As a subject for philosophizing about education, there are few topics as rich and significant as the role of public schools in fostering respect for sexual and religious diversity. The liberal state, it is said, has a clear mission to teach students to respect the rights of others to lead fundamentally different ways of life, and to provide students with the tools needed to make similarly fundamental choices about their own lives. The liberal state must do this, however, without undue (...) or excessive infringement on the rights of children and parents who believe that some common ways of life are, writ large, morally objectionable. This symposium paper features three arguments, each formulated by a different student in education or a related field. The first argues that LGBTQ role models must be provided in schools (through school resources or in person). The second argues that teachers are being placed in a very difficult position when such provision causes controversy with the surrounding community. The third argues that parents must not be given unchecked power over their children’s exposure to LGBTQ role modeling. (shrink)

An argument that the major metaphysical theories of facts give us no good reason to accept facts in our catalog of the world. -/- In this book Arianna Betti argues that we have no good reason to accept facts in our catalog of the world, at least as they are described by the two major metaphysical theories of facts. She claims that neither of these theories is tenable—neither the theory according to which facts are special structured building blocks of reality (...) nor the theory according to which facts are whatever is named by certain expressions of the form “the fact that such and such.” There is reality, and there are entities in reality that we are able to name, but, Betti contends, among these entities there are no facts. -/- Drawing on metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and linguistics, Betti examines the main arguments in favor of and against facts of the two major sorts, which she distinguishes as compositional and propositional, giving special attention to methodological presuppositions. She criticizes compositional facts (facts as special structured building blocks of reality) and the central argument for them, Armstrong's truthmaker argument. She then criticizes propositional facts (facts as whatever is named in “the fact that” statements) and what she calls the argument from nominal reference, which draws on Quine's criterion of ontological commitment. Betti argues that metaphysicians should stop worrying about facts, and philosophers in general should stop arguing for or against entities on the basis of how we use language. (shrink)

In rhetoric, an orator needs both a large vocabulary and a stock of commonplaces and arguments. Erasmus put them together in his De duplici copia verborum ac rerum . In this sixth volume of the first Ordo of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus, Betty Knott has edited the Latin text and added an English introduction and commentary, providing philological and historical information which helps the reader to understand the text and identify its sources.

In his PhD proposal, now published as Seeing Sociological, Garfinkel [2006] formulated action in terms of a mutually constitutive structure—the Noesis-Noema Structures. This structure can be traced to Aaron Gurwitsch’s gestalt psychology and Law of Good Gestalt which theorises how participants prioritise functional Gestalts over other possible meanings of what is perceivable in their surroundings. While Gurwitsch illustrated his theory using images, in this paper we revisit Gurwitsch’s theory in light of the advances in recording real-time interaction to consider Gestalt (...) in spatio-temporality of real-time interaction. We consider the Law of Good Gestalt in terms of the dimensions of time and space, and postulate two analytical principles—the Principle of Good Momentary Gestalt and the Principle of Good Temporal Gestalt—for analysing a multi-angle video segment of a monologue taken from a training event. The analysis examines how the monologue was embedded in a multi-layer projection structure, so that during the time of the monologue, the trainer and trainees can be seen as achieving a transition between one activity to another while sustaining the frame of the training event. Through this, the analysis highlights the multi-layered structure of participants’ field of perception that constitutes their experience of the social activity, and explores a “method” to reconstruct such a structured field of perception through re-coupling meanings to the assemblages of multimodal resources recoverable on video. (shrink)

Mark Coeckelbergh (Int J Soc Robot 1:217–221, 2009) argues that robot ethics should investigate what interaction with robots can do to humans rather than focusing on the robot’s moral status. We should ask what robots do to our sociality and whether human–robot interaction can contribute to the human good and human flourishing. This paper extends Coeckelbergh’s call and investigate what it means to live with disembodied AI-powered agents. We address the following question: Can the human–AI interaction contribute to our moral (...) development? We present an empirically informed philosophical analysis of how the AI personal assistant Siri changes its users’ way of life, based on the responses obtained from 20 semi-directive individual interviews with Siri users. We identify changes in the users’ social interaction associated with the adoption of Siri. These changes include: (1) the indirect effect of reducing opportunities of human interaction, (2) the second-order effect of diminished expectations toward each other in a community, and (3) the acquired preference to obtain hassle-free interaction with Siri over human interaction. We examine them in relation to concerns that are voiced in the current debates over the rise of AI, namely the suspicion that humans could become overly reliant on AI (Danaher 2019) and the worry that social AI could impede on moral development (Fröding and Peterson, Ethics Inf Technol 23:207–214, 2012; Li, Ethics Inf Technol 23:543–550, 2021). We analyze the ethical costs that come from these changes in light of virtue ethics and address potential objections along the way. We end by offering directions for thinking about how to live with AI personal assistant while preserving favorable conditions for moral development. (shrink)

