Starting with service robotics and industrial robotics, this paper aims to suggest philosophical reflections about the relationship between body and machine, between man and technology in our contemporary world. From the massive use of the cell phone to the robots which apparently “feel” and show emotions like humans do. From the wearable exoskeleton to the prototype reproducing the artificial sense of touch, technological progress explodes to the extent of embodying itself in our nakedness. Robotics, indeed, is inspired by biology in (...) order to develop a new kind of technology affecting human life. This is a bio-robotic approach, which is fulfilled in the figure of the cyborg and consequently in the loss of human nature. Today, humans have reached the possibility to modify and create their own body following their personal desires. But what is the limit of this achievement? For this reason, we all must question ourselves whether we have or whether we are a body. (shrink)

In Searle’s social ontology, collective intentionality is an essential component of all institutional facts. This is because the latter involve the assignment of functions, namely "status functions," on entities whose physical features do not guarantee their performance, therefore requiring our acceptance that it be performed. One counter-example to that claim can be found in Carl Menger’s individualistic account of the money system. Menger’s commitment to the self-interest assumption, however, prevents him from accounting for the deontic dimensions of institutional facts.

This chapter contains sections titled: Note.

William James is known as a nineteenth-century philosopher, psychologist, and psychical researcher. Less well-known are the medical fixations that united his multiple identities and drove his ambition to change the way American society conceived of itself in body, mind, and soul. William James, M.D. offers an account of the development and cultural significance of James's ideas and works, and establishes, for the first time, the relevance of medical themes to his major lines of thought. James lived at a time when (...) old assumptions about faith and the moral and religious possibilities for human worth and redemption were increasingly displaced by a concern with the medically "normal" and the perfectibility of the body. Woven into treatises warning of the degeneration of humanity, these ideas comprised the origins of the eugenics movement and were manifest in a growing social stigma attached to illness and invalidism, a disturbing intellectual current in which James felt personally implicated. Most chronicles of James's life have portrayed a distressed young man, a psychological or spiritual crisis, followed by the emergence of a mature thinker who threw off his pallor of mental sickness for good. In contrast, Emma Sutton draws on his personal correspondence, unpublished notebooks, and diaries to show that James considered himself a genuine invalid to the end of his days. Sutton makes the compelling case that his philosophizing was not an abstract occupation but an impassioned response to his own life experiences and challenges. To ignore the medical James is to misread James altogether. Sales points: First book to map William James's preoccupation with medical ideas, concerns, and values across the disciplinary breadth of his work Reveals how themes of invalidism, health, and healing underpinned the genesis of many of James's major philosophical, psychological, and political ideas Draws on the approximately 9,400 items of Jamesian correspondence, together with his private notes and reading lists. (shrink)

This paper develops and tests a new conceptual model incorporating the indirect impact of two ethical ideologies (idealism and relativism) on Chinese consumers’ ethical judgments under four ethically problematic consumption situations (active benefit, passive benefit, deceptive practice, and no/indirect harm) through two cultural values (integration and moral discipline). Data from a large-scale online consumer survey in five major Chinese cities (_N_ = 1046) support most hypotheses. The findings are consistent with the postulated global impact of ethical ideology on forming an (...) individual’s beliefs and values and highlight the importance of a thorough understanding of the significant determinants of consumer ethics to promote ethically responsible consumption behaviors. This study also uses an emic approach to conceptualize and measure Chinese cultural values by using cultural constructs and measures that are designed explicitly in the Chinese context. (shrink)

When we accept oppression of some, we feed the oppression of others, and we make space for domination driven by false ideas of inferiority and lesser worth. When we discount the inherent preciousness of animals who think and feel, we erase precious parts of ourselves. When we consider living beings as "livestock," it's no wonder we pillage the unthinking yet irreplaceable living earth. Sub-Human is a robustly researched, sharply critical yet comfortingly human call to arms, diving deeply into the theory (...) behind oppression, liberation, and the intersections within it. Exploring the history of animal consumption and commodification, this book deconstructs the current sociopolitical climate surrounding animal enterprises by looking at how we got here. Most importantly, it unravels how we can work towards a collectively liberated world. (shrink)

