"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)

Although vast and complex, the universe is orderly in many ways, and conditions at its beginning were right for the eventual evolution of life on this planet. But with life there is death, and with sentient life there is great pain and suffering, often with no apparent justification or purpose. Taking these things together, is it reasonable to conclude that the universe was brought about by God? Moreover, does the magnitude of seemingly pointless suffering square with the idea that God (...) exists, or is it good reason to think there is no God? These questions come up for many people, not just religious believers, and are examined in this engaging and thought-provoking book. Starting out with no pre-disposition to theism, atheism, or agnosticism, God, Evil, and Design takes up these questions in order to see where an impartial investigation leads. To achieve impartiality, the reader is invited to simulate ignorance insofar as his or her own religious preference is concerned. With this approach, God, Evil, and Design provides both a fresh look at important and controversial issues in philosophy and an excellent introduction to the contemporary debates surrounding them. Lively and non-technical, this book will be accessible to anyone with an interest in these topics. (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)

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 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)

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)

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)

The last decade has seen an explosion of research on the gut microbiota—the trillions of microorganisms that colonize the human gut. It is now clear that interindividual diversity in microbiota composition plays an important role in determining susceptibility to a wide variety of diseases. However, identifying the precise changes in microbiota composition that play causal roles has remained a largely unrealized goal. Here, we propose that functional classifications of microbes based on their interactions with and effects on the host—particularly the (...) host immune system—will illuminate the role of the microbiota in shaping human physiology. We outline the benefits of “functional” classification compared to phylogenetic classifications, and review current efforts at functional classification of the microbiota. Finally, we outline a theoretical framework for classifying host-microbiota interactions. Future advances enabling broader functional classifications of the microbiota promise to revolutionize our understanding of the role of gut microbes in health and disease. Functional classifications of the human microbiota reveal previously hidden patterns and will be key to cracking the microbiota composition code. This figure shows a theoretical comparison between phylogenetic classification and functional classification of a host-associated microbial community. (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)

Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence are actively revolutionizing the healthcare industry. While there is widespread concern that these advances will displace human practitioners within the healthcare sector, there are several tasks – including original and nuanced ethical decision making – that they cannot replace. Further, the implementation of artificial intelligence in clinical practice can be anticipated to drive the production of novel ethical tensions surrounding its use, even while eliminating some of the technical tasks which currently compete with ethical (...) deliberation for clinicians’ limited time. A new argument therefore arises to suggest that although these disruptive technologies will change the face of medicine, they may also foster a revival of several fundamental components inherent to the role of healthcare professionals, chiefly, the principal activities of moral philosophy. Accordingly, “machine medicine” presents a vital opportunity to reinvigorate the field of bioethics, rather than withdraw from it. (shrink)

