Despite some significant advances in the creation and protection of rights affecting women's health, these do not always translate into actual health benefits for women. This collection asks: 'What is an effective law and what influences law's effectiveness or ineffectiveness? What dynamics, elements, and conditions come together to limit law's capacity to achieve instrumental goals for women's health and the advancement of women's health rights?' The book presents an integrated, co-referential and sustained critical discussion of the normative and constitutive reasons (...) for law's limited effectiveness in the field of women's health. It offers comprehensive and cohesive explanatory accounts of law's limits and for the first time in the field, introduces a distinction between formal and substantive effectiveness of laws. Its approach is trans-systemic, multi-jurisdictional and comparative, with a focus on six countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa and international human rights case law based on matters arising from Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Peru and Bolivia. The book will be a valuable resource for educators, students, lawyers, rights advocates, and policy-makers working in women's health, socio-legal studies, human rights, feminist legal studies, and legal philosophy more broadly. (shrink)

This book broadens the range of theoretically informed empirical research on business ethics (using data from major American corporations) and addresses the underlying questions about business ethics scholarship. It culminates a decade’s work by the authors—individually, jointly, and with others. The first part of the book addresses the major theoretical questions involved in doing empirical research about normative issues. It addresses the boundaries—methodological, conceptual, and institutional—that too easily separate philosophical and social scientific approaches to business ethics and reviews various ways (...) in which those approaches can be brought close together to benefit research and practice. The second part of the book describes and explains the increasing institutionalization of formal systems designed to manage ethics in organizations. It reviews the state of the art initiatives to foster ethical business conduct and also looks at the relative roles of executives and external policies (e.g., government regulations) in creating meaningful ethical initiatives. In the third part, the focus shifts to individual ethical behavior and how organizations influence it, describing in detail some of the outcomes of organizational ethics initiatives. It also looks at successes, failures, and new prospects in the effort to identify and explain the multiple factors that influence individual ethical behavior. (shrink)

Vague predicates, those that exhibit borderline cases, pose a persistent problem for philosophers and logicians. Although they are ubiquitous in natural language, when used in a logical context, vague predicates lead to contradiction. This paper will address a question that is intimately related to this problem. Given their inherent imprecision, why do vague predicates arise in the first place? I discuss a variation of the signaling game where the state space is treated as contiguous, i.e., endowed with a metric that (...) captures a similarity relation over states. This added structure is manifested in payoffs that reward approximate coordination between sender and receiver as well as perfect coordination. I evolve these games using a variation of Herrnstein reinforcement learning that better reflects the generalizing learning strategies real-world actors use in situations where states of the world are similar. In these simulations, signaling can develop very quickly, and the signals are vague in much the way ordinary language predicates are vague—they each exclusively apply to certain items, but for some transition period both signals apply to varying degrees. Moreover, I show that under certain parameter values, in particular when state spaces are large and time is limited, learning generalization of this sort yields strategies with higher payoffs than standard Herrnstein reinforcement learning. These models may then help explain why the phenomenon of vagueness arises in natural language: the learning strategies that allow actors to quickly and effectively develop signaling conventions in contiguous state spaces make it unavoidable. (shrink)

Oliver Sacks MD, Clinical Professor of Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, talked with Anthony Freeman during his visit to London in January 1995 to publicize his recently published book An Anthropologist on Mars. The interview is preceded by an overview of the book.

Intersectionality theory explores the special sorts of disadvantage that arise as the result of occupying multiple disadvantaged demographic categories. One significant methodological problem for the quantitative study of intersectionality is the difficulty of acquiring data sets large enough to produce significant results when one is looking for intersectional effects. For this reason, we argue, simulation methods may be particularly useful to this branch of theorizing because they can generate precise predictions and causal dependencies in a relatively cheap way, and can (...) thus guide future empirical work. We illustrate this point through models which show that intersectional oppression can arise under conditions where social groups are disadvantaged in the emergence of bargaining norms. As we show, intersectional disadvantage can arise even when actors from all social categories are completely identical in terms of preferences and abilities. The conditions necessary to derive such disadvantage are relatively minimal. And when actors behave in ways that reflect stronger intersectional identities, the potential for disadvantage increases. (shrink)

Recent work on consciousness has distinguished between the qualitative character of an experience (what a particular experience is like) and its subjective character or subjectivity (the for-me-ness of any experience). It is often suggested that subjectivity is a characteristic inner awareness subjects enjoy of their own occurrent experiences. A number of thinkers have also suggested that not only is each subject aware of her own experiences, but that in having these experiences she is aware of them as her own. This (...) is the subjectivity-mineness thesis: necessarily, an experience which is given to its subject is given as the subject’s own experience. I shall argue against the subjectivity-mineness thesis. While I agree that experiences are characterised by inner awareness, it is questionable whether inner awareness entails an awareness of my experiences as mine. I shall offer an alternative account of inner awareness, the impersonal account. On this account the subject of the experience is not presented in the content of inner awareness, but the mode of inner awareness is such that necessarily, this awareness is an awareness of experiences which belong to this subject. This is what makes inner awareness a characteristically first-personal form of awareness. (shrink)

