What are our responsibilities in the face of injustice? How far should we go to fight it? Many would argue that as long as a state is nearly just, citizens have a moral duty to obey the law. Proponents of civil disobedience generally hold that, given this moral duty, a person needs a solid justification to break the law. But activists from Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi to the Movement for Black Lives have long recognized that there are times (...) when, rather than having a duty to obey the law, we have a duty to disobey it. -/- Taking seriously the history of this activism, A Duty to Resist wrestles with the problem of political obligation in real world societies that harbor injustice. Candice Delmas argues that the duty of justice, the principle of fairness, the Samaritan duty, and political association impose responsibility to resist under conditions of injustice. We must expand political obligation to include a duty to resist unjust laws and social conditions even in legitimate states. -/- For Delmas, this duty to resist demands principled disobedience, and such disobedience need not always be civil. At times, covert, violent, evasive, or offensive acts of lawbreaking can be justified, even required. Delmas defends the viability and necessity of illegal assistance to undocumented migrants, leaks of classified information, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, sabotage, armed self-defense, guerrilla art, and other modes of resistance. There are limits: principle alone does not justify law breaking. But uncivil disobedience can sometimes be not only permissible but required in the effort to resist injustice. (shrink)

Many historical and recent forms of protest usually referred to as civil disobedience do not fit the standard philosophical definition of “civil disobedience”. The moral and political importance of this point is explained in section 1, and two theoretical lessons are drawn: one, we should broaden the concept of civil disobedience, and two, we should start thinking about uncivil disobedience. Section 2 is devoted to the main objections against, and theorists' defenses of, civil disobedience.

Hunger strikes are commonly repressed in prison and seen as disruptive, coercive, and violent. Hunger strikers and their advocates insist that incarcerated persons have a right to hunger strike, which protects them against repression and force-feeding. Physicians and medical ethicists generally ground this right in the right to refuse medical treatment; lawyers and legal scholars derive it from incarcerated persons’ free speech rights. Neither account adequately grounds the right to hunger strike because both misrepresent the hunger strike as noncoercive and (...) nonviolent. I articulate an alternative, dual account of the right to hunger strike. On the remedial argument, the right to hunger strike should be legally protected as a right to petition for redress, in light of incarcerated people’s structural vulnerability to abuse and given inadequate grievance mechanisms. The constructive argument derives the right to hunger strike from the right to resist oppression and stresses the normative permissibility of the use of coercive tactics to defend one’s liberty interests in the face of carceral oppression. -/- . (shrink)

Is hactivism the new civil disobedience? I argue that most recent hacktivism isn't, and shouldn't be shoehorned into the category of civil disobedience. I sketch instead a broad matrix of electronic resistance, attentive to the many shapes and goals of hacktivism and I locate five clusters on it, briefly sketching possible dimensions of normative assessment for each: vigilantism, whistleblowing, guerrilla communication, electronic humanitarianism, and electronic civil disobedience.

What is wrong with government whistleblowing and when can it be justified? In my view, ‘government whistleblowing’, i.e., the unauthorized acquisition and disclosure of classified information about the state or government, is a form of ‘political vigilantism’, which involves transgressing the boundaries around state secrets, for the purpose of challenging the allocation or use of power. It may nonetheless be justified when it is suitably constrained and exposes some information that the public ought to know and deliberate about. Government whistleblowing (...) should then be viewed, along the lines of civil disobedience, as a collective cognition- and legitimacy-enhancing device. (shrink)

What I dub the “worst-result” principle is a criterion that identifies civil war and tyranny as the worst evils that could befall a state, and prescribes their prevention. In this thesis, I attempt to define the worst-result principle’s concrete prescriptions and institutional arrangements to meet these. To do so, I explore different understandings of the worst-result principle, that each contributes to the general argument. Montesquieu’s crucial insight concerns the separation of powers to prevent the state from collapsing into despotism. Judith (...) Shklar shows that ‘damage control’ needs to be constantly performed so as to minimize chances of governmental brutality. Roberto Unger points at the importance of encouraging citizens’ involvement in the political process to safeguard freedom. I finally argue, in the light of historical evidence, that it would be unreasonable to think that the task of preventing tyranny can be effectively performed in the absence of courts entrusted with checking powers. (shrink)

"An illustrated directory of experimental, Dada and, in particular, Surrealist photography from 1918-1948, containing over 200 photographic images by some 50 revolutionary artists."--P. [4] of cover.

