Abstract:Sustainable development and built heritage are oft-naturalized hegemonic discourses of the dominant social class. However, under the lens of critical sociomateriality, these categories destabilize—and in Brexit-era London, epicenter of a financial and technological capitalist circulatory space, “all that is solid melts” into the scopal regime of London's View Management Framework (LVMF). Analyzing multiple discourses of Southwark's Strata SE1— billed London's first “sustainable tower”—and adaptive reuse of the historically preserved Lambeth Water Tower, I argue that these structures constitute ‘interface objects’ in (...) a broader relational geography imbricating physical material, social objects, gentrification and the naturalized epistemologies of hegemonic development within London's skyline itself. I offer a reading of critical sociomateriality which illuminates rhythms of daily life within spatial-technological systems of energy provision, urban metabolic processes, as well as “hegemonic premiums,” what Richard Barras terms expected return on symbolic capital vis-à-vis the dominant panopticism of the LVMF. This paper contributes a theorization of critical sociomateriality, operating across a diversity of scales, tactics, and disciplines, analyzing discourses and practices which insinuate politics, artifacts, and technologies across contested issues. Critical sociomateriality is presented as a methodology for deconstructing tactics for inhabiting and interfacing with ‘sustainability’ through London's skyline in an unequal capitalist system marked by dissensus over runaway development, social precarity, and inequality in lived experiences of the urban environment. (shrink)

Rights might be regarded as an objectionable and even a dangerous feature of moral, political, and legal arrangements. It is an element of all types of rights that Able's having right X entails requirements or prohibitions for Baker. These restrictions hold against Baker at Able's discretion, that is unless Able excuses Baker from respecting them. Nor are the restrictions merely decorative. We must presume that they are established because of the expectation that Baker would otherwise be (...) disposed to interfere with the action Ms. Able's right warrants her in taking. Thus as writers as early as Spinoza have stressed, rights are powers – one might even say weapons – that Able may use against Baker. Of course, as a practical matter these “weapons” are frequently ineffective. Ms. Baker may willfully ignore her obligations and prevent Ms. Able from enjoying her entitlements. But such occurrences, as common and as unfortunate as they are, do not materially ease the task of justifying rights. It is only insofar as rights are effective, and hence only insofar as anyone will have reason to defend them, that they are weapons in Able's hands. (shrink)

This paper examines relationships between accountants’ personal values and their moral reasoning. In particular, we hypothesize that there is an inverse relationship between accountants’ “Conformity” values and principled moral reasoning. This investigation is important because the literature suggests that conformity with rule-based standards may be one reason for professional accountants’ relatively lower scores on measures of moral reasoning (Abdolmohammadi et al. J Bus Ethics 16 (1997) 1717). We administered the Rokeach Values Survey (RVS) (Rokeach: 1973, The Nature of Human Values (...) (The Free Press, New York)) and the Defining Issues Test (DIT) (Rest: 1979, Development in Judgment Moral Issues (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)) to164 graduating accounting students enrolled in capstone courses at two universities in the Northeastern United States. As potential entrants into the accounting profession, these subjects bring their values and moral reasoning to bear on attitudes and behaviors in the workplace. We find a highly significant inverse relationship between “Conformity” values and principled moral reasoning (i.e., those who prefer Conformity values have lower levels of moral reasoning). However, we also find that accounting students as a group do not prefer Conformity values above other values such as Self-actualization and Idealism, and we find positive relationships between Self-actualization and Idealism values and moral reasoning. Implications for values and ethics research are discussed. (shrink)

Rights might be regarded as an objectionable and even a dangerous feature of moral, political, and legal arrangements. It is an element of all types of rights that Able's having right X entails requirements or prohibitions for Baker. These restrictions hold against Baker at Able's discretion, that is unless Able excuses Baker from respecting them. Nor are the restrictions merely decorative. We must presume that they are established because of the expectation that Baker would otherwise be (...) disposed to interfere with the action Ms. Able's right warrants her in taking. Thus as writers as early as Spinoza have stressed, rights are powers – one might even say weapons – that Able may use against Baker. Of course, as a practical matter these “weapons” are frequently ineffective. Ms. Baker may willfully ignore her obligations and prevent Ms. Able from enjoying her entitlements. But such occurrences, as common and as unfortunate as they are, do not materially ease the task of justifying rights. It is only insofar as rights are effective, and hence only insofar as anyone will have reason to defend them, that they are weapons in Able's hands. (shrink)

