The handling of corruption cases in Indonesia has undergone significant changes, particularly in the application of criminal procedural law aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of corruption eradication. One of the important developments is the implementation of a progressive legal approach that is more adaptive to socio-political dynamics and aims to create substantive justice. However, there is a gap in the consistent application of the lex specialis principle, which has led to legal uncertainty and regulatory loopholes exploited by corrupt actors. This (...) research employs a qualitative descriptive method with in-depth interviews and legal document analysis to explore the paradigm shifts in the enforcement of corruption cases in Indonesia. The findings indicate that the progressive legal approach has succeeded in addressing inconsistencies in the application of lex specialis, increasing legal flexibility through the practice of discretion, and leveraging collaboration with whistleblowers to uncover major corruption cases. The results also show a significant decrease in the number of corruption cases following the implementation of this new paradigm. This approach allows the law to be more responsive to social changes, creates more sustainable justice, and strengthens efforts to eradicate corruption. The implications of this research provide new insights for legal reform in Indonesia, particularly in enhancing the effectiveness of law enforcement against corruption. (shrink)

The principle of freedom of contract is a fundamental tenet in Indonesian civil law, providing parties with the flexibility to regulate agreements. However, the dominance of public law over private law in corruption cases has led to the neglect of the freedom of contract principle. This study identifies a gap in the literature concerning how public law intervention impacts the freedom of contract in corruption court rulings. Utilizing a normative juridical research method, with an analysis of legal documents and court (...) decisions, this study examines cases that initially were civil disputes but were shifted to the realm of criminal law through a public law approach. The findings indicate that in many cases, the courts tend to override the principle of freedom of contract in favor of public interest, resulting in legal uncertainty for the parties involved in contract disputes. Furthermore, public law intervention in corruption cases often transforms the nature of disputes from civil to criminal, thereby reducing contractual autonomy. This research highlights the need for a better balance between public and private law to safeguard the freedom of contract. These findings offer important contributions for policymakers in designing fair regulations in corruption cases involving contractual disputes. (shrink)

How is it that thoroughly physical material beings such as ourselves can think, dream, feel, create and understand ideas, theories and concepts? How does mere matter give rise to all these non-material mental states, including consciousness itself? An answer to this central question of our existence is emerging at the busy intersection of neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence, and robotics.In this groundbreaking work, philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark explores exciting new theories from these fields that reveal minds like ours to (...) be prediction machines - devices that have evolved to anticipate the incoming streams of sensory stimulation before they arrive. These predictions then initiate actions that structure our worlds and alter the very things we need to engage and predict. Clark takes us on a journey in discovering the circular causal flows and the self-structuring of the environment that define "the predictive brain." What emerges is a bold, new, cutting-edge vision that reveals the brain as our driving force in the daily surf through the waves of sensory stimulation. (shrink)

In this book, Andy Mueller examines the ways in which epistemic and practical rationality are intertwined. In the first part, he presents an overview of the contemporary debates about epistemic norms for practical reasoning, and defends the thesis that epistemic rationality can make one practically irrational. Mueller proposes a contextualist account of epistemic norms for practical reasoning and introduces novel epistemic norms pertaining to ends and hope. In the second part Mueller considers current approaches to pragmatic encroachment in epistemology, ultimately (...) arguing in favor of a new principle-based argument for pragmatic encroachment. While the book defends tenets of the knowledge-first programme, one of its main conclusions is thoroughly pragmatist: in an important sense, the practical has primacy over the epistemic. (shrink)

It's a presupposition of a very common way of thinking about contextsensitivity in language that the semantic contribution made by a bit of context-sensitive vocabulary is sensitive only to features of the speaker's situation at the time of utterance. I argue that this is false, and that we need a theory of context-dependence that allows for content to depend not just on the features of the utterance's origin, but also on features of its destination. There are cases in which a (...) single utterance semantically conveys different propositions to different members of its audience, which force us to say that what a sentence conveys depends not just on the context in which it is uttered, but also on the context in which it is received. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with what Abbinnett1 described as fundamental to the discourses of social science: truth and its construction. The central problem around which the narrative is built is a growing disconnection in one area of social science, management research, between how truth is frequently defined and used and the approaches taken to constructing that truth. The result of this is an intellectual impurity whereby management research occupies an incoherent intellectual space somewhere between modernism and postmodernism. Our argument is (...) that, for a host of probable reasons, management research in many areas is dominated by the search for rational and scientific truth through the use of quantitative methodologies underpinned by a positivist philosophy. The result of this is frequently truth diluted rather than truth distilled. The essay discusses different routes to establishing a type of truth, the location of management research within a modern-postmodern continuum and the implications of this for management researchers. We begin, however, with a brief discussion of the nature of truth in social science. (shrink)

