Regulations surrounding laboratory animal care have tried to address aspects of an image of laboratory animal cruelty publicized by animal rights activists. This image of cruelty, however, is not consistent with the experiences of those charged with the day-to-day care of laboratory animals. This article examines the incongruities between the public image of cruelty to animals in laboratories as promoted by animal rights activists, and the experiences of laboratory animal care staff who apply and enforce laboratory animal care regulations. In (...) doing so, the article illuminates why regulations surrounding laboratory animal care are difficult to comply with on the part of the policy enforcers, and are continuously contested by both animal rights activists and animal research personnel. (shrink)

Research in dynamic semantics has made strides by studying various aspects of discourse in terms of computational effect systems, for example, monads (Shan, 2002; Charlow, 2014), Barker and 2014), (Maršik, 2016). We provide a system, based on graded monads, that synthesizes insights from these programs by formalizing individual discourse phenomena in terms of separate effects, or grades. Included are effects for introducing and retrieving discourse referents, non-determinism for indefiniteness, and generalized quantifier meanings. We formalize the behavior of individual effects, as (...) well as the interactions between effects, in terms of algebraic laws tailored to the relevant discourse phenomena. The system we propose is thus modular and suggests a novel approach to integrating formal accounts of distinct semantic phenomena. Finally, we give an interpretation of the system into pure \( \lambda \) -calculus that respects the laws. Future work will aim to integrate more discourse phenomena using the same methodology, for example, presupposition and conventional implicature. (shrink)

Julian Wuerth offers a radically new interpretation of major themes in Kant's philosophy. He explores Kant's ontology of the mind, his transcendental idealism, his account of the mind's powers, and his theory of action, and goes on to develop an original, moral realist account of Kant's ethics.

Chapter 1 Idealism § 1 Introduction Schopenhauer says that his philosophy grows out of Kant's, as from its "parent stem" (WR I p.501). ...

According to the free energy principle all living systems aim to minimise free energy in their sensory exchanges with the environment. Processes of free energy minimisation are thus ubiquitous in the biological world. Indeed it has been argued that even plants engage in free energy minimisation. Not all living things however feel alive. How then did the feeling of being alive get started? In line with the arguments of the phenomenologists, I will claim that every feeling must be felt by (...) someone. It must have mineness built into it if it is to feel a particular way. The question I take up in this paper asks how mineness might have arisen out of processes of free energy minimisation, given that many systems that keep themselves alive lack mineness. The hypothesis I develop in this paper is that the life of an organism can be seen as an inferential process. Every living system embodies a probability distribution conditioned on a model of the sensory, physiological, and morphological states that are highly probably given the life it leads and the niche it inhabits. I argue for an ecological and enactive interpretation of free energy. I show how once the life of an organism reaches a certain level of complexity mineness emerges as an intrinsic part of the process of life itself. (shrink)

Following a brief reconstruction of Hutto & Satne’s paper we focus our critical comments on two issues. First we take up H&S’s claim that a non-representational form of ur-intentionality exists that performs essential work in setting the scene for content-involving forms of intentionality. We will take issue with the characterisation that H&S give of this non-representational form of intentionality. Part of our commentary will therefore be aimed at motivating an alternative account of how there can be intentionality without mental content, (...) which we have called skilled intentionality. Skilled intentionality is the individual’s selective openness and responsiveness to a rich landscape of affordances.A second issue we take up concerns the distinction between ur-intentionality and content-involving intentionality. We will argue that our notion of skilled intentionality as it is found in humans cuts across these two categories. Instead of distinguishing between different forms of intentionality we recommend focusing on how skilled intentionality takes different forms in different forms of life. (shrink)

