Halpern's Actual Causality is an extended development of an account of causal relations among individual events in the tradition that analyzes causation as difference making. The book is notable for its efforts at formal clarity, its exploration of "normality" conditions, and the wealth of examples it uses and whose provenance it traces. Unfortunately, the various normality conditions considered undermine the capacity of the basic theory to plausibly treat various cases Halpern considers, and the unalloyed basic theory yields implausible results in (...) simple cases of overdetermination, which are not remedied by Halpern's probabilistic version of his theory or unambiguously by the variety of normality conditions Actual Causality entertains. (shrink)

The dominance of agency theory can reduce our collective scope to analyse private equity in all its diversity and depth. We contribute to theorisation of private equity by developing a contrasting perspective that draws on a rich tradition of virtue ethics. In doing so, we juxtapose 'private equity' with 'public good' to develop points of rhetorical and analytical contrast. We develop a typology differentiating various forms of private equity, and focus on the 'take private' form. These takeovers are where private (...) equity funds are used to buy all a firm's publicly listed shares. Take private deals reduce reporting requirements and lessen the amount of public scrutiny a firm comes under. They allow greater control of a firm's assets and resources but also have effects in terms of the wider social fabric. The 'public good' and virtue ethics offer an alternative basis for theorisation of these deals. This provides a needed contrast to accounts of private equity based on agency theory. (shrink)

Research has downplayed the complex discursive processes and practices through which decisions are constructed and blurs the relationship between macro- and micro-levels. The article argues for a critical and ecologically valid approach that articulates how discursive practices are influenced by, and in turn shape, the organizational settings in which they occur. It makes a methodological contribution using decision-making episodes of a senior management team meeting of a multinational company to demonstrate the insights that can be obtained from embedding the Discourse-Historical (...) Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis within a longitudinal ethnography. The approach illuminates the latent and intricate power dynamics and range of potentials of agents, triangulating micro-level discursive strategies with macro-level historical sources and background knowledge on the social and political fields. The article also makes a theoretical contribution by demonstrating the dependency of decision outcomes on often unpredictable and subtle changes in the power—context relationship. (shrink)

What is war, and how should it be waged? Are there restraints on its conduct? What can philosophers contribute to the study of warfare? Arguing that the practice of war requires a sound philosophical understanding, Ian Clark writes a fascinating synthesis of the philosophy, history, political theory, and contemporary strategy of warfare. Examining the traditional doctrines of the "just" and the "limited" war with fresh insight, Clark also addresses the applicability of these ideas to the modern issues of (...) war crimes, choice of targets, guerrilla warfare, and nuclear strategy and deterrence. (shrink)

In this re-written classic text, the author provides a critical review of the various different ways in which ethical debates about warfare are already framed, and asks probing questions about how we think about war, and the changes it is undergoing.

We introduce the CUBISM system for the analysis and deep understanding of multi-participant dialogues. CUBISM brings together two typically separate forms of discourse analysis: semantic analysis and sociolinguistic analysis. In the paper proper, we describe and illustrate major components of the CUBISM system, and discuss the challenge posed by the system’s ultimate purpose, which is to automatically detect anomalous changes in participants’ expressed or implied beliefs about the world and each other, including shifts toward or away from cultural and community (...) norms. (shrink)

We introduce the CUBISM system for the analysis and deep understanding of multi-participant dialogues. CUBISM brings together two typically separate forms of discourse analysis: semantic analysis and sociolinguistic analysis. In the paper proper, we describe and illustrate major components of the CUBISM system, and discuss the challenge posed by the system’s ultimate purpose, which is to automatically detect anomalous changes in participants’ expressed or implied beliefs about the world and each other, including shifts toward or away from cultural and community (...) norms. (shrink)

Involuntary autobiographical memories are typically discussed in the context of negative memories such as trauma ‘flashbacks’. However, IAMs occur frequently in everyday life and are predominantly positive. In spite of this, surprisingly little is known about how such positive IAMs arise. The trauma film paradigm is often used to generate negative IAMs. Recently an equivalent positive film was developed inducing positive IAMs . The current study is the first to investigate which variables would best predict the frequency of positive IAMs. (...) Higher levels of positive mood change to the film were significantly associated with the number of positive IAMs recorded in the subsequent week. Results demonstrate the importance of positive emotional reaction at the time of an event for subsequent positive IAMs. (shrink)

Social norm transgressions are assumed to be at the root of numerous substantial negative outcomes for transgressors. There is a prevailing notion among lay people and scholars that transgressing social norms can negatively impact one’s mental health. The present research aimed to examine this assumption, focusing on clinically relevant outcomes such as anxiety and depression. The present research further aimed to examine a social cognitive process for these outcomes in the form of fear of negative evaluations as a result of (...) one’s norm transgressing behavior. Specifically, it examined whether it is negative evaluations about ourselves or about those close to us that mediates the effect of social norm transgressions, and whether those may vary as a function of culture. Results of the present research, including a study with a community sample, suggest a positive association between social norm transgressions and psychological distress. Results also suggest that increased fear of negative evaluation mediates that association but does so differently for people from more collectivistic cultures and people from less collectivistic cultures. For people from more collectivistic cultures increased fear of negative evaluation of close others may mediate the association between social norm transgressions and psychological distress. However, for people from less collectivistic cultures that association may be mediated by increased fear of negative evaluation of oneself. Implications for research on consequences of social norm transgressions and cross-cultural differences in perceptions of such consequences are discussed as are practical implications for motivating social norm adherence and the maintenance of constructive social norms. (shrink)

ObjectiveBulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder are eating disorders characterized by recurrent binge eating episodes. Overlap exists between ED diagnostic groups, with BE episodes presenting one clinical feature that occurs transdiagnostically. Neuroimaging of the responses of those with BN and BED to disorder-specific stimuli, such as food, is not extensively investigated. Furthermore, to our knowledge, there have been no previous published studies examining the neural response of individuals currently experiencing binge eating, to low energy foods. Our objective was to examine (...) the neural responses to both low energy and high energy food images in three emotive categories in BN and BED participants.MethodsNineteen females with BN or BED, comprising the binge eating group, and 19 age-matched healthy control ’s completed thorough clinical assessment prior to functional MRI. Neural response to low energy and high energy foods and non-food images was compared between groups using whole-brain exploratory analyses, from which six regions of interest were then selected: frontal, occipital, temporal, and parietal lobes; insula and cingulate.ResultsIn response to low energy food images, the BEG demonstrated differential neural responses to all three low energy foods categories compared to HCs. Correlational analyses found a significant association between frequency of binge episodes and diminished temporal lobe and greater occipital lobe response. In response to high energy food images, compared to HC’s, the BEG demonstrated significantly decreased neural activity in response to all high energy food images. The HC’s had significantly greater neural activity in the limbic system, occipital lobe, temporal lobe, frontal lobe, and limbic system in response to high energy food images.ConclusionResults in the low energy food condition indicate that binge frequency may be related to increased aberrant neural responding. Furthermore, differences were found between groups in all ROI’s except the insula. The neural response seen in the BEG to disgust food images may indicate disengagement with this particular stimuli. In the high energy food condition, results demonstrate that neural activity in BN and BED patients may decrease in response to high energy foods, suggesting disengagement with foods that may be more consistent with those consumed during a binge eating episode. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

Hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences (HHEs) accompanying sleep paralysis (SP) are often cited as sources of accounts of supernatural nocturnal assaults and paranormal experiences. Descriptions of such experiences are remarkably consistent across time and cultures and consistent also with known mechanisms of REM states. A three-factor structural model of HHEs based on their relations both to cultural narratives and REM neurophysiology is developed and tested with several large samples. One factor, labeled Intruder, consisting of sensed presence, fear, and auditory and visual (...) hallucinations, is conjectured to originate in a hypervigilant state initiated in the midbrain. Another factor, Incubus, comprising pressure on the chest, breathing difficulties, and pain, is attributed to effects of hyperpolarization of motoneurons on perceptions of respiration. These two factors have in common an implied alien ''other'' consistent with occult narratives identified in numerous contemporary and historical cultures. A third factor, labeled Unusual Bodily Experiences, consisting of floating/flying sensations, out-of-body experiences, and feelings of bliss, is related to physically impossible experiences generated by conflicts of endogenous and exogenous activation related to body position, orientation, and movement. Implications of this last factor for understanding of orientational primacy in self-consciousness are considered. Central features of the model developed here are consistent with recent work on hallucinations associated with hypnosis and schizophrenia. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Steve Clarke and Adrian Walsh propose a normative basis for John Dupré’s criticisms of scientific imperialism, namely, that scientific imperialism can cause a discipline to fail to progress in ways that it otherwise would have. This proposal is based on two presuppositions: one, that scientific disciplines have developmental teleologies, and two, that these teleologies are optimal. I argue that we should reject both of these presuppositions and so conclude that Clarke and Walsh’s proposal (...) is insufficiently warranted for it to provide a normative basis for criticisms of scientific imperialism. (shrink)

