This chapter addresses the question: Who or what decides? How, for Derrida, does a bona fide decision take place? Decision is analyzed in many places in Derrida's work, particularly in the late work. The chapter focuses “micrologically” on what seems to be Derrida's fullest and most elaborate expression of what he means by “decision.” This is an intricate sequence in “Force of Law”. It begins with an apparently peripheral subquestion. Can a decision be a catastrophe? If so, in what sense?

One of the Top 10 Books That Will Change Your Life in 2017 - Live Happy Magazine Grow Your Grit—How You Can Develop the Critical Ingredient for Success Grit—defined as our perseverance and passion for long-term goals—is now recognized as one of the key determinants for achievement and life satisfaction. In an age that provides us with a never-ending stream of distractions and quick-and-easy solutions, how do we build this essential quality? "This book is designed to help you screen out (...) the spam of life and cultivate authentic grit in every setting," writes Caroline Miller. With Getting Grit, this bestselling author brings you an information-rich and practical guide for developing the qualities needed to persevere over obstacles—not just toughness and passion, but also humility, patience, and kindness. Join her as she shares research-based insights and practices on: • Learning grit—how you can enhance your willpower and rewire your brain for resilience • The key traits of gritty people—what the latest research reveals • The three kinds of "false grit" and how to recognize them in yourself • The courage to fail—tools for turning your setbacks into your greatest teachers • Daring to dream big—guidance for building your capacity to take risks and aim higher • No one succeeds alone—tips for gathering your support team and inspiring others • The role of self-compassion, gratitude, and spirituality in building grit "I’ve come to believe that gritty behavior is a positive force that does more than help us rise to our own challenges," writes Caroline Miller. "When we embody the best qualities of grit, we become a role model for others who want to become better people, and help them awaken greater possibilities for themselves." Whether you’re seeking to grow beyond your limits at work, at home, on the sporting field, or in any leadership role, Getting Grit is a powerful resource to help you bring out the qualities that will help you succeed and thrive. (shrink)

Neo-positivism is the view that metaphysical questions completely decompose into ordinary empirical questions that can be answered by scientific enquiry (empirical) or ordinary logical or modal questions, which can be answered by appeal to a metaphysically innocent modalism (modal innocence) or questions that are non-factual, that is questions that are such that the world does not provide the question with a determinate answer (nonfactualism). -/- There is much to like about this book. It forcefully, and at times compellingly, presents a (...) new vision of metaphysics. It forces us to re-engage with questions about what we are doing when we do metaphysics, and presents a startling different picture to many that have emerged in recent times. Rather than conceiving of metaphysics as the search for the fundamental joints of reality, or for those things that give rise to the non-fundamental things we see around us, it argues for a quite different approach. (shrink)

Richard Miller presents a bold new program for international justice. He argues for new standards of responsible conduct by governments, firms, and individuals in developed countries, to govern trade, investment, environmental policy, and the use of force. He offers an urgently needed strategy for moving humanity toward genuine global co-operation.

This chapter contains sections titled: Moral Justification for the Use of Deadly Force Civilian Immunity and Human Rights Violations Civilian Immunity and Culpable Omissions Terrorism and Non‐Violent Rights Violators Conclusion.

Many research ethics guidelines now oblige researchers to offer research participants the results of research in which they participated. This practice is intended to uphold respect for persons and ensure that participants are not treated as mere means to an end. Yet some scholars have begun to question a generalised duty to disclose research results, highlighting the potential harms arising from disclosure and questioning the ethical justification for a duty to disclose, especially with respect to individual results. In support of (...) this view, we argue that current rationales for a duty of disclosure do not form an adequate basis for an ethical imperative. We review policy guidance and scholarly commentary regarding the duty to communicate the results of biomedical, epidemiological and genetic research to research participants and show that there is wide variation in opinion regarding what should be disclosed and under what circumstance. Moreover, we argue that there is fundamental confusion about the notion of “research results,” specifically regarding three core concepts: the distinction between aggregate and individual results, amongst different types of research, and across different degrees of result veracity. Even where policy guidance and scholarly commentary have been most forceful in support of an ethical imperative to disclose research results, ambiguity regarding what is to be disclosed confounds ethical action. (shrink)

This paper is the product of an interdisciplinary, interreligious dialogue aiming to outline some of the possibilities and rational limits of supernatural religious belief, in the light of a critique of David Hume’s familiar sceptical arguments -- including a rejection of his famous Maxim on miracles -- combined with a range of striking recent empirical research. The Humean nexus leads us to the formulation of a new ”Common-Core/Diversity Dilemma’, which suggests that the contradictions between different religious belief systems, in conjunction (...) with new understandings of the cognitive forces that shape their common features, persuasively challenge the rationality of most kinds of supernatural belief. In support of this conclusion, we survey empirical research concerning intercessory prayer, religious experience, near-death experience, and various cognitive biases. But we then go on to consider evidence that supernaturalism -- even when rationally unwarranted -- has significant beneficial individual and social effects, despite others that are far less desirable. This prompts the formulation of a ”Normal/Objective Dilemma’, identifying important trade-offs to be found in the choice between our humanly evolved ”normal’ outlook on the world, and one that is more rational and ”objective’. Can we retain the pragmatic benefits of supernatural belief while avoiding irrationality and intergroup conflict? It may well seem that rationality is incompatible with any wilful sacrifice of objectivity. But in a situation of uncertainty, an attractive compromise may be available by moving from the competing factions and mutual contradictions of ”first-order’ supernaturalism to a more abstract and tolerant ”second-order’ view, which itself can be given some distinctive intellectual support through the increasingly popular Fine Tuning Argument. We end by proposing a ”Maxim of the Moon’ to express the undogmatic spirit of this second-order religiosity, providing a cautionary metaphor to counter the pervasive bias endemic to the human condition, and offering a more cooperation- and humility-enhancing understanding of religious diversity in a tense and precarious globalised age. (shrink)

