Policymakers use financial incentives to achieve a wide variety of public objectives, from pollution reduction to the employment of welfare recipients. Combining insights from economic theory with lessons learned from actual implementation, this article analyzes the implications of two such policies: first, subsidizing contraception, and second, offering financial incentives to individuals for sterilization or for using a long-term, semipermanent method of contraception such as the Intra-Uterine Device, Depo-Provera or Norplant. These subsidy and incentive policies achieve their goals through a myriad (...) of individuals who make their reproductive choices in response to particular costs and benefits. Such programs are ethically and politically controversial. In this paper, I address the question of whether they can be justified either economically or ethically.The first section of this article presents an economic theory to assess whether a subsidy, tax, or incentive is economically efficient, both generally and in the context of contraception. (shrink)

Policymakers use financial incentives to achieve a wide variety of public objectives, from pollution reduction to the employment of welfare recipients. Combining insights from economic theory with lessons learned from actual implementation, this article analyzes the implications of two such policies: first, subsidizing contraception, and second, offering financial incentives to individuals for sterilization or for using a long-term, semipermanent method of contraception such as the Intra-Uterine Device, Depo-Provera or Norplant. These subsidy and incentive policies achieve their goals through a myriad (...) of individuals who make their reproductive choices in response to particular costs and benefits. Such programs are ethically and politically controversial. In this paper, I address the question of whether they can be justified either economically or ethically.The first section of this article presents an economic theory to assess whether a subsidy, tax, or incentive is economically efficient, both generally and in the context of contraception. (shrink)

In the past decade, numerous ethical frameworks have been developed to support public health decision‐making in challenging areas. Before the COVID‐19 pandemic began, members of the authorship team were involved in research programmes, in which the development of ethical frameworks was planned, to guide (a) the use of new technologies for emerging infectious disease surveillance; and (b) the allocation of scarce supplies of pandemic influenza vaccine. However, as the pandemic evolved, significant practical challenges emerged that led to our questioning the (...) value of these frameworks. We now believe that a normative instrument, such as a framework, cannot adequately or reliably provide the ethical guidance that needs to be incorporated into public health decision‐making during natural disasters or infectious disease emergencies. Recently it has been suggested that there are potentially more dynamic, flexible, and effective ways to navigate decisions involving complex considerations entailed in policies and practices during a public health emergency. In this paper, we first outline the key functions of a public health ethics framework, before describing why we believe it would not be fit for purpose during a crisis. We end by considering whether proposed alternative methods to promote ethical public health decision‐making goals have the potential to meet these objectives. (shrink)

Background Outbreaks of infectious disease cause serious and costly health and social problems. Two new technologies – pathogen whole genome sequencing and Big Data analytics – promise to improve our capacity to detect and control outbreaks earlier, saving lives and resources. However, routinely using these technologies to capture more detailed and specific personal information could be perceived as intrusive and a threat to privacy. Method Four community juries were convened in two demographically different Sydney municipalities and two regional cities in (...) New South Wales, Australia to elicit the views of well-informed community members on the acceptability and legitimacy of: making pathogen WGS and linked administrative data available for public health researchusing this information in concert with data linkage and machine learning to enhance communicable disease surveillance systems Fifty participants of diverse backgrounds, mixed genders and ages were recruited by random-digit-dialling and topic-blinded social-media advertising. Each jury was presented with balanced factual evidence supporting different expert perspectives on the potential benefits and costs of technologically enhanced public health research and communicable disease surveillance and given the opportunity to question experts. Results Almost all jurors supported data linkage and WGS on routinely collected patient isolates for the purposes of public health research, provided standard de-identification practices were applied. However, allowing this information to be operationalised as a syndromic surveillance system was highly contentious with three juries voting in favour, and one against by narrow margins. For those in favour, support depended on several conditions related to system oversight and security being met. Those against were concerned about loss of privacy and did not trust Australian governments to run secure and effective systems. Conclusions Participants across all four events strongly supported the introduction of data linkage and pathogenomics to public health research under current research governance structures. Combining pathogen WGS with event-based data surveillance systems, however, is likely to be controversial because of a lack of public trust, even when the potential public health benefits are clear. Any suggestion of private sector involvement or commercialisation of WGS or surveillance data was unanimously rejected. (shrink)