Contemporary ‘crisis studies’ seek to advance democracy by emphasizing the threats that technocracy and populism pose to a specific form of it, liberal-democracy. Crisis studies argue that, since the 1970s, technocratic policymaking has deepened economic inequality. This has fostered citizenly anger, which populists exploit. Four well-known iterations of this argument are evaluated using a political realist lens. Political realism emphasizes the historical context of politics, actors’ possible motives, and a normative orientation derived from the political order itself, rather than an (...) external ethico-moral ideal. The realist lens encourages comparison of crisis studies with historical political theory, which situates liberal-democracy within the long-term development of oligarchic systems of authority, and political history, which portrays technocracy as a product of the well-funded reaction to assertions of the democratic impulse that began in the 1970s. Populism is in this view not so much a perversion of liberal-democracy as it is a perhaps unintended consequence of anti-democratic reaction. The crisis studies make this error because based on a moral defence of the justice of the liberal-democratic order. Revealing the democratically unhelpful moralism at the core of crisis studies demonstrates the usefulness of political realism as a form of applied political theory, and not simply theory about theory. (shrink)

Idioms – expressions like kick the bucket and let the cat out of the bag – are strange. They behave in ways that ordinary multi-word expressions do not. One distinctive and troublesome feature of idioms is their unpredictability: The meanings of sentences in which idiomatic phrases occur are not the ones that we would get by applying the usual compositional rules to the usual meanings of their (apparent) constituents. This sort of behavior requires an explanation. I will argue that the (...) right explanation is that the sentences are being interpreted through a pretense. (What this means, exactly, will be explained in what follows.) This is a surprising claim, for two reasons. On the one hand, it seems that adopting a pretense account is overkill—it’s a far more radical move than is required to account for the phenomena. On the other hand, it seems that a pretense account is hopeless—that there is a fatal overgeneration problem for pretense accounts of idiom that causes them to fail, as Jason Stanley charges, “as badly as it is possible for an account of idiom to fail.” So I will have some work to do. (shrink)

Introduction Jamie Allen Time, of all the dimensions readily presented to experience, seems to do so most readily through things. Stuff, in supposed counter-valence to the negentropic resilience of living things, appears to us as that which degrades through time, and demarcates a more technical chronometry of sequential events. Situated outside the rotting of fruit and the ticking of clocks, a “deep time” persists. Like the ultra-hearing of the bat, and the infra-vision of the boa-constrictor, there exist living and non-living (...) agents and entities capable of revealing the fixity and finitude of our own perceptual frames for thinking and understanding. The recordings presented here consist of four extracts of documents made in deep geological repository sites (for the storage of nuclear waste). Here re-presented are the Yucca Mountain Repository; HADES, in Mol, Belgium; Gorleben in Germany and a further recording from Forsmark in Sweden (pretty much inaudible behind a loop of a pop song). These recordings are imagined acoustic amplifications of deep time, just as the astronomer’s telescope is (thought of a certain way), also a time machine. Stars and nuclear waste are unapparent objects of temporal thought. Andy Weir is an artist from London researching effects of deprioritised subjectivity and contemporary art. This project draws on work developing sonic fictions, stealthy earworms, and micropolitical agencies. Prompted for further thoughts about the recordings presented here, he offered up the interspersed discussion included. —JA Yucca Mountain Repository, Nevada, USA by continent I became interested in these sites originally as spaces that allude to a time outside of the human (‘deep time’) as they are designed to store waste ‘without future maintenance’. The very fact of thinking about these spaces or working on them—engineering etc.. (as I’m particularly interested them in a kind of practice rather than just an object of thought), in other words, forces a confrontation with thought of the extinction of humanity. I was interested in this as a production of affect at odds with the expected ‘ironic, can be whatever you like’ interpretive condition of contemporary art (art under the condition of neoliberalism, say, where the individual subject is prioritised as a free autonomous producer of the meaning of the work) When I thought about this a bit though it ran into paradoxes—yes, I could allude to deep time, but in doing so I just allude to its un-representability, drawing attention to the limits of representation and so reaffirming it—I was stuck in a representation/non-representational negative dialectic. In trying to somehow create a figure for deep time I was either reducing it to my description of it, or presenting it as irreducible. HADES Facility, Mol, Belgium by continent I don’t think I’ve escaped this in the work but my response to it was to create a sonic-fiction. This was based on the idea of a viral transmission of the affect of deep time (this is the ‘pyroclastic-soaked chrono-dread’) through receiving apparatuses, transforming the screen into an intercessor or mediating lure for the outside, a site of exposure multiplying virulently through its dissemination, invoking as much as trying to represent these spaces, the sounds as durations of exposure to contagious materials, and fictions as a way of excavating the strangeness of a world opaque to subjective reconfiguration... Testing out I suppose ways that art could start thinking about figuring the reality of ecological crisis. Gorleben Repository, Lower Saxony, Germany by continent While everything remains at the level of fiction I think the work is problematic. It doesn’t really model anything, giving too much authority to either romantic abandonment or the recuperation of romantic abandonment under its description by theory/philosophy, all contained and controlled by me within a fairly limited condition of what art can do. Deep Time Contagion is precisely a materialisation of and transmission of this paradox (i.e. with screen-media can only present deep time as unrepresentable or draw attention to an inability to present it) taking the comfort/panic induced by this paradox as its material. I’m working now on some new projects that take this as a point of departure. Forsmark Repository, Sweden (Robitussin Mix) by continent. (shrink)