In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a large portion of the world into quarantine, leading to an extensive period of stress making it necessary to explore regulatory techniques that are effective at stimulating long-lasting positive emotion. Previous research has demonstrated that anticipating positive events produces increases in positive emotion during discrete stressors. We hypothesized that state and trait positive anticipation during the COVID-19 pandemic would be associated with increased positive emotions. We assessed how often participants thought about a future (...) positive/negative/neutral event, activity, or goal through a daily reconstruction method that represented a “day in the life” of people in the United States during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of multi-level modeling and mediational analyses demonstrated that higher optimism, one form of trait positive anticipation, was related to higher state positive anticipation, which was in turn related to higher positive emotions during the current episode, which persisted to the next episode. In addition, both optimism and state positive anticipation were related to adaptive responses to the pandemic. These findings suggest that anticipation of future emotional experiences and hopefulness for the future can be a powerful predictor of positive emotions during global pandemics and perhaps other similar chronic stressors. (shrink)

Human reproduction has long been assumed to be an act of the blind force of nature, to which humans were subject, like the weather. However, with recent concerns about the environmental impact of human population, particularly resource depletion, human reproduction has come to be seen as a moral issue. That is, in general, it may be moral or immoral for people to continue propagating their species. The past decade’s philosophical discussions of the question have yielded varying results. This dissertation takes (...) on the issue in a broader moral perspective and asks not only whether it is moral to reproduce but why one should. That is, are there positive normative reasons, whether moral or rational, to reproduce? This thesis approaches this problem first by facing three general philosophical challenges to its resolution: from contemporary population and environmental ethics and rationality theory; from traditional Western schools of moral philosophy; and from recent attempts to answer the narrower question of whether one should reproduce. The thesis finds that exploring these challenges cannot yield a clear response. However, taking cues from many of these approaches, such as care ethics’ emphasis on values, the dissertation proposes that lacking from recent attempts is recognition of a source-value for all human values, viz. the valuing of life in and of itself. Proposing that this valuing is a characteristic of humans and of how they value, it looks to anthropology for empirical justification. It observes that many cultures and individuals frequently prioritize their values so as to devalue this source valuing. Yet, when those value prioritizations give this valuing high priority, there may be some moral justification for reproduction. Furthermore, if one subscribes to the tenets of rationality, which enjoin agents to formulate their beliefs for action based upon the results of rational inquiry, this normative force may invest this descriptive (empirical) hypothesis about values with normative force to guide actions. That is, given certain value prioritizations, it may be rational as well as moral to reproduce. The thesis question of why one should reproduce would then at least have a plausible answer. (shrink)

This philosophical narrative delves into deepening crises afflicting modern democracies, when extreme inequality and its resultant alienation grips not just adults but, even more anguishingly, children. These children and often their parents come in far under the social radar, so out-of-touch that even census takers overlook them. In this milieu, weapons and narcotics are as much an unquestioned part of life as breathing. The world beyond this invisible cage entirely escapes them, nor does the larger society miss them or know (...) about them. This documentary narrative follows a thirteen-year-old who forces himself to escape his oblivious father, not out of hope, but for sheer escape from the execrable situation, without even the will to be himself, whatever that is. He also must navigate through his nightmare existemce, relying on an illicit business, the only thing he knows as well as breathing. If the individuals in this milieu--which cut across racial boundaries--ever even hear of voting, they are drawn to strong-arm politicians, who appeal to these scattered inhabitants, as examples of strength, no-nonsense, even hatred. The ethics of such circumstances' mere existence--further extreme than even those in Les Miserable--in our societies poses a formidable challenge to the ethics of social and political philosophy and are hardly touched upon in the academic literature. The central philosophical question is whether it is possible for a political system to preempt such conditions, particularly when these individuals, especially the children, are veritably invisible. The metaphilosophical issue is why philosophy does not focus more concern about this ignored human morass. To say an indictment of soiciopolitical philosophy is not justified here, that the persons encountered here are merely messed-up self-indulgent people, only adds cause to the charge. (shrink)

