[David Charles] Aristotle, it appears, sometimes identifies well-being with one activity, sometimes with several, including ethical virtue. I argue that this appearance is misleading. In the Nicomachean Ethics, intellectual contemplation is the central case of human well-being, but is not identical with it. Ethically virtuous activity is included in human well-being because it is an analogue of intellectual contemplation. This structure allows Aristotle to hold that while ethically virtuous activity is valuable in its own right, the best life available for (...) humans is centred around, but not wholly constituted by, intellectual contemplation. /// [Dominic Scott] In Nicomachean Ethics X 7-8, Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of eudaimonia, primary and secondary. The first corresponds to contemplation, the second to activity in accordance with moral virtue and practical reason. My task in this paper is to elucidate this distinction. Like Charles, I interpret it as one between paradigm and derivative cases; unlike him, I explain it in terms of similarity, not analogy. Furthermore, once the underlying nature of the distinction is understood, we can reconcile the claim that paradigm eudaimonia consists just in contemplation with a passage in the first book requiring eudaimonia to involve all intrinsic goods. (shrink)

Certain representations are bound in special ways to our sensory capacities; consider, for instance, pictures, sound recordings, and the various forms of mental sensory imagery. What do these representations have in common, and what makes them different from representations of other kinds? Dominic Gregory employs novel ideas on perceptual states and sensory perspectives to explain the special nature of the contents of distinctively sensory representations. The book contains extensive discussions of e.g. perceptual imagination, pictorial representation, and memories.

Dominic Scott compares the Republic and Nicomachean Ethics from a methodological perspective. He argues that Plato and Aristotle distinguish similar levels of argument in the defence of justice, and that they both follow the same approach: Plato because he thinks it will suffice, Aristotle because he thinks there is no need to go beyond it.

Images have power - for good or ill. They may challenge us to see things anew and, in widening our experience, profoundly change who we are. The change can be ugly, as with propaganda, or enriching, as with many works of art. Sight and Sensibility explores the impact of images on what we know, how we see, and the moral assessments we make. Dominic Lopes shows how these are part of, not separate from, the aesthetic appeal of images. His book (...) will be essential reading for anyone working in aesthetics and art theory, and for all those intrigued by the power of images to affect our lives. '...tightly focused and carefully argued... an exceptionally interesting contribution to the philosophy of art: it contains subtle, concise, and convincing discussions of a number of difficult concepts and contentious doctrines... lucid and meticulous'. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that science is the enemy of religious faith. The idea is so pervasive that entire industries of religious apologetics converge around the challenge of Darwin, evolution, and the "secular worldview." This book challenges such assumptions by proposing a different cause of unbelief in the West: the Christian conscience. Tracing a history of doubt and unbelief from the Reformation to the age of Darwin and Karl Marx, Dominic Erdozain argues that the most powerful solvents of religious orthodoxy (...) have been concepts of moral equity and personal freedom generated by Christianity itself. Revealing links between the radical Reformation and early modern philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle, Erdozain demonstrates that the dynamism of the Enlightenment, including the very concept of "natural reason" espoused by philosophers such as Voltaire, was rooted in Christian ethics and spirituality. The final chapters explore similar themes in the era of Darwin and Marx, showing how moral revolt preceded and transcended the challenges of evolution and "scientific materialism" in the unseating of religious belief. The picture that emerges is not of a secular challenge to religious faith, but a series of theological insurrections against divisive accounts of Christian orthodoxy. (shrink)

Limiting dangerous climate change is now widely believed to require negative emissions, a prospect some believe to be unjust and unacceptably risky. While NETs are not risk-free, I argue tha...