In this essay, we discuss a perspective remote from German academics on the examination of Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant, which was developed by Mou Zongsan (牟宗三). Mou focuses his interpretation of Kant on the infinite aspect of human morality and he praises Heidegger’s interpretation of the essence of human existence as “being-able-to-be”. Although, like Heidegger, he emphasizes the recognition of human finiteness as the basic premise of Kant’s philosophy, he refuses to apply this premise to Kant’s entire philosophy. He addresses (...) the fact that for Kant man is “finite but can be infinite”. Furthermore, he criticises Heidegger, on the one hand, for withdrawing the dimension of independence, infinity, supersensibility and timelessness from morality, and Kant, on the other hand, for rejecting the possibility of a positive use of intellectual intuition. By making use of a general insight from the schools of Chinese philosophy that positively recognise the intellectual intuition, one can, Mou believes, change the downsides of Kantian philosophy and organically connect Western and Asian philosophy. (shrink)

This collection of new essays aims to address some of the most perplexing issues arising from death and dying, as well as the moral status of persons and animals. Leading scholars, including Peter Singer and Gerald Dworkin, investigate diverse topics such as animal rights, vegetarianism, lethal injection, abortion and euthanasia.

Le monde occidental s'interroge aujourd'hui sur la passion de la mort qui pousse de jeunes terroristes au suicide et au crime. Le présent essai traite d'une autre fascination, non moins troublante : celle qui travaille sourdement les grands textes de notre modernité. Après Alexandre Kojève, l'écriture de Georges Bataille, de Maurice Blanchot, de Jacques Derrida ou de Jacques Lacan, laisse transparaître un lyrisme de la destruction, un engouement pour l'abîme, qu'il faut savoir reconnaître sous la rigueur de la pensée. D'où (...) vient cette esthétique du malheur? Quels enjeux recouvre-t-elle? Au fil d'une minutieuse lecture, l'auteur s'attache à dénuder un complexe de valeurs et d'affects qui remontent aux origines symboliques de notre civilisation. On entrevoit peu à peu que cette revendication de la mort pourrait bien n'être que le signe inversé de la grande protestation humaine, de sa soif d'infini et de son désir d'être. Betty Rojtman, née à Paris, a dirigé le département de littérature française à l'université hébraïque de Jérusalem. Elle situe sa recherche au carrefour de la pensée contemporaine et de l'exégèse juive traditionnelle. Parmi ses publications : Feu noir sur feu blanc. Essai sur l'herméneutique juive (1986); Une grave distraction (préface de Paul Ricoeur, 1991) ; Une rencontre improbable (2002) et Moïse, prophète des nostalgies (2007). (shrink)

Libraries provide access to large amounts of library metadata. Unfortunately, many libraries only offer textual interfaces for searching and browsing their holdings. Visualizations provide simpler, faster, and more efficient ways to navigate, search and study large quantities of metadata. This paper presents GlamMap, a visualization tool that displays library metadata on an interactive, computer-generated geographic map. We provide detailed discussion of how GlamMap benefits the work of librarians and researchers. We show how geographic representations help librarians to perform tasks such (...) as collection assessment and how geographic information helps researchers to identify important scientific resources. (shrink)

Facing a recent surge in anti-natalist arguments saying that human procreation is immoral, some defend human procreation by saying that procreative parenting adds meaning to parents’ life. This article examines one such defence, and argues that it does not suffice to rescue human procreation from the challenges to procreation.

At present, the task of enforcing UK competition law lies almost exclusively with a public regulator. One of the aims of the Competition Bill which is currently before Parliament is to enable private litigants to seek redress through the courts for harm caused by unlawful anti-competitive conduct. This article considers the appropriate role of private actions in the enforcement of competition law. It is argued that private actions are of both instrumental and intrinsic value: not only can private actions act (...) as a deterrent against harmful behaviour, but they also enable those harmed by unlawful anti-competitive conduct to seek compensation for injury from the perpetrator. But private enforcement suffers from several shortcomings which are not shared by public enforcement. Accordingly, it is argued that although there is a strong case for ‘privatizing competition regulation’, private enforcement should be used to supplement, rather than supplant, public enforcement. This article also explores the problems within a regulatory scheme which combines both private and public enforcement, drawing on the experience of other jurisdictions to shed light on how such ‘aggregation problems’ might best be resolved. Finally, UK competition regulation is examined from an enforcement perspective. It is argued that the UK Competition Bill has the potential to provide a significantly more effective and efficient scheme of regulation. Whether or not this potential is realized will depend on a number of factors, particularly the ability of UK courts to interpret the legislative prohibitions in a coherent, predictable, and transparent manner which is consistent with the economic theory upon which competition regulation is based. (shrink)