This book forms part of the multi-disciplinary Studies in Ethics Series from Liverpool Hope University. It explores the slipperiness of ethics as a concept and demonstrates the multiplicity of intellectual inquiry within contemporary Film Studies. At first glance, â ~ethicsâ (TM) is not necessarily a subject conventionally associated with film. Film is often regarded as a form of â ~lowbrowâ (TM) popular culture, either offering bland entertainment or deliberately setting out to shock â " or, more cynically, generate box office (...) revenue â " through gratuitous inclusion of sex and violence. Certainly, there have always been a minority of films based on the stereotypically â ~ethicalâ (TM) subject of religion, but these have often generated the most controversy, from the studio system decree that it was blasphemous to represent the corporeal body of Christ to the furore surrounding Martin Scorseseâ (TM)s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). This book shows that from the silent era to the present day, film has been inherently concerned with ethical issues. In this light, the definition of ethics that informs the volume and is taken as the starting point of each of the chapters is the notion of personal or institutional motivation; most usually because a character or industry figure makes a decision or choice based on their own moral â " or ethical â " code. Once this is defined, the ethical dimension to films is immediately evident. This book takes as its central theme the difficulty of decisions refracted through personal ethical codes, and thus recognises that what counts as ethics, or morality, is always subjective. Some of the chapters explore films which take conventionally â ~goodâ (TM) ethical standpoints, others investigate why â ~badâ (TM) decisions were made; at least one explores the celebration of practices invoking popular disgust, but all the contributions study ethical decisions within film that represent the strongly felt convictions of those involved and, moreover, address aspects of filmmaking which force the spectator to be an active and reciprocal participant in the creation of meaning, thus implicitly acknowledging that ethics are subjective and in perpetual flux rather than fixed, objective truths. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective CommunicationCarolyn R. MillerThe Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication. Wayne C. BoothMalden, Mass: Blackwell, 2004. Pp. xvi + 206. $20.95, paperback.By using the traditional word rhetoric I want to suggest a whole philosophy of how men succeed or fail in discovering together, in discourse, new levels of truth (or at least agreement) that neither side suspected before.—Wayne C. (...) Booth, 1974Listening-Rhetoric is what I most long to celebrate and practice—the kind that is sadly rare.... Here both sides join in a trusting dispute, determined to listen to the opponent's arguments, while persuading the opponent to listen in exchange.... Both sides are pursuing not just victory but a new reality, a new agreement about what is real.—Wayne C. Booth, 2004By the evidence of these two quotations, the late Wayne Booth sustained a passionate interest in a constructivist, cooperative rhetoric for at least thirty years. His 1974 Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent first sounds many of the themes that are rearticulated in his 2004 The Rhetoric of RHETORIC, a volume in the Blackwell Manifestos series. Both books were motivated by evident failures of public discourse, the earlier one by those emanating from the Vietnam War, including student protests at the University of Chicago, and the recent one by multiple rhetorical sins of the Bush administration and the national media, especially those concerning the war in Iraq. Indeed, Booth confesses here that his distress dates at least to 1963, when he lamented that "the debate about the [Kennedy] assassination [may be] a greater national disgrace than the assassination itself" (109).What animates Booth in both books is the conviction not that only we can do better in conducting our discursive relationships as a nation, as institutions, as families, but that we must do so. We must do so because our ability to live and progress together depends on our talking rather than resorting to force and on our talking in a way that engenders trust and enables continued debate, rather than provoking mistrust and disrespect. The two enemies he has always in sight are violence and deception. These are two forms of rhetorical failure, but the two become entangled when "violence and the threat of violence corrupt rhetoric," particularly during times of war (118), and when corrupt rhetoric itself becomes a kind of violence (48). [End Page 261]As a "manifesto" addressed to a non-specialist audience, The Rhetoric of RHETORIC is relatively brief, engagingly written, and passionately argued. It includes chapters on definitions of rhetoric (good and bad), the history of rhetorical studies, the difficulties of judging rhetoric (i.e., the disjunction between instrumental and ethical effectiveness), the dispersal of rhetoric to multiple disciplines and forums, the condition of rhetorical education today, the dangers of bad rhetoric in politics and in the media, and a demonstration of how our many intractable debates might be improved with "listening-rhetoric," using as a case example the "warfare" between science and religion. Throughout, Booth dramatizes his ideal of listening-rhetoric by engaging in frequent proleptic questioning and refutation as well as reflexive commentary.Anyone who heard Booth talk at a conference within the past decade or more has first-hand knowledge of his predilection for neologism, and he indulged himself in this book (though he resisted in 1974; see Modern Dogma, 11n5). His term for bad rhetoric, the rhetoric that exacerbates misunderstanding or seeks victory through deception, is "rhetrickery"; his term for the best rhetoric, a kind of critical consciousness that seeks to find common ground and to remove misunderstanding, is "rhetorology." We are also introduced to LR (listening-rhetoric), WR (win-rhetoric), BR (bargain-rhetoric), Rhet-Ed (rhetorical education), P-Rhet (political rhetoric), and MR (media rhetoric).Rhetorology, or listening-rhetoric, is Booth's solution to our rhetorical woes, a solution that admittedly has both philosophical and practical limitations. Rhetorology opposes rhetrickery and some versions of win-rhetoric. He is at some pains to explain and sequester these damaging capabilities so that the unsavory aspects of rhetoric's reputation do not obscure its positive potential. Readers familiar with recent rhetorical theorizing... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Citizenship and Culture in Early Modern EuropePeter N. MillerCharlotte Wells, Law and Citizenship in Early Modern France (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), xviii, 198p.Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1994), xviii, 449p.Steven Shapin, The Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, (...) 1994), xxiv, 483p.Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters 1680–1775 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), xv, 395p.Lawrence Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, U.K., 1994), xiii, 217p.Daniel Gordon, Citizens Without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670–1789 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), viii, 270p.Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), xiii, 338p.E. J. Hundert, The Enlightenment’s “Fable”: Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xii, 284p.The pre-modern political world was broken and remade in the two centuries that separate Montaigne from Jefferson. The long agony of the mixed constitution that began in the civil wars which raged in Iberia, France, the Low Countries, and England and seemed settled by the widespread adoption of the maxims of reason of state, revived at the end of the period, with revolution in Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Geneva, and, more famously, [End Page 725] British North America and France. The problem, classically, turned on the location of sovereignty, or supreme authority, in political systems designed to balance and diffuse rather than concentrate power. When budget deficits and fratricidal culture wars raised the cry of “necessity”—with the knowledge, of course, that necessity knew no law—estates and kings across Europe found themselves at daggers drawn. The claim that the ruler, who naturally was wholly committed to the common good, had therefore the ability to take emergency action was used both by those accustomed to rule and those newly attained to it by force. The pursuit of an “interest” that was identified with the nation’s effectively marginalized discussions of right and law while still serving an essentially constitutional, justificatory role in political debate. But if unchecked authority was necessary in order to meet the challenge of a world characterized by change and chance and thus had to reside somewhere, was there anything that made its exercise by one body more appropriate than another? This was the question that lay behind the late eighteenth-century repudiation of the reason of state “solution” to the problem of the mixed constitution. The answer, which clearly underpinned the establishment in fact of what had first been theorized already a century earlier, was that only consent could legitimate the exercise of sovereignty in time of necessity.1Representation, in one form or another, was the acknowledged solution to the problem formulated by Hobbes: “the name of Tyranny, signifieth nothing more, nor less, than the name of Sovereignty, be it in one, or many men, saving that they that use the former word are understood to be angry with them they call Tyrants.” But representation also acknowledged the reality behind the charged category of “citizenship”: most people in most places could not be said to live the life of the active citizen celebrated in Roman republican literature. Hence Hobbes’s attack on recourse to classical exempla in general, and the Libertas of Lucca in particular. The idea of civis as law-abiding subject was as radical a redrawing of the terms of debate as the identification of human nature with unsociability. Insofar as politics, classically, justified itself as the means for individual self-perfection, the practice of the ancient citizen could be conceived of as the practice of that best life speculated upon by philosophers. For the represented citizen, however, politics necessarily occupied a more subsidiary position. What, then, defined the best life to which he could aspire?There is no simple answer to this question, and the early modern ambivalence has persisted into our own time... (shrink)

