Recent work has shown that memory for various types of information associated with social targets (impressions based on behaviours and political ideology) influences decisions to approach or avoid those same targets. The current study was intended to better understand the extent that memory for other types of details associated with targets (beliefs and behaviours) affects subsequent approach/avoidance decisions. In this investigation, participants formed impressions of social targets represented by a picture and a sentence (a belief in Experiment 1; either a (...) belief or behaviour in Experiment 2). Later, memory for the impressions and sentences associated with each target was tested. Finally, participants decided whether they would want to approach or avoid each target. Results demonstrated that accurate memory strongly influenced approach/avoidance decisions for targets associated with different types of information (beliefs; behaviours), although there was no difference in the effect of memory between beliefs and behaviours. Overall, results suggest an important role of memory in decisions to approach or avoid others. (shrink)

Post-modernism offers a revolutionary approach to the study of society: in questioning the validity of modern science and the notion of objective knowledge, this movement discards history, rejects humanism, and resists any truth claims. In this comprehensive assessment of post-modernism, Pauline Rosenau traces its origins in the humanities and describes how its key concepts are today being applied to, and are restructuring, the social sciences. Serving as neither an opponent nor an apologist for the movement, she cuts through post-modernism's (...) often incomprehensible jargon in order to offer all readers a lucid exposition of its propositions. Rosenau shows how the post-modern challenge to reason and rational organization radiates across academic fields. For example, in psychology it questions the conscious, logical, coherent subject; in public administration it encourages a retreat from central planning and from reliance on specialists; in political science it calls into question the authority of hierarchical, bureaucratic decision-making structures that function in carefully defined spheres; in anthropology it inspires the protection of local, primitive cultures from First World attempts to reorganize them. In all of the social sciences, she argues, post-modernism repudiates representative democracy and plays havoc with the very meaning of "left-wing" and "right-wing." Rosenau also highlights how post-modernism has inspired a new generation of social movements, ranging from New Age sensitivities to Third World fundamentalism. In weighing its strengths and weaknesses, the author examines two major tendencies within post-modernism, the largely European, skeptical form and the predominantly Anglo-North-American form, which suggests alternative political, social, and cultural projects. She draws examples from anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, law, planning, political science, psychology, sociology, urban studies, and women's studies, and provides a glossary of post-modern terms to assist the uninitiated reader with special meanings not found in standard dictionaries. (shrink)

The present paper will summarise the methodology, the scientific outcomes, and the potential for generalisation of the model of a project that studied cohabitation between human inhabitants and liminal species (in the present case, corvids) in Tartu, Estonia, from October 2021 to July 2023, with a comparative field study in Paris, France. It will present the context and goals of using a semiotic model to map interspecific cohabitation, expose what kind of data can be used to feed the model in (...) a relevant way and how it was done in the case of this project. This paper will present how the model diagnosed issues in cohabitation, both from material nuisances and cultural aspects, insisting on the concept of “hostile minority” that emerged from the study. It will discuss the importance of problem-solving in interspecific cohabitation, what the model suggested regarding this aspect, how this tool can be generalised to a large variety of cases and why it should be used this way. (shrink)

Motivations and decision-making styles that influence participation in biomedical research vary across study types, cultures, and countries. While there is a small amount of literature on informed consent in non-western cultures, few studies have examined how participants make the decision to join research. This study was designed to identify the factors motivating people to participate in biomedical research in a traditional Nigerian community, assess the degree to which participants involve others in the decision-making process, and examine issues of autonomy in (...) decision-making for research. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with 100 adults (50 men, 50 women) in an urban Nigerian community who had participated in a biomedical research study. Subjects were interviewed using a survey instrument.Two-thirds of the respondents reported participating in the biomedical study to learn more about their illness, while 30% hoped to get some medical care. Over three-quarters (78%) of participants discussed the enrolment decision with someone else and 39% reported obtaining permission from a spouse or family member to participate in the study. Women were more than twice as likely as men to report obtaining permission from someone else before participating. More specifically, half of the female participants reported seeking permission from a spouse before enrolling. The findings suggest that informed consent in this community is understood and practised as a relational activity that involves others in the decision making process. Further studies are needed in non-Western countries concerning autonomy, decision-making, and motivation to participate in research studies. (shrink)

