In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein conveyed the idea that ethics cannot be located in an object or self-standing subject matter of propositional discourse, true or false. At the same time, he took his work to have an eminently ethical purpose, and his attitude was not that of the emotivist. The trajectory of this conception of the normativity of philosophy as it developed in his subsequent thought is traced. It is explained that and how the notion of a ‘form of life’ (...) (Lebensform) emerged only in his later thought, in 1937, earmarking a significant step forward in his philosophical method. We argue that the concept of Lebensform represents a way of domesticating logic itself, the very idea of a claim or reason, supplementing the idea of a ‘language game’, which it deepens. Lebensform is contrasted with the phenomenologists’ Lebenswelt through a reading of the notions of ‘I’, ‘world’ and ‘self’ as they were treated in the Tractatus, The Blue and Brown Books and Philosophical Investigations. Finally, the notion of Lebensform is shown to have replaced the notion of culture (Kultur) in Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein’s spring 1937 ‘domestication’ of the nature of logic is shown to have been fully consonant with the idea that he was influenced by his reading Alan Turing’s 1936/1937 paper, ‘On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem’. (shrink)

In recent months, Covid‐19 has devastated African American communities across the nation, and a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd. The agents of death may be novel, but the phenomena of long‐standing epidemics of premature black death and of police violence are not. This essay argues that racial health and health care disparities, rooted as they are in systemic injustice, ought to carry far more weight in clinical ethics than they generally do. In particular, this essay examines palliative and (...) end‐of‐life care for African Americans, highlighting the ways in which American medicine, like American society, has breached trust. In the experience of many African American patients struggling against terminal illness, health care providers have denied them a say in their own medical decision‐making. In the midst of the Covid‐19 pandemic, African Americans have once again been denied a say with regard to the rationing of scarce medical resources such as ventilators, in that dominant and ostensibly race‐neutral algorithms sacrifice black lives. Is there such thing as a “good” or “dignified” death when African Americans are dying not merely of Covid‐19 but of structural racism? (shrink)

Algorithms influence every facet of modern life: criminal justice, education, housing, entertainment, elections, social media, news feeds, work… the list goes on. Delegating important decisions to machines, however, gives rise to deep moral concerns about responsibility, transparency, freedom, fairness, and democracy. Algorithms and Autonomy connects these concerns to the core human value of autonomy in the contexts of algorithmic teacher evaluation, risk assessment in criminal sentencing, predictive policing, background checks, news feeds, ride-sharing platforms, social media, and election interference. Using these (...) case studies, the authors provide a better understanding of machine fairness and algorithmic transparency. They explain why interventions in algorithmic systems are necessary to ensure that algorithms are not used to control citizens' participation in politics and undercut democracy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

The relationship between religiosity and ethical behavior at work has remained elusive. In fact, inconsistent results in observed magnitudes and direction led Hood et al. (The psychology of religion: An empirical approach, 1996 ) to describe the relationship between religiosity and ethics as “something of a roller coaster ride.” Weaver and Agle (Acad Manage Rev 27(1):77–97, 2002 ) utilizing social structural versions of symbolic interactionism theory reasoned that we should not expect religion to affect ethical outcomes for all religious individuals; (...) rather, such a relationship likely depends on specific religious attitudes including religious motivation orientation (intrinsic RMO vs. extrinsic RMO), perceived sacred qualities of work (job sanctification), and views of God (VOG, loving vs. punishing). We examined the effects of these three religious attitudes on participants’ judgments of 29 ethically questionable vignettes. Consistent with symbolic interactionism theory, intrinsic RMO and having a loving view of God were both negatively related to endorsing ethically questionable vignettes, whereas extrinsic RMO was positively related to endorsing the vignettes. Unexpectedly, job sanctification was positively related to endorsing the vignettes. However, both intrinsic and extrinsic RMO moderated this relationship such that sanctifying one’s job was related to ethical judgments only for those who were: (a) low in intrinsic RMO or (b) high in extrinsic RMO. We reasoned based on symbolic interactionism theory that intrinsically motivated participants, in contrast to extrinsically motivated participants, may have utilized their religious beliefs as a guiding framework in making ethical judgments. (shrink)