In this paper we study the question assuming MA+⌝CH does Sacks forcing or Laver forcing collapse cardinals? We show that this question is equivalent to the question of what is the additivity of Marczewski's ideals 0. We give a proof that it is consistent that Sacks forcing collapses cardinals. On the other hand we show that Laver forcing does not collapse cardinals.

Three of Zeno's objections to motion are answered by utilizing a version of nonstandard analysis, internal set theory, interpreted within an empirical context. Two of the objections are without force because they rely upon infinite sets, which always contain nonstandard real numbers. These numbers are devoid of numerical meaning, and thus one cannot render the judgment that an object is, in fact, located at a point in spacetime for which they would serve as coordinates. The third objection, an arrow never (...) appears to be moving, is answered by showing that it only applies to a finite number of instants of time. A theory of motion is also advanced; it consists of a finite series of contiguous infinitesimal steps. The theory is immune to Zeno's first two objections because the number of steps is finite and each lies outside the domain of observation. Present motion is hypothesized to be an unobservable process taking place within each step. The fact of motion is apparent through a summing (Riemann integration) of the steps. (shrink)

BackgroundThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration traditionally has kept confidential significant amounts of information relevant to the approval or non-approval of specific drugs, devices, and biologics and about the regulatory status of such medical products in FDA’s pipeline.ObjectiveTo develop practical recommendations for FDA to improve its transparency to the public that FDA could implement by rulemaking or other regulatory processes without further congressional authorization. These recommendations would build on the work of FDA’s Transparency Task Force in 2010.MethodsIn 2016-2017, we convened (...) a team of academic faculty from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Yale Medical School, Yale Law School, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to develop recommendations through an iterative process of reviewing FDA’s practices, considering the legal and policy constraints on FDA in expanding transparency, and obtaining insights from independent observers of FDA.ResultsThe team developed 18 specific recommendations for improving FDA’s transparency to the public. FDA could adopt all these recommendations without further congressional action.FundingThe development of the Blueprint for Transparency at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. (shrink)

Confronting crucial and difficult issues, the ten authors whose essays appear in this volume offer fresh perspectives on the nature and value of altruism. This collection of essays on moral philosophy deal with the balance to be struck between egoism and altruism - that is, between pursuing one's own interests and serving the interest of others - and with related issues. Contributions examine the relationship between altruism and rationality; consider cases in which one's personal needs and goals may legitimately be (...) given priority over the needs of others; question whether, and under what conditions, we may properly be forced to serve others' interests; and examine the role government should play in regulating our interactions. (shrink)

In this collection of provocative essays, historians and literary theorists assess the influence of Michel Foucault, particularly his History of Sexuality, on the study of classics. Foucault's famous work presents a bold theory of sexuality for both ancient and modern times, and yet until now it has remained under-explored and insufficiently analyzed. By bringing together the historical knowledge, philological skills, and theoretical perspectives of a wide range of scholars, this collection enables the reader to explore Foucault's model of Greek culture (...) and see how well his interpretation accounts for the full range of evidence from Greece and Rome. Not only do the essays bring to light the assumptions, ideas, and practices that constituted the intimate lives of men and women in the ancient Mediterranean world, but they also demonstrate the importance of the History of Sexuality for fields as diverse as Greco-Roman antiquity, women's history, cultural studies, philosophy, and modern sexuality. The essays include "Situating The History of Sexuality" (the editors), "Taking the Sex Out of Sexuality: Foucault's Failed History" (Joel Black), "Incipit Philosophia" (Alain Vizier), "The Subject in Antiquity after Foucault" (Page duBois), "This Myth Which Is Not One: Construction of Discourse in Plato's Symposium" (Jeffrey S. Carnes), "Foucault's History of Sexuality: A Useful Theory for Women?" (Amy Richlin), "Catullan Consciousness, the 'Care of the Self,' and the Force of the Negative in History" (Paul Allen Miller), "Reversals of Platonic Love in Petronius' Satyricon" (Daniel B. McGlathery), and an essay from Dislocating Masculinity (Lin Foxhall). (shrink)

Male provisioning ability may have evolved as a “good dad” indicator through sexual selection, whereas male creativity may have evolved partly as a “good genes” indicator. If so, women near peak fertility (midcycle) should prefer creativity over wealth, especially in short-term mating. Forty-one normally cycling women read vignettes describing creative but poor men vs. uncreative but rich men. Women’s estimated fertility predicted their short-term (but not long-term) preference for creativity over wealth, in both their desirability ratings of individual men (r=.40, (...) p<.01) and their forced-choice decisions between men (r=.46, p<.01). These preliminary results are consistent with the view that creativity evolved at least partly as a good genes indicator through mate choice. (shrink)

We explore the interaction between Lebesgue measure and dominating functions. We show, via both a priority construction and a forcing construction, that there is a function of incomplete degree that dominates almost all degrees. This answers a question of Dobrinen and Simpson, who showed that such functions are related to the proof-theoretic strength of the regularity of Lebesgue measure for Gδ sets. Our constructions essentially settle the reverse mathematical classification of this principle.

