Are people with flawed faces regarded as having flawed moral characters? An “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype is hypothesized to facilitate negative biases against people with facial anomalies (e.g., scars), but whether and how these biases affect behavior and brain functioning remain open questions. We examined responses to anomalous faces in the brain (using a visual oddball paradigm), behavior (in economic games), and attitudes. At the level of the brain, the amygdala demonstrated a specific neural response to anomalous faces—sensitive to disgust and a (...) lack of beauty but independent of responses to salience or arousal. At the level of behavior, people with anomalous faces were subjected to less prosociality from participants highest in socioeconomic status. At the level of attitudes, we replicated previously reported negative character evaluations made about individuals with facial anomalies, and further identified explicit biases directed against them as a group. Across these levels of organization, the specific amygdala response to facial anomalies correlated with stronger just-world beliefs (i.e., people get what they deserve), less dispositional empathic concern, and less prosociality toward people with facial anomalies. Characterizing the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype at multiple levels of organization can reveal underappreciated psychological burdens shouldered by people who look different. (shrink)

International courts are an integral component of the international legal system. These courts have been proliferating over time and increasingly working to ensure state compliance with the rules of the international regulatory regimes they join. However, these courts face a fundamental challenge: while they can rule against governments in violation of the regime’s rules, they cannot enforce those decisions. Working from the first principle that the regulatory regime is designed to help resolve collective action problems among the signees, this Article (...) proposes a formal model of international court influence that helps to explain the extent and limits of international court influence on national government behavior. (shrink)

Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat was one of the most distinguished scientists and peace campaigners of the post second world war period. He made significant contributions to nuclear physics and worked on the development of the atomic bomb. He then became one of the world’s leading researchers into the biological effects of radiation. His life from the early 1950s until his death in August 2005 was devoted to the abolition of nuclear weapons and peace. For this he was awarded the (...) Nobel Peace Prize, together with Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (that he helped found) in 1995. His work in this area ranked with that of Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell and this article is an attempt to summarise his life, achievements, but in particular outline his views on the moral responsibilities of the scientist. He is a towering intellectual figure and his contributions to mankind should be better known and more widely understood. (shrink)

In their article 'Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach. Part I: Causes', Joseph Halpern and Judea Pearl draw upon structural equation models to develop an attractive analysis of 'actual cause'. Their analysis is designed for the case of deterministic causation. I show that their account can be naturally extended to provide an elegant treatment of probabilistic causation.

ABSTRACT Joseph Halpern and Judea Pearl draw upon structural equation models to develop an attractive analysis of ‘actual cause’. Their analysis is designed for the case of deterministic causation. I show that their account can be naturally extended to provide an elegant treatment of probabilistic causation. 1Introduction 2Preemption 3Structural Equation Models 4The Halpern and Pearl Definition of ‘Actual Cause’ 5Preemption Again 6The Probabilistic Case 7Probabilistic Causal Models 8A Proposed Probabilistic Extension of Halpern and Pearl’s Definition 9Twardy and Korb’s Account (...) 10Probabilistic Fizzling 11Conclusion. (shrink)

Articles: "Generosity of Spirit" by Joseph Kupfer, "Gratitude and Justice" by Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald, "Humility" by Nancy Snow, "The Practice of Pride" by Tara Smith, "The Cognitive Structure of Compassion" by Martha C. Nussbaum, "Reasons for Love" by Robert C. Solomon, "The Value of Hope" by Luc Bovens, "Patience and Courage" by Eamonn Callan, "Forgivingness" by Robert C. Roberts, "Trust as an Affective Attitude" by Karen Jones.

This article examines the interpretive dimensions of human action. Although it takes the reflexive sociology of Pierre Bourdieu as its starting point, the article attempts to develop a more robust hermeneutical account of the reflexivity of social actors and those who study them than Bourdieu himself has considered. It is argued that interpretation is best understood not as the homologous expression of inculcated structures but rather as context-sensitive and reflexively context-transforming action—or what the author wishes to characterize, respectively, as first- (...) and second-order thematizations of embeddedness. The article concludes by contrasting the author's position with the thick description of Clifford Geertz. (shrink)

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This essay conducts an analysis of the underlying factors contributing to the ideological and strategic disagreement between Emilio Aguinaldo and Andres Bonifacio during the Philippine Revolution. Employing a multi-dimensional approach, the essay scrutinizes the distinct objectives each leader had for the revolution, highlighting the complexities of their conflicting perspectives. Likewise it evaluates the substantive impact of the Aguinaldo-Bonifacio schism on what was otherwise considered a unified revolutionary movement, thereby presenting implications for the interpretation of historical revolutions.