Doctors have an ethical and legal duty to respect patient confidentiality. We consider the basis for this duty, looking particularly at the meaning and value of autonomy in health care. Enabling patients to decide how information about them is disclosed is an important element in autonomy and helps patients engage as active partners in their care.Good quality data is, however, essential for research, education, public health monitoring, and for many other activities essential to provision of health care. We discuss whether (...) it is necessary to choose between individual rights and the wider public interest and conclude that this should only rarely be necessary. The paper makes some recommendations on practical steps which could help ensure that good quality information is available for work which benefits society and the public health, while still enabling patients’ autonomy to be respected. (shrink)

Conceptions of individual autonomy and of rational autonomy have played large parts in twentieth century moral philosophy, yet it is hard to see how either could be basic to morality. Kant's conception of autonomy is radically different. He predicated autonomy neither of individual selves nor of processes of choosing, but of principles of action. Principles of action are Kantianly autonomous only if they are law-like in form and could be universal in scope; they are heteronomous if, although law-like in form, (...) they cannot have universal scope. Puzzles about claims linking morality, reason and autonomy are greatly reduced by recognising the distinctiveness of Kantian autonomy. (shrink)

I am working on a substantially revised second edition of this. It is due to be published by Palgrave in 2024.

Anthony O'Hear; VI*—Guilt and Shame as Moral Concepts, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1 June 1977, Pages 73–86, https://doi.org/10.

Self, Language, and World: Problems from Kant, Sellars, and Rosenberg Edited by James R. O'Shea and Eric M. Rubenstein Introduction KANT Willem deVries, Kant, Rosenberg, and the Mirror of Philosophy David Landy, The Premise That Even Hume Must Accept LANGUAGE AND MIND William G. Lycan, Rosenberg On Proper Names Douglas Long, Why Life is Necessary for Mind: The Significance of Animate Behavior Dorit Bar-On and Mitchell Green, Lionspeak: Communication, Expression, and Meaning David Rosenthal, The Mind and Its Expression MIND AND (...) KNOWLEDGE Jeffrey Sicha, The Manifest Image: the Sensory and the Mental Bruce Aune, Rosenberg on Knowing Joseph C. Pitt, Sellarsian Antifoundationalism and Scientific Realism Matthew Chrisman, The Aim of Belief and the Goal of Truth: Reflections on Rosenberg James O’Shea, Conceptual Thinking and Nonconceptual Content: A Sellarsian Divide ONTOLOGY Anton Koch, Persons as Mirroring the World Eric M. Rubenstein, Form and Content, Substance and Stuff Ralf Stoecker, On Being a Realist About Death William G. Lycan, Biographical Remarks on Jay F. Rosenberg Scholarly Publications of Jay F. Rosenberg. (shrink)

Obesity is the focus of multiple lines of inquiry that have -- together and separately -- produced many deep insights into the physiology of weight gain and maintenance. We examine three such streams of research and show how they are oriented to obesity intervention through multilevel integrated approaches. The first research programme is concerned with the genetics and biochemistry of fat production, and it links metabolism, physiology, endocrinology and neurochemistry. The second account of obesity is developmental and draws together epigenetic (...) and environmental explanations that can be embedded in an evolutionary framework. The third line of research focuses on the role of gut microbes in the production of obesity, and how microbial activities interact with host genetics, development and metabolism. These interwoven explanatory strategies are driven by an orientation to intervention, both for experimental and therapeutic outcomes. We connect the integrative and intervention-oriented aspects of obesity research through a discussion of translation, broadening the concept to capture the dynamic, iterative processes of scientific practice and therapy development. This system-oriented analysis of obesity research expands the philosophical scrutiny of contemporary developments in the biosciences and biomedicine, and has the potential to enrich philosophy of science and medicine. (shrink)

Explores the role of eliminating fear in Epicurean ethics and physics, focusing on techniques to eliminate the fear of death and the fear of the gods. Includes a taxonomy of types of fear and types of therapy for fear.

