Deliberative democracy grounds its legitimacy largely in the ability of speakers to participate on equal terms. Yet theorists and practitioners have struggled with how to establish deliberative equality in the face of stark differences of power in liberal democracies. Designers of innovative civic forums for deliberation often aim to neutralize inequities among participants through proportional inclusion of disempowered speakers and discourses. In contrast, others argue that democratic equality is best achieved when disempowered groups deliberate in their own enclaves before entering (...) the broader public sphere. Borrowing from each perspective, the authors argue that there are strong reasons to incorporate enclave deliberation among the disempowered within civic forums. They support this claim by presenting case study evidence showing that participants in such forums can gain some of the same benefits of deliberation found in more heterogeneous groups, can consider a diversity of viewpoints rather than falling into groupthink and polarization, and can persuade external stakeholders of the legitimacy of the group’s deliberations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:A wide range of research uses patterns of genetic variation to infer genetic similarity between individuals, typically referred to as genetic ancestry. This research includes inference of human demographic history, understanding the genetic architecture of traits, and predicting disease risk. Researchers are not just structuring an intellectual inquiry when using genetic ancestry, they are also creating analytical frameworks with broader societal ramifications. This essay presents an ethics framework in the spirit of virtue ethics for these researchers: rather than focus on (...) rule following, the framework is designed to build researchers’ capacities to react to the ethical dimensions of their work. The authors identify one overarching principle of intellectual freedom and responsibility, noting that freedom in all its guises comes with responsibility, and they identify and define four principles that collectively uphold researchers’ intellectual responsibility: truthfulness, justice and fairness, anti-racism, and public beneficence. Researchers should bring their practices into alignment with these principles, and to aid this, the authors name three common ways research practices infringe these principles, suggest a step-by-step process for aligning research choices with the principles, provide rules of thumb for achieving alignment, and give a worked case. The essay concludes by identifying support needed by researchers to act in accord with the proposed framework. (shrink)

By tracing the general evolution of HusserI’s theory of logic and mathematics, this essay explores Husserl’s identification and strategic overcoming of the two forms of psychologism--Iogical psychologism and transcendental psychologism--that bar the way to rigorous phenomenological inquiry. In the early works “On the Concept of Number” and the Philosophie der Arithmetik Husserl himself falls victim to a particular form of logical psychologism. By the time of the Logical Investigations this problem has been dealt with: the method of eidetic intuition enables (...) an account of the “origins” of logical and mathematical concepts without reducing such concepts to mere predicates of mental acts. The task of Formal and Transcendental Logic is to disclose the more pervasive problem of transcendental psychologism, one that taints even the theory of pure logic articulated in the Logical Investigations. A radical solution is provided through the development of an “ultimate logic” of transcendental subjectivity. (shrink)

By tracing the general evolution of HusserI’s theory of logic and mathematics, this essay explores Husserl’s identification and strategic overcoming of the two forms of psychologism--Iogical psychologism and transcendental psychologism--that bar the way to rigorous phenomenological inquiry. In the early works “On the Concept of Number” and the Philosophie der Arithmetik Husserl himself falls victim to a particular form of logical psychologism. By the time of the Logical Investigations this problem has been dealt with: the method of eidetic intuition enables (...) an account of the “origins” of logical and mathematical concepts without reducing such concepts to mere predicates of mental acts. The task of Formal and Transcendental Logic is to disclose the more pervasive problem of transcendental psychologism, one that taints even the theory of pure logic articulated in the Logical Investigations. A radical solution is provided through the development of an “ultimate logic” of transcendental subjectivity. (shrink)

