The theory of representations of Clifford algebras is extended to employ the division algebra of the octonions or Cayley numbers. In particular, questions that arise from the nonassociativity and noncommutativity of this division algebra are answered. Octonionic representations for Clifford algebras lead to a notion of octonionic spinors and are used to give octoninic representations of the respective orthogonal groups. Finally, the triality automorphisms are shown to exhibit a manifest Σ 3 ×SO(8) structure in this framework.

The reproducibility movement in psychology has resulted in numerous highly publicized instances of replication failures. The goal of the present work was to investigate people’s reactions to a psychology replication failure vs. success, and to test whether a failure elicits harsher reactions when the researcher is a woman vs. a man. We examined these questions in a pre-registered experiment with a working adult sample, a conceptual replication of that experiment with a student sample, and an analysis of data compiled and (...) posted by a psychology researcher on their public weblog with the stated goal to improve research replicability by rank-ordering psychology researchers by their “estimated false discovery risk.” Participants in the experiments were randomly assigned to read a news article describing a successful vs. failed replication attempt of original work from a male vs. female psychological scientist, and then completed measures of researcher competence, likability, integrity, perceptions of the research, and behavioral intentions for future interactions with the researcher. In both working adult and student samples, analyses consistently yielded large main effects of replication outcome, but no interaction with researcher gender. Likewise, the coding of weblog data posted in July 2021 indicated that 66.3% of the researchers scrutinized were men and 33.8% were women, and their rank-ordering was not correlated with researcher gender. The lack of support for our pre-registered gender-replication hypothesis is, at first glance, encouraging for women researchers’ careers; however, the substantial effect sizes we observed for replication outcome underscore the tremendous negative impact the reproducibility movement can have on psychologists’ careers. We discuss the implications of such negative perceptions and the possible downstream consequences for women in the field that are essential for future study. (shrink)

In October 2016, the White House, the European Parliament, and the UK House of Commons each issued a report outlining their visions on how to prepare society for the widespread use of artificial intelligence. In this article, we provide a comparative assessment of these three reports in order to facilitate the design of policies favourable to the development of a ‘good AI society’. To do so, we examine how each report addresses the following three topics: the development of a ‘good (...) AI society’; the role and responsibility of the government, the private sector, and the research community in pursuing such a development; and where the recommendations to support such a development may be in need of improvement. Our analysis concludes that the reports address adequately various ethical, social, and economic topics, but come short of providing an overarching political vision and long-term strategy for the development of a ‘good AI society’. In order to contribute to fill this gap, in the conclusion we suggest a two-pronged approach. (shrink)

Global challenge-led research seeks to contribute to solution-generation for complex problems. Multicultural, multidisciplinary, and multisectoral teams must be capable of operating in highly deman...

A growing body of work suggests that the presence of women and of independent directors on boards of directors is associated with higher corporate environmental performance. However, the mechanisms linking board composition to corporate environmental performance are not well understood. This study proposes and empirically tests the mediating role of sustainability-themed alliances in the relationship between board composition and corporate environmental performance. Using the population of public oil and gas firms in the United States as the sample, the study relies (...) on renewable energy alliances to measure sustainability-themed alliances and longitudinally analyzes lagged data for independent and control variables. The study found that the higher the representation of women on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances, and the higher the representation of independent directors on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances. Such alliances, in turn, positively contribute to corporate environmental performance. This paper discusses the study’s contributions to the board composition-social performance literature. (shrink)

This allegory is among the most well-traversed passages in Plato's dialogues and deservedly so. Its emotional impact is undeniable, yet it confronts the reader with several problems of interpretation. There is a strong sense that it is of central importance to the crucial questions of the Platonic philosopher's education and his role in society, and it possibly holds one key to an understanding of the Republic as a whole.