This chapter highlights the common practice of appealing to lay intuitions as evidence for philosophical theories of free will. These arguments often seem to assume that the purported intuitions in question are not results of error, and the purported intuitions are generalizable to some interesting extent. Some empirical investigations of these two assumptions, including some studies that revealed intra‐personal variation in compatibilist intuitions are reviewed. The chapter examines two popular error theories, the affect Hypothesis and the Bypassing Hypothesis, which take (...) these findings to challenges. With new empirical results, it argues instead that both compatibilist and incompatibilist intuitions genuinely reflect how people think about free will and moral responsibility. A pluralistic approach of theorizing about free will that allows one to embrace either compatibilism or incompatibilism in different contexts is proposed. (shrink)

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising from nonideal modern situations. The best way to meet this challenge, Joseph Chan argues, is to adopt liberal democratic institutions that are shaped by the Confucian conception of the good rather than the liberal conception of (...) the right.Confucian Perfectionism examines and reconstructs both Confucian political thought and liberal democratic institutions, blending them to form a new Confucian political philosophy. Chan decouples liberal democratic institutions from their popular liberal philosophical foundations in fundamental moral rights, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and individual sovereignty. Instead, he grounds them on Confucian principles and redefines their roles and functions, thus mixing Confucianism with liberal democratic institutions in a way that strengthens both. Then he explores the implications of this new yet traditional political philosophy for fundamental issues in modern politics, including authority, democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice.Confucian Perfectionism critically reconfigures the Confucian political philosophy of the classical period for the contemporary era. (shrink)

This book provides much new thinking on the phenomenon of whole person education, a phenomenon which features strongly in East Asian universities, and which aims to develop students intellectually, spiritually, and ethically, to master critical thinking skills, to explore ethical challenges in the surrounding community and to acquire a broad based foundation of knowledge in humanities, society and nature. The book considers different approaches to whole person education, including Confucian, Buddhist, and Chinese perspectives, Western philosophy and religion and interdisciplinary approaches. (...) Overall, the book provides a comprehensive overview of whole person education, why it matters and how to implement it. Moreover, although the examples in the book are from East Asia, the discussion and the values involved are universal, important for the whole world. (shrink)

Scientists, philosophers, and policymakers disagree about how to define microaggression. Here, we offer a taxonomy of existing definitions, clustering around (a) the psychological motives of perpetrators, (b) the experience of victims, and (c) the functional role of microaggression in oppressive social structures. We consider conceptual and epistemic challenges to each and suggest that progress may come from developing novel hybrid accounts of microaggression, combining empirically tractable features with sensitivity to the testimony of victims.

This paper examines the concept of medical necessity as it relates to mental health care rationing, arguing that the normal functioning model of medical necessity is insufficient because it fails to cohere with an important aim and function of mental health care, which is to provide support for individuals in abusive or otherwise difficult personal relationships.

A nonfiction, alphabet picture book that introduces young readers to New Age/mystical concepts.

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. We tend to hold people responsible for their choices, but not for what they can’t control: their nature, genes or biological makeup. This thought-provoking collection redefines the boundaries of moral responsibility. It shows how epigenetics reveals connections between our genetic make-up and our environment. The essays challenge established notions of human nature and the nature/nurture divide and suggest a shift in focus from individual to collective responsibility. Uncovering the links between our (...) genetic makeup, environment and experiences, this is an important contribution to ongoing debates on ethics, genetics and responsibility. (shrink)

Environmental epigenetics is increasingly employed to understand the health outcomes of communities who have experienced historical trauma and structural violence. Epigenetics provides a way to think about traumatic events and sustained deprivation as biological “exposures” that contribute to ill-health across generations. In Australia, some Indigenous researchers and clinicians are embracing epigenetic science as a framework for theorising the slow violence of colonialism as it plays out in intergenerational legacies of trauma and illness. However, there is dispute, contention, and caution as (...) well as enthusiasm among these research communities.In this article, we trace strategies of “refusal” (Simpson, 2014) in response to epigenetics in Indigenous contexts. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Australia with researchers and clinicians in Indigenous health, we explore how some construct epigenetics as useless knowledge and a distraction from implementing anti-colonial change, rather than a tool with which to enact change. Secondly, we explore how epigenetics narrows definitions of colonial harm through the optic of molecular trauma, reproducing conditions in which Indigenous people are made intelligible through a lens of “damaged” bodies. Faced with these two concerns, many turn away from epigenetics altogether, refusing its novelty and supposed benefit for Indigenous health equity and resisting the pull of postgenomics. (shrink)

