Four ethical values — maximizing benefits, treating equally, promoting and rewarding instrumental value, and giving priority to the worst off — yield six specific recommendations for allocating medical resources in the Covid-19 pandemic: maximize benefits; prioritize health workers; do not allocate on a first-come, first-served basis; be responsive to evidence; recognize research participation; and apply the same principles to all Covid-19 and non–Covid-19 patients.

"Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false belief. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it irrelevant to (...) many people whether they believe true things or not? In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively."–Publisher’s description. (shrink)

This chapter examines the notion of philosophical truth that Adorno, in Negative Dialectics, believes to be possible by means of his changed conception of philosophy. What that examination finds is that philosophical truth, as Adorno recommends it, is realized through “singular” philosophical experiences. The critical question is that of how the truths that are conveyed through “singularity” can be understood to have persuasive force over us, Adorno's readers. Also examined is the relationship between the philosophically authentic “singularity” approach and the (...) critical endeavors evident, in the same book, through Adorno's engagements with a range of figures from the modern philosophical tradition. (shrink)

This guide leads readers systematically through the arguments of Mary Shepherd's two books. Chapters 1-4 cover the arguments in the Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824), where Shepherd argues that causal principles can be known by reason to be necessary truths and that causal inferences can be rationally justified. Shepherd's primary target in this work is Hume, but she also addresses the views of Thomas Brown and William Lawrence. Shepherd considered her second book, Essays on the Perception (...) of an External Universe, and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (1827), to be an extension of the earlier project on causation; here she appeals to the causal principles established in the first book to argue that we can know through reason that an external world of continually-existing objects must exist independently of us, as the causes of our sensations. Chapter 5 of this Guide addresses Shepherd's accounts of sensation and reasoning; Chapters 6-9 lead the reader through the arguments of the Essays, as well laying out Shepherd's views on skepticism and Berkeleyan idealism, her accounts of mind and body, her philosophy of religion, and the solutions she offers to two puzzles about vision. (shrink)

Episodic memory is memory for past events. It’s characteristically associated with an experience of ‘mentally replaying’ one’s experiences in the mind’s eye. This biological phenomenon has inspired the development of several ‘experience replay’ algorithms in AI. In this chapter, I ask whether experience replay algorithms might shed light on a puzzle about episodic memory’s function: what does episodic memory contribute to the cognitive systems in which it is found? I argue that experience replay algorithms can serve as idealized models of (...) episodic memory for the purposes of addressing this question. Taking the DQN algorithm as a case study, I suggest that these algorithms provide some support for mnemonic accounts, on which episodic memory’s function lies in the storage, encoding and retrieval of information. By extending and adapting experience replay algorithms, we might gain further insight into episodic memory’s operations and contributions to cognition. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of previously published essays by Joseph Boyle, a crucial contributor to 20th century Catholic moral philosophy through his development of the New Classical Natural Law Theory.

This chapter contains sections titled: Hegel and Negative Dialectic Adorno's Disagreement with Hegel The Hegelianism of Adorno's Critical Theory: An Assessment.

Conversations in Metaphysics: Ever Ancient, Ever New introduces students to metaphysics through a set of contemporary readings based on classical metaphysical texts, thinkers, and concepts. It challenges readers to consider and seek possible answers to questions of metaphysics relative to human knowledge and the nature of reality. Organized historically, the readings endeavor to define and probe the concepts of metaphysics, existence, being, God, evil, and morality from antiquity to the present. The historical lens provides students with deeper context for the (...) contemporary readings and helps them establish a basic knowledge of metaphysics and its place within philosophical tradition. In later readings, students are invited to explore how metaphysics relates to religion, science, and technology in the modern world, as well as how metaphysics has shaped and continues to shape the reality of our universe. Rich with engaging material and endless opportunities for critical thought, Conversations in Metaphysics is an ideal ancillary text for courses in philosophy that call attention to metaphysics and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Story Song Prayer.