Cognition has traditionally been understood in terms of internal mental representations, and computational operations carried out on internal mental representations. Radical approaches propose to reconceive cognition in terms of agent-environment dynamics. An outstanding challenge for such a philosophical project is how to scale-up from perception and action to cases of what is typically called ‘higher-order’ cognition such as linguistic thought, the case we focus on in this paper. Perception and action are naturally described in terms of agent-environment dynamics, but can (...) a person’s thoughts about absent, abstract or counterfactual states of affairs also be accounted for in such terms? We argue such a question will seem pressing so long as one fails to appreciate how richly resourceful the human ecological niche is in terms of the affordances it provides. The explanatory work that is supposedly done by mental representations in a philosophical analysis of cognition, can instead be done by looking outside of the head to the environment structured by sociomaterial practices, and the affordances it makes available. Once one recognizes how much of the human ecological niche has become structured by activities of talking and writing, this should take away at least some of the motivation for understanding linguistic thinking in terms of content-bearing internal representations. We’ll argue that people can think about absent, abstract or counterfactual because of their skills for engaging with what we will call “enlanguaged affordances”. We make use of the phenomenological analysis of speech in Merleau-Ponty to show how the multiple affordances an individual is ready to engage with in a particular situation will typically include enlanguaged affordances. (shrink)

At the University of Pretoria the author, a practical theologian, experiences a fruitful soil for the development of an interdisciplinary process. He referred to concrete examples of cooperation, but used the article to reflect on best practices for the interdisciplinary dialogue. He came to the conclusion that it probably made more sense to talk of Practical-theological alternatives rather than to describe the subject in a single fixed manner of understanding and action. Our goal should rather be to open up the (...) boundaries between Practical Theology, Human, Social and Natural Sciences. (shrink)

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. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

_The Ethics Toolkit_ provides an accessible and engaging compendium of concepts, theories, and strategies that encourage students and advanced readers to think critically about ethics so that they can engage intelligently in ethical study, thought, and debate. Written by the authors of the popular _The Philosophers’ Toolkit_ ; Baggini is also a renowned print and broadcast journalist, and a prolific author of popular philosophy books Uses clear and accessible language appropriate for use both inside and beyond the classroom Enlivened through (...) the use of real-world and hypothetical examples Cross-referencing of entries helps to connect and contrast ideas Features lists of prominent ethics organizations and useful websites Encourages readers to think critically about ethics and teaches them how to engage intelligently in ethical study, thought, and debate. (shrink)

The so-called ‘cyclical argument’ for immortality in the Phaedo represents an endeavour to give philosophical respectability to the ancient religious doctrine of the cycle or wheel of rebirth. According to this, the soul is reincarnated after the death of its body and a short period in the ‘other world’ in a purely disembodied state. Socrates sets himself the task of proving that a soul animating a new body must previously have animated another body whose death antedates the life of the (...) new body. (shrink)

DNA databases have significant commercial value. Direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies have built databanks using samples and information voluntarily provided by customers. As the price of genetic analysis falls, there is growing interest in building such databases by paying individuals for their DNA and personal data. This paper maps the ethical issues associated with private companies paying for DNA. We outline the benefits of building better genomic databases and describe possible concerns about crowding out, undue inducement, exploitation, and commodification. While certain (...) objections deserve more empirical and philosophical investigation, we argue that none currently provide decisive reasons against using financial incentives to secure DNA samples. (shrink)

Our perceptual experiences stretch across time to present us with movement, persistence and change. How is this possible given that perceptual experiences take place in the present that has no duration? In this paper I argue that this problem is one and the same as the problem of accounting for how our experiences occurring at different times can be phenomenally unified over time so that events occurring at different times can be experienced together. Any adequate account of temporal experience must (...) also account for phenomenal unity. I look to Edmund Husserl's writings on time consciousness for such an account. (shrink)

In The Gift Relationship, Richard Titmuss argued that the practice of altruistic blood donation fosters social solidarity while markets in blood erode it. This paper considers the implications of this line of argument for the organ market debate. I defend Titmuss’ arguments against a number of criticisms and respond to claims that Titmuss’ work is not relevant to the context of live donor organ transplantation. I conclude that Titmuss’ arguments are more resilient than many advocates of organ markets suggest, and (...) more relevant to the debate than is commonly appreciated. (shrink)

