Most people believe that it is permissible to kill a nonresponsible threat, or someone who threatens one's life without exercising agency. Defenders of this view must show that there is a morally relevant difference between nonresponsible threats and innocent bystanders. Some philosophers, including Jonathan Quong and Helen Frowe, have attempted to do this by arguing that one who kills a bystander takes advantage of another person, while one who kills a threat does not. In this paper, (...) I show that the proposals offered by Quong and Frowe have unacceptable implications. I then argue that those who claim that nonresponsible threats may be killed face a dilemma generated by the possibility of a stationary threat, or someone who endangers another person's life without moving. Unless we arbitrarily distinguish between stationary and moving nonresponsible threats, it is unclear how the permission to kill nonresponsible threats is to be explicated. I conclude that nonresponsible threats are not legitimate targets of self-defence. (shrink)

Some are blameless for posing a threat to the live of another because they are not morally responsible for being a threat. Others are blameless in spite of their responsibility. On what has come to be known as the "moral responsibility account" of liability to defensive killing, it is such responsibility, rather than blameworthiness, for threatening another that renders one liable to defensive killing. Moreover, one's lack of responsibility for being a threat grounds one's nonliability to defensive (...) killing. In "Killing the Innocent in Self-Defense" (1994), I offered an early formulation and defense of such an account. In Section I of this chapter, I renew my defense of the claim that it is impermissible to kill a passive nonresponsible threat in self-defense. In Section II, I renew my defense of the claim that it is permissible to kill a blameless but morally responsible threat in self-defense. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer two arguments in support of the proposition that there are sometimes agent-relative prerogatives to impose harm on nonliable persons. The first argument begins with a famous case where most people intuitively agree it is permissible to perform an act that results in an innocent person’s death, and where there is no liability-based or consequentialist justification for acting. I show that this case is relevantly analogous to a case involving the intentional imposition of lethal defensive harm (...) on a nonliable person. In the final part of the paper, I provide a second, independent, argument in support of the proposition that there are agent-relative permissions to foreseeably harm or kill nonliable people under certain conditions. (shrink)

For decades, intelligence and achievement tests have registered significant differences between people of different races, ethnicities, classes, and genders. We argue that most of these differences are explained not as reflections of differences in the distribution of intellectual virtues but as evidence for the metacognitive mediation of the intellectual virtues. For example, in the United States, blacks typically score worse than whites on tests of mathematics. This might lead one to think that fewer blacks possess the relevant intellectual virtues, or (...) that they possess them less fully. However, research on stereotype threat shows that when blacks are not reminded of their race, they do much better on these tests than when they are. Simply raising to salience the race of the student triggers the activation of the stereotype, which in turn leads to poorer performance. However, learning about stereotype threat to a large extent immunizes people against it. This suggests that the psycho-social dimension of intelligence that recognizes the possibility of effects like stereotype threat is a crucial mediating variable in the development and expression of the intellectual virtues. The Socratic, “Know thyself” needs to be expanded to, “Know thyself and thy society.” Self-knowledge and knowledge of relevant stereotypes are a necessary condition for optimal development and expression of the other intellectual virtues. (shrink)

One of the most noticeable trends in recent years has been the increasing reliance of public decision-making processes on algorithms, i.e. computer-programmed step-by-step instructions for taking a given set of inputs and producing an output. The question raised by this article is whether the rise of such algorithmic governance creates problems for the moral or political legitimacy of our public decision-making processes. Ignoring common concerns with data protection and privacy, it is argued that algorithmic governance does pose a significant (...) class='Hi'>threat to the legitimacy of such processes. Modelling my argument on Estlund’s threat of epistocracy, I call this the ‘threat of algocracy’. The article clarifies the nature of this threat and addresses two possible solutions. It is argued that neither solution is likely to be successful, at least not without risking many other things we value about social decision-making. The result is a somewhat pessimistic conclusion in which we confront the possibility that we are creating decision-making processes that constrain and limit opportunities for human participation. (shrink)