Social network analysis has become an increasingly important tool among political scientists for understanding legislative cooperation in modern, democratic nation-states. Recent research has demonstrated the influence that group affinity (homophily) and mutual exchanges (reciprocity) have in structuring political relationships. However, this literature has typically focused on political cooperation where costs are low, relationships are not exclusive, and/or partisan competition is high. Patterns of legislative behavior in alternative contexts are less clear and remain largely unexamined. Here, we compare theoretical expectations of (...) cooperation in these contexts from the political and biosocial sciences and implement the first assessment of political alliance formation in a novel legislative environment where costs to cooperation are high and party salience low. We implement a stochastic actor-oriented model (SAOM) to examine bill floor sponsorship, a process in which a “floor sponsor” becomes the exclusive advocate for a colleague’s piece of legislation, in the Utah state legislature from 2005 to 2008—a context in which gender (male) and political party (Republican) supermajorities exist. We find that (1) party and gender homophily predict who legislators recruit as floor sponsors, whereas seniority does not, and (2) legislators frequently engage in reciprocal exchanges of floor sponsorship. In addition, whereas gender homophily increases the likelihood of reciprocity, party homophily decreases it. Our findings suggest that when the cost of cooperation is high, political actors use in-group characteristics for initiating alliances, but once a cooperative relationship is established with an out-group political member, it is reinforced through repeated exchanges. These findings may be useful for understanding the rise of political polarization and gridlock in democracies internationally. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 51-53.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AsphyxiationsSteven Connor (bio)Recent events and sociorhetorical expatiations upon them have reaffirmed breathing as the ideal form of free and unimpeded life, that struggles against the throttlings of oppression. The root meaning of oppression, from the past participle of Latin opprimere, is to press, crush or bear down upon, and the word oppression has commonly been used to signify the feeling of the difficulty of breathing, through some constriction (...) or pressure, as in the nocturnal attentions of the nightmare, the spirit imagined as settling suffocatingly on the chest of the sleeper. As a mare that rides rather than being ridden, the spirit is often imagined as a female succubus, though in Fuseli's 1781 painting the mare is accompanied by a simian incubus who squats on the chest of a female sleeper, prompting these lines from Erasmus Darwin:So on his Nightmare through the evening fogFlits the squab Fiend o'er fen, and lake, and bog;Seeks some love-wilder'd maid with sleep oppress'd,Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast.(Darwin 2.16)'Pressing' meant the forcing of somebody into some condition or service, typically the army or navy. In oppressive weather, the clouds may seem to 'lower', or the humid air to cramp and confine the body.We think of breathing as opening or release, of a piece with open windows and unbounded spaces. Human beings have brewed up fantasies for centuries of more complete modes of breathing that would overcome the constriction represented by the respiratory apparatus, exhorting themselves and each other to breathe more deeply, suffusing, not just the lungs, but the diaphragm, the head, and other items of phantasmal physiology. Indeed, the factitiously hollow spaces of the body–the head that we seek to keep 'clear'–are the proof of the belief in the strange principle of vital vacuity, the idea that we exist most fully in empty spaces of innerness, bodily enclosures evacuated of body. Without this sense of the animating function of the breath, the body suffers the inanition of a "want of living [End Page 74] breath in its lungs, which are full of gases but empty of spirit" (Wilkinson 78). In being taken in and given out, breath seems to commute between what Wittgenstein calls "two kinds of worlds, worlds built of different materials." The fact that "the mental world in fact is liable to be imagined as gaseous, or rather, aethereal," seems to Wittgenstein to be related to "the queer role which the gaseous and the aethereal play in philosophy,–when we perceive that a substantive is not used as what in general we should call the name of an object, and when therefore we can't help saying to ourselves that it is the name of an aethereal object" (Wittgenstein 47). The conception of the soul as an afflatus, or a special kind of magic gas, which has been common among so many different peoples, suggests just this kind of aethereal object-that-is-not-one. It embodies the conviction that we are most essentially present as ourselves where we are closest to being nothing, in an out-of-body kind of body.We breathe out–phew, originally in the seventeenth century a violent expression of disgust or emancipatory emptying, as we might nowadays plosively and purifyingly say poo–when we 'ex-press', as we say, our sense of being, as we also say, 'relieved,' from re + levare, to lift up, implying a lightening, or levitation, that approaches in imagination the condition of air itself. To ventilate is to levitate. To be relieved is to dream of remission from the clinging pressure of your own embodiment, as though you could simply emit or expel your own weight. To inhale is to prepare for stress and struggle: to exhale is to relax, to sigh into satisfaction, converting becoming momentarily to being. Exhalation is therefore the decorporizing of the body, or the corporealization of the incorporeal. But though human beings exalt imaginary emptying, as the purifying expulsion of what is evil, infective, invasive, persecutory, expiration is also death. Speech is the expressive sound formed from the impressing of exhaled breath, the dissolving openness of air given imaginary... (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)

This essay examines some stereotypes of bisexuals held by some lesbians. I argue that the decision that a lesbian makes not to become involved with a bisexual woman because she is bisexual can recenter men in lesbian desire, a consequence many lesbians would find deeply problematic. The acceptance of these stereotypes also results in sex becoming the defining characteristic of one's sexual orientation, thus privileging sex over any emotional, affectional, and political commitments to women.

Who Comes After the Subject offers the most comprehensive overview to date of contemporary French thinking on the question of the "subject." Nineteen philosophers and critics offer diverse perspectives on the subject as it has manifested itself in our modern discourses: the subject of philosophy, of the State, of history, of psychoanalysis. Each contribution asks What has become of the subject? or What has the subject become? in the wake of its critiques and deconstructions .

Strong comic immoralism maintains that every time a humorous demonstration (for example, a joke) involves a moral defect, it is enhanced aesthetically in virtue of having this moral defect. I want to show that strong comic immoralism is a coherent position, that it is possible to defend, and that there is, in fact, some reason to defend it. By doing this, my hope is that, moving forward, those who are interested in questions about the relationship between immorality and the aesthetic (...) value of jokes will take more seriously the objections that may be presented against their views by the strong comic immoralist, rather than claiming that “no one on this side of Satan” would be one. (shrink)

This article argues that Habermas’s formal-pragmatics are better understood as a set of weak-universal dispositions susceptible to erosion over the course of a lifetime, if exposed to continual “disappointing” communicative experiences. Habermas’s rational-reconstructive project to explicate the intuitive rule-consciousness held by competent speakers retains immense theoretical value for analyzing both partisan and mass political discourse, if his emphasis on isolated speech situations is supplemented with a logic of communicative memory better accounting for how disagreement antecedes discourse on the formal-pragmatic register. (...) I argue that Habermas’s concept of the “lifeworld” contains untapped theoretical resources for thinking about the formal-pragmatic consequences of accumulated partisan experiences; namely, how such experiences lead inter-partisan actors to jettison mutual imputations of communicative accountability. I conclude by offering revisions to Habermas’s discourse ethics. Rapport-building intended to alleviate the negative effects of prior accumulated partisan experiences is first necessary if a norm is to enjoy real justification. (shrink)

