From very early on, Western philosophers have been obsessed with the understanding of a relatively few works of philosophy which have played a disproportionately large and fundamental role in developing the Western philosophical canon, dominating the curriculum in the past and in the present; there is no indication that they will not do so in the future.Uses and Abuses of the Classics examines the various ways in which the different periods of the history of philosophy have approached these texts. The (...) editors have chosen for analysis some of the major philosophers from periods of the history of philosophy in which the interpretation of the classics has been particularly significant.Contributions to this book include entries on: Aristotle's reading of Plato; Averroes on Aristotle; Nietzsche on the Beginnings of Western Philosophy; and Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics. (shrink)

Seven COVID-19 vaccines are now being distributed and administered around the world (figure correct at the time of submission), with more on the horizon. It is widely accepted that healthcare workers should have high priority. However, questions have been raised about what we ought to do if members of priority groups refuse vaccination. Using the case of influenza vaccination as a comparison, we know that coercive approaches to vaccination uptake effectively increase vaccination rates among healthcare workers and reduce patient morbidity (...) if properly implemented. Using the principle of least restrictive alternative, we have developed an intervention ladder for COVID-19 vaccination policies among healthcare workers. We argue that healthcare workers refusing vaccination without a medical reason should be temporarily redeployed and, if their refusal persists after the redeployment period, eventually suspended, in order to reduce the risk to their colleagues and patients. This ‘conditional’ policy is a compromise between entirely voluntary or entirely mandatory policies for healthcare workers, and is consistent with healthcare workers’ established professional, legal and ethical obligations to their patients and to society at large. (shrink)

Rapid growth in structural and functional brain research has led to increasing ethical discussion of what to do about incidental findings within the brains of healthy neuroimaging research participants that have potential health importance, but which are beyond the original aims of the study. This dilemma has been widely debated with respect to general neuroimaging research but has attracted little attention in the context of neuromarketing studies. In this paper, I argue that neuromarketing researchers owe participants the same ethical obligations (...) as other neuroimaging researchers. The financial resources available to neuromarketing firms and the social value of neuromarketing studies should command greater attention to the elucidation and management of incidental findings. However, this needs to be balanced against finite resources available within most public health systems. (shrink)

Science and the originality of life -- Christian facticity -- Grasping life as a topic -- Ruinance -- The retrieval of history -- Facticity and ontology -- Factical speaking -- Rhetoric -- Sophistry.

This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.

© 2019 The Author. Background: The phenomenon of being 'with woman' is fundamental to midwifery as it underpins its philosophy, relationships and practices. There is an identified gap in knowledge around the 'with woman' phenomenon from the perspective of midwives providing care in a variety of contexts. As such, the aim of this study was to explore the experiences of being 'with woman' during labour and birth from the perspective of midwives' working in a model where care is provided by (...) a known midwife. Methods: A descriptive phenomenological design was employed with ten midwives working in a 'known midwife' model who described their experiences of being 'with woman' during labour and birth. The method was informed by Husserlian philosophy which seeks to explore the same phenomenon through rich descriptions by individuals revealing commonalities of the experience. Results: Five themes emerged 1) Building relationships; 2) Woman centred care; 3) Impact on the midwife; 4) Impact on the woman; and 5) Challenges in the Known Midwife model. Midwives emphasised the importance of trusting relationships while being 'with woman', confirming that this relationship extends beyond the woman - midwife relationship to include the woman's support people and family. Being 'with woman' during labour and birth in the context of the relationship facilitates woman-centred care. Being 'with woman' influences midwives, and, it is noted, the women that midwives are working with. Finally, challenges that impact being 'with woman' in the known midwife model are shared by midwives. Conclusions: Findings offer valuable insight into midwives' experiences of being 'with woman' in the context of models that provide care by a known midwife. In this model, the trusting relationship is the conduit for being 'with woman' which influences the midwife, the profession of midwifery, as well as women and their families. Descriptions of challenges to being 'with woman' provide opportunities for professional development and service review. Rich descriptions from the unique voice of midwives, provided insight into the applied practices of being 'with woman' in a known midwife model which adds important knowledge concerning a phenomenon so deeply embedded in the philosophy and practices of the profession of midwifery. (shrink)