Is it ethical for doctors or courts to prevent patients from making choices that will cause significant harm to themselves in the future? According to an important liberal principle the only justification for infringing the liberty of an individual is to prevent harm to others; harm to the self does not suffice.In this paper, I explore Derek Parfit’s arguments that blur the sharp line between harm to self and others. I analyse cases of treatment refusal by capacitous patients and describe (...) different forms of paternalism arising from a reductionist view of personal identity. I outline an Identity Relative Paternalistic Intervention Principle for determining when we should disallow refusal of treatment where the harm will be accrued by a future self, and consider objections including vagueness and non-identity.Identity relative paternalism does not always justify intervention to prevent harm to future selves. However, there is a stronger ethical case for doing so than is often recognised. (shrink)

For centuries, philosophers have identified beauty with what brings pleasure. Dominic McIver Lopes challenges this interpretation by offering an entirely new theory of beauty - that beauty engages us in action, in concert with others, in the context of social networks - and sheds light on why aesthetic engagement is crucial for quality of life.

In _ Psychiatry in the Scientific Image, _Dominic Murphy looks at psychiatry from the viewpoint of analytic philosophy of science, considering three issues: how we should conceive of, classify, and explain mental illness. If someone is said to have a mental illness, what about it is mental? What makes it an illness? How might we explain and classify it? A system of psychiatric classification settles these questions by distinguishing the mental illnesses and showing how they stand in relation to one (...) another. This book explores the philosophical issues raised by the project of explaining and classifying mental illness. Murphy argues that the current literature on mental illness -- exemplified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- is an impediment to research; it lacks a coherent concept of the mental and a satisfactory account of disorder, and yields too much authority to commonsense thought about the mind. He argues that the explanation of mental illness should meet the standards of good explanatory practice in the cognitive neurosciences, and that the classification of mental disorders should group symptoms into conditions based on the causal structure of the normal mind. (shrink)

Paraconsistent responses to vagueness are often thought to represent a revision of logical theory that is too radical to be defensible. The paracomplete logic of supervaluationism, SpV, is not only taken to be more conservative but is also commonly said to 'preserve classical logic'. This chapter argues that this is wrong on both counts. The paraconsistent logic SbV, or subvaluationism, is no less conservative than SpV nor more so. In the end both logics offer equally compelling theoretical approaches to vagueness. (...) Each approach is also equally objectionable, with neither providing an adequate account of vagueness, but this criticism arises from a feature shared by each approach that is independent of their paracompleteness or paraconsistency per se. For all that has been said, a paraconsistent approach, and the associated recourse to truth-value gluts, remains a contender in accounting for vagueness. (shrink)

I distinguish three evolutionary explanations of mental illness: first, breakdowns in evolved computational systems; second, evolved systems performing their evolutionary function in a novel environment; third, evolved personality structures. I concentrate on the second and third explanations, as these are distinctive of an evolutionary psychopathology, with progressively less credulity in the light of the empirical evidence. General morals are drawn for evolutionary psychiatry.

There is not one but many ways to picture the world--Australian "x-ray" pictures, cubish collages, Amerindian split-style figures, and pictures in two-point perspective each draw attention to different features of what they represent. Understanding Pictures argues that this diversity is the central fact with which a theory of figurative pictures must reckon. Lopes advances the theory that identifying pictures' subjects is akin to recognizing objects whose appearances have changed over time. He develops a schema for categorizing the different ways pictures (...) represent--the different kinds of meaning they have--and argues that that depiction's epistemic value lies in its representational diversity. He also offers a novel account of the phenomenology of pictorial experience, comparing pictures to visual prostheses like mirrors and binoculars. (shrink)

This paper proposes a description of the moral obligations of economic agents. It will show that a threefold division should be adopted to distinguish moral obligations applying to their interactions in the market, obligations applying to their interactions inside business firms and obligations applying to their interactions with agents outside the market. Competition might be permissible in the first case since markets are special patterns of social interactions (called adversarial schemes). They produce their benefits when agents try to satisfy exclusive (...) preferences at the expense of others. However, moral obligations inside the firm and moral obligations outside the market are of a different nature. This argument will be developed in the two first parts of this paper. In the third part, it will outline the relevant strengths of that account in relation with two popular views of economic agents’ moral obligations: the shareholder primacy view and the stakeholder theory. (shrink)

Empirical research on aesthetic response poses two challenges to philosophy. The more familiar challenge is that scientific explanations of aesthetic responses debunk what we take to be our reasons for those responses. One reaction to this challenge is an accommodation strategy that seeks to reconcile the scientific findings with an improved understanding of our normative reasons. This paper presents a more fundamental challenge: a well-established body of research in social psychology indicates that we routinely confabulate the reasons we give for (...) our aesthetic response. This challenges the accommodation strategy and suggests that philosophy should adopt a more radical naturalism about aesthetic response. (shrink)

The paper examines the relationships between the contents of imaginative episodes and the mental images that often play a central role within them. It considers, for example, whether the presence of mental imagery is required for a mental episode to count as an imagining.

