autonomous person who is entitled to make her own decisions. A fetus in-utero has no legal right to protection. In striking contrast, the child, if born alive, may sue for injury in-utero; and the child is entitled to be protected by being removed from her parents (...) if necessary for her protection. Indeed, there is a legal obligation for health professionals to report suspected harm, and for authorities to protect the child's wellbeing. We ask whether such contradictory responses are justified. Should the law intervene where a pregnant woman's actions risk serious and preventable fetal injury? The argument for legal intervention to protect a fetus is sometimes linked to the concept of ‘fetal personhood’ and the moral status of the fetus. In this article we will suggest that even if the fetus is not regarded as a separate person, and does not have the legal or moral status of a child, indeed, even if the fetus is regarded as having no legal or moral status, there is an ethical and legal case for intervening to prevent serious harm to a future child. We examine the arguments for and against intervention on behalf of the future child, drawing on the example of excessive maternal alcohol intake. (shrink)

Virtue ethics interprets human action as pursuing good ends through practices that develop qualities internal to those final goals. The philosophical approach has been identified as critical of economics, leading in turn to the innovative response that by viewing the market as mutually beneficial exchange, economic practice is in fact defendable on virtue ethics grounds. This defends economics using arguments drawn from virtue ethics, but there is a need also to explore space for virtue ethics within economic theory. Examining key (...) contributions of Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom, the article notes that virtue ethics’ appreciation of persons’ communicability of ends is increasingly being relied upon within economics, though sometimes under different names. Its strength to interdisciplinary work between economics and philosophy lies in presenting a methodology able to capture how human beings are capable of, though not fixated on, cooperation. (shrink)

Human cooperation is held to be an evolutionary puzzle because people voluntarily engage in costly cooperation, and costly punishment of non-cooperators, even among anonymous strangers they will never meet again. The costs of such cooperation cannot be recovered through kin-selection, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, or costly signaling. A number of recent authors label this behavior ‘strong reciprocity’, and argue that it is: (a) a newly documented aspect of human nature, (b) adaptive, and (c) evolved by group selection. We argue exactly (...) the opposite; that the phenomenon is: (a) not new, (b) maladaptive, and (c) evolved by individual selection. In our perspective, the apparent puzzle disappears to reveal a biological and evolutionary logic to human cooperation. Group selection may play a role in theory, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain human cooperation. Our alternative solution is simpler, makes fewer assumptions, and is more parsimonious with the empirical data. (shrink)

I take up the challenge of whyfalsebeliefs are better than “cautious actionpolicies” (target article, sect. 9) in navigating adaptive problems with asymmetric errors. I then suggest that there areinteractionsbetween supernatural beliefs, self-deception, and positive illusions, rendering elements of all such misbeliefs adaptive. Finally, I argue that supernatural beliefs cannot be rejected as adaptive simply because recent experiments are inconclusive. The great costs of religion betray its even greater adaptive benefits – we just have not yet nailed down exactly what they (...) are. (shrink)

This essay considers the relationship between the work of contemporary artist Torsten Lauschmann and themes in a growing area of research: philosophy of technology. Themes considered include relations between technology and contemporary urban dwelling, technology and the “everyday,” and Heidegger’s problematic but canonical understanding of technology not as a set of “mere means” but as a “way of revealing.” I argue that Lauschmann’s art renders these themes relevant for our increasingly technologically mediated forms of everyday experience by engaging in a (...) paradoxical practice of creating what McLuhan called “anti-environments.” Part One relates Lauschmann’s art to three concepts surfacing in McLuhan’s late work: “figure,” “ground,” and “anti-environment.” Part Two relates Lauschmann’s art to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of photography in terms of the ontology of dynamic movement. Part Three relates Lauschmann’s art to Heidegger, implying a form of “affective critique” that — by questioning the environmental conditions that constitute works of art — points beyond vexed aspects of Heidegger’s approach, such as its apparent pessimism and tendency to homogenize disparate technologies. The essay’s broader argument is that Lauschmann’s art, like the philosophical reflections to which it is related, is engaged in a practice of challenging settled common-sense notions regarding technologically mediated experience. (shrink)

There is a popular conception among many Zeitgeist watchers, especially in places like the US, Western Europe and Australia, of the urbanized East as existing somehow further into the future. As William Gibson once stated: `The future is here; it just isn't equally distributed yet.' This kind of cultural fetishism extends to not only technolust, but the practices that new gadgets and electronics encourage. The specific phenomenon explored in this article is that of virtual girlfriends and boyfriends: whether in the (...) form of avatars or automated SMS text messages. This particularly Japanese `craze', if we can call it that, fascinates and appals people who still hold P2P romance IRL in high-esteem. It seems like an insult to the intrinsically human and humanist discourse of courtship; and indeed it is. How does this perspective change, however, if we consider `love' as a technology? That is, as both a code with its own algorithmic parameters, and a discourse that also challenges the hyper-rational assumptions of the `merely machinic'. Extending the argument articulated in my book, Love and Other Technologies, this article asks how the emergence of virtual dating and other techno-inflected treatments of romance are working to undo our jealously held notions of intimacy and identity. It concludes that all sex can be considered cybersex, given the communication flows that occur both before, during and after the act. For, as we continue to enframe the discourse of intimacy via new and mobile media, we find it increasingly difficult to deny that intensified inter-subjectivity is always already a matter of technics. Indeed, what Heidegger says of modern technology can effectively be applied to modern love: that it embodies an `unreasonable demand' of nature (and thus has the capacity to reveal something essential about the posthuman condition). (shrink)

