Discusses the nature of philosophical rationality and modernity.

This paper focuses on the role of contract as a governance mechanism in contemporary economic and social relations, exploring this theme in the context of recent writing on contract and contracting within law and other disciplines. The trends towards both outsourcing by private firms and privatization of public services have increased the importance of contract as an instrument of market and quasi-market exchange. Such organizational developments have been accompanied by institutional changes in the way in which business relationships are regulated (...) through legal and extralegal norms and other constraints in the contractual environment. Contract is also being deployed increasingly as an instrument of regulation of social relations between the state and citizens in the fields of welfare, education and criminal justice. Following Macneil, the paper develops a methodology for assessing the quality of different types of relationship—between buyers and sellers, purchasers and providers, providers and consumers, regulators and regulatees, government and governed, and state agencies and citizens—according to the relationality of «contract» norms. Drawing on theories of responsive regulation, the paper explores the institutional and organizational conditions of responsive contractual governance in selected areas of market, quasi-market, and social relations. The underlying argument is that the core values of democracy, participation, and citizenship have a central part to play in the determination of responsive regulatory policy. We should aim to increase the level of public participation in decisions concerning organizational and institutional frameworks, so that citizen and consumer interests may adequately be represented in the determination of optimal forms of governance. (shrink)

Historically, scientific and engineering expertise has been key in shaping research and innovation policies, with benefits presumed to accrue to society more broadly over time. But there is persistent and growing concern about whether and how ethical and societal values are integrated into R&I policies and governance, as we confront public disbelief in science and political suspicion toward evidence-based policy-making. Erosion of such a social contract with science limits the ability of democratic societies to deal with challenges presented by new, (...) disruptive technologies, such as synthetic biology, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, automation and robotics, and artificial intelligence. Many policy efforts have emerged in response to such concerns, one prominent example being Europe's Eighth Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, whose focus on “Responsible Research and Innovation” provides a case study for the translation of such normative perspectives into concrete policy action and implementation. Our analysis of this H2020 RRI approach suggests a lack of consistent integration of elements such as ethics, open access, open innovation, and public engagement. On the basis of our evaluation, we suggest possible pathways for strengthening efforts to deliver R&I policies that deepen mutually beneficial science and society relationships. (shrink)

A kind of political complacency has become a common complaint of Habermasian philosophy. At odds with some earlier stances, according to which he had claimed to represent the best critical hopes of a Marxist tradition that he regarded as exhausted, Habermas has come to defend the legitimacy of liberal democratic institutions and forms ofpolitical expression. No longer the last Marxist, but a hesitant post-Marxist, Habermas is today arguably the foremost intellectual spokesperson for a presently existing democracy which bears as much (...) relation to its stated principles as did the so-called socialisms suffered during the Cold War. The author seeks in this article merely to identify the philosophical bases for the seemingly increasing conservatism of Habermas’s thought. I argue that tensions between the normative dimensions of communicative rationality emerge more clearly as Habermas moves from a general account of discourse, to ethics, and then to democratic politics. Habermas increasingly embraces an abstract normativity and abandons the practical-critical dimensions which were embedded in the counterfactual moment of communicative action. The normative ground for politics itself has narrowed to accommodate the abstract normativity of discourse. (shrink)

This chapter considers whether any of the inner sense mechanisms that have been postulated to detect and represent some of our own mental states should qualify as sensory modalities. We first review and reject the four standard views of the senses, and then propose a set of properties that would be possessed by a prototypical sensory system. Thereafter we consider how closely the existing models of inner sense match the prototype. Some resemble a prototypical sense to a high degree, some (...) much less so. (shrink)

Despite providing the basic theoretical framework for Western biology and all related sciences, Darwinism continues to be a controversial perspective when it comes to understanding ourselves as distinctly "human." In this paper, I try to correct a common misinterpretation of Thomas Hobbes' conceptualization of human nature which I think sheds light on some of the significant misunderstandings and sources of objection to Darwinism. I begin by contrasting this common misreading of Hobbes' philosophy of human nature with an alternative reading that (...) suggests a more subtle notion than is often allowed. I then summarize the basic ideas of Darwinism and explain why I think a Darwinian conceptualization of humanity, freed from misinterpretations of Hobbes, need not lead to an agonistic or reductive notion of human nature. Suggestions made by the philosophers Charles Taylor and Howard Gardner about how science and philosophy can help or hinder conceptualizations of personhood are considered insofar as they corroborate this idea. (shrink)

In this chapter, Amato explores the concept of “vernacular rationality” introduced by Emmanuel Chukwude Eze in his On Reason: Rationality in a World of Cultural Conflict and Racism. Amato interrogates the different ways this idea can be unfolded, expanded, and developed in the spirit if not the letter of Eze’s employment in relation to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics—in particular, its conception of the role tradition plays in the pursuit of understanding and the idea of hermeneutics as practical philosophy. (...) A more hermeneutical conception of vernacular rationality would have the benefit of embracing the linguisticality of our circumstance, and reorienting our rationality toward one another in conversation and dialogue. From the standpoint of Philosophical Hermeneutics this requires us to engage in a critical-constitutive relation toward our tradition(s), emphasizing the work of listening within and between tradition(s), and broadening the circle of listening so as to strengthen the practical connections that allow conversation and dialogue to overcome the irrational and inhumane. (shrink)

