Humor is a surprisingly understudied topic in philosophy. However, there has been a flurry of interest in the subject over the past few decades. This article outlines the major theories of humor. It argues for the need for more publications on humor by philosophers. More specifically, it suggests that humor may not be a well-understood phenomenon by questioning a widespread consensus in recent publications – namely, that humor can be detached from laughter. It is argued that this consensus relies on (...) a cognitivist account of emotion, one that is open to debate, and that it becomes unclear what sorts of phenomena a theory of humor is supposed to explain when one questions this assumption. (shrink)

Abortion opponents are sometimes accused of having inconsistent beliefs, actions, and/or priorities. If they were consistent, they would regard spontaneous abortions to be a greater moral tragedy,...

Definitions of death are often referred to as legal fictions since brain death was conceived in the mid-twentieth century. Reference to legal fiction is generally paired with bioethicists’ concern that it facilitates post-mortem tissue donation and the health system generally, by determining death earlier on the continuum of dying and availing more viable tissue and therapeutic resources for others. The author argues that spatio-legal theory, drawing from legal geography, can account for the heterogeneity of effects that the fiction has in (...) spatially managing bodies (e.g., physicians, patient, family) at the bedside. The legal fiction is produced in physicians’ socio-legal practices, coordinating decision-making according to geographies of scarcity and severable, self-contained live- and dead-bodies. The determination liminally exists between private and public, enacting a sterile, affectless ordering of bodies but administered in the spectacle of sovereign death-making, conveying authority whilst managing patient’s and family’s consents. Spatialising traces of anatamo-politics and biopolitics thereby congeal and are enacted heterogeneously in and through the legal form of the fiction, securing preferred constructions of the body in the management of mortality. These spatio-legal features of the legal fiction are described from their collision with case law and literature that document competing nomoi produced from or secreted by antinomian bodies. (shrink)

The series of 'trolley' examples issue a challenge to moral principles based on intentions, since it seems that these give the wrong answers in two important cases: 'Fat Man', where they seem to say that it is permissible to push someone in front of a trolley to save others, and 'Loop', where they seem to say that it is wrong to divert a trolley towards a single person whose body will stop it and save others. I reply, first, that there (...) is a parallel between the wrongful intention to mutilate in 'Transplant', where one person's vital organs are removed to save others' lives, and the intention to assault in Fat Man. Secondly, I defend Frances Kamm's view that in Loop one can divert the trolley towards the one without an intention to kill or assault, since good potential side-effects can be taken into account in deciding what to do, without their becoming intentions. (shrink)

This essay presents a challenge to the parental obligation objection. This objection is usually made by abortion opponents who argue that because child support laws hold men postnatally responsible for children they helped bring into existence, women too have prenatal parental responsibilities that should prevent them from ending pregnancies through abortions. My essay draws on recent publications in bioethics that distinguish procreative from parental responsibilities. This distinction was originally developed to clarify the duties of third-party participants in assisted reproduction. However, (...) the distinction inadvertently poses a problem for the parental obligation objection, for it raises questions about whether women who do not wish to carry a child to term have parental rather than procreative responsibilities. It does not necessarily follow that the objection must be wrong. But rather, that there is an explanatory gap in it. If abortion violates procreative responsibilities, then drastic changes must be made to fertility medicine. Conversely, there does not appear to be non-question-begging criteria that would explain why pregnant women must have parental responsibilities, in addition to procreative ones, whereas third-party participants in assisted reproduction, such as fertility doctors, embryologists, gamete donors, and surrogates, have only procreative responsibilities. (shrink)

Recently, several states in the United States have sought to adopt more restrictive abortion policies. Most have tried to enact “heartbeat bills” that prohibit most abortions once a fetal heartbeat becomes detectable. This article explores this question: Are heartbeat bills ethically defensible? I argue that they are not. There are at least four problems with them. First, heartbeat bills rely on a problematic understanding of human death. Second, they contradict and even undermine the leading arguments in ethics against abortion. Third, (...) they are ambiguous not just in terms of when they judge fetal heartbeats to be detectable but also in what they deem to be heartbeats. Finally, there is a case to be made that heartbeat bills are disingenuous, both in their intentions and in their underlying motives. (shrink)