A thought-provoking resource detailing why causal theory is useful in geographical enquiry and how it can be developed through mechanism-based thinking. Includes a multitude of approaches and concepts in human geography today, covering important caveats, key considerations, and a synthetic approach Details contemporary geographical thought, covering theory in Marxism, poststructuralism and post-phenomenology/posthumanism, and feminism and postcolonialism Explores relationality and relational thought in contemporary human geography, plus moving towards a relational theory for the 2020s and beyond Discusses mechanism and process in (...) causal explanation, covering causal theory and actors, neoliberalization, and the process-mechanism distinction of neoliberalism Essential reading for academics, geographers, and scholars seeking unique perspective on an important facet of the field. (shrink)

Ethical behavior among businesses has gained significant prominence in recent years. Survey evidence shows that Asian consumers demand for greater social responsibility among businesses. Thus, a deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to such a demand is useful. This study examines the influence of religiosity and values on corporate social responsibility (CSR) support among consumers in Hong Kong and Singapore. Primary data collected among consumers in these cities point to a significant direct relationship between religiosity and CSR support. In (...) Hong Kong, this attitude is due both to altruistic as well as for egotistical (or face saving) reasons. In Singapore, this is mainly due to the latter. The results imply that different motivations should guide CSR strategies in these two cities. (shrink)

This study asked managers with different educational backgrounds and experience from a variety of industries of a variety of sizes representing both genders and various predominant managerial functions at different levels to “describe the skills they think are necessary to perform their jobs effectively”. In particular, they were asked to rank 178 behavioral skills presented under 22 different categories that described different aspects of management. Data were then examined first to determine the importance of ethics or integrity overall in the (...) group of managerial activities and then to explore how specific ethical activities of managers differ across various managerial and organizational characteristics. Findings indicate that ethics is still considered one of the least important skills necessary in managers’ daily work. However, once specific ethical activities are analyzed separately, significant differences are found across characteristics of managers, as well as those of the organizations at which they work. (shrink)

Résumé Et toi, quel est ton genre? Les Betty, intellectuelles précaires, partageant un désir militant, critiques tant vis-à-vis des groupes féministes historiques, que des pratiques politiques au sein du mouvement des mouvements, nous racontent leur création d’un espace, le "sexishock" au cœur même d’un centre social à Bologne.

In On a Discovery, Kant depicts monads as simple beings that are thought in the idea as the ground of appearances. He argues that his account of monads is partially in line with both Leibniz's monadology and his own critical philosophy. However, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant appears to depart from the monadologies of his predecessors. In this article, I make sense of Kant's late subscription to a version of Leibniz's monadology by arguing that Kant considers monads to (...) be the objects represented through cosmological and psychological ideas posited by reason in its search for the unconditioned conditions of appearances. In particular, I point to what I take to be two instances of what Kant calls “objects in the idea” in the Critique of Pure Reason, namely (a) the substratum of matter qua ground of external appearances, and (b) the soul qua ground of internal appearances. Drawing on Kant's reply to Eberhard and the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique, I highlight the merely regulative—and yet fundamental—role that monads conceived as objects of reason play in Kant's critical philosophy. (shrink)

本文旨在初步探索「限肉令」作為應對傳染病大流行和由工廠化畜牧業帶來的其他威脅的預防措施的正當性。「限肉令」並非指全面禁肉，而是以法律限制市民的人均肉品消耗量在滿足基本營養需求的範圍內。本文採用的進路是 緩解一些可能阻礙對此提案進行更宏觀、理性的思考的潛在心理拘繫。此進路參考了傅柯「日常經驗」(everyday experience) 的分析，和佛家倫理學回應全球環境倫理問題的策略。我們先以香港社會為主要案例研究，檢視形成「肉是必需的」一想法和嗜肉情結的社會模式。接著我們引入葷食心理學研究，討論嗜肉情結如何成為正面考慮「限肉令」的障 礙。我們也嘗試回應一些反對此提案的理由，包括來自自由主義 (Liberalism)的批評。 -/- This article explores the preliminary justifiability of meat restriction order as a preventive measure to the risks of pandemic and other forms of harm posed by factory farming. A meat restriction order seeks to limit citizens’ meat consumption at the level of meeting individuals’ basic nutrient needs. This article aims to loosen some potential psychological hooks that prevent a more expansive, rational deliberation of the proposal. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s analysis of “everyday experience” and the (...) Buddhist responses to global environmental issues, we investigate the social patterns that account for the formation of people’s meat commitment, using Hong Kong society as a major case study. With reference to scientific studies of meat-eaters’ psychology, we discuss how the meat commitment becomes a barrier for society to positively consider the justifiability of the proposal. We will also address a number of objections to our proposal, including those from liberalism. (shrink)