What makes a choice hard? I discuss and criticize three common answers and then make a proposal of my own. Paradigmatic hard choices are not hard because of our ignorance, the incommensurability of values, or the incomparability of the alternatives. They are hard because the alternatives are on a par; they are comparable, but one is not better than the other, and yet nor are they equally good. So understood, hard choices open up a new way of thinking about what (...) it is to be a rational agent. (shrink)

‘Normative powers’ are capacities to create normative reasons by our willing or say-so. They are significant, because if we have them and exercise them, then sometimes the reasons we have are ‘up to us’. But such powers seem mysterious. How can we, by willing, create reasons? In this paper, I examine whether normative powers can be adequately explained normatively, by appeal to norms of a practice, normative principles, human interests, or values. Can normative explanations of normative powers explain how an (...) exercise of the will can afford us special freedom in determining our reasons? I argue that normative approaches to answering this question prove to be inadequate. To vindicate the thought that normative powers can make our reasons ‘up to us’, we need an altogether different approach to understanding them, one that is located not in the normative but in the metaphysical. I end the paper by sketching a metaphysical explanation of normative powers. This metaphysical defence of normative powers provides a window into a different, more agent-centered way of thinking about rational agency. (shrink)

Four questions are raised about the semantics of Quantified Modal Logic. Does QML admit possible objects, i.e. possibilia? Is it plausible to admit them? Can sense be made of such objects? Is QML committed to the existence of possibilia? The conclusions are that QML, generalized as in Kripke, would seem to accommodate possibilia, but they are rejected on philosophical and semantical grounds. Things must be encounterable, directly nameable and a part of the actual order before they may plausibly enter into (...) the identity relation. QML is not committed to possibilia in that the range of variables may be restricted to actual objects. Support of the conclusions requires some discussion of substitution puzzles; also, the semantical distinction between proper names which are directly referring, and descriptions even where the latter are "rigid designators". Views of W.V. Quine, B. Russell, K. Donnellan, D. Kaplan as well as S. Kripke are invoked or evaluated in conjunction with these issues. (shrink)

This chapter argues that there is a particular kind of ‘internal’ commitment typically made in the context of romantic love relationships that has striking meta-normative implications for how we understand the role of the will in practical normativity. Internal commitments cannot plausibly explain the reasons we have in committed relationships on the usual model—as triggering reasons that are already there, in the way that making a promise triggers a reason via a pre-existing norm of the form ‘If you make a (...) promise to x, then you have a reason to x’. Instead, internal commitments are that in virtue of which one has the special reasons of committed relationships; they are the grounds of such reasons. In this way, the will is a source of practical normativity. (shrink)

Andrea R English, Ruth Heilbronn; Decolonizing the Curriculum: Philosophical Perspectives – An Introduction, Journal of Philosophy of Education,, qhae043.

This paper proposes a way to understand transformative choices, choices that change ‘who you are.’ First, it distinguishes two broad models of transformative choice: 1) ‘event-based’ transformative choices in which some event—perhaps an experience—downstream from a choice transforms you, and 2) ‘choice-based’ transformative choices in which the choice itself—and not something downstream from the choice—transforms you. Transformative choices are of interest primarily because they purport to pose a challenge to standard approaches to rational choice. An examination of the event-based transformative (...) choices of L. A. Paul and Edna Ullman-Margalit, however, suggests that event-based transformative choices don’t raise any difficulties for standard approaches to rational choice. An account of choice-based transformative choices—and what it is to be transformed—is then proposed. Transformative choices so understood not only capture paradigmatic cases of transformative choice but also point the way to a different way of thinking about rational choice and agency. (shrink)

One of the virtues of the biosemantic view of language is the clarity and simplicity of its description of the general nature of nonrepresentational linguistic constructions. It doesn't follow, however, that it is obvious on this view how these functions should be described individually. After an explanation of the biosemantic approach, initial suggestions are made for analyses of a variety of nonrepresentational constructions that have traditionally been considered problematic. Included are “not”, “is” (of identity), “exists”, “means”, “but”, “if … then”, (...) “possibly” and “true.”. (shrink)

