Florence Ashley has argued that requiring patients with gender dysphoria to undergo an assessment and referral from a mental health professional before undergoing hormone replacement therapy is unethical and may represent an unconscious hostility towards transgender people. We respond, first, by showing that Ashley has conflated the self-reporting of symptoms with self-diagnosis, and that this is not consistent with the standard model of informed consent to medical treatment. Second, we note that the model of informed consent involved in cosmetic surgery (...) resembles the model Ashley defends, and that psychological assessment and referral is recognised as an important aspect of such a model. Third, we suggest that the increased prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in the transgender population arguably supports the requirement of assessment and referral from a mental health professional prior to undergoing HRT. (shrink)

Florence Ashley has responded to our response to ‘Gatekeeping hormone replacement therapy for transgender patients is dehumanising.’ Ashley criticises some of our objections to their view that patients seeking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for gender dysphoria should not have to undergo a prior psychological assessment. Here we clarify our objections, most importantly that concerning the parity between cosmetic surgery and the sort of intervention Ashley has in mind. Firstly, we show Ashley’s criticism of our comparison is insubstantial. We then examine (...) their comments regarding the analogy between abortion and HRT, and the language of informed consent. We also scrutinize the data upon which Ashley relies to defend the claim that informed consent without assessment always yields positive outcomes, finding this conclusion to be overstated. Finally, even if Ashley’s arguments were vindicated, the claim that the gatekeeping of HRT is motivated by hostility towards transgender people remains unsupported. (shrink)

Review: Tony Blackshaw, Zygmunt Bauman ; Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life.

Review: Tony Blackshaw, Zygmunt Bauman ; Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life.

According to the theory theory of folk psychology, our engagement in the folk psychological practices of prediction, interpretation and explanation draws on a rich body of knowledge about psychological matters. According to the simulation theory, in apparent contrast, a fundamental role is played by our ability to identify with another person in imagination and to replicate or re-enact aspects of the other person’s mental life. But amongst theory theorists, and amongst simulation theorists, there are significant differences of approach.

Substantial research examines the follower consequences of leader alignment of words and deeds, but no research has quantitatively reviewed these effects. This study examines extant research on behavioral integrity and contrasts it with two other constructs that focus on alignment: moral integrity and psychological contract breaches. We compare effect sizes between the three constructs, and find that BI has stronger effects on trust, in-role task performance and citizenship behavior than moral integrity and stronger effects on commitment and OCB than psychological (...) contract breach. These stronger attitudinal consequences run counter to our initial expectations, but they provide evidence of important conceptual distinctions and mechanisms that we articulate. BI theory suggests that BI’s greater performance impact is due to the notion that BI affects communication clarity in addition to attitudes. Results of meta-analytic structural equation modeling are consistent with this proposed dual path of BI’s impact. We highlight avenues for future research on BI and discuss how our findings inform the broader research on leader alignment. (shrink)

Arash Abazari's Hegel's Ontology of Power is a superb study of the relevance of Hegel's logic to Marx's theory. Hegel is often dismissed by Marxists as an ‘idealist’ denying the reality of the world, as if Hegel were Bishop Berkeley with a German accent.1 Abazari recognizes this is not the case: ‘(T)he logical categories are not self-standing, but shadow, or track, the empirical world’ (Abazari 2020: 7). But the world in its full actuality does not simply consist of the objects (...) we sense or perceive. It is intrinsically intelligible, and its intelligibility can be comprehended only in thought. When it is, the ‘idealist’ thesis of the identity (in difference) of thought and being holds. Anyone asserting a truth claim implicitly asserts this identity. In so far as Marx asserts that Capital comprehends the capitalist mode of production, he too is an ‘idealist’ in the Hegelian sense of the term. (shrink)

In a step-by-step progression through Marx's three volume work, discovers a systematic theory of socio-economic categories ordered according to the dialectical logic derived from Hegel.

Great bliss clarified -- Six verses on co-emergence -- Utterly clear teaching of unification -- Definitive teaching on dreams -- Clear teaching on utter non-dwelling -- Full teaching of suchness -- Six verses on Madhyamaka.

This study draws on semistructured interviews with 19 white, rural, straight-identified men who have sex with men to understand how they perceive their gender and sexuality. It is among the first to use straight men’s own narratives, and helps address the underrepresentation of rural masculinities research. Through complex interpretive processes, participants reworked non-normative sexual practices—those usually antithetical to rural masculinities—to construct normative masculinity. Most chose other masculine, white, and straight or secretly bisexual men as partners for secretive sex without romantic (...) involvement. By choosing these partners and having this type of sex, the participants normalized and authenticated their sexual encounters as straight and normatively masculine. The participants engaged in bud-sex, a specific type of male–male sex that reinforced their rural masculinity and heterosexuality. The married men framed sex with men as less threatening to marriage than extramarital sex with women, helping to preserve a part of their lives that they described as central to their straightness. The results highlight the flexibility of heterosexuality; the centrality of heterosexuality to normative rural masculinity; how similar sexual practices carry different meanings across contexts and populations; and the social construction of masculinities and sexualities by age, race, gender, time period, and place. (shrink)

A major recurrent feature of the intellectual landscape in cognitive science is the appearance of a collection of essays by Noam Chomsky. These collections serve both to inform the wider cognitive science community about the latest developments in the approach to the study of language that Chomsky has advocated for almost fifty years now,1 and to provide trenchant criticisms of what he takes to be mistaken philosophical objections to this approach. This new collection contains seven essays, the earliest of which (...) were first published about ten years ago. So the linguistic work that is summarised is within the principles and parameters approach and some of the essays (particularly the first and last) provide an outline of the main ideas of the emerging minimalist programme.2 But this is not primarily a book about the details of recent linguistic theory. Rather, in these essays Chomsky offers a wealth of critical commentary on some of the most influential arguments in the philosophy of mind and language that have appeared over the past two decades or so. Indeed, Chomsky discusses a vast range of philosophical topics and reaches some radical conclusions – that many influential philosophical discussions on language and mind are utterly misconceived and that, for example, the traditional mind-body problem cannot even be coherently stated. (shrink)

Gratitude to others is typically understood as a response to good things people give to us or do for us. Occasionally, though, we thank people for things other than gifts or actions. We sometimes thank people for being there for us, for instance, or for loving us, or for being good parents or teachers, or for believing in us. In this article, I develop a set of considerations to help determine whether gratitude to others for being, loving, or believing can (...) be fitting in any of these cases. I begin by arguing that when it is appropriate for a beneficiary thank a benefactor for ϕ-ing, the beneficiary’s gratitude to the benefactor for ϕ-ing is fitting only insofar as the benefactor ϕ-ed out of benevolence, care or concern for the beneficiary. I then show that thanking can express attitudes other than gratitude, thereby highlighting the thanks-gratitude fallacy: the mistake of inferring the fittingness of one person’s gratitude to another from the fact that it would be reasonable for the former to thank the latter. These considerations imply that gratitude for being there for us, gratitude for believing in us, and gratitude for being a good professional can sometimes be fitting, while gratitude for loving us and gratitude for being a good intimate generally are not. (shrink)

Free market environmentalists believe that the extension of private property rights and market transactions is sufficient to address environmental difficulties. But there is no invisible hand operating in markets that ensures that environmentally sound practices will be employed just because property rights are in private hands. Also, liability laws and the court systems cannot be relied upon to force polluters to internalize the social costs of pollution. Third, market prices do not provide an objective measure of environmental matters. Finally, there (...) is a right to a livable environment that justifies regulations protecting the public from unreasonable environmental risks. (shrink)

