Milton Friedman's article, The Social Responsibility of Business Is To Increase Its Profits, owes its appeal to the rhetorical devices of simplicity, authority, and finality. More careful consideration reveals oversimplification and ambiguity that conceals empirical errors and logical fallacies. It is false that business does, or would, operate exclusively in economic terms, that managers concentrate obsessively on profitability, and that ethics can be marginalized. These errors reflect basic contradictions: an apolitical political base, altruistic agents of selfishness, and good deriving (...) from greed. (shrink)

Political philosophers have recently begun to take seriously methodological questions concerning what a theoretical examination of political ideals is suppose to accomplish and how effective theorising in ideal theory is in securing those aims. Andrew Mason and G.A. Cohen, for example, believe that the fundamental principles of justice are logically independent of issues of feasibility and questions about human nature. Their position contrasts sharply with political theorists like John Dunn and Joseph Carens who believe that normative theorising must be integrated (...) with an appreciation of the empirical realities of one’s society. Rather than bracket questions of feasibility and human nature, empirically-oriented political theorists believe that real, non- ideal considerations must be taken seriously when deriving normative theories of justice.1 And some justice-theorists, most notably John Rawls, attempt to. (shrink)

Originally published in 1987, Colin Campbell’s classic treatise on the sociology of consumption has become one of the most widely cited texts in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and the history of ideas. In the thirty years since its publication, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism has lost none of its impact. If anything, the growing commodification of society, the increased attention to consumer studies and marketing, and the ever-proliferating range of purchasable goods and services have made (...) Campbell’s rereading of Weber more urgent still. As Campbell uncovers how and why a consumer-oriented society emerged from a Europe that once embodied Weber’s Protestant ethic, he delivers a rich theorization of the modern logics and values structuring consumer behavior. This new edition, featuring an extended Introduction from the author and an Afterword from researcher Karin M. Ekström, makes clear how this foundational work aligns with contemporary theory in cultural sociology, while also serving as major influence on consumer studies. (shrink)

According to the logical pluralism of Beall and Restall, there are several distinct relations of logical consequence. Some critics argue that logical pluralism suffers from what I call the collapse problem: that despite its intention to articulate a radically pluralistic doctrine about logic, the view unintentionally collapses into logical monism. In this paper, I propose a contextualist resolution of the collapse problem. This clarifies the mechanism responsible for a plurality of logics and handles the motivating data better than the original (...) view. It is a major improvement that should be embraced by all logical pluralists. (shrink)

There is an active debate within the field of phonology concerning the cognitive status of substantive phonetic factors such as ease of articulation and perceptual distinctiveness. A new framework is proposed in which substance acts as a bias, or prior, on phonological learning. Two experiments tested this framework with a method in which participants are first provided highly impoverished evidence of a new phonological pattern, and then tested on how they extend this pattern to novel contexts and novel sounds. Participants (...) were found to generalize velar palatalization (e.g., the change from [k] as in keep to [t⌢∫S] as in cheap) in a way that accords with linguistic typology, and that is predicted by a cognitive bias in favor of changes that relate perceptually similar sounds. Velar palatalization was extended from the mid front vowel context (i.e., before [e] as in cape) to the high front vowel context (i.e., before [i] as in keep), but not vice versa. The key explanatory notion of perceptual similarity is quantified with a psychological model of categorization, and the substantively biased framework is formalized as a conditional random field. Implications of these results for the debate on substance, theories of phonological generalization, and the formalization of similarity are discussed. (shrink)

An alienated young man attempts to find himself through an examination of modern philosophy.