A central figure in Western history and American political thought, Thomas Paine continues to provoke debate among politicians, activists, and scholars. People of all ideological stripes are inspired by his trenchant defense of the rights and good sense of ordinary individuals, and his penetrating critiques of arbitrary power. This volume contains Paine’s explosive _Common Sense_ in its entirety, including the oft-ignored Appendix, as well as selections from his other major writings: _The American Crisis_, _Rights of Man,_ and _The Age of (...) Reason. _It also contains several of Paine’s shorter essays. All the documents have been transcribed directly from the originals, making this edition the most reliable one available. Essays by Ian Shapiro, Jonathan Clark, Jane Calvert, and Eileen Hunt Botting bring Paine into sharp focus, illuminating his place in the tumultuous decades surrounding the American and French Revolutions and his larger historical legacy. (shrink)

Little appears to have changed in the western imagining of the Pacific region since ancient times. While metaphors of redemption and condemnation, paradise and paradise lost, utopia and dystopia persist, Australia's place in the Pacific will remain elusive and insecure. The essay is in two parts. The first half discusses the metaphors implicit in the names given to the region, the South Seas, the Pacific and Oceania, and relates their imagining in the early European expeditions of Balboa and Magellan, in (...) Hodges' paintings done on Cook's second voyage in the 18th century, and in conceptualizations of Australian identity from the colonial period to the mid-20th century writing of historians such as Hancock, Barnard and Manning Clark. The second half of the essay traces the repetition of the same metaphors in the theories of de Certeau and Baudrillard, and in the writings of contemporary Australian critics, including McKenzie Wark, Ross Gibson and Paul Carter. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay connects the two critical realist ideas of underlabouring and meta-theory, making the argument that the process of underlabouring and making ‘disclosure and transformation of the deep categorical structures of science and theory’ is ideal for clarifying strata of theory and therefore points of agreement between different practitioners. Using the 1980s debates over feminism in art history, I show how two important interlocutors – T. J. Clark and Griselda Pollock – used Marxist meta-theory to establish a baseline on (...) which their domain-specific concerns might diverge. A return to this sense of shared agreement and disagreement is urged. (shrink)

Qualitative studies on assisted reproductive technology commonly focus on the perspectives of participants living in major metropolises. In doing so, the experiences of those living outside major cities, and the unique way conditions of spatiality shape access to treatment, are elided. In this paper, we examine how location and regionality in Australia impact upon access and experience of reproductive services. We conducted twelve qualitative interviews with participants residing in regional areas across Australia. We asked participants to discuss their experience with (...) assisted reproduction services and the impacts of location on access, service choice, and experience of care, and analysed the data using reflexive thematic analysis, as outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006, 2019). Participants in this study reported that their location impacted the services available to them, required considerable time in travel, and reduced continuity of care. We draw on these responses to examine the ethical implications of uneven distribution of reproductive services in commercial healthcare settings which rely on market-based mechanisms. (shrink)

In a previous article in this journal, we examined John Dupré's claim that ‘scientific imperialism’ can lead to ‘misguided’ science being considered acceptable. Here, we address criticisms raised by Ian J. Kidd and Uskali Mäki against that article. While both commentators take us to be offering our own account of scientific imperialism that goes beyond that developed by Dupré, and go on to criticise what they take to be our account, our actual ambitions were modest. We intended to ‘explicate the (...) sense in which the term is used by Dupré’ and to ‘identify the normative content of his critique of scientific imperialism’. We made no claim to have developed our own account of scientific imperialism that went further than what was implicit in Dupré's work already. However, that said, the discussions presented by both Kidd and Mäki raise important general issues about how the idea of scientific imperialism should be understood and framed. Here, we offer our considered responses to Kidd's and Maki's discussions of scientific imperialism. (shrink)

Il concetto di legittimità è al tempo stesso definito e indefinito, chiaro e sfuggente. Da un lato, esso evoca immediatamente e spontaneamente un sentimento di approvazione, perché chiaramente collegato nel linguaggio comune a un giudizio valutativo positivo. Dall’altro lato, se analizzato da vicino, il suo contenuto appare sfuggente, polisemico, controverso. Questo ne fa una categoria potente dal punto di vista politico ed estremamente affascinante da un punto di vista scientifico. Nelle pagine seguenti verranno analizzate le teorie di tre autori che (...) si sono confrontati con questo concetto indagando uno degli ambiti in cui la dicotomia sopra presentata è più evidente: quello internazionale. Si tratta della teoria di Ian Clark sulla legittimità nella società internazionale, della prospettiva interciviltà sul diritto internazionale proposta da Onuma Yasuaki e della riflessione di Antony Anghie sullo sviluppo dei principi fondamentali del diritto internazionale e il loro rapporto con il colonialismo. Come vedremo, si tratta di indagini tra loro fortemente eterogenee, e che non sempre fanno del concetto di legittimità internazionale l’oggetto principale o esplicito delle proprie ricerche. Nel confronto tra queste teorie che proporrò nelle mie pagine, il concetto di legittimità internazionale mostrerà tutta la sua complessità e tutto il suo ambiguo rapporto con elementi valutativi. (shrink)