Though stereotype threat is most well-known for its ability to hinder performance, it actually has a wide range of effects. For instance, it can also cause stress, anxiety, and doubt. These additional effects are as important and as central to the phenomenon as its effects on performance are. As a result, stereotype threat has more far-reaching implications than many philosophers have realized. In particular, the phenomenon has a number of unexplored “epistemic effects.” These are effects on our epistemic (...) lives—i.e., the ways we engage with the world as actual and potential knowers. In this paper I flesh out the implications of a specific epistemic effect: self-doubt. Certain kinds of self-doubt can deeply affect our epistemic lives by exacerbating moments of epistemic injustice and by interacting with pernicious ideals of rationality. In both cases, self-doubt can lead to a person questioning their own humanity or full personhood. Since we have reasons to believe that stereotype threat can trigger this kind of self-doubt, then stereotype threat can affect various aspects of ourselves besides our ability to perform to our potential. It can also affect our very sense of self. (shrink)

A large number of molecular, physiological, and biochemical events accompany the mitogen‐induced transition from a quiescent, nonproliferating state to a cycling state. However, it is difficult to distinguish causal steps in the commitment to cell division from correlative events. To approach this problem we have isolated mitogen‐specific nonproliferative variants of 3T3 cells, namely cell lines that are unable to mount a mitogenic response to specific mitogens.

In this paper I discuss the interrelated topics of stereotype threat and attributional ambiguity as they relate to gender and gender identity. The former has become an emerging topic in feminist philosophy and has spawned a tremendous amount of research in social psychology and elsewhere. But the discussion, at least in how it connects to gender, is incomplete: the focus is only on cisgender women and their experiences. By considering trans women's experiences of stereotype threat and attributional ambiguity, (...) we gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena and their problematic effects. (shrink)

The use of armed drones in post-9/11 US military conflicts has increasingly been the subject of academic writings; few, however, examine its collateral effects from a biopolitically-framed, phenomenological lens. This article examines how the indeterminate field of threat produced and sustained by the preventive military paradigm of drone warfare transforms potential threats into determinate targets of military violence. The spatial disruption experienced by inhabitants of the "space of death" generated by the "drone zone" thus transforms their existential comportment of (...) living under drones into that of 'walking corpses' whose relationships to space expose the devastating phenomenological consequences of drone warfare. (shrink)

In this paper I ponder the moral status of conditional threats, in particular the extent to which a threatened party would be permitted to use (lethal) defensive force. I first investigate a mugger case before turning briefly to the more complicated issue of national defence in the face of an invading army. One should not exaggerate the level of protection people under threat owe their conditioned killers simply because what is extorted is of little value. After all, either the (...) conditional threat is willing to kill for something she has no claim on at all, or, if she has a just claim on it - or good reason to believe that she has - she is willing to kill to (re)acquire something of not much worth. In both cases the moral culpability of the conditional threat could be seen as reducing her claim on protection from harm. (shrink)

New Threats to Freedom In the twentieth century, free people faced a number of mortal threats,ranging from despotism, fascism, and communism to the looming menace of global terrorism. While the struggle against some of these overt dangers continues, some insidious new threats seem to have slipped past our intellectual defenses. These often unchallenged threats are quietly eroding our hard-won freedoms and, in some cases, are widely accepted as beneficial. In New Threats to Freedom, editor and author Adam Bellow has assembled (...) an all-star lineup of innovative thinkers to challenge these insidious new threats. Some leap into already raging debates on issues such as Sharia law in the West, the rise of transnationalism, and the regulatory state. Others turn their attention to less obvious threats, such as the dogma of fairness, the failed promises of the blogosphere, and the triumph of behavioral psychology. These threats are very real and very urgent, yet this collection avoids projecting an air of doom and gloom. Rather, it provides a blueprint for intellectual resistance so that modern defenders of liberty may better understand their enemies, more effectively fight to preserve the meaning of freedom, and more surely carry its light to a new generation. What are the new threats to freedom? when has authority not claimed, when imposing trammels and curbs on liberty, that it does so for a wider good and a greater happiness?” —Christopher Hitchens “The regulatory state amounts to a regressive tax that penalizes small independent producers and protects the status quo.” —Max Borders “Europe tends to favor stability over democracy, America democracy over stability.” —Daniel Hannan “The value of free expression is perceived to be at odds with goals that were considered ‘more important,’ like inclusiveness, diversity, nondiscrimination, and tolerance.” —Greg Lukianoff “The masses cannot ultimately be free: only the individual can be.” —Robert D. Kaplan “That old bugbear of postwar sociology—the mob-self—is now a reality. In a participatory/popularity culture, the freedom to think and act for ourselves becomes harder and harder to achieve.” —Lee Siegel “As traditional marriage declines, the ranks of single women are growing, and increasingly these women are substituting the security of a husband with the security of the state.” —Jessica Gavora “Ending the freedom to fail is a mean-spirited attack on the freedom to succeed.” —Michael Goodwin “The only solution to the new threats to American press freedom lies in organized resistance.” —Katherine Mangu-Ward “The new behaviorism isn’t interested in protecting people’s freedom to choose; on the contrary, its core principle is the idea that only by allowing an expert elite to limit choice can individuals learn to break their bad habits.” —Christine Rosen “There’s a world of Travis Bickles out there, and they’re not driving cabs. They’re reading blogs.” —Ron Rosenbaum “The first amendment ensures not that speech will be fair, but that it will be free. It cannot be both.” —David Mamet Join the conversation about these issues at www.newthreatstofreedom.com. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, our purpose is to show what George Berkeley really said about ethics and the background conditions of religious life. The point is that true happiness is only possible in a religious sense; it means happiness in afterlife. The major threat to this is freethinking, or what we see as emerging enlightened modernism. His rather quixotic fix against freethinking shows the man as he is behind all the conventional panegyrics. He is a real Anglican soldier who anticipated (...) but never admitted a critical defeat in the most important of all battles. Interest in George Berkeley’s life’s work has been exceptionally selective. Yet his revolutionary immaterialism is only an early episode in his struggles towards a better society and religious life for all the people, regardless of their denomination. From this point of view, Alciphron is central. But he also develops his ethical ideas in his various minor writings, which have been largely overlooked. (shrink)