Advance care planning is a voluntary process whereby individual preferences, values and beliefs are used to aid a person in planning for end-of-life care. Currently, there is no local instrument to assess an individual’s awareness and attitude towards advance care planning. This study aimed to develop an Advance Care Planning Questionnaire and to determine its validity and reliability among older people in Malaysia. The Advance Care Planning Questionnaire was developed based on literature review. Face and content validity was verified by (...) an expert panel, and piloted among 15 participants. Our study was conducted from October 2013 to February 2014, at an urban primary care clinic in Malaysia. Included were those aged >50 years, who could understand English. A retest was conducted 2 weeks after the first administration. Participants from the pilot study did not encounter any problems in answering the Advance Care Planning Questionnaire. Hence, no further modifications were made. Flesch reading ease was 71. The final version of the Advance Care Planning Questionnaire consists of 66 items: 30 items were measured on a nominal scale, whilst 36 items were measured on a Likert-like scale; of which we were only able to validate 22 items, as the remaining 14 items were descriptive in nature. A total of 245 eligible participants were approached; of which 230 agreed to participate. Factor analysis on the 22 items measured on a Likert-scale revealed four domains: “feelings regarding advance care planning”, “justifications for advance care planning”, “justifications for not having advance care planning: fate and religion”, and “justifications for not having advance care planning: avoid thinking about death”. The Cronbach’s alpha values for items each domain ranged from 0.637–0.915. In test-retest, kappa values ranged from 0.738–0.947. The final Advance Care Planning Questionnaire consisted of 63 items and 4 domains. It was found to be a valid and reliable instrument to assess the awareness and attitude of older people in Malaysia towards advance care planning. (shrink)

Motivations and decision‐making styles that influence participation in biomedical research vary across study types, cultures, and countries. While there is a small amount of literature on informed consent in non‐western cultures, few studies have examined how participants make the decision to join research. This study was designed to identify the factors motivating people to participate in biomedical research in a traditional Nigerian community, assess the degree to which participants involve others in the decision‐making process, and examine issues of autonomy in (...) decision‐making for research. A descriptive cross‐sectional study was conducted with 100 adults (50 men, 50 women) in an urban Nigerian community who had participated in a biomedical research study. Subjects were interviewed using a survey instrument.Two‐thirds of the respondents reported participating in the biomedical study to learn more about their illness, while 30% hoped to get some medical care. Over three‐quarters (78%) of participants discussed the enrolment decision with someone else and 39% reported obtaining permission from a spouse or family member to participate in the study. Women were more than twice as likely as men to report obtaining permission from someone else before participating. More specifically, half of the female participants reported seeking permission from a spouse before enrolling. The findings suggest that informed consent in this community is understood and practised as a relational activity that involves others in the decision making process. Further studies are needed in non‐Western countries concerning autonomy, decision‐making, and motivation to participate in research studies. (shrink)

This study investigated the consistency of the finding that family cohesion and adaptability are significant predictors of adolescent moral thought. To test this, 175 adolescents from a metropolitan population and 146 from an urban fringe population were administered White's revised Moral Authority Scale, Olson et al.'s Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale, and a family demographic questionnaire. A linear relation between family cohesion and family and equality sources of moral authority was found in both samples. However, the significant linear (...) relation between family adaptability and total source influence score found in Sample 1 was not found in Sample 2. This finding might result from the heterogeneity of sociocultural factors across the samples; post hoc analyses suggested that sociocultural factors might play an important moderating role in the relation between family adaptability and adolescent moral thought. (shrink)