Most commonplace moral failure is not conditioned by evil intentions or the conscious desire to harm or humiliate others. It is more banal and ubiquitous – a form of moral stupidity that gives rise to rationalization, self‐deception, failures of due moral consideration, and the evasion of responsibility. A kind of crude, perception‐distorting self‐absorption, moral stupidity is the cause of many moral missteps; moral development demands the development of self‐knowledge as a way out of moral stupidity. Only once aware of the (...) presence or absence of particular desires and beliefs can an agent have authority over them or exercise responsibility for their absence. But what is the connection between self‐knowledge and moral development? I argue that accounts (such as Kant's and Richard Moran's) which construe instances of self‐knowledge as like the verdicts of a judge cannot explain its potential role in moral development, and claim that it must be conceived of in a way that makes possible a process of self‐refinement and self‐regulation. Making use of Buddhist moral psychology, I argue that when self‐knowledge plays a role in moral development, it includes a quality of attention to one's experience best modeled as the work of the craftsperson, not as judge. (shrink)

This paper argues that Anscombe's arguments against appealing to the self-reference rule that 'I" refers to its producer are ineffective.

Why did the omnipotent, omniscient, unsurpassably, and perfectly good being who is necessary in Himself, and having a supremely rational will, contingently create ex nihilo? What motivation could account for such freely undertaken activity, displaying it as neither necessary nor less than fully rational? The chapter considers and criticizes answers recently offered by Mark Johnston and Alex Pruss. It is argued that creation of some contingent reality or other is necessary, and that plausible reflections on the ordered complexity in God’s (...) motivations indicate that the scope of contingency regarding what to create is highly constricted—though not to the point of complete modal collapse. A perfect creator would create either an infinite and richly varied multiverse or an infinitely improving universe realizing a wide array of kinds of goods. Finally, a rebuttal is given to the contention that any element of contingency in a divine choice entails a rational-explanatory deficiency. (shrink)

Drawing on an analysis of complaint files that we conducted for the Irish Medical Council, this paper offers three possible explanations for the gap between the ubiquity of official commitments to taking patients’ complaints seriously and medical professional regulators’ dismissal—as not warranting an inquiry—of the vast majority of complaints submitted by members of the public. One explanation points to the “regulatory illiteracy” of many complainants, where the remit and threshold of seriousness of regulators is poorly understood by the general public. (...) Another points to possible processes of “institutional epistemic injustice” that unjustly undermine the credibility of certain complainants, such as those with low levels of formal education. A third explanation highlights the marginalization of the general public from “symbolic power” to define what matters in medical professional regulation. The paper is offered in a spirit of ideas in progress and raising questions rather than definitive insights into the regulatory process. (shrink)

In his commentary on my paper, “Means-Ends Epistemology”, David Chart constructs a Riddle of Induction with the following feature: Means-ends analysis, as I formulated it in the paper, selects “all emeralds are grue” as the optimal conjecture after observing a sample of all green emeralds. Chart’s construction is rigorous and correct. If we disagree, it is in the philosophical morals to be drawn from his example. Such morals are best discussed by elucidating some of the larger epistemological issues involved. “Means-ends (...) Epistemology” sought a normative theory of hypothesis selection. I defined what it means for an inductive method to reliably and efficiently find a correct hypothesis from a set of alternative hypotheses. (In fact, I investigated a number of standards of empirical success for inductive methods.) Call such methods optimal. We may take optimal inferences to be those made by optimal methods. This defines a relation Optimal-Inference(h,e,H): “given the set of alternative hypotheses H, and evidence e, hypothesis h is an optimal inference”. One fundamental difference between the means-ends approach and traditional confirmation theory is that the latter has sought a two-place relation between theory and evidence alone, something like “hypothesis h is highly confirmed given evidence e”. From my point of view, posing the problem of induction as discerning the right relation between theory and evidence is elliptical because it leaves unspecified the set of alternative hypotheses under investigation (as well as other relevant factors, such as the scientist’s background knowledge, observational means, cognitive capacities and epistemic values). Chart’s Riddle highlights the fact that depending on the space of alternative hypotheses, means-ends analysis may select a different hypothesis on the same evidence: “all emeralds are green” in my Goodmanian Riddle, and “all emeralds are grue” in his. To my mind, his example.. (shrink)

