Introduction -- Part I: Willing as practical knowing -- The will and practical judgment -- Fundamental practical judgments : the wish for happiness -- Part II: From presuppositions of judgment to the idea of a categorical imperative -- The formal presuppositions of practical judgment -- Constraints on willing -- Part III: Interpretation -- The categorical imperative -- Applications -- Conclusion.

Kant holds that the human cognitive power is divided into two "stems", understanding and sensibility. This doctrine has seemed objectionably dualistic to many critics, who see these stems as distinct parts, each able on its own to produce representations, which must somehow interact, determining or constraining one another, in order to secure the fit, requisite for cognition, between concept and intuition. This reading cannot be squared, however, with what Kant actually says about theoretical cognition and the way understanding and sensibility (...) cooperate in it. Such cognition, as Kant conceives of it, satisfies two conditions: it has unity, and it depends on the existence of its object. The first of these conditions entails that the cognitive power must lie in spontaneity, or understanding, while the second implies that this spontaneity depends on receptivity, or sensibility, to be the cognitive power that it is. Consideration of how these capacities must be conceived as cooperating in cognition reveals them to be related, not as interacting parts, but as form and matter. Such a conception of their relation may at first glance seem to be merely another version of dualistic thinking; in fact, however, a proper appreciation of it eliminates the appearance of dualism and helps allay an associated concern that Kant's distinction would taint our cognition with an unacceptable subjectivism. (shrink)

Kant claims that the concept of the highest good, the idea of happiness in proportion to virtue, is grounded in the moral law. But this claim has often been challenged. How can Kant justify including happiness in the highest good? Why should only the virtuous be worthy of happiness? This paper argues that when the moral law is interpreted as the criterion for valid application of the concept of the good, the concept of the highest good does indeed follow from (...) the moral law. It also argues that the duty to promote the highest good harmonizes with other duties. (shrink)

The common assumption that the Transcendental Deduction aims to refute scepticism often leads interpreters to conclude that it fails and even that Kant is confused about what it is supposed to achieve. By examining what Kant himself says concerning the Deductions' relation to scepticism, this article seeks to determine what sort of scepticism he has in view and how he responds to it. It concludes that the Deduction aims neither to refute Cartesian, outer- world scepticism nor to refute Humean, empiricist (...) scepticism, and it outlines an alternative conception of the Deduction's task, as one of reconciling apparently conflicting claims of reason. (shrink)

This major collection of essays offers the first serious challenge to the traditional view that ancient and modern ethics are fundamentally opposed. In doing so, it has important implications for contemporary ethical thought, as well as providing a significant re-assessment of the work of Aristotle, Kant and the Stoics. The contributors include internationally recognised interpreters of ancient and modern ethics. Four pairs of essays compare and contrast Aristotle and Kant on deliberation and moral development, eudaimonism, self-love and self-worth, and practical (...) reason and moral psychology. The final pair of essays introduces the Stoics as an example of how the apparently antithetical views of Aristotle and the Stoics might be reconciled. (shrink)

As social media becomes increasingly popular, human subjects researchers are able to use these platforms to locate, track, and communicate with study participants, thereby increasing participant retention and the generalizability and validity of research. The use of social media; however, raises novel ethical and regulatory issues that have received limited attention in the literature and federal regulations. We review research ethics and regulations and outline the implications for maintaining participant privacy, respecting participant autonomy, and promoting researcher transparency when using social (...) media to locate and track participants. We offer a rubric that can be used in future studies to determine ethical and regulation-consistent use of social media platforms and illustrate the rubric using our study team’s experience with Facebook. We also offer recommendations for both researchers and institutional review boards that emphasize the importance of well-described procedures for social media use as... (shrink)

This essay chiefly concerns the unity of self-consciousness expounded under the heading "the original synthetic unity of apperception" in Kant's transcendental deduction. It focuses mainly on Kant's identification of this unity with the understanding, the faculty of knowledge, with the aim of throwing light on the understanding and on knowledge as well as on synthetic unity.