It has been forty years since the first multi-channel cochlear implant was used in Australia. While heralded in the hearing world as one of the greatest inventions in modern medicine, not everyone reflects on this achievement with enthusiasm. For many people in the Deaf community, they see the cochlear implant as a tool that reinforces a social construct that pathologizes deafness and removes Deaf identity. In this paper, I set out the main arguments for and against cochlear implantation. While I (...) conclude that, on balance, cochlear implants improve the well-being and broaden the open futures of deaf children, this does not justify mandating implants in circumstances where parents refuse them because this may compound unintended harms when society interferes in the parent-child relationship. For this reason, I argue that parental refusal of cochlear implantation falls within Gillam’s concept of the zone of parental discretion. (shrink)

Pragmatism, Experience, and the Given The doctrine of the Given is that subjects have direct non-inferential awareness of content of their experiences and apprehensions, and that some of a subject's beliefs are justified on the basis of that subject's awareness of her experiences and apprehensions. Pragmatist criticisms of the Given as a myth are shown here not only to be inadequate but to presuppose the Given. A model for a pragmatist account of the Given is then provided in terms of (...) refinements of Dewey's theory of experience. The doctrine of the Given is implicated in the functions of inquiry insofar as one must take it that experience is a source of justification. (shrink)

“Natural logic” was proposed by Lewis Henry Morgan as the engine of cultural evolution, concluding that the “course and manner” of cultural development “was predetermined, as well as restricted within narrow limits of divergence, by the natural logic of the human mind.” This essay argues that Morgan’s conception of natural logic aids the project of settler colonialism. Rather than being a false account of human agency, however, it is a conception of natural logic that is produced through the systematic narrowing (...) of possibilities for agency, human, and otherwise. This narrowed logic is thus only a part of a differently conceived logic of agency that is also general and normative. The discussion proceeds in four sections: first, a presentation of Morgan’s conception of natural logic and its origins; second, an analysis of four colonizing implications of Morgan’s view; third, examples of further developments of natural logic in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the work structuralist and post-structuralist theorists; and, last, a brief introduction of a decolonial logic that provides a broader alternative conception of the structure of agency, human, and otherwise, and that avoids the oppressive effects of the reductionism of the natural logic received from Morgan and his successors. (shrink)

Many fans of Diogenes of Sinope laud his parrhesia, free speech used for critique. However, Diogenes abused not only the powerful but also the socially marginalized. We argue that interpreters of Diogenes cannot explain away the undeniably troublesome things that Diogenes said about those at the margins. But we also argue that Diogenes ought nonetheless to be preserved. Some of his chreiai can be reminders of how to be courageous and fight for the downtrodden, and others can serve as reminders (...) of how easily those aspirations can be forgotten. We offer a variety of ways to interpret Diogenes, especially since the figure of Diogenes is an historical composite from centuries of sources. But we arrive at a position of loving antagonism toward Diogenes, loving Cynic commitments to autarkeia and against wealth and power, and disapproving when Cynics fell short of their commitments and critical aspirations. (shrink)

Nous introduisons une extension aux points fixes de la logique IF (faite pour l’indépendance) de Hintikka et Sandu. Nous donnons des résultats sur sa complexité et son pouvoir expressif. Nous la relions aux jeux de parité à information imparfaite, et nous montrons une application à la définition d’un mu-calcul modal fait pour l’indépendance.

