When is an indirect report of what a speaker meant correct? The question arises in the law. The Contract Law case of Spaulding v. Morse is a good example. Following their 1932 divorce, George Morse and Ruth Morse entered into a trust agreement in 1937 for the support of their minor son Richard. In that agreement, George promised to “pay to [Spaulding as] trustee in trust for his said minor son Richard the sum of twelve hundred (...) dollars per year, payable in equal monthly installments on the first day of each month until the entrance of Richard D. Morse into some college, university or higher institution of learning beyond the completion of the high school grades, and thereupon, instead of said payments, amounting to twelve hundred dollars yearly, he shall and will then pay to the trustee payments in the sum of twenty-two hundred dollars per year for a period of said higher education but not more than four years.” Richard graduated from high school on February 5, 1946 and, in the post-WWII continuation of the draft, was inducted into the army the following day. The question in the case is whether George, by the words of the trust agreement, meant that he would pay $1,200 per year for Richard’s support while he was in the army. Is that a correct indirect report of what George meant?The explanation I offer assumes Gricean analysis of speaker meaning, and it emphasizes the role of speaker meaning typically plays in solving coordination problems. A coordination problem is a situation “in which each person wants to participate in a group action but only if others also participate.” A classic example is a political protest: “each person might want to take part in an antigovernment protest but only if there are enough total protesters to make arrests and police repression unlikely.” Coordination problems arise in more mundane settings as well – in Spaulding v. Morse, for example. Ruth and George want to mutually agree on Richard’s support: Ruth wants to commit to an arrangement only if George does, and vice versa for George. In 1937, George and Ruth solved the problem through speaker meaning. By signing the trust agreement, George, with Ruth as his audience, meant that he obligated himself to a particular support agreement. When Ruth signed, she, with George as her audience, meant that she accepted the agreement. In general, parties often solve coordination problems through speaker meaning. If, for example, enough people can communicate their commitment to participate in the protest to enough people, the protest will take place.The account assigns a central role to the fact that speaker meaning facilitates coordination by creating relevant common knowledge. Common knowledge is “the recursive belief state in which A knows X, B knows X, A knows that B knows X, B knows that A knows X, ad infinitum.” Common knowledge facilitates coordination: “Actors coordinate when they have evidence for common knowledge, and refrain from coordinating when they do not.”. (shrink)

This collection of essays serves both as an introduction to Ruth Millikan’s much-discussed volume Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories and as an extension and application of Millikan’s central themes, especially in the philosophy of psychology. The title essay discusses meaning rationalism and argues that rationality is not in the head, indeed, that there is no legitimate interpretation under which logical possibility and necessity are known a priori. In other essays, Millikan clarifies her views on the nature of mental (...) representation, explores whether human thought is a product of natural selection, examines the nature of behavior as studied by the behavioral sciences, and discusses the issues of individualism in psychology, psychological explanation, indexicality in thought, what knowledge is, and the realism/antirealism debate. Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1 In Defense of Proper Functions 2 Propensities, Exaptations, and the Brain 3 Thoughts without Laws 4 Biosemantics 5 On Mentalese Orthography, Part 1 6 Compare and Contrast Dretske, Fodor, and Millikan on Teleosemantics 7 What Is Behavior? A Philosophical Essay on Ethology and Individualism in Psychology, Part 1 8 The Green Grass Growing All Around: A Philosophical Essay on Ethology and Individualism in Psychology, Part 2 9 Explanation in Biopsychology 10 Metaphysical Antirealism? 11 Truth Rules, Hoverflies, and the Kripke-Wittgenstein Paradox 12 Naturalist Reflections on Knowledge 13 The Myth of the Essential Indexical 14 White Queen Psychology; or, The Last Myth of the Given References Index. (shrink)