Plato's Bedroom is a book for people who want to be better at falling in love and being in love, with all the ecstasies and dangers erotic life can bring. It is also an inviting book for readers who are intellectually playful and up for a challenge, written with verve, and full of stories thoughtful persons will find to be mirrors of their own erotic selves. Drawing on Greek myth, Plato, Shakespeare, and a wide range of modern literature and movies, (...) the book gets Aphrodite talking with the young lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and lets us listen in on Woody Allen arguing with Othello. The author's account of how we seek, fear, avoid, and sometimes destroy love, is astonishingly fresh and engaging. Throughout its pages, one hears the voice of an engaging teacher and the conversation of a wise friend. In short, this is a work of practical philosophy, not scholarship, though only a scholar could have written it. It invites readers into a deep appreciation of timeless ancient wisdom through reflecting on their own powers for love and their susceptibility to desire. A distinctive feature of the book is the interweaving of two guiding threads in Plato's conception of erotic experience: androgyny, that is, the integration of masculine and feminine; and creativity, in both a sexual and a spiritual sense. These two aspects of Plato's erotic vision, androgyny and creativity, lead readers to a sense of grateful wonder and sacred awe at our own erotic powers. Our natural experience of romantic love, articulated so well by Plato, points toward a more explicitly religious interpretation of love's commitments and pleasures. (shrink)

In this paper we critically examine and seek to extend Philip Kitcher’s Ethical Project to weave together a distinctive naturalistic conception of how ethics came to occupy the place it does in our lives and how the existing ethical project should be revised and extended into the future. Although we endorse his insight that ethical progress is better conceived of as the improvement of an existing state than an incremental approach towards a fixed endpoint, we nonetheless go on to argue (...) that the metaethical apparatus Kitcher constructs around this creative metaethical proposal simply cannot do the work that he demands of it. The prospect of fundamental conflict between different functions of the ethical project requires Kitcher to appeal to a particular normative stance in order to judge specific changes in the ethical project to be genuinely progressive, and we argue that the virtues of continuity and coherence to which he appeals can only specify rather than justify the normative stance he favors. We conclude by suggesting an alternative approach for ethical naturalists that seems to us ultimately more promising than Kitcher’s own. (shrink)

Rethinking Cooperation with Evil advances the theological conversation on this topic from both speculative and practical vantage points. To facilitate his argument, Connors utilizes historical analyses that contrast Aquinas's method of moral reasoning with that of the casuist treatment of cooperation. Consequently, the book includes numerous case studies that will be of interest both to moral theologians and readers new to the topic.

The home birth movement in the United States is an alternative health belief system that promotes a model of pregnancy and childbirth contradictory to the conventional biomedical model. The alternative model stresses normalcy and non-intervention and is informed by an ideology that promotes individual authority and responsibility for health and health care. It is founded in an epistemological system that assigns primacy and goodness to the Natural, fuses moral and practical injunctions in the arena of health behavior, and valorizes subjective (...) as well as objective sources of knowledge. ( Natural = as found in nature without technical intervention). Differences of opinion with the conventional medical model of childbirth do not spring from misunderstanding of this model, but from disagreement with it. Members of this movement are typically educated, middle class, and white. Keywords: alternative childbirth, home birth, midwifery, out-of-hospital birth. (shrink)

The life of the man whose pamphlet "Common Sense" became one of the basic tracts of the American Revolution.

