The number of people suffering from dementia will rise considerably in the years to come. This will have important implications for society. People suffering from dementia have to rely on relatives and professional caregivers when their disorder progresses. Some people want to determine for themselves their moment of death, if they should become demented. They think that the decline in personality caused by severe dementia is shocking and unacceptable. In this context, some people consider euthanasia as a way to avoid (...) total deterioration. In this article, we discuss some practical and ethical dilemmas regarding euthanasia in persons with severe dementia based on an advance euthanasia directive. We are using a personalist approach in dealing with these ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

The number of people suffering from dementia will rise considerably in the years to come. This will have important implications for society. People suffering from dementia have to rely on relatives and professional caregivers when their disorder progresses. Some people want to determine for themselves their moment of death, if they should become demented. They think that the decline in personality caused by severe dementia is shocking and unacceptable. In this context, some people consider euthanasia as a way to avoid (...) total deterioration. In this article, we discuss some practical and ethical dilemmas regarding euthanasia in persons with severe dementia based on an advance euthanasia directive. We are using a personalist approach in dealing with these ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

The number of people suffering from dementia will rise considerably in the years to come. This will have important implications for society. People suffering from dementia have to rely on relatives and professional caregivers when their disorder progresses. Some people want to determine for themselves their moment of death, if they should become demented. They think that the decline in personality caused by severe dementia is shocking and unacceptable. In this context, some people consider euthanasia as a way to avoid (...) total deterioration. In this article, we discuss some practical and ethical dilemmas regarding euthanasia in persons with severe dementia based on an advance euthanasia directive. We are using a personalist approach in dealing with these ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The number of people suffering from dementia will rise considerably in the years to come. This will have important implications for society. People suffering from dementia have to rely on relatives and professional caregivers when their disorder progresses. Some people want to determine for themselves their moment of death, if they should become demented. They think that the decline in personality caused by severe dementia is shocking and unacceptable. In this context, some people consider euthanasia as a way to (...) avoid total deterioration. In this article, we discuss some practical and ethical dilemmas regarding euthanasia in persons with severe dementia based on an advance euthanasia directive. We are using a personalist approach in dealing with these ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

Diagnosis of dementia in primary care is both difficult and important. The recommendations by several authors to improve the diagnosis of dementia by general practitioners are important, but insufficient. It is argued that perhaps the disease concept in itself is a cause of confusion for clinicians. Primary care physicians need an adapted procedure, gradually leading to the final diagnosis of dementia. It has to be a stepwise labelling strategy, using global descriptions and non-disease specific labels in the beginning, ending up (...) with well-defined disease criteria. In this process, there is circularity: previous diagnoses have to be kept in mind because symptoms and signs may gradually change during the progression of the disease, leading to reconsideration of previous deleted options. To frame this properly, the primary care physician needs to adopt a broad frail elderly geriatric concept. Implementation of this concept not only helps the diagnostic process, but also stimulates the care for dementing patients and their caregivers. Relevant arguments for early diagnostic involvement of primary care physicians can be put forward on condition that a new concept, adapted procedures and adapted instruments are used. (shrink)

The past 50 years have seen an accumulation of evidence suggesting that associative learning depends on high-level cognitive processes that give rise to propositional knowledge. Yet, many learning theorists maintain a belief in a learning mechanism in which links between mental representations are formed automatically. We characterize and highlight the differences between the propositional and link approaches, and review the relevant empirical evidence. We conclude that learning is the consequence of propositional reasoning processes that cooperate with the unconscious processes involved (...) in memory retrieval and perception. We argue that this new conceptual framework allows many of the important recent advances in associative learning research to be retained, but recast in a model that provides a firmer foundation for both immediate application and future research. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

In this response, we provide further clarification of the propositional approach to human associative learning. We explain why the empirical evidence favors the propositional approach over a dual-system approach and how the propositional approach is compatible with evolution and neuroscience. Finally, we point out aspects of the propositional approach that need further development and challenge proponents of dual-system models to specify the systems more clearly so that these models can be tested.