Introduction Like most scholars of Dewey’s aesthetics, Thomas Alexander (who may be counted foremost under that banner), has a tendency to see in Dewey’s work an inextricable tendency toward unity. Aesthetic experience in Dewey’s Art as Experience, turns on the concept of ‘fusion’ in which meanings are ‘fused’ into aesthetic wholes which can be embodied in art. Aesthetic experiences, taking in hand Dewey’s understanding of ‘experience’ as objective process involving the interplay of nature an...

Faces provide information about a person's identity, as well as their sex, age, and ethnicity. People also infer social and personality traits from the face — judgments that can have important societal and personal consequences. In recent years, deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have proven adept at representing the identity of a face from images that vary widely in viewpoint, illumination, expression, and appearance. These algorithms are modeled on the primate visual cortex and consist of multiple processing layers of simulated (...) neurons. Here, we examined whether a DCNN trained for face identification also retains a representation of the information in faces that supports social‐trait inferences. Participants rated male and female faces on a diverse set of 18 personality traits. Linear classifiers were trained with cross validation to predict human‐assigned trait ratings from the 512 dimensional representations of faces that emerged at the top‐layer of a DCNN trained for face identification. The network was trained with 494,414 images of 10,575 identities and consisted of seven layers and 19.8 million parameters. The top‐level DCNN features produced by the network predicted the human‐assigned social trait profiles with good accuracy. Human‐assigned ratings for the individual traits were also predicted accurately. We conclude that the face representations that emerge from DCNNs retain facial information that goes beyond the strict limits of their training. (shrink)

I argue that factory farming should be abolished consistent with the principles of classical liberalism. To make my case, I first argue that anti-cruelty is a commitment of classical liberalism. In Section 3, I explain how the commitments of classical liberalism, including a commitment to anti-cruelty, give us weighty reasons to abolish factory farming. Then, I consider and respond to the objection that the property rights of factory farmers override the strength of reasons for the abolition of factory farming. Finally, (...) I conclude by flagging some other possible implications of taking seriously a liberal commitment to anti-cruelty. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno, İkinci Dünya Savaşı sonrası dönemin önde gelen filozof ve toplum kuramcılarından biridir. Eleştirel Kuramın gelişmesinde önemli rolü olan, özgün ve de genellikle zor olan yazıları sadece temel felsefi sorular ileri sürmekle kalmayıp aynı zamanda edebiyat, sanat, müzik, sosyoloji ve siyaset kuramına ilişkin derin analizler de sunar. Bu kapsamlı kitapta Brian O’Connor, Adorno’nun felsefesini, onun eserleriyle ilk kez karşılaşanlara açıklamaktadır. O’Connor, bu amaçla, yaşamı ve entelektüel çevresinin bağlamını oluşturan ana felsefi görüşleri aracılığıyla Adorno felsefesinin merkezi unsurlarını (...) değerlendiriyor. Bu bağlamda Aydınlanmanın diyalektiği, şeyleşme, bütünsellik, dolayımlama, özdeşlik, özdeşsizlik, deneyim, negatif diyalektik, içkinlik, özgürlük, özerklik ve sanatta taklit gibi kavramları, felsefesinin temel alanları üzerinden tartışıyor. Kronoloji ve terimler sözlüğünün yanı sıra ek okuma önerileri de içeren Adorno, felsefe, edebiyat, sosyoloji ve kültürel çalışmalarla ilgilenenler için ideal bir giriş kitabı... (shrink)

In many jurisdictions, legal frameworks afford patients the opportunity to make prospective medical decisions or to create directives that contain a special provision forfeiting their own ability to object to those decisions at a future time point, should they lose decision‐making capacity. These agreements have been described with widely varying nomenclatures, including Ulysses Contracts, Odysseus Transfers, Psychiatric Advance Directives with Ulysses Clauses, and Powers of Attorney with Special Provisions. As a consequence of this terminological heterogeneity, it is challenging for healthcare (...) providers to understand the terms and uses of these agreements and for ethicists to engage with the nuances of clinical decision‐making with such unique provisions surrounding patient autonomy. In theory, prospective self‐binding agreements may safeguard patient's “authentic” wishes from future “inauthentic” changes of mind. In practice, it is unclear what may be comprised within these agreements or how—and to what effect—they are used. The primary focus of this integrative review is to curate the existing literature describing Ulysses Contracts (and analogous decisions) used in the clinical arena, in order to empirically synthesize their shared essence and provide insights into the traditional components of these agreements when used in practice, the requirements of their consent processes, and the outcomes of their utilization. (shrink)