As they are conventionally formulated, Boolean games assume that players make their choices in ignorance of the choices being made by other players – they are games of simultaneous moves. For many settings, this is clearly unrealistic. In this paper, we show how Boolean games can be enriched by dependency graphs which explicitly represent the informational dependencies between variables in a game. More precisely, dependency graphs play two roles. First, when we say that variable x depends on variable y, then (...) we mean that when a strategy assigns a value to variable x, it can be informed by the value that has been assigned to y. Second, and as a consequence of the first property, they capture a richer and more plausible model of concurrency than the simultaneous-action model implicit in conventional Boolean games. Dependency graphs implicitly define a partial ordering of the run-time events in a game: if x is dependent on y, then the assignment of a value to y must precede the assignment of a value to x; if x and y are independent, however, then we can say nothing about the ordering of assignments to these variables—the assignments may occur concurrently. We refer to Boolean games with dependency graphs as partial-order Boolean games. After motivating and presenting the partial-order Boolean games model, we explore its properties. We show that while some problems associated with our new games have the same complexity as in conventional Boolean games, for others the complexity blows up dramatically. We also show that the concurrency in partial-order Boolean games can be modelled using a closure-operator semantics, and conclude by considering the relationship of our model to Independence-Friendly logic. (shrink)

Inspired by a debate between Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget, this work traces the development of natural history from Aristotle to Darwin, and demonstrates how the science of plants and animals has emerged from the common conceptions of folkbiology.

Nous introduisons une extension aux points fixes de la logique IF (faite pour l’indépendance) de Hintikka et Sandu. Nous donnons des résultats sur sa complexité et son pouvoir expressif. Nous la relions aux jeux de parité à information imparfaite, et nous montrons une application à la définition d’un mu-calcul modal fait pour l’indépendance.

This manuscript consists of two parts, Part I. and Part II. Part I., written by the same author and titled "THE PERSECUTED CHURCH: THE CLANDESTINE CATHOLIC CHURCH (ECCLESIA SILENTII) IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA DURING COMMUNISM 1948 – 1991," was published in the January issue of the Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe (OPREE), ISSN: 2693-2148.2 It includes a brief historical overview and introduces the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii) in Czechoslovakia during Communism from 1948 to 1991. Part II. directly follows Part (...) I. and continues with the following sections: Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and References. Part II considers the collapse of the Czech Roman Catholic Church and the end destruction of the Clandestine Catholic Church by the Holy See, along with the process of secularization after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia from 1991 to 2021. (shrink)

Paradigmatically led by existential phenomenological premises, as formulated by Jean-Paul Sartre and Edmund Husserl specifically, this paper aims at a deconstruction of the value of psychiatric labelling in terms of the implications of such labelling for the labelled individual’s experience of freedom as a conscious imperative. This work has as its intention the destabilisation of labelling as a stubborn and inexorable mechanism for social propriety and regularity, which in its unyielding classificatory brandings is Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 2, (...) Edition 1, April 2002. (shrink)

Prenatal diagnosis utilizes invasive procedures such as amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling, cord blood sampling and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. These techniques can diagnose serious foetal illnesses and this therefore provides valuable information to couples, helping them to prepare for the birth of an affected child. It also affords women the freedom to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy. The selective termination of foetuses with serious disabilities does not represent disability discrimination because women and parents are actually rejecting the disability, rather than (...) the foetus itself More significantly, the choice to abort a foetus with a serious illness or disability is an intensely private and personal exercise that does not and cannot be reflective of a wider public morality. Exactly the same can be said of the choice to selectively abort foetuses based solely on their sex. The private choice of women in this respect does not amount to the social devaluation of women. Firstly, it is an erroneous assumption that women in Australia prefer male babies. Secondly, even if there is a preference for male babies, banning prenatal sex selection would be treating just one of many symptoms of sexism, rather than curing the primary causes. The moral right of all women to reproductive freedom is an embodiment of their equal value in society. (shrink)