Drawing on writers as diverse as Saul Kripke, Stanley Cavell, G. E. M. Anscombe, Jonathan Lear, and Bernard Williams, I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein's key notion of a form of life that explains why Wittgenstein was so enigmatic about it. Then, I show how Hilary Putnam's criticism of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics and Richard Rorty's support of (what he takes to be) Wittgenstein's legacy in the philosophy of mind both require mistaken assumptions about Wittgenstein's idea of a form (...) of life. Finally, I consider the extent to which the idea of a form of life is subject to Donald Davidson's critique of the idea of a conceptual scheme. (shrink)

When I started the book, I thought that if there are beliefs, then they are brain states. I still believe that. I express three caveats about the book.

Reviews evidence which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Ss are sometimes unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, unaware of the existence of the response, and unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do (...) so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes. (shrink)

The authors find East Asians to be holistic, attending to the entire field and assigning causality to it, making relatively little use of categories and formal logic, and relying on "dialectical" reasoning, whereas Westerners, are more analytic, paying attention primarily to the object and the categories to which it belongs and using rules, including formal logic, to understand its behavior. The 2 types of cognitive processes are embedded in different naive metaphysical systems and tacit epistemologies. The authors speculate that the (...) origin of these differences is traceable to markedly different social systems. The theory and the evidence presented call into question long-held assumptions about basic cognitive processes and even about the appropriateness of the process–content distinction. (shrink)

This book is a critical and analytical survey of the major attempts, in modern philosophy, to deal with the phenomenon of intentionality—those of Descartes, Brentano, Meinong, Husserl, Frege, Russell, Bergmann, Chisholm, and Sellars. By coordinating the semantical approaches to the phenomenon, Dr. Aquila undertakes to provide a basis for dialogue among philosophers of different persuasions. "Intentionality" has become, since Franz Brentano revived its original medieval use, the standard term describing the mind's apparently paradoxical capacity to relate itself to objects existing (...) in the world. One approach to the phenomenon emphasizes the mental act. The author argues that the most adequate account involves elements of both approaches. Contemporary treatments tend to formulate problems of intentionality primarily in terms of logic and semantics rather than those of metaphysics and phenomenology. Dr. Aquila's effort to coordinate these approaches will make his book useful to students both of analytical philosophy of mind and also of phenomenology. (shrink)

Edited by four leading members of the new generation of medical and healthcare ethicists working in the UK, respected worldwide for their work in medical ethics, Principles of Health Care Ethics, Second Edition_is a standard resource for students, professionals, and academics wishing to understand current and future issues in healthcare ethics. With a distinguished international panel of contributors working at the leading edge of academia, this volume presents a comprehensive guide to the field, with state of the art introductions to (...) the wide range of topics in modern healthcare ethics, from consent to human rights, from utilitarianism to feminism, from the doctor-patient relationship to xenotransplantation. This volume is the Second Edition of the highly successful work edited by Professor Raanan Gillon, Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics at Imperial College London and former editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, the leading journal in this field. Developments from the First Edition include:_ The focus on ‘Four Principles Method’ is relaxed to cover more different methods in health care ethics. More material on new medical technologies is included, the coverage of issues on the doctor/patient relationship is expanded, and material on ethics and public health is brought together into a new section. (shrink)

Charles Foster and Jonathan Herring are to be congratulated on their useful presentation of the roles played by concepts of personhood and identity in English medical law. 1 However, I fear that the project they have undertaken here is misconceived. It is an interesting and important misconception, which is widely shared in the literature on medical law and ethics; but a misconception it remains. The problem is this. What we call ‘the Law’ is in fact a complex assemblage of institutions, (...) rules, accredited persons, practices and systems. What it is not is a self-sufficient, integrated and self-interpreting system of doctrine. As such it does not have a clear structure which we can excavate and the idea that we can find concepts which explain and unify that structure at some deep level is thus quixotic. To approach ‘the Law’ in that way is to pursue a chimaera. We should instead... (shrink)

