This article examines responses to the controversial picketing and media‐savvy provocations of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). Since WBC’s conduct is widely perceived as cruel, people often respond with anger and animosity, which reinforce WBC’s self‐representation as a persecuted church. Conversely, I have engaged Westboro Baptists in interviews that function as “bridging conversations.” This methodology centers on critical‐empathic listening, comparative religious ethics, and a disciplined restraint from expressing moral judgment. I argue that this response is supported by the data and (...) understandings obtained, metapragmatic commentary, my rapport with churchgoers, and evidence of their empathy. In conclusion, I gauge the methodology’s risks and consider its expansion, for example, with undergraduates who have joined our conversations. In an era of polarized discourse, nonjudgmental listening is a counter‐intuitive response that troubles entrenched binaries, including the public fashioning of WBC as a dehumanized enemy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to many contemporary observers, including Hillel Steiner [1], Herbert Hart [2], John Gray [3] and Isaiah Berlin [4], the equal liberty principle lies at the heart of liberalism. Yet despite its central place in liberal theory, it has attracted little critical appraisal. This paper seeks to examine the meaning and some of the policy implications of the equal liberty principle, paying particular attention to the elucidations produced by Herbert Spencer, Steiner and Hart — the only systematic (...) analysts of the notion of equal liberty. In part 1, the meaning of the equal liberty principle is discussed, and it is shown to be intrinsically ambivalent. In part 2, where certain policy implications are considered, the conclusion is reached that the equal liberty principle is ambiguous in its policy prescriptions, and requires to be supplemented by some other principle before it can be unequivocally applied. (shrink)

The popularity of ‘food sovereignty’ to cover a range of positions, interventions, and struggles within the food system is testament, above all, to the term’s adaptability. Food sovereignty is centrally, though not exclusively, about groups of people making their own decisions about the food system—it is a way of talking about a theoretically-informed food systems practice. Since people are different, we should expect decisions about food sovereignty to be different in different contexts, albeit consonant with a core set of principles (...) (including women’s rights, a shared opposition to genetically modified crops, and a demand for agriculture to be removed from current international trade agreements). In this paper we look at the analytical points of friction in applying ideas of food sovereignty within the context of Indigenous struggles in North America. This, we argue, helps to clarify one of the central themes in food sovereignty: that it is a continuation of anti-colonial struggles, even in post-colonial contexts. Such an examination has dividends both for scholars of food sovereignty and for those of Indigenous politics: by helping to problematize notions of food sovereignty and postcoloniality, but also by posing pointed questions around gender for Indigenous struggles. (shrink)

Talk about time travel is puzzling even if it isn't obviously contradictory. Philosophers however are divided about whether time travel involves empirical paradox or some deeper metaphysical incoherence. It is suggested that time travel requires a Parmenidean four-dimensionalist metaphysical conception of the world in time. The possibility of time travel is addressed (mainly) from within a Parmenidean metaphysical framework, which is accepted by David Lewis in his defence of the coherence of time travel. It is argued that time travel raises (...) formidable difficulties which are not satisfactorily resolved by Lewis's ingenious defence of time travel. Objections to time travel considered include: (1) travel to other times is impossible because there is nowhere (or “nowhen”) to go to; (2) the problem that upon setting out on a journey to the past a time machine will collide with itself; (3) time travel generates a mysterious temporal dualism between experiential time and physical time; (4) travel to the past permits reverse causation, raising the possibility of causal loops and attendant problems arising, for example, from the prospect of empirical contradiction and the possibility of someone being one of their ancestors. (shrink)

Technological developments have resulted in tremendous increases in the volume and diversity of the data and information that must be processed in the course of biomedical and clinical research and practice. Researchers are at the same time under ever greater pressure to share data and to take steps to ensure that data resources are interoperable. The use of ontologies to annotate data has proven successful in supporting these goals and in providing new possibilities for the automated processing of data and (...) information. In this chapter, we describe different types of vocabulary resources and emphasize those features of formal ontologies that make them most useful for computational applications. We describe current uses of ontologies and discuss future goals for ontology-based computing, focusing on its use in the field of infectious diseases. We review the largest and most widely used vocabulary resources relevant to the study of infectious diseases and conclude with a description of the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) suite of interoperable ontology modules that together cover the entire infectious disease domain. (shrink)

