What is the role of conscious experience in the epistemology of perceptual knowledge: how should we characterise what is going on in seeing that o is F in order to illuminate the contribution of seeing o to their status as cases of knowing that o is F? My proposal is that seeing o involves conscious acquaintance with o itself, the concrete worldly source of the truth that o is F, in a way that may make it evident to the subject (...) that o is an instance of ‘x is F’ as she understands this, and hence evident that o is F. Seeing that o is F is thus a way of its being evident that o is F and is therefore a way of knowing that o is F. (shrink)

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the (...) literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

This volume addresses a wide variety of moral concerns regarding slavery as an institutionalized social practice. By considering the slave's critical appropriation of the natural rights doctrine, the ambiguous implications of various notions of consent and liberty are examined. The authors assume that, although slavery is undoubtedly an evil social practice, its moral assessment stands in need of a more nuanced treatment. They address the question of what is wrong with slavery by critically examining, and in some cases endorsing, certain (...) principles derived from communitarianism, paternalism, utilitarianism, and jurisprudence. (shrink)

Legal decision-support systems have the potential to improve access to justice, administrative efficiency, and judicial consistency, but broad adoption of such systems is contingent on development of technologies with low knowledge-engineering, validation, and maintenance costs. This paper describes two approaches to an important form of legal decision support—explainable outcome prediction—that obviate both annotation of an entire decision corpus and manual processing of new cases. The first approach, which uses an attention network for prediction and attention weights to highlight salient case (...) text, was shown to be capable of predicting decisions, but attention-weight-based text highlighting did not demonstrably improve human decision speed or accuracy in an evaluation with 61 human subjects. The second approach, termed semi-supervised case annotation for legal explanations, exploits structural and semantic regularities in case corpora to identify textual patterns that have both predictable relationships to case decisions and explanatory value. (shrink)

The traditional ‘no property’ approach of the law to human biomaterials has long been punctured by exceptions. Developments in the jurisprudence of property in human tissue in English law and beyond demonstrate that a variety of tissues are capable of being subject to proprietary considerations. Further, among commentators, there are few who would deny, given biotechnological advances, that such materials can be considered thus. Yet, where commentators do admit human biomaterials into the realm of property, it is often done with (...) an emphasis on some sort of separation from the person who is the source of those materials. One line of argument suggests that there is a difference between persons and things, which constitutes a morally justifiable distinction when it comes to property. This article examines whether the idea of separability can do the work of demarcating those objects that ought to be considered property from those that ought not to be. It argues that, despite the entailment of a separability criterion inherent in both the statutory and common law positions, and the support given to this by some commentators, it is philosophically problematic as the basis for delineating property in human tissue and other biomaterials. (shrink)

Trust is both ethically important and essential for business but difficult to measure. This paper contributes toward clarifying the nature of trust in a way that is both conceptually helpful for ethical inquiries concerning business and pertinent to the measurement of trust as an element in organizations. Several papers hypothesize that increasing the role of trust in a corporation reduces the need for external monitoring and contracts. Assessing this important hypothesis requires a way to gauge whether a firm has a (...) trusting corporate culture. We develop an objective measure of trust in a firm’s corporate culture by counting the number of times 21 trust-related words appear in an important kind of document: the Management Discussion and Analysis section of the annual report. We report two significant findings: that, contrary to what one might think, firms with a trusting culture frequently use audit and control-type words and that trust is positively linked with subsequent share price volatility. We propose explanations of these findings with the hope of facilitating the objective measurement of trust and enhancement of a trusting atmosphere in corporate culture. (shrink)

Researchers of the Northeast Ethics Education Partnership at Brown University sought to improve an understanding of the ethical challenges of field researchers with place-based communities in environmental studies/sciences and environmental health by disseminating a questionnaire which requested information about their ethical approaches to these researched communities. NEEP faculty sought to gain actual field guidance to improve research ethics and cultural competence training for graduate students and faculty in environmental sciences/studies. Some aspects of the ethical challenges in field studies are not (...) well-covered in the literature. More training and information resources are needed on the bioethical challenges in environmental field research relating to maximizing benefits/reducing risks to local inhabitants and ecosystems from research; appropriate and effective group consent and individual consent processes for many diverse communities in the United States and abroad; and justice considerations of ensuring fair benefits and protections against exploitation through community-based approaches, and cultural appropriateness and competence in researcher relationships. (shrink)

