In their article, “Immigrant legalization: A Dilemma Between Justice and The Rule of Law,” Sarah Song and Irene Bloemraad address rule of law objections to policies that would regularize the status of undocumented immigrants in the United States. On their view, justice requires that liberal democratic states (i.e., states that are committed to individual liberty and universal equality) provide pathways for undocumented immigrants to regularize their status. We do not disagree with Song and Bloemraad’s account: rule of law and regularization (...) policies are not inconsistent, and in fact regularization supports rule of law, when properly understood. Our view is that there needs to be a deeper investigation into the motivations of “rule of law” objections considered in Song and Bloemraad’s account. We argue that the real purpose of these objections is not necessarily to serve as an alternative to the justice-based claims of undocumented immigrants, but as a way to undermine them. On our account, these rule of law objections accomplish this undermining task through the mechanisms of dog whistling, discrediting and distorting, and ostracizing. (shrink)

Since 1900, debates about the justification of punishment have also been debates about the cause of crime. In the early twentieth century, the rehabilitative ideal of punishment viewed mental illness and dysfunction in individuals as the cause of crime. Starting in the 1970s, retributivism identified the immorality of human agents as the source of crime, which dovetailed well with the “tough-on-crime” political milieu of the 1980s and 1990s that produced mass incarceration. After surveying these historical trends, Wirts argues for a (...) social critical view that crime is best understood as a product of an unjust society, not faulty human beings. This view should take the lessons learned by the critiques of rehabilitation, however, and resist the tendency to reduce human beings to recipients of social services. (shrink)

Hugh Baxter’s book Habermas: A Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy not only carefully recounts Habermas’ political and legal theory, but also raises several insightful criticisms of Habermas. Of particular note is Baxter’s criticism of Habermas’ system–lifeworld model originally presented in Theory of Communicative Action. Baxter argues that Habermas ought to discard the concept of the lifeworld because the distinction between lifeworld and system is no longer tenable in the model of political power presented in Habermas’ later work, Between Facts (...) and Norms, which focuses more explicitly on law as a social system. Baxter contends that the lifeworld, which Habermas describes as those parts of our lives that are structured by communicative action and shared norms, is an unhelpful way of understanding our social world because, in reality, most of our interactions are structured both by communicative norms and by the strategic action typical of ‘the system’. I argue, however, that Habermas must retain the theoretical distinction between system and lifeworld, though in everyday practice they are not so neatly disentangled, because without such an element there would be no source of legitimacy for the law. Without a connection to the communicative action of the lifeworld, law and the political structure would be nothing but strategic action. (shrink)

Criminal law practices in the US, including policing and incarceration, have drawn heavy criticism for their disproportionate impact on black people, particularly black men. At the same time, some feminist scholars and activists advocate for increases in criminal law responses to sexual assault, including expanding criminal statutes to cover more instances of sexual assault and increasing sentencing guidelines. These reforms are often justified by claims that criminal law should express more feminist values and reject sexist social schemas. This paper makes (...) the case that criminal legal interventions aimed at changing sexist social schemas, such as ‘rape culture,’ are unlikely to be successful because criminal law is effective at maintaining existing social norms, but bad at introducing novel ones. Similarly, in the US, criminality has been ideologically linked to blackness, so attempts to use the stigma of criminality to combat sexual violence are likely to reinforce anti-black racism. The very meaning of a criminal law depends on related social schemas, and the racist social schemas associated with criminality undermine the ability of criminal legal responses to present anti-sexist values. At best, criminal legal reforms aimed at expressing the equal dignity of women will be ambiguous because their meaning is negotiated by existing sexist and racist social schemas. Thus, penal expressivism cannot offer a justification for using criminal law to combat sexual assault. (shrink)