The goal of neuroeconomics is a mathematical theory of how the brain implements decisions, that is tied to behaviour. This theory is likely to show some decisions for which rational-choice theory is a good approximation, to provide a deeper level of distinction among competing behavioural alternatives, and to provide empirical inspiration for economics to incorporate more nuanced ideas about endogeneity of preferences, individual difference, emotions, endogeneous regulation of states, and so forth. I also address some concerns about rhetoric and practical (...) epistemology. Neuroscience articles are necessarily speculative and the science has proceeded rapidly because of that rhetorical convention. Single-study papers are encouraged and are necessarily limited in what can be inferred, so the sturdiest cumulation of results, and the best guide forward, comes in review journals which compile results and suggest themes. The potential of neuroeconomics is in combining the clearest experimental paradigms and statistical methods in economics, with the unprecedented capacity to measure a range of neural and cognitive activity that economists like Edgeworth, Fisher and Ramsey daydreamed about but did not have. (shrink)

Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) holds that the senses, imagination, and passions aim at survival and the satisfaction of the body’s needs, rather than truth or the good of the mind. Each of these faculties makes a distinctive and, indeed, an indispensable contribution to the preservation of life. Commentators have largely focused on how the senses keep us alive. By comparison, the imagination and passions have been neglected. In this paper, I reconstruct Malebranche’s account of how the imagination contributes to the preservation (...) of the body by compensating for the limitations of the senses. First, the imagination represents non-actual states of affairs, such as probable or possible future states. Second, the imagination forges new and often helpful associations based on past experiences. Third, the imagination (mis)represents that objects will cause pleasure and pain, thereby imbuing them with emotional significance they would otherwise lack. Together, these features flesh out Malebranche’s view that the imagination is necessary for the preservation of life. (shrink)

In this article I critically examine Adam Moore’s claim that the threshold for overriding intangible property rights and privacy rights is higher, in relation to genetic enhancement techniques and sensitive personal information, than is commonly suggested. I argue that Moore fails to see how important advances in genetic research are to social justice. Once this point is emphasised one sees that the issue of how formidable overriding these rights are is open to much debate. There are strong reasons, on grounds (...) of social justice, for thinking the importance of such rights is likely to be diminished in the interests of ensuring a more just distribution of genes essential to pursuing what John Rawls calls a person’s ”rational plan of life’. (shrink)

Owen Barfield: a conversation with Shirley Sugerman -- To Owen Barfield -- Cecil Harwood: Owen Barfield -- Norman O. Brown: on interpretation -- Howard Nemerov: exceptions and rules -- Studies in polarity -- David Bohm: imagination, fancy, insight, and reason in the process of thought -- R.H. Barfield: darwinism -- Richard A. Hocks: "novelty" in polarity to "the most admitted truths" : tradition and the individual talent in S.T. Coleridge and T.S. Eliot -- Robert O. Preyer: the burden of culture (...) and the dialectic of literature -- R.K. Meiners: on modern poetry, poetic consciousness, and the madness of poets -- Paul Piehler: Milton's iconoclasm -- Colin Hardie: two descents into the underworld -- Lionel Adey: enjoyment, contemplation, and hierarchy in Hamlet -- G.B. Tennyson: etymology and meaning -- R.J. Reilly: a note on Barfield, romanticism, and time -- Shirley Sugerman: an "essay" on Coleridge on imagination -- Clyde S. Kilby: the ugly and the evil -- Mary Caroline Richards: the vessel and the fire -- The works of Owen Barfield -- G.B. Tennyson: a bibliography of the works of Owen Barfield. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOscar Larsson’s sympathetic critique of constructivist institutionalism calls for a clarification of my understanding of subjectivity, inter-subjectivity, and their mutual interdependence. That interdependence lies at the heart of any genuinely constructivist approach, just as the interdependence of structure and agency lies at the heart of any genuinely institutionalist approach. As such, I reject the charge of subjectivism just as I would that of voluntarism. Building on the social ontology of Berger and Luckmann, we can distinguish between subjectivity and intra-subjectivity and (...) proceed to show how the latter implies a notion of inter-subjectivity. An example of the social construction of a political crisis shows that social facts are made and remade through a fusion of inter- and intra-subjectivities. (shrink)