Written by one of today's most creative and innovative philosophers, Ruth Garrett Millikan, this book examines basic empirical concepts; how they are acquired, how they function, and how they have been misrepresented in the traditional philosophical literature. Millikan places cognitive psychology in an evolutionary context where human cognition is assumed to be an outgrowth of primitive forms of mentality, and assumed to have 'functions' in the biological sense. Of particular interest are her discussions of the nature of abilities as (...) different from dispositions, her detailed analysis of the psychological act of reidentifying substances, and her critique of the language of thought for mental representation. In a radical departure from current philosophical and psychological theories of concepts, this book provides the first in-depth discussion on the psychological act of reidentification. (shrink)

While reviewing relevant recent research, it becomes apparent that cognitive approaches have been rejected and excluded from Critical Discourse Analysis by many scholars out of often unjustified reasons. This article argues, in contrast, that studies in CDA would gain significantly through integrating insights from socio-cognitive theories into their framework. Examples from my own research into the comprehension and comprehensibility of news broadcasts, Internet discussion boards as well as into discourse and discrimination illustrate this position. However, I also argue that there (...) are salient limits to cognitive theories which have to be taken into account, specifically when proposing social change via rational/cognitive insights. Examples from recent political debates on immigration and from the election campaign in the US in 2004 serve to emphasize these arguments. (shrink)

This essay responds to Hirstein, Sifferd and Fagan’s book, Responsible Brains, which claims that executive function is the guiding mechanism that supports both responsible agency and the necessity for some excuses. In contrast, I suggest that executive function is not the universal acid and the neuroscience at present contributes almost nothing to the necessary psychological level of explanation and analysis. To the extent neuroscience can be useful, it is virtually entirely dependent on well-validated psychology to correlate with the neuroscientific variables (...) under investigation. The essay considers what executive function is and what the neuroscience adds to our understanding of it. Then it addresses moral and legal responsibility generally, and specific doctrines. Executive function is seldom found to be the most perspicuous approach to any of the general or specific moral and legal questions. (shrink)

This article considers the extent to which the debate about animal rights can be enriched by Richard Rorty’s theory of rights. Although Rorty’s work has enjoyed a lot of scholarly attention, commentators have not considered the implications of his arguments for animals. Nor have theorists of animal rights engaged his approach to rights. This paper argues that Rorty’s thinking holds a number of attractions for proponents of animal rights. It also considers some of its drawbacks. It is further argued that (...) Rorty’s thinking about rights avoids many of the problems that animal ethic of care theorists have found in rights discourse being applied to animals. Rorty’s work thus provides a valuable resource for bringing these two major strands within the animal ethics literature into closer theoretical kinship. (shrink)

This article examines the attempts by John Rawls in the works published after Political Liberalism to engage with some of the feminist responses to his work. Rawls goes a long way toward addressing some of the major feministliberal concerns. Yet this has the unintended consequence of pushing justice as fairness in the direction of a more comprehensive, rather than a strictly political, form of liberalism. This does not seem to be a problem peculiar to Rawls: rather, any form of liberalism (...) hospitable to feminist concerns must be, at the very least, a partly comprehensive, rather than a strictly political, doctrine. (shrink)

This article demonstrates that there is no free will problem in forensic psychiatry by showing that free will or its lack is not a criterion for any legal doctrine and it is not an underlying general foundation for legal responsibility doctrines and practices. There is a genuine metaphysical free will problem, but the article explains why it is not relevant to forensic practice. Forensic practitioners are urged to avoid all usage of free will in their forensic thinking and work product (...) because it is irrelevant and spawns confusion. (shrink)

In Children, Religion and the Ethics of Influence, John Tillson sets out a clear and convincing case for the view that children ought not to be initiated into religious faith by their parents or others with the relevant ‘extra-parental responsibilities’. However, by predicating his thesis on an understanding of illegitimate religious influence that largely equates initiation into faith with the inculcation of a distinctive type of propositional content, I contend that Tillson misses some of the potential harms such initiation may (...) engender. Here I briefly explain why this is a problem before suggesting three ways he might respond to the criticism. (shrink)