Surveillance is essential for communicable disease prevention and control. Traditional notification of demographic and clinical information, about individuals with selected infectious diseases, allows appropriate public health action and is protected by public health and privacy legislation, but is slow and insensitive. Big data–based electronic surveillance, by commercial bodies and government agencies, which draws on a plethora of internet- and mobile device–based sources, has been widely accepted, if not universally welcomed. Similar anonymous digital sources also contain syndromic information, which can be (...) analysed, using customised algorithms, to rapidly predict infectious disease outbreaks, but the data are nonspecific and predictions sometimes misleading. However, public health authorities could use these online sources, in combination with de-identified personal health data, to provide more accurate and earlier warning of infectious disease events—including exotic or emerging infections—even before the cause is confirmed, and allow more timely public health intervention. Achieving optimal benefits would require access to selected data from personal electronic health and laboratory records and the potential to re-identify individuals found to be involved in outbreaks, to ensure appropriate care and infection control. Despite existing widespread digital surveillance and major potential community benefits of extending its use to communicable disease control, there is considerable public disquiet about allowing public health authorities access to personal health data. Informed public discussion, greater transparency and an ethical framework will be essential to build public trust in the use of new technology for communicable disease control. (shrink)

If this book were a film, it would be rated M-with a caution that 'some viewers may be disturbed by some scenes'. In CATCHING THE KNOWLEDGE WAVE? Jane Gilbert takes apart many long-held ideas about knowledge and education. She says that knowledge is now a verb, not a noun-something we do rather than something we have-and explores the ways our schools need to change to prepare people to participate in the knowledge-based societies of the future. The knowledge society (...) is an idea that is widely discussed, but not well understood. Knowledge is developing a new meaning, one that is quite different to the one our schools were built on. Because of this, knowledge society developments are a major challenge for our schools. We cannot address this challenge by adding more ideas to our existing structures. We need a completely new framework-one that takes account of knowledge's new meaning, but also gives everyone an equal opportunity to succeed. If this seems like a tall order, it probably is-however this book attempts to map out such a framework. This is a book to argue with, to agree or disagree with, but above all to read-the future of our public education system is at stake. (shrink)

Since its founding in 1943, Medievalia et Humanistica has won worldwide recognition as the first scholarly publication in America to devote itself entirely to medieval and Renaissance studies. Since 1970, a new series, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America and edited by an international board of distinguished scholars and critics, has published interdisciplinary articles. In yearly hardbound volumes, the new series publishes significant scholarship, criticism, and reviews treating all facets of medieval and Renaissance culture: history, art, literature, music, (...) science, law, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

Mobile phone-based applications (apps) can promote faster targeted actions to control COVID-19. However, digital contact tracing systems raise concerns about data security, system effectiveness, and their potential to normalise privacy-invasive surveillance technologies. In the absence of mandates, public uptake depends on the acceptability and perceived legitimacy of using technologies that log interactions between individuals to build public health capacity. We report on six online deliberative workshops convened in New South Wales to consider the appropriateness of using the COVIDSafe app to (...) enhance Australian contact tracing systems. All groups took the position (by majority) that the protections enacted in the app design and supporting legislation were appropriate. This support is contingent on several system attributes including: the voluntariness of the COVIDSafe app; that the system relies on proximity rather than location tracking; and, that data access is restricted to local public health practitioners undertaking contact tracing. Despite sustained scepticism in media coverage, there was an underlying willingness to trust Australian governing institutions such that in principle acceptance of the new contact tracing technology was easy to obtain. However, tensions between the need to prove system effectiveness through operational transparency and requirements for privacy protections could be limiting public uptake. Our study shows that informed citizens are willing to trade their privacy for common goods such as COVID-19 suppression. But low case numbers and cautionary public discourses can make trustworthiness difficult to establish because some will only do so when it can be demonstrated that the benefits justify the costs to individuals. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit Gilbert Harman's arguments for a "clutter avoidance" norm. The norm -- which says that we ought to avoid cluttering our minds with trivialities -- is widely endorsed. I argue that it has some fairly dramatic consequences for normative epistemology.

In Community of Inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp: Childhood, Philosophy and Education is the first in a series edited by Maughn Gregory and Megan Laverty, Philosophy for Children Founders, and is a major contribution to the literature on philosophy in schools. It draws attention to an author and practitioner who was largely responsible for the development of scholarship on the community of inquiry, who co-founded the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC), and who undeniably made a significant (...) contribution to philosophy for/with children as a global movement. For anyone familiar with Philosophy for Children, they would, no doubt, also be familiar with its founder Matthew Lipman. However, not always acknowledged is that Ann Margaret Sharp, a philosopher of education, was also one of its pioneers who collaborated with Lipman to develop a theory and practice of the community of inquiry as a collaborative pedagogy and method for Philosophy with Children, as well as a pre-college curriculum. Also, not widely known is that the term ‘community of inquiry’ first appeared in an article co-authored by Lipman and Sharp (1978). Lipman credited Sharp with reconstructing the Peircean/Buchlerian notion of community of inquiry into a model of educational practice. Together they extensively developed the community of inquiry as an approach to teaching, said to transform the structure of the classroom in fundamental ways. Gregory and Laverty set the record straight regarding Sharp’s involvement in the development and success of Philosophy for Children as a school program and worldwide movement. Both editors are highly qualified for a project like this. Between them they have written numerous articles, book chapters and books and have co-edited books on philosophy of education, particularly philosophy for/with children. They are also well-respected practitioners who have collaborated with Sharp. (shrink)