The existence of predatory animals is a problem in animal ethics that is often not taken as seriously as it should be. We show that it reveals a weakness in Tom Regan's theory of animal rights that also becomes apparent in his treatment of innocent human threats. We show that there are cases in which Regan's justice-prevails-approach to morality implies a duty not to assist the jeopardized, contrary to his own moral beliefs. While a modified account of animal rights that (...) recognizes the moral patient as a kind of entity that can violate moral rights avoids this counterintuitive conclusion, it makes non-human predation a rights issue that morally ought to be subjected to human regulation. Jennifer Everett, Lori Gruen and other animal advocates base their treatment of predation in part on Regan's theory and run into similar problems, demonstrating the need to radically rethink the foundations of the animal rights movement. We suggest to those who, like us, find it less plausible to introduce morality to the wild than to reject the concept of rights that makes this move necessary to read our criticism either as a modus tollens argument and reject non-human animal rights altogether or as motivating a libertarian-ish theory of animal rights. (shrink)

In American legal journals over the last decade there were hundreds of pages of articles worrying over threats to justice and freedom arising from the power to withhold benefits. Government officials have tremendous discretion to offer or withhold foreign aid, ration-books, government contracts and jobs, welfare subsidies, public housing, tariff protection, academic grants, alien resident status, paroles, or exemption from conscription or combat, from arrest or prosecution or imprisonment. Right-wing economists have worried about welfare-state emphasis on administrative discretion rather than (...) the rule of law. And left-wing economists have worried about the rich man's power to intimidate the poor man by threatening to cut off his productive work. (shrink)

Within the broader agenda of adherence research, health beliefs have been identified as being significant predictors of adherence. Specifically, perceived threat as a health belief has received considerable attention in compliance and adherence research from multiple perspectives in multiple patient populations. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the concept of perceived threat as it relates to treatment adherence through a series of perspectives: conceptual, methodological, and empirical. Analysis of the literature reveals that there is lack of (...) consistency in operationalization of perceived threat as it relates to treatment adherence. Perceived threat is most commonly cited in studies that focus on health beliefs or utilize a stress and coping paradigm. Instruments have been developed with items that measure perceived threat. Measures of threat occur primarily through uni‐dimensional measures that do not reflect the inter‐relatedness of the threat experience to personal and contextual factors. Future research examining perceived threat from a cognitive appraisal perspective, where both primary and secondary appraisals can be examined, may provide additional insight into factors affecting treatment adherence. (shrink)

This paper discusses the puzzle of blackmail, i.e. the way in which the threat of an otherwise legally permissible action can in some cases constitute blackmail. It argues that the key to understanding blackmail is in terms of coercion and threats, and the effect such threats have on the validity of a victim’s consent. The nature of coercion and of coercive threats is considered in detail to support the thesis that threats are prima facie impermissible, though often justified all-things-considered. (...) The puzzle of blackmail arises due to the fact that the law rarely has regard to an agent’s motives in acting, whereas this is the focus of the puzzling cases. (shrink)