In February 2020, the British Medical Association will be surveying members for their views on what the BMA’s position on physician-assisted dying should be. The BMA is currently opposed to physician-assisted dying in all its forms, a position that was agreed in 2006 at the annual representative meeting, the Association’s policy-making conference.1 As previously reported in Ethics briefing,2 the decision to survey members follows a motion passed at last year’s ARM which called on the BMA to “carry out a poll (...) of members to ascertain their views on whether the BMA should adopt a neutral position with respect to a change in the law on assisted dying”. The results from the survey will not determine BMA policy. Rather, the results be published ahead of this year’s ARM and provided to those attending to inform a debate and discussion on the BMA’s policy position. More information about the survey, including a briefing pack of useful information, and information for BMA members on how to participate can be found online at www.bma.org.uk/PAD. ### High Court rejects Judicial reviews on assisted suicide The High Court has refused permission for two separate challenges to the law on assisted suicide in the UK to proceed to a full hearing. In the first case, Phil Newby, who has motor neuron disease, applied for judicial review of the law on assisted suicide and asked for the court to carry out a detailed examination of what he termed “legislative facts” – that is, an examination of the existing evidence on the “costs, risks and benefits” of regulating assisted suicide – including a cross-examination of relevant expert witnesses.1 Handing down the judgement, Lord Justice Irwin and Mrs Justice May, held that assisted dying …. (shrink)

Healthcare professionals are currently working under extreme pressure as they respond to the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19. At the time of writing, there is currently no effective vaccine or anti-viral treatment. The pandemic is fast-moving, relatively unpredictable and of uncertain duration. In many countries, it is placing an enormous stress on healthcare resources and providing care to existing standards is proving difficult. Unfortunately, in some countries, health services have been overwhelmed. The impact of the pandemic on resource-poor countries is of (...) particular concern. This extraordinary situation is raising, or has the potential to raise, many ethical challenges for doctors delivering care to patients. It is possible, for example, that there may be points in this pandemic where decisions need to be made about who should have access to finite specialised intensive care beds, drugs and equipment. This has happened in some countries and, despite efforts by the UK Government to reduce demand and increase supply, it is still possible that this could happen in the UK. Some hospital trusts in the UK are already reporting concerningly low supplies of oxygen and vital medicines such as propofol and alfentanil.1 In these circumstances, where not everyone can be treated, difficult ethical decisions will have to made. For example, can some patients be prioritised over others? How should a doctor decide on which patients to treat? Can treatment be withdrawn from patients who are currently being treated, but are not responding, in order to offer treatment to those who may have a better chance of benefiting? The UK is also reporting concerningly low supplies of vital personal protective equipment for frontline workers, raising the question - what are a doctor’s obligations to treat patients, in circumstances that present a high …. (shrink)

This paper will discuss the correlation between the world of everyday life, finite provinces of meaning, and religion. To this end, the paper will start out by explaining Schutz’ considerations on “paramount reality” of the world of everyday life as well as the theory of “multiple realities” and “finite provinces of meaning”. Schutz’ considerations will then be elaborated upon and taken a step further in a discussion of the various ‘realnesses’ of the multiple realities. Special attention will be paid to (...) a finite province of meaning only mentioned in passing by Schutz: religion. The paper will first analyze the special features of religion as a finite province of meaning and highlight the correlation it enters with the world of everyday life. Subsequently, hereafter and paradise conceptions will be described as “ultimate provinces of meaning,” and it will be shown how their realnesses connect to the world of everyday life. Finally, the “fundamental anxiety” will be studied as the motor of the relevance structures of the world of everyday life, the finite provinces of meaning as well as the hereafter conceptions. (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)

This article discusses work on implementing emotional and cultural models into synthetic graphical characters. An architecture, FAtiMA, implemented first in the antibullying application FearNot! and then extended as FAtiMA-PSI in the cultural-sensitivity application ORIENT, is discussed. We discuss the modelling relationships between culture, social interaction, and cognitive appraisal. Integrating a lower level homeostatically based model is also considered as a means of handling some of the limitations of a purely symbolic approach. Evaluation to date is summarised and future directions discussed.