In this article, I identify and critically examine 3 dogmas of normativity that support a commonly accepted ‘Passivist View' of rational agency. I raise some questions about these dogmas, suggest what we should believe in their place, and moot an alternative ‘Activist View' of what it is to be a rational agent that grows out of rejection of the 3 dogmas. Underwriting the dogmas and the Passivist View, I suggest, is a deeply held but mistaken assumption that the normative domain (...) is fundamentally akin to the nonnormative domain. Once we allow that the normative may be fundamentally unlike the nonnormative in certain key ways, a shift in our thinking about what it is to be rational becomes possible. I end by considering some implications of this paradigm shift in rationality from the passive to the active for various applied matters. (shrink)

Resumen:El propósito de este ensayo es analizar en qué manera se producen las elaboraciones de conocimiento social, diferenciando el que es propiamente generado como construcción del mundo social del que, de un modo más específico, tiene pretensión de validez científica. Nuestra intención ha sido hacerlo poniendo el fundamento en esa intuición que se caracteriza por ser una forma de acceso al conocimiento cotidiano habitual, natural, sin complejas elaboraciones, intuitivo, en definitiva, que parece regir los posicionamientos, puntos de vista y percepciones (...) en nuestros días; y lo hace, además, de una forma que puede llamarse estética por las propias conceptualizaciones más clásicas, y también porque la estética parece ser uno de los signos de nuestros tiempos que ha quedado incorporado a los mecanismos por los que se produce el conocer intuitivo. Sobre estas bases, concluiremos proponiendo algunas conceptualizaciones que definan y delimiten la validez de las distintas formas de conocimiento social.Palabras clave: intuición; estética; conocimiento; construcción social; verdad. (shrink)

The recent Minnesota case of In re Emergency Guardianship of Albert Barnes illustrates an emerging class of cases where a dispute between a family proxy and a hospital over “medical futility” requires legal resolution. The case was further complicated by the patient’s spouse who fraudulently claimed to be the patient’s designated health care proxy and who misrepresented the patient’s previously expressed treatment preferences. Barnes demonstrates the degree of significant administrative and institutional support to the health care team, ethics consultants, and (...) futility committees that is required when a futility dispute escalates to the need for judicial resolution. An institutional futility policy, especially one that is endorsed by other regional medical centers and organizations, is an important foundation for a hospital that seeks judicial support in a dispute over medical futility in end of life care. (shrink)

Paradigm intensional contexts result from the unmarked use of referential expressions as “self‐signs”, signs that refer to themselves as tokens, types, or members of Sellarsian “dot‐quoted” kinds. Self‐signing (but unquoted) linguistic expressions are more difficult to recognize than non‐linguistic self‐signs such as the color of a felt pen's casing that represents the color of ink inside. I will discuss non‐linguistic self‐signing, then examine self‐signing in quotation, in “said that …” contexts and in “believes that … ” contexts. The phenomenon of (...) intensionality may reduce to a kind of equivocation, a matter of notation rather than a necessary feature of language. (shrink)

Four questions are raised about the semantics of Quantified Modal Logic. Does QML admit possible objects, i.e. possibilia? Is it plausible to admit them? Can sense be made of such objects? Is QML committed to the existence of possibilia?The conclusions are that QML, generalized as in Kripke, would seem to accommodate possibilia, but they are rejected on philosophical and semantical grounds. Things must be encounterable, directly nameable and a part of the actual order before they may plausibly enter into the (...) identity relation. QML is not committed to possibiha in that the range of variables may be restricted to actual objects.Support of the conclusions requires some discussion of substitution puzzles; also, the semantical distinction between proper names which are directly referring, and descriptions even where the latter are "rigid designators".Views of W.V. Quine, B. Russell, K. Donnellan, D. Kaplan as well as S. Kripke are invoked or evaluated in conjunction with these issues. (shrink)