Does the Second Amendment protect those who threaten others by negligently or recklessly wielding firearms? What line separates constitutionally legitimate gun displays from threatening activities that can be legally proscribed? This article finds guidance in the First Amendment doctrine of true threats, which permits punishment of “statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individual.” The Second Amendment, like the First, should (...) not be read to protect those who threaten unlawful violence. And to the degree that the constitution requires a culpable mental state in such circumstances, the appropriate standard should be recklessness. (shrink)

South African Military Professionalism: Some Critical Observations and Threats -- Threats to Professionalism in the United States Military -- Higher Education and the Profession of Arms: Explaining the Logic -- Military Professionalism -- An Organizational Challenge by Itself -- The Challenge of Maintaining Military Professionalism in the Face of Transformation: The Indonesian Army Experience -- Threats and Opportunities for Military Professionalism from Social Media -- The Profession of Arms and the Promotion of Ethics: The profession of Arms and the Challenge (...) of Ethics -- The New Economic Togetherness: Globalization of Economics and Some Implications for Security and the Military Profession -- Displaced Pride: Attacking Cynicism at the United States Air Force Acedemy -- Military Professionalism of the Swedish Armed Forces in the 21st Century -- The Dynamic Five-Factor Model as a Compass for Military Professionalism: A Comparison Between Switzerland and the Netherlands -- Complacency: A Threat to (Canadian) Military Professionalism. (shrink)

The threat simulation theory of dreaming states that dream consciousness is essentially an ancient biological defence mechanism, evolutionarily selected for its capacity to repeatedly simulate threatening events. Threat simulation during dreaming rehearses the cognitive mechanisms required for efficient threat perception and threat avoidance, leading to increased probability of reproductive success during human evolution. One hypothesis drawn from TST is that real threatening events encountered by the individual during wakefulness should lead to an increased activation of the (...) system, a threat simulation response, and therefore, to an increased frequency and severity of threatening events in dreams. Consequently, children who live in an environment in which their physical and psychological well-being is constantly threatened should have a highly activated dream production and threat simulation system, whereas children living in a safe environment that is relatively free of such threat cues should have a weakly activated system. We tested this hypothesis by analysing the content of dream reports from severely traumatized and less traumatized Kurdish children and ordinary, non-traumatized Finnish children. Our results give support for most of the predictions drawn from TST. The severely traumatized children reported a significantly greater number of dreams and their dreams included a higher number of threatening dream events. The dream threats of traumatized children were also more severe in nature than the threats of less traumatized or non-traumatized children. (shrink)

We present a new thought experiment that raises a threat for Minimal Physicalism, i.e. the thesis according to which mental properties supervene on physical properties. Our proposal is an example of the so called hard problems in philosophy of mind, in particular the problem of maximal consciousness. We do not however presuppose anything about its very nature apart from the minimal, weak assumption that it is determined by first order mental properties. We argue that either Minimal Physicalism is unable (...) to give an adequate account of the new thought experiment we present or has to explain the fact that two numerically distinct but physically indistinguishable individuals have different maximal consciousness due to their spatial location. We contend that this last conclusion is strongly at variance with our contemporary scientific image of the world. (shrink)

Whether, how and when do leaders engage in ethical leadership as a response to status threat? We propose that leaders facing status threat are likely to develop ethical leadership behaviors toward subordinates. Drawing on power dependence theory, we theorize that experiencing status threat augments leaders’ dependence on subordinates who can provide them with status-relevant resources. Dependence on subordinates further motivates leaders to absorb the resource constraints through displaying ethical leadership. However, if leaders are able to obtain alternative (...) resources to cope with status threat, their dependence on subordinates is weakened. We conducted two studies to test the predictions. Using a moderation-of-process design, Study 1 found that when participants experienced status threat, they displayed more ethical leadership behaviors, but particularly so when their reward structure was team- rather than individual-based. Study 2 was a field study using a sample of 104 teams from two Chinese firms listed in the “Top 500 private enterprises in China.” We found that leaders who experienced more status threat were perceived to be more ethical by their subordinates, which was mediated by leaders’ perceptions of dependence on subordinates. The mediated effect was stronger for leaders who were less skilled in networking. Implications for theory on the contextual factors of ethical leadership, dependence, and status threat are discussed. (shrink)