O priming semântico é um tipo de memória implícita que se caracteriza pelo efeito facilitador de um estímulo precedente no processamento de um estímulo posterior, causado pela relação semântica existente entre os dois. O objetivo deste estudo foi verificar relações entre os efeitos de priming semânt..

Mark Johnson is widely regarded as a major figure in philosophical embodied cognition theory in the U.S., and as co-founder with George Lakoff of conceptual metaphor theory. These two theories, along with Johnson's deep rootedness in classical American Pragmatism, provide the themes for the analyses developed in both Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason: How our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding and The Aesthetics of Meaning and Thought: The Bodily Roots of Philosophy, Science, Morality and Art. The two texts together review (...) and expand Johnson's earlier work, in the case of the newest book by further elaborating and providing expanded empirical support for work that by necessity began as rather more speculative than... (shrink)

Despite the fact that the reductio ad absurdum argument is a valid deductive form, while the slippery slope argument is most often presented as a fallacious form of inductive argument, the two argument types bear some striking similarities. Investigation of these similarities reveals some more universal difficulties in the teaching of informal logic, and, in particular the difference between strong informal arguments and fallacious ones.

In this paper, I argue that the principle of fairness can license both a duty of fair play, which is used to ground a moral duty to obey the law in just or nearly just societies, and a duty of resistance to unfair and unjust social schemes. The first part of the paper analyzes fairness’ demands on participants in mutually beneficial schemes of coordination, and its implications in the face of injustice. Not only fairness does not require complying with unfair (...) and unjust social schemes, but it also prohibits benefiting from such schemes. I use the case of racial segregation in the U.S. to illustrate this latter argument, and consider some objections to my investigation, given the availability and straightforwardness of justice. The second part of the paper elaborates the argument for the duty to resist. The Radical Reform argument first establishes, by elimination of the alternatives (exit and restitution), that the principal way for citizens to cease benefiting from an unfair and unjust social scheme is to radically reform it. The Resistance Argument then shows that resistance is crucial to bring about reform, so that one ought to resist unfair and unjust schemes from which one benefits. Next, I offer two arguments for collective resistance and political solidarity, one based on empirical considerations and the other based on fairness. Finally, I consider the costs of the resistance efforts which fairness may require. (shrink)

Certain anthropological narratives of South Africa's Eastern Cape province, such as Monica Hunter's 1936 Reaction to Conquest and Philip Mayer's 1963 Townsmen or Tribesmen, persist as potent referential 'bodies of knowledge'. By laying down the coordinates of Black rural and urban experience, such studies continue to animate concepts of tradition and modernity, effectively conjuring up notions of 'the border', both literally and metaphorically. Encountering Pauline Ingle's photographic collection amidst these circuits of knowledge and ways of seeing is to recognise that (...) it is both unusual and exceptional. It is a collection of over 4000 images that are not only located in a rural area but also covers a sustained time period, corresponding to the period of formal apartheid. The concept of the rural is amplified in the collection, positioning it as a site of development, as the 'not yet modern', in which subjects are figured both in class hierarchies and in relation to Daniel Morolong's urban photographs in and around East London in the 1950s. Employing the theory of social acts enables a re-contemplation of the subject, and a reading of the social that suggests a set of possibilities and futures beyond what currently constitutes the rural and the urban; and upturns the disciplinary optics that condition the predominating ethnographies and historiographies of the Eastern Cape. (shrink)

When someone encounters an explanation perceived as weak, this may lead to a feeling of deprivation or tension that can be resolved by engaging in additional learning. This study examined to what extent children respond to weak explanations by seeking additional learning opportunities. Seven‐ to ten‐year‐olds (N = 81) explored questions and explanations (circular or mechanistic) about 12 animals using a novel Android tablet application. After rating the quality of an initial explanation, children could request and receive additional information or (...) return to the main menu to choose a new animal to explore. Consistent with past research, there were both developmental and IQ‐related differences in how children evaluated explanation quality. But across development, children were more likely to request additional information in response to circular explanations than mechanistic explanations. Importantly, children were also more likely to request additional information in direct response to explanations that they themselves had assigned low ratings, regardless of explanation type. In addition, there was significant variability in both children's explanation evaluation and their exploration, suggesting important directions for future research. The findings support the deprivation theory of curiosity and offer implications for education. (shrink)