Hegel’s definition of the state as a common public authority in The German Constitution marks his first thorough attempt to understand the authority of the modern state in terms of the rule of law. Such an understanding of the state constitutes an important advance in Hegel’s political philosophy since, in his early political-theological writings, the legal relation was in essence excluded from the political sphere. Positing a fundamental opposition between legality and authentic ethical life, Hegel interpreted societies in which legal (...) forms become particularly pronounced as societies founded on degenerate political institutions and caught up in an inexorable process of decline. Until Hegel grasped the positive ethical significance of legal authority, something accomplished in The German Constitution, his theory of the state remained largely determined by a Greek-inspired, virtue-based paradigm of political life. Only with the overcoming of this paradigm could he move to a comprehensive analysis of both modern institutional structures and the political theories that attempt to understand and justify them. Hegel’s evolving theory of modern legal form thus provides an important index and measure of his complex stance toward modern political society and of his critical assessment of the self-interpretations of modernity offered by the natural right tradition and the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Wisely, the authors begin this book by describing it as a polemic. They argue that most contemporary analytic metaphysics is a waste of time and resources since contemporary ‘neo-scholastic’ metaphysical theorizing cannot hope to attain objective truth given its penchant for making a priori claims about the nature of the world which are backed up by appeal to intuition. In engaging in this activity, metaphysicians have, the authors claim, abandoned hope of locating any interesting connection between their metaphysical pronouncements and (...) how our best empirical theories describe the world. Moreover, the success attained by empirical science just cannot be matched by metaphysical theorizing and so, faced with this asymmetry, empirical science wins: a priori metaphysical theorizing must give way to a naturalistic form of metaphysics, a positive account of which the authors attempt to elucidate in the second and third, rather lengthy chapters of the book.The first chapter consists of a statement of the authors’ negative view, a vigorous, sustained and sometimes withering attack upon contemporary a priori metaphysics. Most ire is reserved for those who indulge in what the authors call ‘pseudo-scientific metaphysics’; that is, those who pay lip service to keeping their metaphysical speculation in tune with physics, only to constrain their ontology in such a way that the entities and processes within it do not even play a role in current physical theory, or are in straightforward contradiction with it. Much philosophy of science and scientific metaphysics is too superficial and simplistic to deserve the name and bears more relation to ‘the philosophy of “A” Level chemistry’. The guilty in this respect include David Lewis, Jaegwon Kim, Jonathan Lowe, Donald Davidson, Jerry Fodor, Crawford Elder, Trenton Merricks among …. (shrink)

An investigation of the eidetic and transcendental phenomenological reductions as productive (and not merely descriptive) activities, Hence as a praxis generative of meaning. The eidetic reduction is a metaphoric system, Describing the movement from topos to tropes: the primal ontological structure is found to be that of distortion, Of a "coherent deformation," a breaking of forms, Which maintains the phenomenological horizon's openness. This founds a theory of decentered being, Ex-Centric subjectivity, And an anti-Ideologic critique.

We argue that developing a human ethics application is an effective method for refining the intent and design of research studies. Our study aimed to investigate the delivery of end-of-life and palliative care nursing to residents of an aged care unit in a Multi-purpose Service/centre in rural Victoria. We used the ethics application process as a strategy to focus the study, and to refine the data collection and analysis techniques. It is our contention that the process of completing the application (...) and gaining ethics approval is laborious; however, the intellectualising that occurs provides researchers with an opportunity to reflect upon and refine their studies, thus ensuring the ultimate success and timely completion of research investigations. (shrink)

In this original work of cultural criticism, Allen S. Weiss explores the meaning of radio to the modern imagination.

A thorough history of the involvement of Australia's Northern Territory in World War II. Includes photos, extensive notes and bibliography.

The following conclusions have been reached: The phenomenological concept of the "horizon" calls into question both the traditional philosophical concepts of Truth and Being, and it provides the basis for a new, non-hierarchical and non-ideological ontology. On the basis of the new ontology that Merleau-Ponty founds, the ontology of the "Flesh," Merleau-Ponty's thought provides the basis for a strong hermeneutic tool for the critique of ideological systems. Such a critique is not merely a linguistic technique; it is equally based upon (...) a nascent libido theory, which attempts to relate the linguistic and libidinal levels of experience into a unified hermeneutic of human existence. Thus Merleau-Ponty was a precursor of the contemporary French libido theorists, but without falling into the reductionistic error which is often committed by them. Merleau-Ponty did not reduce all existence to either the linquistic or libidinal level, but rather understood language and the body to be each other's significative horizon. Thus Merleau-Ponty's later work serves as both an existential hermeneutic of existence and a critique of ideology, while simultaneously helping to inaugurate the most recent trends of French thought. ;The methodological considerations of this dissertation are based upon the fact that Merleau-Ponty's philosophy was a nexus of existentialism, phenomenology and structuralism, as well as being what I wish to show is one of the foundations of post-structuralist libido theory. Thus all of these styles of philosophizing and their ontological implications must be traced out as they apply to Merleau-Ponty's later writing. Primarily, this dissertation is an analysis of one primary source: the working notes to the incomplete text of The Visible and the Invisible. Yet this interpretation must be effected in the light of Merleau-Ponty's previous works, and the texts that influenced him, and it must especially clarify the lineage of those texts that were subsequently influenced by him. But this textual analysis is combined with phenomenological analyses which are intended to provide examples that support the ontological claims that are made. ;This dissertation is an attempt to interpret the working notes to Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible, and to evolve a general theory of interpretation based upon his insights. Specifically, the problem is that of the conciliation of the two major trends of contemporary French philosophy, linguistic analysis and libido theory, which at many points offer mutually exclusive interpretations of existence. I attempt to show how Merleau-Ponty provided an ontology which took into consideration both of these problematics, an ontology which bears as its central, but itself problematic term, the "Flesh." His new ontology of the Flesh is based upon the ontological implications of the classical phenomenological concept of the "horizon," which refers to the indistinct, implicit areas of the perceptual and conceptual fields, and which necessitates a radical reinterpretation of previous philosophy. (shrink)