AimsTo examine attitudes towards physician-assisted suicide (PAS) among physicians in Sweden and compare these with the results from a similar cross-sectional study performed in 2007.ParticipantsA random selection of 250 physicians from each of six specialties (general practice, geriatrics, internal medicine, oncology, surgery and psychiatry) and all 127 palliative care physicians in Sweden were invited to participate in this study.SettingA postal questionnaire commissioned by the Swedish Medical Society in collaboration with Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. ResultsThe total response rate was 59.2%. Slightly (...) fewer than half [47.1% (95% CI 43.7–50.5)] of the respondents from the six specialties accepted PAS, which is significantly more than accepted PAS in the 2007 study [34.9% (95% CI 31.5–38.3)]. Thirty-three percent of respondents were prepared to prescribe the needed drugs. When asked what would happen to the respondent’s own trust in healthcare, a majority [67.1% (95% CI 63.9–70.3)] stated that legalizing PAS would either not influence their own trust in healthcare, or that their trust would increase. This number is an increase compared to the 2007 survey, when just over half [51.9% (95% CI 48.0–55.2)] indicated that their own trust would either not be influenced, or would increase.ConclusionsThe study reveals a shift towards a more accepting attitude concerning PAS among physicians in Sweden. Only a minority of the respondents stated that they were against PAS, and a considerable proportion reported being prepared to prescribe the needed drugs for patient self-administration if PAS were legalized. (shrink)

We introduce generalized quantifiers, as defined in Tarskian semantics by Mostowski and Lindström, in logics whose semantics is based on teams instead of assignments, e.g., IF-logic and Dependence logic. Both the monotone and the non-monotone case is considered. It is argued that to handle quantifier scope dependencies of generalized quantifiers in a satisfying way the dependence atom in Dependence logic is not well suited and that the multivalued dependence atom is a better choice. This atom is in fact definably equivalent (...) to the independence atom recently introduced by Väänänen and Grädel. (shrink)

This study presents a qualitative description of situations at work that staff members perceive as giving rise to ethical issues. All staff members working with patients across seven wards were given the opportunity to freely describe ethical considerations in an ethical diary over the course of one week. One hundred and five staff members kept a diary. The diaries were analysed with qualitative content analysis where four dominant themes emerged: good care, order and clarity, loyalty, and inadequacy. These results contain (...) statements in which patients are respected and listened to, as well as statements that express a desire for relatively strict, routine-based care. Relatively few statements were of a reflective or discussing nature which highlights the need for clinical ethical support. There is a need of a visible and supportive leadership which encourages ethical reflection. Reflections on real cases could provide an opportunity to challenge existing practices and thereby promote ethical awareness. (shrink)

This collection of essays contains revised versions of papers delivered at a conference entitled “Duty, Interest, and Practical Reason: Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics” that was organized by Stephen Engstrom and Jennifer Whiting at the University of Pittsburgh in 1994. One of the main aims of the conference was to bring together scholars on Aristotle, the Stoics, and Kant to reevaluate the common view that Greek and Kantian ethics represent fundamentally opposed conceptions of ethical theory and the roles of morality (...) and happiness in practical reasoning. According to a common view, the ancients are eudaimonists; they derive or justify the virtues by showing how they contribute to the agent’s own eudaimonia or happiness. By contrast, Kant sharply criticizes eudaimonism for deriving or justifying morality in terms of happiness. This criticism applies to eudaimonism of all sorts, even Stoic eudaimonism, which is perhaps closer in some respects to Kant’s own views, and of which he is somewhat less critical than he is of other forms of eudaimonism. For Kant, moral duty and respect for the moral law must be grounded in reason itself and cannot be made to depend on any independent standard. These and related assumptions about ancient and Kantian ethics have helped structure much contemporary systematic work in ethical theory, as well as common conceptions of these ethical traditions. But this common view has been under reexamination lately; some of the most interesting work in the history of ethics in recent years has been in Greek and Kantian ethics, and much of it challenges one or another aspect of the received view of the ethical theory and moral psychology of Kant or the Greeks. However, with some exceptions, renewed interest and recent work in these two traditions has proceeded in parallel. The conference aimed to correct this, by bringing together some of the most distinguished scholars of ancient and modern ethics to compare and assess the role of moral duty and happiness in the two traditions. Most of the essays have such a comparative assessment as their main theme; but even those that focus more exclusively on one of the traditions contribute indirectly to this comparative assessment. (shrink)