Populations in many Midwest cities are declining. To maintain infrastructure with a shrinking tax base, city planners have sometimes proposed to right size such cities, sometimes shutting down or removing infrastructure. Such proposals have been met with fierce resistance among many residents, especially in communities with a history of top-down, racialized city planning. This raises the question: if population loss is a near certainty, is it possible to shrink justly? Much work on environmental injustice focuses on removing bad things from (...) an environment, but in shrinking cities, there is a high likelihood that good things will be removed. Is it at all possible to do this in a manner that promotes justice? In our view, the answer is perhaps. Academics and professional city planners ought not determine the fate of cities, but can develop detailed conceptions of a city’s future for residents to consider. To this end, we build on a theoretical framework—the notion of a “just city”– to sketch a few ideas about what a just shrinking city might look like, identifying both a wider array of hazards, and possible benefits, to reducing city services than is often noticed. (shrink)

Pauline Bebe, diplômée d'anglais et d'études juives à Londres (Leo Baeck College) et à Paris est, depuis dix ans, la première et la seule femme rabbin en France, à Paris, où elle est rabbin d'une des trois communautés de juifs libéraux français. Et c'est en tant que femme et rabbin qu'elle nous livre aujourd'hui un très intéressant Dictionnaire des femmes et du judaïsme, qu'elle a intitulé Isha (premier nom de Eve), féminin de Ish, en hébreu : l'humaine, la femme. (...) Ce n'est pas le premi... (shrink)

A commissioned article about philosopher of ecology Levi Bryant, and his theory of urban space.

The prohibition against using others ‘merely as means’ is one of Kant’s most famous ideas, but it has proven difficult to spell out with precision what it requires of us in practice. In ‘How to Use Someone “Merely as a Means”’ (2020), I proposed a new interpretation of the necessary and sufficient conditions for using someone ‘merely as a means’. I argued that my agent-focused actual consent inter- pretation has strong textual support and significant advantages over other readings of the (...) prohibition. In the present essay, I respond to comments by Claudia Blöser, Irina Schumski, and Oliver Sensen. I first address the role of maxims in relation to the Formula of Humanity, and I spell out in more detail the relation between the agent’s belief and the actual facts pertaining to the consent of the person who is used as means to the agent’s end. I then discuss the importance of the requirement that agents make their use of others conditional on the others’ consent as a matter of moral principle. I next show that the proposed reading of the prohibition, despite its focus on the agent’s maxims and practical reasoning, yields important conclusions about the moral status of external actions, and I address several cases that are pur- ported to spell trouble for my reading of Kant’s prohibition. I end by outlining two challenges for possible (rational) consent readings of the prohibition against using others merely as means. (shrink)

'Autonomy' is originally a political notion. In this chapter, I argue that the political theory Kant defended while he was writing the _Groundwork_ sheds light on the difficulties that are commonly associated with his account of moral autonomy. I argue that Kant's account of the two-tiered structure of political legislation, in his _Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law_, parallels his distinction between two levels of moral legislation, and that this helps to explain why Kant could regard the notion of 'autonomy' as (...) apt to express the principle of morality---at least in the mid 1780s. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE CUSANUS' VISION OF MAN Historical and Historiographical Backgrounds Nicolaus Cusanus has fascinated and puzzled students of late medieval and ...

Professor Vaillancourt has written an unique introductory volume designed to assist non-Marxist scholars and students to understand and evaluate Marxist inquiry. In clear, straightforward language, the author identifies and examines the research of four of the most important contemporary Marxist currents--structuralists, philosophics, materialists, and deductivists. Marxist research-relevant assumptions about epistemology, methodology, and science are scrutinized along with how each of the various Marxist groups goes about conducting research in terms of contemporary social science norms. Examples are offered of how the (...) respective groups' epistemology and methodological assumptions influence their choice of a research strategy and its associated research techniques. The value and utility of the results of Marxist inquiry for defending knowledge claims and producing reasoned policy are also explained. (shrink)

The present article will introduce a proposition of semiotic methodology that can be used to diagnose cohabitation issues in cities between human inhabitants and non-human liminals. This methodology is built on a few sets of data that should be easy to obtain in any important city, and can therefore be utilised in a variety of situations. The different sets of data allow us to map the cohabitation semiosphere (following Hoffmeyer’s meaning of the term) of the situation along three axes: the (...) materiality of the situation, the symbolic significance of the relationship, and the emotional significance of the interaction. These three aspects allow us to see gaps, paradoxes and points of consistency, enabling complex and multi-level understanding of the situation. (shrink)

