This article advocates employing John Stuart Mill's harm principle to set the boundary for unregulated free speech, and his Greatest Happiness Principle to regulate speech outside that boundary because it threatens unconsented-to harm. Supplementing the harm principle with an offense principle is unnecessary and undesirable if our conception of harm integrates recent empirical evidence unavailable to Mill. For example, current research uncovers the tangible harms individuals suffer directly from bigoted speech, as well as the indirect harms generated by the systemic (...) oppression and epistemic injustice that bigoted speech constructs and reinforces. Using Mill's ethical framework with an updated notion of harm, we can conclude that social coercion is not justified to restrict any harmless speech, no matter how offensive. Yet certain forms of speech, such as bigoted insults, are both harmful and fail to express a genuine opinion, and so do not deserve free speech protection. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's defense of freedom of discussion in On Liberty remains a major influence on philosophical and public debates about free speech. By highlighting underappreciated textual evidence and key distinctions, this introduction attempts to show how the contributions of the symposium authors – Melina Constantine Bell, Rafael Cejudo, Christopher Macleod, and Dale E. Miller – point toward a more complete account of Mill's views.

In this article we focus on three key precepts shared by Confucianism and the African ethic of Ubuntu: the central value of community, the desirability of ethical partiality, and the idea that we tend to become morally better as we grow older. For each of these broad similarities, there are key differences underlying them, and we discuss those as well as speculate about the reasons for them. Our aim is not to take sides, but we do suggest ways that Ubuntu (...) and Confucianism might have something to learn from each other and perhaps come closer. We hope that our preliminary reflections can inspire further debate and thinking on a theme – dialogues between long-standing and large-scale non-Western traditions – that is bound to increase in importance as non-Western societies play a greater role in the global system and as the search continues for a 'global ethic'. (shrink)

Early discussions of ?climate justice? have been dominated by economists rather than political philosophers. More recently, analytical liberal political philosophers have joined the debate. However, the philosophical discussion of climate justice remains in its early stages. This paper considers one promising approach based on human rights, which has been advocated recently by several theorists, including Simon Caney, Henry Shue and Tim Hayward. A basic argument supporting the claim that anthropogenic climate change violates human rights is presented. Four objections to this (...) argument are examined: the ?future persons? objection; the ?risk? objection; the ?collective causation? objection; and the ?demandingness? objection. This critical examination leads to a more detailed specification and defence of the claim that anthropogenic climate change violates human rights. (shrink)

In recent years, protesters around the world have been calling for the removal of commemorations honouring those who are, by contemporary standards, generally regarded as seriously morally compromised by their racism. According to one line of thought, leaving racist memorials in place is profoundly disrespectful, and doing so tacitly condones, and perhaps even celebrates, the racism of those honoured and memorialized. The best response is to remove the monuments altogether. In this article, I first argue against a prominent offense-based account (...) of the wrong of simply leaving memorials in place, unaltered, before offering my own account of this wrong. In at least some cases, these memorials wrong insofar as they express and exemplify a morally objectionable attitude of race-based contempt. I go on to argue that the best way of answering this disrespect is through a process of expressively ‘dehonouring’ the subject. Removal of these commemorations is ultimately misguided, in many cases, because removal, by itself, cannot adequately dishonour, and simple removal does not fully answer the ways in which these memorials wrong. I defend a more nuanced approach to answering the wrong posed by these monuments, and I argue that public expressions of contempt through defacement have an ineliminable role to play in an apt dishonouring process. (shrink)

There is currently little empirical information about attitudes towards cognitive enhancement - the use of pharmaceutical drugs to enhance normal brain functioning. It is claimed this behaviour most commonly occurs in students to aid studying. We undertook a qualitative assessment of attitudes towards cognitive enhancement by conducting 19 semi-structured interviews with Australian university students. Most students considered cognitive enhancement to be unacceptable, in part because they believed it to be unethical but there was a lack of consensus on whether it (...) was similar or different to steroid use in sport. There was support for awareness campaigns and monitoring of cognitive enhancement use of pharmaceutical drugs. An understanding of student attitudes towards cognitive enhancement is important in formulating future policy. (shrink)