Several states have recently adopted more restrictive abortion policies yet permit fertility clinics to create surplus IVF embryos. This essay examines this issue: Is it morally inconsistent to prohibit abortion yet permit surplus embryos to be used in fertility medicine? I consider various arguments that try to reconcile this tension. None succeed. Either one holds that embryos have full moral status, and opposes both abortion and surplus embryos, or one denies that embryos have full moral status, which would permit surplus (...) embryos to be used but would entail that some abortions should be permissible as well. (shrink)

BackgroundFear of cancer recurrence is common amongst cancer survivors. There is rapidly growing research interest in FCR but a need to prioritize research to address the most pressing clinical issues and reduce duplication and fragmentation of effort. This study aimed to establish international consensus among clinical and academic FCR experts regarding priorities for FCR research.MethodsMembers of the International Psycho-oncology Society Fear of Cancer Recurrence Special Interest Group were invited to participate in an online Delphi study. Research domains identified in Round (...) 1 were presented and discussed at a focus group to consolidate the domains and items prior to presentation in further survey rounds aimed at gaining consensus on research priorities of international significance.ResultsThirty four research items were identified in Round 1 and 33 of the items were consolidated into six overarching themes through a focus group discussion with FCR experts. The 33 research items were presented in subsequent rounds of the delphi technique. Twenty one participants contributed to delphi round 1, 16 in round 2, and 25 and 29 participants for subsequent delphi rounds. Consensus was reached for 27 items in round 3.1. A further four research items were identified by panelists and included in round 3.2. After round 3.2, 35 individual research items were ratified by the panelists. Given the high levels of consensus and stability between rounds, no further rounds were conducted. Overall intervention research was considered the most important focus for FCR research. Panelists identified models of care that facilitate greater access to FCR treatment and evaluation of the effectiveness of FCR interventions in real world settings as the two research items of highest priority. Defining the mechanisms of action and active components across FCR/P interventions was the third highest priority identified.ConclusionThe findings of this study outline a research agenda for international FCR research. Intervention research to identify models of care that increase access to treatment are based on a flexible approach based on symptom severity and can be delivered within routine clinical care were identified as research areas to prioritize. Greater understanding of the active components and mechanisms of action of existing FCR interventions will facilitate increased tailoring of interventions to meet patient need. (shrink)

Advances in fertility medicine have led some ethicists to call for stricter regulations on assisted reproduction. One counterargument is that such restrictions are unfair, for they impose far more...

© 2013 The Editors of The Philosophical QuarterlyProfessor Haldane's collection of essays covers not only topics of Philosophy of Religion, but issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. They are treated not so much from a particular religious viewpoint, or from a philosophical tradition associated with religious principles, but by using materials inspired by such viewpoints and traditions. Haldane is explicitly combating an influential strand of thought in academic philosophy which would exclude such materials in principle, even while the (...) discipline increases its openness to inspirations from external sources such literature, social history, and neuroscience, and while the philosophy of the English‐speaking world has an increasingly open‐minded attitude to alternative methodologies and traditions, such as continental philosophy. What results is a set of intriguing philosophical explorations, mostly focused on the views of a particular philosopher,... (shrink)

Joint attention (JA) is hypothesized to have a close relationship with developing theory of mind (ToM) capabilities. We tested the co-occurrence of ToM and JA in social interactions between adults with no reported history of psychiatric illness or neurodevelopmental disorders. Participants engaged in an experimental task that encouraged nonverbal communication, including JA, and also ToM activity. We adapted an in-lab variant of experience sampling methods (Bryant, Coffey, Povinelli, & Pruett, 2013) to measure ToM during JA based on participants’ subjective reports (...) of their thoughts while performing the task. This experiment successfully elicited instances of JA in 17/20 dyads. We compared participants’ thought contents during episodes of JA and non-JA. Our results suggest that, in adults, JA and ToM may occur independently. (shrink)