To this day, the Italian Jewish literary postwar canon is undisputedly ruled by Primo Levi, Giorgio Bassani and Carlo Levi. This study of three major Italian Jewish women writers – Natalia Ginzburg, Clara Sereni and Lia Levi – highlights the presence in Italian literature of a subversive Jewish écriture feminine. These writers’ formal independence and subversive redeployment of narrative and thematic strategies not only consolidated a strong female voice in Italian literature but also produced a specific Italian brand of Jewish (...) literature. The following analysis shows how, through their literary ‘life miniatures’, Ginzburg, Sereni and Levi recentre the domestic everydayness of woman’s personal and historical experience, while, simultaneously, challenging the traditional representations of women’s positions within family and within the public space, as well as interrogating their Jewish identity vis-a-vis their country’s Fascist past. In particular, this article focuses on the way in which all three authors portray themselves as women trying to strike a balance between their Jewish identity and history alive only in the domestic space of their family lives, and their gender identity which is repressed by the patriarchal system both in the house and in the public arena. These women respond by moving ‘out’ of their homes, by exploring the city space – thus turning the ‘urban monster’ into a positive locus for women’s self-determination and political action – and by bonding with other women. Through a demasculinization of the city space, these memoirs re-elaborated notions of family, Judaism, private and historical memory, and they reinvented a poetics for the ‘small virtues’ of woman’s everyday existence while also pioneering a new space in literature that radically changed the direction of patriarchal Italian culture in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz stand out among their seventeenth-century contemporaries as the great rationalist philosophers. Each sought to construct a philosophical system in which theological and philosophical foundations serve to explain the physical, mental and moral universe. Through a careful analysis of their work, Pauline Phemister explores the rationalists seminal contribution to the development of modern philosophy. Broad terminological agreement and a shared appreciation of the role of reason in ethics do not mask the very significant disagreements that led (...) to three distinctive philosophical systems: Cartesian dualism, Spinozan monism and Leibnizian pluralism. The book explores the nature of, and offers reasons for, these differences. Phemister contends that Spinoza and Leibniz developed their systems in part through engagements with and amendment of Cartesian philosophy, and critically analyses the arguments and contributions of all three philosophers. The clarity of the authors discussion of their key ideas including their views on knowledge, universal languages, the nature of substance and substances, bodies, the relation of mind and body, freedom, and the role of distinct perception and reason in morals will make this book the ideal introduction to rationalist philosophy. (shrink)

The Moral Self addresses the question of how morality enters into our lives. Pauline Chazan draws upon psychology, r ral philosophy and literary interpretation to rebut the view that morality's role is to limit desire and control self-love. Perserving the ancients' connection between what is good for the self and what is morally good, Chazan argues that a certain kind of care for the self is central to moral agency. Her intriguing argument begins with a critical examination of the (...) views of Hume, Rousseau and Hegel. The constructive part of the book takes a more unusual turn by synthesising the work on the analyst Heinz Kohut and Aristotle into Chazan's own positive account, which is then illustrated by the use of Russian literature. (shrink)

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3010, Australia and.

SCIENCE CHAPTER I THE CHANGING PATTERN § i THE case presented in this book is not likely to survive criticism in every detail. There never was and there ...

Kant is famous for his universalist moral theory, which emphasizes human dignity, equality, and autonomy. Yet he also defended sexist and (until late in his life) racist views. In this essay, I address the question of how current readers of Kant should deal with Kant’s sexism and racism. I first provide a brief description of Kant’s views on sexual and racial hierarchies, and of the way they intersect. I then turn to the question of whether we should set aside Kant’s (...) sexism and racism or ‘translate’ his egalitarian principles into inegalitarian ones. I argue for a third position, namely, that we should highlight the tensions that pervade Kant’s theory. In the final section, I argue that the use of inclusive language and female pronouns in recent discussions of Kant’s moral and political philosophy carries significant risks. I end by articulating several preconditions for fruitfully using Kant’s moral principles to criticize sexism and racism. (shrink)