This captivating new book, a milestone in Buddhist and comparative studies, is a compilation of seventeen essays celebrating the work and thought of Nolan Pliny Jacobson. A profoundly motivated interdisciplinary thinker, Jacobson sought to discover, clarify, and synthesize points of similarity among leading thinkers of different Oriental and Western cultures. For almost half a century, he articulated his vision of an emerging world civilization, one in which all people can feel and express their creative, constructive powers for the benefit of (...) others as well as for themselves. Jacobson believed that philosophy and the works of philosophers should be understood as a vital force enriching all civilizational experience. His own philosophic perspective was rooted in the conviction that novelty is the source of all experience and the center of a creativity that lives beyond words, arguments, and rational paradigms. Throughout his career, Jacobson explored Buddhist texts and personalities, spending much time in the Orient, particularly Myanmar and Japan. He also closely studied the works of numerous Western philosophers, including Whitehead, Dewey, Peirce, James, Hartshorne, and Wieman. Jacobson believed that American philosophy and Buddhism concurred in many ways, with the potential to form a powerful basis for the development of a world civilization. The essays in this volume are organized around Jacobson’s activities, publications, and interests. Authored by an impressive selection of scholars, the essays are grouped into four sections—"Historical Context," "Central Issues," "Practical Implications," and "The Japan Emphasis." Hajime Nakamura, Charles Hartshorne, Kenneth K. Inada, Seizo Oho, and numerous others discuss freedom, creativity, and Buddhism’s self-corrective nature, setting forth their reasons for sharing Jacobson’s ideas and visions. (shrink)

We argue for a naturalistic account for appraising scientific methods that carries non-trivial normative force. We develop our approach by comparison with Laudan’s (American Philosophical Quarterly 24:19–31, 1987, Philosophy of Science 57:20–33, 1990) “normative naturalism” based on correlating means (various scientific methods) with ends (e.g., reliability). We argue that such a meta-methodology based on means–ends correlations is unreliable and cannot achieve its normative goals. We suggest another approach for meta-methodology based on a conglomeration of tools and strategies (from statistical modeling, (...) experimental design, and related fields) that affords forward looking procedures for learning from error and for controlling error. The resulting “error statistical” appraisal is empirical—methods are appraised by examining their capacities to control error. At the same time, this account is normative, in that the strategies that pass muster are claims about how actually to proceed in given contexts to reach reliable inferences from limited data. (shrink)

The Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice, intended as a standard for teaching and practicing software engineering, documents the ethical and professional obligations of software engineers. The code should instruct practitioners about the standards society expects them to meet, about what their peers strive for, and about what to expect of one another. In addition, the code should also inform the public about the responsibilities that are important to the profession. Adopted in 2000 by the IEEE Computer Society (...) and the ACM--two leading international computing societies--the code of ethics is intended as a guide for members of the evolving software engineering profession. The code was developed by a multinational task force with additional input from other professionals from industry, government posts, military installations, and educational professions. (shrink)

While the effect of humanitarian intervention on the recurrence and intensity of armed conflict in a crisis zone has received significant scholarly attention, there has been comparatively less work on the negative externalities of introducing peacekeeping forces into conflict regions. This article demonstrates that large foreign forces create one such externality, namely a previously non-existent demand for human trafficking. Using Kosovo, Haiti, and Sierra Leone as case studies, we suggest that the injection of comparatively wealthy soldiers incentivizes the creation of (...) criminal networks by illicit actors. We theorize further that the magnitude of increase in trafficking should be directly proportional to the size of the foreign force, with larger forces producing larger increases. We find that both hypotheses hold with varying levels of confidence across our three case studies. Despite the benevolent intent of peacekeeping missions, the possibility that they may contribute to human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation runs counter to the spirit of such interventions. This is especially problematic given that trafficking rings, once established, may be adapted to provide weapons and narcotics, thereby planting the seed of further destabilization. (shrink)

Originalism is a force to be reckoned with in constitutional interpretation. At one time a monolithic theory of constitutional interpretation, contemporary originalism has developed into a sophisticated family of theories about how to interpret and reason with a constitution. Contemporary originalists harness the resources of linguistic, moral, and political philosophy to propose methodologies for the interpretation of constitutional texts and provide reasons for fidelity to those texts. The essays in this volume, which includes contributions from the flag bearers of several (...) competing schools of constitutional interpretation, provides an introduction to the development of originalist thought, showcases the great range of contemporary originalist constitutional scholarship, and situates competing schools of thought in dialogue with each other. They also make new contributions to the methodological and normative disputes between originalists and non-originalists, and among originalists themselves. (shrink)

Originalism is a force to be reckoned with in constitutional interpretation. At one time a monolithic theory of constitutional interpretation, contemporary originalism has developed into a sophisticated family of theories about how to interpret and reason with a constitution. Contemporary originalists harness the resources of linguistic, moral, and political philosophy to propose methodologies for the interpretation of constitutional texts and provide reasons for fidelity to those texts. The essays in this volume, which includes contributions from the flag bearers of several (...) competing schools of constitutional interpretation, provides an introduction to the development of originalist thought, showcases the great range of contemporary originalist constitutional scholarship, and situates competing schools of thought in dialogue with each other. They also make new contributions to the methodological and normative disputes between originalists and non-originalists, and among originalists themselves. (shrink)

Racism in health and healthcare has long been recognised as a structural issue. While there has been growing research and a number of important initiatives that have come from approaching racism as a structural issue, there is a range of implications that yet have to be explored as they relate to health and healthcare. Conceptualising racism in this way provides a means to consider how it shapes and is shaped by a range of global injustices and serves as a foundation (...) for more egregious harms. It also suggests that if we are to dismantle racism, we need to look both within and beyond the traditional domains of health and healthcare and account for a range of broader forces that sustain and re‐enforce racism. We first discuss the issue of responsibility, drawing on Young's social connection model to argue that we all have a responsibility to take action in addressing structural racism. We will then deal with a question that naturally follows, namely how we discharge our responsibilities, with a focus on the role of disruptive action in challenging power and ignorance in dismantling racism in health and healthcare. (shrink)

