The growing interest in AI in advance capitalist societies can be understood not just in relation to its practial achievements, which remain modest, but also in its ideological role as a technological paradign for the reconstruction of capitalism. This is similar to the role played by scientific management during the second industrial revolution, circa 1880–1930, and involves the extension of the rationalization and routinization of labour to mental work. The conception of human intelligence and the emphasis on command and control (...) systems of much contemporary AI research reflects its close relationship with the US military and corporate capital, which are the sources of many of AI's key metaphors and anolgies. (shrink)

(1990). Perfecting the machine: Instrumental rationality and the bureaucratic ideologies of the state. World Futures: Vol. 28, Cross-Cultural Dialogue, pp. 141-161.

Many of the reforms being required or recommended to ensure that for-profit companies achieve greater transparency and more effective governance are similarly being promoted for adoption by nonprofit health care organizations. The demands are coming from a variety of sources - government officials, donors, business partners, companies that provide directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance, the media, and directors themselves. To meet these demands, nonprofit health care boards and executives need to assess whether they have the right number, mix, and (...) caliber of board members, and to modify their recruitment and/or retention strategies where they don't. -/- The following discussion is another in an ongoing Inquiry series called "Dialogue," a collaboration with the Alliance for Advancing Nonprofit Health Care to provide a variety of voices on current, major issues in the nonprofit health care sector. (shrink)

In this acclaimed exploration of the search for "authentic" individual identity, Marshall Berman explores the historical experiences and needs out of which this new radicalism arose. Focussing on eighteenth-century Paris, a time and place in which a distinctively modern form of society was just coming into its own, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticity—of a self that could organize the individual's energy and direct it toward his own happiness—articulated eighteenth-century man's deepest responses to this brave new world, (...) and his most ardent hope for a new life in it. Exploring in particular the ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticity was radically opposed to the bourgeois, capitalistic idea of "self-interest.". (shrink)

A world of legal conflicts -- The limits of sovereigntist territoriality -- From universalism to cosmopolitanism -- Towards a cosmopolitan pluralist jurisprudence -- Procedural mechanisms, institutional designs, and discursive practices for managing pluralism -- The changing terrain of jurisdiction -- A cosmopolitan pluralist approach to choice of law -- Recognition of judgments and the legal negotiation of difference.

Gathering thoughts -- Teachers who inspired me -- What am I? : Montessori? Steiner? eclectic? : Is it important? -- Which comes first? : a philosophical framework, theory and research evidence : what do teachers and other practitioners need to bring out their best work -- Working with principles which are interpreted and embedded in articulated practice -- The importance of parent partnership and the development of moral values and self-discipline -- Play : a very complex thing -- Finding how (...) to position myself in relation to play -- Inclusion : commonalities, differences"fragmentation or wholeness?"-- Cultivating creativity -- Remaining a generalist rather than becoming a specialist within one area of early childhood education -- Changing political climates -- How best to train teachers of young children -- Remaining a Froebelian but still exploring why and wondering "will I always be one?". (shrink)

What is the best way to respond to monuments in our communities if they represent people who stood for harmful ideas and/or societal structures? I start with the assumption that it would be best for everyone if all of the harmful monuments were removed from our public squares. The more interesting question is: Why would it be best? I will examine critically two different explanations as to why it would be best: one, Plato's, which rests on the harmful non-intellectual influences (...) of images and the other, Socrates’, which rests on the harmful intellectual influences of those images. In the end, I shall argue that Socrates got it right and Plato wrong due to the former's ability to explain human behaviour and the latter's surprising lack of that same ability, despite how widely it is believed. If the argument is correct, it will have deep and widespread implications for how we educate our children and ourselves about every important aspect of the human condition. (shrink)

What all contemporary so-called aristotelian realists have in common has been identified by David Armstrong as the principle of instantiation. This principle has been put forward in different versions, but all of them have the following simple consequence in common: uninstantiated universals do not exist. Such entities are for the lotus-eating Platonist to countenance, but not for any sort of moderate realist. I shall argue that this principle, in any guise, is not the best way to differentiate aristotelianism from Platonism. (...) In its place, I shall suggest that the best way to differentiate the two versions of realism from each other is by means of a far more powerful idea: naturalism. And the surprising conclusion given this means of differentiation will be that contrary to the usual proclamations, Platonism will be the more naturalistic theory, whereas aristotelianism will come to be seen for what it really is, namely, non-naturalistic. (shrink)

In their target article, “Proposed Principles for International Bioethics Conferencing: Anti-Discriminatory, Global, and Inclusive,” Jecker et al. (2024) highlight the growing international scope o...