The threat of biological and chemical terrorism highlights a growing tension in research ethics between respecting the interests of individuals and safeguarding and protecting the common good. But what it actually means to protect the common good is rarely scrutinized. There are two conceptions of the common good that provide very different accounts of the limits of permissible medical research. Decisions about the limits of acceptable medical research in defense of the common good should be carried out only within (...) the latter framework. (shrink)

This paper argues that extortion is a clear threat in intergenerational relations, and that the threat is manifest in some existing proposals in climate policy and latent in some background tendencies in mainstream moral and political philosophy. The paper also claims that although some central aspects of the concern about extortion might be pursued in terms of the entitlements of future generations, this approach is likely to be incomplete. In particular, intergenerational extortion raises issues about the appropriate limits (...) to the sway of central values such as welfare and distributive justice. We should be wary of ways in which such values invite us to buy off, or perhaps to join, an intergenerational climate Mafia. (shrink)

The paper addresses the nature of duties grounded in human rights. Rather than being protections against harm, per se, I contend that human rights largely shield against risk impositions to protected interests. “Risk imposition” is a normative idea requiring explication, but understanding dutiful action in its terms enables human rights to provide prospective policy guidance, hold institutions accountable, operate in non-ideal circumstances, embody impartiality among persons, and define the moral status of agencies in international relations. Slightly differently, I indicate a (...) general understanding of dutiful action that permits human rights to see to the tasks of an institutional morality. (shrink)

Stereotype threat is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when individuals become aware that their behavior could potentially confirm a negative stereotype. Though stereotype threat is a widely studied phenomenon in social psychology, there has been relatively little scholarship on it in philosophy, despite its relevance to issues such as implicit cognition, epistemic injustice, and diversity in philosophy. However, most psychological research on stereotype threat discusses the phenomenon by using an overly narrow picture of it, which focuses on (...) one of its effects: the ability to hinder performance. As a result, almost all philosophical work on stereotype threat is solely focused on issues of performance too. -/- Social psychologists know that stereotype threat has additional effects, such as negatively impacting individuals’ motivation, interests, long-term health, and even their sense of self, but these other effects are often downplayed, or even forgotten about. Therefore, the “standard picture” of stereotype threat needs to be expanded, in order to better understand the theoretical aspects of the phenomenon, and to develop broader, more effective interventions. This dissertation develops such an “expanded picture” of stereotype threat, which emphasizes how the phenomenon can negatively impact both self-identity and epistemic agency. In doing so, I explore the nature of stereotypes more generally and argue that they undermine groups’ moral status and contribute to what is called “ontic injustice.” I also show how stereotype threat harms members of socially subordinated groups by way of coercing their self-identity and undermining their epistemic agency, which I argue is a form of epistemic injustice. Lastly, I analyze the expanded picture’s implications for addressing the low proportion of women in professional philosophy. I critically engage recent arguments that these low numbers simply reflect different interests women have, which if innate or benign, would require no intervention. My expanded picture shows the mistakes in this sort of reasoning, which is also present in discussions on the underrepresentation of women in science. The expanded picture of stereotype threat that this dissertation develops is not only practically important, but also advances key philosophical debates in social epistemology, applied ethics, and social metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper sketches the emergence of, and shifts within, the social, legal, and political figurations of sex workers in Poland. By adopting a genealogical perspective, I investigate how sex workers have been (re)constituted as subjects of governance and unimaginable social justice claimants in legislation, political debates, and law enforcement strategies. With a broad temporal scope, this article traces continuities, transformations, and disruptions within modes of sex work governance in Poland from the adoption of the first laws relating to sex work (...) enacted during the early 19th century to the present day. Through analysis of policy documents, scholarly work on the history of sex work policies in Poland, and personal accounts by sex workers, I identify and examine two dominant discursive and legal figurations of a sex worker: as a threat, and as a victim in need of rescue and protection. While analysing the emergence of and interplay between these two figurations, this article demonstrates how these seemingly contradictory frames of recognition gradually conjoined within 20th-century Polish sex work governance strategies, rendering sex workers unimaginable subjects of rights and social justice claimants. (shrink)