Introduction -- 1. Problem of the New -- 2. Problem of Relations -- 3. Problem of Emergence -- 4. Problem of One and Many -- 5. Plato and the Third Man Argument -- 6. Bradley and the Problem of Relations -- 7. Moore, Russell and the Birth of Analytic Philosophy -- 8. Russell and Deleuze on Leibniz -- 9. On Problematic Fields -- 10. Kant and Problematic Ideas -- 11. Armstrong and Lewis on the Problem of One and Many -- (...) 12. Determinables and Determinates -- 13. The Limits of Representational Thought -- 14. Learning from a Cup of Coffee -- 15. Carnap and the Fate of Metaphysics -- 16. Truth and Relevance -- Conclusion. (shrink)

Abstract:Vulnerability is an important criterion to assess the ethical justification of the inclusion of participants in research trials. Currently, vulnerability is often understood as an attribute inherent to a participant by nature of a diagnosed condition. Accordingly, a common ethical concern relates to the participant’s decisionmaking capacity and ability to provide free and informed consent. We propose an expanded view of vulnerability that moves beyond a focus on consent and the intrinsic attributes of participants. We offer specific suggestions for how (...) relational aspects and the dynamic features of vulnerability could be more fully captured in current discussions and research practices. (shrink)

Abstract:Vulnerability is an important criterion to assess the ethical justification of the inclusion of participants in research trials. Currently, vulnerability is often understood as an attribute inherent to a participant by nature of a diagnosed condition. Accordingly, a common ethical concern relates to the participant’s decisionmaking capacity and ability to provide free and informed consent. We propose an expanded view of vulnerability that moves beyond a focus on consent and the intrinsic attributes of participants. We offer specific suggestions for how (...) relational aspects and the dynamic features of vulnerability could be more fully captured in current discussions and research practices. (shrink)

In recent years, protesters around the world have been calling for the removal of commemorations honouring those who are, by contemporary standards, generally regarded as seriously morally compromised by their racism. According to one line of thought, leaving racist memorials in place is profoundly disrespectful, and doing so tacitly condones, and perhaps even celebrates, the racism of those honoured and memorialized. The best response is to remove the monuments altogether. In this article, I first argue against a prominent offense-based account (...) of the wrong of simply leaving memorials in place, unaltered, before offering my own account of this wrong. In at least some cases, these memorials wrong insofar as they express and exemplify a morally objectionable attitude of race-based contempt. I go on to argue that the best way of answering this disrespect is through a process of expressively ‘dehonouring’ the subject. Removal of these commemorations is ultimately misguided, in many cases, because removal, by itself, cannot adequately dishonour, and simple removal does not fully answer the ways in which these memorials wrong. I defend a more nuanced approach to answering the wrong posed by these monuments, and I argue that public expressions of contempt through defacement have an ineliminable role to play in an apt dishonouring process. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1.What is a Concept? -- 2.Why Philosophy? -- 3.How to Become a Philosopher -- 4.Putting Philosophy in its Place -- 5.Philosophy and Science -- 6.Philosophy and Logic -- 7.Philosophy and Art.

What responsibilities does each of us have to reduce or limit our greenhouse gas emissions? Advocates of individual emissions reductions acknowledge that there are limits to what we can reasonably demand from individuals. Climate ethics has not yet systematically explored those limits. Instead, it has become popular to suggest that such judgements should be ‘context-sensitive’ but this does not tell us what role different contextual factors should play in our moral thinking. The current approach to theory development in climate ethics (...) is not likely to be the most effective way to fill this gap. In existing work, climate ethicists use hypothetical cases to consider what can be reasonably demanded of individuals in particular situations. In contrast, ‘climate ethics with an ethnographic sensibility’ uses qualitative social science methods to collect original data in which real individuals describe their own situations. These real-life cases are more realistic, more detailed and cover a broader range of circumstances than hypothetical cases. Normative analysis of real-life cases can help us to develop a more systematic understanding of the role that different contextual factors should play in determining individual climate responsibilities. It can also help us to avoid the twin dangers of ‘idealization’ and ‘special pleading’. (shrink)

This paper presents a new theory of modal reasoning, i.e. reasoning about what may or may not be the case, and what must or must not be the case. It postulates that individuals construct models of the premises in which they make explicit only what is true. A conclusion is possible if it holds in at least one model, whereas it is necessary if it holds in all the models. The theory makes three predictions, which are corroborated experimentally. First, conclusions (...) correspond to the true, but not the false, components of possibilities. Second, there is a key interaction: it is easier to infer that a situation is possible as opposed to impossible, whereas it is easier to infer that a situation is not necessary as opposed to necessary. Third, individuals make systematic errors of omission and of commission. We contrast the theory with theories based on formal rules. (shrink)

This paper is an introduction to topos theory which assumes no prior knowledge of category theory. It includes a discussion of internal logic in a topos, A characterization of the category of sets, And an investigation of the notions of topology and sheaf in a topos.