Many linguists and philosophers of language explain linguistic meaning in terms of truth conditions. This book focuses on the meanings of expressions that escape such truth-conditional treatment, in particular the concessives: but , even if , and although . Corinne Iten proposes semantic analyses of these expressions based on the cognitive framework of relevance theory. A thoroughly cognitive approach to linguistic meaning is presented in which linguistic forms are seen as mapping onto mental entities, rather than individuals and properties (...) in the real world. Researchers and advanced students in pragmatics will find this account lucid, clear and accessible. (shrink)

This article is based on a roundtable held at the Association of Internet Researchers annual conference in 2017, in Tartu, Estonia. The roundtable was organized by the Oxford Internet Institute’s Digital Ethics Lab. It was entitled “Artificial Intelligence and the Good Society”. It brought together four scholars—Michael Zimmer, Stine Lomborg, Ben Zevenbergen, and Corinne Cath—to discuss the promises and perils of artificial intelligence, in particular what ethical frameworks are needed to guide AI’s rapid development and increased use in societies. (...) The paper covers three case studies. They give a distinct overview of the ethical issues raised by the use of AI at different levels of analysis: top-down application of AI, bottom-up use of AI, and how academics and governments have reacted to these new challenges. From the case studies, four areas emerged. They represent some of the most topical ethical questions related to AI: its uses, its users, its designers, and the data that fuel it. Each of them provided a specific subset of ethical concerns that need further investigation. In conclusion, three recommendations are formulated for researchers and regulators to ensure the AI has a net-positive impact on society. (shrink)

Les etudes ici rassemblees interrogent les articulations et desarticulations que Jean-Francois Lyotard place au principe du langage. Le volume dessine ainsi les lignes de force et les deplacements de sa pensee, ses presupposes et ses apories. Il montre les malentendus et les polemiques suscites par sa reecriture radicale de la rationalite. Pas de langage en general, dit Lyotard, mais des langages multiples, des types de discours heterogenes que la politique brasse sans pacifier leurs conflits. La recherche du consensus, dont l' (...) ethique de la discussion a souligne l'importance, tend a occulter les differends qui divisent les fins respectives des genres de discours. On ne peut pas etre pacifiste en matiere de phrases, et pas indifferent. Car tout enchainement discursif signe la victoire d'un genre et porte tort aux autres. Sans compter que la parole, quel qu'en soit le registre, eclipse par principe ce qui echappe aux contraintes linguistiques, ce champ de la sensation et du sentiment que Discours, figure explorait, des 1971, en inventant le figural. Apres 1983, apres l' ontologie des phrases du Differend, Lyotard cherche a cerner ce que les mots laissent en souffrance et dont ils doivent pourtant temoigner. Phrase-affect, infantia, donation sensible, Chose sont quelques-uns des noms sous lesquels il pense alors ce qui resiste au langage, le travaille de l'interieur et signe la difficulte de l'ecriture.Ont participe a ce volume Isabelle Aubert, Geoffrey Bennington, Gaelle Bernard, Corinne Enaudeau, Frederic Fruteau de Laclos, Alberto Gualandi, Laurence Kahn, Charlotte Murgier, Andreas Niederberger, Sophie Nordmann, Michel Olivier, Claire Pages, Ronit Peleg, Gerard Raulet, Jean-Francois Rey, Jean-Michel Salanskis, Francois-David Sebbah, Gerald Sfez, Rieke Trimcev. (shrink)

In this commentary, we respond to the editorial letter by Professor Luciano Floridi entitled “AI as a public service: Learning from Amsterdam and Helsinki.” Here, Floridi considers the positive impact of municipal AI registers, which collect a limited number of algorithmic systems used by the city of Amsterdam and Helsinki. We question a number of assumptions about AI registers as a governance model for automated systems. We start with recent attempts to normalize AI by decontextualizing and depoliticizing it, which is (...) a fraught political project that encourages what we call ‘ethics theater’ given the proven dangers of using these systems in the context of the digital welfare state. We agree with Floridi that much can be learned from these registers about the role of AI systems in municipal city management. The lessons we draw, on the basis of our extensive ethnographic engagement with digital wellfare states, are distinctly less optimistic. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe and characterize some structural features of natural reasoning by analyzing a number of conversations held by operators during shift changeovers. During this work phase the operators have to cooperate in order to carry out the same process. This need to cooperate leads to dialogues and joint elaboration of information, especially when involving the reporting of a malfunction. Three dialogues observed at this work phase on two study sites are analyzed. These analyses show (...) that the step by step follow-up of the operators' collective reasoning is feasible. They highlight that these reasonings are complex experimental and hypothetico-deductive reasonings. They are reasonings for action, that are elaborated as the conversation unfolds, and for which the operators do not always have the means of testing their hypotheses. (shrink)