Can the Euthydemus illuminate the philosophical significance of sophistry? In answering this question, I ask why the most direct and sustained confrontations between Socrates and the two brothers should all center on time and the soul. The Euthydemus, I argue, is a not primarily a polemic against eristic manipulation of language, but a diagnosis of the soul’s ambiguous unity. It shows that sophistic speech emerges from the soul’s way of relating to its own temporal character and to logos. Stated differently, (...) a central theme of this dialogue is one which, we are repeatedly told, the Greeks had not yet thematized--the nature of interiority. (shrink)

This introduction to a special Tradition and Discovery issue on Polanyi’s realism summarizes, and comments on the views of Jha, Gulick, Mullins, Cannon, Puddefoot, Meek and Sanders. All agree that Polanyi advocated a scientific realism hanging on the theses that reality is independent of human conceptualizations and that it is partially and fallibly knowable. Major differences concern its scope. All agree that it is comprehensive, pertaining not only to common sense and science but to intrinsic and ultimate values, and perhaps (...) the divine realities as well. Whereas Jha and Gulick argue a more limited scope, others defend a Polanyian position by drawing in various ways on the personal and social coefficients of the practice of inquiry. The debates show clearly that the relationship between Polanyi’s epistemology, axiology and hermeneutics deserve further scrutiny. (shrink)

Aesthetics and Music is a rich and interesting study. Hamilton's approach is innovative. He interleaves chapters on the history of philosophical thought about music with more theoretical discussions of music, sound, rhythm and improvisation, but does not cover the work–performance relation, depiction or expression. He draws on an atypically broad range of examples, including avant-garde, medieval, non-Western and jazz. The assumptions are humanist: ‘I wish to argue for an aesthetic conception of music as an art … according to which music (...) is a human activity grounded in the body and bodily movement and interfused with human life’.The historical chapters are valuable and not without analysis and criticism. Hamilton shows how the ancient Greek theorists were more interested in music's mathematical properties as reflecting the underlying harmony of relations between cosmic bodies than in the practice of musicians. While they equated the value of art with its contribution to an education for citizenship and while their concept of the arts differed …. (shrink)

Hegel for Social Movements by Andy Blunden is an introduction to the reading of Hegel intended for those already active in social movements. It introduces Hegel's ideas in a way which will be useful for those fighting for social change, and while some familiarity with philosophy would be an advantage for the reader, the main pre-requisite is a commitment to the practical pursuit of ideal aims. The book covers the whole sweep of Hegel's writing, but focuses particularly on the Logic (...) and Hegel's social theory - the Philosophy of Right. Blunden brings to his exposition an original interpretation of Hegel's Logic as the logic of social change, utilizing his expertise in Vygotsky's cultural psychology and Soviet Activity Theory. (shrink)

SUMMARYEarly modern printers, publishers and booksellers not only influenced readers to purchase particular books but continue to shape our reception of printed books today. Through title-page advertisements, prefaces and indexes, these ‘print agents’ forged unique relationships with new and returning readers. Paying attention to paratextual structures can uncover strategies for marketing new books, corralling readers and outlining new genres. A consideration of framing devices can also further our understanding of digital resources: much as print agents mediated printed books, digital humanists (...) help reinforce the value of new technologies for the study of early modern texts, guiding users to apply new methods of research, and helping establish new areas of scholarship. As a new kind of print agent, digital humanists must be more aware of their choices in curating, organising and labeling metadata. As we rethink what it means to read, edit and disseminate texts through the digital medium, we must also understand the degree to which modern and early modern editorial practices challenge and influence our scholarship and criticism. (shrink)

“There’s no disputing about taste.” That’s got a nice ring to it, but it’s not quite the ring of truth. While there’s definitely something right about the aphorism – there’s a reason why it is, after all, an aphorism, and why its utterance tends to produce so much nodding of heads and muttering of “just so” and “yes, quite” – it’s surprisingly difficult to put one’s finger on just what the truth in the neighborhood is, exactly. One thing that’s pretty (...) clear is that what’s right about the aphorism, that there’s no disputing about taste, isn’t that there’s no disputing about taste. There’s heaps of disputing about taste. People engage in disputes about which movies, music, paintings, literature, meals, furniture, architectural styles, etc. are good, beautiful, tasty, fun, elegant, ugly, disgusting, etc. all the time. This is obvious to anyone who has watched dueling-movie-critics shows, read theater reviews, or negotiated with a group or partner about which movie or restaurant to go to, or which sofa or painting to put in the living room. It takes great care and good aim to fling a brick without hitting somebody who’s engaged in a dispute about taste. (shrink)

Detecting introspective errors about consciousness presents challenges that are widely supposed to be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. This is a problem for consciousness science because many central questions turn on when and to what extent we should trust subjects’ introspective reports. This has led some authors to suggest that we should abandon introspection as a source of evidence when constructing a science of consciousness. Others have concluded that central questions in consciousness science cannot be answered via empirical investigation. (...) I argue that on closer inspection, the challenges associated with detecting introspective errors can be overcome. I demonstrate how natural kind reasoning—the iterative application of inference to the best explanation to home in on and leverage regularities in nature—can allow us to detect introspective errors even in difficult cases such as judgments about mental imagery, and I conclude that worries about intractable methodological challenges in consciousness science are misguided. (shrink)

The moral status of animals is a subject of controversy both within and beyond academic philosophy, especially regarding the question of whether and when it is ethical to eat meat. A commitment to animal rights and related notions of animal protection is often thought to entail a plant-based diet, but recent philosophical work challenges this view by arguing that, even if animals warrant a high degree of moral standing, we are permitted - or even obliged - to eat meat. Andy (...) Lamey provides critical analysis of past and present dialogues surrounding animal rights, discussing topics including plant agriculture, animal cognition, and in vitro meat. He documents the trend toward a new kind of omnivorism that justifies meat-eating within a framework of animal protection, and evaluates for the first time which forms of this new omnivorism can be ethically justified, providing crucial guidance for philosophers as well as researchers in culture and agriculture. (shrink)

Discursive deference in the governance of science and technology is rebalancing from expert analysis toward participatory deliberation. Linear, scientistic conceptions of innovation are giving ground to more plural, socially situated understandings. Yet, growing recognition of social agency in technology choice is countered by persistently deterministic notions of technological progress. This article addresses this increasingly stark disjuncture. Distinguishing between “appraisal” and “commitment” in technology choice, it highlights contrasting implications of normative, instrumental, and substantive imperatives in appraisal. Focusing on the role of (...) power, it identifies key commonalities transcending the analysis/participation dichotomy. Each is equally susceptible to instrumental framing for variously weak and strong forms of justification. To address the disjuncture, it is concluded that greater appreciation is required—in both analytic and participatory appraisal—to facilitating the opening up of governance commitments on science and technology. (shrink)