Las distinciones conceptuales propuestas por Thomas Hobbes reflejan el problema político de considerar lo múltiple en la unidad o la convergencia de innumerables cuerpos, deseos y pasiones en la consolidación de una voluntad soberana unitaria. Ejemplo de ello son las nociones de potentiae (potencias) y potestas (poder), junto a otras como multitud y pueblo o súbditos y soberano. Todas ellas reflejan el problema de la estabilidad del Estado y su legitimidad institucional: la necesidad de generar, de manera continua, un poder (...) común. Con la intención de formular una lectura democrática, el propósito de este artículo es relacionar una lectura iconográfica del frontispicio del Leviatán con la presencia/ausencia de un cuerpo indómito. El trabajo concluye que un rasgo esencial de la teoría política hobbesiana es el sentido de lo democrático fundamentado en la presencia ineludible de cuerpos colectivos que deben ser representados. (shrink)

Is it Possible to Experiment with Thought? Ernst Mach’s Notion of Thought Experiment and its Pedagogical Context around 1900. The article tries to establish the crucial importance of the pedagogical dimension of Ernst Mach’s ideas on experimenting with thought. The focus on contemporary pedagogics demonstrates, first, that Mach’s didactic approach to physics is part of a much broader stream of pedagogical writings that transcends national and disciplinary borders and comprises a diversity of authors, e.g. Wilhelm Jerusalem, William James or Alfred (...) N. Whitehead; second, that the much‐heralded controversy between Mach and the French philosopher of science Pierre Duhem about thought experiments does not only revolve around epistemological issues but rather stems from their antagonist vision of teaching physics; and finally, third, that G. Stanley Hall’s psychogenetic theory of pedagogics bears a strong resemblance with the evolutionary naturalism of Machian epistemology and helps explaining key tenets of Mach’s conception of thought experiment. By establishing a broad convergence between the work of all these authors despite their different academic upbringing, background and nationality the article argues for a complex and historically fine‐grained vision of the relations between natural, social and human sciences going beyond dichotomies like ‘Erklären’ and ‘Verstehen’ or the ‘Two Cultures’. (shrink)

In Markets Without Limits and a series of related papers, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue that it is morally permissible to buy and sell anything that it is morally permissible to possess and exchange outside of the market. Accordingly, we should open markets in “contested commodities” including blood, gametes, surrogacy services, and transplantable organs. This paper clarifies some important aspects of the case for market boundaries and in so doing shows why there are in fact moral limits to the (...) market. I argue that the case for restricting the scope of the market does not turn on the idea that some things are constitutively non-market goods; it turns instead on the idea that treating some things according to market norms would threaten the realization of particular kinds of human interests. (shrink)

According to recent empirical research (Transparency International, 2013), nearly 15% of people worldwide admitted to having paid a bribe in an educational setting. Given the nature of corruption,...

El objetivo de este texto es una aproximación teórica de la infancia en las principales concepciones de la filosofía occidental, la nueva historia social de la infancia en el continente y las principales poéticas estéticas del cine latinoamericano durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Para este propósito se analizan las nociones de la infancia desde trabajos con un enfoque histórico-hermenéutico, de análisis crítico de discurso y evaluación de las nociones con base en los aportes de los campos teóricos abordados. (...) Estos cruces permiten pensar los lugares de la infancia como instrumento para lograr un sueño político, las concepciones del tiempo, los derechos liberales de la Ilustración, y el acontecimiento fenomenológico. El fin de esta revisión crítica es un llamado a tejer líneas de fuga de la historia, a recrear mecanismos de resistencia audiovisual que apueste por una estética imperfecta, que desdibuje herencias, que marque procesos sociales en los que la infancia tenga una voz auténtica. Al enfocar la imagen de la infancia resulta crucial que el cine, más allá de mostrar realidades fácticas concretas, tenga un margen de ficción que aprovecha para darnos una poética sentimental de las infancias olvidadas y reinventar la estetización de las nuevas infancias en re-existencias autónomas desde la pluralidad de miradas del continente. (shrink)