In this paper we distinguish between epistemic dilemmas, epistemic quasi-dilemmas, and quasi epistemic dilemmas. Our starting point is the commonsense position that S faces a genuine dilemma only when S must take one of two paths and both are bad. It’s the “must” that we think is key. Moral dilemmas arise because there are cases where S must perform A and S must perform B—where ‘must’ implies a moral duty—but S cannot do both. In such a situation, S is doomed (...) to violate a moral obligation. Analogously, S face’s a genuine epistemic dilemma only if she has an epistemic duty to believe that p and at the same time an epistemic duty to not believe that p (either because she has a duty to believe ~p or a duty to suspend judgment). We argue that such cases never arise because there is no epistemic duty to adopt a particular doxastic attitude towards any particular proposition (ever). Hence, there are no epistemic dilemmas. Nevertheless, one might suppose there are situations in which one’s evidence pulls in different directions without determining a uniquely justified doxastic attitude. Such epistemic quasi-dilemmas aren’t full-fledged dilemmas, but they are arguably close enough to pose a genuine problem for the believer. But we argue that there are no genuine epistemic quasi-dilemmas either: They are all resolvable in principle. Fans of dissonance will not be totally disappointed, however, since we argue that there may well be quasi-epistemic dilemmas. These are genuinely unwinnable situations in which one’s moral or pragmatic obligations to do epistemically-relevant things make incompatible demands. (shrink)

Universities in North America and Europe increasingly provide financial incentives to encourage collaboration between faculty in different disciplines, based on the premise that this yields more innovative and sophisticated research. Drawing from a wealth of empirical data, the contributors to Investigating Interdisciplinary Collaboration put that theory to the test. What they find reveals how interdisciplinarity is not living up to its potential, but also suggests how universities might foster more genuinely collaborative and productive research. Chapter 10 is available Open Access (...) here: https: //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK395883/. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore the validity of phenomenology in the psychiatric setting. The phenomenological method - as a mode of research, a method of engagement between self and other, and a framework for approaching what it means to know - has found a legitimate home in therapeutic practice. Over the last century, phenomenology, as a philosophical endeavour and research method, has influenced a wide range of disciplines, including psychiatry. Phenomenology has enabled an enrichment of such practice through deepening the (...) way in which we can come to know the experiences of the other. This knowing-of-the-other is explored here within the context of psychiatric and clinica assessment. The question asked is: How best can we come to know those we work with? What method of engagement can be used to most completely come to understand and narrate the experiences of the individual, and how can this be applied in the context of an assessment aimed at psychiatric or psychological intervention? Elements of phenomenological praxis are presented as definitive of the most integral way of approaching the human subject. Husserlian and Heideggerian notions are explicated and related to phenomenological conceptions of intersubjectivity, in an effort to describe a phenomenology that can be used effectively within the psychiatric setting. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 1 May 2007. (shrink)

In today’s online data-driven world, people constantly shed data and deposit digital footprints. When individuals access health services, governments and health providers collect and store large volumes of health information about people that can later be retrieved, linked and analysed for research purposes. This can lead to new discoveries in medicine and healthcare. In addition, when securely stored and de-identified, the privacy risks are minimal and manageable. In many jurisdictions, ethics committees routinely waive the requirement for researchers to obtain consent (...) from data subjects before using and linking these datasets in an effort to balance respect for individuals with research efficiency. In this paper, I explore the ethical justification for using routinely collected health data for research without consent. I conclude that, not only is this morally justified but also that data subjects have a moral obligation to contribute their data to such research, which would obviate the need for ethics committees to consider consent waivers. In justifying this argument, I look to the duty of easy rescue, distributive justice and draw analogies with vaccination ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In 2010,Business Ethics Quarterlypublished ten articles that considered the potential contributions to business ethics research arising from recent scholarship in a variety of philosophical and social scientific fields (strategic management, political philosophy, restorative justice, international business, legal studies, ethical theory, ethical leadership studies, organization theory, marketing, and corporate governance and finance). Here we offer short responses to those articles by members ofBusiness Ethics Quarterly’s editorial board and editorial team.