Imagination and idealism are particularly important creative epistemic virtues for the medical sciences if we hope to improve the health of the world’s ageing population. To date, imagination and idealism within the medical sciences have been dominated by a paradigm of disease control, a paradigm which has realised significant, but also limited, success. Disease control proved particularly successful in mitigating the early-life mortality risks from infectious diseases, but it has proved less successful when applied to the chronic diseases of late (...) life (like cancer). The time is ripe for the emergence and prominence of a supplementary medical research paradigm, the paradigm of ‘healthy ageing’ which prioritises the goal of rate (of ageing) control rather than disease control. This is the difference between extending the human healthspan versus extending survival by managing (or trying to eliminate) the multi-morbidities, frailty and disability currently prevalent in late life. The idealism of the disease control paradigm is myopic because it ignores the health constraints imposed by the inborn ageing process itself, a biological reality which is already inflicting significant economic and disease burdens on the world’s ageing populations. Unless the medical sciences retard the rate of biological ageing, these problems will continue to be amplified as larger numbers of persons survive into late life. (shrink)

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. What values and principles should inform the regulation of new human genetic technologies? To adequately answer this question we need an account of genetic justice. That is, an account of what constitutes a fair distribution of genetic endowments that influence our expected life-time acquisition of natural primary goods. These are goods that every rational person has an interest in. The decisions we now make regarding the regulation of human genetic technologies will determine how quickly and (...) effectively these benefits are brought into existence, as well as who receives these benefits. In this paper I argue that a necessary condition of a defensible account of genetic justice is that it must track genetic complexity. Genetic complexity encompasses phenomena such as polygenetic traits, gene-gene interactions and complex environmental influences. More specifically, I argue that pluralistic prioritarianism is a theoretical position well-suited for tracking genetic complexity. (shrink)

While not underestimating the value of useful knowledge and skills, it is suggested that education should also develop the subjective self of the learner. A distinction is drawn between an ‘additive’ view of education which simply furnishes the individual with knowledge and skills and a ‘transformative’ concept which concerns itself with changes to more central parts of the learner's self. In developing a concept of the subjective self, reference is made to the Enlightenment notion of the autonomous rational self and (...) the interpersonal or cultural self of the Symbolic Interactionists and Communitarians. Particular attention, however, is given to Heidegger's three categories of entities experienced by the phenomenological self: the ‘present at hand’, the ‘ready to hand’ and those entities with whom we share the experience of ‘being with’. An attempt is made to interpret important aspects of education in terms of the development of learners' growing knowledge and deepening understanding of these three kinds of entity and the relation in which they stand to them. (shrink)

Explains Popper's views on natural and social science, ranging in Part I from metaphysical considerations to his interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics, and in Part II from the errors of historicism and holism to the roles of theoretical models, institutions, traditions and history.

Plato’s Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman exhibit several related dialectical methods relevant to Platonic education: maieutic in Theaetetus, bifurcatory division in Sophist and Statesman, and non-bifurcatory division in Statesman, related to the ‘god-given’ method in Philebus. I consider the nature of each method through the letter or element paradigm, used to reflect on each method. At issue are the element’s appearances in given contexts, its fitness for communing with other elements like it in kind, and its own nature defined through its (...) relations to others. These represent stages of inquiry for the Platonic student inquiring into the sources of knowledge. (shrink)

The dichotomy between virtue and self‐interest or pleasure is held to face modern moral educators with a conflict between the interest of society and that of their pupils, as well as presenting obvious motivational difficulties. Three possibilities for mitigating this conflict are offered. First, it is argued that virtue is an essential constituent of our well‐being insofar as even undetected wickedness isolates us from others. Second, young people, alienated by the negative nature of conventional morality, may respond positively to certain (...) moral appeals in a way that is fulfilling and life‐enhancing. Third, it is argued that moral education which emphasises the rights of young people themselves alongside those of others would be both more reputable and more effective than that based on the opposition between virtue and self‐interest or pleasure. (shrink)

: This paper explores some of the challenges raised by human genetic interventions for debates about distributive justice, focusing on the challenges that face prioritarian theories of justice and their relation to the argument advanced by Ronald Lindsay elsewhere in this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal. Also examined are the implications of germ-line genetic enhancements for intergenerational justice, and an argument is given against Fritz Allhoff's conclusion, found in this issue as well, that such enhancements are morally (...) permissible if and only if they augment primary goods. (shrink)