Terrorism, the use of military force in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and the fatal police shootings of unarmed persons have all contributed to renewed interest in the ethics of police and military use of lethal force and its moral justification. In this book, philosopher Seumas Miller analyzes the various moral justifications and moral responsibilities involved in the use of lethal force by police and military combatants, relying on a distinctive normative teleological account of institutional roles. His conception constitutes a (...) novel alternative to prevailing reductive individualist and collectivist accounts. As Miller argues, police and military uses of lethal force are morally justified in part by recourse to fundamental natural moral rights and obligations, especially the right to personal self-defense and the moral obligation to defend the lives of innocent others. Yet the moral justification for police and military use of lethal force is to some extent role-specific. Both police officers and military combatants evidently have an institutionally-based moral duty to put themselves in harm's way to protect others. Under some circumstances, however, police have an institutionally based moral duty to use lethal force to uphold the law; and military combatants have an institutionally based moral duty to use lethal force to win wars. Two key notions in play are joint action and the natural right to self-defense. Miller uses a relational individualist theory of joint actions to construct the notion of multi-layered structures of joint action in order to explicate organizational action. He also provides a novel theory of justifiable killing in self-defense. Over the course of his book, Miller covers a variety of urgent topics, such as police shootings of armed offenders, police shooting of suicide-bombers, targeted killing, autonomous weapons, humanitarian armed intervention, and civilian immunity. (shrink)

Strong non-maximalism holds that some truths require no ontological ground of any sort. Strong non-maximalism allows one to accept that some propositions are true without being forced to endorse any corresponding ontological commitments. We show that there is a version of truthmaker theory available—anti-aboutness truthmaking—that enjoys the dialectical benefits of the strong non-maximalist’s position. According to anti-aboutness truthmaking, all truths require grounds, but a proposition need not be grounded in the very thing(s) that the proposition is about. We argue that (...) if strong non-maximalism can be defended, then so can anti-aboutness truthmaking on the very same basis; one can enjoy the benefits of strong non-maximalism without giving up on the idea that truth is always grounded in being. (shrink)

In a lot of domains in metaphysics the tacit assumption has been that whichever metaphysical principles turn out to be true, these will be necessarily true. Let us call necessitarianism about some domain the thesis that the right metaphysics of that domain is necessary. Necessitarianism has flourished. In the philosophy of maths we find it held that if mathematical objects exist, then they do of necessity. Mathematical Platonists affirm the necessary existence of mathematical objects (see for instance Hale and Wright (...) 1992 and 1994; Wright 1983 and 1988; Schiffer 1996; Resnik 1997; Shapiro 1997 and Zalta 1988) while mathematical nominalists, usually in the form of fictionalists, hold that necessarily such objects fail to exist (see for instance Balaguer 1996 and 1998; Rosen 2001 and Yablo 2005). In metaphysics more generally, until recently it was more or less assumed that whatever the right account of composition—the account of under what conditions some xs compose a y—that account will be necessarily true (for a discussion of theories of composition see Simons 1987 and van Inwagen 1987 and 1990; the modal status of the composition relation is explicitly addressed in Schaffer 2007; Parsons 2006 and Cameron 2007). Similarly, it has generally been assumed that whatever the right account is of the nature of properties, whether they be universals, tropes, or whether nominalism is true, that account will be necessarily true (though see Rosen 2006 for a recent suggestion to the contrary). In considering theories of persistence it has been widely held that whether objects endure or perdure through time is a matter of necessity (Sider 2001; though see Lewis 1999 p227 who defends contingent perdurantism). And with respect to theories of time it is frequently held that whichever of the A- or B-theory is true is necessarily true. A-theorists often argue that there is time in a world only if the A-theory is true at that world (see for instance McTaggart 1903; Markosian 2004; Bigelow 1996; Craig 2001) while B-theorists often argue that the A-theory is internally inconsistent (Smart 1987; Mellor 1998; Savitt 2000 and Le Poidevin 1991). Once again, we find a few recent contingentist dissenters. Bourne (2006) suggests that it is a contingent feature of time that it is tensed, and thus that the A-theory is contingently true. Worlds in which there exist only B-theoretic properties are worlds with time, it is just that time in those worlds time is radically different to the way it is actually. Other defenders of the B-theory, though not expressly contingentists, do offer arguments against versions of the A-theory that try to show that such A-theories theories are inconsistent with the actual laws of nature (see for instance Saunders 2002 and Callender 2000); these arguments, at least, leave room for the possibility that the A-theories in question are contingently false (at least on the assumption that the laws of nature are themselves contingent, an assumption that not everyone accepts). Despite some notable exceptions, necessitarianism has flourished in many, if not most, domains in metaphysics. One such exception is Lewis’ famous defence of Humean supervenience as a contingent claim about our world. Lewis does not argue that necessarily, the supervenience base for all matters of fact in a world is nothing but a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact. Rather, he thinks that we have reason to think that our world is one in which Humean supervenience holds (see Lewis 1986 p9-10 and 1994). Another exception to the necessitarian orthodoxy is to be found in the lively debate about the modal status of the laws of nature. Here, if anything, contingentism has been the dominating force, with it generally being held that there are possible worlds in which different laws of nature hold (this view is defended by, among others, Lewis 1986 and 2010; Schaffer 2005 and Sidelle 2002). Necessitarian dissenters hold that the laws of nature are necessary, frequently because they think it is necessary that fundamental properties have the causal or nomic profiles they do (see for instance Shoemaker 1980 and 1988; Swoyer 1982; Bird 1995; Ellis and Lierse 1994). Nevertheless, when it comes to thinking about the nature of the laws themselves, the necessitarian presumption is back on firm footing. Though there is disagreement about whether the laws are generalisations that feature in the most virtuous true axiomatisation of all the particular matters of fact (often known as the Humean view of laws and defended by Ramsey 1978; Lewis 1986 and Beebee 2000) or whether laws are relations of necessity that hold between universals (a view defended by Armstrong 1983; Dretske 1977; Tooley 1977 and Carroll 1990) no one has seriously suggested that it might be a contingent matter which of these is the right account of laws. The necessitarian orthodoxy is not surprising since metaphysics is largely an a priori process. While a priori reasoning may be used to determine whether a proposition is necessary or contingent, it is not well placed (in the absence of a posteriori evidence) to determine whether a contingent proposition is actually true or false. Since metaphysicians aim to tell us which principles are true in which worlds, on the face of it the discovery that metaphysical principles are contingent seems to make part of the task of metaphysics epistemically intractable. In what follows I consider two reasons one might end up embracing contingentism and whether this would lead one into epistemic difficulty. The following section considers a route to contingent metaphysical truths that proceeds via a combination of conceptual necessities and empirical discoveries. Section 3 considers whether there might be synthetic contingent metaphysical truths, and the final section raises the question of whether if there were such truths we would be well placed to come to know them. (shrink)