The prohibition on using others ‘merely as means’ is one of the best-known and most influential elements of Immanuel Kant’s moral theory. But it is widely regarded as impossible to specify with precision the conditions under which this prohibition is violated. On the basis of a re-examination of Kant’s texts, the article develops a novel account of the conditions for using someone ‘merely as a means’. It is argued that this account has not only strong textual support but also significant (...) philosophical advantages over alternative conceptions. (shrink)

Whatever its implications for the other features of human agency at its best — for moral responsibility, reasons-responsiveness, self-realization, flourishing, and so on—addiction is universally recognized as impairing autonomy. But philosophers have frequently misunderstood the nature of addiction, and therefore have not adequately explained the manner in which it impairs autonomy. Once we recognize that addiction is not incompatible with choice or volition, it becomes clear that none of the Standard accounts of autonomy can satisfactorily explain the way in which (...) it undermines fully autonomous agency. In order to understand to what extent and in what ways the addicted are autonomy-impaired, we need to understand autonomy as consisting, essentially, in the exercise of the capacity forextended agency.It is because addiction undermines extended agency, so that addicts are not able to integrate their lives and pursue a Single conception of the good, that it impairs autonomy. (shrink)

Kant’s most prominent formulation of the Categorical Imperative, known as the Formula of Universal Law (FUL), is generally thought to demand that one act only on maxims that one can will as universal laws without this generating a contradiction. Kant's view is standardly summarized as requiring the 'universalizability' of one's maxims and described in terms of the distinction between 'contradictions in conception' and 'contradictions in the will'. Focusing on the underappreciated significance of the simultaneity condition included in the FUL, I (...) argue, by contrast, that the principle is better read as requiring that one be able to will two things simultaneously without self-contradiction, namely, that a maxim be one's own and that it be a universal law. This amounts to a new interpretation of the FUL with significant interpretive and philosophical advantages. (shrink)

Advance directives convey consumers’ wishes about accepting or refusing future treatment if they become incompetent. They are designed to communicate a competent consumer’s perspective regarding the preferred treatment, should the consumer later become incompetent. There are associated ethical issues for health practitioners and this article considers the features that are relevant to nurses. In New Zealand, consumers have a legal right to use an advance directive that is not limited to life-prolonging care and includes general health procedures. Concerns may arise (...) regarding a consumer’s competence and the document’s validity. Nurses need to understand their legal and professional obligations to comply with an advance directive. What role does a nurse play and what questions arise for a nurse when advance directives are discussed with consumers? This article considers the cultural dimensions, legal boundaries, consumers’ and providers’ perspectives, and the medical and nursing positions in New Zealand. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant viewed himself as the first person to have properly defined the concept of a human ‘race’. He distinguished four human ‘races’ and ranked the.

This chapter proposes a solution to the Trolley Problem in terms of the Kantian prohibition on using a person ‘merely as a means.’ A solution of this type seems impossible due to the difficulties it is widely thought to encounter in the scenario known as the Loop case. The chapter offers a conception of ‘using merely as a means’ that explains the morally relevant difference between the classic Bystander and Footbridge cases. It then shows, contrary to the standard view, that (...) a bystander who diverts the trolley in the Loop case need not be using someone ‘merely as a means’ in doing so. This makes it possible to show why the Loop scenario does not undermine the explanation of the salient moral difference between the Bystander and Footbridge cases. (shrink)

During the 1780s, as Kant was developing his universalistic moral theory, he published texts in which he defended the superiority of whites over non-whites. Whether commentators see this as evidence of inconsistent universalism or of consistent inegalitarianism, they generally assume that Kant's position on race remained stable during the 1780s and 1790s. Against this standard view, I argue on the basis of his texts that Kant radically changed his mind. I examine his 1780s race theory and his hierarchical conception of (...) the races, and subsequently address the question of the significance of these views, especially in the light of Kant's own ethical theory. I then show that during the 1790s Kant restricts the role of the concept of race, and drops his hierarchical account of the races in favour of a more genuinely egalitarian and cosmopolitan view. (shrink)

"Sure to be controversial and of interest to a wide audience in feminist history" (Judith Grant, University of Southern California), this book draws on a wide range of political and intellectual traditions to demonstrate that, only by ...