Ethical discussions about medical treatment for seriously ill babies or children often focus on the ‘value of life’ or on ‘quality of life’ and what that might mean. In this paper, I look at the other side of the coin—on the value of death, and on the quality of dying. In particular, I examine whether there is such a thing as a good way to die, for an infant or an adult, and what that means for medical care. To do (...) that, I call on philosophy and on personal experience. However, I will also make reference to art, poetry and music. That is partly because the topic of mortality has long been reflected on by artists as well as philosophers and ethicists. It is also because, as we will see, there may be some useful parallels to draw. (shrink)

Ethical analyses, professional guidelines and legal decisions support the equivalence thesis for life-sustaining treatment: if it is ethical to withhold treatment, it would be ethical to withdraw the same treatment. In this paper we explore reasons why the majority of medical professionals disagree with the conclusions of ethical analysis. Resource allocation is considered by clinicians to be a legitimate reason to withhold but not to withdraw intensive care treatment. We analyse five arguments in favour of non-equivalence, and find only relatively (...) weak reasons to restrict rationing to withholding treatment. On the contrary, resource allocation provides a strong argument in favour of equivalence: non-equivalence causes preventable death in critically ill patients. We outline two proposals for increasing equivalence in practice: (1) reduction of the mortality threshold for treatment withdrawal, (2) time-limited trials of intensive care. These strategies would help to move practice towards more rational treatment limitation decisions. (shrink)

Questions about learning and discovery have fascinated philosophers from Plato onwards. Does the mind bring innate resources of its own to the process of learning or does it rely wholly upon experience? Plato was the first philosopher to give an innatist response to this question and in doing so was to provoke the other major philosophers of ancient Greece to give their own rival explanations of learning. This book examines these theories of learning in relation to each other. It presents (...) an entirely different interpretation of the theory of recollection which also changes the way we understand the development of ancient philosophy after Plato. The final section of the book compares ancient theories of learning with the seventeenth-century debate about innate ideas, and finds that the relation between the two periods is far more interesting and complete than is usually supposed. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that the NIMH’s new Research Domain of Criteria is a useful test of the philosophical hypothesis of eliminative materialism and demonstrates the superiority of a moderate eliminativism over integrationism, which is a rival philosophical framework for the cognitive sciences. I begin by going over the motivation for RDOC, which rests on the problems with the existing Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders framework in psychiatry. Then, I introduce the main tenets of RDoC before (...) discussing eliminativism and trying to show what a moderate eliminativism looks like through the example of addiction. I then contrast that approach with intregrationism to the latter’s detriment. I end by wondering whether the broadly political consequences of eliminativism give us non-scientific reasons for resisting it, as it threatens to rob ordinary people of important means of self-description. (shrink)

Precautionary Principles are often said to be appropriate for decision-making in contexts of uncertainty such as climate policy. Contexts of uncertainty are contrasted to contexts of risk depending on whether we have probabilities or not. Against this view, I argue that the risk-uncertainty distinction is practically irrelevant. I start by noting that the history of the distinction between risk and uncertainty is more varied than is sometimes assumed. In order to examine the distinction, I unpack the idea of having probabilities, (...) in particular by distinguishing three interpretations of probability: objective, epistemic, and subjective probability. I then claim that if we are concerned with whether we have probabilities at all—regardless of how low their epistemic credentials are—then we almost always have probabilities for policy-making. The reason is that subjective and epistemic probability are the relevant interpretations of probability and we almost always have subjective and epistemic probabilities. In contrast, if we are only concerned with probabilities that have sufficiently high epistemic credentials, then we obviously do not always have probabilities. Climate policy, for example, would then be a case of decision-making under uncertainty. But, so I argue, we should not dismiss probabilities with low epistemic credentials. Rather, when they are the best available probabilities our decision principles should make use of them. And, since they are almost always available, the risk-uncertainty distinction remains irrelevant. (shrink)

In a series of recent works, Ian Hacking has produced a model of social causation in mental illness and begun to sketch in outline how this might be integrated with the medical model of psychiatry. This article elaborates and revises Hacking 's model of social forces, criticizes him for attempting a merely semantic resolution of the tension between the social and the biological, and sketches an alternative approach that builds upon his substantial insights.