This paper develops a practice-based Theory of Generative Interactions across diversity that builds on empirical findings and conceptual frameworks from multiple fields of study. This transdisciplinary review draws on the disciplines of sociology, social psychology, organization studies, and communications. The Theory of Generative Interactions suggests that in order to facilitate inclusion, multiple types of exclusionary dynamics must be overcome through adaptive cognitive processing and skill development, and engagement in positive interactions must occur in order to facilitate inclusion that is created (...) and sustained by contextually relevant sets of organizational practices. The organizational practices provide the following conditions for generative interactions: pursuing an important, shared organizational purpose, mixing diverse members frequently over protracted periods of time, enabling differing groups to have equal standing and insider status in contributing to success, and providing collaborative interdependence, interpersonal comfort, and self-efficacy. These interactions are generative in that they help to challenge the guiding assumptions of the organizational culture, reconsider taken-for-granted aspects, and raise fundamental questions about organizations. We assert that such interactions, properly structured, can help organizations more fully address all stakeholders in creating value ethically, and ultimately creating equity for individuals and groups in the organization. (shrink)

A puzzling feature of Spinoza's discussion of the good is that it takes place on two different levels whose compatibility seems uncertain. He advances a view of the nature of ascriptions of “good” to certain individual things, but he also devotes a large part of the Ethics to recommending a particular conception of the good person. The first theory appears to undermine the force of the second. For Spinoza's view of ascriptions of “good” to any objects apparently leads in the (...) direction of subjectivism; what is good from one person's viewpoint may be bad for another's, and no viewpoint is privileged. Yet a subjectivist view of ascriptions of good would mix poorly with Spinoza's own presentation of a standard for human conduct; he himself voices a view of human good which he takes to be more than just another sound in the chorus of ethical opinions. Professor E.M. Curley expresses concern with such a difficulty in his recent article “Spinoza's Moral Philosophy: “The greater portion of Spinoza's ethical theory is devoted not to metaethics, but to normative athics. not to the analysis of ethical judgments, but to the making of ethical judgments. (shrink)

Since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a growing web of state laws restricts access to abortion. Here we consider how, ethically, doctors should respond when terminating a pregnancy is clinically indicated but state law imposes restrictions on doing so. We offer a typology of cases in which the dilemma emerges and a brief sketch of the current state of legal prohibitions against providing such care. We examine the issue from the standpoints of conscience, (...) professional ethics, and civil disobedience and conclude that it is almost always morally permissible and praiseworthy to break the law and that, in a subset of cases, it is morally obligatory to do so. We further argue that health care institutions that employ or credential physicians to provide reproductive health care have an ethical duty to provide a basic suite of practical supports for them as they work to ethically resolve the dilemmas before them. (shrink)

Ten chapters of Locke's 1685 draft are given here, with an introduction, an index of correlating passages in the Essay and the draft, and an interpretive essay, "Locke on Active Power and the Idea of Active Power from Bodies." The passages discuss various aspects of Locke's views on power and causation, including his distinction between active and passive powers, the relation between active power and minds, passive power and bodies, the origin of the idea of power, the definition of qualities (...) as powers, the distinction between actual and potential qualities, our ignorance of the causal basis of properties, and the nature of the causal relation between inner constitutions and sensible qualities of bodies. (shrink)

§1. Both the human capacity for language and individual languages have evolved, in part, by natural selection. This paper considers certain aspects and consequences of this, concerning, among other things, the semanticspragmatics distinction.

This Article addresses the general question of "why citizenship?" through the lens of children’s citizenship. It unpacks the different elements of substantive citizenship and considers what they mean for children: membership and participation; rights; responsibilities; and equality of status, respect and recognition. It then discusses the lessons that may be learned from feminist critiques of mainstream constructions of citizenship, paying particular attention to the question of capacity for citizenship. It concludes by suggesting that much of the literature that is making (...) the case for recognition of children as citizens is not so much arguing for the wholesale extension of adult rights and obligations of citizenship to children but recognition that children’s citizenship practices constitute them as de facto, even if not complete de jure, citizens. More broadly, the Article argues that this position points towards an understanding of citizenship which embraces but goes beyond that of a bundle of rights. (shrink)

This index gives the location of each reference in Spinoza's Ethics to every axiom, definition, corollary, scholium, and proposition in that work.

The Deleuzian model and the masochistic contract -- Masochism, feminine "goodness" and sacrifice -- Self-mutilation and (a)signification -- Transgressive reconfigurations -- Heterocosms, spectres and the world remade -- Postscrip.