The ipsilesional arm of stroke patients often has functionally limiting deficits in motor control and dexterity that depend on the side of the brain that is lesioned and that increase with the severity of paretic arm impairment. However, remediation of the ipsilesional arm has yet to be integrated into the usual standard of care for upper limb rehabilitation in stroke, largely due to a lack of translational research examining the effects of ipsilesional-arm intervention. We now ask whether ipsilesional-arm training, tailored (...) to the hemisphere-specific nature of ipsilesional-arm motor deficits in participants with moderate to severe contralesional paresis, improves ipsilesional arm performance and generalizes to improve functional independence. We assessed the effects of this intervention on ipsilesional arm unilateral performance [Jebsen–Taylor Hand Function Test ], ipsilesional grip strength, contralesional arm impairment level [Fugl–Meyer Assessment ], and functional independence [Functional independence measure ]. Intervention occurred over a 3 week period for 1.5 h/session, three times each week. All sessions included virtual reality tasks that targeted the specific motor control deficits associated with either left or right hemisphere damage, followed by graded dexterity training in real-world tasks. We also exposed participants to 3 weeks of sham training to control for the non-specific effects of therapy visits and interactions. We conducted five test-sessions: two pre-tests and three post-tests. Our results indicate substantial improvements in the less-impaired arm performance, without detriment to the paretic arm that transferred to improved functional independence in all three posttests, indicating durability of training effects for at least 3 weeks. We provide evidence for establishing the basis of a rehabilitation approach that includes evaluation and remediation of the ipsilesional arm in moderately to severely impaired stroke survivors. This study was originally a crossover design; however, we were unable to complete the second arm of the study due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We report the results from the first arm of the planned design as a longitudinal study. (shrink)

This book documents recent and historical events in the theoretically-based practice of peace development. Its diverse collection of essays describes different aspects of applied philosophy in peace action, commonly involving the contributors' continual engagement in the field, while offering support and optimal responses to conflict and violence.