This book investigates what actually happens when Pierre Bayle writes about the past and challenges the still prevalent view that he is dispassionate in the way he treats the subjects of the more than two thousand articles in his biographical Dictionnaire historique et critique. It opens with two case studies of the way he uses the sources available to him, which reveal a committed writer at work. Subsequent chapters explore the theory that shapes his erudition; the method that he devised (...) to discern falsehood from truth; his critical approach to Scripture; his conceptual reconstruction of the past. Bayle emerges from this as a writer whose interest in the past is more than antiquarian. The ideal of impartiality, which he drew from Renaissance conceptions of history, is not neutral but always situated. For all their apparent objectivity, the articles in the Dictionnaire are actually shaped by the debates, conflicts, and politics of Bayle's own time and place. In 1989, when this book was first published, its intertextual and contextualised reading of Bayle was innovative. Although many similar studies followed, this book led the way by developing an approach that allows us to gain access to the deeper strata of Bayle's thought. (shrink)

William James (1842-1910) was both a philosopher and a psychologist, nowadays most closely associated with the pragmatic theory of truth. The essays in this Companion deal with the full range of his thought as well as other issues, including technical philosophical issues, religious speculation, moral philosophy and political controversies of his time. The relationship between James and other philosophers of his time, as well as his brother Henry, are also examined. By placing James in his intellectual landscape the volume will (...) be particularly useful to teachers and students outside philosophy in such areas as religious studies, history of ideas, and American studies. New readers and nonspecialists will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to James currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of James. (shrink)

In arguing against the view that the ethical standards for business are separate from normal interpersonal standards, virtue theory has been applied to business ethics in a limited manner. Previous virtue theorists have argued that this separation need not occur because the virtues for succeeding in business are congruent with civic and personal virtues. However, they have neglected the fact that virtue theory stresses that virtues are formed to fulfil certain desires, ends, and purposes of the person. Since ends are (...) formed within a community, business and corporations should view themselves as members of the community which contributes to the ethical development of its individuals. Hence, I argue that business cannot have a separate standard of ethical behaviour than that of its community, because its goals are means which are subordinate to the ultimate goal of individual and community flourishing. (shrink)

One of the major purposes of this article is to show that friendship was one of Nietzsche's central concerns and that he shared Aristotle's belief that it takes higher and lower forms. Yet Nietzsche's interest in friendship is overlooked in much of the secondary literature. An important reason for this is that this interest is most evident in the works of his middle period, and these tend to be neglected in commentaries on Nietzsche. In the works of the middle period, (...) Nietzsche suggests that there is a close connection between friendship and selfhood, contending that an individual's friendships reflect something about his or her identity. Following Aristotle, he believes that friendship can make a significant contribution to self-knowledge and self-improvement, which are both closely associated with his notion of self-overcoming. Nietzsche encourages individuals to adopt an aesthetic approach to the self: they should refashion themselves by consolidating their strengths, minimising their weaknesses and developing themselves in new directions. The works of the middle period suggest, however, that not only can friendship foster self-overcoming, but that the talent for friendship is one of the marks of a higher human being. Recognising this requires some reconsideration of Nietzsche's putative individualism and the belief that he holds great individuals to be utterly independent and indifferent to the judgements of others. It also requires a revision of the common interpretation that he is unremittingly sceptical about pity and other forms of fellow-feeling. Yet while Nietzsche generalises about friendship in the works of the middle period and contrasts its superior and inferior forms, he remains sensitive to its particularity. He never adopts a wholly formulaic approach to this relationship, but recognises that difference and responsiveness to particularity are among its central characteristics. (shrink)

Testing is an effective learning method, and it is the basis of mobile quiz apps. Quiz apps have the potential to facilitate remote and self-regulated learning. In this context, automatized feedback plays a crucial role. In two experimental studies, we examined the effects of two feedback types of quiz apps on performance, namely, the standard corrective feedback of quiz apps and a feedback that incorporates additional information related to the correct response option. We realized a controlled lab setting (n= 68, (...) Study 1) and an unsupervised mobile setting (n= 150, Study 2). In the learning phase, participants used the quiz app and received feedback. They also completed a subsequent test as well as a follow-up test 1 week later by using the same quiz app. Irrespective of feedback type and setting, cognitive outcomes (quiz scores) and metacognitive outcomes (response certainty) increased similarly in the short term and long term. Feedback effects were not moderated by participants' overall response certainty during learning, their prior knowledge, and the difficulty of quiz items. Moreover, we found that participants perceived the quiz app to be similarly attractive, interesting, and enjoyable in both feedback conditions and that they spent slightly more time to process quiz items in the lab setting. We discuss these results in detail, including the role of moderating and mediating factors and prospects for further research and practice. Overall, our results underline that quiz apps are useful and effective tools that can support the acquisition and retention of semantic knowledge in different learning settings. (shrink)

This article examines the 2008 report of the Quebec Government’s Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences which was co-authored by Charles Taylor. Summarizing its main themes, it identifies points of intersection with Taylor’s political thought. Issues of citizen equality, including gender equality, secularism, integration and interculturalism, receive special attention.

Despite the considerable body of scholarship and practice on interconnected systems of dominance and its effects on women in different social locations, Chicanas remain “outside the frame” of mainstream academic feminist dialogues. This article provides an overview of the contributions of Chicana intersectional thought, research, and activism. We highlight four major scholarly areas of contribution: borders, identities, institutional inequalities, and praxis. Although not a full mapping of the Chicana/latina presence in intersectionality, it proffers the distinctive features and themes defining the (...) intersectional terrain of Chicana feminism. (shrink)

Abstract:The question broached in the title may sound odd. It makes sense to ask whether Hume’s empiricism is successful, and whether it is the best way of rendering rigorous the (vague) empiricist view. But is it not obvious that Hume is an empiricist? I shall argue that the answer is negative, at least when we are concerned with methodological empiricism, pertaining to the way inquiry, both scientific and philosophical, must proceed. In support of my claim, I will distinguish between the (...) theoretical question, pertaining to the methodological view Hume endorses, and the practical question, concerned with the way he conducts his inquiry. My conclusion will be that the answer to the first question is contentious, and the answer to the second is negative. (shrink)

Moral sceptics maintain that there are no objective moral values, or that there is no moral knowledge, or no moral facts, or that what looks like a statement which makes a moral judgment is not really a statement and does not have a truth-value. All of this is rather, unclear because all of it is negative. It will be necessary to remove some of this unclarity because my aim in this paper is to establish a proposition which may be summarized (...) by saying: even if there are no objective moral values in one sense, there are objective moralvalues in another sense, and the latter values are good enough to do some of the jobs that objective values in the first sense would have done. A useful analogy might be that of a person who has lost her hand and has been given a prosthesis. In one sense the prosthesis is not as real as the hand, in another sense it is just as real ; most importantly, the person can do with the prosthesis enough of what she could do with the hand to make do. (shrink)

Physicians in rural settings confront many of the same ethical dilemmas as their urban counterparts: confidentiality, quality‐of‐life decisions, resource allocation, and their moral responsibility for bettering the life of the community. However, the courses of action they choose as morally justifiable are influenced by distance from other professional facilities, the interrelationship of private and professional roles in a small community, and the non‐specialized orientation of their practices.