Drawing the line on physician assistance in physician-assisted death continues to be a contentious issue in many legal jurisdictions across the USA, Canada and Europe. PAD is a medical practice that occurs when physicians either prescribe or administer lethal medication to their patients. As more legal jurisdictions establish PAD for at least some class of patients, the question of the proper scope of this practice has become pressing. This paper presents an argument for restricting PAD to the terminally ill that (...) can be accepted by defenders as well as critics of PAD for the terminally ill. The argument appeals to fairness-based paternalism and the social meaning of medical practice. These two considerations interact in various ways, as the paper explains. The right way to think about the social meaning of medical practice bears on fair paternalism as it relates to PAD and vice versa. The paper contends that these considerations have substantial force when directed against proposals to extend PAD to non-terminally ill patients, but considerably less force when directed against PAD for the terminally ill. The paper pays special attention to the case of non-terminally ill patients who suffer from treatment-resistant depression, as these patients present a potentially strong case for extending PAD beyond the terminally ill. (shrink)

Ethical theories normally make room both for global duties to human beings everywhere and special duties to those we are attached to in some way. Such a split-level view requires us to specify the kind of attachment that can ground special duties, and to explain the comparative force of the two kinds of duties in cases of conflict. Special duties are generated within groups that are intrinsically valuable and not inherently unjust, where the duties can be shown to be integral (...) to relationships within the group. Since nations can be shown to meet these conditions, acknowledging special obligations towards compatriots is justified. However for such partiality to be reasonable, it must be balanced against recognition of duties of global justice. These duties include duties to respect human rights and duties of fairness towards non-nationals. Weighing such duties against domestic duties of social justice is not a simple task, and the outcome should depend on the precise specification of the duty at stake. In particular, the duty to respect human rights fragments into four sub-duties whose force when set against local duties is markedly different. (shrink)

According to Peter Singer, virtually all of us would be forced by adequate reflection on our own convictions to embrace a radical conclusion about giving. The following principle, he says, is “surely undeniable” -- at least once we reflect on secure convictions concerning rescue, as in his famous case of the drowning toddler.

ABSTRACT In the standard case of justifiable killing in self‐defence one agent without provocation tries to kill a second agent and the second agent's only way to avoid death is to kill his attacker. It is widely accepted that such killings in self‐defence are morally justifiable, but it has proved difficult to show why this is so. Recently, Montague has put forward an account in terms of forcing a choice between lives, and Teichman has propounded a quasi‐Hobbesian rights‐based account (...) of self‐defence. I argue that neither Montague nor Teichman has succeeded in providing an adequate justification for killing in self‐defence. (shrink)

Could an accreditation, certification, or rating mechanism help the pharmaceutical industry improve both its bioethical performance and its public reputation? Other industries have used such systems to assess, improve, distinguish, and demonstrate the quality of their services, processes, and products. These systems have also helped increase transparency, accountability, stakeholder confidence, and awareness of industry best practices. This article explains how market forces can be harnessed to recognize and promote better bioethical performance by pharmaceutical companies when there are good systems to (...) accredit, certify, or rate. It concludes with a review of relevant failures of credit-rating agencies — such as conflicts of interests and revolving-door practices — to illuminate some of the pitfalls of developing a bioethics accreditation, certification, or rating system for pharmaceutical companies. (shrink)

Rather than focusing on political and legal debates surrounding attempts to determine if and when genocidal rape has taken place in a particular setting, this essay turns instead to a crucial, yet neglected area of inquiry: the moral significance of genocidal rape, and more specifically, the nature of the harms that constitute the culpable wrongdoing that genocidal rape represents. In contrast to standard philosophical accounts, which tend to employ an individualistic framework, this essay offers a situated understanding of harm that (...) features the importance of interdependence and relationality and that conceptualizes harms as embodied and contextual. The paper ultimately reveals what is distinctive about this particular crime of sexual violence by exploring the logic of genocidal rape: genocidal rape involves the harm of forced self-betrayal unleashed relationally, causing victims as representatives of their group to participate inadvertently in the destruction of that group. (shrink)

This article explores whether the bioethical performance and trustworthiness of pharmaceutical companies can be improved by harnessing market forces through the use of accreditation, certification, or rating. Other industries have used such systems to define best practices, set standards, and assess and signal the quality of services, processes, and products. These systems have also informed decisions in other industries about where to invest, what to buy, where to work, and when to regulate. Similarly, accreditation, certification, and rating programs can help (...) drug companies address stakeholder concerns in four areas: clinical trial design and management, dissemination of clinical trial results, marketing practices, and the accessibility of medicines. To illuminate processes — such as conflicts of interests and revolving-door policies — that can jeopardize the integrity of accreditation, certification, and ratings systems, the article concludes with a consideration of recent failures of credit-rating agencies and a review of the regulatory capture literature. (shrink)

