The primary purpose of depictive works of pornography, we take it, is sexual arousal through sexually explicit representations; what we callprototypical pornography satisfies those aims through the adoption of a ceteris paribus maximally realistic depictive style. Given that the purpose of sexual arousal seems best fulfilled by establishing the most robust connections between the viewer and the depictive subject, we find it curious that not all works of pornography aspire to prototypical status. Accordingly, we target for philosophical scrutiny several non-standard (...) but putatively pornographic forms: Tijuana Bibles, hentai manga, and slash-fiction. We find that works of these genres possess certain depictively or fictively oriented properties that appear at least prima facie incompatible with prototypical pornography, and thereby to pose two pressing questions that anyprima facie viable analysis of pornography must answer: the depiction question and the fiction question. By answering these questions, we can not only arrive at a deeper understanding of the aims of pornography and the reasons for which significant sub-genres of pornography might diverge from the prototypical ideal, but also perhaps better understand what lies at pornography’s edge, and so better understand the ways in which pornography might relate to what lies beyond. (shrink)

In preparation for the development of a rapid tissue donation programme, we surveyed healthcare providers in our institution about knowledge and attitudes related to RTD with lung cancer patients. A 31-item web based survey was developed collecting data on demographics, knowledge and attitudes about RTD. The survey contained three items measuring participants’ knowledge about RTD, five items assessing attitudes towards RTD recruitment and six items assessing HCPs’ level of agreement with factors influencing decisions to discuss RTD. Response options were presented (...) on a 5-point Likert scale. Ninety-one HCPs participated in the study. 66% indicated they had never heard of RTD prior to the survey, 78% rated knowledge of RTD as none or limited and 95.6% reported not having ethical or religious concerns about discussing RTD with patients. The majority were either not comfortable or not sure if they felt comfortable discussing RTD with cancer patients . 56.1% indicated their knowledge of RTD would play an integral role in their decision to discuss RTD with patients. 71.4% reported concerns with RTD discussion and the emotional state of the patient. Physicians and nurses play an important role in initiating conversations about recruitment and donation to research that can ultimately influence uptake. Increasing HCP knowledge about RTD is a necessary step towards building an RTD programme. Our study provides important information about characteristics associated with low levels of knowledge and practice related to RTD where additional education and training may be warranted. (shrink)

Rapid tissue donation (RTD) is an advancing oncology research procedure for collecting tumors, metastases, and unaffected tissue 2–6 h after death. Researchers can better determine rates of progression, response to treatment, and polymorphic differences among patients. Cancer patients may inquire about posthumous body donation for research to offer a personal contribution to research; however, there are barriers to recruiting for an RTD program. Physicians must reassure the patient that their treatment options and quality of care will not be compromised due (...) to participating in RTD. In this commentary we discuss how theories of altruism may explain cancer patients’ desire to participate in an RTD program, the ethical concerns of health care professionals and patients and the use of altruism as a recruitment strategy. We offer recommendations for examining the cultural and ethical climate of the institution prior to initiating such a program such as examining the relationship of healthcare professionals and patients, identifying ethical concerns, and examining ways to promote acceptance and buy-in across professionals, patients, and families. (shrink)

A sentence of first-order logic is satisfiable if it is true in some structure, and finitely satisfiable if it is true in some finite structure. The question arises as to whether there exists an algorithm for determining whether a given formula of first-order logic is satisfiable, or indeed finitely satisfiable. This question was answered negatively in 1936 by Church and Turing (for satisfiability) and in 1950 by Trakhtenbrot (for finite satisfiability).In contrast, the satisfiability and finite satisfiability problems are algorithmically solvable (...) for restricted subsets---or, as we say, fragments---of first-order logic, a fact which is today of considerable interest in Computer Science. This book provides an up-to-date survey of the principal axes of research, charting the limits of decision in first-order logic and exploring the trade-off between expressive power and complexity of reasoning. Divided into three parts, the book considers for which fragments of first-order logic there is an effective method for determining satisfiability or finite satisfiability. Furthermore, if these problems are decidable for some fragment, what is their computational complexity? Part I focusses on fragments defined by restricting the set of available formulas. Topics covered include the Aristotelian syllogistic and its relatives, the two-variable fragment, the guarded fragment, the quantifier-prefix fragments and the fluted fragment. Part II investigates logics with counting quantifiers. Starting with De Morgan's numerical generalization of the Aristotelian syllogistic, we proceed to the two-variable fragment with counting quantifiers and its guarded subfragment, explaining the applications of the latter to the problem of query answering in structured data. Part III concerns logics characterized by semantic constraints, limiting the available interpretations of certain predicates. Taking propositional modal logic and graded modal logic as our cue, we return to the satisfiability problem for two-variable first-order logic and its relatives, but this time with certain distinguished binary predicates constrained to be interpreted as equivalence relations or transitive relations. The work finishes, slightly breaching the bounds of first-order logic proper, with a chapter on logics interpreted over trees. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes References.