Epicurus notoriously argued that death at no time is a harm because before death there is no harm and after death there is no victim. The denial that death can be a harm to the one who dies has been challenged by various claims including (1) death is eternally bad for the victim (Feldman), (2) it is before death that it is bad for the victim (Feinberg and Pitcher), (3) death is bad for the victim but at no particular time (...) (Nagel), and (4) it is at the time of death that death is bad for the victim (Lamont). Nagel's account is more plausible and is consistent with the view that the temporal location of the harm of untimely death is best understood as the time when the decedent might otherwise have lived. (edited). (shrink)

Steven Nadler has argued that Spinoza can, should, and does allow for the possibility of suicide committed as a free and rational action. Given that the conatus is a striving for perfection, Nadler argues, there are cases in which reason guides a person to end her life based on the principle of preferring the lesser evil. If so, Spinoza’s disparaging statements about suicide are intended to apply only to some cases, whereas in others he would grant that suicide is dictated (...) by reason. Here, I object to Nadler’s interpretation by showing that it conflicts with Spinoza’s metaphysical psychology. Even given Nadler’s interpretation of the conatus doctrine, the possibility that reason could guide a person to commit suicide is incompatible with the conatus of the mind. Spinoza holds that the mind cannot contain an adequate idea ‘that excludes the existence of our body’. Yet, as I argue, in order for reason to guide a person voluntarily to end her life, she would need to have an adequate idea representing her death – an idea that excludes the existence of her body. For this reason, Spinoza's system rules out the possibility of rational suicide. (shrink)

Spinoza's doctrine of the eternity of the mind is often understood as the claim that the mind has a part that is eternal. I appeal to two principles that Spinoza takes to govern parthood and causation to raise a new problem for this reading. Spinoza takes the composition of one thing from many to require causal interaction among the many. Yet he also holds that eternal things cannot causally interact, without mediation, with things in duration. So the human mind, since (...) it is the idea of a body existing in duration, cannot have an eternal part. In order to solve this problem, I propose an aspectual reading of Spinoza's doctrine of the eternity of the mind: the mind itself is eternal, under one of its aspects. (shrink)

Although Spinoza disagrees with Descartes's claim that animals are mindless, he holds that we may nevertheless treat them as we please because their natures are different from human nature. Margaret Wilson has questioned the validity of Spinoza's argument, since it is not clear why differences in nature should imply differences in ethical status. In this paper, I propose a new interpretation of Spinoza's argument that responds to Wilson's challenge. We have ethical commitments to other humans only because we share the (...) same nature, for this implies that in helping them become more perfect, we also make them more useful to us. However, since animals have different natures than we do, helping them perfect themselves may make them less useful to us. Reason dictates only what it can dictate unconditionally, so it does not guide us to pursue the good of lower animals. Though Spinoza's argument is valid, there is little reason to think it sound; I conclude with a brief criticism of Spinoza's doctrine of human nature, which plays a central role in the argument. (shrink)

In Sisyphus's Boulder, Eric Dietrich and Valerie Hardcastle argue that we will never get such a theory because consciousness has an essential property that..

In an increasingly complex world with increasingly powerful organisations it seems inevitable that society – or groups in society – would become anxious about whether these organisations could be encouraged to match that power with an appropriate responsibility. This is the function of accountability – to require individuals and organisations to present an account of those actions for which society holds them – or would wish to hold them – responsible. And the history of social accounting, at its most fundamental, (...) is a history of attempts to develop this accountability. It seems to me that the widespread and systematic practice of social and environmental accounting is a deeply essential element in any well‐functioning, complex democracy. The corollary is that the absence of such mechanisms raises fundamental questions about the nature of modern democracies. This article briefly outlines what I believe to be the three strands of social accounting. It then identifies a few of the lessons that we may be able to learn from current experience and, in particular, how social accounting is related to accountability, democracy and sustainability. The central issue of the tension between accountability and control is touched upon: I then illustrate how the stakeholder model can be used to help define the social account, and conclude with a few words on attestation. (shrink)

The moral status of future persons is problematic. It is often claimed that we should take the interests of the indefinite unborn very seriously, because they have a right to a decent life. It is also claimed (often by the same people) that we should allow unrestricted access to abortion, because the indefinite unborn have no rights. In this paper I argue that these intuitions are not in fact inconsistent. The aim is to provide an account of trans-temporal concern which (...) resolves the prima facie inconsistency between commonly held intuitions about our obligations to future persons. I argue that our intuitions can be reconciled provided that we explicate obligations to the future in terms of impersonal principles subject to retroactive person-affecting constraints. (shrink)