Property rights are the rules governing ownership in society. This Element offers an analytical framework to understand the origins and consequences of property rights. It conceptualizes of the political economy of property rights as a concern with the follow questions: What explains the origins of economic and legal property rights? What are the consequences of different property rights institutions for wealth creation, conservation, and political order? Why do property institutions change? Why do legal reforms relating to property rights such as (...) land redistribution and legal titling improve livelihoods in some contexts but not others? In analyzing property rights, the authors emphasize the complementarity of insights from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, including Austrian economics, public choice, and institutional economics, including the Bloomington School of institutional analysis and political economy. (shrink)

This article evaluates the gains but also the losses of the set-theoretical ontology Badiou develops in Being and Event, in order to stress the importance of the shift to a concern with appearance and difference in Logics of Worlds. It is argued that this shift suggests a possible rapprochement between Badiou’s philosophy of the event on the one hand and postcolonial critical race theory on the other. This is explored through an evental reading of the so-called Morant Bay Revolt that (...) took place in Jamaica in 1865. The article closes by exploring some of the overlaps between Badiou’s development of an “objective phenomenology” in Logics of Worlds, and Frantz Fanon’s elaboration of a phenomenology of race in Black Skin, White Masks. (shrink)

This article evaluates the gains but also the losses of the set-theoretical ontology Badiou develops in Being and Event, in order to stress the importance of the shift to a concern with appearance and difference in Logics of Worlds. It is argued that this shift suggests a possible rapprochement between Badiou’s philosophy of the event on the one hand and postcolonial critical race theory on the other. This is explored through an evental reading of the so-called Morant Bay Revolt that (...) took place in Jamaica in 1865. The article closes by exploring some of the overlaps between Badiou’s development of an “objective phenomenology” in Logics of Worlds, and Frantz Fanon’s elaboration of a phenomenology of race in Black Skin, White Masks. (shrink)

By far the most common term in Professor Jeffner's paper is ‘understanding’, and it is clearly with understanding that he is primarily concerned. However, at the beginning of his paper he talks of understanding and explanation, and at least in the case of his third kind of reality he clearly sees understanding and explanation as intimately related. In this he is surely right. I myself would say that understanding is cognizing a manifold as a single whole in all its internal (...) relationships, and this ties up with what Jeffner has to say about Gestalts on pp. 220–221. And explanation, as I hope to show, depends upon or presupposes the understanding that flows from the possession of a Gestalt . However, Jeffner adopts Hempel and Oppenheim's deductivist account of scientific explanation, and I believe this account to be fundamentally mistaken, and to have serious consequences for his argument. One does not achieve explanation merely by finding a set of empirically true premises from which a proposition expressing the explanandum can be deduced – if that were so one would explain Socrates' mortality by pointing out that everything snub-nosed is mortal, and that Socrates was snub-nosed. It is interesting, in this respect, to compare Hempel's account of explanation with that of Aristotle. There are substantial similarities between the two accounts, but there is one fundamental difference. Hempel insists that there can be no explanation unless events are connected in some way, and so rejects, for example, a mere sequential narrative as constituting an explanation. (shrink)

Deliberative democrats conceive of the democratic process as a transformative process, one that requires citizens to participate in authentic deliberation with others rather than engaging in the strategic behaviour characteristic of existing democratic practices. Current practices often pit factions of society against one another in a struggle to win or retain political power. The moralized conception of democracy defended by deliberative democrats is one that emphasizes the importance of being open-minded, reasonable and accommodating. These civic virtues are necessary if we (...) are to treat others as equals when decisions are made concerning the use of political power, power that will influence the life prospects of everyone. Deliberative democrats are thus concerned with the normative legitimacy of a democratic decision; this legitimacy depends ‘on the degree to which those affected by it have been included in the decision-making processes and have had the opportunity to influence the outcomes’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLearning procedures such as mere exposure, evaluative conditioning, and approach/avoidance training have been used to establish evaluative responses as measured by the Implicit Association...