This is the first comprehensive account of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, highlighting its moral, political, legal, economic, cultural, and psychological aspects. Contrasting Kant’s views with those of his German contemporaries, and relating them to current debates, Pauline Kleingeld sheds new light on texts that have been hitherto neglected or underestimated. In clear and carefully argued discussions, she shows that Kant’s philosophical cosmopolitanism underwent a radical transformation in the mid 1790s and that the resulting theory is philosophically stronger than is usually thought. (...) Using the work of figures such as Fichte, Cloots, Forster, Hegewisch, Wieland, and Novalis, Kleingeld analyzes Kant’s arguments regarding the relationship between cosmopolitanism and patriotism, the importance of states, the ideal of an international federation, cultural pluralism, race, global economic justice, and the psychological feasibility of the cosmopolitan ideal. In doing so, she reveals a broad spectrum of positions in cosmopolitan theory that are relevant to current discussions of cosmopolitanism. -/- TABLE OF CONTENTS: Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. World citizens in their own country: Wieland and Kant on moral cosmopolitanism and patriotism; 2. Universal republic of world citizens or international federation?: Cloots and Kant on global peace; 3. Global hospitality: Kant's concept of cosmopolitan right; 4. Hierarchy or diversity?: Forster and Kant on race, culture, and cosmopolitanism; 5. International trade and justice: Hegewisch and Kant on cosmopolitanism and globalization; 6. Cosmopolitanism and feeling: Novalis and Kant on the development of a universal human community; 7. Kant's cosmopolitanism and current philosophical debates; Bibliography; Index. (shrink)

In this essay, “The Principle of Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory: Its Rise and Fall,” Pauline Kleingeld notes that Kant’s Principle of Autonomy, which played a central role in both the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason, disappeared by the time of the Metaphysics of Morals. She argues that its disappearance is due to significant changes in Kant’s political philosophy. The Principle of Autonomy states that one ought to act as if one were (...) giving universal laws through one’s maxims. The criterion of just legislation that Kant accepted in the mid-1780s does not require any actual consent on the part of the citizens—genuine universality is sufficient for a law to be just. Hence, at that time, Kant could indeed explicate the criterion governing the moral permissibility of one’s maxims by drawing an analogy with the criterion governing the justice of political laws. In the Metaphysics of Morals and in other works in the 1790s, however, he added the further condition that laws must be given with the consent of the citizens. With this further condition, the moral criterion was no longer fully analogous to the criterion for political laws being just. Accordingly, Kleingeld argues, Kant dropped the Principle of Autonomy, which was firmly based on that analogy. (shrink)

The Montagovian hypothesis of direct model-theoretic interpretation of syntactic surface structures is supported by an account of the semantics of binding that makes no use of variables, syntactic indices, or assignment functions & shows that the interpretation of a large portion of so-called variable-binding phenomena can dispense with the level of logical form without incurring equivalent complexity elsewhere in the system. Variable-free semantics hypothesizes local interpretation of each surface constituent; binding is formalized as a type-shifting operation on expressions that denote (...) functions, & sentences containing a free pronoun are analyzed as a function from individuals to propositions having a meaning of type (e,t). Standard weak crossover effects & binding patterns in sentences with multiple pronouns are shown to submit to straightforward type-theoretic treatments that do not rely on indexation. The variable-free semantics smoothly implements full surface compositionality & requires less machinery than standard accounts to handle functional questions, their answers, sloppy inferences, & across-the-board binding. 73 References. J. Hitchcock. (shrink)

Mimicry in the animal kingdom mostly consists of two major types: by appearance or by behaviour. Although these are not the only ones, they will be the main focus of this article. We will develop two purposes of behavioural mimicry in animal death rituals : how it helps understanding a complex concept, and how it teaches to manage intense emotions. We will first show how ritual mimicry is a logical step in the evolution of appearance mimicry and why it can (...) be a major advantage for the species that are able to use it. We will give a brief explanation of the importance of the notion of semiosis in behavioural mimicry. In a few words, we will also describe what a ritual is, how to recognize it and what its different features are. Then, for the first purpose, we will show how understanding what death is, or at least, what it is not – not sleep, nor illness – is difficult. This process starts through mimicry, which raises awareness in the young that a major event is occurring. For the second purpose, we will show how mimicry helps the young learn ritual behaviours and gestures which help distressed adults with managing their emotions in these situations. As such, mimicry is also a way to learn this emotional behaviour management, enabling the young – and future adult – to be less distressed when confronted with loss. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 613-625, July 2022.