This paper considers three possible ways of understanding the claim that the American criminal justice system is racist: individualist, “patterns”-based, and ideology-based theories of institutional racism. It rejects an individualist explanation of institutional racism because such an explanation fails to explain the widespread prevalence of anti-black racism in this system or indeed in the United States. It considers a “patterns” account of institutional racism, where consistent patterns of disparate racial effect mimic the structure of intentional projects of racial subjugation like (...) slavery or Jim Crow. While a “patterns” account helpfully directs attention to the effects of policies and practices that make up an institution, it does not fully explain the deep roots of anti-blackness in the criminal justice system in the United States. The paper concludes by defending an ideology-based theory of institutional racism for understanding the criminal justice system because the stereotype of the black criminal has a mutually reinforcing relationship with the patterns of disparate outcome for black people in the criminal justice system. This relationship creates a looping effect where the stereotype of the black criminal fuels the disproportionate involvement of black people in the criminal justice system, and the disproportionate representation of black people with felony records, in prisons, brutalized in police encounters, and so on reinforces the idea that black people are especially prone to criminality. Ideological approaches to racism that integrate attention to the patterns of disparate effect best explain what it means to say that the criminal justice system is racist. (shrink)

Granted that God may exist, how may God be defined in our time? Addressing this issue Benjamin Farley explores a variety of belief systems, Western and Eastern, religious and skeptical. Taking an approach that is both critical of religion as well as sympathetic, Farley refuses to shy away from hard questions or to dismiss constructive answers that speak to the human condition. He distinguishes human "intellectual ascent" towards God from humankind's "innate and inner sense" to know and relate to the (...) living God, demonstrating the efforts and rewards of both approaches in Christianity, as well as in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen. Alongside these more obviously "religious" approaches, Farley reviews the methodologies and findings of today's greatest scientific minds, including skeptics such as Hawking, Dawkins, and Wilson, as well as their skeptical forerunners of the past. He argues that belief in God can no more ignore the scientific truth about the universe than science can dismiss the spiritual yearnings and hunger of humanity for purpose, meaning, and its inescapable sense of the presence of God. (shrink)

The paper argues that an adequate account of Nietzsche's conception of value must take into consideration the complex interaction of intrahuman forces, such as drives and affects, and interhuman cultural forces which together give rise to values. The paper goes on to confront three major interpretive tendencies in Nietzsche scholarship which stem, I argue, from overly reductive accounts of value. The tendencies, exemplified by Richard Schacht, Maudmarie Clark, and Alexander Nehamas respectively claim: that value is or should be objective in (...) character, that value claims are reliant on consistent with truth claims, and that value is realized most highly in individual lives. On the basis of the conception of value articulated, the paper ultimately defends the view that value, for Nietzsche, is intra- and intersubjective in its origins, non-cognitive in character, and realized most importantly as the cultural, rather than individual, level.Im Beitrag wird gezeigt, dass eine angemessene Darstellung von Nietzsches Wertkonzept die komplexe Wechselwirkung von solchen Kräften, die im Menschen selbst zu finden sind, wie Triebe und Affekte, und zwischenmenschlichen kulturellen Kräften, die im Menschen selbst zu finden sind, wie Triebe und Affekte, und zwishcenmenschlichen kulturellen Kräften, die im Menschen selbst zu finden sind, wie Triebe und Affekte, und zwischenmenschlichen kulturellen Kräften berücksichtigen muss. Es werdent drei einflussreiche Interpertationslinien in der gegenwärtigen Nietzscheforschung, vertreten durch Richard Schacht, Maudmarie Clark und Alexander Nehamas, gegenübergestellt, die, wie ich meine, von einem allzu reduzierten Ansatz hinsichtlich des Wertes ausgehen, indem behaptet wirt: dass Werte objektiv sind oder sein sollen, dass Wertansprüche abhängig sind von oder konsistent sind mit Warheitsansprüchen, dass Werte vor allem im individuellen Leben realisiert werden. Der Beitrag stellt dagegen, dass Werte für Nietzsche ihrem Ursprung nach intra- und intersubjektiv sind, ihrem Charakter nach nonkognitiv und eher auf der kulturellen als der individuellen Ebene realisiert werden. (shrink)

Concept of ethics in Ādi-Granth, Sikh canon.