Philosophically robust conceptions of ethical life and moral critique would advance the struggle against capital. Marx can be read as implying that human life is irreducibly meaningful, linguistic, and cultural, but he often is not. Whether or not Marx recognized them himself, these dimensions of life have not been sufficiently thematized or developed by Marxists. I argue that we can move toward doing so with assistance from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. A hermeneutical approach to historical materialism would help clarify and (...) articulate some aspects of Marxism which in particular have been hard to resolve within a wider view of the ethical, political, scientific, and historical dimensions of social action and change. (shrink)

Ifeanyi Menkiti’s “Person and Community in African Traditional Thought” is criticized from the standpoint that the author assumes a dichotomous framework taken over in his decision to articulate the African view of the person in the idiom of modern philosophy. Kwame Gyekye’s critique of Menkiti in “Person and Community in Akan Thought” is also scrutinized to see if it manages to break free from this framework. I conclude by calling for a departure from quasi-scientific approaches to human nature and experience (...) that attempt to apprehend culture from a position without culture. (shrink)

We argue that Graziano and Kastner are mistaken to claim that neglect favors their self-directed social perception account of consciousness. For the latter should not predict that neglect would result from damage to mechanisms of social perception. Neglect is better explained in terms of damage to attentional mechanisms.

The aim of the article is to introduce a new concept of “pain-related bodily doubt,” which complements current concepts currently in use, such as pain-related fear, pain catastrophizing, and pain self-efficacy. This new concept, adapted from recent philosophical work on illness experience, has the potential to positively contribute to pain research and clinical practice by providing a vocabulary for clinicians and patients to discuss implicit or tacit dimensions of pain-related experiences.

Singer argues that thinking on the Left insufficiently appropriates the broader insights about life and human nature made possible by Darwin. I think Singer has it backwards: the problem is not that Darwin has insufficiently been allowed to influence thinking on the Left, but, rather, that the meaning of “Darwinism” has been distorted by the wider scientific and intellectual communities broadly as a support for Right-wing views including patriarchy and racism since its early days. That Darwin’s theories have so often (...) been made to serve and support such views marks the power of ideology. The problem is not what bad scientists Leftists are, but why Singer thinks they bear the primary responsibility for explaining Darwinism to a world that still doesn’t get it. Even scientists have tended to associate Darwinism with a caricature of Hobbes’ “perpetual warre,”—in which only the activities of males in battle over resources, females, and territory, seem to matter. Yet, Darwinism is a theory of survival, not death. In contrast with the “Hobbesian” view of Darwinism, it is better understood as a theory that sees organisms as embedded within contexts of life-sustaining activities that define a form of life for their species’ within definite local environments. Their activities, understood as natural history, within the horizon of the life of a species in the midst of others, complete our picture of the lives of organisms. This view of life coordinates better with Leftist goals and attitudes than those typical on the Right, and it is not surprising that it has tended to be suppressed in popular and conventional scientific thinking. (shrink)

Background The prioritization protocols for accessing adult critical care in the extreme pandemic context contain tiebreaker criteria to facilitate decision-making in the allocation of resources between patients with a similar survival prognosis. Besides being controversial, little is known about the public acceptability of these tiebreakers. In order to better understand the public opinion, Quebec and Ontario’s protocols were presented to the public in a democratic deliberation during the summer of 2022. Objectives (1) To explore the perspectives of Quebec and Ontario (...) citizens regarding tiebreakers, identifying the most acceptable ones and their underlying values. (2) To analyze these results considering other public consultations held during the pandemic on these criteria. Methods This was an exploratory qualitative study. The design involved an online democratic deliberation that took place over two days, simultaneously in Quebec and Ontario. Public participants were selected from a community sample which excluded healthcare workers. Participants were first presented the essential components of prioritization protocols and their related issues (training session day 1). They subsequently deliberated on the acceptability of these criteria (deliberation session day 2). The deliberation was then subject to thematic analysis. Results A total of 47 participants from the provinces of Quebec (n = 20) and Ontario (n = 27) took part in the online deliberation. A diverse audience participated excluding members of the healthcare workforce. Four themes were identified: (1) Priority to young patients - the life cycle - a preferred tiebreaker; (2) Randomization - a tiebreaker of last resort; (3) Multiplier effect of most exposed healthcare workers - a median acceptability tiebreaker, and (4) Social value – a less acceptable tiebreaker. Conclusion Life cycle was the preferred tiebreaker as this criterion respects intergenerational equity, which was considered relevant when allocating scarce resources to adult patients in a context of extreme pandemic. Priority to young patients is in line with other consultations conducted around the world. Additional studies are needed to further investigate the public acceptability of tiebreaker criteria. (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents (...) in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