Addiction: A Philosophical Approach CHAPTER ABSTRACTS “Introduction: Dismantling the Catchphrase” by Candice Shelby Shelby dismantles the catchphrase “disease of addiction.” The characterization of addiction as a disease permeates both research and treatment, but that understanding fails to get at the complexity involved in human addiction. Shelby introduces another way of thinking about addiction, one that implies that is properly understood neither as a disease nor merely as a choice, or set of choices. Addiction is a phenomenon emergent from a (...) complex dynamic system that is at once physical, psychological, social, and more. “A Philosophical Analysis of Addiction” by Candice Shelby Shelby brings much-needed clarity to the discourse surrounding the topic of addiction. Arguing that addiction can neither properly be understood as a disease nor as merely a set of choices, Shelby exposes the weaknesses of both approaches. She shows that addicted persons do not exhibit the elements characteristic of compulsion, nor does an account of addiction in terms of weakness of will, or irrational choosing, provide a satisfying explanation. Instead, by replacing traditional substance ontology with process ontology, and accepting the reality of emergent entities, a coherent account of persons, minds, and addiction can be provided. A fundamental philosophical shift is necessary to see that bodies, minds, values, and addictions are all part of the natural world. “Addiction at the Individual Level” by Candice Shelby Shelby discusses the most influential accounts of addiction as it is understood at the purely individual level. From hedonic theories to incentive sensitization, to habit theories of addiction, to behavioral theories and the ego depletion theory, Shelby considers a variety of approaches to understanding addiction in individuals, as framed in both psychological and in neuroscientific terms. She notes some important caveats that should be considered before accepting the research regarding addiction at the individual level, namely that the scanning studies that are so popularly used to characterize addiction in neurobiological terms are ambiguous, and rely on numerous assumptions that may be false, and that certainly mislead. Shelby provides much-needed critique of both disease and choices models as they characterize addiction at the individual level. “Addiction and the Local Environment” by Candice Shelby Shelby argues that human addiction cannot be understood without serious consideration of the individual’s local environment, her home and family. From the gestational environment to interactions with caregivers during post-natal development to the adult environment in which people become addicted, Shelby shows that no one becomes an addict in a vacuum. Stress is a major influence in the environment throughout life, and has serious consequences for addictive vulnerability. Genetic influences as well are important to addictive vulnerability, but genes always express in interaction with their environment. Social acceptance or rejection is another particularly important factor in the local environment with respect to both coming to be addicted and transitioning out of it. “The Relation Between Addiction and Culture” by Candice Shelby Shelby provides a groundbreaking analysis of the relation between addicts and the cultures that breed them. In this cultural critique, Shelby shows that addictions to certain substances have historically been both the solution to the problem of how to grow economies and control people, and a problem for economic productivity and controlling citizens. Not all cultures have even the concept of addiction, while others, such as the contemporary Western world, and the U.S. in particular, seem to foster it. Shelby shows that addiction is both a cultural construct and, from another way of thinking about it, the result of conditions created by particular cultures. Social inequities, alienation, driving capitalism, and in particular the power of pharmaceutical companies, all contribute to the spiraling endemic of addiction. “Addiction and Meaning” by Candice Shelby Shelby provides a unique argument that understanding how meanings work is essential to a complete analysis of addiction. Individuals experiencing addiction and those who care about and for them often utterly fail to communicate. This is because their respective systems of meanings come to be significantly different. Meanings are not, Shelby argues, best understood in the symbolic terms that characterized the theory of language in the 20th century, but are better apprehended as emotion-rich prototypes carved from repeated interaction with the world. Becoming addicted essentially changes one’s entire system of meanings. Requisite to transitioning out of addiction is a Gestalt-type shift in one’s system of meanings. This holistic way of understanding meanings also provides one level of explanation of what happens when an addict relapses. “The Phenomenology of Addiction and its Implications” by Candice Shelby One way of judging theories of addiction is by how well they capture the phenomenal descriptions that addicts give of their own experiences. Shelby considers variations on 5 basic patterns of addictive experience through the eyes of particular individuals who lived through addictive periods, and shows how even the most influential theories of addiction fail to capture all of them. She argues that an important implication of taking the details of individuals’ addictive stories seriously is that addiction must be understood as a personal phenomenon emergent from a particular complex dynamic system. As her theory of addiction would lead one to expect, no two addicts are the same, and no single-focus theory can explain why not. “Possibilities for Transitioning Out of Addiction” by Candice Shelby Shelby provides numerous strategies for transitioning out of addiction. Given that the vast majority of addiction treatment programs currently available are 12-step based and only successful about 5-8% of the time, it is essential that other approaches be undertaken. Shelby canvasses a variety of options for helping addicted individuals to make the transition out of their troubled pattern of thinking and behaving. From direct brain interventions to drugs to trauma therapy to exercise and nutrition to habit reformation to use of narrative and changing one’s social context as ways of redefining the self, Shelby shows that the possibilities for transitioning out of addiction are legion. Perhaps the best approach is to understand addiction treatment in terms of providing physical, psychological, and social tool kits. “Addiction Emerges from a Complex Dynamic System” by Candice Shelby Shelby considers whether there truly exists such a thing as “an addict” or “addictive thinking” in the universal sense. She concludes that within the context of disruptive substance use or repetitive engagement in certain activities, ordinary human cognitive biases and behavior patterns are categorized as addictive. Addiction, she argues, is best understood as an irreducible human reality, emergent from a sufficiently complex dynamic system (an organism with self-awareness, within a particular cultural milieu) that is both shaped by and contributes to the shaping of its environment. Attempts to simplify addiction into one or a few dimensions may create a solvable problem, but by doing so they fail to solve the real one. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 15 Candice Lyons Behind the Scenes: Elizabeth Keckley, Slave Narratives, and the Queer Complexities of Space In the fall of 1867—just two years after the conclusion of the American Civil War—former First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, finding herself in dire financial straits, traveled incognito to New York. She hoped to sell select pieces from her famed wardrobe (...) in order to supplement her income, which was, at the time, rather meager. Accompanying the recently widowed socialite was her self-described “modiste” and “confidante ” Elizabeth Keckley, a formerly enslaved African American dressmaker who had been “intimately associated” with Lincoln for years.1 Despite the various measures undertaken to ensure the scheme’s success, including attempts to extort monied East Coast Republicans and strategic appeals to the press, it ultimately proved fruitless. Political nemeses seized on the opportunity to publicly mock Lincoln, who was seen as an “extravagant and improper” social climber, for her “pecuniary embarrassment,” treating the public auction of her clothing as a spectacle akin to the World Fair.2 Eventually, the former First Lady was forced to retreat to her home in Chicago, leaving Keckley behind to tend to her affairs. 1. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2015): Location no. 406, 54, 53. 2. Carolyn Sorisio, “Unmasking the Genteel Performer: Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes and the Politics of Public Wrath,” African American Review 34 (2000): 20; Keckley, Behind the Scenes, Location no. 1321. 16 Candice Lyons This decision, however, left the ordinarily sought-after seamstress in dire straits of her own, given that the time she was compelled to dedicate to what would come to be known as “The Old Clothes Scandal ” necessitated closing down her then-thriving business in Washington, DC.3 This, coupled with the fact that indemnification for her services was not forthcoming from Mrs. Lincoln, was likely at least partially at the root of Keckley’s decision to publish her now-infamous memoir, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years A Slave and Four Years in the White House in 1868.4 Keckley explained that she penned her autobiographical text in a bid to “defend [her]self” and Lincoln against charges of impropriety following the New York incident. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, the book’s release had the exact opposite effect: Keckley’s literary disclosures were met with scorn, regarded by large swaths of white Americans, including some of the same people who had been most vocal in their condemnation of Mary Todd Lincoln, as constituting a set of socially impermissible transgressions of class, race, and gender. Sales of the book were subsequently suppressed, Keckley’s relationship with Lincoln (who had been caught off guard by the text’s release) came to an abrupt end, and there was even a brief, parodic pamphlet produced, titled Behind the Seams; by a Nigger Woman Who Took in Work from Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis, which cast the entire ordeal as a sort of (racist) cautionary tale.5 Given the clear disdain held for Lincoln by people across the political spectrum at the time, it can be difficult to make sense of the visceral reaction prompted by Keckley’s airing of the controversial figure’s dirty laundry (pun intended). Considering the ways Behind the Scenes implicitly challenged the fixity of hierarchical distinctions between Black and white, employee and employer, however, repudiation of the work might be understood as inevitable. Further, given the “intimate” and ambiguous nature of Lincoln and Keckley’s relationship, the book may also 3. Sorisio, “Unmasking the Genteel Performer,” 19. 4. The text’s infamy is in part attributable to its anomalous structure, which rendered it distinct from many of the era’s other book-length slave narratives ; whereas monographs such as Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl centered on the author’s experience of and eventual escape from slavery, Keckley’s work deals only briefly with these matters, primarily concerning itself with the intimate affairs of the author’s (white) employer. 5. Sorisio, “Unmasking the Genteel Performer,” 19. Candice... (shrink)