Book synopsis: This collection of essays from the Royal Institute of Philosophy shows the connections and interrelations between the analytic and hermeneutic strains in German philosophy since Kant, partly to challenge the idea that there are two separate, non-communicating traditions. The distinguished contributors include David-Hillel Ruben on Marx, Robert Solomon writing on Nietzsche, Michael Inwood on Heidegger, P. M. S. Hacker on Frege and Wittgenstein, Christopher Janaway on Schopenhauer, Thomas Uebel on Neurath and the Vienna Circle, and Jay Bernstein (...) on Adorno. The collection is rounded off by a paper by Jürgen Habermas specifically on hermeneutic and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

The importance of the Tree of Life when looked at from its negative side will give the reader new perspective of the spiritual path. Ignorance of universal law can mean that when you think you are doing "good", you may actually be doing "evil". Consciousness is the key. This is an important book for students on any path.

A variety of objections to human germ-line genetic engineering have been raised, such as the claim that we ought not to place individuals at significant risk without their consent It has also been argued that it is paternalistically objectionable to confer significant benefits on individuals without their consent. As well as imposing a risk of harm to non-consenting parties, there is the risk of harm to others. This paper evaluates these and related objections to germ-line genetic engineering. While a complete (...) prohibition on human germ-line genetic engineering is rejected it is argued that acceptable germ-line engineering (a) should at least expand and enrich rather than restrict and constrain the choices for individuals affected, and (b) should not seek to change basic human dispositions and values (‘human nature’). (shrink)

The critique of traditional Western ethics, and in particular its anthropocentric foundations, is a central theme which has dominated environmental philosophy for the last twenty years. Anthropocentrism is widely identified as a fundamental source of the alienating and destructive attitudes towards the nonhuman world which are a principal target of a number of salient ecophilosophies. This paper addresses a problem about articulating the concern with anthropocentrism raised by the influencial formulations of deep ecology by nature liberation proponent Val Plumwood.

Technological developments have resulted in tremendous increases in the volume and diversity of the data and information that must be processed in the course of biomedical and clinical research and practice. Researchers are at the same time under ever greater pressure to share data and to take steps to ensure that data resources are interoperable. The use of ontologies to annotate data has proven successful in supporting these goals and in providing new possibilities for the automated processing of data and (...) information. In this chapter, we describe different types of vocabulary resources and emphasize those features of formal ontologies that make them most useful for computational applications. We describe current uses of ontologies and discuss future goals for ontology-based computing, focusing on its use in the field of infectious diseases. We review the largest and most widely used vocabulary resources relevant to the study of infectious diseases and conclude with a description of the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) suite of interoperable ontology modules that together cover the entire infectious disease domain. (shrink)

This book addresses the perennial question: What is justice?

The title of Roger Ariew’s new book parallels that of his earlier collection of essays, Descartes and the Last Scholastics, published in 1999 and widely regarded as a signal contribution to the study of Descartes’s relationship to his intellectual predecessors. Some of the themes of that work are reflected in the new book as well. In both, Ariew seeks to overthrow the myth of Descartes as staunch opponent of Scholasticism by revealing his affinities to strands of Scholastic thought. Indeed, given (...) the title, it may be surprising that much of Descartes and the First Cartesians focuses on Descartes’s relationship to Scholastic philosophy. The reason is that Ariew’s aim is to show how Descartes’s followers designed.. (shrink)

The Higher Education and Employment strand of the Learning for Life project focused on exploring some of the values of 169 students and graduate employees (Arthur et al. 2009a , b ). A major theme suggested by participants, which arose naturally from the data and emerged from people’s accounts during in-depth interviews, involved the close relationship they felt existed between voluntary work and core values. It is this aspect of the project that is reported. There are several important and new (...) findings that will be highlighted, including: voluntary work as a dimension for the development of character, personal development and a venue for developing people’s skills (which universities and employers often seek in their processes of recruitment); the types of voluntary work conducted by students and graduate employees; the role of ethnic minorities; people’s moral motivations behind engaging in voluntary work; the rise of the gap year volunteer; and the link between voluntary work at university and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the working world. (shrink)

Examining the Strategic Computing Program after four years, in the context of the crucial recognition that it is only a small part of the whole range of military artificial intelligence applications, suggests a number of clear implications and intimations about such crucial questions as: 1) the current roles of industry and the universities in developing high technology war; 2) the effects on political and military policy of high-tech weapons systems; and 3) the importance of advanced military computing to subtle philosophical (...) dilemmas including human self-definition and the future of war. (shrink)

Hillel Steiner; III*—Individual Liberty, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 33–50, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristote.