In this paper I offer a philosophical analysis of the act of ‘liking’ a post on social media. First, I consider what it means to ‘like’ something. I argue that ‘liking’ is best understood as a phatic gesture; it signals uptake and anoints the poster’s positive face. Next, I consider how best to theorise the power that comes with amassing many ‘likes’. I suggest that ‘like’ tallies alongside posts institute and record a form of digital social capital. Finally, I consider (...) whether ‘likes’ have ultimately improved online discourse. I argue that while the ‘liking’ function itself is relatively innocuous, public ‘like’ tallies introduce a corrosive motivation to online communication. By making the prospect of increased social capital perpetually salient to us, they encourage us to prioritise high levels of engagement over meaningful engagement. (shrink)

This paper examines and evaluates from a Christian perspective the common Christian presumption against pleasing people, which is roughly the idea that Christians should not be motivated by or delight in the favorable opinion of others. I argue that several ways of saving the idea that Christians can blamelessly care what others think about them are misguided or insufficient. I contend that the most important way to save this idea is by drawing attention to concern for the opinions of others (...) in the context of a social role. (shrink)

This paper combines considerations from ethics, medicine and public health policy to articulate and defend a systematic case for mask wearing mandates. The paper argues for two main claims of general interest in favour of these mandates. First, mask wearing mandates provide a more effective, just and fair way to tackle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic than policy alternatives such as laissez-faire approaches, mask wearing recommendations and physical distancing measures. And second, the proffered objections against mask wearing mandates may justify some (...) exemptions for specific categories of individuals, but do not cast doubt on the justifiability of these mandates. Hence, unless some novel decisive objections are put forward against mask wearing mandates, governments should adopt such mandates. (shrink)

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the EU confirms the protection of personal data as a fundamental human right and affords data subjects more control over the way their personal information is processed, shared, and analyzed. However, where data are processed by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, asserting control and providing adequate explanations is a challenge. Due to massive increases in computing power and big data processing, modern AI algorithms are too complex and opaque to be understood by most data (...) subjects. Articles 15 and 22 of the GDPR provide a modest regulatory framework for automated data processing by, among other things, mandating that data controllers inform data subjects about when it is being used, and its logic and ramifications. Nevertheless, due to the phrasing of the articles and the numerous exceptions they allow, doubts have arisen about their effectiveness. In this paper, we empirically evaluate the quality and effectiveness of AI disclosures as mandated by the GDPR. By means of an online survey (N = 835), we investigated how data subjects expect to be informed about the automated processing of their data. We then conducted a content analysis of the AI disclosures of N = 100 companies and organizations. The combined findings reveal that current GDPR-mandated disclosures do not meet the expectations and needs of data subjects. Explanations drawn up following the guidelines of the generic formulations of the GDPR differ widely and are often vague, incomplete and lack transparency. In our conclusions we identify a path towards standardizing and optimizing AI information notices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Please Help Me”Rebecca L. VolpeTwo–year–old Jay was born prematurely at 26 weeks gestation, addicted to opiates. After several months in the Neonatal ICU, he was sent home, ventilator–dependent but with a high likelihood of survival and a low chance of severe, lasting disability. When Jay was 1½, he had a cardiopulmonary arrest at home. The parents of children who are on ventilators at home receive extensive education and (...) training about how to respond to something like an arrest. They are taught that a quick response is often critical to their child’s long–term prognosis. And yet, Jay’s parents took such a long time to respond to his code that Jay now has severe hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy: his brain was deprived of oxygen for so long that he has no higher cortical function, and will never think, speak, walk, or play.Currently, Jay is ventilator–dependent and has a very poor prognosis. Jay goes back and forth between a nursing home and the hospital. During one of his many hospitalizations, the ICU team decided to call an ethics consultation, because they felt that continued aggressive intervention was no longer in Jay’s best interests. I was the person on the other end of the line when the medical team called. After having a brief conversation with the attending physician, I left my office and walked to the Pediatric ICU to visit Jay. I arrived at the bedside—really just a large crib—and saw a baby with dark hair lying flat on his back. His tongue was swollen and protruding from his mouth, his eyes were puffy and closed, and his limbs were limp. On his belly was a piece of paper with the words, “BECKY PLEASE HELP ME” typed in huge, bold font. I looked up, into the eyes of the attending physician and said, “Did you type that?” The physician nodded yes. Much could be said about this physician’s behavior. But the bottom line—from a clinical perspective, at least—is that this ICU team was desperate, and that they had significant expectations that I would be able to help them.I began the work of the consultation. I reviewed the medical record, spoke with members of the treating team, and set up a time to talk to the family. During the family meeting, I learned that Jay’s parents wanted to continue to treat aggressively, and that they believed it was not their place to decide when it was their son’s time to die. That was [End Page 122] God’s decision. They could not fathom removing interventions that were maintaining their son’s life. They acknowledged that his quality of life was not high, but, still, it was life.The preferences of the treating team were in stark contrast to the parents’ preferences. The neurologists believed Jay did not have the capacity to experience physical pain, but the ICU team believed that continuing to treat Jay was cruel. Although the ICU team acknowledged that Jay was probably not suffering, they noted that we could not know for sure, and that sometimes Jay grimaced and withdrew—signs that are often interpreted as suffering. The ICU team also argued that given all the sick children in the world, and the scarcity of healthcare resources, it didn’t make sense to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into prolonging Jay’s life. Additionally, they discovered that Jay had osteopenia (weak, brittle bones)—which was causing multiple bone fractures. The ICU team anguished over the thought of Jay’s small, soft bones continuing to break despite their best efforts.The bioethicist in me knows that, as long as the patient isn’t suffering and the parents aren’t demanding futile interventions (they weren’t), our role as providers was not to judge the parents’ value system. I told the ICU team over and over that different people place different value on Jay’s type of life, and that it wasn’t for us to tell them that their value structure was wrong. I talked with other members of the clinical ethics consultation service. Then I brought the case to the entire institutional... (shrink)