Louise Labé est-elle une femme? Et pourquoi l’œuvre serait-elle inauthentique autrement? Le petit drame critique engendré par un ouvrage de Mireille Huchon pose la question du rapport de l’œuvre à son auteur, ou l’Auteur comme instance et valeur. Une définition restreinte du lyrisme comme expression personnelle et sincère est corollairement mise en cause. L’émotivité du débat reflète l’angoisse de perdre une autorité féminine mythique. Le soupçon d’inauthenticité révèle aussi notre moment théorique en interrogeant l’articulation entre lyrisme et codes « genrés (...) ». On fait cependant bien parler en français une courtisane gauloise dans tous les sens, apte à rivaliser avec Laure et l’Italie…. (shrink)

Our study has two concerns. The first falls under the methodological aspect of collaborative research : how researchers and teachers introduce each other to the world of the other and at their respective referents? What are the characteristics of their interactions, how do they facilitate mutual understanding? The second falls within the terms of the partnership : how to negotiate the subject of mutual concern, that is to say what will become both object of research and object of training? This (...) study shows that professional development actors rooted in a negotiation - conversion process, through the involvement of bifacial objects. In this sense, collaboration takes shape around the same object, each actor takes care of one side of the bifacial object and needs the experience of the other to develop this side. We can then speak of reciprocal acculturation. This research shows that collaboration is established once it has acquired the characteristics of a work situation in which and by which the activity of each category of actors produces development. (shrink)

Currently more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. This is expected to rise to more than two-thirds by mid-century. Thus, our economic, social, and environmental challenges mostly and increasingly play out in urban settings. How can cities be strengthened to address the growing challenges they face? This special issue addresses the ethical implications of revitalizing urban environments, and the roles that diversity and inclusion, as well as social innovation, play in this process. The five papers herein show (...) that it is not easy to strengthen our cities, but with the right policies, political and corporate leadership, and depth of community grounding in ethical principles, it is possible. In this editorial essay, we summarize the contributions of each of these papers to this important conversation, clarify the questions that remain, and offer directions for future research. (shrink)

Le corpus PhraséoRoChe se centre sur le roman de chevalerie de langue française écrit en prose. Il rassemble des textes issus d’œuvres produites entre le XIIIe siècle et le XVIIe siècle, période bornée par la naissance et la disparition de ce genre textuel. Pour permettre des interrogations par le lecteur d’aujourd’hui d’un corpus outillé embrassant une diachronie aussi longue, il faut faire des choix concernant l’évolution de la langue, non seulement en traitant le décalage entre le français contemporain et la (...) langue des textes retenus mais aussi en faisant face aux difficultés liées à l’hétérogénéité de l’ancien français, du moyen français et du français préclassique. Quels choix méthodologiques peuvent être pertinents en vue de l’objectif défini, à savoir une exploitation de type linguistique, stylistique ou littéraire? Les collaborateurs du projet se sont heurtés à la triple difficulté de rester fidèles aux textes, d’intégrer la diversité des pratiques éditoriales des chercheurs selon les étapes de l’histoire du français et d’unifier le plus possible les principes de traitement pour faciliter la réception actuelle. Le présent article rend compte des deux volets de l’opération : la sélection et la transcription d’un ensemble de 40 textes, d’abord, et l’annotation au moyen de balises structurelles, d’étiquettes lexicales et d’étiquettes morphosyntaxiques, ensuite. (shrink)

Genetically modified cassava is currently being developed to address problems of diseases that threaten the food security of farmers in developing countries. The technologies are aimed at smallholder farmers, in hopes of reducing the vulnerability of cassava production to these diseases. In this paper we examine barriers to farmers’ voice in the development of GM cassava. We also examine the role of a translational research process to enhance farmers’ voice, to understand the sources of vulnerability farmers in a group in (...) Kenya’s Coast face, and to determine if their concerns are consistent with those of the scientists in agriculture addressing farmers’ needs. A two-way communication participatory process provided insights into the complex vulnerability context of farmers, their primary concerns with processing and markets of cassava in order to improve livelihoods, the lack of networks with two way communication flows, and the lack of information on GM technologies. The translational research engaged farmers and scientists in an iterative process where scientists are learning what farmers need, and farmers are learning about the potential benefits and risks from GM technologies, while at the same time expressing their concerns. (shrink)