In his recent paper ‘Knowing What Things Look Like’, Matthew McGrath offers a challenge to the idea that knowing an object by seeing it, ‘visual objectual knowledge’ is an instance of immediate knowledge. I offer supporters of the notion of immediate visual objectual knowledge two potential strategies for blocking McGrath’s argument: either by questioning McGrath’s claim about the role that knowing what an object looks like plays in visual objectual knowledge or by denying that any explanation of how knowing what (...) an object looks like plays that role must proceed through an appeal to factual knowledge involving that object’s looks. (shrink)

The debate concerning the role of intuitions in philosophy has been characterized by a fundamental disagreement between two main camps. The first, the autonomists, hold that, due to the use in philosophical investigation of appeals to intuition, most of the central questions of philosophy can in principle be answered by philosophical investigation and argument without relying on the sciences. The second, the naturalists, deny the possibility of a priori knowledge and are skeptical of the role of intuition in providing evidence (...) in philosophical inquiry. In spite of the seemingly stark and deep disagreement between the autonomist and the naturalist, in this paper I will attempt to suggest that there is a way to mount a partial defense of intuition-based philosophical practice on naturalist grounds. As will be seen, doing so will require a number of concessions that will satisfy few autonomists while simultaneously disappointing those naturalists who might have thought that all notions of the a priori had been successfully laid to rest. However, I will argue that the account proposed here will preserve those features of traditional philosophical practice that matter most and better explain the history of successes and failures of that practice, thus answering the worries of the autonomist, and that the rejection of the No A Priori Thesis attendant with the account presented here is indeed demanded by the current theories of our best scientific understanding of the mind, thus pacifying the rabid naturalistic critic of any version of apriorism. (shrink)

According to H.L.A. Hart's analysis, to utter an internal legal statement is partly to express an acceptance of a set of norms. This article attempts to defend Hart's conception of internal legal discourse by responding to the following three lines of criticism that can be found in Joseph Raz's writings: (i) that Hart's analysis fails to account for what Raz calls ‘detached legal statements’; (ii) that Hart's deployment of the notion of acceptance in his analysis vitiates his legal positivist (...) project because such acceptance necessarily amounts to moral endorsement; and (iii) that Hart is wrong to assume that normative practices, including discursive legal practices, can be characterized satisfactorily by deploying only descriptive statements. I argue that Hart's theory, or at least a theory along the lines that Hart developed, has sufficient resources to handle satisfactorily these criticisms. His world is a noonday world in which sharply outlined figures, most of them more than a little singular, act in describable ways against perceptible backgrounds. Clifford Geertz, speaking of Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard. (shrink)

The deeply entrenched, sometimes heated conflict between the disability movement and the profession of bioethics is well known and well documented. Critiques of prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion are probably the most salient and most sophisticated of disability studies scholars’ engagements with bioethics, but there are many other topics over which disability activists and scholars have encountered the field of bioethics in an adversarial way, including health care rationing, growth-attenuation interventions, assisted reproduction technology, and physician-assisted suicide. The tension between the (...) analyses of the disabilities studies scholars and mainstream bioethics is not merely a conflict between two insular political groups, however; it is, rather, also an encounter between those who have experienced disability and those who have not. This paper explores that idea. I maintain that it is a mistake to think of this conflict as arising just from a difference in ideology or political commitments because it represents a much deeper difference—one rooted in variations in how human beings perceive and reason about moral problems. These are what I will refer to as variations of moral psychology. The lived experiences of disability produce variations in moral psychology that are at the heart of the moral conflict between the disability movement and mainstream bioethics. I will illustrate this point by exploring how the disability movement and mainstream bioethics come into conflict when perceiving and analyzing the moral problem of physician-assisted suicide via the lens of the principle of respect for autonomy. To reconcile its contemporary and historical conflict with the disability movement, the field of bioethics must engage with and fully consider the two groups’ differences in moral perception and reasoning, not just the explicit moral and political arguments of the disability movement. (shrink)