Genomic research can reveal ‘unsolicited’ or ‘incidental’ findings that are of potential health or reproductive significance to participants. It is widely thought that researchers have a moral obligation, grounded in the duty of easy rescue, to return certain kinds of unsolicited findings to research participants. It is less widely thought that researchers have a moral obligation to actively look for health-related findings. This paper examines whether there is a moral obligation, grounded in the duty of easy rescue, to actively hunt (...) for genomic secondary findings. We begin by showing how the duty to disclose individual research findings can be grounded in the duty of easy rescue. Next, we describe a parallel moral duty, also grounded in the duty of easy rescue, to actively hunt for such information. We then consider six possible objections to our argument, each of which we find unsuccessful. Some of these objections provide reason to limit the scope of the duty to look for secondary findings, but none provide reason to reject this duty outright. We argue that under a certain range of circumstances, researchers are morally required to hunt for these kinds of secondary findings. Although these circumstances may not currently obtain, genomic researchers will likely acquire an obligation to hunt for secondary findings as the field of genomics continues to evolve. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The central aim of Peter Hägel’s Billionaires in World Politics (BWP) is to challenge the assumption that private individuals lack agency and power in world politics – an assumption that is widely shared in the field of International Relations (IR). Hägel’s methodological strategy to achieve this aim is twofold. First, he concentrates on minutest biographical aspects of billionaires to lay bare the idiosyncrasy of their choices, and to falsify, thus, structuralist assumptions of how individual agency is undermined by factors (...) such as class, roles, or fields. Second, Hägel engages in counter-factual reasoning to support the claim that these individual decisions end up having a real impact on public affairs abroad. This impact is difficult to overestimate given that, as Hägel reveals, billionaires have affected a whole array of political issues, including Brexit, climate change policy, democratic development in Eastern Europe, global health policy, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and the war in Iraq. This introduction starts off by elaborating on the central scholarly contribution of BWP. Following that, this introduction explains why the insights that BWP provides suggest that we do not live in a neo-feudal order, despite the immense global economic inequality which billionaires’ wealth manifests. (shrink)

Nussbaum’s moral cosmopolitanism informs her capability-based theory of justice, which she uses in order to develop a distinctive model of cosmopolitan democratic education. I characterize Nussbaum’s educational model as a ‘statist model,’ however, because it regards cosmopolitan democratic education as necessary for realizing democratic arrangements at the domestic level. The socio-cultural diversity of virtually every nation, Nussbaum argues, renders it mandatory to educate citizens in a cosmopolitan fashion. Citizens must develop empathy and sympathy towards all co-citizens of their domestic polities (...) and cope effectively with socio-cultural diversity. I criticize Nussbaum’s statist model, because it neglects that due to the ways in which international institutions already constrain national decision-making, citizens will not fully enjoy the human freedom of co-determining the political choices that affect their lives unless international affairs are further democratized. Therefore I suggest ext... (shrink)

This psychology textbook offers a comprehensive examination of the basic principles of behavior analysis and their application to issues of social significance. Behavioral scientists are interested in elucidating the fundamental principles that govern the behavior of human and non-human animals. Behavior Analysis is designed to meet the needs of senior undergraduate courses and postgraduate training in behavior analysis and its applications. The eleven comprehensive chapters: ·consider how fundamental principles of behavior can be used in an applied setting to identify behavior (...) to be changed, to select treatments which increase of decrease behavior, and to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions; and ·give examples from various disciplines, including dietetics, education, occupational therapy, and speech therapy, as well as clinical, social, health and community psychology. In addition to covering core material essential for courses in psychology, this volume will also provide a useful account of behavioural psychology and its applied uses for students and professionals from a wide range of fields. (shrink)

Voici une dition qui contribuera sans doute clairer une activit encore mal connue de Voltaire, celle d' diteur. Car de cette uvre composite qu'est le Discours de l'empereur Julien Voltaire se veut avant tout et reste bien l'organisateur, empruntant l'empereur du IVe si cle le r quisitoire qu'il a dress dans son Contre les Galil ens et au marquis d'Argens, son moderne et premier traducteur, la 'belle infid le' qu'il a donn e lire cinq ans plus t t ceux qui (...) n'entendaient ni le grec ni le latin. Voltaire n'a cependant conserv le joyau que pour le servir dans une monture toute nouvelle: d'Argens avait accompagn sa traduction d'une substantielle pr face et d'une annotation abondante; mais Voltaire a cart la premi re et retenu un tiers seulement de la seconde, encadrant d sormais le Discours de ses propres textes; en pr faces un 'Avis au lecteur' suivi d'un 'Portrait de l'empereur Julien' et d'un 'Examen du Discours'; en postface un virulent 'Suppl ment au Discours'. A quoi l'on ajoutera les quarante-quatre notes r dig es par l' diteur et qui s'adjoignent aux treize notes de d'Argens qu'il a conserv es; ce sont les 'nouvelles notes de divers auteurs' annonc s par la page de titre et dont quatre sont sign es Damilaville, Boulanger, Bolingbroke et 'le th ologien Th ro': sous ces noms d'emprunt, l' diteur ne s'est pas fait scrupule de r utiliser certains de ses textes ant rieurs, pas plus qu'il n'a craint, par de simples coupes habilement op r es dans certaines notes de d'Argens, de d figurer l'occasion la pens e du marquis quand elle se trouve contraire la sienne. Ainsi voit-on clairer sous ses diff rents aspects une activit ditoriale dont il fallait aussi p n trer les motifs. (shrink)