In recent work Philip Goff has defended the thesis of subjecthood transparency: someone possessing the concept ‘subjecthood’ is thereby in a position to know, a priori, what it is for an entity to be a subject of experiences. Kevin Morris has criticized a specific argument that Goff provides for subjecthood transparency. I will argue that Morris’s criticism of Goff’s argument does not succeed. I will then present an alternative criticism of Goff’s argument, one that also applies to the thesis of (...) subjecthood transparency itself. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The article aims to analyse the consciousness of masses in the communication system of the 20th century projecting the individual level onto the social one. _Theoretical basis._ In the fields of philosophy and other humanities since the middle of the last century there has dominated an opinion that the category of mass and its communication are second-rate and non-elitist phenomena. Condensing the experience of human history (especially – the nineteenth century – the time of the bourgeois revolutions and the (...) two world wars), such parameters were set by the creators of social psychology Gustave Le Bon and Sigmund Freud in their basic research "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind", "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego". Since ancient times the masses have really resembled immoral emotional neoformations, which minimized the individual qualities of the components of the whole and showed the features of a predominantly animal nature. It is no coincidence that those masses were called emotional, or just a crowd, regardless of the topos of existence: streets and squares, or the infospace of the first mass media (newspapers, radio, cinema, television). However, analysing the crowd, the scientists noted that this is only an extreme modification of the mass, and, in addition to it, there may be others – quite the opposite in their nature. With the advent of the World Wide Web, the situation has changed: scientists and futurists have been talking about the mass of intellectuals, which seems to be formed and combined in the field of information technology. And it surpasses the traditional elite in many respects. _Originality._ Having analysed the works of classic and modern researchers, we came to the conclusion that in fact the masses, like individuals (according to C. G. Jung), are divided into four types. Correspondingly, each of them has its own behaviour, psychology, philosophy etc. This article focuses on beliefs and ideological positions as the basis for the functioning of emotional, sensory, intuitive and rational masses in the context of 20th century philosophy. The object of our analysis was the philosophical schools of neo-positivism, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, existentialism, pragmatism, anthropology, phenomenology, and others. _Conclusions._ According to our assumption, regardless of the type of mass and direction of modern philosophy as a field of its implementation, rationalism comes to the fore everywhere (as a primary source and theoretical basis or motivation). Thus, it can be concluded that the rational mass now dominates, not emotional (which was thoroughly described by Le Bon and Freud). And this is quite natural in the age of digital technology. (shrink)

Otávio Bueno gives a positive and accurate summary of my defense of Platonism, with special emphasis on the epistemological issues. He criticizes “skeptical nominalism”, and proposes instead an “agnostic nominalism”, which treats mathematical objects as “objects of thought”, and neither rejects nor accepts abstract entities. In my response I argue that the main problem for nominalism is to account for abstract properties and relations, and that treating mathematical objects as objects of thought does not provide a satisfactory solution to that (...) end.Otávio Bueno apresenta um resumo positivo e correto de minha defesa do Platonismo, com ênfase especial nos aspectos epistemológicos. Ele critica o “nominalismo cético” e propõe um “nominalismo agnóstico” que trata os objetos matemáticos como “objetos de pensamento”, sem rejeitar ou aceitar entes abstratos. Em minha réplica argumento que o problema principal para o nominalismo é dar conta das propriedades e relações abstratas, e que tratar os objetos matemáticos como objetos de pensamento não é uma solução satisfatória para esse fim. (shrink)

My disagreement with the deflationist treatment of truth affects my attitude to Paul Horwich’s approach to meaning and intentionality. In my response I summarize objections to the deflationist account of truth developed in some detail in chapters 2, 7, and 12, and argue that the notion of intentionality should be treated naturalistically in a broader context than the context of the referential import of the locution “means that”.Minha discordância com a visão deflacionista da verdade afeta minha atitude em relação às (...) propostas deflacionistas de Paul Horwich para a intencio-nalidade. Em minha réplica faço um resumo das objeções ao deflacionismo em relação à verdade, detalhadas nos capítulos 2, 7 e 12, e argumento que a noção de intencionalidade deveria ser tratada naturalisticamente em um contexto mais amplo que o contexto do alcance referencial da locução “significa que”. (shrink)

The importance of the specifi relationship between the US and the EU is determined by the role they play in solving international problems. The purpose of the article is to study the impact of common and distinctive position in US and EU foreign policy on the development of their relations and ability to effectively solve the world’s problems. At the beginning of the XXI century relations between the US and the EU have been developing in various spheres of foreign policy. (...) The priorities were security cooperation, the fiht against international terrorism and the development of economic relations. US and EU are mutually benefiial and priority partners for each other. This is determined in the foreign policy instruments of the United States and the European Union. However, this does not preclude the existence in the United States and the European Union different approaches to solving international problems and competition between them. The biggest differences between the US and the EU are shown in approaches to the settlement of military conflcts, the fiht against global warming and the greenhouse effect. The largest component of competitive relations is manifested in the development of the Arctic region. The US seeks to engage the EU foreign policy implementation taking into account American interests. However, at the beginning of the XXI century the EU had its own foreign policy program. The EU has an unhappy tendency towards US methods of solving world problems and unilateral actions in the international arena. The bipolar system was dominated by bilateral cooperation between the US and individual states of the European Union, but during the presidency of Barack Obama, the United States prefer relations with European politicians who represent the agreed position of 28 EU member states. The US in implementing its foreign policy should take into account the position of individual states and the European Union as a whole entity. This affects the process of solving international problems. Despite the existence of contradictions in the relations of the United States and the European Union, cooperation will continue to contribute to this long-term relationship, similarities in approaches to building political and economic systems and similarities in mentality. (shrink)