Academic debates are so frequent and omnipresent in most disciplines, particularly the social sciences and humanities, it seems obvious that disagreements are bound to occur. The aim of this paper is to show that whereas the agent who perceives his/her contribution as being misunderstood locates the origin of the communication problem on the side of the receiver who "misinterprets" the text, the emitter is in fact also contributing to the possibility of this misunderstanding through the very manner in which his/her (...) text is written. In other words, I propose a symmetric approach to understanding misunderstandings: taking simultaneously into account the position of the reader in the scientific field and the structure of the texts of the writers. The paper thus proposes to complement the sociological analysis of controversies in a scientific field with the close reading of texts, a practice usually found in studies of argumentation, in order to explain the occurrence of misunderstandings. The debate surrounding the charge of "relativism" among sociologists of scientific knowledge provides us with a case study to analyse in detail the argumentative context of misunderstanding. (shrink)

The paper investigates how the politeness marker please is used by young people to distinguish themselves from adults and create an identity of their own. The analysis of please is based on the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language. The distribution and uses of please in COLT are compared with similar data from the British component of the International Corpus of English. We can recognize several functions of the “impolite” please in the COLT Corpus. To begin (...) with, it is used strategically to establish or confirm harmonious relationships between the speakers. Secondly, “mock impoliteness” may be understood in a positive way because it is amusing or entertaining. In young people’s circles entertainment skills are for example highly valued. Finally, impoliteness is used creatively in interaction by the participants who use repetition, reformulation and escalation to construct ritualized sequences of apparent insults. (shrink)

In the vast literature on human rights and natural law one finds arguments that draw on science or mathematics to support claims to universality and objectivity. Here are two such arguments: 1) Human rights are as universal (i.e., valid independently of their specific historical and cultural Western origin) as the laws and theories of science; and 2) principles of natural law have the same objective (metahistorical) validity as mathematical principles. In what follows I will examine these arguments in some detail (...) and argue that both are misplaced. A section of the paper will be devoted to a discussion of arguments relying on the historical and cultural specificity (and intrinsic superiority) of Western science. The conclusion is that both science and mathematics offer little help to anyone wanting to make use of them as paradigms of universality, objectivity, and rationality. Finally, I will draw some consequences for the idea of human rights. (shrink)

De-extinction is the process through which extinct species can be brought back into existence. Although these projects have the potential to cause great harm to animal welfare, discussion on issues surrounding de-extinction have focussed primarily on other issues. In this paper, I examine the potential types of welfare harm that can arise through de-extinction programs, including problems with cloning, captive rearing and re-introduction. I argue that welfare harm should be an important consideration when making decisions on de-extinction projects. Though most (...) of the proposed benefits of these projects are insufficient to outweigh the current potential welfare harm, these problems may be overcome with further development of the technology and careful selection of appropriate species as de-extinction candidates. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explore the empirical agenda of business ethics research from a methodological perspective. It is argued that the quality of empirical research in the field remains relatively poor and unconvincing. Drawing on the distinctions between the two main philosophical positions from which methodologies in the social sciences are derived – positivism and interpretism – it is argued that it is business ethics' tradition of positivist, and highly quantitative approaches which may be at the root of these epistemological (...) problems. Six distinct aspects of business ethics research are identified and assessed according to their methodological impact. Accordingly, it is argued that more interpretive approaches may offer substantial liberating potential in the development of a stronger and more theory-rich empirical base. The author concludes by arguing for greater plurality and diversity in empirical research methodologies in the business ethics field. (shrink)

Simulations are used in very different contexts and for very different purposes. An emerging development is the possibility of using simulations to obtain a more or less representative reproduction of organs or even entire persons. Such simulations are framed and discussed using the term ‘digital twin’. This paper unpacks and scrutinises the current use of such digital twins in medicine and the ideas embedded in this practice. First, the paper maps the different types of digital twins. A special focus is (...) put on the concrete challenges inherent in the interactions between persons and their digital twin. Second, the paper addresses the questions of how far a digital twin can represent a person and what the consequences of this may be. Against the background of these two analytical steps, the paper defines first conditions for digital twins to take on an ethically justifiable form of representation. (shrink)

The use of Ritalin and other stimulant drug treatments for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) raises distinctive moral dilemmas for parents; these moral dilemmas have not been adequately addressed in the bioethics literature. This paper draws upon data from a qualitative empirical study to investigate parents' use of the moral ideal of authenticity as part of their narrative justifications for dosing decisions and actions. I show that therapeutic decisions and actions are embedded in valued cultural ideals about masculinity, self-actualization and success, (...) as well as in moral conceptions of authenticity and personal freedom. I argue that this investigation of parents' moral justifications and dosing dilemmas raises questions about the validity of authenticity as a transcendent moral principle. Moreover, this study demonstrates that in order to be relevant, bioethical analysis of neurocognitive enhancement must engage with ground-up studies of moral principles and decision-making in context. (shrink)

Why are enthymemes so frequent? Are we dumb arguers, smart rhetoricians, or parsimonious reasoners? This paper investigates systematic use of enthymemes, criticizing the application of the principle of charity to their interpretation. In contrast, I propose to analyze enthymematic argumentation in terms of parsimony, i.e. as a manifestation of the rational tendency to economize over scant resources. Consequences of this view on the current debate on enthymemes and on their rational reconstruction are discussed.

This paper draws together two strands in the debate over the existence of mathematical objects. The first strand concerns the notion of extra-mathematical explanation: the explanation of physical facts, in part, by facts about mathematical objects. The second strand concerns the access problem for platonism: the problem of how to account for knowledge of mathematical objects. I argue for the following conditional: if there are extra-mathematical explanations, then the core thesis of the access problem is false. This has implications for (...) nominalists and platonists alike. Platonists can make a case for epistemic access to mathematical objects by providing evidence in favour of the existence of extra-mathematical explanations. Nominalists, by contrast, can use the access problem to cast doubt on the idea that mathematical objects play a substantive role in scientific explanation. (shrink)

It appears that utilitarian arguments in favor of moral vegetarianism cannot justify a complete prohibition of eating meat. This is because, in certain circumstances, forgoing meat will prevent no pain, and so, on utilitarian grounds, we should be opportunistic carnivores rather than moral vegetarians. In his paper, ‘Puppies, pigs, and people: Eating meat and marginal cases,’ Alastair Norcross argues that causal impotence arguments like these are misguided. First, he presents an analogous situation, the case of chocolate mousse a-la-bama, in order (...) to argue that we, individually, are not causally impotent. Second, Norcross offers a threshold argument in which he argues that while we may individually be causally impotent, when we adopt moral vegetarianism in concert with others, we become causally potent in preventing harms by factory farming. We argue that Norcross's responses ultimately fail to address the causal impotence objection. The former argument fails because it vastly oversimplifies the world in which we find ourselves. Given the size of factory farming, the reasonable conclusion is that we are in fact powerless to prevent harms to animals in factory farms in many or most cases. The latter argument fails because even if collective action will have an impact on factory farming, this does not provide us with an argument against being carnivores in certain circumstances. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that a phenomenological concept of normality can be helpful to understand the experiential side of post-truth phenomena. How is one’s longing for, or sense of, normality related to what we deem as real, true, or objective? And to what extent is the sense for “what (really) is” related to our beliefs of what should be? To investigate this, I combine a phenomenological approach to lived normality with a genealogical account of represented normality that sheds light (...) on the social and historical contingency of definitions of normality and their intertwinement with structures of power. It is my contention that such an approach to normality is well-suited to investigate how is and ought are interrelated within subjective experience and practice. This might in turn help overcoming one-sided debates on post-truth, which rely on the strict opposition of objectivity versus subjectivity, universal truth versus subjective experience, facticity versus meaning, or reason versus stupidity. It also sheds light on the ambivalent or contested status of experience within debates of post-truth and feminist theory. I will conclude that post-truth is related to what Hannah Arendt has termed the lack of a common world (i.e., normality), arguing that a plurality of experiences is needed to let the “real world” stand its ground again. (shrink)

In the creep literature, time has often been elevated from its role as a means of ordering events to that of a fully fledged state variable. It is hoped that this paper will highlight the dangers of this approach and will illustrate the proper role of time in mathematical physics, emphasizing the important distinction between coordinate and state variables.

