Purpose Computing ethics represents a long established, yet rapidly evolving, discipline that grows in complexity and scope on a near-daily basis. Therefore, to help understand some of that scope it is essential to incorporate a range of perspectives, from a range of stakeholders, on current and emerging ethical challenges associated with computer technology. This study aims to achieve this by using, a three-pronged, stakeholder analysis of Computer Science academics, ICT industry professionals, and citizen groups was undertaken to explore what they (...) consider to be crucial computing ethics concerns. The overlap between these stakeholder groups are explored, as well as whether their concerns are reflected in the existing literature. Design/methodology/approach Data collection was performed using focus groups, and the data was analysed using a thematic analysis. The data was also analysed to determine if there were overlaps between the literature and the stakeholders’ concerns and attitudes towards computing ethics. Findings The results of the focus group analysis show a mixture of overlapping concerns between the different groups, as well as some concerns that are unique to each of the specific groups. All groups stressed the importance of data as a key topic in computing ethics. This includes concerns around the accuracy, completeness and representativeness of data sets used to develop computing applications. Academics were concerned with the best ways to teach computing ethics to university students. Industry professionals believed that a lack of diversity in software teams resulted in important questions not being asked during design and development. Citizens discussed at length the negative and unexpected impacts of social media applications. These are all topics that have gained broad coverage in the literature. Social implications In recent years, the impact of ICT on society and the environment at large has grown tremendously. From this fast-paced growth, a myriad of ethical concerns have arisen. The analysis aims to shed light on what a diverse group of stakeholders consider the most important social impacts of technology and whether these concerns are reflected in the literature on computing ethics. The outcomes of this analysis will form the basis for new teaching content that will be developed in future to help illuminate and address these concerns. Originality/value The multi-stakeholder analysis provides individual and differing perspectives on the issues related to the rapidly evolving discipline of computing ethics. (shrink)

Richard Asher was an English physician and writer. Born in Brighton, the son of a clergyman, he was educated at Lancing College and studied medicine at the London Hospital, qualifying in 1934. After various junior posts at the London and West Middlesex Hospitals, he was appointed physician at the Central Middlesex Hospital in 1943. The Central Middlesex was a former municipal hospital, and Asher was among a group of young consultants who transformed this medical backwater into a center with a (...) high reputation for its clinical work, research, and teaching. Asher was a general physician.. (shrink)

This article sets out a new conception of ‘property as an asset of resilience’. Building on Fineman’s emphasis on ‘webs’ of resilience, and applying insights from Actor-Network Theory and Resilient Property Theory, we examine how the rhetorical claims asserted by owners and non-owners, individually and collectively, and the ways that law recognizes and endorses those claims, affect the production of property-as-resilience. Applying Fineman’s framework, we argue that the ‘embodiment’ and ‘embeddedness’ of human vulnerability is revealed by the necessary and inevitable (...) relationship we have with land, housing and place. Everyone—including homeless people—must ‘be’ somewhere (embodiment); however, it is our ability to access ‘assets of resilience’ through our social embeddedness in institutional structures and relationships that mitigates (or not) our experience and life opportunities. In this article we analyze the nature of real property as an asset of resilience, the consequences of exclusionary concepts of ownership for how resilience is allocated, and the implications for how we think and talk about ‘exclusion’ and ‘inclusion’ in property theories and property law. We consider the roles that states perform in the allocation of property as an asset of resilience: both directly, through the protection and enforcement of private property rights and official narratives about the nature of private property; and indirectly, as owners leverage the hinterland of privilege extended to ‘ownership’ and owners to deepen their own networks of resilience. (shrink)

The second-generation critical theory of Apel and Habermas was substantially built on the semiotic pragmatism of Charles Peirce. Along with critical theory generally, this variation requires a theory of society in which to embed its wide-ranging normative commitments. The article proposes re-orienting Habermas’s decades-old theory of communicative action, which contained essential pointers to a critical theory of society that has never been adequately taken up in either the critical social sciences or critical theory proper. Revising Habermas, Peirce is drawn upon (...) to crystallize the preferred critical semiotic realist theory of society. Asemiotic social ontology of the necessary range and scope is accordingly put forward that centres on inferential communal reasoning within the wider contexts of social perception and social actuality. The resulting approach, overcoming established dichotomies, is realist and processual as well as substantive, critical as well as hermeneutic and phenomenological, transcendent as well as immanent, realist as well as idealist, a priori as well as a posteriori, cognitive as well as normative, macro as well as micro, individual as well as collective and creative as well as habitual. (shrink)