This article examines if bottom-up artificial moral agents are capable of making genuine moral judgements, specifically in light of David Hume’s is-ought problem. The latter underscores the notion that evaluative assertions could never be derived from purely factual propositions. Bottom-up technologies, on the other hand, are those designed via evolutionary, developmental, or learning techniques. In this paper, the nature of these systems is looked into with the aim of preliminarily assessing if there are good reasons to suspect that, on the (...) foundational level, their moral reasoning capabilities are prone to the no-ought-from-is thesis. The main hypothesis of the present work is that, by conceptually analysing the notion of bottom-up artificial moral agents, it would be revealed that their seeming moral judgements do not have proper philosophical basis. For one, the said kinds of artifacts arrive at the understanding of ethically-relevant ideas by means of culling data or facts from the environment. Thus, in relation to the is-ought problem, it may be argued that, even if bottom-up systems seem prima facie capable of generating apparent moral judgments, such are actually absent of good moral grounding, if not empty of any ethical value. (shrink)

Most non-human animals live in the wild and it is probable that suffering predominates in their lives due to natural events. Humans may at some point be able to engage in paradise engineering, or the modification of nature and animal organisms themselves, to improve the well-being of wild animals. We may, in other words, make nature 'red in tooth and claw' no more. We argue that this creates a tension between environmental ethics and animal ethics which is likely insurmountable. First, (...) we argue that concern for the environment can be compatible with helping individual wild animals but should see redesigning nature as morally impermissible. Second, we argue that if we are concerned with animal well-being, we may reject that we have a duty to help wild animals even to the point of redesigning nature, but we must nevertheless concede that it is permissible to do so under certain circumstances. We show how this permissibility can be derived from three animal rights views: Tom Regan's, a novel account inspired by Thomas Pogge and a libertarian approach to animal rights. (shrink)

Many human beings have considered the powers and the limits of human knowledge, but few have wondered about the power that the idea of knowledge has over us. Steven Connor's The Madness of Knowledge is the first book to investigate this emotional inner life of knowledge - the lusts, fantasies, dreams, and fears that the idea of knowing provokes. There are in-depth discussions of the imperious will to know, of Freud's epistemophilia (or love of knowledge), and the curiously insistent (...) links between madness, magical thinking, and the desire for knowledge. Connor also probes secrets and revelations, quarreling and the history of quizzes and "general knowledge," charlatanry and pretension, both the violent disdain and the sanctification of the stupid, as well as the emotional investment in the spaces and places of knowledge, from the study to the library. In an age of artificial intelligence, alternative facts, and mistrust of truth, The Madness of Knowledge offers an opulent, enlarging, and sometimes unnerving psychopathology of intellectual life. -- From Publisher, page 2 of cover. (shrink)

In Cajetan's Biblical Commentaries, Michael O'Connor argues that Cajetan's motive was more 'Catholic Reform' than 'Counter-Reformation', and that his method was a bold hybrid of scholasticism and Renaissance humanism, correcting the Vulgate's errors and expounding the text according to the literal sense.

This book argues that we misunderstand the importance of the topic of self-knowledge if we conceive of it merely as a puzzle about how we can know a special range of facts. Instead, we should regard it as an inducement to reflect on the nature of the relevant facts themselves, and of the kind of mind of which they hold. In this sense, the interest of the topic of self-knowledge is metaphysical rather than merely epistemological: its primary importance lies in (...) the light it can shed on what our minds are, rather than just on how we come to know certain facts about them. Appreciating this point puts us in a position to see a link between debates about how we know our own minds and the dark but intriguing idea that Jean-Paul Sartre expressed in his remark that, for a human being, "to exist is always to assume its being" in a way that implies "an understanding of human reality by itself." An implication of thus Sartrean standpoint on self-awareness, I argue, is that our primary form of self-awareness must be transparent: its focus must be, not on ourselves, but on aspects of the non-mental world presented in a way that is informed by an implicit self-awareness. Nevertheless-as I go on to argue-we are necessarily capable of transforming this implicit self-awareness, through reflection, into an explicit understanding of ourselves and our own mental states. (shrink)