In September 2020, relationships and sex education (RSE) became compulsory in all English secondary schools, and relationships education became compulsory in all English primary schools, marking a significant step forward in the fight to establish children's rights. Although the new RSE regime will help to ensure that many English schools provide pupils with a far more comprehensive RSE curriculum than ever before, the statutory guidance underpinning it includes a number of caveats that mean, although the subject is compulsory, not all (...) children will receive the same content. Arguably, along with the right to withdraw (which is often exercised on religious grounds), the most insidious of these ‘carve-outs’ allows faith schools to teach RSE according to their ‘distinctive religious character’. This exemption has been used to defend the use of religious RSE resources that critics maintain are misogynistic, homophobic and often draw heavily on pseudoscience, as well as to justify leaving certain topics (such as same-sex relationships or trans rights) out of classroom discussion altogether. Drawing on empirically informed normative case studies and recent reforms to the curriculum in Wales, I argue that faith-based carve-outs to RSE policy imperil children's access to a distinct package of educational goods. Using a recent framework for educational decision-making based on these goods developed by Brighouse et al. I go on to conclude that such policies are politically and morally unjustifiable (at least if one agrees that the relevant package of goods is desirable). I further maintain that, even when considered from the perspective of human rights law—which is often given as a pragmatic reason to allow more permissive policies with respect to teaching topics that may impinge upon parents’ deeply held convictions—there are no necessary grounds for governments to legislate for the subject to be circumscribed by the religious beliefs of parents or the faith ethos of the schools children attend. (shrink)

Hume’s familiar sceptical argument against induction brands as irrational our practice of generalising from observed regularities because of its reliance on the assumption that nature is uniform, an assumption which is unjustifiable. The argument which I wish to consider focuses instead on the observed regularities that are required if we are legitimately to extrapolate from experience. According to Hume, the paradigm type of inductive reasoning involves a constant conjunction. But in fact we do not encounter such invariable uniformities: our experience (...) is, almost invariably, irregular. So setting aside Hume’s sceptical qualms about the very attempt to form expectations about the hitherto unobserved, how can we justify our ignoring such irregularities? My conclusion is that, even if the principle of uniformity can be justified, our practice is irrational by Hume’s lights. This is a new Humean critique of our “causal reasoning,” for, although Hume does not present it, the ingredients are all his. (shrink)

In the section of the Treatise titled ‘Of the immateriality of the soul’, Hume adduces an argument to show that nothing can be ‘locally conjoined’ with all of a person’s perceptions. The argument is seldom discussed, and deserves attention, mainly because it can be transformed into an argument against the very existence of a soul. In this paper, I present and closely examine both arguments, Hume’s argument and the one against the existence of the soul. Both, I conclude, are fallacious. (...) In dem Abschnitt des Treatise mit dem Titel ‚Of the immateriality of the soul‘ bringt Hume ein Argument vor, das zeigen soll, dass nichts mit allen Perzeptionen einer Person ‚lokal verknüpft‘ sein kann. Das Argument wird selten diskutiert, verdient aber Aufmerksamkeit, hauptsächlich deshalb, weil es in ein Argument gegen die Existenz der Seele umgewandelt werden kann. In diesem Aufsatz stelle ich beide Argumente – Humes Argument und das gegen die Existenz der Seele – dar und untersuche sie im Detail. Ich gelange zu der Feststellung, dass beide Argumente fehlerhaft sind. (shrink)

Learning Beyond the Objective in Primary Education explores an existential perspective for pedagogy in response to the current technocratic paradigm of education prevalent in many countries worldwide. This new perspective is termed 'Bildung's repetition.' The book seeks to encourage policy makers and educational practitioners to consider the impact of education on children, over and above the meeting of set targets and objectives.