This paper argues that individuals in many high-income countries typically have moral reasons to limit their beef consumption and consume plant-based protein instead, given the negative effects of beef production and consumption. Beef production is a significant source of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts, high levels of beef consumption are associated with health risks, and some cattle production systems raise animal welfare concerns. These negative effects matter, from a variety of moral perspectives, and give us collective moral (...) reasons to reduce beef production and consumption. But, as some ethicists have argued, we cannot draw a straight line from the ethics of production to the ethics of consumption: even if a production system is morally impermissible, this does not mean that any given individual has moral reasons to stop consuming the products of that system, given how miniscule one individual’s contributions are. This paper considers how to connect those dots. We consider three distinct lines of argument in support of the conclusion that individuals have moral reasons to limit their beef consumption and shift to plant-based protein, and we consider objections to each argument. This argument applies to individuals in high beef-consuming and high greenhouse gas-emitting high-income countries, though we make this argument with a specific focus on the United States. (shrink)

This article explores the relation among illness, home, and belonging. Through a feminist phenomenological framework, I describe the disorientations of being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and living with mental illness. This research anticipates the consequences of illness and serious disorientations for a conception of belonging as seamless body–world compatibility. Instead, this article examines how the stability of bodily dwellings in experiences of disorientation can suggest ways of being in the world that are more attentive to interdependency, unpredictability, and change (...) in human experience. I argue that these types of dwellings function as a more capacious and apposite metaphor to account for variations in belonging. This discussion outlines the ethical importance of building worlds that make room for different ways of being at home in and through our interactions with others. Although my discussion does not supply norms for ethical action, I contend that a feminist phenomenology of illness generates saliences and illuminates sensibilities that can transform our ways of being with others. (shrink)

The context of economic globalization has contributed to the emergence of a new form of social action which has spread into the economic sphere in the form of the new social economic movements. The emblematic figure of this new generation of social movements is fair trade, which influences the economy towards political or social ends. Having emerged from multiple alternative trade practices, fair trade has gradually become institutionalized since the professionalization of World Shops, the arrival of fair trade products in (...) the food industry, and the establishment of an official "fair trade" label. With the strength that this institutionalization has generated, fair trade can now be considered a real trade system that questions, as much as it renews, the traditional economic system. In parallel, this transformation has exacerbated the tensions within the movement, which can be characterized as a clash between a "radical, militant" pole and a "softer, more commercial" one. However, it is not the actual institutionalization of fair trade which is being debated among fair trade actors on either side of the fence, but rather the challenges inherent in finding an economic institutionalization acceptable to social economic movements. Therefore the institutionalization process of fair trade should not be seen as mere degradation of social action, but rather as typical of the institutionalization process of new social economic movements. If we need to worry about the highjacking and alteration of the fair trade movement by the dominant economic system, the opposite is no less likely, as new social economic movements contribute to an ethical restructuring of markets. (shrink)

Lack of guidance and regulation for authorizing medical cannabis for conditions involving the health and neurodevelopment of children is ethically problematic as it promulgates access inequities, risk-benefit inconsistencies, and inadequate consent mechanisms. In two virtual sessions using participatory action research and consensus-building methods, we obtained perspectives of stakeholders on ethics and medical cannabis for children and youth. The sessions focused on the scientific and regulatory landscape of medical cannabis, surrogate decision-making and assent, and the social and political culture of medical (...) cannabis. We found that evidence-gathering and data dissemination, pressures on clinical relationships, and the lack of integration of culturally diverse perspectives and Indigenous knowledges were key areas of concern. Participants emphasized the importance of utilizing adaptive study designs, highlighted the importance of trust-building between clinicians, patients and caregivers, and discussed barriers including historical and ongoing stigmatization of medical cannabis. We conclude that continued public consultation and strength-based research that integrate diverse perspectives are critical steps forward. (shrink)