In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and (...) the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: The Technologisation of the Social: A 21st-Century Megamachine? Paul O’Connor -/- 1. Communication as Theatricalisation: Self-Presentation in the Digital Age Arpad Szakolczai -/- 2. Parasites of the Social: Digital Disruptions of the Labour Market Tom Boland -/- 3. Possessed by Technology: The Metastasis of Absence Agnes Horvath -/- 4. Technologisation of the Social: Symbiosis, Parasitism, or Predation? Daniel Gati -/- 5. J'accuse Zéro: The Technology of Zero and the Making of a Personal Void Ray Griffin -/- 6. Digital Affordances and the Liminal Stephen Turner -/- 7. The Smart Womb: Digital Technologies and the Maze of Trickster Politics Marius Ion Benta -/- 8. Brave New Industry? The Dark Side of Dematerialisation and Industry 4.0 Thomas S.J. Smith -/- 9. ‘What Have You Caught?’: Nannycams and Hidden Cameras as Normalised Surveillance of the Intimate Janos Mark Szakolczai -/- 10. Coercive Visibility: Discipline in the Digital Public Arena Paul O’Connor -/- Conclusion: Is There a Way Out of the Technologisation of the Social? Marius Ion Benta. (shrink)

In her Pharmaceutical Freedom, Jessica Flanigan argues that antibiotics can be regulated consistent with her otherwise largely deregulatory view with respect to pharmaceuticals and recreational drugs. I contend in this essay that the reasons for justifying antibiotic regulation are reasons that can be offered to justify the regulation of many other drugs, both pharmaceutical and recreational. After laying out the specifics of Flanigan’s view, I suggest that it is amenable to the regulation of drugs like varenicline. Though such drugs can (...) legitimately improve the quality of a patient’s life by helping them quit smoking, they could be permissibly regulated if they expose others to impermissible risks. I then argue that recreational drugs like alcohol could be regulated using the same reasoning. In the penultimate section of this essay, I anticipate objections that one might have to my extension of arguments favoring antibiotic regulation to drugs correlated with aggression. Flanigan might find my extrapolation of her view as entirely plausible and accept that her view is relatively friendly to these regulations, or she might reconsider her antibiotic caveat if these regulations are overly paternalistic on her understanding. I conclude by briefly considering the benefits and drawbacks of adopting each view. (shrink)

This book offers current international initiatives, developed for working with children from "Birth to Eight" by a diverse group of noted professional authors. Their readings present an overview of early education as it evolved from the Froebelian kindergarten to today's practices in various Early Education settings around the globe. The international voices of the authors represent a balanced perspective of happenings in various nations and lend a conversational approach to each chapter. The chapters analyze the Universal Preschool Education movement promoted (...) by various countries, states, and agencies; examine model curriculum programs in a variety of teaching/learning settings; and identify directions the community can take in promoting effective early education programs. Particular attention is given to key issues and concerns faced by practitioners and families world-wide. Studies reveal successful approaches to bilingual education in a Chilean kindergarten, research findings on gender differences in primary school girls for learning science in Wales, literacy development strategies for teaching in UK multicultural classrooms and childhood centres, the process of integration special education with early childhood practices in China, and exemplars of community outreach to improve the well being of children through advocacy for governmental changes in early education policies and professional development. This book is for everyone interested in the well being of young children moving forward in a global age to meet the challenges of early citizenship in their world. (shrink)

There exists in academic medicine a core ethical issue that is seldom pursued: trainees are frequently not the best person in the operating room at a given intervention being performed, and yet as a profession we understand a fundamental need to afford them opportunities to perform. Academic centres are traditionally associated with a higher quality of care than non-academic centres, suggesting that practical measures exist within teaching hospitals that effectively mask the clinical discrepancies between trainees and their preceptors. Nonetheless, we (...) are bound by our ethical commitments as physicians to balance the obligations of care with the duty to teach. In order to ethically validate the model of ‘surgeon as teacher’, we propose that there must be a reconciliation of the tensions between traditional professional values in medicine with the constraints inherent in a time-bound utilitarian medical system. Ultimately, we must consciously accept that ensuring the longitudinal availability of skilled surgeons in society aligns more closely with our core ethical obligations as outlined in the social contract that medical professionals maintain with the general public than does the ethical demand to provide unreservedly individual-focused patient care. It is the duty of individual practitioners, as a necessity of lineage to maintain and fulfil our greater duties to society, to foster deontological relationships where possible within this utilitarian system while accepting short-term imperfection in our practice. There are no data in this manuscript. (shrink)