Background Massively parallel sequencing techniques, such as whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), may reveal unsolicited findings (UFs) unrelated to the diagnostic aim. Such techniques are frequently used for diagnostic purposes in pediatric cases of developmental delay (DD). Yet policy guidelines for informed consent and return of UFs are not well equipped to address specific moral challenges that may arise in these children’s situations. Discussion In previous empirical studies conducted by our research group, we found that it (...) is sometimes uncertain how children with a DD will develop and whether they could come to possess capacities for autonomous decision-making in the future. Parents sometimes felt this brought them into a Catch-22 like situation when confronted with choices about UFs before undergoing WES in trio-analysis (both the parents’ and child’s DNA are sequenced). An important reason for choosing to consent to WES was to gain more insight into how their child might develop. However, to make responsible choices about receiving or declining knowledge of UFs, some idea of their child’s future development of autonomous capacities is needed. This undesirable Catch-22 situation was created by the specific policy configuration in which parents were required to make choices about UFs before being sequencing (trio-analysis). We argue that this finding is relevant for reconfiguring current policies for return of UFs for WES/WGS and propose guidelines that encompass two features. First, the informed consent process ought to be staged. Second, differing guidelines are required for withholding/disclosing a UF in cases of DD appropriate to the level of confidence there is about the child’s future developmental of autonomous capacities. Conclusion When combined with a dynamic consent procedure, these two features of our guidelines could help overcome significant moral challenges that present themselves in the situations of children undergoing genomic sequencing for clarifying a DD. (shrink)