This article contributes to the contemporary debate on land and water grabbing through a detailed, qualitative case study of horticultural agribusinesses which have settled in Tanzania, disrupting patterns of land and water use. In this paper we analyse how capitalist settler farms and their upstream and downstream peasant neighbours along the Nduruma river, Tanzania, expand and defend their water use. The paper is based on 3 months of qualitative field work in Tanzania. We use the echelons of rights analysis framework (...) combined with the concept of institutional bricolage to show how this contestation takes place over the full spectrum of actual abstractions, governance and discourses. We emphasise the role different (inter)national development narratives play in shaping day-to-day contestations over water shares and rule-making. Ultimately, we emphasise that water grabbing is not a one-time event, but rather an on-going struggle over different water resources. In addition, we show how a perceived beneficial development of agribusinesses switching to groundwater allows them to avoid peasant-controlled institutions, avoiding further negotiation between the different actors and improving their image among neighbouring communities. This development illustrates how complex and obscured processes of water re-allocation can be without becoming illegal per se. (shrink)

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to postphenomenology, an emerging school of thought in the philosophy of technology and science and technology studies, which addresses the relationships users develop with the devices they use.

Jan-Werner Müller’s Democracy Rules advances the debate over populism beyond politicised arguments over definitions. His refusal to blame populism on unenlightened masses points to the need for a coalition of democrats and liberals if liberal democracy is to be saved. But are these enough? Or does the uneven history of democracy in the twentieth century, recounted in Müller’s other works, suggest the need for coalitions that also reach moderates and other blocs less moved by either democratic or liberal ideals? Though (...) distorting media and unresponsive parties may share some blame, what if committed liberals and democratic constitutionalists sometimes really aren't in the majority? And when is polarising between ‘true’ and ‘false’ democrats, and daring to ‘fight fire with fire’, more likely to succeed than to further the hyper-polarisation populists rightly see as their own best strategy? Müller’s book moves debate beyond issuing warnings to raise important questions like these. (shrink)

In searching for an appropriate utility function in the expected utility framework, we formulate four properties that we want the utility function to satisfy. We conduct a search for such a function, and we identify Pareto utility as a function satisfying all four desired properties. Pareto utility is a flexible yet simple and parsimonious two-parameter family. It exhibits decreasing absolute risk aversion and increasing but bounded relative risk aversion. It is applicable irrespective of the probability distribution relevant to the prospect (...) to be evaluated. Pareto utility is therefore particularly suited for catastrophic risk analysis. A new and related class of generalized exponential (gexpo) utility functions is also studied. This class is particularly relevant in situations where absolute risk tolerance is thought to be concave rather than linear. (shrink)

Background Parental refusal of routine childhood vaccination remains an ethically contested area. This systematic review sought to explore and characterise the normative arguments made about parental refusal of routine vaccination, with the aim of providing researchers, practitioners, and policymakers with a synthesis of current normative literature. Methods Nine databases covering health and ethics research were searched, and 121 publications identified for the period Jan 1998 to Mar 2022. For articles, source journals were categorised according to Australian Standard Field of Research (...) codes, and normative content was analysed using a framework analytical approach. Results Most of the articles were published in biomedical journals (34%), bioethics journals (21%), and journals that carry both classifications (20%). Two central questions dominated the literature: (1) Whether vaccine refusal is justifiable (which we labelled ‘refusal arguments’); and (2) Whether strategies for dealing with those who reject vaccines are justifiable (‘response arguments’). Refusal arguments relied on principlism, religious frameworks, the rights and obligations of parents, the rights of children, the medico-legal best interests of the child standard, and the potential to cause harm to others. Response arguments were broadly divided into arguments about policy, arguments about how individual physicians should practice regarding vaccine rejectors, and both legal precedents and ethical arguments for vaccinating children against a parent’s will. Policy arguments considered the normative significance of coercion, non-medical or conscientious objections, and possible reciprocal social efforts to offset vaccine refusal. Individual physician practice arguments covered nudging and coercive practices, patient dismissal, and the ethical and professional obligations of physicians. Most of the legal precedents discussed were from the American setting, with some from the United Kingdom. Conclusions This review provides a comprehensive picture of the scope and substance of normative arguments about vaccine refusal and responses to vaccine refusal. It can serve as a platform for future research to extend the current normative literature, better understand the role of cultural context in normative judgements about vaccination, and more comprehensively translate the nuance of ethical arguments into practice and policy. (shrink)