This article defends misanthropy against what I take to be an underappreciated objection. Several recent defenders of misanthropy have held that it should be understood as involving a critical judgment of humanity based on the belief that human life is saturated with moral failings. The first half of this article identifies a problem for this view: namely, most people do not experience their lives in ways that would seem to be entailed by the misanthrope’s judgment. The second half proposes a (...) solution to this objection—an error theory for misanthropy. Several arguments are given. A common theme among them, however, is that there are good reasons to think that human beings habitually ignore and/or suppress certain displays of their moral failings. A misanthrope can also argue that beings whose lives are choked in moral failings will be more likely to overlook and to disavow them. (shrink)

Peter Lamarque recently reported on current trends in aesthetics in the Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics. Noticeably absent from his list, however, is the emergence and acceptance of feminist approaches in aesthetics, especially among analytic philosophers. Yet feminism is an important movement, one that should have been included among those he discusses. Indeed, my goal is to convince you that feminism should have made it onto Lamarque’s list. Rather than criticize him, however, I want to use his oversight to ask why (...) feminist philosophers working in analytic aesthetics have trouble getting the recognition they deserve. My suggestion will be that the specificity of feminist critiques in aesthetics is often what makes it difficult for philosophers to appreciate their significance. I will also argue that it is precisely because of this specificity that feminism is a uniquely important movement in contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

The use of intention in ethics has been the subject of intense debate for many years, but no consensus has emerged over whether intention is morally relevant, or even how it should be understood. In this paper I wish to make a thorough, though by no means exhaustive, examination of the concept and the concepts around it, some to be seen as near-synonyms, and some as contrasting ideas. My interest is in the ethical use of the concept, though my own (...) analysis of it will be indebted to discussions in the philosophy of action. The most famous ethical use, which will not, however, be my direct focus here, is the ‘principle of double effect,’ which states that an agent may cause or allow something bad as long as, first, no evil is intended as an end or a means; and, second, that the foreseen bad is not out of proportion with the anticipated good. It is important to note the principle’s testimony to the plausibility of prohibitions expressed in terms of intentions, and, alongside these, a general prohibition on doing inordinate harms even without intention. (shrink)

Aaron Smuts argues that the holiday film It's a Wonderful Life should be understood as both an illustration and a cinematic vindication of objective list theories of worth. This article argues that he is right about the first point but wrong about the second. It's a Wonderful Life is an excellent illustration of objective list theories. However, it also exposes a problem for them – their susceptibility to sceptical anxieties about whether we can know if our lives are worth living. (...) More specifically, I argue that It's a Wonderful Life shows how our lives are vulnerable to two sceptical anxieties, one arising from our potential inability to confirm our successes in promoting the good, the other from our potential inability to ascertain which goods can properly be said to be in our lives due to gaps in our self-knowledge and our potential for self-deception. (shrink)

The claim that they are the ‘Divine Command Theory of Morality’ might seem to be the neatest and most obvious way to account for the moral force of divine commands. In this paper I shall argue that the Divine Command Theory fails as an account of God’s relationship with morality, both in terms of coherence and in terms of fidelity to the traditional theist practice of obedience to God, while a more modest account of how God is to be understood (...) as having a special moral authority can be successful on both counts. (shrink)

In this paper I give an account and defence of the thought and practice associated with the notion of obedience in religious ethics, especially in reply to the claim that obedience is necessarily unconscientious. First, I argue that it is conscientious to give weight to commands if they are identifiable as pieces of authoritative advice, or, as theists commonly believe, if they have intrinsic moral force. Second, I argue that a theist's strictly moral reasons for fulfilling obligations are not replaced (...) but reinforced by reasons arising out of a personal relationship with God. Anyone who loves God will want to please God, to act in accordance with His teaching and to avoid His punishment, and theists can do these things by respecting existing moral reasons for action. Third, I show how it can be valuable that people submit to God in further ways, by doing what God commends, and by committing themselves to obeying divine commands which would not otherwise be addressed to them. Finally, I argue that subordinating oneself to God's will is itself a partial attainment of the spiritual ideal of mystical union with God. (shrink)

This is a selective annotated bibliography of publications in the area of feminist aes-thetics from 1990 to 2003. It is intended to compliment the bibliography presented by Linda Krumholz and Estella Lauter in the Spring 1990 issue of Hypatia.