This article develops a critical theory of human–computer interaction intended to test some of the assumptions and omissions made in the field as it transitions from a cognitive theoretical frame to a phenomenological understanding of user experience described by Harrison et al. as a third research paradigm and similarly Bødker :24–31; Bødker, Interactions 22):24–31, 2015) as third-wave HCI. Although this particular focus on experience has provided some novel avenues of academic enquiry, this article draws attention to a distinct bridge between (...) the conventional HCI disciplinary concerns with predominantly task-based digital work and use context and a growing business interest in consumer experiences in digital environments. Critical HCI addresses the problem of experience in two interrelated ways. On one hand, it explores the role market logic plays in putting user experiences to work. On the other hand, it engages with ontological understandings of experience hitherto realized in HCI by way of a phenomenological matrix. The article concludes by bringing in an old thinker to consider experience in novel ways that relate ontological concerns to a broader political concept of experience capitalism. (shrink)

Hegel conceptualized the capitalist economy as a system of needs, with commodities and money serving as means to human ends. While anticipating Marx’s criticisms of certain tendencies in capitalism, Hegel insisted that higher-order institutions, especially those of the modern state, could put them out of play and establish a reconciliation of universality, particularity, and individuality warranting rational affirmation. Hegel, however, failed to comprehend the emergence of capital as a dominant subject, subordinating human ends under its end. The structural coercion, domination, (...) and exploitation inherent in the capital/wage labor relationship illustrate that point, as does the depoliticization of inherently political matters in capitalist market societies. The reconciliation of universality, particularity, and individuality Hegel endorsed requires a form of socialism incorporating deliberative democracy in local workplaces and communities, conjoined with representative bodies on regional, national, and ultimately global levels. (shrink)

Smith begins with a comprehensive analysis of social theory, presents a defense of Jurgen Habermas' main contribution to social ethics and contrasts Habermas' rational foundation for ethics with the decisionism defended by Max Weber, and ...

In recent publications Paolo Virno and Carlo Vercellone have called attention to Marx’s category of the general intellect in theGrundrisse, and to the unprecedented role its diffusion plays in contemporary capitalism. According to Virno, the flourishing of the general intellect, which Marx thought could only take place within communism, characterises post-Fordist capitalism. Vercellone adds that Marx’s account of the real subsumption of living labour under capital is obsolete in contemporary cognitive capitalism. Both authors regard Marx’s value theory as historically obsolete. (...) I argue that these views rest on a confusion of value and wealth, a neglect of Marx’s account of the role of ‘free gifts’ to capital, an underestimation of the role of the general intellect in the period prior to the rise of post-Fordism/cognitive capitalism, and an underestimation of the restrictions on the diffusion of the general intellect in contemporary capitalism. (shrink)

Professional soldiers and academics have spent considerable effort trying to conclude when it is permissible to set aside the usual moral prohibition against killing in order to achieve the goals set before them. What has received much less attention, however, is when it is appropriate to set aside other moral considerations such as the prohibition against deception, theft and blackmail. This makes some sense, since if it is moral to kill someone, whether or not it is appropriate to deceive him (...) seems to be trivial in comparison. But members of the intelligence community, both military and non-military, must determine for times of peace as well as war when it is appropriate to set aside the usual prohibitions in order to achieve national objectives. The purpose of this article is to provide a framework for military and non-military intelligence professionals for answering and discussing these questions. By applying insights from Kantian and Lockean ethics, the authors seek to describe an ethic of the intelligence profession that permits a combination of ethical restraint and intelligence effectiveness. (shrink)

Chris Arthur‟s body of work counts as a very important and original contribution to systematic dialectics, and I have profited immensely from his writings over the years. However we disagree on a number of points. Some have to do with the relatively secondary question of the intellectual relationship between Hegel and Marx; others involve more substantive matters. In his reply to my review of Joseph McCarney‟s Hegel on History Arthur distinguishes three different versions of the thesis that there is a (...) “homology” between the logic of capital (in a Marxian understanding of it) and Hegel‟s “idea.” I shall comment briefly on each and then conclude with a general remark. (shrink)