This chapter examines the tension between the justification and the punishment of civil disobedience, and theorists’ common solutions to it, by focusing on two central questions: first, should the state punish civil disobedience? Second, should the civil disobedient accept punishment? It presents the theoretical lay of the land on each of these questions, with particular attention to American jurisprudence on civil disobedience. The third part takes a step back to ask anew, how should we think about civil disobedience? and uncovers (...) some problematic assumptions behind the common theoretical approach to the “problem” of civil disobedience. (shrink)

Is the civic duty to report crime and corruption a genuine moral duty? After clarifying the nature of the duty, I consider a couple of negative answers to the question, and turn to an attractive and commonly held view, according to which this civic duty is a genuine moral duty. On this view, crime and corruption threaten political stability, and citizens have a moral duty to report crime and corruption to the government in order to help the government’s law enforcement (...) efforts. The resulting duty is triply general in that it applies to everyone, everywhere, and covers all criminal and corrupt activity. In this paper, I challenge the general scope of this argument. I argue that that the civic duty to report crime and corruption to the authorities is much narrower than the government claims and people might think, for it only arises when the state (i) condemns genuine wrongdoing and serious ethical offenses as “crime” and “corruption,” and (ii) constitutes a dependable “disclosure recipient,” showing the will and power to hold wrongdoers accountable. I further defend a robust duty to directly report to the public—one that is weightier and wider than people usually assume. When condition (ii) fails to obtain, I submit, citizens are released of the duty to report crime and corruption to the authorities, but are bound to report to the public, even when the denunciation targets the government and is risky or illegal. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the existence of a moral duty to disobey the law and engage in civil disobedience on the basis of one of the grounds of political obligation—the Samaritan duty. Christopher H. Wellman has recently offered a ‘Samaritan account’ of state legitimacy and political obligation, according to which the state is justified in coercing each citizen in order to rescue all from the perilous circumstances of the state of nature; and each of us is bound to obey (...) the law, as the state demands, because we each have a responsibility to help rescue others when this assistance is not unreasonably costly. Though Wellman recognizes that there can be reasons for disobeying the law and resisting injustice in otherwise legitimate states, he overlooks the possibility that at least some of these reasons could be Samaritan in nature, grounded in the duty to rescue people from peril. As I shall argue, the Samaritan duty supports obligations to disobey the law, when the law prohibits Samaritan rescues, and to engage in civil disobedience, when unjust laws and practices contribute to endangering people. The discussion proceeds as follows. After a brief overview of the Samaritan duty, I articulate my case for Samaritan duties to disobey the law, and duties to engage in civil disobedience when unjust laws, institutions, or practices enable what I call ‘persistent Samaritan perils’. I then examine and respond to several objections to my account: first, that the costs of law-breaking are unreasonable, and thus cannot be morally required; second, that individuals’ particular acts of protest and civil disobedience do not appear to make any difference to the rescue, and thus cannot be required; third, that I stretch the Samaritan duty beyond recognition; and fourth, that the Samaritan duty binds us to help people in need or peril anywhere, not particularly at home. I consider in conclusion the advantages and limits of my account of citizens’ Samaritan duties in the face of injustice. (shrink)

While philosophers usually agree that there is room for civil disobedience in democratic societies, they disagree as to the proper justification and role of civil disobedience. The field has so far been divided into two camps—the liberal approach on the one hand, which associates the justification and role of civil disobedience with the good of justice, and the democratic approach on the other, which connects them with the value and good of democracy. William Smith’s Civil Disobedience and Deliberative Democracy offers (...) a ‘deliberative’ theory, which constitutes an attractive synthesis of the two camps as it conceives of civil disobedience as a guardian of both justice and deliberative democracy. In this review essay, I first revisit the ‘problem’ of civil disobedience, examining in particular the two pillars of the case against civil disobedience as Smith depicts it, namely, the prohibition on legal disobedience established by the moral duty to comply, and the notion that civil disobedience strains the bonds of civic friendship. I suggest, contra, that the duty to comply as Smith defends it fails to be comprehensive because it is tightly bound to deliberative democratic procedures, which are involved in the making of only a portion of authoritative decisions; and, contra, that civil disobedience does not strain, but instead invigorates, civic friendship. Second, I entertain the possibility that citizens have a moral duty, not a mere right, to resist injustice. I show that Smith’s theory, in particular his account of the moral duty to comply, provides the resources to defend a general duty to resist injustice which, depending on the circumstances, can demand protesting the law or frustrating injustice. Third, I contend that Smith’s conception of the different contexts of injustice—he identifies three main ones—should be expanded to include what I call ‘official disrespect’ and ‘deliberative ignorance’. I argue that each context offers reasons to disobey the law but not necessarily in the civil manner determined by Smith. (shrink)