Risk is implicit in economic development. When does a course of economic development ethically balance risk and likely benefit? This paper examines the view of risk we find in Amartya Sen’s work on development. It shows that Sen’s capabilities approach leads to a more sensitive understanding of risk than traditional utility theory. Sen’s approach also supplies the basis of an argument for risk aversion in interventions that affect economic development. Sen’s approach describes development as aiming at freedom. The paper shows (...) how this claim can be made compatible with the social and relational basis of African communitarianism. (shrink)

An innovative program recently initiated at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center allows people to donate a kidney in exchange for a voucher that a loved one can redeem for a kidney if and when needed. As a relatively new practice, the ethical implications of advanced kidney donation have not yet been widely discussed. This paper reflects on some of the bioethical issues at stake in this new donation program, as well as some broader philosophical issues related to (...) the meaning and moral salience of commodification. I first consider whether the literature on commercial markets in organs––a longstanding topic of bioethical debate––can meaningfully inform ethical analysis of kidney voucher programs. Specifically, I consider whether and to what extent common objections to the exchange of kidneys for cash also apply to the exchange of kidneys for “kidney vouchers.” Second, I argue that the contrast between the ethical issues raised by these two practices highlights the need to understand commodification as existing on a continuum, with different degrees of commodification giving rise to different ethical issues. Doing so can help sharpen our understanding of commodification as a moral concept, as well as its relevance to broader debates about the moral limits of markets. (shrink)

One common objection to establishing regulated live donor organ markets is that such markets would be exploitative. Perhaps surprisingly, exploitation arguments against organ markets have been widely rejected in the philosophical literature on the subject. It is often argued that concerns about exploitation should be addressed by increasing the price paid to organ sellers, not by banning the trade outright. I argue that this analysis rests on a particular conception of exploitation, and outline two additional ways that the charge of (...) exploitation can be understood. I argue that while increasing payments to organ sellers may mitigate or eliminate fair benefits exploitation, such measures will not necessarily address fair process exploitation or complicity in injustice. I further argue that each of these three forms of wrongdoing is relevant to the ethics of paid living organ donation, as well as the design of public policy more generally. (shrink)

Genomic sequencing technologies (GS) pose novel challenges not seen in older genetic technologies, making traditional standards for fully informed consent difficult or impossible to meet. This is due to factors including the complexity of the test and the broad range of results it may identify. Meaningful informed consent is even more challenging to secure in contexts involving significant time constraints and emotional distress, such as when rapid genomic testing (RGS) is performed in neonatal intensive care units. In this article, we (...) propose that informed consent matters not for its own sake, but because obtaining it furthers a range of morally important goals, such as promoting autonomy, well‐being, and trust in medicine. These goals form the basis of a new framework [PROmoting Morally Important Consent Ends (PROMICE)] for assessing the ethical appropriateness of various informed consent models. We illustrate this framework with two examples: (a) a tiered and layered consent model for obtaining consent for GS, and (b) consent for RGS in critically ill newborns. We conclude that appropriately—rather than fully—informed consent provides the correct standard for genomic medicine and research. (shrink)

Scepticism about the possibility of machine consciousness comes in at least two forms. Some argue that our neurobiology is special, and only something sharing our neurobiology could be a subject of experience. Others argue that a machine couldn't be anything else but a zombie: there could never be something it is like to be a machine. I advance a dynamic sensorimotor account of consciousness which argues against both these varieties of scepticism.