Neonatal intensive care units represent simultaneously one of the great success stories of modern medicine, and one of its most controversial developments. One particularly controversial issue is the resuscitation of extremely preterm infants. Physicians in the United States generally accept that they are required to resuscitate infants born as early as 25 weeks and that it is permissible to resuscitate as early as 22 weeks. In this article, I question the moral pressure to resuscitate by criticizing the idea that resuscitation (...) in this context “saves” a human life. Our radical medical advancements have allowed us to intervene in the life of a human before it makes sense to say that such an intervention “saves” someone; rather, what the physician does in resuscitating and treating an extremely preterm infant is to take over creating it. This matters, I argue, because “rescues” are much more morally urgent than “creations.”. (shrink)

The debate on whether and how the Internet can protect and foster human rights has become a defining issue of our time. This debate often focuses on Internet governance from a regulatory perspective, underestimating the influence and power of the governance of the Internet’s architecture. The technical decisions made by Internet Standard Developing Organisations that build and maintain the technical infrastructure of the Internet influences how information flows. They rearrange the shape of the technically mediated public sphere, including which rights (...) it protects and which practices it enables. In this article, we contribute to the debate on SDOs’ ethical responsibility to bring their work in line with human rights. We defend three theses. First, SDOs’ work is inherently political. Second, the Internet Engineering Task Force, one of the most influential SDOs, has a moral obligation to ensure its work is coherent with, and fosters, human rights. Third, the IETF should enable the actualisation of human rights through the protocols and standards it designs by implementing a responsibility-by-design approach to engineering. We conclude by presenting some initial recommendations on how to ensure that work carried out by the IETF may enable human rights. (shrink)

At healthcare facilities worldwide, women during childbirth undergo medical procedures they haven’t consented to and experience mistreatment and disrespect. This phenomenon is recognized as obstetric violence (OV), a distinct form of gender violence. The resulting trauma carries both immediate and long-term implications, making it vital to address for promoting women’s health. OV is partly shaped by a narrow, paternalistic conception of vulnerability. A flawed conception of the vulnerability of pregnant women and fetuses has opened the door to medical control and (...) coercion during childbirth. In this paper we examine what role notions of vulnerability play in perpetuating OV and consider recent attitudinal shifts in research ethics as a model for addressing it. (shrink)

This paper takes Porochista Khakpour’s personal narrative of chronic illness, disability, and addiction in Sick: A Memoir (2018) as a starting point to reflect on social and material features of sick bodily subjectivity. In ways heretofore largely unexplored by tradi-tional phenomenologies of illness, I ask what different modalities of the body come to light if we move beyond the privatization of dis-ease as a biological dysfunction and instead bring into focus its re-lation with conditions of existence that make and keep (...) some of us sick. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently argued that policies aimed at reducing human fertility are a practical and morally justifiable way to mitigate the risk of dangerous climate change. There is a powerful objection to such “population engineering” proposals: even if drastic fertility reductions are needed to prevent dangerous climate change, implementing those reductions would wreak havoc on the global economy, which would seriously undermine international antipoverty efforts. In this article, we articulate this economic objection to population engineering and show how it (...) fails. We argue, first, that the economic objection paints an inaccurate picture of the complicated relationship between demographic change and economic growth, and second, that any untoward economic effects of fertility reduction can be mitigated with additional policies. Specifically, we argue that supplementing fertility reduction with policies that facilitate the emigration of younger people from developing nations to developed nations could allow for both global reductions in GHG emissions and continued economic stability. Further, we show that moral arguments against such unprecedented increases in immigration are unsuccessful. We conclude that population engineering is a practical and morally justifiable tool for addressing the twin evils of climate change and global poverty. (shrink)

Individuals vary in perceptual accuracy when categorising facial expressions, yet it is unclear how these individual differences in non-clinical population are related to cognitive processing stages at facial information acquisition and interpretation. We tested 104 healthy adults in a facial expression categorisation task, and correlated their categorisation accuracy with face-viewing gaze allocation and personal traits assessed with Autism Quotient, anxiety inventory and Self-Monitoring Scale. The gaze allocation had limited but emotion-specific impact on categorising expressions. Specifically, longer gaze at the eyes (...) and nose regions were coupled with more accurate categorisation of disgust and sad expressions, respectively. Regarding trait measurements, higher autistic score was coupled with better recognition of sad but worse recognition of anger expressions, and contributed to categorisation bias towards sad expressions; whereas higher anxiety level was associated with greater categorisation accuracy across all expressions and with increased tendency of gazing at the nose region. It seems that both anxiety and autistic-like traits were associated with individual variation in expression categorisation, but this association is not necessarily mediated by variation in gaze allocation at expression-specific local facial regions. The results suggest that both facial information acquisition and interpretation capabilities contribute to individual differences in expression categorisation within non-clinical populations. (shrink)