Within Kantian ethics and Kant scholarship, it is widely assumed that autonomy consists in the self-legislation of the principle of morality. In this paper, we challenge this view on both textual and philosophical grounds. We argue that Kant never unequivocally claims that the Moral Law is self-legislated and that he is not philosophically committed to this claim by his overall conception of morality. Instead, the idea of autonomy concerns only substantive moral laws, such as the law that one ought not (...) to lie. We argue that autonomy, thus understood, does not have the paradoxical features widely associated with it. Rather, our account highlights a theoretical option that has been neglected in the current debate on whether Kant is best interpreted as a realist or a constructivist, namely that the Moral Law is an a priori principle of pure practical reason that neither requires nor admits of being grounded in anything else. (shrink)

So‐called downshifters seek more meaningful lives by decreasing the amount of time they devote to work, leaving more time for the valuable goods of friendship, family and personal development. But though these are indeed meaning‐conferring activities, they do not have the right structure to count as superlatively meaningful. Only in work – of a certain kind – can superlative meaning be found. It is by active engagements in projects, which are activities of the right structure, dedicated to the achievement of (...) goods beyond ourselves, that we make our lives superlatively meaningful. (shrink)

The word ‘cosmopolitan’, which derives from the Greek word kosmopolitês (‘citizen of the world’), has been used to describe a wide variety of important views in moral and socio political philosophy. The nebulous core shared by all cosmopolitan views is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, do (or at least can) belong to a single community, and that this community should be cultivated. Different versions of cosmopolitanism envision this community in different ways, some focusing on (...) political institutions, others on moral norms or relationships, and still others focusing on shared markets or forms of cultural expression. The philosophical interest in cosmopolitanism lies in its challenge to commonly recognized attachments to fellow citizens, the local state, parochially shared cultures, and the like. (shrink)

Brown, Pauline I recently came across an article by Meg Keneally in The Guardian. I can think of no better description of our policies and practices on immigration detention than the following extract: It's a well-worn solution to an intractable human problem involving a large group of inconvenient people - ship them off somewhere, put a wall around them, and try to forget about the whole thing. You could argue that our country was founded as a result of this (...) approach. You could also argue that we learned our lesson too well, because it's an approach we are still using when it comes to vulnerable people who have undertaken hazardous ocean journeys - and the outcomes are no more humane than they were in the 18th and 19th centuries. (shrink)

The external world sceptic tells some familiar narratives involving massive deception. Perhaps we are brains in vats. Perhaps we are the victim of a deceitful demon. You know the drill. The sceptic proceeds by observing first that victims of such deceptions know nothing about their external environment and that second, since we cannot rule out being a victim of such deceptions our- selves, our own external world beliefs fail to attain the status of knowledge. Discussions of global external world scepticism (...) tend to focus on the second step, where a number of well-known lines of resistance have been offered. But there has been little attention to the first, seemingly innocuous step. That will be the focus of this paper. Part one – sections 1, 2, and 3 – will explain why these standard narratives are not convincing examples of cases where there is no knowledge of the external world. In part two – section 4 – we shall undertake a useful case study. David Lewis’s ‘Elusive Knowledge’ is often thought of as presenting an epistemological vision that is somewhat friendly to external world scepticism: as Lewis himself presents things, there are contexts where external world knowledge ascriptions are uniformly false, and where true knowledge ascriptions are limited to either axiomatic truths or truths about our inner life. We examine his discussion in the light of the preceding reflections and show that the framework he presents is not so concessionary to global external world scepticism after all. (shrink)