Algorithmic systems and predictive analytics play an increasingly important role in various aspects of modern life. Scholarship on the moral ramifications of such systems is in its early stages, and much of it focuses on bias and harm. This paper argues that in understanding the moral salience of algorithmic systems it is essential to understand the relation between algorithms, autonomy, and agency. We draw on several recent cases in criminal sentencing and K–12 teacher evaluation to outline four key ways in (...) which issues of agency, autonomy, and respect for persons can conflict with algorithmic decision-making. Three of these involve failures to treat individual agents with the respect they deserve. The fourth involves distancing oneself from a morally suspect action by attributing one’s decision to take that action to an algorithm, thereby laundering one’s agency. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: So far in this book, we have examined algorithmic decision systems from three autonomy-based perspectives: in terms of what we owe autonomous agents (chapters 3 and 4), in terms of the conditions required for people to act autonomously (chapters 5 and 6), and in terms of the responsibilities of agents (chapter 7). -/- In this chapter we turn to the ways in which autonomy underwrites democratic governance. Political authority, which is to say the ability of a government to exercise (...) power, may be justifiable or not. Whether it is justified and how it can come to be justified is a question of political legitimacy. Political legitimacy is another way in which autonomy and responsibility are linked. This relationship is the basis of the current chapter, and it is important in understanding the moral salience of algorithmic systems. We will draw the connection as follows. We begin, in section 8.1, by describing two uses of technology: crime predicting technology used to drive policing practices and social media technology used to influence elections (including by Cambridge Analytica and by the Internet Research Agency). In section 8.2 we consider several views of legitimacy and argue for a hybrid version of normative legitimacy based on one recently offered by Fabienne Peter. In section 8.3 we will explain that the connection between political legitimacy and autonomy is that legitimacy is grounded in legitimating processes, which are in turn based on autonomy. Algorithmic systems—among them PredPol and the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook-Internet Research Agency amalgam—can hinder that legitimation process and conflict with democratic legitimacy, as we argue in section 8.4. We will conclude by returning to several cases that serve as through-lines to the book: Loomis, Wagner, and Houston Schools. -/- The link below is to an open-access copy of the chapter. (shrink)

Philosophical Perspectives, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 189-205, December 2021.

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 583-612, July 2022.

The idea that moral virtues form some sort of “unity” has received considerable attention from virtue theorists. In this paper, I argue that the possibility of unity among intellectual virtues has been wrongly overlooked. My approach has two main components. First, I work to distinguish the variety of different views that are available under the description of a unity thesis. I suggest that these views can be categorised depending on whether they are versions of standard unity or of strong unity. (...) Standard unity claims that the possession of one virtue implies possession of all the others. Strong unity claims that the virtues are, in some sense, all the same thing. By exploring what these different versions of unity would look like when applied to intellectual virtues, I aim to provide a menu of options for future work in virtue epistemology. I then develop and defend one of these options in more detail, arguing that the initially less plausible strong unity has merit when applied to the intellectual sphere. In these two ways, I aim to show that the possibility of unity among the intellectual virtues is deserving of serious consideration. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: One important criticism of algorithmic systems is that they lack transparency. Such systems can be opaque because they are complex, protected by patent or trade secret, or deliberately obscure. In the EU, there is a debate about whether the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) contains a “right to explanation,” and if so what such a right entails. Our task in this chapter is to address this informational component of algorithmic systems. We argue that information access is integral for respecting (...) autonomy, and transparency policies should be tailored to advance autonomy. -/- To make this argument we distinguish two facets of agency (i.e., capacity to act). The first is practical agency, or the ability to act effectively according to one’s values. The second is what we call cognitive agency, which is the ability to exercise what Pamela Hieronymi calls “evaluative control” (i.e., the ability to control our affective states, such as beliefs, desires, and attitudes). We argue that respecting autonomy requires providing persons sufficient information to exercise evaluative control and properly interpret the world and one’s place in it. We draw this distinction out by considering algorithmic systems used in background checks, and we apply the view to key cases involving risk assessment in criminal justice decisions and K-12 teacher evaluation. -/- The link below is to an open access version of the chapter. (shrink)

Intended for logicians and mathematicians, this text is based on Dr. Hamilton's lectures to third and fourth year undergraduates in mathematics at the ...