Without doctors being able to explain medical decisions to patients, I argue their use of black box AIs would erode the effective and respectful care they provide patients. In addition, I argue that physicians should use AI black boxes only for patients in dire straits, or when physicians use AI as a “co-pilot” (analogous to a spellchecker) but can independently confirm its accuracy. I respond to A.J. London’s objection that physicians already prescribe some drugs without knowing why they work.

This book is a story about promoting systemic change of SEL in the mindset and capabilities of staff, in the structure of the district, and in the vision, mission, and policies that guide the district.

The book examines what advocates of the law of karma mean by the doctrine, various ways they interpret it, and how they see it operating. The study investigates and critically evaluates the law of karma's connections to significant philosophical concepts like causation, freedom, God, persons, the moral law, liberation, and immortality. For example, it explores in depth the implications of the doctrine for whether we are free or fatalistically determined, whether human suffering can be reconciled with cosmic justice, the nature (...) of the self, and the character of moral experience. (shrink)

In this book, Michael P. Berman uses Merleau-Ponty’s thought to develop a critique, grounded in his phenomenology, of certain issues in the philosophy of religion such as faith, love, vision, soul, magic and miracles, judgment, evil, and hallowing.

The Essential Berkeley and Neo-Berkeley is an introduction to the life and work of one of the most significant thinkers in the history of philosophy and a penetrating philosophical assessment of his lasting legacy. David Berman goes beyond providing an introduction and gives us a broader and deeper appreciation of Berkeley as a philosopher. He argues for Berkeley's work as a philosophical system with coherence and important key themes hitherto unexplored and provides an analysis of why he thinks Berkeley's (...) work has had such lasting significance. With a particular focus on Berkeley's dualist thinking and theories of 'mental types', Berman provides the reader with a key to unlocking the significance of this work. This introductory text will provide an insight into Berkeley's full body of work, the distinctiveness of his thinking and how deeply relevant this key thinker is to contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Set aside fanciful doomsday speculations about AI. Even lower-level AIs, while otherwise friendly and providing us a universal basic income, would be able to do all our jobs. Also, we would over-rely upon AI assistants even in our personal lives. Thus, John Danaher argues that a human crisis of moral passivity would result However, I argue firstly that if AIs are posited to lack the potential to become unfriendly, they may not be intelligent enough to replace us in all our (...) jobs. If instead they are intelligent enough to replace us, the risk they become unfriendly increases, given that they would not need us and humans would just compete for valuable resources. Their hostility will not promote our moral passivity. Secondly, the use of AI assistants in our personal lives will become a problem only if we rely on them for almost all our decision-making and motivation. But such a (maximally) pervasive level of dependence raises the question of whether humans would accept it, and consequently whether the crisis of passivity will arise. (shrink)

Global legal pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the twenty-first century.

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 520-530, July 2022.

Andrew Simester’s new book, Fundamentals of Criminal Law: Responsibility, Culpability, and Wrongdoing, is a masterful analysis of the doctrines of the general part of the criminal law and the multiple, overlapping functions that those doctrines serve. Along the way, Simester makes explicit what criminal law theorists routinely presuppose—that the ordinary words “blameworthiness” and “culpability” pick out the same moral concept. This essay argues that this assumed equivalence is mistaken: two concepts are in play, not one. Roughly, to be blameworthy is (...) to be justly liable to blaming practices in virtue of being at fault, and to be culpable is to act in a fashion that manifests or issues from insufficient concern for morally weighty interests. Culpability is not identical to blameworthiness, but rather a ground of blameworthiness: to be culpable is one way to be at fault, thus one way to be blameworthy. More importantly, culpability is not the exclusive ground of blameworthiness; an agent can be at fault, hence blameworthy, without being culpable. This essay defends these conceptual claims and draws forth some implications for two theses that Simester advances: that it is morally permissible to punish persons for criminal negligence and that it is unjust to punish persons who don’t deserve it. (shrink)