The dual character of invariance under transformations and definability by some operations has been used in classical works by, for example, Galois and Klein. Following Tarski, philosophers of logic have claimed that logical notions themselves could be characterized in terms of invariance. In this article, we generalize a correspondence due to Krasner between invariance under groups of permutations and definability in L∞∞ so as to cover the cases that are of interest in the logicality debates, getting McGee’s theorem about quantifiers (...) invariant under all permutations and definability in pure L∞∞ as a particular case. We also prove some optimality results along the way, regarding the kinds of relations which are needed so that every subgroup of the full permutation group is characterizable as a group of automorphisms. (shrink)

This paper examines a specific appeal to philosophical anthropology—Andy Clark's—and the role it plays in shaping his account of our fundamental cyborg humanity." By focusing on the theme of embodiment, we also inquire into how phenomenology might benefit from Clark's account as well as how Clark's account might benefit from further engagement with phenomenology. Throughout, we explore inter- and intra-disciplinary questions that highlight the contribution the philosophy of technology can make to our understanding of embodiment and philosophical anthropology.

This paper considers a principal concept of metaphysics – the category of substance – as it figures in Kant’s critical program of establishing metaphysics as a science. Like Leibniz, Kant identifies metaphysical concepts through logical reflection on the form of cognitive activity. He thus begins with general logic’s account of categorical judgment as an act of subordinating predicate to subject. This categorical form is then considered in transcendental logic with reference to the possibility of its real use. Transcendental reflection reveals (...) that the categorical form, in its potential for such use, constitutes the category of substance and accident, representing a first real subject and a determination of its existence. But to qualify for objective, scientific employment, metaphysics’ concepts must admit of real definitions, which show their objects to be possible, and such possibility, pace Leibniz, can be established only in relation to possible experience. Thus, relying on his doctrine of the schematism, Kant shows the category to figure constitutively in experience, as the ground of the first law of nature, that in all change substance persists. (shrink)

We characterize the expressive power of extensions of Dependence Logic and Independence Logic by monotone generalized quanti ers in terms of quanti er extensions of existential second-order logic.

BackgroundPsychiatric staff members have the power to decide the options that frame encounters with patients. Intentional as well as unintentional framing can have a crucial impact on patients’ opportunities to be heard and participate in the process. We identified three dominant ethical perspectives in the normative medical ethics literature concerning how doctors and other staff members should frame interactions in relation to patients; paternalism, autonomy and reciprocity. The aim of this study was to describe and analyse statements describing real work (...) situations and ethical reflections made by staff members in relation to three central perspectives in medical ethics; paternalism, autonomy and reciprocity.MethodsAll staff members involved with patients in seven adult psychiatric and six child and adolescent psychiatric clinics were given the opportunity to freely describe ethical considerations in their work by keeping an ethical diary over the course of one week and 173 persons handed in their diaries. Qualitative theory-guided content analysis was used to provide a description of staff encounters with patients and in what way these encounters were consistent with, or contrary to, the three perspectives.ResultsThe majority of the statements could be attributed to the perspective of paternalism and several to autonomy. Only a few statements could be attributed to reciprocity, most of which concerned staff members acting contrary to the perspective. The result is presented as three perspectives containing eight values.•Paternalism; 1) promoting and restoring the health of the patient, 2) providing good care and 3) assuming responsibility.•Autonomy; 1) respecting the patient’s right to self-determination and information, 2) respecting the patient’s integrity and 3) protecting human rights.•Reciprocity; 1) involving patients in the planning and implementation of their care and 2) building trust between staff and patients.ConclusionsPaternalism clearly appeared to be the dominant perspective among the participants, but there was also awareness of patients’ right to autonomy. Despite a normative trend towards reciprocity in psychiatry throughout the Western world, identifying it proved difficult in this study. This should be borne in mind by clinics when considering the need for ethical education, training and supervision. (shrink)