Gonzales tells Mark Crimmins (1992) that Crimmins knows him under two guises, and that under his other guise Crimmins thinks him an idiot. Knowing his cleverness, but not knowing which guise he has in mind, Crimmins trusts Gonzales but does not know which of his beliefs to revise. He therefore asserts to Gonzales. (FBI) I falsely believe that you are an idiot.

Gallup surveys consistently show that nine in 10 Americans express a belief in God (Nash, Business, religion, and spirituality: A new synthesis, 2003 ), while more than 45 % claim to have some awareness of God on the job (Nash and McLellan, Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenges of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life, 2001 ). Recently, Lynn et al. (Journal of Business Ethics 85:227–243, 2009 ) argued that the ability to integrate the specific beliefs and practices (...) of one’s faith with the work one does represent an important although neglected area of research. As such, they developed and demonstrated convergent validity for the faith at work scale, designed to measure the extent to which individuals believe they are able to integrate their Judaeo-Christian beliefs and practices and their work. In a subsequent study, Lynn et al. (Human Relations 64:675–701, 2010 ) demonstrated that the faith at work scale was related to faith maturity, church attendance, age, and denominational strictness, and negatively associated with organizational size. No research, however, has examined the possible positive benefits of integrating faith and work. I therefore developed and tested hypotheses concerning the relationship between the faith at work scale and seven important life and work outcomes (satisfaction with life, intent to leave one’s job, self-rated job performance, job satisfaction, and three forms of organizational commitment). In all, four of seven hypotheses were confirmed. (shrink)

This essay considers the two-way relation between critical realism and psychoanalysis. Critical realism vindicates and deepens our understanding of ontology by drawing on the sciences for which it...

In 1964, the American Medical Association invited liberal theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel to address its annual meeting in a program entitled “The Patient as a Person” [1]. Unsurprisingly, in light of Heschel’s reputation for outspokenness, he launched a jeremiad against physicians, claiming: “The admiration for medical science is increasing, the respect for its practitioners is decreasing. The depreciation of the image of the doctor is bound to disseminate disenchantment and to affect the state of medicine itself” [1, p. 35]. Heschel’s (...) reference to “disenchantment” suggests that he may have been familiar with the work, or at least the outlook, of sociologist Max Weber, whose 1917 address “Science as a Vocation” portrays the modern world as disenchanted by the progress of rationalism. Heschel’s life’s vocation had been to uncover the inner meaning of religious faith and to translate that faith into principled action. Heschel saw disenchantment not as an inescapable aspect of modern life but rather as the byproduct of physicians’ conscious choices to seek worldly success and material comfort. Yet, because of their privileged position as witnesses to human vulnerability, physicians possess an obligation to develop their own personhood, to re-enchant medicine, and through medicine to spark a positive transformation in all of modern life. As Heschel says, “The doctor must realize the supreme nobility of his vocation, to cultivate a taste for the pleasures of the soul. … The doctor is a major source of moral energy affecting the spiritual texture and substance of the entire society” [1, pp. 34, 38]. While Heschel’s conception of the physician’s role is romanticized and idealized, changes in the organization and practice of medicine have validated his concerns. (shrink)

This book is a wide-ranging examination of rationalist thought in philosophy from ancient times to the present day. Written by a superbly qualified cast of philosophers Critically analyses the concept of rationalism Focuses principally on the golden age of rationalism in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Also covers ancient rationalism, nineteenth-century rationalism, and rationalist themes in recent thought Organised chronologically Various philosophical methods and viewpoints are represented.