An early work in which Baudrillard became Baudrillard. When Fatal Strategies was first published in French in 1983, it represented a turning point for Jean Baudrillard: an utterly original, and for many readers, utterly bizarre book that offered a theory as proliferative, ecstatic, and hallucinatory as the postmodern world it endeavored to describe. Arguing against the predetermined outcomes of dialectical thought with his renowned, wry, ambivalent passion, with this volume Jean Baudrillard mounted an attack against the “false problems” posed by (...) Western philosophy. If his Marxist days were firmly behind him, Baudrillard here indicated that metaphysics had also gone the way of sociology and politics: the contemporary world demanded nothing less than Pataphysics, Alfred Jarry's absurdist philosphy that described the laws of the universe supplementary to this one. In effect, with Fatal Strategies, Baudrillard became Baudrillard. In his extrapolationist manner, Baudrillard sought to replace Western philosophy's circular arguments with a ritualistic Theater of Cruelty. Using this line of thought developed in Fatal Strategies, Baudrillard went on, throughout the 1980s, to find new and shatteringly accurate ways of discussing American corporatocracy, arms build-up, and hostage taking. Fatal Strategies asserts a profound critique of American politics, and it is an important step towards his examination of evil.Jean Baudrillard was a philosopher, sociologist, cultural critic, and theorist of postmodernity who challenged all existing theories of contemporary society with humor and precision. An outsider in the French intellectual establishment, he was internationally renowned as a twenty-first century visionary, reporter, and provocateur. His Simulations instantly became a cult classic and made him a controversial voice in the world of politics and art. (shrink)

This article has two related aims: to examine how the Internet might be rendered an object of coherent philosophical consideration and critique, and to contribute to divesting the term “transcendental” of the negative connotations it carries in contemporary philosophy of technology. To realise them, it refers to Kant’s transcendental approach. The key argument is that Kant’s “transcendental idealism” is one example of a more general and potentially thoroughgoing “transcendental” approach focused on conditions that much contemporary philosophy of technology misunderstands (...) or ignores, to the detriment of the field. Diverse contemporary approaches are engaged to make this claim, including those of Verbeek, Brey, Stiegler, Clark and Chalmers, Feenberg, and Fuchs. The article considers how these approaches stand in relation to tendencies towards determinism, subjectivism, and excessive forms of optimism and pessimism in contemporary considerations of the Internet. In terms of Kant’s transcendental idealism, specifically, it concludes by arguing that contemporary philosophy of technology does not go far enough in considering the Internet as a “regulative idea”; in terms of transcendental approaches more generally, it concludes by arguing that openness to the transcendental has the potential to call into question presuppositions regarding what constitutes an “empirical” object of enquiry in philosophy of technology, thereby, opening the field up to important new areas of research. (shrink)

Feminists have argued that oppressive socialization undermines the liberal model of autonomy. We contend that this argument can also be employed effectively as a challenge to the standard bioethical model of informed consent. We claim that the standard model is inadequate because it relies on presumptions of procedural autonomy and rational choice that overlook the problem of how agents are often socialized so that they adopt and internalize oppressive norms as part of their motivational structure. The argument that (...) oppressive socialization undermines liberalism’s view of autonomy is most relevant to what Beauchamp and Childress call the threshold elements of informed consent—competence and voluntariness. We show how these elements fail to account for morally relevant factors such as oppressive socialization. (shrink)

Feminists have argued that oppressive socialization undermines the liberal model of autonomy. We contend that this argument can also be employed effectively as a challenge to the standard bioethical model of informed consent. We claim that the standard model is inadequate because it relies on presumptions of procedural autonomy and rational choice that overlook the problem of how agents are often socialized so that they adopt and internalize oppressive norms as part of their motivational structure. The argument that (...) oppressive socialization undermines liberalism’s view of autonomy is most relevant to what Beauchamp and Childress call the threshold elements of informed consent—competence and voluntariness. We show how these elements fail to account for morally relevant factors such as oppressive socialization. (shrink)

One question that leads us into aesthetics is: why does beauty matter? Or, what do aesthetic goods bring to my life, to make it a life that goes well? Or, how does beauty deserve the place we have evidently made for it in our lives? A theory of aesthetic value states what beauty is so as to equip us to answer this question. According to aesthetic hedonism, aesthetic values are properties of items that stand in constitutive relation to pleasure. Contemporary (...) versions of aesthetic hedonism don’t explain what makes aesthetic values aesthetic, but they do explain what makes them normative, stating what makes it the case that aesthetic value facts lend weight to what an agent should do, for the fact that acting yields pleasure is always a reason to act. This book introduces and defends an alternative to aesthetic hedonism. According to the network theory, aesthetic value facts lend weight to its being an achievement for an agent to act. Since agents achieve by acting in coordination with one another, the theory takes seriously the sociality of aesthetic activity. The main argument for the network theory is that it better explains six facts about aesthetic activity than does aesthetic hedonism. The book also discusses the relationship between aesthetic value and pleasure, the point and distinctive character of aesthetic discourse, and the metaphysics of aesthetic value. Two final chapters use the network theory to shed light on how aesthetic value matters to us as individuals and as members of collectives. (shrink)