The synthetic theory of evolution has gone stale and an expanding or (re-)widening of it towards a new synthesis has been announced. This time, development and culture are supposed to join the synthesis bandwagon. In this article, I distinguish between four kinds of synthesis that are involved when we extend the evolutionary synthesis towards culture: the integration of fields, the heuristic generation of interfields, the expansion of validity, and the creation of a common frame of discourse or ‘big-picture’. These kinds (...) of synthesis are connected to epistemic values that are used to evaluate theories as well as analogies. A review of these epistemic values and the kinds of synthesis connected to them shall illustrate two points. First, that the discussions about culture and evolution exhibit an epistemic bias towards synthesis, even if, as history shows, synthesis and well as isolation can be fruitful epistemic strategies in science. The paper thus contains some critical notes on the value of synthesis in science. Second, reviewing the kinds of synthesis and values involved allows for a new perspective on the analogies involved in theories of cultural evolution. It is a perspective that makes the criteria with which these theories are usually evaluated explicit. With this we can compare the different standpoints people have taken on the usefulness of theories of cultural evolution at a higher level. Differences arise because of different epistemic values assumed. (shrink)

Integrating the concept of place meanings into protected area management has been difficult. Across a diverse body of social science literature, challenges in the conceptualization and application of place meanings continue to exist. However, focusing on relationships in the context of participatory planning and management allows protected area managers to bring place meanings into professional judgment and practice. This paper builds on work that has outlined objectives and recommendations for bringing place meanings, relationships, and lived experiences to the forefront of (...) land-use planning and management. It proposes the next steps in accounting for people’s relationships with protected areas and their relationships with protected area managers. Our goals are to 1) conceptualize this relationship framework; 2) present a structure for application of the framework; and 3) demonstrate the application in a specific protected area context, using an example from Alaska. We identify three key target areas of information and knowledge that managers will need to sustain quality relationship outcomes at protected areas. These targets are recording stories or narratives, monitoring public trust in management, and identifying and prioritizing threats to relationships. The structure needed to apply this relationship-focused approach requires documenting and following individual relationships with protected areas in multiple ways. The goal of this application is not to predict relationships, but instead to gain a deeper understanding of how and why relationships develop and change over time. By documenting narratives of individuals, managers can understand how relationships evolve over time and the role they play in individual’s lives. By understanding public trust, the shared values and goals of individuals and managers can be observed. By identifying and prioritizing threats, managers can pursue efforts that steward relationships while allowing for the protection of experiences and meanings. The collection and interpretation of these three information targets can then be integrated and implemented within planning and management strategies to achieve outcomes that are beneficial for resource protection, visitor experiences, and stakeholder engagement. By investing in this approach, agencies will gain greater understanding and usable knowledge towards the achievement of quality relationships. It represents an investment in both place relationships and public relations. By integrating such an approach into planning and management, protected area managers can represent the greatest diversity of individual place meanings and connections. relationships, place meanings, trust, narratives, planning, protected areas. (shrink)

As a part of an attempt to account for the status of Marxism today, this paper explores Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of the Act. Given that, to a point, this theory constitutes a neutralization of certain postmodernist challenges, the paper presents its materialistic-ontological assumptions and genealogically restores its most important conceptual components. It also questions the link between Žižek’s Theory of the Act and the communist Idea and partially elucidates the differences between Žižek’s stance and the post-Marxism of authors such as (...) Ernesto Laclau and Alain Badiou. The hypothesis that guides this work is that even though it is not part of the paradigm of historical materialism, Žižek’s Theory of the Act essentially represents a reinvigoration of Marxist theory and a strengthening of the political-emancipatory practice that the times in which we live require. (shrink)

This paper outlines a theoretical context for research into ‘the subject of ethics’ in terms of how students come to see themselves as self-reflective actors. I maintain that the ‘subject of ethics’, or ethical subjectivity, has been overlooked as a necessary aspect of creating politically transformative spaces in education. At the heart of egalitarian politics lies a fundamental tension between the equality of voices and the notion that one way of being or one voice may be deemed more legitimate than (...) another; which in turn puts the equality of beings into question. Building from Michel Foucault’s work regarding ethics and subjectivity, I suggest that a ‘subject of ethics’ can be viewed, in part, as a series of relations of self that form the horizon upon which a subject comes to work on themselves relative to moral codes and power relations. Ethical relations of self can be a useful concept for those interested in educational research that furthers social and ecological justice. In the conclusion of this paper I also discuss the limitations of locating ethics entirely within a constituted human subject. (shrink)