In this article, I examine the ethical and political dimensions of Hannah Arendt’s fundamental categories of thinking, judgment, and action, with the aim of uncovering and defending the coherence of the otherwise enigmatic nature of their interplay. In so doing, I attempt to resolve many of the tensions and ambiguities that appear to permeate Arendt’s account of judgment, by offering an analysis of its aesthetic structure that will later allow me to offer a new interpretation of the precise relation that (...) holds between thinking and judgment, as well as of judgment’s relation with regard to both morality and politics in general, making extended use of a writing analogy that involves thought experimentation. In this light, the category of judgment will be shown to serve as the bridge that seamlessly connects Arendt’s private conception of thinking, which is personal, contemplative, and anti-teleological, with the intersubjective realm of political action in the public sphere. The nexus binding the three categories together will be shown to consist specifically of an ontogenetic chain of interdependence that begins with thinking and culminates in action, where each successor category in the sequence can be viewed as a higher-order version of its immediate predecessor category. From this, I then explain the way they are able to collectively create a positive feedback loop that turns on the axis of our progress as thinkers, as well as on the state of our moral development as individuals, and which, in the process, creates potential openings for genuine political progress. (shrink)

An analysis of the collective engagement with the disease known as Alzheimer’s and the dementia reputed of it reveals recourse to a socially standardized formula that attributes causal agency to the brain in the absence of clinching knowledge. I propose that what Baudrillard calls the model of molecular idealism stipulates such a neurological view of determinism in order to provide caregivers with reassurance in the face of the perplexing character of dementia and the depressing reactions to mortality that it brings (...) to the surface. (shrink)

We propose that the ontic understanding of quantum mechanics can be extended to a fully realistic theory that describes the evolution of the wavefunction at all times, including during a measurement. In such an approach the wave equation should reduce to the standard wave equation when there is no measurement, and describe state reduction when the system is measured. The general wave equation must be nonlinear and nonlocal, and we require it to be time-symmetric; consequently, this approach is not a (...) new interpretation but a new theory. The wave equation is an integrodifferential equation (IDE). The time symmetry requirement leads to a retrocausal approach, in which the wave equation is solved subject to initial and final conditions to determine history at intermediate times. We propose that different outcomes from (apparently) identically prepared experiments may result from uncontrolled parameters; both the nonlocality and the retrocausality of the theory imply that Bell’s Theorem cannot rule out such “hidden variables.” Beginning with Hamilton’s principle, we demonstrate the construction of such a theory by replacing the action with a functional designed to give rise to a nonlinear, nonlocal IDE as the wave equation. This IDE reduces to the standard wave equation (a differential equation) in the absence of a measurement, but exhibits state reduction to a single eigenvalue when the system interacts with another system with the properties of a measurement apparatus. We demonstrate several desirable features of this theory; for other properties we indicate their plausibility and possible avenues to a proof. (shrink)

: In earlier work, Bernard R. Goldstein and the present author have introduced a procedural rule for historical inquiry, which requires that one take pains to establish the credibility of any citation of ancient thought by later writers in antiquity through a process of verification. In this paper, I shall apply what I call the Rule of Ancient Citations to Simplicius' interpretation of Aristotle's remarks in Meta L. 8, which is the primary point of departure for the modern understanding of (...) Greek planetary theory. I first sketch several lines of argument that lead me to conclude that Simplicius' interpretation should not be accepted because it assumes a concern with planetary phenomena unknown to the Greeks before the late 2nd and early 1st centuries BC. Then, after showing that there is a fairly well defined range of readings of Aristotle's remarks more in keeping with what we actually know of astronomy in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, I conclude that neither Aristotle's report about the Eudoxan and Callippan accounts of the celestial motions nor Simplicius' interpretation of this report is a good starting point for our understanding of early Greek planetary theory. (shrink)