The Wnt family of developmental regulators were named after the Drosophila segmentation gene wingless and the murine proto‐oncogene int‐1. Homology between these two genes connected oncogenesis to cell‐cell signals in development. I review how wingless was initially characterized, and cloned, as part of the quest to identify developmental cell‐to‐cell signals, based on predictions of the Positional Information Model, and on the properties of homeotic and segmentation gene mutants. The requirements and cell‐nonautonomy of wingless in patterning multiple embryonic and adult structures (...) solidified its status as a candidate signaling molecule. The physical location of wingless mutations and transcription unit defined the gene and its developmental transcription pattern. When the Drosophila homolog of int‐1 was then isolated, and predicted to encode a secreted proto‐oncogene homolog, it's identity to the wingless gene confirmed that a developmental cell‐cell signal had been identified and connected cancer to development. (shrink)

This article offers an interpretation of Jesus’ invitation to “rest for the soul” in Matthew 11:28–30. On this interpretation Jesus’ offer of rest is an invitation to start a whole new way of life—a life characterized by rest with God working its way into the depths of one’s soul by means of indwelling Spirit. This understanding of Jesus’ offer of rest is developed in light of the immediate context in Matthew, parallel passages in Jeremiah and Sirach and a biblical theology (...) of the fall. (shrink)

Charles Foster and Jonathan Herring are to be congratulated on their useful presentation of the roles played by concepts of personhood and identity in English medical law.1 However, I fear that the project they have undertaken here is misconceived. It is an interesting and important misconception, which is widely shared in the literature on medical law and ethics; but a misconception it remains. The problem is this. What we call ‘the Law’ is in fact a complex assemblage of institutions, rules, (...) accredited persons, practices and systems. What it is not is a self-sufficient, integrated and self-interpreting system of doctrine. As such it does not have a clear structure which we can excavate and the idea that we can find concepts which explain and unify that structure at some deep level is thus quixotic. To approach ‘the Law’ in that way is to pursue a chimaera. We should instead think of ‘the Law’ as Wittgenstein taught us to approach a language.2 We can find concepts through investigation of language in practical use, but the …. (shrink)

Staged 2 different videotaped interviews with the same individual—a college instructor who spoke English with a European accent. In one of the interviews the instructor was warm and friendly, in the other, cold and distant. 118 undergraduates were asked to evaluate the instructor. Ss who saw the warm instructor rated his appearance, mannerisms, and accent as appealing, whereas those who saw the cold instructor rated these attributes as irritating. Results indicate that global evaluations of a person can induce altered evaluations (...) of the person's attributes, even when there is sufficient information to allow for independent assessments of them. Furthermore, Ss were unaware of this influence of global evaluations on ratings of attributes. In fact, Ss who saw the cold instructor actually believed that the direction of influence was opposite to the true direction. They reported that their dislike of the instructor had no effect on their rating of his attributes but that their dislike of his attributes had lowered their global evaluations of him. (shrink)

In ‘Salvaging the Concept of Nudge’ Yashar Saghai performs an important clarificatory task which certainly advances our philosophical and ethical understanding of nudges in public policy, and in healthcare ethics in particular.1 In this brief commentary I identify some issues which could usefully be taken forward in subsequent discussions.A central difficulty with ethical discussions of nudging is that insufficient care is taken to distinguish two morally important features of nudges. The first, which Saghai very properly concentrates upon, is the mechanism (...) of nudging. Nudges rely on psychological properties of human decision-makers as the way in which their intended effects are brought about. Much of the ethical concern with nudges focuses on just this. Whatever the motive of the nudger, or the objective of the nudge, or the ex ante or ex post ratification of the nudge by the nudge, operating through influence, impulse or non-rational features of the nudgee's decision-making is wrong. The nature of this wrongness can be spelled out in different ways, and which one of these we choose has important implications for the precise ethical argument …. (shrink)