Unnatural Horizons presents a selective history of the last five centuries of landscape architecture at the intersection of poetics and science, rhetoric and technology, and philosophy and politics. It investigates the relations between garden aesthetics and metaphysics, discussing issues similar to those raised by Weiss's critically acclaimed Mirrors of Infinity. The Western garden has always served as a setting for music, dance, theater, sculpture, and architecture, as well as the minor arts of meditative contemplation and erotic seduction. The history of (...) landscape architecture is therefore inextricable from the histories of the other arts, and must be studied from an interdisciplinary and polycultural point of view. Some of the topics included in this book are the influence of neo-Platonic philosophy on the Italian Renaissance garden, erotic fantasies and the 18th-century libertine garden, the contrast between Thoreau's romantic notion of virgin nature and changes in perception due to increasing speed and mechanization, and the limits of landscape architecture as art form in 20th-century gardens. (shrink)

Resource added for the Landscape Horticulture Technician program 100014.

Perverse Desire and the Ambiguous Icon analyzes the limits of the applicability of psychoanalytic theory to aesthetic discourse, and in doing so expands the range of non-normative paradigms of spectatorial identification and sexual identity. These considerations are based on the epistemological premises that the ideal seldom coincides with the empirical, and that identification is always partial, fragmented, heterogeneous, mixed, such that total identification would be tantamount to delirium. The imagination is but the ephemera of partial objects torn from culture and (...) history, the transgression by fragmentation of a contemporary cosmos all too unified and all too controlled to admit the most singular, and idiosyncratic, phantasms of our desires. Thus we must posit an aesthetics where theory and interpretation are juxtaposed to, or traced above, the effects of the passions, where a muscular contraction or spasm is worth as much as a concept. It is here, at the fragile limit between iconophilia and iconoclasm, that the ironies and exigencies of poetic justice reside. (shrink)

Possession Trance and Dramatic Perversity Dionysus arrives as a stranger, enigmatic, disquieting, contagious, spreading an epidemic of mania leading to ...

In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

In response to recent calls to extend the underlying theories used in the literature :375–413, 2005; Craft in J Bus Ethics 117:221–259, 2013), we review the usefulness of social norm theory in empirical business ethics research. We begin by identifying the seeds of social norm theory in Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the Glasgow Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1759/1790) seminal work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Next, we introduce recent theory in social norm activation by Bicchieri and (...) compare the new theory to two theoretical frameworks found in the literature: Kohlberg’s Handbook of socialization theory and research, Rand McNally, Chicago, IL, 1969; in: Lickona Moral development and behavior, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1976) theory of moral development and Cialdini and Trost’s The handbook of social psychology, Oxford University Press, Boston, 1998) taxonomy of social norms. We argue that the new theory provides useful insights by emphasizing the ability of situational cues and information to generate common expectations for social/moral norms. The theory is particularly useful for empirical research in business ethics because it gives both organizational and individual factors a role in motivating norm-based behavior. To demonstrate this usefulness, we present examples where the theory has been effectively applied in experimental accounting research to generate new insights. We conclude by citing specific examples where the theory may prove useful in empirical business ethics research. (shrink)