This paper critically explores the way in which ‘trafficking’ has been framed as a problem involving organized criminals and ‘sex slaves’, noting that this approach obscures both the relationship between migration policy and ‘trafficking’, and that between prostitution policy and forced labour in the sex sector. Focusing on the UK, it argues that far from representing a step forward in terms of securing rights and protections for those who are subject to exploitative employment relations and poor working conditions in the (...) sex trade, the current policy emphasis on sex slaves and ‘victims of trafficking’ limits the state's obligations towards them. (shrink)

One of the most perplexing paradoxes of toleration concerns the ‘tolerant racist’. According to most current definitions of toleration, a person is considered tolerant if, and only if, 1) he refrains from interfering with something 2) he deeply disapproves of, 3) in spite of having the power to interfere. Hence, a racist who refrains from discriminating against members of races he considers inferior despite having the power to do so, should be considered a tolerant person. Moreover, a person can apparently (...) become more tolerant by increasing the range or degree of his racist disapproval, just as long as he continues not to act against the objectionable object. This paper examines this strongly counterintuitive implication of the standard concept of toleration, by considering in full the meaning and nature of racism(s) and focusing on the power component of toleration. It explores both an exclusive solution and an accommodating solution to the paradox. The first part of the paper shows that none of the standard agent-oriented views of racism — doxastic, dispositional or volitional — adequately supports either solution. The second part of the paper turns to another, structural account of racism and toleration. It suggests that taking into account an institutional interpretation of toleration as non-domination and adopting a more socio-political perspective on racism provides an accommodating solution to the paradox. (shrink)

Integrating the concept of place meanings into protected area management has been difficult. Across a diverse body of social science literature, challenges in the conceptualization and application of place meanings continue to exist. However, focusing on relationships in the context of participatory planning and management allows protected area managers to bring place meanings into professional judgment and practice. This paper builds on work that has outlined objectives and recommendations for bringing place meanings, relationships, and lived experiences to the forefront of (...) land-use planning and management. It proposes the next steps in accounting for people’s relationships with protected areas and their relationships with protected area managers. Our goals are to 1) conceptualize this relationship framework; 2) present a structure for application of the framework; and 3) demonstrate the application in a specific protected area context, using an example from Alaska. We identify three key target areas of information and knowledge that managers will need to sustain quality relationship outcomes at protected areas. These targets are recording stories or narratives, monitoring public trust in management, and identifying and prioritizing threats to relationships. The structure needed to apply this relationship-focused approach requires documenting and following individual relationships with protected areas in multiple ways. The goal of this application is not to predict relationships, but instead to gain a deeper understanding of how and why relationships develop and change over time. By documenting narratives of individuals, managers can understand how relationships evolve over time and the role they play in individual’s lives. By understanding public trust, the shared values and goals of individuals and managers can be observed. By identifying and prioritizing threats, managers can pursue efforts that steward relationships while allowing for the protection of experiences and meanings. The collection and interpretation of these three information targets can then be integrated and implemented within planning and management strategies to achieve outcomes that are beneficial for resource protection, visitor experiences, and stakeholder engagement. By investing in this approach, agencies will gain greater understanding and usable knowledge towards the achievement of quality relationships. It represents an investment in both place relationships and public relations. By integrating such an approach into planning and management, protected area managers can represent the greatest diversity of individual place meanings and connections. relationships, place meanings, trust, narratives, planning, protected areas. (shrink)

:This paper examines the transmediation of sacrifice in the Isuma “Fast Runner” trilogy, focusing in particular upon The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. In this film the impact of the introduction of Christianity upon traditional Inuit culture in the 1920s sets the stage for literal and metaphorical sacrifice, tied inexorably to the parallel threat of conversion and the transvaluation of traditional shamanistic beliefs. In the process, the film maintains a critical stance with respect to both the ethnographic perspective of the outsider, (...) which it incorporates, and to its own preferred Inuit perspective. My reading of the transmediation of sacrifice in The Journals rests upon the relation between sacrificial substitution and the notion of communion, in both doctrinaire and more secular senses. I argue that the film presents the Inuit characters negotiating a necessary détente with Christian culture, both at the cost of traditional beliefs and in the form of the co-optation and transmediation of ritual within the film's story, a process mirrored in the appropriation of the digital video medium in the fictional re-creation of these events. (shrink)

Taking precautions to prevent harm. Whether principe de précaution, Vorsorgeprinzip, føre-var prinsippet, or försiktighetsprincip, etc., the precautionary principle embodies the idea that public and private interests should act to prevent harm. Furthermore, the precautionary principle suggests that action should be taken to limit, regulate, or prevent potentially dangerous undertakings even in the absence of absolute scientific proof. Such measures also naturally entail taking economic costs into account. With the environmental disasters of the 1980s, the precautionary principle established itself as an (...) operational concept. On the eve of the 1997 Climate Summit in Kyoto, precaution, as the precautionary principle is often referred to, has now become a key legal principle in environmental law, in general, and in current international climate negotiations, in particular, attempts to understand why. It examines in turn the natural affinity between the precautionary principle and climate change, reviews a series of issues which the principle raises, and discusses avenues which it opens paper, climate change fulfills the theoretical requirements set for the application of the precautionary principle. It comes as no surprise that the actual application of the precautionary principle in the context of climate change raises high political stakes. As a result, climate change science, in particular, and science, in general, is under the fire of politically-motivated scientific skeptics. Thus, by way of the counter-measures which must be put into effect, the precautionary principle calls for a greater sense of responsibility on the part of scientists and the public at large. Specifically, from scientists, it demands perseverance in rigor, excellence in communication, and committment to education. However, even if special efforts are made to implement the precautionary principle in the context of climate change, the success of climate change mitigation will constitute no test of the validity, the usefulness, or the efficiency of the precautionary principle. Indeed, the degree to which climate change mitigation succeeds only provides a measure of our kind's ability to manage responsibly the global commons which we inherited from our ancestors and which our generation enjoys, the global commons which we will pass on to today's children and to generations to come. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare Margaret Cavendish’s argument for the view that colours of objects are inseparable from their ‘physical’ qualities with George Berkeley’s argument for the view that secondary qualities of objects are inseparable from their primary qualities. By reconstructing their respective arguments, I show that both thinkers rely on the ‘inconceivability principle’: the claim that inconceivability entails impossibility. That is, both premise their arguments on the claim that it is impossible to conceive of an object that has size (...) and shape but no colour. I argue that Cavendish, like Berkeley, accepts the inconceivability principle on the grounds that it is impossible to conceive of something that could not, in principle, be perceived and, in turn, that something imperceptible could not possibly exist. As such, I argue that both Cavendish and Berkeley are committed to an ‘empiricist’ modal epistemology: one wherein our knowledge of what it is possible to perceive informs us about what could possibly exist. For this reason, I conclude that there is more empiricism in Cavendish’s epistemology than secondary literature to date suggests. (shrink)

Peerages and baronetages were successful commercial directories sold by a number of prominent London booksellers from the beginning of the 18th century. They provided an account of most titled families (peers as well as baronets). As serial publications, they were intended for a larger public in need of identification tools in a context of expanding urban sociability and of major recomposition within the elites. In these pocket books, there were no longer the elaborate tree diagrams that had ornamented most of (...) the visitation books of the College of Arms, and which still could be found among ancient family papers. This transition was required for technical, commercial, and also ideological reasons. The selling point for publishers was to provide an up-to-date account of the ‘modern’ families, which could be better achieved through alphabetical listings, biographical discourses, or tabular charts. However, this formal reconfiguration led to many criticisms. These family directories were accused of compromising the dignity of titled families. The idea of a lost Golden Age when ancient lineages had been exhibited on stone, wooden panels, or vellum regained some appeal among social commentators. After 1760, with the renewal of radicalism and the onset of the age of revolutions, tree thinking came to be rehabilitated, but was also reinvented to better defend and naturalise social hierarchies. In this context, trees were increasingly used as powerful national emblems and less as dynastic emblems. The changing fortunes of family trees in 18th-century British prints enable us to reflect on the ideological aspects of the visualisation of kinship. (shrink)

The idea that quotidian, middle-level concepts typically have internal structure -- definitional, statistical, or whatever -- plays a central role in practically every current approach to cognition. Correspondingly, the idea that words that express quotidian, middle-level concepts have complex representations "at the semantic level" is recurrent in linguistics; it's the defining thesis of what is often called "lexical semantics," and it unites the generative and interpretive traditions of grammatical analysis. Recently, Hale and Keyser (1993) have provided a budget of sophisticated (...) and persuasive arguments for the claim that `denominal' verbs are typically derived from phrases containing the corresponding nouns: `singvtr' is supposed to come from something like DO A SONG; `saddlevtr' is supposed to come from something like PUT A SADDLE ON; `shelvevtr' is supposed to come from something like PUT ON A SHELF, and so forth.1 We think these are among the most persuasive arguments for lexical decomposition in the linguistics literature. Still, this paper is going to claim that they are finally unconvincing. In Part 1, we will show that there are quite serious arguments of a familiar kind against the decompositional analyses that Hale and Keyser (henceforth, HK) propose; in Part 2 we'll show that the arguments that HK offer in favor of their analyses are flawed. (shrink)