Why do humans reason? Many animals draw inferences, but reasoning—the tendency to produce and respond to reason-giving performances—is biologically unusual, and demands evolutionary explanation. Mercier and Sperber advance our understanding of reason’s adaptive function with their argumentative theory of reason. On this account, the “function of reason is argumentative… to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade.” ATR, they argue, helps to explain several well-known cognitive biases. In this paper, I develop a neighboring hypothesis called the intention alignment model and (...) contrast it with ATR. I conjecture that reasoning evolved primarily because it helped social hominins more readily and fully align their intentions. We use reasons to advance various proximal ends, but in the main, we do it to overwrite the beliefs and desires of others: to get others to think like us. Reason afforded our ancestors a powerful way to build and maintain the shared outlooks necessary for a highly collaborative existence. Yes, we sometimes argue so as to gain argumentative advantage over others, or otherwise advantage ourselves at the expense of those we argue with, but more often, we reason in ways that are mutually advantageous. In fact, there are excellent reasons for thinking this must be so. IAM, I suggest, neatly explains the available evidence, while also providing a more coherent account of reason’s origins. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of what happens to consciousness under the influence of psychedelic drugs—specifically of psilocybin, or “magic” mushrooms— and performs a Foucauldian discourse analysis upon the answers that have been variously proposed. Predominant societally legitimated answers (the pathological, psychological, and prohibition discourses) are those that, in Foucault's sense, are imposed from the outside as “scientific classifications,” that is, they are based upon observations of the effects of mushrooms on others. By contrast, a series of resistive discourses (the (...) recreational, psychedelic, entheogenic, and animistic discourses) have been constructed in opposition, as a means of making sense of the subjective experience of taking mushrooms. When critiqued, only the animistic discourse— the belief that mushrooms occasion encounters with discarnate spirit entities, or animaphany—transgresses a fundamental societal boundary. In the West, to believe in the existence of spirits is to risk being labeled “mad,” and as such the phenomenon of mushroom‐induced animaphany goes largely ignored. It nevertheless remains a phenomenon in need of further scholarly research. (shrink)

In Supersizing the Mind, Andy Clark argues that the human mind is not bound inside the head but extends into body and environment.

I argue against Schroeder's explanation of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge. In section 1, I introduce pragmatic encroachment and point out that an explanation of it should avoid Pascalian considerations. In section 2, summarize the key aspects of Schroeder's explanation of pragmatic encroachment. In section 3, I argue that Schroeder's explanation faces a dilemma: it either allows for an objectionable form of Pascalian encroachment or it fails to be a fully general explanation of pragmatic encroachment.

There have been few attempts to answer the challenges for alethic pluralists to maintain standard accounts of the logical operators and of logical consequence in a sufficiently systematic and precise way. This chapter presents a pluralist account of logic and semantics that answers these challenges. The chapter also shows how to accommodate logical pluralism and ontological pluralism within an extension of the framework.

Hegel does not directly examine the legitimacy of capital punishment in the Philosophy of Right. There is an implication of vengeful death in the endless retribution that characterizes abstract right, and also in the potential carnage that can result from non-compliance with the prevailing order in a society based upon morality; but in terms of just punishment, which can only occur in the state, Hegel is silent on the matter of the death penalty. It is mentioned occasionally in the “additions” (...) to the main text provided by the lecture notes of Hegel’s students, wherein Hegel reportedly speaks of the necessity of the death penalty for murder, and the undesirability of capital punishment for most lesser crimes. Although the conclusions of this paper do not contradict either of these representations of Hegel’s opinion about capital punishment, the arguments used will not rely on the additions since their authority is not beyond question. Rather, this paper will be concerned only with Hegel’s own pronouncements, which refer directly to the death penalty only twice—and each time in connection to historical treatments of the subject. Both Draco’s “barbarous” insistence that every criminal meet with death, and Beccaria’s arguments against the right of the state to employ the death penalty are criticized by Hegel, but the object of criticism in each case is the reasoning behind their respective positions. Nowhere in the main text of the Philosophy of Right does Hegel explicitly endorse or deny the legitimacy of capital punishment. (shrink)