Neuroscientists are increasingly put into situations which demand critical reflection about the ethical and appropriate use of research tools and scientific knowledge. Students or trainees also have to know how to navigate the ethical domains of this context. At a time when neuroscience is expected to advance policy and practice outcomes, in the face of academic pressures and complex environments, the importance of scientific integrity comes into focus and with it the need for training at the graduate level in the (...) responsible conduct of research . I describe my experience teaching RCR in a graduate neuroscience program and identify three personal reflections where further dialogue could be warranted: mobilizing a common set of competencies and virtues standing for professionalism in the neurosciences; tailoring RCR for the neurosciences and empowering students through the active engagement of mentors; soliciting shared responsibility for RCR training between disciplines, institutions and governmental or funding agencies. (shrink)

This essay responds to Badiou's charge that Deleuze fails to set forth a philosophy that is “beyond Gategorical oppositions.” It is argued that this criticism of Deleuze is founded upon a misreading of the Deleuzean distinction between the virtual and the actual, a reading that carries forward Badiou's misreading of Spinoza and, hence, of Deleuze's Spinozism. With this corrected, we show how the virtual‐actual distinction operates within the experimental philosophy, or pragmatics, that Deleuze, and later Deleuze and Guattari, sets forth. (...) It is this pragmatics that is precisely the philosophy of difference that is beyond categorical oppositions. Through a comparison of Deleuzean pragmatics with the work of Hume and Peirce, we are able to respond to Badiou's further criticism that Deleuze's philosophy fails to understand the conditions for creativity in thought and culture. This criticism is itself resolved once one corrects for Badiou's misreading of Deleuze's virtual‐actual distinction. (shrink)

This narrative provides insight into medical education for Black physicians in South Carolina in the 1960s, during the civil rights movement. It also discusses the many rewards and challenges of being a physician of color, describes what has been done to develop programs that benefit minority communities, and argues that more such programs are needed.

Based upon research done by evolutionary psychologists into the reason why human beings feel depression in social situations, I argue that philosophers have significant warrant to consider depression as an important feature conditioning moral imagination. The moral imagination come up with new enterprises and new ways of organizing social life. This reorganization would meet many of the goals put forth by pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. I argue that depression will work as a leading clue and unique imaginative “space” to reconstruct (...) various social situations. (shrink)

This book offers an extended comparison of the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and David Hume. The book argues that Deleuze's early work on Hume was instrumental to Deleuze's formulation of the problems and concepts that would remain a focus of his entire corpus. Reading Deleuze's work in light of Hume's influence, along with a comparison of Deleuze's work with William James, Henri Bergson and others set the stage for a vigorous defence of his philosophy against a number of recent criticisms (...) and extend the field of Deleuze studies by showing how Deleuze's thought can clarify and contribute to the work being done in political theory, cultural studies, and history, particularly the history of the Scottish Enlightenment. By engaging Deleuze's thought with the work of Hume, this book clarifies and supports the work of Deleuze and exemplifies the continuing relevance of Hume's thought to a number of contemporary debates. (shrink)

A central tenet of moral individualism is that only an entity’s intrinsic (non-relational) properties can ground moral status because only intrinsic properties give rise to agent-neutral reasons. However, I show that the two main approaches to making the agent-neutral/agent-relative distinction fail to exclude morally salient relational (extrinsic) properties from giving rise to agent-neutral reasons. As such, moral individualism accounts of moral status are false. Further, arguments that depend on moral individualism’s central tenet—like the argument from “marginal” cases—are unable to defend (...) their thesis by merely claiming that special relations cannot ground moral status. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 8, Page 33-35, August 2011.

A highly ordered universe is described in terms of neutrino and electrino alone as basic particles, and length and time alone as dimensional units. New theories are obtained of particles, nuclides, atomic spectra, general relativity, and gravitation.