In William Angoff's recent article in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, he presented several thought-provoking philosophical issues of concern to measurement-oriented psychologists. The first of these issues, the notion of test and item bias, is the topic of the present paper. In his article, he reports that average score differences in the performance on many cognitive tests have appeared among racial or ethnic groups. Twenty to thirty years ago, differential psychologists, summarizing and critically evaluating studies demonstrating performance differences on tests and (...) in other behavior among cultural, ethnic and racial groups, agreed that such group differences indeed existed, but that causal interpretations differed markedly among the investigators at the time. More recently, the focus has shifted to what has been termed test fairness, with the focus falling more upon tests and their inadequacies than the behavior which underlies the tests. Similar findings and conclusions were frequently advanced in physiological tests of strength and endurance which are often used for civil service positions such as those in the fire fighting service and which frequently disadvantage women. The question raised is simply whether the discrimination is fair or not; that is, do given test score differences reflect variation in performance between groups which are reflective of true behavioral differences or are these differences artifactual and embedded in the assessment device itself, whether intentional or not. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

I am seeking volunteer referees to review 7 draft articles submitted to Libertarian Papers. I list the titles and Abstracts of a few of them below. If you are potentially interested in reviewing any of these, or if you have any particular referee suggestions for any of them, please contact me. I’d be happy to [...].

Please feel free to send me nominations for the best LP article from 2010. Alford Prize Awarded for Best Libertarian Article in 2009 The O.P. Alford III Prize in Libertarian Scholarship is a $1000 prize awarded by the Mises Institute each year for the the article published in the preceding volume of Libertarian Papers that [...].

This paper gives an overview of pro-active meeting assistants, what they are and when they can be useful. We explain how to develop such assistants with respect to requirement definitions and elaborate on a set of Wizard of Oz experiments, aiming to find out in which form a meeting assistant should operate to be accepted by participants, and whether the meeting effectiveness and efficiency can be improved by an assistant at all. This paper gives an overview of pro-active meeting assistants, (...) what they are and when they can be useful. We explain how to develop such assistants with respect to requirement definitions and elaborate on a set of Wizard of Oz experiments, aiming to find out in which form a meeting assistant should operate to be accepted by participants, and whether the meeting effectiveness and efficiency can be improved by an assistant at all. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Unauthorized Propositions”The Federalist Papers and Constituent PowerJason Frank (bio)The PEOPLE, who are the sovereigns of the State, possess a power to alter it when and in what way they please. To say otherwise is to make the thing created, greater than the power that created it.—Anonymous, Federal Gazette, March 18, 1789The we of the Constitution’s “We the People” was as much of an artificial construct as the Constitution (...) itself, it was its creature, not its creator.—Sheldon Wolin, The Presence of the PastIn Federalist No. 40, James Madison engaged the vexing question of whether the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 had been properly authorized “to frame and propose” the new Federal Constitution of the United States [83]. Madison explored there “the ground on which the Convention stood” [264], which he identified as the purportedly solid foundation of the people themselves [Morgan 272]. Federalist No. 40 offers a theoretically probing yet avowedly practical reflection on the availability of foundations and on dilemmas of popular authorization in times of constitutional crisis; it may be productively read as an exemplary eighteenth-century American reflection on a state of exception. As such, Federalist No. 40 provides helpful orientation to how the popular constitutionalism of the revolutionary and postrevolutionary years confronted and navigated—if never fully resolved—some of the most insistent paradoxes of modern democratic theory.In No. 40, Madison was preoccupied with the theoretical and historical dilemmas surrounding the eighteenth-century American conception of the people’s constituent power—that is, the ultimate power of the people to alter fundamental law “when and in what way they please.”1 However, in contrast to most contemporary theoretical approaches to constituent power—whether influenced by the political theology of Carl Schmitt or the immanentist optimism of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri—Madison’s navigation of the attending dilemmas of popular authorization resisted the turn to metaphysical abstraction and the appeal to a transcendent or immanent absolute. In his approach to the problem of constituent power, Madison insisted on the productive irreducibility of institutional mediation and the performative elicitation of a retrospective authorization by the people. While accepting the absence of a firm ground of legal authorization (the unbroken authority of law), Madison also rejected a wholly extralegal or unmediated appeal to the people themselves (the transcendental appeal to spirit beyond the letter of the law). Instead, he endorsed a political navigation of these dilemmas in medias res. Confronting [End Page 103] the dilemma of constituency—how does the people give birth to itself as a self-authorizing subject?—Madison shifted the register of discourse away from the formal and juridical and toward the informally ethicopolitical. Doing so, he was able to affirm a rupture in law while simultaneously enlisting another register of normative continuity. This essay outlines Madison’s productive encounter with these dilemmas in The Federalist, and suggests the relevance of his example for recent debates in democratic theory, too often captivated by the formal rubrics of “norm” and “exception.”1The government which [the Federalists] are so enthusiastically fond of is as yet an ideal phantom, a chimera, a mere theory detested and execrated by every true friend to government.—“One of the People,” Carlisle Gazette, January 9, 1788Madison wrote Federalist No. 40 as a response to widespread and persuasive Anti-Federalist claims that the Philadelphia Convention had exceeded the mandate granted to it by the Annapolis Convention of 1786 and the Congressional Act of 1787, both of which authorized the meeting of the Philadelphia Convention “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation” [259]. While the Philadelphia Convention was, in Bruce Ackerman’s words, “expressly subordinated to existing institutions and procedures” [Ackerman 43], it had nonetheless produced an entirely new constitutional text and—theoretically more problematic for Madison—an entirely new procedure for its popular ratification [see also Ackerman and Katyal]. Under Article 13 of the Articles of Confederation, constitutional reform could come about only through the unanimous assent of the thirteen state legislatures.2 Under the Philadelphia Convention’s plan, the ratification of the proposed constitution would bypass the constituted power of the state legislatures and appeal instead to the... (shrink)