If good taste is a virtue, then an account of good taste might be modelled on existing accounts of moral or epistemic virtue. One good reason to develop such an account is that it helps solve otherwise intractable problems in aesthetics. This paper proposes an alternative to neo-Aristotelian models of good taste. It then contrasts the neo-Aristotelian models with the proposed model, assessing them for their potential to contend with otherwise intractable problems in aesthetics.

In cognitive science, creative ideas are defined as original and feasible solutions in response to problems. A common proposal is that creative ideas are generated across dedicated cognitive pathways. Only after creative ideas have emerged, they can be enacted to solve the problem. We present an alternative viewpoint, based upon the dynamic systems approach to perception and action, that creative solutions emerge in the act rather than before. Creative actions, thus, are as much a product of individual constraints as they (...) are of the task and environment constraints. Accordingly, we understand creative motor actions as functional movement patterns that are new to the individual and/or group and adapted to satisfy the constraints on the motor problem at hand. We argue that creative motor actions are promoted by practice interventions that promote exploration by manipulating constraints. Exploration enhances variability of functional movement patterns in terms of either coordination or control solutions. At both levels, creative motor actions can emerge from finding new and degenerate adaptive motor solutions. Generally speaking, we anticipate that in most cases, when exposed to variation in constraints, people are not looking for creative motor actions, but discover them while doing an effort to satisfy constraints. For future research, this paper achieves two important aspects: it delineates how adaptive (movement) variability is at the heart of (motor) creativity, and it sets out methodologies toward stimulating adaptive variability. (shrink)

End-of-life decision-making is controversial. There are different views about when it is appropriate to limit life-sustaining treatment, and about what palliative options are permissible. One approach to decisions of this nature sees consensus as crucial. Decisions to limit treatment are made only if all or a majority of caregivers agree. We argue, however, that it is a mistake to require professional consensus in end-of-life decisions. In the first part of the article we explore practical, ethical, and legal factors that support (...) agreement. We analyse subjective and objective accounts of moral reasoning: accord is neither necessary nor sufficient for decisions. We propose an alternative norm for decisions – that of ‘professional dissensus’. In the final part of the article we address the role of agreement in end-of-life policy. Such guidelines can ethically be based on dissensus rather than consensus. Disagreement is not always a bad thing. (shrink)

Pictures enable us to see scenes in marked surfaces. This raises a puzzle—how can an evaluation of a picture as a vehicle for seeing-in differ from an evaluation of the scene itself? To solve the puzzle, we must understand the variety of ways seeing-in relates to seeing a marked surface.

Who should decide how a machine will decide what to do when it is driving a car, performing a medical procedure, or, more generally, when it is facing any kind of morally laden decision? More and more, machines are making complex decisions with a considerable level of autonomy. We should be much more preoccupied by this problem than we currently are. After a series of preliminary remarks, this paper will go over four possible answers to the question raised above. First, (...) we may claim that it is the maker of a machine that gets to decide how it will behave in morally laden scenarios. Second, we may claim that the users of a machine should decide. Third, that decision may have to be made collectively or, fourth, by other machines built for this special purpose. The paper argues that each of these approaches suffers from its own shortcomings, and it concludes by showing, among other things, which approaches should be emphasized for different types of machines, situations, and/or morally laden decisions. (shrink)