We apply the analysis that we have developed over the course of several publications on the significance of ignorance for decision-making, especially in surrogate (and, thus, in political) contexts, to political decision-making, such as it has been, during the COVID-19 pandemic (see Scheall 2019; Crutchfield and Scheall 2019; Scheall and Crutchfield 2020; Scheall 2020). Policy responses to the coronavirus constitute a case study of the problem of policymaker ignorance. We argue that political responses to the virus cannot be explained by (...) assuming that the interests of policymakers were at loggerheads with those of their constituents at the beginning of the crisis. In order to explain the responses of policymakers, it is necessary to recognize the effects of relevant ignorance on their incentives to pursue different policy objectives. We discuss the knowledge that policymakers required at the start of the pandemic in order to deliberately realize the goal of limiting overall human suffering and the spontaneous forces that could have facilitated the realization of this goal. The problem of policymaker ignorance implies that policymakers have not earnestly pursued the goal of limiting overall suffering due to the novel coronavirus, but have repeatedly resorted to the pursuit of relatively less epistemically burdensome goals. The problem of policymaker ignorance explains why policymakers have focused primarily on limiting one kind of suffering – physical suffering due to the virus – and have mostly ignored related kinds of suffering, i.e., the economic, sociological, psychological, and physical suffering caused by policies to limit physical suffering from the virus. The problem of policymaker ignorance also helps to explain why policymakers relied on the relatively blunt instrument of economic lockdown rather than more focused protection policies, and why they continue to resort to lockdowns, despite the emerging scientific evidence of their ineffectiveness at mitigating physical suffering due to the virus. (shrink)

The article argues that bribery is wrong because it violates fundamental notion of equality and it undermines the vitality of the institutions affected.

The main aim of this work was initially a modest one, 'to collect information as to the main facts of Hutcheson's life in Dublin prior to his appointment as Professor at Glasgow'. As the materials grew, however, and Scott's interest in Hutcheson deepened, the planned article expanded into a book that has since become the standard biography. The emphasis throughout is on the development of Hurcheson's thought in the context of an ongoing debate with his contemporaries.

Due to the complexity of aesthetic ideas and the lack of a determinate concept that is adequate to the experience, we search for the words to describe our encounters with art. Sometimes, that search is in vain, and we have difficulty expressing ourselves. In such cases, we are so taken aback by the sheer amount of cognitive activity spurred by our aesthetic experience that we are silenced by art. Instead of viewing what happens in judgments of taste as “discursively mute,” (...) as does Joseph Cannon in his essay, “The Intentionality of Judgments of Taste in Kant’s Critique of Judgment,” I will show how the excess of aesthetic experience has the potential to foster sociability, communication, and ultimately, community. .. (shrink)

Research Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 2, Page 151-162, April 2022. In today’s online data-driven world, people constantly shed data and deposit digital footprints. When individuals access health services, governments and health providers collect and store large volumes of health information about people that can later be retrieved, linked and analysed for research purposes. This can lead to new discoveries in medicine and healthcare. In addition, when securely stored and de-identified, the privacy risks are minimal and manageable. In many jurisdictions, ethics (...) committees routinely waive the requirement for researchers to obtain consent from data subjects before using and linking these datasets in an effort to balance respect for individuals with research efficiency. In this paper, I explore the ethical justification for using routinely collected health data for research without consent. I conclude that, not only is this morally justified but also that data subjects have a moral obligation to contribute their data to such research, which would obviate the need for ethics committees to consider consent waivers. In justifying this argument, I look to the duty of easy rescue, distributive justice and draw analogies with vaccination ethics. (shrink)

Enquiring into the reality of existence, Alan Bradfield draws on knowledge from philosophy to sub-atomic physics to explore such mysteries as free will, mind, matter, time and self.

Informed by the investigative thrust of phenomenological inquiry and the ‘phenomenology of intersubjectivity’, the overarching aim of this article is to provide an accurate illumination of the experience of being diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, and thus being ‘a labelled individual’. This article is based on research that sought to understand the impact of the psychiatric label upon labelled individuals interpersonal and intersubjective presence as experienced outside the psychiatric institution. The principle question asked was: “What is the experience of being (...) a labelled individual in the world?”. It was discovered that psychiatric labelling unfolds as a disconnection and dislocation from co-existence with others. Moreover, labelling had the effect of robbing such individuals of their subjectivity, rendering them lonely, misunderstood and viewed as somehow defective, disabled and wrong. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 3, Edition 1, November 2003. (shrink)