In her latest book _Spying Through a Glass Darkly: The Ethics of Espionage and Counter-Intelligence_, Cécile Fabre suggests that the deception of third parties during an infiltration operation can be justified as a foreseen but unintended side effect. In this essay, I criticize this view. Such deception, I argue, is better justified paternalistically as a means of preventing third parties from becoming wrongful threats. In the second part of the article, I show that Fabre ignores an important moral complication in (...) deception operations where agents intentionally allow others to be harmed as a means of protecting a secret. I argue that intentionally allowing harm to others as a means is a particularly problematic mode of agency which must be addressed in a normative account of espionage. (shrink)

"Challenging myths about the power-filled life"--Cover.

Several authors have suggested that a more parsimonious and conceptually elegant treatment of everyday mereological and topological reasoning can be obtained by adopting a spatial ontology in which regions, not points, are the primitive entities. This paper challenges this suggestion for mereotopological reasoning in two-dimensional space. Our strategy is to define a mereotopological language together with a familiar, point-based interpretation. It is proposed that, to be practically useful, any alternative region-based spatial ontology must support the same sentences in our language (...) as this familiar interpretation. This proposal has the merit of transforming a vague, open-ended question about ontologies for practical mereotopological reasoning into a precise question in model theory. We show that (a version of) the familiar interpretation is countable and atomic, and therefore prime. We conclude that useful alternative ontologies of the plane are, if anything, less parsimonious than the one which they are supposed to replace. (shrink)

Abstract: There is a long tradition of trying to analyze art either by providing a definition (essentialism) or by tracing its contours as an indefinable, open concept (anti-essentialism). Both art essentialists and art anti-essentialists share an implicit assumption of art concept monism. This article argues that this assumption is a mistake. Species concept pluralism—a well-explored position in philosophy of biology—provides a model for art concept pluralism. The article explores the conditions under which concept pluralism is appropriate, and argues that they (...) obtain for art. Art concept pluralism allows us to recognize that different art concepts are useful for different purposes, and what has been feuding definitions can be seen as characterizations of specific art concepts. (shrink)

This groundbreaking book is the first to provide a critical overview of the relationship between contemporary ceramics and curatorial practice in museum culture. Ceramic objects form a major part of museum collections, with connections to anthropology, archaeology and other disciplines that engage with the cultural and social history of humankind. In recent years museums have provided the impetus for cutting-edge artistic practice, either as a response to particular collections, or as part of exhibitions. But the question of how museums have (...) staged contemporary ceramics and how ceramic artists respond to museum collections has not been the subject of published research to date. This book examines how ceramic artists have, over the last decade, begun to animate museum collections in new ways, and reflects on the impact that these new initiatives have had in the broad context of visual culture. Ceramics in the Expanded Field is the culmination of a three-year AHRC funded project, and reflects its major findings. It brings together leading international voices in the field of ceramics, research undertaken throughout the project and papers delivered at the concluding conference. By examining the benefits and constraints of interventions and the dialogue between ceramics and museological practice, this book will bring focus to an area of museology that has not yet been theorized, and will contribute to policy debates and art practice. (shrink)

We can't understand ourselves or our world without knowing God. Designed for formal or informal study, this book explores God's plan, works, and attributes and answers key questions about him.

The numerically definite syllogistic is the fragment of English obtained by extending the language of the classical syllogism with numerical quantifiers. The numerically definite relational syllogistic is the fragment of English obtained by extending the numerically definite syllogistic with predicates involving transitive verbs. This paper investigates the computational complexity of the satisfiability problem for these fragments. We show that the satisfiability problem (= finite satisfiability problem) for the numerically definite syllogistic is strongly NP-complete, and that the satisfiability problem (= finite (...) satisfiability problem) for the numerically definite relational syllogistic is NEXPTIME-complete, but perhaps not strongly so. We discuss the related problem of probabilistic (propositional) satisfiability, and thereby demonstrate the incompleteness of some proof-systems that have been proposed for the numerically definite syllogistic. (shrink)