A few years ago I ran across a statement by Jean-Paul Sartre which seemed to imply that if there is a God, then there can be no human freedom. That thesis struck me as questionable, but at the time I did not pause to examine it. More recently I ran across a similar, more explicit statement by Kurt Baier, and I decided the time to pause had come. My knee-jerk response to Baier – and I confess it was probably nothing (...) more – was, ‘Why can't there be human freedom if there is a God? Indeed, can there be human freedom if there isn't a God ?’ The second of these questions has proved to be the more provocative to me, for the more I have thought about it, the more it has seemed to me that it is the atheist and not the theist who should be on the defensive about libertarianism, i.e. the position that human beings do act, that human actions are not determined, that we are the sole cause of our actions, and that all things remaining the same, we could have done otherwise. Indeed, the more I thought about that question – Can there be human freedom if there is no God? – the more convinced I became that the atheist has no good reason for believing in libertarianism. Note: I am not saying that atheism is logically incompatible with libertarianism. Perhaps it is, but if it is, that is not yet obvious to me. Rather, I am saying that an atheist who believes in libertarianism must believe in it on the basis of faith and must hold this faith in opposition to the only type of evidence that is available to him. Hence, by denying the existence of God, Baier and Sartre do not make room for human freedom; they make belief in human freedom irrational. By contrast, I shall argue, the theist does have a good reason for believing that humans are free. Let's take separate looks at Baier and Sartre; then I shall summarize the substance of my position. (shrink)

Bioethics has been subject to considerable social criticism in recent years. One criticism that has caused particular discomfort in the bioethics community is that bioethicists, because of the way their work is funded, are involved in profound conflicts of interest that undermine their title to be considered independent moral commentators on developments in biomedicine and biotechnology. This criticism draws its force from the assumption that bioethics is, or ought to be, a type of normative social criticism. Versions of this criticism (...) come from both the political left and right. For instance, such criticisms include allegations that bioethics is inherently socially conservative, that it is inherently “pro-technology”, that it lays spurious claims to moral and social authority and expertise, that its focus on autonomy links it to neoliberal theories of choice, and that it is an ideological mystification of real social relationships and political power. This commentary paper analyses the problem of bioethical conflict of interest, and argues that the types of conflict of interest facing bioethics are inherent to the role of “public intellectual” that bioethicists generally wish to assume. The paper defends this conception of the role of the bioethicist, arguing that bioethicists should be interested and openly so. (shrink)

Political argument and institutions in the UnitedKingdom have frequently been represented as the products of ablend of nationalistic conservatism, liberal individualism andsocialism, in which consensus has been prized over ideology. This situation changed, as the standard story has it, with therise of Thatcherism in the late 1970s, and again with the arrivalof Tony Blair's ``New Labour'' pragmatism in the late 1990s. Solidarity as an element of political discourse makes itsappearance in the UK late in the day. It has been most (...) stronglylinked to the Third Way debate, as framed most influentially inthe work of Prof. Anthony Giddens.In this paper we review the history and pre-history of the debateon solidarity in the UK, focussing mostly on its implications forwelfare state reform. In particular we discuss the proposals forthe long-term care of the Elderly issued by the Royal Commissionon long-term care in 1999. In this context we critically examinethe idea that solidarity is a new concept in British politicalculture, and that it is a concept which has real political ``bite''in the project of welfare reform. We examine this through aconsideration of Giddens's attempted synthesis of politicalargument and social theory. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that resource allocation in publicly funded medical systems cannot be done using a purely substantive theory of justice, but must also involve procedural justice. I argue further that procedural justice requires institutions and that these must be “local” in a specific sense which I define. The argument rests on the informational constraints on any non-market method for allocating scarce resources among competing claims of need. However, I resist the identification of this normative account of local (...) justice with the actual approach to local decision-making taken within the UK National Health Service. I illustrate my argument with reference to the case of provision of In Vitro Fertilisation within the UK NHS. (shrink)