The state of theorizing bearing on an explicit, contemporary, critical theory of society is first of all outlined. While contemporary conditions of scholarship are not promising in this respect, the potential of a distinctive critical theory of society nonetheless remains tantalizing. The mostly agreed, even if mostly only implicitly, core architectonic of critical theory is outlined as a foundation, though disagreements persist over the significance of the linguistic turn and context-transcendent versus context-immanent modes of theorizing. On the basis of the (...) outline of the general architectonic, suggestions are made, pointing forward to the articles in the special issue, as to how the contemporary democratic focus of the theory offers inspiration for a more explicit, modern articulation. Such a theory would follow the lead of the first generation, but it would additionally take on board the multiple theoretical as well as social changes that have since occurred. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that deductive reasoning skills are related to mathematical abilities. Nevertheless, so far the links between mathematical abilities and these two forms of deductive inference have not been investigated in a single study. It is also unclear whether these inference forms are related to both basic maths skills and mathematical reasoning, and whether these relationships still hold if the effects of fluid intelligence are controlled. We conducted a study with 87 adult participants. The results showed that transitive (...) reasoning skills were related to performance on a number line task, and conditional inferences were related to arithmetic skills. Additionally, both types of deductive inference were related to mathematical reasoning skills, although transitive and conditional reasoning ability were unrelated. Our results also highlighted the important role that ordering abilities play in mathematical reasoning, extending findings regarding the role of ordering abilities in basic maths skills. These results have implications for the theories of mathematical and deductive reasoning, and they could inspire the development of novel educational interventions. (shrink)

The challenge of realizing the democratic power of publics through public sphere remains acute but not hopeless. While claiming that Habermas communicative social theory offers a way forward in spite of a productive but constraining turn towards a modified social liberal frame, nonetheless three limitations of the theory are identified. The first bears on the insufficiency of the sociological evolutionist description of society relevant to the public sphere drawn from classical sociological accounts of differentiation and integration. The second identifies learning (...) theoretical limitations of the normative interactionist, proceduralist account of democracy and democratization potentials. And the third observes on the disconnection between the theory of communicative reasoning from, on the one hand, the critique of pathologies of reasoning, and, on the other, from its implications for lifeworld rationalization. These identified limitations are intended to provide new impetus to radically rethink the public sphere as intrinsic to solving contemporary problems of democracy that Habermas’s more recent account of deliberative theory, with the public sphere merely supplementary, cannot fully do. Yet, with Habermas, this should be on the basis of advancing the communication theory of democracy. (shrink)

The article begins with a selective outline of social theories of crisis. Such crisis diagnosis is important for general, societal argumentation. The current article positions normative-critical theories and Luhmann’s own version of system theory on opposite sides of the societal argument about the future of Europe and, generally, postnational society. The former supports moral and ethical visions of egalitarian pluralism, and the latter emphasizes the need to conform to the functional, communication logics of self-organizing social systems. It is then proposed (...) that if rival social theoretical traditions, the above named and others, are to engage in meaningful normative argument with one another, they must develop a minimal, shared understanding of what should constitute the theory of society. In pursuit of this goal, the article advances a shared, minimal, theoretical framework that addresses both the full spectrum of the normative culture of modernity and its critique, no matter from which social standpoint or theoretical tradition the latter is advanced. In conclusion, asserting its own normative standpoint, it is argued that both a European cultural model and a constitutional order based on cosmopolitan solidarity are needed. Such a model should assert moral principles of justice, equality, responsibility, and legitimacy that would adequately respect and include the full variety of milieus and associational forms in contemporary European society, not just those of the present elite. Such a model should not simply be abstractly asserted, though that is an essential first step, but its conditions of possibility should be supported by appropriate social research that would investigate capacities for transnational democratic innovation and the formation of substantive moral principles among European publics. (shrink)

The book contains an extraordinary condensation of important themes regarding populism. It brings social and political science together with normative philosophy, something badly needed today in critical theory to advance its theoretical-empirical approach. But it is precisely the kind of interpretation of critical theory presented in the book that is the focus of these brief comments. In particular, I mainly ask about the relation to second-generation critical theory. In this context, the comments particularly address kinds and levels of cultural structure (...) that make possible the form of normative reconstruction offered by critical theory, and examines how these appear – or do not appear – in the book, together with outlining the implications for the approach. Specifically, I will address three main dimensions arising in the book. These are (a) Immanent Critique; (b) The counterfactual status of ideals; (c) The methodology of ideal type analysis. The general conclusion is show in what ways the line of inquiry present in the book can be further elaborated within critical theory. (shrink)