The Monographs produced by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) apply rigorous procedures for the scientific review and evaluation of carcinogenic hazards by independent experts. The Preamble to the IARC Monographs, which outlines these procedures, was updated in 2019, following recommendations of a 2018 expert Advisory Group. This article presents the key features of the updated Preamble, a major milestone that will enable IARC to take advantage of recent scientific and procedural advances made during the 12 years since (...) the last Preamble amendments. The updated Preamble formalizes important developments already being pioneered in the Monographs Programme. These developments were taken forward in a clarified and strengthened process for identifying, reviewing, evaluating and integrating evidence to identify causes of human cancer. The advancements adopted include strengthening of systematic review methodologies; greater emphasis on mechanistic evidence, based on key characteristics of carcinogens; greater consideration of quality and informativeness in the critical evaluation of epidemiological studies, including their exposure assessment methods; improved harmonization of evaluation criteria for the different evidence streams; and a single-step process of integrating evidence on cancer in humans, cancer in experimental animals and mechanisms for reaching overall evaluations. In all, the updated Preamble underpins a stronger and more transparent method for the identification of carcinogenic hazards, the essential first step in cancer prevention. (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents (...) in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/Protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/Proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Learning Christ: Ignatius of Antioch and the Mystery of Redemption by Gregory VallDavid Vincent Meconi S.J.Learning Christ: Ignatius of Antioch and the Mystery of Redemption. By Gregory Vall. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 401. $69.95 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8132-2158-8.In the first decade of the first Christian century, the bishop of Antioch found himself surrounded by imperial guards under order to drag (...) him back to Rome to face the consequences of his supposed atheism and traitorous leadership in Christ’s Church. Eusebius’s episcopal list places Ignatius as the third bishop of Antioch, after Saints Peter and Evodius, reigning in Antioch from ca. 70 to 107. Ignatius was a larger-than-life character; even as a child he was supposedly the little boy whom the Lord embraced and held up as an example of heavenly simplicity (Matt 18:2-4). In ten clear and illuminating chapters, Gregory Vall brings the reader through the many legends and apocryphal assumptions surrounding Ignatius and his thinking. Vall’s purpose in writing this work is to show contemporary scholars the levels of richness and theological insight in Ignatius’s relatively small epistolary corpus.The first two chapters treat Ignatius’s use of Scripture and how his reading of the canon plays out in his theology of salvation. “Scripture and Economy” (chap. 1) and “Issues in Ignatian Scholarship” (chap. 2) show not only the massive amount of scholarly attention such a relatively small amount of writing has generated over the centuries, but also why the way Ignatius read and [End Page 321] used Sacred Scripture is still important today. The five guiding loci Vall would have the reader keep in mind are how Ignatius consistently assumes (1) the necessary connection between “theology” (God’s very self) and God’s economy in creation, (2) the link between creation and redemption, (3) the relationship between the Old and New Covenants of God and his chosen ones, (4) the sending of the Son who comes to impart the Spirit, and (5) the life of the pilgrim-sojourner who simultaneously is a future beholder of eternal glory.With these guiding principles in place, Ignatius proves to be a Christian thinker who understands that mystical transformation, and not moral achievement, is what saves us. Accordingly, here we become the students of one who sees himself teaching on behalf of Jesus Christ. This is ecclesia for Ignatius, a place where those called out of the world come together as one so as to be illumined into true Christ-bearers. For Ignatius, therefore, “theology is properly an ecclesial activity and not merely the function of isolated individuals. Our place, then, is to sit alongside Ignatius and contemplate the mystery of redemption with him” (86), thereby developing a visceral sympathy for the things of Christ, drawing near to God and to the people of God in truth and in love. Theology and all Christian activity are consummated in nothing other than Love himself, charity being the only true mark of the theologian.The next three chapters thus turn to Ignatius’s theology of the Godhead: “Jesus and the Father” (chap. 3), “Flesh and Spirit” (chap. 4), and “Faith and Love” (chap. 5). Here, the fundamental theology of Ignatius is handled masterfully. A true contrast to the starts and attempts and to the Gnostic leanings, as well as to the fundamental errors, of the second century, Ignatius amazingly proves to be a loving pastor as well as a sophisticated theologian anticipating accurately later Church formulae. Vall takes care to show how Ignatius advances Pauline insights faithfully while never being afraid to adapt scriptural terms and traditions to meet the challenges of his own flock.Especially important in this middle section is how Ignatius saw the Christian life as teleologically unifying earth and heaven, anticipating Augustine of Hippo’s wordplay of living in spe but not yet in re. Since the Logos is the first and last principle () of reality, but has now even taken on flesh and revealed the fullness of the Father to those still on their way, “the person of Christ, his deeds, and... (shrink)

Review of: Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology.

This volume, with contributions from scholars in political science, literature, and philosophy, examines the mutual influence of reason and religion at the time of the American Founding.