In Utopophobia: On the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy, David Estlund defends against utopophobia in political philosophy. Estlund claims that it is no defect in a theory of justice if it sets a high standard that has little chance of being achieved by any society. The book does not, however, give similar permission to argue for unrealistically optimistic political proposals. Going beyond Estlund, I consider the possibility that some utopian thinking is warranted not just in the context of formulating (...) a theory of justice, but in the practical context, too. Sometimes theorizers ought to argue for and pursue political proposals that seem unrealistically optimistic. (shrink)

Microaggressions are seemingly negligible slights that can cause significant damage to frequently targeted members of marginalized groups. Recently, Scott O. Lilienfeld challenged a key platform of the microaggression research project: what’s aggressive about microaggressions? To answer this challenge, Derald Wing Sue, the psychologist who has spearheaded the research on microaggressions, needs to theorize a spectrum of aggression that ranges from intentional assault to unintentional microaggressions. I suggest turning to Bonnie Mann’s “Creepers, Flirts, Heroes and Allies” for inspiration. Building from Mann’s (...) richer theoretical framework will allow Sue to answer Lilienfeld’s objection and defend the legitimacy of the concept, ‘microaggression’. (shrink)

In this article, we aim to map out the complexities which characterise debates about the ethics of vaccine distribution, particularly those surrounding the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. In doing so, we distinguish three general principles which might be used to distribute goods and two ambiguities in how one might wish to spell them out. We then argue that we can understand actual debates around the COVID-19 vaccine – including those over prioritising vaccinating the most vulnerable – as reflecting disagreements (...) over these principles. Finally, we shift our attention away from traditional discussions of distributive justice, highlighting the importance of concerns about risk imposition, special duties, and social roles in explaining debates over the COVID-19 vaccine. We conclude that the normative complexity this article highlights deepens the need for decision-making bodies to be sensitive to public input. (shrink)

In 1798, the National Institute and the French minister of foreign relations invited European countries to send delegations of science practitioners to Paris to finalise the values of the metre and the kilogram. This article reads the event as part of a wider attempt to establish the political relevance of international scientific consensus and include scientific exchanges in the diplomatic culture of post-revolutionary Europe. At the end of the 18th century, the scope and methods of both the sciences and diplomacy (...) were being renegotiated. French academicians hoped that the new system of weights and measures would at once facilitate international scientific exchanges and advertise that new authority should be politically invested in savants. During the Directory, part of the political elite hoped to stabilise the Revolution and forge an international order where the Republic could coexist with old regime monarchies. This entailed focusing diplomatic negotiations on commercial development, something a shared metrological system could foster. The conference was the product of the alliance between the two groups. Foreign responses to the project reveal the novelty of the association between scientific discussions and diplomatic negotiations. Furthermore, European savants and governments did not agree that metrological reforms fell primarily under the expertise of science practitioners, rather than under that of trading actors or administrators. The conference did not produce consensus on the suitability of the metric system or on the feasibility of programmes for the unification of weights and measures. It was more successful at promoting precision and rationality as key parameters to assess metrological systems and science practitioners as main experts in the matter. (shrink)

While human genetic research promises to deliver a range of health benefits to the population, genetic research that takes place in Indigenous communities has proven controversial. Indigenous peoples have raised concerns, including a lack of benefit to their communities, a diversion of attention and resources from non-genetic causes of health disparities and racism in health care, a reinforcement of “victim-blaming” approaches to health inequalities, and possible misuse of blood and tissue samples. Drawing on the international literature, this article reviews the (...) ethical issues relevant to genetic research in Indigenous populations and considers how some of these have been negotiated in a genomic research project currently under way in a remote Aboriginal community. We consider how the different levels of Indigenous research governance operating in Australia impacted on the research project and discuss whether specific guidelines for the conduct of genetic research in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are warranted. (shrink)