We assert that audit quality can be improved to the extent that social norms for honesty and responsibility are activated in the auditor. To test this assertion, we use an experimental audit market setting found in the literature and manipulate factors expected to activate honesty and responsibility norms in the auditor. We find that auditor misreporting is reduced when the investor is another participant in the experiment rather than computer simulated, and thus, the interests of third-party investors are salient to (...) the auditor. We also find that auditor misreporting is reduced when the auditor is required to sign-off on the audit report, but only when the investor is another participant in the experiment. Consistent with our underlying theory, we find that pre-experimental measures of sensitivity to honesty and responsibility norms help explain the effects of our manipulated variables. Finally, we find that these measures of social norm sensitivity are associated with the moral judgment that auditor misreporting is unethical. Our study helps explain previous anomalous findings in the literature and answers the call in Blay et al. for empirical researchers to use social norm theory to develop stronger tests of moral reasoning in the market for auditing services. (shrink)

The question of if, and under what conditions transsexuals should be allowed to participate in sports in their acquired sex is becoming increasingly relevant partly because the number of transsexuals is increasing partly because many countries now provide mechanisms for achieving legal recognition as belonging to the new acquired sex. This paper develops (1) an analysis of the justification for maintaining sex segregation in some sports and (2) an account of the rights of transsexuals to be recognised in their new (...) sex. On the basis of these two analyses it critically evaluates two set of rules for the participation of transsexuals in elite sports: the UK guidelines issued in pursuance of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the International Olympic Committee's guidelines. It is argued that these guidelines are conflicting and that a modified set of criteria is more justifiable. (shrink)

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all (...) further questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

Legal scholarship exploring the nature of evidence and the process of juridical proof has had a complex relationship with formal modeling. As evident in so many fields of knowledge, algorithmic approaches to evidence have the theoretical potential to increase the accuracy of fact finding, a tremendously important goal of the legal system. The hope that knowledge could be formalized within the evidentiary realm generated a spate of articles attempting to put probability theory to this purpose. This literature was both insightful (...) and frustrating. Much light was shed on the legal system, but it also quickly became evident that the tools of probability theory were in many ways ill-constructed for the task. Fundamental incompatibilities between the structure of legal decision making and the extant formal tools were identified, and it became evident that many of the purported explanations of legal phenomena were internally inconsistent. As a consequence, interest in this type of formal modeling declined, and attention was directed toward different kinds of explanations of the phenomena. Perhaps under the influence of a recent trend toward various types of formal modeling in legal scholarship, a recent burst of articles, rather than attempting to explain the macro structure of trials, which was the previous object of interest, attempts to quantify the probative value of various items of evidence in ways consistent with the formal features of various probability theories, and then to study decision making from that perspective. For example, the value of evidence is often purported to be its likelihood ratio, that is, the probability of discovering or receiving the evidence given a hypothesis (e.g., the defendant did it) divided by the probability of discovering or receiving the evidence given the negation of the hypothesis (the defendant didn't do it). Alternatively, the value of evidence is purported (more contextually) to be the information gain it provides, defined as the increase in probability it provides for a hypothesis above the probability of the hypothesis based on the other available evidence. Both conceptions then assume that all of the various probability assessments conform or ought to conform to the dictates of Bayes' theorem (that maintains consistency among such assessments); empirical studies are then done testing the extent to which this is so and proposing how the law can increase the probability that it is so. The general criticisms of using Bayes' theorem as a formal model of juridical proof are well known and were integral to the last wave of interest in formal modeling of the evidentiary process. This paper thus for the most part puts aside that more general issue, and focuses specifically on mathematical modeling of the value of particular items of evidence. The paper demonstrates that formal modeling has only limited value in explaining the value of legal evidence, much more limited than those constructing and discussing the models assume, and thus that the conclusions they draw about the value of evidence are unwarranted. This is done through a discussion of four recent examples that attempt to quantify evidence relating to, respectively, carpet fibers, infidelity, DNA random-match evidence, and character evidence used to impeach a witness. This article thus makes two contributions. First, and most importantly, it is another demonstration of the complex relationship between algorithmic tools and legal decision making. Second, at a minimum it points out serious pitfalls for analytical or empirical studies of juridical proof. (shrink)

_Why Plato Wrote_ argues that Plato was not only the world’s first systematic political philosopher, but also the western world’s first think-tank activist and message man. Shows that Plato wrote to change Athenian society and thereby transform Athenian politics Offers accessible discussions of Plato’s philosophy of language and political theory Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011.