We receive a variety of submissions on various topics of libertarian scholarship, such as philosophy, economics, legal theory, political science, history, and social/cultural analysis. If you are interested in serving as an occasional referee, please contact me privately at [email protected].

Libertarian Papers is pleased to announce that Matthew McCaffrey has agreed to serve as the journal’s Editor. A PhD candidate at the University of Angers, Mises Institute fellow, and winner of the 2010 Lawrence W. Fertig Prize in Austrian Economics, Matt previously served as the journal’s Managing Editor. He may be reached here. Stephan Kinsella [...].

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the distinction between justified and unjustified religious diversity, a problem that Dirk-Martin Grube only hinted at in his article ‘Justified Religious Difference.’ This article’s focus is not so much on the epistemological question of justifying religious difference, but on how to deal with it in the societal sphere. This implies that religions and religious diversity will be approached from a practical perspective, that is, as ways of life. I start (...) by examining the opportunities and problems of religious diversity, opposing a universalist and a particularist view on this issue. Religious difference is an opportunity, because it is intertwined with creativity and innovation, but it is also a problem, because it confronts us with incompatible judgments, irreconcilable values, and contrary principles. Notwithstanding the legitimate objections that can be raised against the particularist position, the above observations seriously undermine Grube’s idea that the distinction between justified and unjustified religious difference can be made unambiguously, because of the heterogeneous character of the idea of justification itself. In order to deal with this issue, I propose a re-examination of the idea of tolerance, defined as a virtue: I disapprove of your manner of living, but I respect in it your liberty to live as you please and I recognize your right to manifest it publicly. But this virtue makes only sense against the background of the intolerable, which is the translation of the idea of unjustified religious difference into the language of the public debate. This idea serves as an always fragile limit to tolerance. (shrink)

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As early as page 2 in Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion, Stedman Jones boldly highlights that “he invention of what came to be called as ‘Marxism’ was initially in large part the creation of Engels in his books and pamphlets, beginning with Anti-Dühring in 1878”. He further adds, as keepers of Marx’s works, the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party, including August Bebel, Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, and Franz Mehring, were also responsible for further mystifications of Marx by hiding (...) the embarrassing gaps between the image and reality of Marx and his theory. This was ostensibly done in order to protect the party – which had Marx as its founding theorist – from being attacked and discredited by the ruling power which was the imperial government of Wilhelmine Germany. Jones subsequently states, “From the beginning, what came to be called as ‘Marxism’ had been built upon an unambiguously selective view of what was to count as theory, not only in relation to would-be heretics, but also in relation to Marx himself”. Afterwards he reveals a content from Bebel’s letter to Kautsky: “By the way, I want to tell you – but please keep absolutely quiet about it – that some of the letters were not published, above all, because they were too strong for us”. These punchlines are more than enough to shake the general understanding of Marx and “Marxism” to acclaiming Marxists and critical theorists alike. (shrink)

: I take issue with the view that libertarian theory does not imply any particular stand on abortion. Liberty is the absence of interference with people’s wills—interests, wishes, and desires. Only entities that have such are eligible for the direct rights of libertarian theory. Foetuses do not; and if aborted, there is then no future person whose ….