Racism as an independent topic of investigation in philosophy has considerably developed since the 1990s, when it appeared as part of growing debates that, on the one hand, investigated the political meaning of race and, on the other, its ontology and whether it existed at all. Likewise, with the idea of racism, its broadly normative meaning is critiqued by some philosophers, while others ask how best to conceive of it and identify its immorality. There were a few early and significant (...) forays in philosophy about the nature of racism, of which three works stand out because of the way they set the terms of the debate: David Theo Goldberg's Racist Culture, Charles W. Mills’ The Racial Contract, and Jorge L.A. Garcia's “The Heart of Racism.”1 This collection reacts to the latter fork in the discussion but does so in ways that significantly touch on the former.The collection begins with Jorge L. Garcia's “Virtue Ethics in Social Theory: Defending a Volitional Analysis of Racism from Tommie Shelby's Challenges.” It is a clarification and defense of his influential volitional analysis of racism (VAR) from three prominent objections: that VAR inadequately accounts for the immorality of racism because it relies on the assumed wrongness of racism built into ordinary usage of the term ‘racist;’ that it mistakenly separates intention from belief; and that it does not fully account for the racism of some troubling mental states that cannot be traced back to a racist ill-will. Garcia's account of racism as fundamentally rooted in racist ill-will, along with Lawrence Blum's, is representative of agent-centered theories of racism. Not only do they attempt to explain individual or personal racism, but they also hold that racism in institutions, structures, or systems traces back to the racism of persons.Current accounts of structural racism, however, claim that it exists and operates independently of infection from intentionally racist persons, that the focus on racist persons cannot adequately account for how racism works in society, and that, instead, we should concentrate on structures and ideologies. Amelia Wirts sharply defends this view in her, “What does it mean to say ‘The Criminal Justice System is Racist’?” She explains how structural racism applies to America's criminal justice system and other “intermediate” (between individual and societal level) structures. Wirts argues that personal accounts of racism, and in particular Garcia's VAR, do not adequately account for the patterns of racial disparity in the criminal justice system or its disproportionate harm to black people. She advocates, instead, for a patterned view of structural racism, the patterns of which operate “as if it were designed to disproportionately harm” some racialized group. Additionally, Wirts adds that such patterns are particularly racist when they fuel racist ideological symbols, as the criminal justice system does in relation to the idea of the black criminal.Structural analyses of racism are powerfully instructive, and Alisa Bierria, in “Structural Racism Within Reason,” offers an account that takes an epistemic turn that advances our understanding of their meaning. More than the idea that personal and structural racism beget each other in continuous looping effects, and more than the view that racism is best understood as an ideology that provides the content to racist attitudes or policy proscriptions, she argues that structural racism structures reason. Drawing on the 2012 case of Marissa Alexander, who unsuccessfully tried to use Florida's Stand Your Ground Law to justify her firing a warning shot at her estranged, abusive husband to protect herself from his murderous threat, Bierra argues that structural racism extends constructed and controlling intentions onto its targets, and, as in the case she discusses, it uses those constructed and fictional intentions to justify their punishment and depriving them of equal justice.Structural analyses of racism are essential additions to the philosophical understanding of racism that have appropriately challenged the centrality of agent-centered accounts. The increasing academic focus on structural explanations, however, along with the current overuse of “systemic racism” in popular discourse, threatens to eclipse the value of accounts of agent-centered accounts. In “Is Racism Essentially Systemic?” Michael Hardimon counsels against this trend. He reminds us that racism is not essentially systemic, and that the dominance of structural explanations could obscure its other forms and even the proper understanding of structural racism. Indeed, structures once constructed might operate independently of human intention, but they are designed, initiated, and often operated by persons.After considering the direction of the current philosophical discussion about the meaning of racism and its immorality, the next set of articles expands the discussion into matters of class, xenophobia, and white nationalism. Lawrence Blum's “Race and Class Together” starts it off. Blum builds class into his analysis of racism and critiques its absence in anti-racist theory. He argues that paying attention to class is required to secure justice for the victims of racism because pursuing justice is often a matter of both. Blum contends that race and class are “normatively distinct axes of injustice” and that, depending on the question, racial injustice needs to be addressed separately. However, there are aspects of racial injustice that can only be dealt with through a class analysis and require class or combined class–race focused policies. Pointing to the fact that many of the members of groups targeted by racism (he considers blacks, Indigenous peoples, and Latinxs) share cross-class interests, which includes shared interests with some whites, which they do not share with more economically privileged members of their own groups, Blum argues that these interests should be addressed through “class-focused policies,” in a manner that will secure justice for disadvantaged racial groups.Shifting from the class-race analysis, José Jorge Mendoza, in “‘Go Back to Where You Came From!’ Racism, Xenophobia, and White Nationalism,” turns our attention toward white nationalism to examine whether it is best understood as an expression of racism or xenophobia. Although he recognizes the importance of xenophobia in white nationalism, Mendoza does not neglect its connections with racist ideas. However, he acknowledges that emphasizing the role of race in condemnations of white nationalism risks overextending the concept of race, i.e., in regards to pan-racial groups, because some members of those groups are racially identified as white. Thus, the charge of racism against white nationalism in such cases may not clearly apply. To deal with those cases, Mendoza cleverly decouples the ideas of “radicalization” and “racial formation,” and he puts forward a new concept, “racial disintegration,” to account for the operation and shifting targets of white nationalism.In the final piece, David H. Kim and I discuss xenophobia and racism in the case of “Anti-Asian Racism.” We move from general theories of racism to inquire about what is at the base of anti-Asian racism. Little is said in contemporary accounts of racism about anti-Asian racism. This is due, in part, to the high level of abstraction in those discussions but also because much of the literature takes anti-blackness as the model of racism. Our piece addresses this lacuna in a manner not beholden to the black-white binary. We discuss how the idea of anti-Asian racism is a conceptual problem in the American context dominated by that binary. We then argue that xenophobia as a form of civic ostracism, and to some extent xenophilia, play a particular role in how anti-Asian racism functions and its immorality.The pieces in this collection resonate with current events and controversies involving racism and illustrate the potential of the debate to relate to and speak those events, not just to the specialized interests of a cloistered academic conversation. Each piece demonstrates the potential for extending vital lines of debate and discussion that touches the raw nerve of the public discussion of racism. (shrink)