Scientists, both modern and contemporary, commonly try to discern patterns in nature. They also frequently use arguments by analogy to construct an understanding of the natural mechanisms responsible for producing such patterns. For Robert Boyle, the famous clock at Strasbourg provided a perfect paradigm for understanding the connection between these two scientific activities. Unfortunately, it also posed a serious threat to his realistic pretensions. All sorts of internal mechanisms could produce precisely the same movements across the face of a clock. (...) Given God's immense creative capacities, Boyle realized that standard epistemological constraints could never ensure, not even to the least degree of probability, that scientific theories about the unobservable mechanisms of nature were descriptively accurate. Like most moderns, he fortified his epistemology theologically in order to retain his realistic stance. John Locke, however, took counsel from Ecclesiastes to repudiate Boyle's realism, while Samuel Clarke mobilized biblical images to dismiss the clockwork paradigm altogether.A contemporary review of this modern controversy reveals that there is still much to learn from the clock at Strasbourg. Among other things, the realism/antirealism issue is of central importance to understanding today's science, Nancey Murphy's protests notwithstanding. Moreover, the kind of realistic stance that is essential, not only to the truth but to the very intelligibility of certain types of scientific explanation, demands more than the critical realism of Ian Barbour. To be taken seriously, the models used in such contexts must be taken literally. (shrink)

Many people suspect it is morally wrong to watch the graphically violent horror films colloquially known as gorefests. A prominent argument vindicating this suspicion is the Argument from Reactive Attitudes (ARA). The ARA holds that we have a duty to maintain a well-functioning moral psychology, and watching gorefests violates that duty by threatening damage to our appropriate reactive attitudes. But I argue that the ARA is probably unsound. Depictions of suffering and death in other genres typically do no damage to (...) our appropriate reactive attitudes, and until we locate a relevant difference between these depictions in gorefests and in other genres, we should assume that the depictions in gorefests do no damage. I consider and reject three candidate differences: in artistic merit, meaningfulness, and audience orientation. Until genre skeptics identify a relevant difference, we should accept the taste for gory fictions as we would any other morally innocuous variation in taste. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertations about “things in themselves,” namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the “neglected alternative” problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. According to this problem, Kant may be entitled to assert that spatio-temporality is a subjective element of our cognition, but he cannot rule out that it may also be a feature of the objective world. In this paper, I show in a new (...) way how Kant’s view (focusing on his conclusions about space) is not subject to this objection, by showing that he does not make the denial about mind-independent reality that he is typically held to make. The argument develops consequences of a new reading of Kant’s expression “an sich selbst” (‘in itself’; ‘in themselves’). I argue that “an sich selbst” or “per se” has a special, judgment-level role, so that this expression does not form new noun-terms adjectivally. It follows that the conceptual unit of Kant’s “Conclusions” in the TA is simply “things” (Dinge), since “things in themselves” is not a nominal expression; Kant adopts the Wolffian ontological use of “thing” as the basic kind-term for any existent. The arguments that things per se are not in space are arguments that space cannot be a necessary property or relations of things as a kind. I show that this does not involve the positive claim about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection. (shrink)

The Ethics of Need: Agency, Dignity, and Obligation argues for the philosophical importance of the notion of need and for an ethical framework through which we can determine which needs have moral significance. In the volume, Sarah Clark Miller synthesizes insights from Kantian and feminist care ethics to establish that our mutual and inevitable interdependence gives rise to a duty to care for the needs of others. Further, she argues that we are obligated not merely to meet others’ needs (...) but to do so in a manner that expresses "dignifying care," a concept that captures how human interactions can grant or deny equal moral standing and inclusion in a moral community. She illuminates these theoretical developments by examining two cases where urgent needs require a caring and dignifying response: the needs of the elderly and the needs of global strangers. Those working in the areas of feminist theory, women’s studies, aging studies, bioethics, and global studies should find this volume of interest. (shrink)