How should we characterize the functional role of conscious visual experience? In particular, how do the conscious contents of visual experience guide, bear upon, or otherwise inform our ongoing motor activities? According to an intuitive and philosophically influential conception, the links are often quite direct. The contents of conscious visual experience, according to this conception, are typically active in the control and guidance of our fine-tuned, real-time engagements with the surrounding three-dimensional world. But this idea is hostage to empirical fortune. (...) It is a hostage, moreover, whose safety is in serious doubt. Thus Milner and Goodale argue for a deep and abiding dissociation between the contents of conscious seeing, on the one hand, and the resources used for the on-line guidance of visuo-motor action, on the other. This ‘dual visual systems’ hypothesis, which finds many echoes in various other bodies of cognitive scientific research, poses a prima facie challenge to the Assumption of Experience-Based Control. More importantly, it provides fuel for an alternative and philosophically suggestive account of the functional role of conscious visual experience. (shrink)

A recently developed model of general collective intelligence defines a method for organizing humans or artificially intelligent agents that is believed to create the potential to exponentially increase the general problem-solving ability of groups of such entities over that of any individual entity. An analysis based on this model suggests that many and perhaps all “wicked problems” are collective optimization problems that cannot reliably be addressed without a system of collective optimization, but that might be reliably addressed through such a (...) system. This paper briefly introduces the concept of GCI as well as why it is a system of collective optimization, and explores why “wicked problems” from the perspective of GCI are collective optimization problems, and therefore why such problems might require GCI to be reliably solvable. (shrink)

In the middle of the ninth century, Isho‘dad of Merv, the East Syrian bishop of Haditha wrote extensive commentaries on all of the books of the Old and the New Testament, using a variety of sources, not only exegetical ones. This article offers the first (partial) reconstruction of Isho‘dad’s Syriac chronographic source, on the basis of a comparison of material in his commentaries on the Old Testament with two Syrian Orthodox chronicles (Michael the Syrian and the Anonymous Chronicle of 1234) (...) and one Arabic Melkite chronicle (Agapius of Mabbug). It will be argued that this Syriac chronicle was written between the middle of the sixth century and the middle of the ninth century and was influenced by a variety of sources, most notably the Syriac Chronicle of Andronicus and the Chronicle Epitome of John Malalas. (shrink)

This essay reflects on the ability of neuroscientific data to be of personal value and to enrich our lives by offering insight into our capacities for self management and choice. The theory of cognitive dualism proposed by Roger Scruton seeks to preserve rationality and allow for freedom of will, but he appears reluctant to engage with the data accruing in neural studies. I contrast this approach with a Thomistic hylomorphic approach to the philosophy of mind that is founded on participation (...) in being. It offers the potential to draw on neurobiological knowledge for insights into rationality, motivation, and eudaimonia. The role of neural development in eudaimonia is considered and the benefits of a Thomistic hylomorphism founded on participation in esse are summarized. (shrink)

I have two main objectives in this essay: (1) to situate the events of 11 September within the context of the impact of modernization on religious consciousness and institutions; and (2) to suggest, albeit without adequate empirical support, that militant Islamic opposition to the West in general and the United States in particular is itself an effect of the peculiar path of modernization that has unfolded in the Gulf region of the Middle East over the last 200 years. To develop (...) my argument, I draw upon Habermas's theory of social evolution. Since this strategy requires explaining the key components of that theory, I devote a good part of the article to this task. The paper has five parts. In parts one and two, I criticize competing explanations of the events of 11 September from left, right and center. All these positions fail in one way or another to take seriously the religious significance of those events. In part three, I explain the six central dimensions of Habermas's theory of social evolution: (1) communicative rationality; (2) communicative action; (3) life-world; (4) system; (5) social typology; and (6) the systemic colonization of the life-world. In part four, I examine the relation between religion and modernity. In part five, I examine the modernization processes in the Gulf region of the Middle East. Empirical evidence tentatively suggests that such a process has been one-dimensional, focusing on systemic complexity to the detriment of the communicative rationalization of the life-world. Such evidence also indicates the existence of widespread systemic colonization of the life-world. If the empirical data are correct, then we can explain the emergence of extreme militant Islamic fundamentalism as an effect of a retarded development of those socio-political structures necessary for the realization of communicative rationality. (shrink)

Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, and there is growing consensus that medical errors should be discussed after they occur. This essay argues that potential errors should be discussed with patients as well in the informed consent process prior to treatment. While physicians don’t have the obligation to tell patients to go to physicians and hospitals that would present less potential for error, patients should be told of increased risks compared to other options, (...) and be guided through the data on physician and hospital rankings. Suggestions are given to improve this informed consent process. (shrink)