Volume Eight of the project documenting Thomas Jefferson's last years presents 591 documents dated from 1 October 1814 to 31 August 1815. Jefferson is overjoyed by American victories late in the War of 1812 and highly interested in the treaty negotiations that ultimately end the conflict. Following Congress's decision to purchase his library, he oversees the counting, packing, and transportation of his books to Washington. Jefferson uses most of the funds from the sale to pay old debts but spends some (...) of the proceeds on new titles. He resigns from the presidency of the American Philosophical Society, revises draft chapters of Louis H. Girardin's history of Virginia, and advises William Wirt on revolutionary-era Stamp Act resolutions. Jefferson criticizes those who discuss politics from the pulpit, and he drafts a bill to transform the Albemarle Academy into Central College. Monticello visitors Francis W. Gilmer, Francis C. Gray, and George Ticknor describe the mountaintop and its inhabitants, and Gray's visit leads to an exchange with Jefferson about how many generations of white interbreeding it takes to clear Negro blood. Finally, although death takes his nephew Peter Carr and brother Randolph Jefferson, the marriage of his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph is a continuing source of great happiness. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit ist eine Fortsetzung derThompson'schen Analysen des Parasitenzyklus bei Insekten, die mit der irrealen Folgerung endeten, dass unter gewissen Voraussetzungen — die wir in der gegenwärtigen Analyse akzeptiert haben —jeder Parasit in relativ kurzer Generationenfolge seinen Wirt, und damit sich selbst, zur Ausrottung bringen muss. Der Einfluss von wiederkehrenden Umwelt-katastrophen wie sie z.B. durch ungünstiges Wetter sehr häufig bedingt sind, wurde untersucht mit dem Ergebnis, dass solche Katastrophen, wenn sie in nicht allzugrossen Intervallen auftreten, völlig genügen, um (...) die Unterbrechung der akkumulativen Parasitierung im Zyklus zu erklären.Die grössere Empfindlichkeit der Parasiten, welche aus allen Beobachtungen und Analysen sich ergibt, ist nicht physiologisch, sondern ökologisch bedingt. Methodisch hat sich gezeigt, dass die Analyse tierischer Populationen weitgehend ohne Anwendung von Integralen möglich ist.Die Ergebnisse, welche die hohe Bedeutung der Feinde bei grosser Wirtsdichte, und ihre minimale Wirksamkeit, wenn letztere niedrig ist, zeigen, sind unabhängig von einem besonderen Dichtefaktor der Feindvermehrung — wie er im allgemeinen besteht und die aufgezeigten Tendenzen noch verstärkt — gewonnen. Der Einfluss des Superparasiten wird unter dem Einfluss wiederkehrender Umwelt-katastrophen minimal. Am Modell einiger beobachteter Gradationen wird die Übereinstimmung mit unserer Analvse demonstriert.Le travail ci-dessus est la continuation des analyses deThompson des cycles parasitaires chez les insectes, qui l'ont à la conclusion absurde qu'en acceptant certaines suppositions — que nous avons acceptées dans la présente analyse — chaque parasite exterminerait son hôte et par conséquent soi-même. Nous avons étudié l'influence de certains phénomènes catastrophiques récurrents provenant du milieu comme par exemple celle d'un temps défavorable. Ces phénomènes, pourvu qu'ils ne se présentent pas à des intervalles trop grands, suffisent amplement pour expliquer l'interruption de la parasitation accumulative dans les cycles.La sensibilité plus grande des parasites qui est démontrée dans toutes les observations et analyses ne provient pas de causes physiologiques, mais écologiques.La méthodologie a donné comme résultat intéressant le fait que l'analyse des populations animales peut se faire sans l'application des intégrales.Les résultats démontrant la grande importance des ennemis quand les hôtes sont nombreux, mais par contre une activité minimale des ennemis quand les hôtes sont rares, ont été obtenus indépendamment d'une augmentation spéciale des ennemis qui, en général, constitue un facteur important, ce qui renforce encore les tendances que nous avons trouvées. L'influence des superparasites devient minime sous l'action des catastrophes récurrentes dus au milieu. Finalement, au moyen de quelques gradations bien observées, nous avons démontré que notre analyse est conforme aux faits. (shrink)