In this paper we have two related aims. First, we aim to present an account of what it is to treat women as sex-objects.1 Like other philosophical writers in the field, we hold that the central idea in an account of such treatment is the failure to treat women with proper respect in sexual behavior. This idea has been cashed out in terms of using,2 and in terms of dehumanization or failure to accord equal rights to freedom and welfare.3 However, (...) we believe that there is a central deficiency in most such philosophical accounts of treating women as sex-objects, namely, a failure to outline in any detail a theory of interpersonal norms so that one can grasp in more concrete terms what it is to avoid treating a woman as a sex-object. We aim to rectify this deficiency by presenting a model of interpersonal norms based on the work of the social psychologist Chris Argyris. (shrink)

This paper is an enquiry into the logical, metaphysical, and physical possibility of time travel understood in the sense of the existence of closed worldlines that can be traced out by physical objects. We argue that none of the purported paradoxes rule out time travel either on grounds of logic or metaphysics. More relevantly, modern spacetime theories such as general relativity seem to permit models that feature closed worldlines. We discuss, in the context of Gödel's infamous argument for the ideality (...) of time based on his eponymous spacetime, what this apparent physical possibility of time travel means. Furthermore, we review the recent literature on so-called time machines, i.e., of devices that produce closed worldlines where none would have existed otherwise. Finally, we investigate what the implications of the quantum behaviour of matter for the possibility of time travel might be and explicate in what sense time travel might be possible according to leading contenders for full quantum theories of gravity such as string theory and loop quantum gravity. (shrink)

The second edition of Doing Ethics in Media continues its mission of providing an accessible but comprehensive introduction to media ethics, with a theoretical grounding in moral philosophy, to help students think clearly and systematically about dilemmas in the rapidly changing media environment. Each chapter highlights specific considerations, cases, and practical applications for the fields of journalism, advertising, digital media, entertainment, public relations, and social media. Six fundamental decision-making questions - the "5Ws and H" around which the book is organized (...) - provide a path for students to articulate the issues; understand applicable law and ethics codes; consider the needs of stakeholders; work through conflicting values; integrate philosophic principles; and pose a "test of publicity." Students are challenged to be active ethical thinkers through the authors' reader-friendly style and use of critical early-career examples. While most people will change careers several times during their lives, all of us are life-long media consumers, and Doing Ethics in Media prepares readers for that task. Doing Ethics in Media is aimed at undergraduate and graduate students studying media ethics in mass media, journalism, and media studies. It also serves students in rhetoric, popular culture, communication studies, and interdisciplinary social sciences. The book's companion website-doingethicsin.media, or www.doingmediaethics.com-provides continuously updated real-world media ethics examples and collections of essays from experts and students. The site also hosts ancillary materials for students and for instructors, including a test bank and instructor's manual. (shrink)

This entry considers the philosophical subject called 'metaphysics'. There have been many conceptions of metaphysics, and metaphysics has faced severe criticism throughout the history of philosophy and continues to do so. Besides discussing some major trends in analytic metaphysics - understood as 'metaphysics done by analytic philosophers' - we consider some of the criticisms and possible responses.

It may seem that epistemic and practical rationality weigh reasons differently, because ties in practical rationality tend to generate permissions and ties in epistemic rationality tend to generate a requirement to withhold judgment. I argue that epistemic and practical rationality weigh reasons in the same way, but they have different "default biases". Practical rationality is biased toward every option being permissible whereas epistemic rationality is biased toward withholding judgment's being required.