The thirty-three essays in <I>Relativism: A Contemporary Anthology</I> grapple with one of the most intriguing, enduring, and far-reaching philosophical problems of our age. Relativism comes in many varieties. It is often defined as the belief that truth, goodness, or beauty is relative to some context or reference frame, and that no absolute standards can adjudicate between competing reference frames. Michael Krausz's anthology captures the significance and range of relativistic doctrines, rehearsing their virtues and vices and reflecting on a spectrum of (...) attitudes. Invoking diverse philosophical orientations, these doctrines concern conceptions of relativism in relation to facts and conceptual schemes, realism and objectivity, universalism and foundationalism, solidarity and rationality, pluralism and moral relativism, and feminism and poststructuralism. Featuring nine original essays, the volume also includes many classic articles, making it a standard resource for students, scholars, and researchers. <B>Table of Contents:</B> Foreword by Alan Ryan Preface Introduction Michael Krausz <B>Part I. Orienting Relativism</B> 1. Mapping Relativisms Michael Krausz 2. A Brief History of Relativism Maria Baghramian <B>Part II. Relativism, Truth, and Knowledge</B> 3. Subjective, Objective, and Conceptual Relativisms Maurice Mandelbaum 4. “Just the Facts, Ma’am!” Nelson Goodman 5. Relativism in Philosophy of Science Nancy Cartwright 6. The Truth About Relativism Joseph Margolis 7. Making Sense of Relative Truth John MacFarlane 8. On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme Donald Davidson 9. Truth and Convention: On Davidson’s Refutation of Conceptual Relativism Hilary Putnam 10. Conceptual Schemes Simon Blackburn 11. Relativizing the Facts Paul A. Boghossian 12. Targets of Anti-Relativist Arguments Harvey Siegel 13. Realism and Relativism Akeel Bilgrami <B>Part III. Moral Relativism, Objectivity, and Reasons</B> 14. Moral Relativism Defended Gilbert Harman 15. The Truth in Relativism Bernard Williams 16. Pluralism and Ambivalence David B. Wong 17. The Relativity of Fact and the Objectivity of Value Catherine Z. Elgin 18. Senses of Moral Relativity David Wiggins 19. Ethical Relativism and the Problem of Incoherence David Lyons 20. Understanding Alien Morals Gopal Sreenivasan 21. Value: Realism and Objectivity Thomas Nagel 22. Intuitionism, Realism, Relativism, and Rhubarb Crispin Wright 23. Moral Relativism and Moral Realism Russ Schafer-Landau <B>Part IV. Relativism, Culture, and Understanding</B> 24. Anti Anti-Relativism Clifford Geertz 25. Solidarity or Objectivity? Richard Rorty 26. Relativism, Power, and Philosophy Alasdair MacIntyre 27. Internal Criticism and Indian Rationalist Traditions Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen 28. Phenomenological Rationality and the Overcoming of Relativism Jitendra N. Mohanty 29. Understanding and Ethnocentricity Charles Taylor 30. Relativism and Cross-Cultural Understanding Kwame Anthony Appiah 31. Relativism, Persons, and Practices Amélie Oksenberg Rorty 32. One What? Relativism and Poststructuralism David Couzens Hoy 33. Must a Feminist Be a Relativist After All? Lorraine Code List of Contributors Index. (shrink)

The transcendental expectation of string theory is that the nature of the fundamental forces, particle spectra and masses, together with coupling constants, is uniquely determined by mathematical and logical consistency, non-empirically, that is by pure reason. However pluralism triumphed with the explosive emergence of the multiverse. String theorists have extended a long-sought dream to a landscape or a happy caparnaum. Proponents of string theory try to qualify their arguments via swampland conjectures while cosmologists retreat to their telescopes. We review the (...) current status of the string theory swampland. (shrink)

Like any philosophically interesting health care practice, ethical analysis of Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis has produced a wide range of moral positions. For example, one might contrast David King's view that warns PGD should be strictly limited and regulated because it will soon result in the expansion of a troubling "laissez-faire eugenics" with Julian Savulescu's argument for the "principle of procreative beneficence" morally requiring parents to use information attained through PGD to select the "best child". That is, these authors represent two (...) poles of a sort of moral spectrum regarding PGD. At one end, we have a deep suspicion of the technology as directly leading to... (shrink)

The idea of God: absolute intellectuality.-- The creation: absolute emanation.-- Matter and force: the universe in its potentiality and actuality.-- The universal mechanism: motion and its transformations.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

We evaluate the literature on the memorability of supernatural concepts, itself part of a growing body of work in the emerging cognitive science of religion. Specifically, we focus on Boyer’s Minimally Counterintuitive hypothesis according to which supernatural concepts tap a cognitively privileged memory-enhancing mechanism linked to violations of default intuitive inferences. Our assessment reveals that the literature on the MCI hypothesis is mired in empirical contradictions and methodological shortcomings which makes it difficult to assess the validity of competing theoretical models, (...) including the MCI hypothesis itself. In light of this fractured picture, we make the case for an account of the MCI effect which dispenses with a memory mechanism specific to supernatural concepts. This account has several desirable properties. First, it preserves Boyer’s pioneering insights regarding the ontological status of supernatural concepts and the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to their cultural prevalence. Second, our account is based on independently-motivated mechanisms that are well-established in the literature. Third, this account offers a principled resolution of the tension in the extant literature between studies that do replicate the MCI effect and those that seemingly fail to do so. Finally, because the proposed mechanisms are not specific to supernatural concepts, the scope of the MCI effect may be extended to account for a broader range of highly transmissible concepts than those it was originally intended to explain. We conclude with a set of theoretical and methodological prescriptions designed to guide future research on the memorability of supernatural concepts. (shrink)

The paper examines various interpretations of Dworkin’s thesis of the Unity of Value, as expressed and defended in his book Justice for Hedgehogs. Dworkin’s arguments for various aspects of his unity of value thesis are relied on in interpreting the which is then compared with versions of value pluralism.