Collaboration is increasingly popular across academia. Collaborative work raises certain ethical questions, however. How will the fruits of collaboration be divided? How will the work for the collaborative project be split? In this paper, we consider the following question in particular. Are there ways in which these divisions systematically disadvantage certain groups? -/- We use evolutionary game theoretic models to address this question. First, we discuss results from O'Connor and Bruner (unpublished). In this paper, we show that underrepresented groups (...) in academia can be disadvantaged in such situations by dint of their small numbers. Second, we present novel results exploring how the hierarchical structure of academia can lead to bargaining disadvantage. We investigate models where one actor has a higher baseline of academic success, less to lose if collaboration goes south, or greater rewards for non-collaborative work. We show that in these situations, the less powerful partner is disadvantaged in bargaining over collaboration. (shrink)

Is religious faith consistent with being an intellectually virtuous thinker? In seeking to answer this question, one quickly finds others, each of which has been the focus of recent renewed attention by epistemologists: What is it to be an intellectually virtuous thinker? Must all reasonable belief be grounded in public evidence? Under what circumstances is a person rationally justified in believing something on trust, on the testimony of another, or because of the conclusions drawn by an intellectual authority? Can it (...) be reasonable to hold a belief on a topic over which there is significant, entrenched disagreement among informed inquirers, or should such disagreement lead all parties to modify or suspend their own judgments? Is there anything about faith that exempts it from measurement against such epistemic norms? And if we would so evaluate it, how exactly should we understand the intellectual commitments faith requires? The volume's introduction provides a roadmap of the central issues and controversies as currently discussed by philosophers. In fourteen new essays written to engage nonspecialists as well as philosophers working in religion and epistemology, a diverse and distinguished group of thinkers then consider the place of intellectual virtue in religious faith, exploring one or more of the specific issues noted above. (shrink)

I first argue that forms of regulated parenting are presumptively justified whereas private parenting is not. Then, I argue that the reasons we have to believe that regulated parenting is justified give us reasons to believe that individuals who are objectionably intolerant—that is, they subscribe to prejudicial dogmas such as racism, sexism, and homophobia to such an extent that their ability to direct caring attitudes toward, for example, Black people, women, and/or gay people is significantly impaired—ought not to rear children. (...) Finally, I argue that if these people ought not to rear children, we have special reason to institute a scheme of parental licensing to ensure they do not. (shrink)

We show that previous results from epistemic network models showing the benefits of decreased connectivity in epistemic networks are not robust across changes in parameter values. Our findings motivate discussion about whether and how such models can inform real-world epistemic communities. As we argue, only robust results from epistemic network models should be used to generate advice for the real-world, and, in particular, decreasing connectivity is a robustly poor recommendation.

It is important for members of marginalized groups to express political views relevant to how members of their respective groups should be treated. Recently, however, it has been argued that there are some contexts––that is, contexts in which members of marginalized groups are tokenized and have considerable power to influence political outcomes that would affect their other group members––in which certain marginalized group members ought not express certain political views relevant to how members of their respective groups should be treated. (...) In this essay, I examine two arguments defending this conclusion (the proportional representation and unjust enrichment arguments) and conclude that both fail. Then, I argue that recognizing that members of marginalized groups are permitted to speak their minds, even in these contexts, favorably affirms their broad political speech rights. (shrink)

Time travel and its associated paradoxes are a topic of academic discussion that has historically been of interest only in physics and philosophy. This paper presents a new paradox of time travel that puts psychological issues at the forefront. The new time traveller faces conflicts between agency and agency awareness that are not addressed in other paradoxes. Further, in considering these other paradoxes it is seen how concerns about the time traveller's psychological state can lead to new challenges to the (...) accepted deterministic paradox resolutions. (shrink)

As more and more instances of corporate hypocrisy become public, consumers have developed an inherent general skepticism towards firms’ corporate social responsibility claims. As CSR skepticism bears heavily on consumers’ attitudes and behavior, this paper draws from Construal Level Theory to identify how it can be pre-emptively abated. We posit that this general skepticism towards CSR leads people to adopt a low-level construal mindset when processing CSR information. Across four studies, we show that matching this low-level mindset with concrete CSR (...) messaging works to effectively mitigate the negative effects of inherent CSR skepticism on consumers’ attitudes, purchase intentions, and word of mouth. The resulting construal-mindset congruency strengthens the favorability of consumer responses through increased positive elaboration and perceptions of CSR message credibility. Furthermore, this congruency effect is shown to persist over time in skeptical domains but to dissipate in less skeptical domains. (shrink)