Based on her earlier ground-breaking axiomatization of quantified modal logic, the papers collected here by the distinguished philosopher Ruth Barcan Marcus cover much ground in the development of her thought, spanning from 1961 to 1990. The first essay here introduces themes initially viewed as iconoclastic, such as the necessity of identity, the directly referential role of proper names as "tags", the Barcan Formula about the interplay of possibility and existence, and alternative interpretations of quantification. Marcus also addresses the putative (...) puzzles about substitutivity and about essentialism. The collection also includes influential essays on moral conflict, on belief and rationality, and on some historical figures. Many of her views have been incorporated into current theories, while others remain part of a continuing debate. (shrink)

On a hot sleepy summer day an old truck rattles along a dusty road. A turnip falls off the truck, the truck does not stop. Perhaps the old man who drives the truck does not know that the turnip fell off, or perhaps he does not care. He values his time or his ease more than he values the I turnip. We, who know not only that turnips are nourishing but that many people go hungry, may say that the man (...) ought to have stopped to pick up the turnip. (shrink)

There is a need for inner recollection opposed to our everyday distraction. Our distraction is partly based on anthropological features and partly on social and cultural features. As well as feelings of distraction, we know experiences of being focussed from everyday life. As feelings in which distraction is absent, and as feelings in which we are partly and temporarily released from our own egocentric perspective, they remind us that a different kind of relation to ourselves and the world is possible. (...) Therefore, they can motivate a process of self-transformation aiming at a mystical state of mind, which is of a more profound and enduring kind than ordinary experiences of being focussed. The mystical state of mind is a state in which we transcend ourselves in the face of the universe and thereby relativize our own affective involvement. It is a feeling of an all-encompassing unity which ultimately concerns us; and it is a feeling of love, joy, and peace of mind. Mystical feelings thus shape and restrict spaces of possibilities, and they comprise an altered sense of what it means to be real. Therefore, they can be classified as existential feelings. Still, the mystical state of mind differs from prototypical existential feelings because it is a positive feeling, necessarily comprises active as well as passive moments, and presupposes an explicit way of attending to the world as world. (shrink)

In her recent article, “The One Necessary Condition for a Business Ethics Course: The Teacher Must be a Philosopher,” Ellen Klein argues that philosophers are best qualified to teach business ethics by virtue of their expertise in ethical theory. Klein likens her claim to that of Plato’s “philosopher-king,” who claimed that the philosopher is best suited to be “king,” because he possesses a theoretical understanding of justice. In response to Klein, I point to Aristotle’s objection to Plato, which shows that (...) theoretical knowledge of ethics is not sufficient for making a person ethical, because ethics requires both theoretical and practical knowledge. Ultimately, I argue that in order to have a successful business ethics class, one must address both the issues unique to ethical theory, and the particularstructures and contexts that are unique to making an ethical decision within the business environment. (shrink)

Public health ethics is emerging as a new field of inquiry, distinct not only from public health law, but also from traditional medical ethics and research ethics. Public health professional and scholarly attention is focusing on ways that ethical analysis and a new public health code of ethics can be a resource for health professionals working in the field. This article provides a preliminary exploration of the ethical issues faced by public health professionals in day-to-day practice and of the type (...) of ethics education and support they believe may be helpful. (shrink)

A Reformed understanding of sickness requires that connections be drawn between the structural effects of sin and the ways that sickness is experienced in people's lives. Such an understanding can be an important resource for the bioethicist, both the bioethicist who speaks from the Reformed tradition and the bioethicist who speaks to patients and caregivers who may assume that sin and sickness are connected, but may understand that linkage in overly simplistic ways.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on age and the digital divide by examining the uses of and attitudes toward information and communication technologies by 26 politically senior citizens.Design/methodology/approachThe approach taken involved in‐depth face‐to‐face interviews.FindingsThe majority of the respondents are informed and balanced cyber‐enthusiasts who have embraced the opportunities afforded by ICTs to enhance their lives in general, including their political activities.Originality/valueThese findings destabilize the dominant image of older people and their attitudes to and experiences (...) of ICTs that appears in most of the literature on age and the digital divide. Those aged 65 and over represent the last cohort, in Western societies at least, for whom age as such is likely to be a decisive factor in their relationship to ICTs. It is therefore vital to get some insight into their views. (shrink)