Ce travail présente quelques modèles mathématiques de répartition d'objets dans un ensemble de cases devant servir en particulier à l'analyse des résultats expérimentaux concernant la distribution des œufs d'un parasite dans un groupe de ses hôtes. On trouvera successivement une descriptions des situations concrêtes permettant l'utilisation de tels modèles, un rappel sur le matériel d'analyse combinatoire utilisé, cinq modèles relatifs aux différentes hypothèses de distribution au hasard, réception au hasard, reparasitisme à probabilités constante et variable et un exemple d'application aux (...) résultats de V.Labeyrie sur le parasitime d'Acrolepia assectella Z. par un ichneumonide Several mathematical models of distribution of objects among a set of boxes are presented in view of the analysis of experimental results obtained on the distribution of the eggs of a parasite among a group of its hosts.First, practical situations which allow the application of such models are described. In a second part, one recalls the elements of combinatorial analysis required by the following mathematical developments.Five models are then set up, each one being associated with the different hypothesis of: chance distribution, chance acceptance, re-parasitism with constant or variable probability Finally, an exemple of application to the results of V.Labeyrie on the parasitism ofAcrolepia assectella Z. by an ichneumon fly is given.Diese Arbeit soll einige mathematische Modelle von Verteilung der Gegenstände in eine Menge von Fächern geben, deren Zweck im Besonderen die Analyse von Versuchsergebnissen über die Eierlegung eines Parasiten in eine Gruppe seiner Wirte sein will.Es folgen: eine Beschreibung der konkreten Lagen, die eine Verwendung solcher Modelle ermöglichen, eine Aufzählung der benutzten Ergebnisse kombinatorischer Analysis, fünf Modelle, die folgenden verschiedenen Voraüssetzungen entsprechen: Zufallverteilung, Zufallaufnahme, wiederholter Parasitismus mit stetiger oder veränderlicher Wahrscheinlichkeit und ein Anwendungsbeispiel an Ergebnisse von V.Labeyrie über Parasitismus derAcrolepia assectella Z. durch einen Ichneumoniden—. (shrink)