An appeal to the inexplicable has always been a favourite tactic of the Supernaturalist; and even today those Supernaturalists that remain seem to derive some comfort from it. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, the orthodox Protestant apologetic in this country laid great stress on the ‘inexplicable’ events allegedly associated with Christ's life as anthenticating the truths of revelation. A more general thesis has been put forward as often, and even more often assumed: that the occurrence of inexplicable (...) events demonstrates the reality of a ‘spiritual’ realm. And in current literature we can find it claimed that the hegemony of science or the tenability of materialism is threatened by those inexplicabilities which are now known as the phenomena of ESP. (shrink)

A critical note on Christopher Bartel and Jack M. C. Kwong, ‘Pluralism, Eliminativism, and the Definition of Art’, Estetika 58 (2021): 100–113. Art pluralism is the view that there is no single, correct account of what art is. Instead, art is understood through a plurality of art concepts and with considerations that are different for particular arts. Although avowed pluralists have retained the word ‘art’ in their discussions, it is natural to ask whether the considerations that motivate pluralism should lead (...) us to abandon art talk altogether; that is, should pluralism lead to eliminativism? This paper addresses arguments both for and against this move. We ultimately argue that pluralism allows one to retain the word ‘art’, if one wants it, but only in a loose, conversational sense. The upshot of pluralism is that talk of art in general cannot be asked to do theoretical and philosophical work. (shrink)

By a fragment of a natural language, we understand a collection of sentences forming a naturally delineated subset of that language and equipped with a semantics commanding the general assent of its native speakers. By the semantic complexity of such a fragment, we understand the computational complexity of deciding whether any given set of sentences in that fragment represents a logically possible situation. In earlier papers by the first author, the semantic complexity of various fragments of English involving at most (...) transitive verbs was investigated. The present paper considers various fragments of English involving ditransitive verbs and determines their semantic complexity. (shrink)

Josiah Royce (1855?1916) was, in addition to being the pre-eminent metaphysician at the turn of the 19th century in the USA, regarded as ?a logician of the first rank?. At the time of his death in 1916, he had begun a substantial and potentially revolutionary project in logic in which he sought to show the connection between logic and ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics. His system was developed in light of the work of Bertrand Russell and A. B. Kempe and aimed (...) to include Russell's logic as a subsystem. This more comprehensive logic, which Royce called system Σ, brought together an analysis of the character of experience and knowledge with the principles which served to organize interests and direct actions. The result was to be a logical theory framed by ?a profoundly ethical motive as well as a genuinely intellectual one? that would serve as ?a theory of the way in which activities must go on if they go on at all?. This paper examines three stages in the development of Royce's logical system, its relation to the logic of Principia Mathematica, and prospects for its further development. (shrink)

Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development seeks to explore and develop Leon Trotsky's concept of uneven and combined development. In particular, it aims to adapt the political and historical analysis which originated in Trotsky's Russia for use within the contemporary field of world literature. As such, it draws together the work of scholars from both the field of international relations and the field of literature and the arts. This collection will therefore be of particular interest to anyone who is interested (...) in new ways of understanding world literary texts, or interested in new ways of applying Trotsky's revolutionary politics to the contemporary world order. (shrink)

Most of the literature on teaching within nursing education presents teaching and learning strategies as unproblematic and widely generalized across contexts, content, learners, and educators. We argue that to be truly effective, teaching strategies must be harmonious with instructor’s beliefs, intentions, and actions. In this paper, we introduce the notion of a plurality of effective teaching based on five different ‘perspectives on teaching’– each composed of different beliefs, intentions, actions, and strategies and illustrated by cases from nursing education. We propose (...) that this foundational conceptualization provides a base from which nurse educators can (1) communicate across differences of philosophical perspective and intent; and (2) critically reflect on their educational practices. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction A Cautious Set‐Up Minimal Authorship (of Sorts) Minimal Authorship (of the Comic Sort) Some Work for a Theory of Comic Authorship Illustrating Robust Comic Authorship Comic Authorship of the McCloudian Sort Appropriation Cases Commission Cases Collaborative Cases Non‐Collaborative Cases Final Thoughts Notes References.