This paper engages with the concept of the migrant subject, as framed through contemporary literature on migrancy, and read through the Pauline Ingle photographic collection, located in the Eastern Cape. As against gendered historiographies of labour migrancy and the associated meanings attributed to the rural as a site of social reproduction, Ingle's photographs invite a series of atypical readings that unsettle these subjectivities. Rather, they suggest social and political acts that presage and constitute a migrant citizenship, one that undermines the (...) dichotomy of the rural and urban and projects the possibility of reading the history of the subject in the Eastern Cape differently. (shrink)

Organismal death is foundational to the evolution of life, and many biological concepts such as natural selection and life history strategy are so fashioned only because individuals are mortal. Organisms, irrespective of their organization, are composed of basic functional units—cells—and it is our understanding of cell death that lies at the heart of most general explanatory frameworks for organismal mortality. Cell death can be exogenous, arising from transmissible diseases, predation, or other misfortunes, but there are also endogenous forms of death (...) that are sometimes the result of adaptive evolution. These endogenous forms of death—often labeled programmed cell death, PCD—originated in the earliest cells and are maintained across the tree of life. Here, we consider two problematic issues related to PCD (and cell mortality generally). First, we trace the original discoveries of cell death from the nineteenth century and place current conceptions of PCD in their historical context. Revisions of our understanding of PCD demand a reassessment of its origin. Our second aim is thus to structure the proposed origin explanations of PCD into coherent arguments. In our analysis we argue for the evolutionary concept of PCD and the viral defense-immunity hypothesis for the origin of PCD. We suggest that this framework offers a plausible account of PCD early in the history of life, and also provides an epistemic basis for the future development of a general evolutionary account of mortality. (shrink)

Mates’s Puzzle has flown below many philosophers’ radar, despite its relations to both Frege’s Puzzle and the Paradox of Analysis. We explain the relations amongst these puzzles on the way to arguing that Mates’s Puzzle suggests a generalization of Frege’s Puzzle, and of the sense-reference distinction itself, in the form of hierarchy of senses. We explain how Mates’s Puzzle and the hierarchy, to different degrees, illuminate each other, and how their connection is missed in the literature. However, we argue that (...) the potential of Mates’s Puzzle to illuminate the hierarchy is yet to be fully actualised. We suggest that in order to do better, we need to formulate Mates’s Puzzle as a puzzle in the philosophy of thought and not as puzzle in the philosophy of language. What is needed, to which the present paper is a precursor, is an account of the cognitive significance of higher-order senses. (shrink)

Les études tentant de répondre à la question " Qu'est-ce que la justice? " et à cette autre, inséparable, " Qu'est-ce qu'une société juste? " sont assez nombreuses ces dernières années, mais elles ne sont pas toujours faciles d'accès, au contraire du livre d'Alain Durand. Par un discours systématique et structuré, il présente quelques réflexions occasionnées par des lectures ou par des événements et tendances de fond liés à l'actualité. L'auteur se confronte à de grands auteurs qui, depuis Aristote (...) jusqu'à John Rawls, sans oublier d'autres penseurs plus récents, ont substantiellement enrichi les approches de la justice sociale. Une attention particulière est accordée à l'apport du christianisme. La foi, en effet, ne cesse d'apparaître comme une force d'interrogations radicales pour l'élaboration d'une société plus juste. Et l'Eglise, qui doit être attentive aux priorités et aux dérives dans ce domaine, est ainsi conduite à des remises en question, tant en elle-même, que dans un monde devenu éthiquement pluraliste. La lecture de ce livre peut être faite assez librement, par les multiples portes d'entrée qu'il offre. (shrink)