Reference to responsibility is prominent in discussions of climate change of every kind. Certain dimensions of the issue call it forth. These include, above all, the planetary scale of the problem and the corresponding sense of endangerment, along with lack of clarity on what exactly needs to be done and who should do it. The question of planetary responsibility has been around for some time. The limits to growth debate of more than 40 years ago already indicated concern about the (...) ecological limits of industrial civilization (Meadows et al., 1972; Meadows et al., 2004). In this light, the article reviews and takes inspiration from key philosophical conceptualizations of global ecological responsibility before it goes on to add a necessary sociological approach that reveals the democratic, communicative mechanisms that might make it realizable. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

John J. Cleary was an internationally recognised authority in ancient Greek philosophy. This volume of penetrating studies of Plato, Aristotle, and Proclus, philosophy of mathematics, and ancient theories of education, display Cleary’s range of expertise and originality of approach.

PurposeMedical humanities is a field which implies collaborative work across disciplines although the degree to which this actually occurs is unknown. Our purpose was to determine the degree of joint work in medical humanities through analysis of authorship and acknowledgements in the two main medical humanities journals.MethodsObservational survey of authorship. We studied authorship data in all papers published in the two major general medical humanities journals between 2009 and 2018.ResultsTwo-thirds of papers had single authors, of whom a majority declared a (...) single disciplinary affiliation. The titles of 60.8% of papers explicitly suggested collaborative content of which 19.9% had multiple authors from more than one discipline ; of the remainder, almost half had a single, single-disciplinary author. One-third of papers referenced one or more people in the acknowledgements. Among papers whose titles suggested humanities or medical content only, authorship lists of 10.2% and 17.9% respectively demonstrated collaborative scholarship.ConclusionsDespite considerable involvement from both humanities and medical practitioners, there is still substantial scope for enhanced emphasis on collaborative seminars and exchanges in the medical humanities and editorial policies to promote transparency of the nature of collaborative work among disciplines. Journal editors and editorial boards should reflect on the opportunity to promote enhanced visibility of joint work in scholarship in the medical humanities through reflection and review of current editorial policies. (shrink)

Winner of the 2010 Concordia Philosophy Students' Association Undergraduate Essay Contest.

It is widely thought that functionalism and the qualia theory are better positioned to accommodate the ‘affective’ aspect of pain phenomenology than representationalism. In this paper, we attempt to overturn this opinion by raising problems for both functionalism and the qualia theory on this score. With regard to functionalism, we argue that it gets the order of explanation wrong: pain experience gives rise to the effects it does because it hurts, and not the other way around. With regard to the (...) qualia theory, we argue that it fails to capture the sense in which pain 's affective phenomenology rationalises various bodily-directed beliefs, desires, and behaviours. Representationalism, in contrast, escapes both of these problems: it gets the order of explanation right and it explains how pain 's affective phenomenology can rationalise bodily-directed beliefs, desires, and behaviours. For this reason, we argue that representationalism has a significant advantage in the debates about pain 's affective phenomenology. We end the paper by examining objections, including the question of what representationalists should say about so-called ‘disassociation cases’, such as pain asymbolia. (shrink)

This syllabus was submitted to the Rhodes College Office of Academic Affairs by the course instructor.

This syllabus was submitted to the Rhodes College Office of Academic Affairs by the course instructor.

This syllabus was submitted to the Rhodes College Office of Academic Affairs by the course instructor.

This syllabus was submitted to the Rhodes College Office of Academic Affairs by the course instructor.

This paper reports on an investigation of issues surrounding the use of ethical codes/codes of conduct in Irish based companies. Using a comprehensive questionnaire survey, the paper examines the incidence, content and enforcement of codes of conduct among a sample of the top 1000 companies based in Ireland. The main findings indicate that the overall usage of codes of conduct amongst indigenous Irish companies has increased significantly from 1995 to 2000. However, in line with prior research, these codes focus primarily (...) on issues surrounding company and employee protection as opposed to society protection. Almost half of all codes are written by company personnel or provided by head office. Revisions of codes are common but formal ongoing methods of instructing new staff about codes are not prevalent. Less than one-third of companies with codes have formal channels for reporting violations but a high percentage have formal disciplinary procedures in place for breaches of codes. (shrink)

In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Tommie Shelby evaluates arguments for and against the elimination of incarceration as a mode of punishment. In this article, we discuss and expand upon Shelby's arguments, using two very different systems—those of Norway and the United States—as examples to illustrate some general principles.