In the human quest for meaning, work occupies a central position. Most adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work, which often serves as a primary source of purpose, belongingness, and identity. In light of these benefits to employees and their organizations, organizational scholars are increasingly interested in understanding the factors that contribute to meaningful work, such as the design of jobs, interpersonal relationships, and organizational missions and cultures. In a separate line of inquiry, scholars of business ethics (...) have examined meaningful work as a moral issue concerning the management of others and ourselves, exploring whether there are definable characteristics of meaningful work to which we have moral rights, and whether there are moral duties to ourselves and others to fulfill those rights. In this article, we examine contemporary developments in both disciplines about the nature, causes, and consequences of meaningful work; we explore linkages between these disciplines; and we offer conclusions and research opportunities regarding the interface of ethical and organizational perspectives on performing and providing meaningful work. (shrink)

A spatial logic is a formal language interpreted over any class of structures featuring geometrical entities and relations, broadly construed. In the past decade, spatial logics have attracted much attention in response to developments in such diverse fields as Artificial Intelligence, Database Theory, Physics, and Philosophy. The aim of this handbook is to create, for the first time, a systematic account of the field of spatial logic. The book comprises a general introduction, followed by fourteen chapters by invited authors. Each (...) chapter provides a self-contained overview of its topic, describing the principal results obtained to date, explaining the methods used to obtain them, and listing the most important open problems. Jointly, these contributions constitute a comprehensive survey of this rapidly expanding subject. (shrink)

John Henry Newman is widely acknowledged to be an important theologian. However Newman commentators suggest that his work has received little recognition by philosophers. The general consensus has been that until the latter part of the twentieth century Newman has been an isolated philosophical figure. This essay offers an historical re-evaluation of Newman's philosophical reception in order to explore whether or not his significance has been underestimated. The historical method is used in the analysis and assessment of this question. The (...) study therefore probes the general philosophical reaction to Newman's work in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In doing so the essay offers an historical investigation and re-evaluation of the claims of Newman having a negligible philosophical legacy. (shrink)

BackgroundIn June 2019, the Australian state of Victoria joined the growing number of jurisdictions around the world to have legalised some form of voluntary assisted dying. A discourse of safety was prominent during the implementation of the Victorian legislation.Main textIn this paper, we analyse the ethical relationship between legislative “safeguards” and equal access. Drawing primarily on Ruger’s model of equal access to health care services, we analyse the Victorian approach to voluntary assisted dying in terms of four dimensions: horizontal equity, (...) patient agency, high quality care, and supportive social norms. We argue that some provisions framed as safeguards in the legislation create significant barriers to equal access for eligible patients.ConclusionsWhile safety is undoubtedly ethically important, we caution against an overemphasis on safeguarding in voluntary assisted dying legislation given the implications for equal access. (shrink)

This book is a defense of political liberalism as a feminist liberalism. A novel and restrictive account of public reason is defended. Then it is argued that political liberalism's core commitments restrict reasonable conceptions of justice to those that secure genuine, substantive equality for women and other marginalized groups.

The topic of epistemic injustice in global health ethics is complex, important and vast. While presenting as nuanced and complete a picture of the challenge as we possibly could, we were acutely aware of our positionality and how it gave us a certain viewpoint that would need to be expanded by others with different positions and experiences. We were, therefore, delighted to receive the collected commentaries by Atuire,1 Abimbola,2 Frimpong-Mansoh,3 Nyamnjoh and Ewuoso,4 Tangwa,5 Ambrogi et al.6 We would like to (...) thank these authors for furthering our account by raising questions, pointing out gaps or complementing our analysis. The points raised by these authors—and many points that will undoubtedly be raised by others in future—should be critically engaged with as we collectively define and work towards a more epistemically just global health ethics. Specifically, two points stand out. First, Frimpong-Mansoh accurately diagnoses our ambiguity about being drawn into debates about relativism in bioethics. We …. (shrink)

Gilbertson, Savulescu, Oakley and Wilkinson propose extending the availability of terminal sedation (TS) to patients with intractable pain and/or suffering who are expected to live more than 2 weeks (hence the designation of extended TS (ETS)) and to patients whose values are known but who do not have decision-making capacity.1 Their plan is worthy of serious consideration: it is, after all, based on the fundamental and well-recognised medical ethical values of patient autonomy and beneficence. But, even when restricted to jurisdictions (...) that allow assisted dying, the ETS proposal raises three important issues. When the authors speak of ‘assisted dying’ and of ‘Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAS)’, they refer specifically to the laws in Australia and similar ones in New Zealand, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain and Canada that permit clinicians either to provide patients with lethal medications for self-administration (formerly called physician-assisted suicide) or to administer lethal medications themselves (voluntary euthanasia). First, the authors distinguish—as do many patients and the public—between sedation to unconsciousness and death. Indeed, as the authors point out, the difference seems obvious: unconsciousness can be reversed, death cannot. Yet in the case of TS, this may be …. (shrink)