Over the course of his work, Graham Oppy developed numerous important criticisms of versions of the cosmological argument. Here I am not concerned with his specific criticisms of cosmological arguments but rather with his claim that cosmological arguments per se are not good arguments, for they provide no persuasive reason for believing the conclusion that God exists and are embedded in theories that already affirm the conclusion. I explore what he believes makes an argument good, contend that cosmological arguments can (...) have functions within worldviews other than persuasion, and consider his recent modifications of the discussion that address competing worldviews. (shrink)

The version uploaded to this site is a late draft. The paper arises both from William L. Rowe's classic 1979 discussion of the problem of evil, argues that there exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse, and also from Steven Wykstra's response, in the course of which he argues for the following Condition of Reasonable Epistemic Access (CORNEA): "On the basis (...) of cognized situation s, human H is entitled to claim 'It appears that p' only if it is reasonable for H to believe that, given her cognitive faculties and the use she has made of them, if p were not the case, s would likely be different in some way discernible by her." My paper discusses CORNEA, and proposes a replacement principle. (shrink)

Locates in Schelling a new understanding of our relation to nature in philosophy.

Robert Adams defends a platonic account of goodness, understood as excellence, claiming that there exists a platonic good that all other good things must resemble, identifying the Good with God. Mark Murphy agrees, but argues that this platonic account is in need of Aristotelian supplementation, as resemblance must take into account a thing’s kind-membership. While this article will accept something like Murphy’s account of goodness, it will further develop its details and support. Without relying on theistic premises, I show that (...) the metaphysical status of an individual’s goodness consists in resemblance with the platonic good. As for the distinct question of what that goodness holds in virtue of, I conclude it holds in virtue of exactly: the thing’s own properties, those properties being such as to satisfy its kind-based standards, and those K-standards resembling the platonic good. I then develop an account of how K-standards resemble the platonic good: The K-standards resemble it firstly with respect to requiring activities, as the platonic good will be posited to be active, and must resemble it secondly also at the level of what teleology those activities are directed towards. I also motivate the need for a third respect of resemblance, to be developed in future work. The article ends with a discussion of the nature of the platonic good. (shrink)

Why do states who are committed to the principle of civilian immunity and the protection of non-combatants end up killing and injuring large numbers of civilians during their military operations? Bugsplat explains this paradox through an in-depth examination of five conflicts fought by Western powers since 1989.

« Ce guide offre aux étudiants en formation initiale à l'enseignement, au personnel enseignant en poste, à leurs formateurs et aux directions d'établissement scolaire les ressources nécessaires pour se frayer un chemin à travers les cadres éthiques et légaux complexes qui réglementent le quotidien de la pratique enseignante. ».

One of America's foremost philosophers reflects on the discipline and its relation to everyday life.

Aristotelian theory, as found in Michael Thompson and Philippa Foot, claims that to be good is to be good as a member of that kind. Moreover, Foot argues in effect that goodness admits of only the kind-based sort, obtaining solely in virtue of something’s satisfying kind-based standards. However, I contend that something can satisfy kind-relative standards but nonetheless be bad—I propose a hypothetical Ebola-like microbe that meets its kind-standards of being destructive for its own sake, but it would plausibly be (...) bad for doing so. In defending my counterexample, I respond to the Aristotelian contention that evaluations should only be made from “within” the standpoint of a particular lifeform conception, rather than an “external” one from which that kind itself can be judged to be bad. (shrink)

The second edition of The Great Psychotherapy Debate has been updated and revised to include a history of healing practices, medicine, and psychotherapy, an expanded theoretical presentation of the contextual model, an examination of therapist effects, and a thorough review of the research on common factors such as the alliance, expectations, and empathy.

A survey of moral theology from its biblical origins to the eve of the Reformation, demonstrating that Reformed moral sensibilities were received and developed from the greater church tradition.

Volume 1: A-B -- Volume 2: C-E -- Volume 3: F-I -- Volume 4: J-O -- Volume 5: P-R -- Volume 6: S-X.