While cancer survivors commonly experience fear and anxiety, a substantial minority experience an enduring and debilitating fear that their cancer will return; a condition commonly referred to as fear of cancer recurrence. Despite recent advances in this area, little is known about FCR among people from Indigenous or other ethnic and racial minority populations. Given the high prevalence and poor outcomes of cancer among people from these populations, a robust understanding of FCR among people from these groups is critical. The (...) current review identified and aggregated existing literature on FCR amongst adult cancer survivors from Indigenous and minority populations. The protocol of this review was registered with PROSPERO in July 2020. A systematic search of bibliographic databases was conducted for relevant articles published from 1997 to November 2019. Data from eligible articles were extracted and appraised for quality by two independent reviewers. Nineteen articles from four countries met the inclusion criteria, including 14 quantitative, 4 qualitative and 1 mixed-methods study. Only one article reported on an Indigenous population. Few studies reported on FCR prevalence or severity. While the variation in tools used to measure FCR hindered a robust estimate of severity, results suggested some differences in FCR severity between minority and dominant populations, although these may have been due to study metholodological differences. Few factors were reported as being associated with FCR in minorities across multiple studies. The qualitative synthesis found five themes associated with the lived experience of FCR: variations in the lived experience of FCR; spirituality and worldview impacting on FCR; the importance of staying positive; complexities around support; and increasing cancer knowledge. The findings of this review highlight differences in FCR across cultures and contexts, which reinforces the need for culturally-specific approaches to this condition. The dearth of research in this area is of concern given the significant burden of cancer in these populations. A deeper understanding of this condition among Indigenous and minority populations is critical to developing and delivering appropriate and effective psychosocial care for cancer survivors from these groups. Systematic Review Registration: identifier [CRD42020161655]. (shrink)

The essays in this collection, many originally presented at a 2008 colloquium on Celtic Cosmology and the Power of Words, aim to examine the worldviews held by the Celtic peoples, particularly the Gaelic (Irish and Scottish) perspectives. Texts and inscriptions, some of them pre-Christian, in Celtic languages and in Celtic Latin provide the sources for the worldviews under study. This area of research is also linked to that of the power of words, which refers to human belief in powerful speech (...) acts. Naming and story-telling processes convey knowledge of the cosmos; this knowledge is connected to the landscape and its roads, rivers, mountains and hills. Cosmology is a description of the order and structure of the world as perceived by human beings, and its study is a study of layers – in the earth, in the language and in the tales. (shrink)

Texas’ beloved Blue Bell Creameries was one of the leading ice cream brands worldwide until contaminated products issues culminated in 2015. During the outbreak, three people died and Blue Bell was forced to issue a total product recall. Governmental investigations revealed the company knew its production facilities had contamination issues as early as 2009. In 2020, Blue Bell pled guilty to shipping contaminated ice cream and paid over $19 million in fines. Paul Kruse, Blue Bell’s long-standing president, was alleged to (...) have ordered the cessation of a product contamination testing program and to have ordered the destruction of evidence that confirmed contamination. As a result of his alleged actions, Kruse was charged with seven criminal counts. Students must step into the role of Kruse, critically think through the consequences of action and inaction at the management level, and consider possible alternatives from various ethical perspectives. (shrink)

This paper considers the problem of closeness in the ethical use of intention. In section I, attempts inspired by Anscombe to use a “coarse grained” understanding of intention, to deal with certain difficult cases, are rejected. In section II it is argued that the difficult cases can be addressed using other moral principles. In section III a more detailed account of intention is set out, analysing intention as a reason for action, and in section IV two paradoxes apparently created by (...) this account are addressed: on the contrast between intentions and intentional action, and the difference between killing a group of people together or individually. In section V another set of cases is considered, to test how this account of intention handles the intention of harm. Section VI considers the objection that an agent may cause what is a harm without intending it as a harm. (shrink)