In their forthcoming article, ‘What makes a medical intervention invasive?’ De Marco, Simons, and colleagues explore the meaning and usage of the term ‘invasive’ in medical contexts. They describe a ‘Standard Account’, drawn from dictionary definitions, which defines invasiveness as ‘incision of the skin or insertion of an object into the body’. They then highlight cases wherein invasiveness is employed in a manner that is inconsistent with this account (eg, in describing psychotherapy) to argue that the term invasiveness is often (...) used to explicitly or implicitly reference interventions that do not fall under the standard account. The authors offer an alternative ‘schematic’ definition of invasiveness, whereby medical interventions entail an underlying context-independent property of ‘basic invasiveness’ and may be understood both relative to each other and to a context-specific threshold of what is ‘invasive’. 1 We propose that the meaning of terms such as ‘invasiveness’ is necessarily heterogeneous,... (shrink)

The defection thesis holds that members of marginalized social groups are obligated not to express views important to others in the group that are regarded by the others as substantively wrong. In this essay, I evaluate arguments that seek to vindicate the defection thesis and conclude they all fail. Then, I argue that we have reason to believe sanctioning defectors in certain ways is wrongful and that the expression of their contentious ideas is good for members of marginalized groups. We (...) are left to conclude both that members of marginalized groups have no obligation to suppress certain heterodox views and that it is likely wrong to sanction them for expressing these views even if it were wrong for them to do so. (shrink)

In the United Kingdom women have access to termination of pregnancy for maternal reasons until 24 weeks’ completed gestation, but it is accepted practice for children born at or beyond 25 weeks’ gestation to be treated according to the child’s perceived best interests even if this is not in accordance with parental wishes. The authors present a case drawn from clinical practice which highlights the discomfort that parents may feel about such an abrupt change in their rights over their child, (...) and argue that parents should have greater autonomy over treatment decisions regarding their prematurely born children. (shrink)

With precision and profundity born of 30 years of devoted study, John Boyle offers an essential introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas on Scripture, shedding helpful light on the goals, methods, and commitments that animate the Angelic Doctor's engagement with the sacred page. Because the genius of St. Thomas's approach to the Bible lies not so much in its novelty but rather in the fidelity and clarity with which he recapitulates the riches of the preceding interpretive Tradition, this initiation into (...) St. Thomas's vision of Scripture is itself an orientation to the Church's vision of Scripture, from the Fathers through and beyond the Middle Ages. St. Thomas's embeddedness within the Church's Tradition and his own historical context is integral to his approach to Scripture, yet it sets him at some distance from modern readers, for whom his interpretive vision may seem perplexing or even impenetrable. In this Primer, Boyle first provides an acclimation to this medieval context through a survey and explanation of pertinent technical terminology used by St. Thomas and characteristic of the scholastic theology of the time. With an eye to the medieval practice of considering Scripture according to the fourfold division of causes, Boyle builds on this initial foundation by exploring in turn St. Thomas's accounts of the end or use of Scripture (final cause), its divine and human authorship (efficient cause), its order and division (material cause), and its literary styles or genres (formal cause). Drawing on writings from across St. Thomas's corpus, but especially his work On the Commendation and Division of Sacred Scripture and the prologues to his biblical commentaries, Boyle masterfully elucidates both the hermeneutical principles and deep wisdom of the Angelic Doctor's approach to Scripture, imparting invaluable guidance not only for reading and understanding St. Thomas and other great masters of the Tradition, but also-and ultimately-for understanding Scripture in light of this Tradition and reading it with greater benefit and joy. (shrink)