This essay denaturalizes the taken-for-granted meaning of ‘access’ and interrogates its role and lived meaning in ableist social worlds, with a focus on spaces of higher education. I suggest that legalistic approaches to access need ‘cripping’ by a disability framework. Currently, these approaches (1) miss the intersubjective sociality of being-in-the-world; (2) they prioritize a narrow conception of access focused on ‘physical’ access and ‘physical’ space (a typology I contest); (3) they approach access as frozen in time, rather than as a (...) relational and temporally dynamic process (4); and, finally, they contribute to bureaucratizing and privatizing disability knowledge. I examine ‘access’ through the lens of belonging by asking how we orient ourselves in spaces shaped by oppressive social norms. I argue that ableist lifeworlds generate serious disorientations for disabled people that are lasting, structurally enforced, and harmful or debilitating. (shrink)

Politics seem most alien to the demand for truth, for they engage the future which is, on principle, undeterminable, whereas truth conversely requires that the object be determined according to strict rules. Yet, political philosophy has never renounced the quest for a true understanding of human living_together, an understanding that makes becoming predictable, thus denying its contingency. However lofty, the ambition nonetheless elicited the most devastating political experience in history: totalitarianism. Such a disaster would seem to call for cautious relativism, (...) but letting oneself be ruled by the arbitrariness of opinions is just as irresponsible as obeying the necessity of a postulated "destiny."Such is the quandary whose challenge was taken up by Hannah Arendt. In so doing, Arendt does not dismiss the true from the sphere of action. She seeks to comprehend which uses of truth cancel political lucidity and which uses of truth conversely warrant political lucidity. What shapes Arendt's position is a battle waged on several fronts, pointing to three distinct goals which this article proposes to address successively: first, the ambition to rescue politics from any "true law of history" which would aim at governing them; secondly, the ambition to rescue politics from the political lies in charge of their rewriting; thirdly, the ambition to rescue politics from a value relativism which would be irresponsible or cynical. Rational truth, factual truth, and opinion are all successively implicated, even though one cannot simply dissociate them from one another. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 3, Page 274-282, March 2022.

This essay, written by a biologist, a microbial ecologist, a biological anthropologist, and an anthropologist‐historian, examines tensions and translations in microbiome research on animals in the laboratory and field. The authors trace how research questions and findings in the laboratory are extrapolated into the field and vice versa, and the shifting evidentiary standards that these research settings require. Showing how complexities of microbiomes challenge traditional standards of causation, the authors contend that these challenges require new approaches to inferences used in (...) ecology, anthropology, and history. As social scientists incorporate investigations of microbial life into their human studies, microbiome researchers venture into field settings to develop mechanistic understandings about the functions of complex microbial communities. These efforts generate new possibilities for cross‐fertilizations and inference frameworks to interpret microbiome findings. Microbiome research should integrate multiple scales, levels of variability, and other disciplinary approaches to tackle questions spanning conditions from the laboratory to the field. (shrink)

Sollicité par les ayants droit de propriétaires juifs dépossédés pendant la Seconde guerre mondiale, l’avocat est aujourd’hui amené à retracer l’itinéraire du bien spolié pour démontrer la dépossession illégitime de son propriétaire. Ce faisant, il intervient dans la procédure du débat contradictoire en tant que chercheur de mémoire : le contentieux des biens spoliés constitue ainsi pour l’avocat un moyen de modeler la mémoire collective d’un pays mais aussi l’écriture de l’Histoire. L’avocat occupe alors un rôle dans la recherche du (...) juste, intervenant à chaque étape de l’élaboration de la décision judiciaire afin d’en pointer les incertitudes. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 1 Seiten: 295-299.