Change in View offers an entirely original approach to the philosophical study of reasoning by identifying principles of reasoning with principles for revising one's beliefs and intentions and not with principles of logic. This crucial observation leads to a number of important and interesting consequences that impinge on psychology and artificial intelligence as well as on various branches of philosophy, from epistemology to ethics and action theory. Gilbert Harman is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. A Bradford Book.

Call the norms of inquiry zetetic norms. How are zetetic norms related to epistemic norms? At first glance, they seem quite closely connected. Aren't epistemic norms norms that bind inquirers qua inquirers? And isn't epistemology the place to look for a normative theory of inquiry? While much of this thought seems right, this paper argues that the relationship between the epistemic and the zetetic is not as harmonious as one might have thought and liked. In particular, this paper argues that (...) some familiar contemporary epistemic norms are in tension with, and even in conflict with, central zetetic norms. (shrink)

The Aesthetics of Design offers the first full treatment of design in the field of philosophical aesthetics, challenging the discipline to broaden its scope to include the quotidian objects and experiences of our everyday lives and concerns ...

In this paper I look at belief and degrees of belief through the lens of inquiry. I argue that belief and degrees of belief play different roles in inquiry. In particular I argue that belief is a “settling” attitude in a way that degrees of belief are not. Along the way I say more about what inquiring amounts to, argue for a central norm of inquiry connecting inquiry and belief and say more about just what it means to have an (...) inquiry or question settled. (shrink)

The everyday concept of a social group is approached by examining the concept of going for a walk together, an example of doing something together, or "shared action". Two analyses requiring shared personal goals are rejected, since they fail to explain how people walking together have obligations and rights to appropriate behavior, and corresponding rights of rebuke. An alternative account is proposed: those who walk together must constitute the "plural subject" of a goal. The nature of plural subjecthood, the thesis (...) that social groups are plural subjects, and the relation of these ideas to Rousseau's and Hobbes 's, are briefly explored. (shrink)

A long-awaited translation on the philosophical relation between technology, the individual, and milieu of the living.

In this paper I argue that there is a class of attitudes that have questions (rather than propositions or something else) as contents.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Postcolonialism offers challenging and provocative ways of thinking about colonial and neocolonial power, about self and other, and about the discourses that perpetuate postcolonial inequality and violence. Much of the seminal work in postcolonialism has been shaped by currents in philosophy, notably Marxism and ethics. "Understanding Postcolonialism" examines the philosophy of postcolonialism in order to reveal the often conflicting systems of thought which underpin it. In so doing, the book presents a reappraisal of the major postcolonial thinkers of the twentieth (...) century.Ranging beyond the narrow selection of theorists to which the field is often restricted, the book explores the work of Fanon and Sartre, Gandhi, Nandy, and the Subaltern Studies Group, Foucault and Said, Derrida and Bhabha, Khatibi and Glissant, and Spivak, Mbembe and Mudimbe. A clear and accessible introduction to the subject, "Understanding Postcolonialism" reveals how, almost half a century after decolonisation, the complex relation between politics and ethics continues to shape postcolonial thought. (shrink)

In Neither Beast Nor God, Gilbert Meilaender elaborates the philosophical, social, theological, and political implications of the question of dignity, and ...

_Arguing with People_ brings developments from the field of Argumentation Theory to bear on critical thinking in a clear and accessible way. This book expands the critical thinking toolkit, and shows how those tools can be applied in the hurly-burly of everyday arguing. Gilbert emphasizes the importance of understanding real arguments, understanding just who you are arguing with, and knowing how to use that information for successful argumentation. Interesting examples and partner exercises are provided to demonstrate tangible ways in (...) which the book’s lessons can be applied. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Philosophy Pitfalls, and What Is Needed to Avoid Them Institutional History at Cambridge Cambridge Philosophy Reference.

The intersection of AI and neurotechnology has resulted in an increasing number of medical and non-medical applications and has sparked debate over the need for new human rights, or “neurorights,”...