The ability of managers to identify and interpret challenges in the external environment is one of the micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities. The underlying literature on strategic issue interpretation suggests that interpreting environmental challenges as opportunities rather than threats is more likely to lead to proactive and innovative responses, but there are also potentially positive effects of threat interpretation, for instance high levels of commitment and risk-seeking behaviour. In this paper, I use the context of climate change to explore the (...) link between threat interpretation and innovation in more detail. I use exploratory cluster analysis and illustrative case studies to develop a set of propositions to explain when threat interpretation can in fact encourage innovation. I identify two ethical mechanisms that positively mediate the relationship between threat interpretation and innovation: enlarged concept of responsibility to society and moral legitimacy. The paper contributes to the literature by identifying the importance of ethics in linking managerial interpretation to innovation, particularly in the context of global environmental and social challenges. (shrink)

I consider two threats to the idea that on-line intelligent behaviour (the production of fluid and adaptable responses to ongoing sensory input) must or should be explained by appeal to neurally located representations. The first of these threats occurs when extra-neural factors account for the kind of behavioural richness and flexibility normally associated with representation-based control. I show how this anti-representational challenge can be met, if we apply the thought that, to be a representational system, an action-oriented neural system must (...) not only be the source of at least some of the observed behavioural richness and flexibility, it must also feature two architectural traits, namely arbitrariness and homuncularity. Unfortunately, however, this solution opens the door to our second threat to representation. The homuncularity condition will not be met by any system in which the causal contribution of each component is massively context-sensitive and variable over time. I end by discussing the empirical bet that biological nervous systems will not exhibit this style of causation. (shrink)

Gaze cueing effect (GCE) refers to attention orienting towards the gazed-at location, characterised by faster responses to gazed-at than non-gazed-at stimuli. A previous study investigated the effects of affective priming on GCE and reported that threatening primes enhanced GCE. However, it remains unknown whether the threat or heightened arousal potentiated GCE. We investigated how highly arousing threatening and positive primes, compared to low arousing neutral primes modulate GCE. After a brief exposure to an affective prime (pictures of threat (...) or erotica) or a neutral prime, participants detected an asterisk validly or invalidly cued by the gaze direction of a neutral face. The results showed that the threatening primes diminished the magnitude of GCE. The highly arousing positive primes did not have an effect on GCE. Further analyses showed that, as compared to neutral priming, the reaction times after threatening primes were shortened on invalid trials. This finding was interpreted to suggest that the threatening primes enhanced goal-directed target detection and attenuated attention orienting by irrelevant gaze cues via improving executive control. In sum, the present findings indicate that threat priming modulates GCE, not because of heightened arousal but because of the threat. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the widespread view that obstructors are a special sort of bystander is mistaken. Obstructors make Victim worse off by their presence, and thus are more properly described as innocent threats. Only those characters who do not make Victim worse off by their presence can be classified as bystanders.

The paper argues that Rawls's account of the obligation to keep promises entails that inasmuch as we are obliged to keep promises, we are also obliged to carry out threats. On the basis of the principle of fairness, Rawls claimed that a social practice creates a moral obligation if it is just, and one has benefited from it or entered it voluntarily. A practice of threats meets Rawls's first principle of justice. We may reasonably assume that immoral threats, just like (...) immoral promises, are not socially obliging. Threats meet Rawls's second principle of justice mainly because weaker parties benefit from drawing red lines, backed by credible threats. Finally, threats create social benefits: they contribute to social cooperation and collaboration. The argument entails that we must either accept the counterintuitive claim that threats are morally binding, or reject Rawls's account of the obligation to keep promises. (shrink)

Theories of threats and offers can blind us to some wrongs even as they illuminate others. Spouses sometimes negotiate divorce settlements by proposing to litigate custody unless given financial concessions. Supported by theories that rely exclusively on rights, courts often uphold these settlements saying things like "[s]imply insisting upon ... what one believes to be his legal rights is not coercive." I suggest a means of distinguishing (divorcing) threats from offers that explains why it is sometimes coercive to insist on (...) one's rights in negotiations. (shrink)

Using a specific case as an example, the article argues that the Internet allows dissemination of academic ideas to the general public in ways that can sometimes pose a threat to academic freedom. Since academic freedom is a fundamental element of academia and since it benefits society at large, it is important to safeguard it. Among measures that can be taken in order to achieve this goal, the publication of anonymous research seems to be a good option.