The central virtue at issue in recent philosophical discussions of the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics has been the virtue of compassion. Opponents of virtue ethics such as Gilbert Harman and John Doris argue that experimental results from social psychology concerning helping behavior are best explained not by appealing to so-called ‘global’ character traits like compassion, but rather by appealing to external situational forces or, at best, to highly individualized ‘local’ character traits. In response, a number of philosophers have argued (...) that virtue ethics can accommodate the empirical results in question. My own view is that neither side of this debate is looking in the right direction. For there is an impressive array of evidence from the social psychology literature which suggests that many people do possess one or more robust global character traits pertaining to helping others in need. But at the same time, such traits are noticeably different from a traditional virtue like compassion. (shrink)

In this article, I undertake three main tasks. First, I argue that, contrary to the standard view, moral injury is not a species of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) but rather, on the most coherent conception of moral injury, PTSD is (in effect) a species of moral injury. In doing so, I make use of the notion of caring deeply about something or someone worthy of being cared deeply about. Second, I consider so-called “dirty hands” actions in police work and in (...) war, and distinguish these from the morally legitimate, but harmful, actions of police officers and of war fighters, such as the morally legitimate use of coercive force and lethal force (respectively). While the morally legitimate use of harmful methods is constitutive of these occupational roles, “dirty hands” methods are not. Roughly speaking, a “dirty hands” action is one that is morally wrong and (typically) unlawful but done for the sake of a good outcome. Both categories of action are conducive to moral injury, but “dirty hands” actions much more so, especially given the slippery moral slope from “dirty hands” actions to egregious moral wrongdoing. Third, I offer some recommendations for reducing moral injury among police officers and war fighters. (shrink)

The literature on the interplay between geographic communities and organizations has largely ignored the role of individual residents. In adopting a meso-perspective, we examine a potentially vital relationship between corporate conduct and pro-social behavior demanding sacrifice from individuals. Drawing on Weber ), we theorize that organizations in a community legitimize personal social conduct in three ways—by serving as role models, imparting norms and values, and routinizing forms of interaction. We study the relationship between corporate social responsibility behavior by local firms (...) and the social distancing of citizens in US counties during the Covid-19 pandemic, a core ethical outcome. We argue and find that the residents of communities in which firms exhibit higher levels of CSR engaged in more SD during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was true when firms were long-established, isomorphic in their CSR, and major employers and vendors. Moreover, CSR relating to the treatment of employees as well as positive and negative extremes in CSR bore especially strong relationships with SD. Implications are drawn for the study of business ethics, as modeled by CSR, as a force for ethical personal behavior and public health in communities. (shrink)

Importance Informed consent is essential to ethical, rigorous research and is important to recruitment and retention in cancer trials.Objective To examine cancer clinical trial (CCT) participants’ perceptions of informed consent processes and variations in perceptions by cancer type.Design and Setting and Participants Cross-sectional survey from mixed-methods study at National Cancer Institute–designated Northeast comprehensive cancer center. Open-ended and forced-choice items addressed: (1) enrollment and informed consent experiences and (2) decision-making processes, including risk-benefit assessment. Eligibility: CCT participant with gastro-intestinal or genitourinary, hematologic-lymphatic (...) malignancies, lung cancer, and breast or gynecological cancer (N = 334).Main Outcome Measures Percentages satisfied with consent process and information provided; and assessing participation’s perceptions of risks/benefits. Multivariable logistic or ordinal regression examined differences by cancer type.Results Most patient-participants felt well informed by the consent process (more than 90% overall and by cancer type) and. most (87.4%) reported that the consent form provided all the information they wanted, although nearly half (44.8%) reported that they read the form somewhat carefully or less. More than half (57.9%) said that talking to research staff (i.e., the consent process) had a greater impact on participation decisions than reading the consent form (2.1%). A third (31.1%) were very sure of joining in research studies before the informed consent process (almost half of lung cancer patients did—47.1%). Most patients personally assessed the risks and benefits before consenting. However, trust in physicians played an important role in the decision to enroll in CCT.Conclusions and Relevance Cancer patients rely less on written features of the informed consent process than on information obtained from the research staff and their own physicians. Research should focus on information and communication strategies that support informed consent from referring physicians, researchers, and others to improve patient risk-benefit assessment and decision-making. (shrink)

Reflections on the linkage between and the provocative force of problems in the analogy of city and soul, in the simile-bound characterization of the Good, and in the performative tension between what Plato has Socrates say about the philosopher's disinclination to descend into the city and what he has Socrates do in descending into the Piraeus to teach, with a closing recognition of the analogy between Socratic teaching and Platonic writing.

Religious violence may trigger feelings of repulsion and indignation, especially in a society that encourages toleration and respect, but rejection contradicts the principles of inclusion that define a democracy and its core moral values. How can we think ethically about religious violence and terrorism, especially in the wake of such atrocities as 9/11? Known for his skillful interrogation of ethical issues as they pertain to religion, politics, and culture, Richard B. Miller returns to the basic tenets of liberalism to (...) divine an ethical response to religious extremism. He questions how we should think about the claims and aspirations of political religions, especially when they conflict so deeply with liberal norms and practices, and he suggests how liberal critics can speak confidently in ways that respect cultural and religious difference. Miller explores other concerns within these investigations as well, such as the protection of human rights and a liberal democratic commitment to multicultural politics. In relating religion and ethics, he develops a new lens for viewing political religions and their moral responsibilities. This probing inquiry also forces us to rethink our response to 9/11. (shrink)