Representational theories of mind cannot individuate the sense modalities in a principled manner. According to representationalism, the phenomenal character of experiences is determined by their contents. The usual objection is that inverted qualia are possible, so the phenomenal character of experiences may vary independently of their contents. But the objection is inconclusive. It raises difficult questions about the metaphysics of secondary qualities and it is difficult to see whether or not inverted qualia are possible. This paper proposes an alternative test (...) of representationalism. Do experiences in different sense modalities have the same phenomenal character when they share content? Psychological work on the perception of shape through vision and spatial hearing is discussed. This work shows that visual and auditory experiences differ in phenomenal character even in so far as they represent similar properties. This objection to representationalism does not invite questions about secondary qualities or depend on establishing metaphysical possibilities. (shrink)

There are not enough solid organs available to meet the needs of patients with organ failure. Thousands of patients every year die on the waiting lists for transplantation. Yet there is one currently available, underutilized, potential source of organs. Many patients die in intensive care following withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment whose organs could be used to save the lives of others. At present the majority of these organs go to waste.In this paper we consider and evaluate a range of ways (...) to improve the number and quality of organs available from this group of patients. Changes to consent arrangements (for example conscription of organs after death) or changes to organ donation practice could dramatically increase the numbers of organs available, though they would conflict with currently accepted norms governing transplantation.We argue that one alternative, Organ Donation Euthanasia, would be a rational improvement over current practice regarding withdrawal of life support. It would give individuals the greatest chance of being able to help others with their organs after death. It would increase patient autonomy. It would reduce the chance of suffering during the dying process. We argue that patients should be given the choice of whether and how they would like to donate their organs in the event of withdrawal of life support in intensive care.Continuing current transplantation practice comes at the cost of death and prolonged organ failure. We should seriously consider all of the alternatives. (shrink)

Jennifer Radden argues that delusions play an important role in modernist epistemology, which is preoccupied with the justification and evaluation of beliefs. Another theme running through the book is the importance of culture for attribution of delusion. Beliefs that look delusional will not be treated as pathological if they are expressions of religious views or other culturally acceptable forms of life. It is hard to see why cultural acceptability should play a role in the modernist project of justification. I suggest (...) that we think less about a philosophical project of justification and turn our attention instead to commonsense judgements of the circumstances in which we see a belief as evidence of underlying pathology. I discuss cases in which unjustified beliefs are nonetheless treated as phenomena that are consistent with our views of how healthy human beings act, and suggest that alongside folk psychology we should acknowledge a folk epistemology that embraces such instances. I suggest that delusions are beliefs that folk epistemology treats as inexplicable, and that this approach solves some of the puzzles that Radden identifies as growing out of the modernist epistemic project. (shrink)

Can love really be considered another form of technology? Dominic Pettman says it can - although not before carefully redefining technology as a cultural challenge to what we mean by the "human" in the information age. Using the writings of such important thinkers as Giorgio Agamben, Jean-LucNancy, and Bernard Stiegler as a springboard, Pettman explores the "techtonic" movements of contemporary culture, specifically in relation to the language of eros. Highly ritualized expressions of desire - love, in other words - always (...) reveal an era's attitude toward what it means to exist as a selfamong others. For Pettman, the articulation of love is a technique of belonging: a way of responding to the basic plurality of everyone's identity, a process that becomes increasingly complex as the forms of mediated communication, from cell phone and text messaging to the mass media, multiply andmesh together.Wresting the idea of love from the arthritic hands of Romanticism, Pettman demonstrates the ways in which this dynamic assemblage - "the stirrings of the soul" - have always been a matter of tools, devices, prosthetics, and media. Love is, after all, something we make. And, love, this book argues,is not eternal, but external. (shrink)

Predictions of poor prognosis for critically ill patients may become self-fulfilling if life-sustaining treatment or resuscitation is subsequently withheld on the basis of that prediction. This paper outlines the epistemic and normative problems raised by self-fulfilling prophecies (SFPs) in intensive care. Where predictions affect outcome, it can be extremely difficult to ascertain the mortality rate for patients if all treatment were provided. SFPs may lead to an increase in mortality for cohorts of patients predicted to have poor prognosis, they may (...) lead doctors to feel causally responsible for the deaths of their patients, and they may compromise honest communication with patients and families about prognosis. However, I argue that the self-fulfilling prophecy is inevitable when life-sustaining treatment is withheld or withdrawn in the face of uncertainty. SFPs do not necessarily make treatment limitation decisions problematic. To minimize the effects of SFPs, it is essential to carefully collect and appraise evidence about prognosis. Doctors need to be honest with themselves and with patients and their families about uncertainty and the limits of knowledge. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 61-63.