Struggles over precious resources such as oil, water, and land are increasingly evident in the contemporary world. States, indigenous groups, and corporations vie to control access to those resources, and the benefits they provide. These conflicts are rapidly spilling over into new arenas, such as the deep oceans and the Polar regions. How should these precious resources be governed, and how should the benefits and burdens they generate be shared? Justice and Natural Resources provides a systematic theory of natural resource (...) justice. It argues that we should use the benefits and burdens flowing from these resources to promote greater equality across the world, and share governance over many important resources. At the same time, the book takes seriously the ways in which particular resources can matter in peoples lives. It provides invaluable guidance on a series of pressing issues, including the scope of state resource rights, the claims of indigenous communities, rights over ocean resources, the burdens of conservation, and the challenges of climate change and transnational resource governance. It will be required reading for anyone interested in natural resource governance, climate politics, and global justice. (shrink)

Current research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) illustrates the growing sense of discord surrounding the ‘business of doing good’ (Dobers and Springett, Corp Soc Responsib Environ Manage 17(2):63–69, 2010). Central to these concerns is that CSR risks becoming an over-simplified and peripheral part of corporate strategy. Rather than transforming the dominant corporate discourse, it is argued that CSR and related concepts are limited to “emancipatory rhetoric…defined by narrow business interests and serve to curtail interests of external stakeholders.” (Banerjee, Crit Sociol (...) 34(1):52, 2008). The paper addresses gaps in the literature and challenges current thinking on corporate governance and CSR by offering a new conceptual framework that responds to the concerns of researchers and practitioners. The limited focus of existing analyses is extended by a holistic approach to corporate governance and social responsibility that integrates company, shareholder and wider stakeholder concerns. A defensive stance is avoided by delineating key stages of the governance process and aligning profit centred and social responsibility concerns to produce a business-based rationale for minimising risk and mainstreaming CSR. (shrink)

Philosophers often treat racist and sexist slurs as a special sort of puzzle. What is the difference between a slur and its correlates? In attempting to answer this question, a second distinction has been overlooked: that between slurs and insults. What makes a term count as a slur? This is not an unnecessary taxonomical question as long as ableist terms such as ‘moron’ are dismissed as mere insults. Attempts to resolve the insult/slur distinction by considering the communicative content of slurs (...) are not promising. A better solution is offered by speech act theory, and this paper develops a novel way to describe ordinary slurring utterances as oppressive speech acts. This can both explain the difference between slurs and insults, and challenge the dismissal of ableist terms. (shrink)

The partial structures program of da Costa, French and others offers a unified framework within which to handle a wide range of issues central to contemporary philosophy of science. I argue that the program is inadequately equipped to account for simple cases where idealizations are used to construct abstract, mathematical models of physical systems. These problems show that da Costa and French have not overcome the objections raised by Cartwright and Suárez to using model-theoretic techniques in the philosophy of science. (...) However, my concerns arise independently of the more controversial assumptions that Cartwright and Suárez have employed. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays about logic and its applications to various philosophical problems. In general, it is argued that logic constitutes an important device of philosophical analysis. Concerning the nature of logic the author defends the thesis that first-order logic is the logic. Among the philosophical problems to which logic is applied in the essays are: truth, consistency, realism, foundations of semantics, psychologism, undetermination of theories by empirical data, modalities, value concepts, identity, vagueness, God's existence, transcendentals, legal reasoning, (...) category mistakes, bivalence, the cognitive relation, and meaningfulness. (shrink)

In our increasingly instrumentalist culture, debates over the privatization of schooling may be beside the point. Whether we hatch some new plan for chartering or funding schools, or retain the traditional model of government-run schools, the ongoing instrumentalization of education threatens the very possibility of public education. Indeed, in the culture of performativity, not only the public school but public life itself is hollowed out and debased. Qualities are recast as quantities, judgments replaced by rubrics, teaching and learning turned into (...) exchange values. Schools should be central to public life: key locations for the regeneration of values, the cultivation of judgment, and the creation of the conditions for positive freedom. In this article Chris Higgins, drawing on Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, goes beyond typical treatments of the schools as equalizer of individual opportunity to explore three aspects of educational publicity: the school as an object of communal concern, schooling as preparation for public life, and the classroom as public space. (shrink)