The “scarred villain” trope, where facial differences like scars signify moral corruption, is ubiquitous in film (e.g., Batman’s The Joker). Strides by advocacy groups to undermine the trope, however, suggest cinematic representations of facial differences could be improving with time. This preregistered study characterized facial differences in film across cultures (US vs. India) and time (US: 1980-2019, India: 2000-2019). Top-grossing films by country and decade were screened for characters with facial differences. We found that the scarred villain trope has actually (...) worsened with time, although in tandem with progress in also representing non-villainous characters with facial anomalies. Country of origin did not predict the presence of facial differences in villains or heroes. “Action” and “fantasy” movies were the most likely genres to depict villains with facial differences. Finally, villains’ facial differences crossed more facial subunits and were more likely to involve lips, chin, and mandible than when present in heroes. Our findings underscore the need for critical reflection on the role of cultural practices—even when seemingly innocuous—in shaping and maintaining negative biases against already stigmatized groups. (shrink)

In this classic, exciting, and thoughtful text, Metaphysics , Peter van Inwagen examines three profound questions: What are the most general features of the world? Why is there a world? and What is the place of human beings in the world? Metaphysics introduces to readers the curious notion that is metaphysics, how it is conceived both historically and currently. The author's work can serve either as a textbook in a university course on metaphysics or as an introduction to metaphysical thinking (...) for the interested reader. This second edition, revised though not fundamentally changed, includes the basis of the first edition with a new chapter on the nature of time. (shrink)

In this new book, Alessandra Tanesini demonstrates that feminist thought has a lot to offer to the study of Wittgenstein's philosophical work, and that -at the same time-that work can inspire feminist reflection in new directions. In Wittgenstein, Tanesini offers a highly original interpretation of several themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy. She argues that when we look at his work through feminist eyes we discover that he is not primarily concerned with providing solutions to technical problems in the philosophy of mind, (...) mathematics, and language. Instead, his remarks on these topics are intended to offer insights about human finitude, the loneliness of the modern autonomous self, and our relations to other human beings. Thus, the modern conception of the individual emerges as the critical target of Wittgenstein's philosophical work, both early and late. This conception has also been one of the dominant concerns of contemporary feminist philosophy. In this book, Wittgenstein's insights are deployed to further feminist debates on issues such as identity, difference, the masculine character of the modern self. (shrink)

The Netherne Hospital in Surrey is perhaps the most prestigious site in the history of British art therapy, associated with the key figures Edward Adamson and Eric Cunningham Dax, whose pioneering work involved the setting-up of a large studio for psychiatric patients to create expressive paintings. What is little-known, however, is the work of the designated scientist for psychiatric research, Hungarian Jewish émigré Francis Reitman, who was charged with an overall scientific analysis of the artistic products of the studio. Schooled (...) in the biological psychiatric tradition of Ladislas J. Meduna in Budapest prior to his exile to the Maudsley Hospital in 1938 – and committed to treatments such as leucotomy and electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) – Reitman was an unusual candidate for research into the unconscious processes behind art and psychosis. Yet he authored two highly popular and widely reviewed books on his analyses of the abundant artistic output created by patients with schizophrenic diagnoses at the Netherne. In his Psychotic Art (1950) and Insanity, Art and Culture (1954), Reitman compared such schizophrenic images with those produced by artists under the influence of mescaline and examined the artistic output of patients having undergone leucotomy. This article draws on archival materials and Reitman’s original research publications in order to reconstruct his theory of schizophrenic art within the complex context of postwar British psychiatry, negotiating as he did between biologically reductive understandings of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic categories, and ultimately synthesizing concepts from both. It also analyses Reitman’s implicit theory of the therapeutic mechanism of art in the treatment of psychiatric patients. (shrink)