Animals and War: Confronting the Military-Animal Industrial Complex is the first book to examine how nonhuman animals are used in war and the military. Animals and War contributes significantly to the fields of social justice, animal rights, and anti-war/peace activist communities. This book also will be read by peace, conflict, social justice, and critical animal studies scholars, students, and practitioners.

fusion theory challenges efforts to see theory as inhibiting by presenting an approach that is innovative, eclectic, and subtle in order to draw out competing and constellating ideas and opinions. This collected volume of essays examines fusion theory and demonstrates how the theory can be applied to the reading of various works of Indian English novelists.

Using the emerging technology of large-scale textual analysis, this study examines the use of the term ‘customer satisfaction’ and its variants in the annual reports issued by publicly traded U.S. corporations and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as Form 10-K. We document the frequency of the term’s occurrence in 10-Ks over the 1995–2013 period and the differences in usage across industries. We then relate the term’s usage in 10-Ks to subsequent scores from the American Customer Satisfaction Index to (...) determine whether management’s discussion of customer satisfaction in financial disclosures is credible. The commitment of management to shareholders versus, more broadly, stakeholders is a central question in business ethics, and the integrity of management communication is a fundamental construct in the American Marketing Association’s Statement of Ethics. We document a complex relation between management’s discussion of customer satisfaction and subsequently reported satisfaction. We find that the general use of customer satisfaction in 10-K documents is negatively correlated with subsequent ACSI scores. However, for retail firms, when the phrase is located near words indicating measurement or monitoring of the phenomenon, the empirical relation is reversed and becomes positive. (shrink)

When scientists act unethically, their actions can cause harm to participants, undermine knowledge creation, and discredit the scientific community. Responsible Conduct of Research training i...

The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to date has been more fact-oriented (...) and less theoretical than physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort. The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam; much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry) and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions “native” to biology and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations that is truly native to living systems. Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted Newtonian mechanics. -/- This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the basic terms or tools needed. The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its early stages, this will seem to be a “new science”. This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological, ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows. -/- Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary problems and multiple domains spanning both “hard” and “soft” sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability of our approach to address “wicked problems” which span across physics, chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as “grand challenges” to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the INBIOSA program. -/- The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently. Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and measured as it progresses. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHow should we conceive of a right to reproduce? And, morally speaking, what might be said to justify such a right? These are just two questions of interest that are raised by the technologies of assisted reproduction. This paper analyses the possible legitimate grounds for a right to reproduce within the two main theories of rights; interest theory and choice theory.

A response is given to the claim by Claxton and Culyer, who stated that the policies of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) do not evaluate patients rather than treatments. The argument is made that the use of values such as quality of life and life-years is ethically dubious when used to choose which patients ought to receive treatments in the National Health Service (NHS).

Governments and policy-makers have of late displayed renewed attention to behavioural research in an attempt to achieve a range of policy goals, including health promotion. In particular, approaches which could be labelled as ‘nudges’ have gained traction with policy-makers. A range of objections to nudging have been raised in the literature. These include claims that nudges undermine autonomy and liberty, may lead to a decrease in responsibility in decision-making, lack transparency, involve deception, and involve manipulation, potentially occasioning coercion. In this (...) article I focus on claims of coercion, examining nudges within two of the main approaches to coercion—the pressure approach and the more recent enforcement approach. I argue that coercion entails an element of control over the behaviour of agents which is not plausibly displayed by the kinds of serious examples of nudges posited in the literature. (shrink)

Bill Brewer presents an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. He argues that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs at all about particular objects in the world. This fresh approach to epistemology turns away from the search for necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and works instead from a theory of understanding in a particular area.