This article must open with a Warning. In face of the positive information which the sciences supply, the philosophical contribution to this problem will seem disappointingly negative, or at least mine will do so. For I shall insist, and I think we can only rightly insist, that the philosopher is not yet in a position to produce a satisfactory positive theory of the relation between mind and body. And I shall annoy many of you further by insisting that the old-fashioned (...) “dualism” has not really been disproved. However, even if you do not agree with me, it is at any rate a good general piece of advice that, when we are confronted with a philosophical view which has maintained its ground for a very long time but seems to ourselves or to our generation very unreasonable, we should look specially carefully to find the positive grounds which have made so apparently unplausible a doctrine seem true to so many competent thinkers. (shrink)

At least for those who uphold the rationality of morality, ethics and practical reason are not two distinct topics: an ethically sound agent is one whose practical reason functions as it should. Take, for instance, the greatest historical figures. Aristotle claimed that no virtue of character can exist without practical wisdom—the excellence of practical, deliberative reason. And Kant thought that the categorical imperative, the ultimate moral principle that governs a good will, was at the same time the fundamental principlof practical (...) reasoning because the will simply ispractical reason. Even before any philosophical theory of the connection between acting well and the exercise of a rational power is in view, our moral practices strongly suggest that there is one. For we take it for granted that, in an important range of cases, when an agent fails to act as she should, something has gone awry with the agent and not just with her acts, and, furthermore, that the agent herself may be held responsible for this. In calling an agent who acts unethically "irrational," we are saying these two things. (shrink)

There are few examples in the literature of objective measures for the assessment of donor willingness. The author describes the scoring system in use at his own renal transplant unit which has brought objectivity to the process of determining the willingness of living related donors. In this system, a total score to determine the degree of willingness or unwillingness is calculated based on responses to a series of questions. The author believes that with minor modifications this system could be implemented (...) by transplant units in different countries and cultures to screen out donors who are acting under duress. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Constructing Constructivism” by Hugh Gash. Upshot: The concept of “constructivist teaching” seems unattainable for two reasons: a philosophical and an empirical one. Also, Hugh Gash’s survey is not so much about radical constructivism in education, but a review of different connected ideas labeled “constructivism” that have dominated the educational field.

Réflexions sur deux publications récentes en ecclésiologie : «Eclesiología 30 años después de Lumen Gentium. Pueblo de Dios - Cuerpo de Cristo - Templo del Espíritu Santo - Sacramento - Comuniοn», Pedro Rodríguez , Madrid : Rialp, 1994 et François Guillemette, «Théologie des conférences Episcopales. Une herméneutique de Vatican II», Montréal, QC : Médiaspaul, 1994.