The use of intention in ethics has been the subject of intense debate for many years, but no consensus has emerged over whether intention is morally relevant, or even how it should be understood. In this paper I wish to make a thorough, though by no means exhaustive, examination of the concept and the concepts around it, some to be seen as near-synonyms, and some as contrasting ideas. My interest is in the ethical use of the concept, though my own (...) analysis of it will be indebted to discussions in the philosophy of action. The most famous ethical use, which will not, however, be my direct focus here, is the ‘principle of double effect,’ which states that an agent may cause or allow something bad as long as, first, no evil is intended as an end or a means; and, second, that the foreseen bad is not out of proportion with the anticipated good. It is important to note the principle's testimony to the plausibility of prohibitions expressed in terms of intentions (indicated by the first condition), and, alongside these, a general prohibition on doing inordinate harms even without intention (indicated by the second condition). (shrink)

Some commentators have claimed that Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy should be understood as a response to the Holocaust. This study assesses that claim. It begins by clarifying what it means to call his philosophy a “response.” The bulk of the article then analyzes his essay, “Useless Suffering,” one of the few works in Levinas's philosophic oeuvre where he discusses the Holocaust. Levinas is widely read as claiming that there can be no explanation for the Holocaust—that it marks “the end of theodicy.” (...) It is shown, however, that his point is not that it cannot be explained, but that we misjudge the nature of evil when we view it as calling for explanation rather than practical activity. Based on this analysis, it is argued that Levinas's philosophy can be understood as a response to the Holocaust in the sense of being a performative writing that sought to address the evil that occurred in the Holocaust by transforming the ethical sensibilities of his readers. (shrink)

When moral rules are formulated in terms of intentions, agents are forbidden to countenance harms that are out of proportion with the good they are intending to achieve. Shelly Kagan has argued that if resources are not used for the most value-producing purpose, the agent will be allowing a harm or loss greater than the good intended. I argue that this understanding of proportionality is incorrect, since it displaces the common-sense understanding of the duty of aid, which varies in stringency (...) according to the agent’s relationship with the person in need, and other factors. I suggest that proportionality should be understood in terms of the duty of aid. Even in pursuing an intended good, one must not infringe one’s duty of aid to others. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to overlooked similarities between John Rawls’s and Emmanuel Levinas’s understandings of justice. Its first part provides a synopsis of each philosopher’s ideas as well t...

This paper draws attention to overlooked similarities between John Rawls’s and Emmanuel Levinas’s understandings of justice. Its first part provides a synopsis of each philosopher’s ideas as well t...

Three-dimensional ‘bioprinting’ is under development, which may produce living human organs and tissues to be surgically implanted in patients. Like tissue engineering and regenerative medicine generally, the process of bioprinting potentially disrupts experience of the human body by redefining understandings of, and becoming actualised in new practices and regimes in relation to, the body. The authors consider how these novel sociotechnical imaginaries may emerge, having regard to law’s contribution to, as well as its possible transformation by, the process of 3D (...) bioprinting. The authors draw on Gilbert Simondon and corporeal, material feminists to account for these disruptions as ‘ontogenetic,’ in the sense that technology can produce new ontologies or beings. The authors focus namely on ontogenesis, individuation and the pre-individual forces that comprise, and yet remain inexhausted by, the process of 3D bioprinting. The authors argue legal phenomena are pre-individual forces that ‘in-form’ ontogenesis. These pre-individual forces are indistinguishable from those implicated in the individuation of the body’s physical form; thereby, the individuation of the bodily material through 3D bioprinting may be expressive and generative of sociolegal phenomena, at least as those relate to the body. The authors conclude that 3D bioprinting shores up conventional, liberal conceptions in law of the human body as individual, bounded and primarily contractual. Three-dimensional bioprinting may introduce ontological difference to the extent it promises and realises a new temporality of the human as a species- and legal-subject, although such a development would only seem to expand, rather than attenuate, a biopolitical regime. (shrink)