Stereotype threat—a situational context in which individuals are concerned about confirming a negative stereotype—is often shown to impact test performance, with one hypothesized mechanism being that cognitive resources are temporarily co-opted by intrusive thoughts and worries, leading individuals to underperform despite high content knowledge and ability. We test here whether stereotype threat may also impact initial student learning and knowledge formation when experienced prior to instruction. Predominantly African American fifth-grade students provided either their race or the date before (...) a videotaped, conceptually demanding mathematics lesson. Students who gave their race retained less learning over time, enjoyed the lesson less, reported a diminished desire to learn more, and were less likely to choose to engage in an optional math activity. The detrimental impact was greatest among students with high baseline cognitive resources. While stereotype threat has been well documented to harm test performance, the finding that effects extend to initial learning suggests that stereotype threat's contribution to achievement gaps may be greatly underestimated. (shrink)

Next SectionMaking threats and offers to patients is a strategy used in community mental healthcare to increase treatment adherence. In this paper, an ethical analysis of these types of proposal is presented. It is argued (1) that the primary ethical consideration is to identify the professional duties of care held by those working in community mental health because the nature of these duties will enable a threat to be differentiated from an offer, (2) that threatening to act in a (...) way that would equate with a failure to uphold the requirements of these duties is wrong, irrespective of the benefit accrued through treatment adherence and (3) that making offers to patients raises a number of secondary ethical considerations that need to be judged on their own merit in the context of individual patient care. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these arguments, setting out a pathway designed to assist community mental healthcare practitioners to determine whether making a specific proposal to a patient is right or wrong. (shrink)

In Free Will and Luck, Mele presents a case of an agent Ernie, whose zygote was intentionally designed so that Ernie A-s in 30 years, bringing about a certain event E. Mele uses this case of original design to outline the zygote argument against compatibilism. In this paper I criticize the zygote argument. Unlike other compatibilists who have responded to the zygote argument, I contend that it is open to the compatibilist to accept premise one, that Ernie does not act (...) freely and is not morally responsible for anything he does. I argue that compatibilists should deny premise two. Diana’s effective intention to create Ernie’s zygote such that Ernie A-s in 30 years and her intervention to bring about his A-ing mark a significant difference between Ernie and normal agents in a deterministic universe with regard to how their zygotes were created that affects whether those agents act freely and are morally responsible for so acting. (shrink)

Two major regulatory changes are affecting the provision of undergraduate legal education in England and Wales. On the one hand, the Qualifying Law Degree is being deregulated, meaning law schools are free to make significant changes to how and what they teach. On the other hand, higher education in England has seen a significant overhaul through the creation of the Office for Students, which treats students as consumers. Now more than ever, law schools need to ask themselves existential questions which (...) will not only test their continued relevance or indeed viability within the ‘market’ for higher education, but also the status of the discipline of law as a whole. The regulatory landscape may indeed present a significant threat, but it is also an opportunity to reflect on what law schools are for, and consequently what changes could result from the academic freedom that comes with deregulation. Whilst different law schools will interpret their mission differently, they should caution against either generalised inertia or succumbing to an outcomes-oriented provision that simply prepares students for the new Solicitors Qualifying Examination. Instead, law schools will find their proper purpose in critical reflection and academic self-grounding, providing undergraduate students with a ‘question everything’ mentality, and showing them that law is something to be experienced and not merely learnt. (shrink)

Revonsuo’s influential Threat Simulation Theory predicts that people exposed to survival threats will have more threat dreams, and evince enhanced responses to dream threats, compared to those living in relatively safe conditions. Participants in a high crime area differed significantly from participants in a low crime area in having greater recent exposure to a life-threatening event . Contrary to TST’s predictions, the SA participants reported significantly fewer threat dreams , and did not differ from the Welsh participants (...) in responses to dream threats . Overall, the incidence of threat in dreams was extremely low—less than 20% of dreams featured realistic survival threats. Escape from dream threats occurred in less than 2% of dreams. We conclude that this evidence contradicts key aspects of TST. (shrink)

Most seem to presume that what is threatening about manipulation arguments is the ‘no difference’ premise – that is, the claim that there are no responsibility-relevant differences between a manipulated agent and her merely causally determined counterpart. This presumption underlies three recent replies to manipulation arguments from Kearns (2012), King (2013), and Schlosser (2015). But these replies fail to appreciate the true threat from manipulation arguments – namely, the manipulation cases that are allegedly counterexamples to the leading compatibilist conditions (...) on moral responsibility. This paper argues that if there is a counterexample to all the leading compatibilist conditions on moral responsibility then this is sufficient to undermine compatibilism. (shrink)