The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to date has been more fact-oriented (...) and less theoretical than physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort. The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam; much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry) and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions “native” to biology and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations that is truly native to living systems. Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted Newtonian mechanics. -/- This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the basic terms or tools needed. The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its early stages, this will seem to be a “new science”. This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological, ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows. -/- Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary problems and multiple domains spanning both “hard” and “soft” sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability of our approach to address “wicked problems” which span across physics, chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as “grand challenges” to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the INBIOSA program. -/- The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently. Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and measured as it progresses. (shrink)

The primary aim of this article is to point up an essential attitude, an anxiety even, that has inflected – and perhaps inhibited - our engagement with film. Film theory has been marked by a ‘refusal to see, a looking away’ (Mulvey & Wollen 1976, 36), and my suggestion is that this has achieved its fullest expression in those strands of film theory heavily influenced by psychoanalysis. These, in turn, have remained within a gendered conceptual framework whereby the discursive or (...) the narrative is associated with the masculine, and the image or spectacle is aligned with the feminine. This is not to reject these applications out of hand but rather to revisit this area with its blind spots in mind and to consider aspects that are perhaps at once obvious but often overlooked. (shrink)

This paper examines the role that population vulnerabilities play in insurance coverage for a representative sample of Latinos and Asians in the United States. Using data from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS), these analyses compare coverage differences among and within ethnic subgroups, across states and regions, among types of occupations, and among those with or without English language proficiency. Extensive differences exist in coverage between Latinos and Asians, with Latinos more likely to be uninsured. Potential explanations include (...) the type of occupations available to Latinos and Asians, reforms in immigration laws, length of time in the United States, and regional differences in safety-net coverage. Policy implications are discussed. (shrink)

"Golf day 2005 @ federal golf club, red hill." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (196), pp. 7.

I argue that with the advent of poststructuralism, traditional theories of representation, truth, and resistance have been seriously brought into question. References to the “natural” and the “wild” cannot escape the poststructural attack against foundational concepts and the constituting character of human-centered language. I explore the ways in which environmental movements and literary expression have tended to posit pre-ideological essences, thereby replicating patterns of power and authority. I also point to how environmentalism might be reshaped in light of poststructuralism to (...) challenge power without reference to authority. (shrink)

A taped conversational interview with Daniel Dennett and Bill Uzgalis covers a wide range of topics arising from Dennett’s thoughts about computing and human beings. The background of Dennett’s work is explored as are his views about mind-brain identity theory, artificial intelligence, functionalism, human exceptionalism, animal culture, language, pain, freedom and determinism, and quality of life.

Research ethics principles and regulations typically have been applied to the protection of individual human subjects. Yet, new paradigms of research that include the place-based community and cultural groups as partners or participants of environmental research interventions, in particular, require attention to place-based identities and geographical contexts. This paper argues the importance of respecting “place” within human subjects protections applied to communities and cultural groups as part of a critical need for research ethics and cultural competence training for graduate research (...) students. These protections and benefits are extensions of the Belmont Principles and have been included in recent recommendations from research regulatory committees. (shrink)

Yet another medical ethics book has been published, but the difference this time is that I actually like it Sokol and Bergson’s handbook Medical ethics and law—surviving on the wards and passing exams is for medical students and junior doctors preparing for life in medicine and for the inevitable exams. The format of the book closely follows that of the core curriculum for medical ethics and law set out by the BMA in 2004 in Medical ethics today. The book ….

In the United Kingdom, the debate about how best to meet the shortfall of organs for transplantation has persisted on and off for many years. It is often presumed that the answer is simply to alter the law to a system of presumed consent. Acting perhaps on that presumption in his annual report launched in July, the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, advocated a system of organ donation based on presumed consent, the so-called “opt-out” system.1 He is calling for (...) a change in the law in England and Wales whereby consent to organ donation is presumed, making a person’s organs automatically available for transplantation after death, unless they registered objections to this while alive. Subsequently, the British Medical Association lent its support to the introduction of such a system.2 The BMA contends that “the practice of presumed consent legislation has had a significant effect on the number of cadaveric donors per million population.”2It is often taken for granted that there must be a correlation between the enactment of legislation on presumed consent and an increase in organ donation and procurement. However, the correlation is not as straightforward as it might seem. It may be that other practical measures to encourage organ donation could be implemented without changing the Human Tissue Act 2004, an Act which has been in force for barely a year.An analysis by Abadie and Gay demonstrated that “presumed consent legislation has a positive and sizeable effect on organ donation rates”,3 but they themselves admitted that the correlation between rates of donation and presumed consent legislation is “not completely unequivocal”.3 It is true that among the most successful cases in procurement rates are countries with presumed consent legislation . However, since some of the …. (shrink)

Following the publication of the Weatherall report on the use of non-human primates in research, this paper reflects on how to provide appropriate and ethical models for research beneficial to humankind. Two of the main justifications for the use of non-human primates in biomedical research are analysed. These are the “least-harm/greatest-good” argument and the “capacity” argument. This paper argues that these are equally applicable when considering whether humans are appropriate subjects of biomedical research.