"It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless. Certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the community almost automatic. But we all know that each generation has its own test, the contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately judge of its own moral achievements. (...) To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation. This book is a study of various types and groups who are being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an acceptance of social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct."--. (shrink)

The meaning of a symbol is determined by its use, but the canonical way of specifying meaning is in a statement of the form "S means...". To be able to provide such a specification is equivalent to being able to translate the symbol S into one's own terms. A change in usage of terms involves a change of meaning iff the correct translation between earlier usage and later usage takes a term into a different expression. Such translation is holistic, a (...) matter of finding the best mapping. Sameness of meaning is a similarity relation, as is sameness of concept. The meaning of a larger expression is derived from the meaning of its parts iff the translation of the whole is derived from the translation of its parts. (shrink)

This volume tracks the evolution of Mansbridge's key contributions to democratic theory in participatory, institutional and feminist contexts through articles that span her entire career to date.

One important concern regarding implantable Brain Computer Interfaces is the fear that the intervention will negatively change a patient’s sense of identity or agency. In particular, there is concern that the user will be psychologically worse-off following treatment despite postoperative functional improvements. Clinical observations from similar implantable brain technologies, such as deep brain stimulation, show a small but significant proportion of patients report feelings of strangeness or difficulty adjusting to a new concept of themselves characterized by a maladaptive je ne (...) sais quoi despite clear motor improvement. Despite the growing number of cases in the DBS literature, there is currently no accepted or standardized tool in neuroethics specifically designed to capture the phenomenological postoperative experience of patients implanted with DBS or BCI devices. Given potential risks of postoperative maladaptation, it is important for the field of neuroethics to develop a qualitative instrument that can serve as a shared method for capturing postoperative variations in patient experience of identity and agency. The goal of this article is to introduce an instrument we have developed for this purpose and call for further neuroethical efforts to assess the phenomenology of implantable brain device use. (shrink)

Drawing on earlier work of the author that is both clarified and amplified here, this article explores the question: what is it for two or more people to intend to do something in the future? In short, what is it for people to share an intention? It argues for three criteria of adequacy for an account of shared intention (the disjunction, concurrence, and obligation criteria) and offers an account that satisfies them. According to this account, in technical terms explained in (...) the paper, people share an intention when and only when they are jointly committed to intend as a body to do such-and-such in the future. This account is compared and contrasted with the common approach that treats shared intention as a matter of the correlative personal intentions, with particular reference to the work of Michael Bratman. (shrink)

La pensée philosophique peut-elle faire plus que comprendre les problèmes? Peut-elle être source de solutions pour l'action? Dans ce recueil d'inédits dont le fil directeur est la pensée philosophique, son développement, sa portée et la tâche qui lui incombe, Gilbert Simondon apparaît comme l'homme d'une philosophie aussi exigeante, lucide et probe que réaliste : c'est quand la pensée est vraiment réflexive qu'elle peut être source d'action, donner des normes, se faire vraie morale et vraie politique par-delà les mythes et (...) les partis pris sclérosants, "scolastiques". Ces promesses de la pensée n'ont cessé d'être soulignées dans toute son oeuvre. Un volume qui articule constamment la pensée et l'action, les problèmes posés par le monde actuel et leurs solutions. (shrink)

Challenges, possibilities, and opportunitie for re-founding the tradition of philosophical personalism today.

Biobanks are proliferating rapidly worldwide because they are powerful tools and organisational structures for undertaking medical research. By linking samples to data on the health of individuals, it is anticipated that biobanks will be used to explore the relationship between genes, environment and lifestyle for many diseases, as well as the potential of individually-tailored drug treatments based on genetic predisposition. However, they also raise considerable challenges for existing legal frameworks and research governance structures. This book critically examines the current governance (...) structures in place for biobanks in England and Wales. It shows that the technologies, techniques and practices involved in biobanking do not always conform neatly to existing legal principles and frameworks that apply to other areas of medical research. Using a socio-legal approach, including interview data gathered from the scientific community, this book provides unique insights and makes recommendations about appropriate governance mechanisms for biobanking in the future. It also explores the issues around the secondary use of information, such as consent and how to protect privacy, when biobanks are accessed by a number of different third parties. These issues have relevance both within England and Wales and to a wide international audience, as well as for other areas where large datasets are used.--Back cover. (shrink)

Challenges the idea held by many prominent twentieth-century Sinologists that early China experienced a “language crisis.” Jane Geaney argues that early Chinese conceptions of speech and naming cannot be properly understood if viewed through the dominant Western philosophical tradition in which language is framed through dualisms that are based on hierarchies of speech and writing, such as reality/appearance and one/many. Instead, early Chinese texts repeatedly create pairings of sounds and various visible things. This aural/visual polarity suggests that texts from (...) early China treat speech as a bodily practice that is not detachable from its use in everyday experience. Firmly grounded in ideas about bodies from the early texts themselves, Geaney’s interpretation offers new insights into three key themes in these texts: the notion of speakers’ intentions (yi), the physical process of emulating exemplary people, and Confucius’s proposal to rectify names (zhengming). Jane Geaney is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond and the author of On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought. (shrink)