In his recent work The Myth of Dialectics John Rosenthal presents a forceful polemic against Hegel and Marxists sympathetic to the Hegelian legacy. The methodology Hegel employed, his metaphysical assertions, his rejection of the principles of formal logic, and the political implications of his standpoint, are all fundamentally incompatible with Marx’s perspective, according to Rosenthal. While Rosenthal grants that Marx did make use of Hegelian motifs in his theory of value, even this is not to Hegel’s credit: the very perversity (...) of Hegel’s thought made it useful for the comprehension of the perversity of capital. In this paper I argue that a close and reasonably charitable reading of Hegel’s Logic reveals a quite different picture of his methodology and ontological commitments from that presented by Rosenthal. While there are profound substantive differences between the Hegelian and Marxian 1 perspectives on capitalist society, it is not the case that Hegel’s Logic is homologous with capital. The Logic provides helpful conceptual resources for a critique of capital. In the final section of the paper five areas are briefly sketched in which Hegelian dialectical logic remains of contemporary interest. (shrink)

_Two notions of autonomy are distinguished. The respective_ _denials that psychology is autonomous from neurobiology are neuron_ _doctrines, moderate and radical. According to the moderate neuron_ _doctrine, inter-disciplinary interaction need not aim at reduction. It is_ _proposed that it is more plausible that there is slippage from the_ _moderate to the radical neuron doctrine than that there is confusion_ _between the radical neuron doctrine and the trivial version._.

My topic is Hume’s treatment of the problem of evil in the Dialogues and elsewhere in his philosophical writings. The aim is to provide an overall view of Hume’s position which also takes account of the historical debate associated with the problem of evil. Critical and interpretative issues will also be addressed. We shall see that Hume is concerned mainly with a particular form of the evidential argument from evil which appears especially damaging to theistic belief in so far as (...) it calls into question traditional views of the nature of God. (shrink)

T?s?, a thirteenth century logician writing in Arabic, uses two logical connectives to build up molecular propositions: ?if-then?, and ?either-or?. By referring to a dichotomous Tree, T?s? shows how to choose the proper disjunction relative to the terms in the disjuncts. He also discusses the disjunctive propositions which follow from a conditional proposition.

Yves Grandjean, Tony Kozelj and François Salviat The Zeus Gate on Thasos p. 175-268 The Gate of Zeus and Hera, offered by Pythippos son of Paiestratos, is one of the most remarkable features of the Thasian enceinte: to the sculptured reliefs that adorned it was added a particular architectural embellishment which has never been analysed in its entirety. The numerous blocks preserved in situ make it possible to reconstruct the elevation of the gate, which was in fact a gate (...) tower, and to detail the appearance of the latter with its architectural facing of superimposed orders — Doric and Ionic — on the town side and its Doric frieze integrated into the walls of the tower on the side facing the country. The influences of Macedonian, funerary and palatial architecture are manifest. According to the lists of theoroi and the amphora stamps discovered in the levels preceding its construction, the gate tower was erected in around 300 BC. It replaced an original opening going back to the time when the enceinte visible today was built, in other words after the raid on Thasos by Histiaios of Miletus in 494; the old excavations like the recent investigations confirm the account by Herodotus (VI 46), which there is no reason to doubt. (shrink)

The Liberal Arts deal with the human being as a whole and hence with what lies at the essence of being human. As a result, the Liberal Arts have a far greater capacity to do good than other fields of study, for their foundation in philosophy enables them to bring students into contact with the ultimate questions which they are free to accept. Even if these questions have little or no ‘market value’, it should be obvious that the way they (...) are taught and learned is going to have a powerful impact upon the future of the students and society. It is suggested here that mathematics has an integral role in the study of the liberal arts in a first degree at a university where the ‘meal ticket’ is subsequently studied in the graduate or professional school. (shrink)