In this paper, we explore three separate questions that are relevant to assessing the prudential value of life in infants with severe life-limiting illness. First, what is the value or disvalue of a short life? Is it in the interests of a child to save her life if she will nevertheless die in infancy or very early childhood? Second, how does profound cognitive impairment affect the balance of positives and negatives in a child’s future life? Third, if the life of (...) a child with life-limiting illness is prolonged, how much suffering will she experience and can any of it be alleviated? Is there a risk that negative experiences for such a child will remain despite the provision of palliative care? We argue that both the subjective and objective components of well-being for children could be greatly reduced if they are anticipated to have a short life that is affected by profound cognitive impairment. This does not mean that their overall well-being will be negative, but rather that there may be a higher risk of negative overall well-being if they are expected to experience pain, discomfort, or distress. Furthermore, we point to some of the practical limitations of therapies aimed at relieving suffering, such that there is a risk that suffering will go partially or completely unrelieved. Taken together, these considerations imply that some life-prolonging treatments are not in the best interests of infants with severe life-limiting illness. (shrink)

Aesthetic hedonists agree that an aesthetic value is a property of an item that stands in some constitutive relation to pleasure. Surprisingly, however, aesthetic hedonists need not reduce aesthetic normativity to hedonic normativity. They might demarcate aesthetic value as a species of hedonic value, but deny that the reason we have to appreciate an item is simply that it pleases. Such is the approach taken by an important strand of South Asian rasa theory that is represented with great clarity and (...) ingenuity in the work of K. C. Bhattacharyya. Bhattacharyya is an aesthetic hedonist who grounds aesthetic normativity in freedom. (shrink)

BackgroundECMO is a particularly scarce resource during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its allocation involves ethical considerations that may be different to usual times. There is limited pre-pandemic literature on the ethical factors that ECMO physicians consider during ECMO allocation. During the pandemic, there has been relatively little professional guidance specifically relating to ethics and ECMO allocation; although there has been active ethical debate about allocation of other critical care resources. We report the results of a small international exploratory survey of ECMO (...) clinicians’ views on different patient factors in ECMO decision-making prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We then outline current ethical decision procedures and recommendations for rationing life-sustaining treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic, and examine the extent to which current guidelines for ECMO allocation (and reported practice) adhere to these ethical guidelines and recommendations.MethodsAn online survey was performed with responses recorded between mid May and mid August 2020. Participants (n = 48) were sourced from the ECMOCard study group—an international group of experts (n = 120) taking part in a prospective international study of ECMO and intensive care for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey compared the extent to which certain ethical factors involved in ECMO resource allocation were considered prior to and during the pandemic.ResultsWhen initiating ECMO during the pandemic, compared to usual times, participants reported giving more ethical weight to the benefit of ECMO to other patients not yet admitted as opposed to those already receiving ECMO, (p < 0.001). If a full unit were referred a good candidate for ECMO, participants were more likely during the pandemic to consider discontinuing ECMO from a current patient with low chance of survival (53% during pandemic vs. 33% prior p = 0.002). If the clinical team recommends that ECMO should cease, but family do not agree, the majority of participants indicated that they would continue treatment, both in usual circumstances (67%) and during the pandemic (56%).ConclusionsWe found differences during the COVID-19 pandemic in prioritisation of several ethical factors in the context of ECMO allocation. The ethical principles prioritised by survey participants were largely consistent with ECMO allocation guidelines, current ethical decision procedures and recommendations for allocation of life-sustaining treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

The debate about positive and negative claims of conscience is, in large part, about ethical consistency. In this commentary I argue that there can be differences between conscientious provision of treatment and conscientious nonprovision of treatment that are ethically relevant. However, in many cases, including those described in this commentary, there is not sufficient ethical reason to treat them differently. This means that asymmetrical conscientious objection policies are potentially unjustified.