This article explores what might happen to the concept of performativity within arguments that are understood as ‘topological’. It argues that we might ‘decline’ performativity, which is to say, elaborate the concerns that are expressed in the concept, but inclining it more boldly towards the complexities of a world whose elements are always in process of constitution, of reiterative enfolding. Taking a cue from Isabelle Stengers’ recent work in which she posits the notion of ecologies of practice, on the one (...) hand, and Whitehead’s concept of concern, on the other, the paper argues that emergent entities have differential requirements – not least according to the disciplines to which they appeal – and subtend different modes of implied obligation. An adherence to these requirements needs to be accompanied by persuasive presentation that obliges a community to affirm any entity. On many levels of abstraction, ecologies need to show concern for an entity to facilitate its emergence and to sustain its mode of being. In an expanded vision, then, human and non-human entities at all levels enter into multifarious relational modes of becoming, but these become of sustained consequence only through persuasion of communities, sometimes organized into disciplines. The survival of entities requires forms of differentiation, division and of value. The paper relates these arguments to forms of sociological enquiry that give glimpses of how sociology might respond. It ends with a hesitation around the radical anti-anthropomorphism of the stance developed, and argues that this does not entirely eclipse the importance of political hope. (shrink)

Communitarian thinkers have argued that liberalism devalues community in modern societies. This essay assesses the three main strands of the contemporary debate betweeen communitarianism and liberalism: (1) the communitarian critique of the liberal universalism, (2) the communitarian critique of liberal individualism, and (3) the communitarian critique of liberal politics. In each case, it is argued that the debate has moved from fairly abstract philosophical controversies to more concrete engagement with political disputes in Western as well as East Asian societies.

This article gives a comparative analysis of the way in which Lacanian psychoanalysis and Alain Badiou's mathematical ontology understand the category of the real, respectively, as the foundation of individual subjectivity or the name of being-as-being. A number of shifts in focus arise from the fundamental difference in the location of the void: from the individual act to the collective event; from death drive to immortal truth; from subjective destitution and cathartic purification to transformative interventions and constitutive thought. These shifts (...) are exemplified, elaborated and analysed through a close reading of the thinkers' respective commentaries on Sophocles' Antigone. Foregrounding what is philosophically at stake in these differences, the article defends Badiou against Lacanian critics by examining the ethical and political force of his innovation. (shrink)

It is usually supposed that the Dirac and radiation equations predict that the phase of a fermion will rotate through half the angle through which the fermion is rotated, which means, via the measured dynamical and geometrical phase factors, that the fermion must have a half-integral spin. We demonstrate that this is not the case and that the identical relativistic quantum mechanics can also be derived with the phase of the fermion rotating through the same angle as does the fermion (...) itself. Under spatial rotation and Lorentz transformation the bispinor transforms as a four-vector like the potential and Dirac current. Previous attempts to provide this form of transformational behavior have foundered because a satisfactory current could not be derived.(14). (shrink)

Much contemporary discussion of mercy has focused on what I call ‘beneficent mercy’: compassionately sparing a person from harsh treatment that she deserves. Drawing on Seneca’s discussion of mercy, I articulate a different concept of mercy which I call ‘critical mercy’: treating a person justly when unjust social rules call for harsher treatment. Whereas beneficent mercy is grounded in recognition of imperfection in human individuals, critical mercy is grounded in recognition of imperfection in human institutions. I argue that political communities (...) have reason to authorize judges to grant critical mercy in criminal law. I contend with the objection that critical mercy appears to violate the ideal of the rule of law. I argue that where certain constraints are met, rule of law values in fact provide positive reason to authorize judges to grant critical mercy in criminal law. (shrink)

I never heard or met F. R. Leavis personally, but like many others I have felt the impact of his writing as teaching and would like to reflect on its nature in that regard. His published criticism is strongly inflected toward the purposes of teaching. His notorious exclusions, for example, of authors he knew very well are partly directed to the practical consideration of how much a conscientious student can read attentively in a three-year degree syllabus, and what reading in (...) that time will best form the capacity for critical judgment. Yet he resisted the authority implicit in the notion of the teacher and saw the seminar as engaging in a common pursuit of reading, albeit with those less experienced than himself. I... (shrink)

Here is the third of our three responses to Dawkins's The God Delusion.

Some aspects of the theory of Boolean algebras and distributive lattices–in particular, the Stone Representation Theorems and the properties of filters and ideals–are analyzed in a constructive setting.