Mathematical idealizations are scientific representations that result from assumptions that are believed to be false, and where mathematics plays a crucial role. I propose a two stage account of how to rank mathematical idealizations that is largely inspired by the semantic view of scientific theories. The paper concludes by considering how this approach to idealization allows for a limited form of scientific realism. ‡I would like to thank Robert Batterman, Gabriele Contessa, Eric Hiddleston, Nicholaos Jones, and Susan Vineberg for helpful (...) discussions and encouragement. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Beering Hall, Purdue University, 100 N. University Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2098; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Phenomenal conservatism holds, roughly, that if it seems to S that P, then S has evidence for P. I argue for two main conclusions. The first is that phenomenal conservatism is better suited than is proper functionalism to explain how a particular type of religious belief formation can lead to non-inferentially justified religious beliefs. The second is that phenomenal conservatism makes evidence so easy to obtain that the truth of evidentialism would not be a significant obstacle to justified religious belief. (...) A natural objection to phenomenal conservatism is that it makes evidence too easy to obtain, but I argue this objection is mistaken. (shrink)

We address three questions raised by Cummings and Foreman regarding a model of Gitik and Sharon. We first analyze the PCF-theoretic structure of the Gitik–Sharon model, determining the extent of good and bad scales. We then classify the bad points of the bad scales existing in both the Gitik–Sharon model and other models containing bad scales. Finally, we investigate the ideal of subsets of singular cardinals of countable cofinality carrying good scales.

In this book, Chris W. Surprenant puts forward an original position concerning Kant’s practical philosophy and the intersection between his moral and political philosophy. Although Kant provides a detailed account of the nature of morality, the nature of human virtue, and how right manifests itself in civil society, he does not explain fully how individuals are able to become virtuous. This book aims to resolve this problem by showing how an individual is able to cultivate virtue, the aim of (...) Kant’s practical philosophy. Through an examination of Kant’s accounts of autonomy, the state, and religion, and their effects on the cultivation of virtue, Surprenant develops a Kantian framework for moral education, and ultimately raises the question of whether or not Kantian virtue is possible in practice. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics brings together cutting-edge writing by more than twenty leading authorities on the history of physics from the seventeenth century to the present day. By presenting a wide diversity of studies in a single volume, it provides authoritative introductions to scholarly contributions that have tended to be dispersed in journals and books not easily accessible to the general reader. While the core thread remains the theories and experimental practices of physics, the Handbook contains (...) chapters on other dimensions that have their place in any rounded history. These include the role of lecturing and textbooks in the communication of knowledge, the contribution of instrument-makers and instrument-making companies in providing for the needs of both research and lecture demonstrations, and the growing importance of the many interfaces between academic physics, industry, and the military. (shrink)

Ethicists increasingly reject the scale as a useful metaphor for weighing reasons. Yet they generally retain the metaphor of a reason’s weight. This combination is incoherent. The metaphor of weight entails a very specific scale-based model of weighing reasons, Dual Scale. Justin Snedegar worries that scale-based models of weighing reasons can’t properly weigh reasons against an option. I show that there are, in fact, two different reasons for/against distinctions, and I provide an account of the relationship between the various kinds (...) of reason for and against. With this account in hand, we’ll see that Dual Scale has no problem weighing any kind of reason against. (shrink)

Just as theory of representation is deficient if it can’t explain how misrepresentation is possible, a theory of computation is deficient if it can’t explain how miscomputation is possible. Nonetheless, philosophers have generally ignored miscomputation. My primary goal in this paper is to clarify both what miscomputation is and how to adequately explain it. Miscomputation is a special kind of malfunction: a system miscomputes when it computes in a way that it shouldn’t. To explain miscomputation, you must provide accounts of (...) computational behavior, computational norms, and how computational behavior can deviate from computational norms. A secondary goal of this paper is to defend an (quasi-)individualist, mechanistic theory of miscomputation. Computational behavior is narrowly individuated. Computational norms are widely individuated. A system miscomputes when its behavior manifests a narrow computational structure that the widely individuated norms say that it should not have. (shrink)

In this essay, the authors analyze and interpret facsimiles of important original documents—published here for the first time—that are deeply relevant to the education of the young Ayn Rand at the University of Petrograd. This definitive reading of source material provides significant documentation of Rand’s courses, teachers, and textbooks—and what she might have learned from them. Other original source materials are revealed to advance further investigations of this key period in Rand’s life. Recent commentary on Rand’s education in Gary H. (...) Merrill’s book, False Wisdom, is also considered. (shrink)

Chris Daly; Tropes, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 253–262, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/94.1.253.