The aims of this study were to present themes in nursing motifs as depicted in tattoos and to describe how it reflects upon nursing in popular culture as well as within professional nursing culture. An archival and cross‐sectional observational study was conducted online to search for images of nursing tattoos that were freely available, by utilizing the netnographic methodology. The 400 images were analyzed in a process that consisted of four analytical steps focusing on metaphors and meanings in the tattoos. (...) The findings present four themes: angels of mercy and domination; hegemonic nursing technology; embodying the corps; and nurses within the belly of the monster. The tattoos serve as a mirror of popular culture and the professional culture of nurses and nursing practice within the context of body art. Body art policy statements have been included in nursing personnel dress code policies. Usually these policies prohibit tattoos that are sexist, symbolize sex or could contribute and reproduce racial oppression. The results show that the tattoos can be interpreted according to several layers of meanings in relation to such policies. We therefore stress that this is an area highly relevant for further analyses in nursing research. (shrink)

The Scottish independence referendum in 2014 saw the breakthrough of online political campaigning in the UK. Despite the outcome, research and media alike concluded that the main pro-independence campaign, Yes Scotland, outdid the main pro-union campaign, Better Together, in the online battle. This article addresses this discrepancy by exploring how YS and BT used social media affordances in order to legitimize their own and de-legitimize their opponents’ positions. The material consists of multimodal tweets published by YS and BT in the (...) run-up to the referendum. The article employs a model for multimodal legitimation that takes into consideration the construction of authority, moral evaluation and the construction and justifications of means and goals. The findings show that both campaigns made extensive use of de-legitimating strategies, although YS was more balanced. The article also shows that the campaigns’ communicative choices had implications for the construction and justification of goals and means, with YS running a more visionary campaign than BT. (shrink)

In his very rich and insightful book, Kant's Theory of Freedom, Henry Allison argues that in the first Critique Kant's reason for rejecting Humean compatibilism in favor of an incompatibilist conception of practical freedom stems, not from a specific concern to ground morality, as many have supposed, but from his general conception of rational agency, which Allison explicates in terms of the idea of practical spontaneity. Practically spontaneous rational agency is subject to imperatives and therefore distinct from Humean agency. But (...) it is not necessarily subject to the categorical imperative and hence is distinct from fully spontaneous (transcendentally free) moral agency. A conception thus emerges of an agent with limited spontaneity, subject to hypothetical but not categorical imperatives. A doubt may be raised, however, as to whether Kant's view can accommodate this conception of limited practical spontaneity. Reflection on Kant's notion of a hypothetical imperative suggests that the idea of limited spontaneity is in danger of either collapsing into the Humean picture or else turning out to be equivalent to the conception of full spontaneity appropriate to moral agency. There is thus reason to suppose that, for Kant, we would not be bound by imperatives at all if we were not bound by the categorical imperative. (shrink)

The Delegation for Medical Ethics within the Swedish Society of Medicine has taken the initiative to create national ethical guidelines on cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The reasons behind this initiative were indications of differences in the way decisions about cardiopulmonary resuscitation were made and documented and requests expressed by health-care professionals for new national ethical guidelines. During the process of creating the guidelines, a number of workshops were held with representatives from the delegation and clinical experts from various branches of medicine. Several (...) versions of the working document were sent to consultation bodies with requests for comments. We therefore believe that the final guidelines are well supported by the medical profession in Sweden. The purpose of this article is to present ethical issues on which it was difficult to reach consensus due to divergent opinions expressed by the people and organisations involved. The arguments for and against a particular point of... (shrink)