The artform of standup comedy can be seen as having much in common with the discipline of philosophy, particularly with the way philosophy is carried out or “performed,” whether professionally or otherwise. There are, for instance, certain basic similarities between how standup comedians and philosophers value ideals of clarity and precision when it comes to the issue of determining what kind of language is best to employ if one seeks to either effectively deliver a funny joke, as in the case (...) of standup comedy, or if one seeks to effectively articulate and present an argument that can later be assessed as sound, as in the case of philosophy. The reason this is of note is because it is rooted in another similarity that serves not only to bring these two activities significantly closer but to isolate standup comedy from most artforms when it comes to how it conceives of matters pertaining to interpretation and purpose. More specifically, this is the fact that standup comedians and philosophers alike hope, and even expect on some level, that, in the best of cases, their respective jokes and reasoned arguments will compel some form of unanimous approval from those who properly understand and engage with their content. When this observation is combined with the additional observation that jokes can also serve as vehicles for imparting wisdom of a genuinely philosophical nature despite the fact that generating laughter rather than seeking truth per se represents standup comedy’s ostensive primary goal, this leads one to wonder how porous the boundaries that otherwise serve to distinguish these two activities might be. In particular, in light of the nature and scope of the many similarities that can be said to exist between them, which I lay out and discuss in the article, it seems that standup comedy could even be reasonably argued to be the artform closest to philosophy. (shrink)

This paper compares and contrasts the basic income proposal with the alternative policy proposal of the state acting as employer of last resort. Two versions of the UBI proposal are distinguished: one is hard to differentiate from expanded welfare state provision. Van Parijs’s proposal is radical enough to qualify as major egalitarian revision to capitalism. However, while it removes from a capitalist class the power to determine the terms on which others labour, it leaves this class in place and able (...) to exert other powers that distort the macro-economy. These include pecuniary emulation, demand pull inflation, and political resistance to full employment so that the rentier class does not have to contend with entrepreneurs *and* the working class over the distribution of the productive surplus. The state as employer of last resort proposal addresses these deeper issues while also claiming that inflationary pressure will undermine the UBI alternative. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV V.

Philosophical discussions of information and specificity in biology are now commonplace, but no consensus exists about whether the privileging of genetic causation in investigation and explanation...

Liberal attempts to defend faith schooling have been conditional on the ability of faith schools to serve as a context for individual choice. A recent critique of these attempts claims that religious parents would find such moderate faith schooling unacceptable. This article sets forth a new liberal defence of faith schools drawing heavily on the distinction between political and comprehensive liberalism. Since political liberalism's understanding of personal autonomy does not include the ability to make choices, the political liberal defence of (...) faith schools can accommodate denominational schools that limit the ability of students to choose or change their religion. (shrink)

This article examines the role of dissection in the teaching of secondary biology and environmental science, within the context of the development of attitudes toward animals. Retrospective data concerning their experience in high school with dissection for 191 undergraduate education students are described, and their reported use of alternatives to invasive animal study are evaluated in relation to specific educational objectives in secondary science. It was found that most students were required to perform dissections, that many but not most experienced (...) negative and stable emotional reactions, and that teachers employed limited alternatives to dissection in their classes. The implications of this for secondary science teaching and for teacher education are discussed. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1978, is a radical approach to the philosophical distinction between Being and beings, in which the life of Socrates is used as the metaphor for the theoretical life, in contrast to the continuous historical interest in that life as an object for biographical reconstruction and description. Professor Blum's main concern is to develop a story that coordinates stages of the theoretical life to practices which exemplify man's ideal relationship with language.

New Perspectives on Aristotle'sDe caelo (Leiden) 139-161. Machamer, PK (1978) " Aristotle on Natural Place and Motion" Isis 69: 377-387. ...

Despite the many differing perspectives possible regarding the concept of a property right, one central aspect is, arguably, the primal exclusionary impulse and its special connection to a particular form of subjectivity, especially in terms of how people feel about space, enclosed space and any subsequent property rules applicable. Such aspects limit speculative thought concerning the enactment of challenging housing reforms. This essay therefore asks: Why is exclusion so relevant to spatial ethics, and is it only a particular form of (...) subjectivity that is involved in the phenomena of exclusionary impulses? As a response, new speculative thoughts are proposed that aim at challenging such specialised subjectivity, exclusionary impulses and spatial engagement: re-sanctification of enclosed space, de-objectification of being and a call to develop new or alternative subjectivities and modes of somatic thought. (shrink)