It has always seemed to me that one of my father's great contributions to monarchical practice was the manner in which, without apparent design, he managed to resolve the internal contradictions of monarchy in the twentieth century that requires it to be remote from, yet at the same time to personify the aspirations of the people. It must appear aloof and distant in order to sustain the illusion of a Monarch who, shunning faction, stands above politics and the more mundane (...) allegiances. At the same time it must appear to share intimately the ideals of the multitude, whose affection and loyalty provide the broad base of constitutional Monarchy. My father, with the instinctive genius of the simple man, found the means of squaring the apparent circle within the resources of his own character. By the force of his own authentic example – the king himself in the role of the bearded paterfamilias … he transformed the Crown as personified by the Royal Family into a model of the traditional family virtues, a model that was all the more genuine for its suspected but inconspicuous flaws. The King, as the dutiful father, became the living symbol not only of the nation, but also of the Empire, the last link holding these diversified and scattered communities. (shrink)

Neoclassical economics remains the leading theoretical alternative to Marxian economics. In this article I shall contrast the accounts of technical change in capitalism proposed by both theories. I shall introduce five criteria relevant to a comparison of competing social theories, and argue that the Marxian perspective on technical change in capitalism is superior on all five counts.

Agricultural biotechnology is a social pursuit, undertaken by social agents within social institutions.1 Any attempt to explore the social dimensions of a profound and complex technological development such as biotechnology is bound to be controversial, and any attempt to formulate an ethical assessment of such a development is bound to be yet more complex and controversial. This surely explains why many choose to ignore these inquiries. But the social dimensions of biotechnology are just as real as viruses, bacteria, enzymes, and (...) cells. To refuse to investigate them with the same seriousness that viruses, bacteria, enzymes and cells are investigated is to place an arbitrary restriction on the scope of rational inquiry. (shrink)

Extreme monetary policies successfully prevented the “Great Recession” of 2007–2009 from turning into a global depression. However, they did not address the underlying problems in global capitalism. In recent years prominent “insiders” of global capitalism have proposed reforms designed to remedy these defects. I argue that these proposals are inadequate, due in great part to a failure to acknowledge a profound change in the “deep structure” of capitalism. Technological change, which in the past has contributed so much to the dynamism (...) of capitalism development, no longer does so. The need for extreme monetary policies in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007–2009, the failure of these policies, and the lack of plausible alternatives to them, are all symptoms of an underlying disease beyond cure. A path towards a democratic form of socialism must be forged for the simple yet compelling reason Rosa Luxemburg articulated: it is a matter of socialism or barbarism. (shrink)

Extreme monetary policies successfully prevented the “Great Recession” of 2007–2009 from turning into a global depression. However, they did not address the underlying problems in global capitalism. In recent years prominent “insiders” of global capitalism have proposed reforms designed to remedy these defects. I argue that these proposals are inadequate, due in great part to a failure to acknowledge a profound change in the “deep structure” of capitalism. Technological change, which in the past has contributed so much to the dynamism (...) of capitalism development, no longer does so. The need for extreme monetary policies in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007–2009, the failure of these policies, and the lack of plausible alternatives to them, are all symptoms of an underlying disease beyond cure. A path towards a democratic form of socialism must be forged for the simple yet compelling reason Rosa Luxemburg articulated: it is a matter of socialism or barbarism. (shrink)

When, where, and how should the promotion of human rights and democracy abroad figure in American foreign policy? A compelling way for liberals to influence this debate is to underscore a Wilsonian agenda's relevance to national security.

Our massive tampering with the world's interdependent web of life-coupled with the environmental damage inflicted by deforestation, species loss, and climate change-could trigger widespread adverse effects, including unpredictable collapses of critical biological systems whose interactions and dynamics we only imperfectly understand. Uncertainty over the extent of these effects cannot excuse complacency or delay in facing the threats ... We the undersigned, senior members of the world's scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our (...) stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated. (Union of Concerned Scientists, 1992). (shrink)