My dissertation addresses a frequent criticism of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas is best known for his powerful claims about the importance of ethics. Many critics fault him, though, because he never specifies any useful, action-guiding ethical principles. Many also charge that he cannot offer any such principles. Levinas thinks there is an aspect of our encounters with other persons, one involving the responsibilities we have to them, that cannot be fully comprehended, and he criticizes philosophers for not respecting this fact. Yet (...) it would seem contradictory for him, in turn, to develop ethical rules or norms that purport to be expressive of this side of human life. My dissertation shows that this criticism is misplaced. I argue, first, that he draws his epistemic conclusions about the transcendence of what he calls "the human other" by reflecting on the fact that our ethical responsibilities to others override other relationships we have to them. Another person is always, first and foremost, a being to whom I have certain obligations; Levinas uses the rhetoric of transcendence and infinitude to emphasize the way in which acknowledging these responsibilities differs from other acts of cognition. Nothing in his argument, however, prevents him from specifying a normative ethics. I develop this argument in part through a close reading of pivotal sections of Totality and Infinity. I also test it by reviewing claims he makes about the inexplicability of the Holocaust. My dissertation's later chapters show that Levinas does, in fact, specify a normative ethics in his work. I review several places where he endorses liberal ethical ideals. I also clarify his brand of liberalism by faulting recent efforts to assimilate his ethics to some form of Kantian liberalism. (shrink)

Cathryn Vasseleu _Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty_ London: Routledge, 1997 ISBN 041514233 (hbk) 0415142741 (pbk) 157 pp.

Divine commands are typically held, by theists, to be made not only at the foundations of morality, but also in an 'everyday' setting, when there are already moral considerations applicable to the addressee(s). My aim is to show how a particular command could relate to these pre-existing moral considerations, if it is more than just a repetition of them. If it is right that an action be obligatory, wrong or supererogatory, why would God want to change its status? Anyone can (...) make a normative difference by giving information, making co-ordination proposals, or transferring rights, and it is clear why these actions will sometimes by worthwhile. The problem must be focused on when God makes a moral difference directly, using a 'special moral authority', when His commands are efficacious qua commands. Using this authority, God can perfect imperfect duties, which may make it easier to carry them out. He can extend duties, to make sure more value is produced. He can allocate sacrifices, which can be carried by anyone. And He can resolve conflict games, to everyone's benefit. This explains why God should issue commands in the way that theists typically represent him as doing. (shrink)

Circumvention tourism is a form of medical tourism that occurs when individuals travel abroad to receive treatments that are a prohibited in their home county but permitted in a destination country. This paper explores this question: Should individuals be punished by their home countries for engaging in circumvention tourism? Guido Pennings, Richard Huxtable, and I. Glenn Cohen have all argued for what I call “formalist accounts” of circumvention tourism. That is, they try to show that certain types of circumvention tourism (...) should or should not be punished in principle. Against them, I show that questions about circumvention tourism’s punishability cannot be answered in the abstract. Whether individuals should be punished depends too much on the prima facie morality of the treatments being performed and the prohibitions being circumvented. (shrink)

The conceptual persona of the idiot recurs and evolves over the decades between Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition and his final book with Guattari, What is Philosophy?, shifting from a philosophical question to a nonphilosophical one that allies thought with literature and life. The great figure of this shock of literature is Antonin Artaud who, Deleuze argues, refinds thought’s creative capacity by putting it back in touch with its immanent outside – with a machinic and pre-personal ‘unthought’. This essay will argue (...) that by turning to works from later in Artaud’s œuvre, especially the 1946 poem-cycle Artaud le Mômo, the problem of idiocy meets a correlative problem concerning life and death. Artaud establishes a four-fold of thought-unthought-life-unlife which is problematically resolved in what he calls a ‘body’, a figure which I will argue requires that we rethink the relationship Artaud experiences between idiocy and suffering. (shrink)