Firms’ real estate choices significantly affect their sustainability, due to real estate’s impact on the natural environment. This paper investigates the ecological responsiveness of firms in specific industries by analyzing the decisions these firms make in occupying office space. We analyze the decisions of more than 11,000 tenants to choose office space in green buildings or in, otherwise comparable, conventional buildings nearby. Controlling for building quality and location, we find that corporations in the oil and banking industries, as well as (...) non-profit organizations, are among the most prominent green tenants. Furthermore, measures of an industry’s human capital intensity are positively related to the propensity to lease green office space. These empirical findings confirm the theoretical framework on economic advantage and institutional pressure as important determinants for the ecological responsiveness of firms. (shrink)

Let [Formula: see text] be an integer. We show that the set of real numbers that are Poisson generic in base [Formula: see text] is [Formula: see text]-complete in the Borel hierarchy of subsets of the real line. Furthermore, the set of real numbers that are Borel normal in base [Formula: see text] and not Poisson generic in base [Formula: see text] is complete for the class given by the differences between [Formula: see text] sets. We also show that the (...) effective versions of these results hold in the effective Borel hierarchy. (shrink)

In this paper I will describe four theories of time that can be found in Aristotle. I will compare these four theories with modern notions of time, and propose that the ancient and modern views are substantively the same. Of course, all four theories cannot be true together. I will present four ways to resolve the inconsistencies, and conclude that the contradictions can be resolved.

Intuitively we feel that we ought (to attempt) to save the lives, or ameliorate the suffering, of identifiable individuals where we can. But this comes at a price. It means that there may not be any resources to save the lives of others in similar situations in the future. Or worse, there may not be enough resources left to prevent others from ending up in similar situations in the future. This chapter asks whether this is justifiable or whether we would (...) be better served focusing on public health in the form of preventative medicine. It looks briefly at the supposed difference between benefiting individuals and benefiting populations by considering the difference between interventions aimed at ‘rescue’ and those which are preventative. It then considers the rule of rescue in the health care setting, and looks at some of the reasons stemming from this that we might have for allocating resources to rescue interventions. If these reasons do not provide adequate justification for preferring these types of interventions, then the implication is that our current mode of resource allocation may need to be revised in favour of a more public health-oriented model. (shrink)

Bazin's distinction between different kinds of realism discriminates between an authentic mode of apprehension and mere sight, or between revelation and spectacle, as it were, where spectacle, significantly, is connected with the arousal of physical sensation. My argument is that this resonates in unexpected ways with a ‘modernist’ conceptual paradigm, specifically in relation to the persistent prioritization of the temporal over the spatial as the superior aesthetic register, itself based upon a residual resistance to the visual realm. To pursue this, (...) I shall return to some of Bazin's most influential texts and concepts. In addition, a consideration of his more marginal discussions of cinema, sex and censorship will offer an oblique entry point into some of these broader issues at play in his work. (shrink)

Fast-moving and ever-changing, stem cell science and research presents ongoing ethical and legal challenges in many countries. Each development and innovation throws up new challenges. This is the case even where new developments initially seem to solve old dilemmas. Sometimes it becomes evident that new science does not in fact solve old problems and, for that reason, the ethical issues remain. In recognition of this, this book presents innovative and creative analyses of a range of ethical and legal challenges raised (...) by stem cell research and its potential and actual application. The editors of this collection have brought together experts from ethics and law to bring fresh perspectives on the use of and research on stem cells. The chapters in this collection range across a number of different issues in the debate on stem cells, from the ethical dilemmas of conducting stem cell research to those of the clinical application of stem cell technology. Each chapter gives an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the ethical or legal issues at stake. The early chapters give engaging new expositions on the permissibility of using embryos in stem cell research, in particular challenging our views about how we view and OCyconstructOCO the embryo in debates regarding stem cells. Later chapters move on to actual and potential clinical uses of stem cells and present novel arguments about these. (shrink)