While the addiction treatment industry holds steadfast to the idea that addiction is a disease, and the choice theorists maintam to the contrary that it is justa choice, the truth is not as simple as either. The idea of addiction is a social construct that evolved over the 20th century to encompass increasingly morephenomena, while becoming increasingly conceptually less clear. Taking a complex dynamic systems approach, rather than relying on either the obscure disease notion or the naive choice concept allows (...) us to conceive of the organism, the mind, and the addiction as essentially temporal and emergent. From thisperspective, physical, mental, and social causes operate within one dynamic system, allowing for genetic, developmental, and environmental effects to be understood within a single framework. Such a framework offers much greater hope for successfully addressing the issue than does either the currently dominant disease paradigm or choice theory. (shrink)

Background: Informed consent in clinical research is mandated throughout the world. Both patient subjects and investigators are required to understand and accept the distinction between research and treatment.Aim: To document the extent and to identify factors associated with therapeutic misconception in a population of patient subjects or parent proxies recruited from a variety of multicentre trials .Patients and methods: The study comprised two phases: the development of a questionnaire to assess the quality of informed consent and a survey of patient (...) subjects based on this questionnaire.Results: A total of 303 patient subjects or parent proxies were contacted and 279 questionnaires were analysed. The median age was 49.5 years, sex ratio was 1 and 61% of respondents were professionally active. Overall memorisation of the oral or written communication of informed consent was good , and satisfaction with the process was around 70%. Therapeutic misconception was present in 70% of respondents, who expected to receive better care and ignored the consequence of randomisation and treatment comparisons. This was positively associated with the acuteness and severity of the disease.Conclusion: The authors suggest that the risk of therapeutic misconception be specifically addressed in consent forms as an educational tool for both patients and investigators. (shrink)

To be able to make “change” happen in the lives of patients entrusted to his care, Watzlawick says he tried to produce a theory about it. He was forced to acknowledge that the mechanisms of change resist systematization and, therefore, all wishes to elicit them as well.Well-being is to therapy what discovery is to thought and the event is to History: the position – unforeseen, unforeseeable – in reality of what did not hitherto exist. And heuristics would be, if not (...) a science, since there could be no science of change, then at least the name given to reflection on its mystery. (shrink)

In the roots of political culture in the USA, Tocqueville long ago noted with concern an individualism that could undercut needed structures of shared community. This individualism, argues the author, is one key feature of American culture that tends to empower military interventionism by empowering American elites to go their own way and pursue their own interests, without too much worry that they will be held accountable to more communitarian standards. Yet, American culture is not one-sided, and the author encourages (...) public appeals to another, balancing cultural value, that of republicanism. The author also touches briefly on the cultural tradition of American messianism and its value to globe-conquering elites. (shrink)

C'est au croisement des personnalités et des événements que se structure progressivement une culture stratégique. Qu'en est-il de celle de la France, nation bâtie "à coups d'épée"? Quelles expériences l'ont forgée, quelles philosophies la sous-tendent? Telles sont les questions fondamentales auxquelles répond cet ouvrage. Car la stratégie militaire française constitue un objet d'étude à la fois bien et mal connu. Connu puisqu'inscrit dans une histoire intimement liée à la construction d'une identité nationale et internationale dont on constate aujourd'hui encore sur (...) les champs de guerre toute la vivacité. Mal connu cependant lorsqu'il s'agit d'en examiner les fondements idéels et culturels. Cette méconnaissance est liée à la complexité même de toute stratégie. Loin d'être un simple art des moyens, elle produit des concepts, doctrines ou représentations de la guerre qui résultent d'expériences militaires spécifiques mais qui trouvent leurs racines dans des conditions philosophiques à l'oeuvre dans la construction de toute stratégie. La stratégie militaire française constitue un fascinant terrain d'étude : cette indispensable histoire philosophique de la pensée stratégique française — du XVIIIème siècle à nos jours — en est le reflet. Ce premier tome traite de la stratégie continentale. Un second tome à paraître traitera de la stratégie africaine. (shrink)

Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar e examinar criticamente alguns dos principais argumentos fornecidos pelo linguista norte-americano Noam Chomsky, em favor da tese da origem inata de uma gramática universal, usualmente associada à tradição filosófica racionalista, como constituindo a única explicação possível das características específicas da linguagem humana e de sua aquisição, na mais tenra infância. Serão, por conseguinte, examinadas algumas críticas feitas por Thomas Nagel à tese do assim chamado inatismo biológico de Chomsky e, ao final do artigo, será (...) feita uma defesa dos argumentos de Chomsky em favor de sua tese inatista. (shrink)