Scientific knowledge is the outcome of a collective, for example, of experts, methods, equipment, and experimental sites. The configuration of the collective shapes the scientific findings, allowing some interactions to become visible and meaningful at the expense of others. PROTEE is a methodology that aims to increase the reflexivity of research and innovation projects by helping to sensitize practitioners to the demarcations their projects enact and to think through how these may affect the relevance of the outcomes. We used PROTEE (...) to structure a series of dialogues with a research project that wanted its findings to make a contribution to the heated debate on transgenic trees. Through this process, the project did indeed become more articulated while we ourselves became engaged with the project in a very particular way, by becoming loyal to it. The dialogues also made the risks that engagement with public debate entails for scientists very apparent. Like us, the scientific project chose its loyalties, but what PROTEE did was to help make these explicit. (shrink)

Dupras and Bunnik take on the particular privacy risks of multi-omics, in particular via a contrast and comparison of genomics and epigenomics, followed by a consideration of the issues in r...

A synthesis of rights and participatory approaches to citizenship, linked through the notion of human agency, is proposed as the basis for a feminist theory of citizenship. Such a theory has to address citizenship's exclusionary power in relation to both nation-state ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’. With regard to the former, the article argues that a feminist theory and politics of citizenship must embrace an internationalist agenda. With regard to the latter, it offers the concept of a ‘differentiated universalism’ as an attempt (...) to reconcile the universalism which lies at the heart of citizenship with the demands of a politics of difference. Embracing also the reconstruction of the public-private dichotomy, citizenship, reconceptualized in this way, can, it is argued, provide us with an important theoretical and political tool. (shrink)

BackgroundThe triangle completion test has been used to assess egocentric wayfinding for decades, yet there is little information on its reliability. We developed a virtual reality based test and investigated whether either test of spatial navigation was reliable.ObjectiveTo examine test-retest reliability of the real-world and VR triangle completion tests. A secondary objective was to examine the usability of the VR based test.Materials and methodsThirty healthy adults aged 18–45 years were recruited to this block randomized study. Participants completed two sessions of (...) triangle completion tests in the real-world and VR on the same day with a break between sessions.ResultsIn both test versions distance from the endpoint and angle of deviation showed poor test-retest reliability. Distance traveled had moderate reliability in both the real-world and VR tests. The VR triangle test showed poor correlation with the real-world test.ConclusionThe triangle completion test has poor test-retest reliability and demonstrates poor concurrent validity between the real-world and VR. Nevertheless, it was feasible to translate a real-world test of spatial navigation into VR. VR provides opportunities for development of clinically relevant spatial navigation tests in the future. (shrink)

In recent years, politically active Latinx and Asian American Pacific Islander youth have addressed anti-Black racism within their own immigrant and refugee communities, engaged in protests against police violence, and expressed support for #SAYHERNAME. Reflecting the broader patterns of a new political generation and of progressive social movement leadership, women and nonbinary youth have disproportionately committed to inclusive fights for racial justice. In this essay, through two biographical examples, we highlight the role of grassroots youth organizing groups in training their (...) diverse young members to become effective allies, introducing them to intersectional frameworks that motivate solidarity across racial and ethnic boundaries. (shrink)

Public health ethics is emerging as a new field of inquiry, distinct not only from public health law, but also from traditional medical ethics and research ethics. Public health professional and scholarly attention is focusing on ways that ethical analysis and a new public health code of ethics can be a resource for health professionals working in the field. This article provides a preliminary exploration of the ethical issues faced by public health professionals in day-to-day practice and of the type (...) of ethics education and support they believe may be helpful. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2019, Page 20-22.

On a ‘comparative’ conception of practical reasons, reasons are like ‘weights’ that can make an action more or less rational. Bernard Gert adopts instead a ‘toggle’ conception of practical reasons: something counts as a reason just in case it alone can make some or other otherwise irrational action rational. I suggest that Gert’s conception suffers from various defects, and that his motivation for adopting this conception – his central claim that actions can be rational without there being reasons for them (...) – does not require adoption of the toggle conception. The more intuitive comparative conception of reasons for action can accommodate the insight. (shrink)

Focusing on the genesis of the work, its documetnation and the politics of canon construction, Ruth Noack discusses Triangle in relation to conceptualism, perfromance and the position of women in Tito's Yugoslavia.