Comparative philosophy is dependent upon translation, often translations that will help preserve some fundamental commitments: to linguistic mastery, to the recovery or preservation of an original, and to the protection of an authenticity that will ground these commitments. Such a view can sometimes obscure a nostalgia for questionable causes. Comparative philosophy, especially with continental affinities, often relies on two moves: first, a boundary must be found (or produced) between philosophy itself and other forms of writing (literature or fiction, say), to (...) ensure proper grounding. Second, it must be understood that this boundary depends upon an underlying philosophy of language: language speaks us, it speaks Being; to dwell in a different language is to dwell in a different house of being (Martin Heidegger). But how might this project – its historiography of return and grounding, and its mythologizing of linguistic and ontological recovery – be challenged by the very practice of translation itself? Perhaps this challenge is one of translation’s philosophical benefits. (shrink)

The primary thesis of this article is that the rights and powers of corporations--to collect, recombine, and resell personal data--have accrued in such a way as to fundamentally circumvent traditional and conventional conceptions of privacy, especially with respect to the sphere of informational privacy. In so doing, informational capitalism has also altered in fundamental ways the public and social sphere itself, the sphere through which one might expect these corporate forces and uses of technology to be controlled.

Open peer commentary on the article “Constructing Constructivism” by Hugh Gash. Upshot: The concept of “constructivist teaching” seems unattainable for two reasons: a philosophical and an empirical one. Also, Hugh Gash’s survey is not so much about radical constructivism in education, but a review of different connected ideas labeled “constructivism” that have dominated the educational field.

Whistleblower bounty schemes that pay individuals a cash “bounty” for surfacing information about illegal conduct have rapidly gained public and scholarly attention, fueling calls to install a bounty approach across numerous regulatory areas, from workplace safety, environmental protection, and civil rights to political corruption, immigration, and antitrust. Yet despite the enthusiasm, bounty regimes have remained confined to the fraud context. This Article uses this fact as a jumping off point and, looking across the regulatory state, aims to answer some basic (...) questions about bounty regimes that have thus far eluded sustained scholarly attention: What features of a given regulatory area make it more or less conducive to a bounty approach? Given this, how might existing bounty regimes be revised? And if bounty regimes were to break out of the fraud area, where might they most profitably spread? It offers some initial answers to these questions by constructing a simple framework that shows how two features of the regulatory environment - the directness of the harm to be regulated and the determinacy of the legal mandate to be implemented - structure the choice among competing bounty approaches. These aspects of regulatory context, I argue, map onto the two most vexing challenges facing regulatory architects weighing a bounty mechanism or choosing among competing designs: optimizing the quantity and quality of information revelation and maintaining public control over the elaboration of legal mandates. The framework brings into relief some of the fault-lines in the growing scholarly debate about the optimal use and design of bounty schemes, including the choice between a simple cash-for-information scheme and a more elaborate qui tam scheme in which whistleblowers are vested with independent enforcement authority via a private right of action. It also yields a rough regulatory roadmap showing where existing bounty schemes might be revised and also the areas to which a bounty approach might be usefully exported. (shrink)

The early twenty-first century will be remembered as a time of constant crisis. These crises have created repeated global states of emergency, revealing gaps, and inadequacies in social protection systems worldwide. Alongside these crises, and as a response to them, social protection has grown into a paradigm of global governance. This development is also noticeable in the practices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. At the heart of all social protection policies is the protection of vulnerable groups. (...) Crises create new vulnerabilities and deteriorate the situation of those already vulnerable. The article explores the social protection endorsement of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund through the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows how crises have fueled their social protection endorsement, making protection of vulnerable groups a central outspoken policy preference. The article asks whether the policies adopted in response to the pandemic confirm their social protection commitment and what challenges remain. (shrink)