This investigation addresses a pressing anxiety of our time - that of homelessness. Tersely stated, the philosophical significance of homelessness in its more modern context can be understood to emerge with Nietzsche and his discourse on nihilism, which signals the loss of the highest values hitherto. Diverging from Nietzsche, Heidegger interprets homelessness as a symptom of the oblivion of being. The purpose of the present enquiry is to rigorously confront humanity's state of homelessness, and at the same time illumine the (...) extent to which Heidegger's thought engages with this pervasive phenomenon. In questioning the nature of homelessness, Heidegger's preoccupations with nihilism and modern technology prove crucial. Moreover, his attempts to overcome or prepare for the overcoming of this state of homelessness are also of great import to the current investigation. Adorno and Lèvinas offer scathing critiques of Heidegger's thought as it relates to the motifs of homelessness, homecoming (Heimkunft) and the German Heimat, for they associate it with provincialism, paganism, and a pernicious form of politics. In providing these critiques they bring to light the risks involved in undertaking a homecoming venture, and they also show how a great thinker can err greatly. While acknowledging the importance of these criticisms, the present study reveals how Heidegger's various discourses on homelessness and homecoming bear fruitful insights that can contribute not just to a Germanic sense of homecoming but to a sense of homecoming that humanity at large can relate to and be enriched by. (shrink)

Qualia have proved difficult to integrate into a broadly physicalistic worldview. In this paper, I argue that despite popular wisdom in the philosophy of mind, qualia’s intrinsicality is not sufficient for their non-reducibility. Second, I diagnose why philosophers mistakenly focused on intrinsicality. I then proceed to argue that qualia are categorical and end with some reflections on how the conceptual territory looks when we keep our focus on categoricity.

A sizable literature exists concerning the structure of Socrates' argument at Euthyphro 9d–11b. Although there is some dispute, a substitutional reading has emerged as a leading interpretation. However, some rear‐guard maneuvers are in order to defend this reading against its competitors. In this paper, I articulate a substitutional reading and argue that it is invalid on two counts: one, Socrates oversteps the logic of his reductio ad absurdum, and two, he illicitly substitutes coreferring expressions in explanatory contexts. Next, I defend (...) the substitutional reading by (1) rebutting its leading contender, Sharvy's formal causation interpretation, and (2) showing how a similar substitutional argument is made in the Protagoras. (shrink)

This paper discusses the legitimacy of accountants’ recent involvement in social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting (SEAAR). Support for accountants’ legitimacy is proposed by highlighting some of the technical skills they offer to the SEAAR process as conceived in AA1000. It is argued that the relevance of these skills is strengthened within a conception of SEAAR which principally perceives it as a risk/stakeholder management process focused primarily on the concerns of corporate management as opposed to those of the wider (...) society. However, the paper moves on to maintain that if we wish to promote a conception of SEAAR primarily focused on accountability to stakeholders (denoted as ‘true accountability’) as opposed to risk/stakeholder management, then, particularly in the domain of external social audit, the legitimacy of accountants’ participation may be disputed. The paper therefore concludes by cautioning against facilitating the unquestioned entry of accountants into the realm of SEAAR. (shrink)

In this article we aim to see how far one can get in defending the identity thesis without challenging the inference from conceivability to possibility. Our defence consists of a dilemma for the modal argument. Either “pain” is rigid or it is not. If it is not rigid, then a key premise of the modal argument can be rejected. If it is rigid, the most plausible semantic account treats “pain” as a natural-kind term that refers to its causal or historical (...) origin, namely, C-fibre stimulation. It follows that any phenomenon that is not C-fibre stimulation is not pain, even if it is qualitatively similar to pain. This means there could be phenomena that feel like pain but are not pain since they are not C-fibre stimulation. These possible phenomena can be used to explain away the apparent conceivability of pain without C-fibre stimulation. On either horn of the dilemma, the identity theorist has ample resources to respond to Kripke's argument, even without wandering into the contentious territory of conceivability and possibility. (shrink)