The doctrine of the moral equality of combatants holds that combatants on either side of a war have equal moral status, even if one side is fighting a just war while the other is not. This chapter examines arguments that have been offered for and against this doctrine, including the collectivist position famously articulated by Walzer and McMahan’s influential individualist critique. We also explore collectivist positions that have rejected the moral equality doctrine and arguments that some individualists have offered in (...) its favor. We defend a non-categorical version of the moral equality doctrine, according to which combatants on either side of a just war sometimes (but not always) have equal moral status. On our view, some degree of culpability is necessary for liability, and non-culpable combatants may therefore sometimes remain non-liable even when they fight for an unjust cause. (shrink)

This target article focuses on dynamics that arise in three typical ethically complex cases in which psychiatric consultations are requested by physicians: a dying patient refuses life-prolonging treatment, an uncooperative patient demands to be allowed to go outside and smoke, and an angry patient demands to be admitted to the hospital. The discussion canvasses what is at stake morally and clinically in each of these cases and explores clinician–patient interactions, dynamics in relationships between consulting physicians and consultant psychiatrists, patient transference, (...) and physician countertransference. The article defines legalism and countertransference and argues that an ethically and clinically important consequence of these phenomena for patients is distortion of clinicians' perceptions of patients' decisions and vulnerabilities. The discussion also describes how legalism and countertransference adversely affect how clinicians treat their psychiatrist colleagues. Finally, the article suggests how the effects of legalism and countertransference can be mitigated. (shrink)

In the Australian state of Victoria, legislation allowing voluntary assisted dying (VAD) passed through parliament in November 2017. There was then an eighteen-month period before the start date for patient access to VAD, referred to as the “implementation period.” The implementation period was intended to allow time for the relevant government department and affected organizations to develop processes before the Act came into effect in June 2019. This qualitative interview study investigates the perspectives of a multidisciplinary sample of twelve clinicians (...) from a single metropolitan hospital during this implementation period. Maximum variation sampling was utilized to ensure breadth across discipline (medical, nursing, allied health), speciality, and stated level of support for the VAD legislation. Four key themes were identified from the interview data: preparing for the unknown, ethical diversity within the organization, building a respectful culture, and concerns about the inability of the legislated approach to capture clinical nuances. Overall, these clinicians’ workplace experiences during the implementation period were shaped by the ethical diversity within their organization and a sense of uncertainty about how the VAD legislation would integrate with the practical realities of their clinical setting. The concept of “ethical diversity” could be a useful one for supporting staff in an organization during a VAD implementation period. (shrink)

In Volume 33:1 of the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, a system for diagramming syllogistic inferences using straight line segments is presented by Englebretsen. In light of recent research on the representational power of diagrammatic representation systems by the authors, we point out some problems with the proposal, and indeed, with any proposal for representing logically possible situations diagrammatically. We shall first outline the proposed linear diagrammatic system of Englebretsen, and then show by means of counterexamples that it is (...) inadequate as a representation scheme for general logical inferences (the task for which the system is intended). We also show that modifications to the system fail to remedy the problems. The considerations we present are not limited to the particular proposal of Englebretsen; we thus draw a more general moral about the use of spatial relations in representation systems. (shrink)

Generating group interaction is a necessary part of teaching philosophy, but there are many obstacles to creating it in a traditional classroom. We propose that philosophy courses can be improved by turning to hybrid models that integrate classroom discussion with online message boards, or forums. Using anecdotes and a comprehensive survey, we argue that using forums helps instructors overcome time constraints in the classroom, helps some students overcome anxiety over contributing, improves discussion, reduces the need to review, and gives instructors (...) a better view of how their students encounter philosophy. We also provide examples of how to use forums and forum assignments. (shrink)

Two recent films by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, David Mamet, can provide opportunities for observing student reactions to ethically troublesome situations and for discussing business-communication ethics in the classroom. The key question addressed in this article is whether business-communication courses, for example, those in public relations, can encourage students to make the "metaphoric leap" and apply Mamet's messages to class readings and discussions on ethical problems or challenges. Through showing two films in their entirety and conducting focus groups among upper-level undergraduates, (...) the authors find that there is instructional value in using Mamet's films to discuss ethics in business-related settings. (shrink)