Mark Schroeder has, rather famously, defended a powerful Humean Theory of Reasons. In doing so, he abandons what many take to be the default Humean view of weighting reasons—namely, proportionalism. On Schroeder’s view, the pressure that Humeans feel to adopt proportionalism is illusory, and proportionalism is unable to make sense of the fact that the weight of reasons is a normative matter. He thus offers his own ‘Recursive View’, which directly explains how it is that the weight of reasons is (...) a normative matter. In this paper, I argue against Schroeder that a Humean ought to be a proportionalist. On my view, proportionalism is clearly an intuitive theory of weighting for a Humean, so we should resist it only if Schroeder can demonstrate either that there is a serious problem with the view, or that there is a better alternative. I then further argue that Schroeder fails to deliver on either condition. As a result, I conclude that there are good intuitive reasons for a Humean to be a proportionalist, and no good reason not to be. (shrink)

Friendship (philia) plays a prominent role in Aristotle’s ethical thought. It is only within the context of his discussions of philia that Aristotle explicitly mentions acting for the sake of another’s good: friends, he claims, wish and do good things for one another for the sake of the friend. However, it is not clear whether Aristotle limits disinterested wishing well to the complete friendships of virtuous agents. I argue that he does not; friends of all varieties, to the extent that (...) they are friends at all, wish and act well for the friend’s sake. I also consider whether Aristotle’s remarks on self-love and friendship might provide reason for thinking that love for others is and ought to be an extension of self-love. I reject the idea that love for a friend is justified by self-love: the virtuous agent does not care about the good of her friends only insofar as she sees those friends as her other selves. (shrink)

Historian, city planner, international lecturer, and early advocate of interdisciplinary study, Corinne LathropGIlb draws on disciplines beyond the conventional study of history to explore such diverse topics as symbolismin city planning, biorhythms as determinants of creativity, the intertwined histories of liberalism andcorporatism, and the role of beauty in public policy. Woven as a subtext throughout this collection ofarticles, speeches, and other short writings is Dr. Gilb's inquiry into the dynamic between inner history ("thearchitecture of self-space") and outer history. Thought-provoking (...) and entertaining, Toward Holistic History istimely in its call for an historiography that recognizes the "great honeycomb" of pluralisms that defines our world. (shrink)

Many of us believe that we can and do have individual obligations to refrain from contributing to massive collective harms – say, from producing luxury greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; however, our individual actions are so small as to be practically meaningless. Can we then, justify the intuition that we ought to refrain? In this paper, we argue that this debate may have been mis-framed. Rather than investigating whether or not we have obligations to refrain from contributing to collective action, perhaps (...) we should ask whether we have reason to do so. However, this framing brings challenges of its own, and so we close by asking what problems are generated if we focus on these questions of ‘contributory ethics’. (shrink)

Joshua Parker’s article on green inhaler prescribing is important and timely. I agree with much of it, specifically regarding the institutional duty to make climate-friendly changes (from environmentally expensive prescriptions to ‘greener,’ similarly effective ones). The challenge, however, comes in determining how that institutional obligation impacts the rights and duties of patients. In this commentary, I want to offer a friendly alternative to Parker’s view of individual patient obligation, which I suggest is important for reasons that go beyond this one (...) case. Parker’s broad view is that, because metered-dose inhalers (MDIs) emit far more greenhouse gases (GHG) than do dry powder inhalers (DPIs), and the two are equally effective for most patients, the healthcare system should switch most patients on MDIs to DPIs, and the patients have a pro tanto duty to accept this change.1 The problem is that no individual inhaler use causes harmful climate change, and so it is difficult to explain a duty not to use MDIs. It seems that my individual behaviour ‘makes no difference’ to climate change, so familiar more principles have a difficult time justifying a prohibition of such behaviour. Parker’s response to this worry fits into the consequentialist tradition,2 3 as he argues that each individual contribution to climate change causes some amount of ‘expected harm,’ because it contributes a little bit to future climate changes which will cause harm. And since we have a duty to minimise expected harm, we have a duty not to make such small contributions to climate change. I think we should be sceptical of this sort of argument. It makes the most sense if we endorse a bathtub metaphor, in which the atmosphere is like a bathtub, and once it is full, every …. (shrink)

Editors' introduction to the Puncta special issue on "Critically Sick: New Phenomenologies Of Illness, Madness, And Disability.".

Western media coverage of female genital modifications in Africa has been hyperbolic and one-sided, presenting them uniformly as mutilation and ignoring the cultural complexities that underlie these practices. Even if we ultimately decide that female genital modifications should be abandoned, the debate around them should be grounded in a better account of the facts.