Approximately two billion people lack access to medicines globally. People living with HIV, cancer patients, those suffering from tuberculosis or malaria, and other populations in desperate need of life-saving medicines are increasingly unable to access existing preventative, curative, and life-prolonging treatments. In many cases, treatment may be unavailable or inaccessible for even some of the most common and readily treatable health concerns, such as hypertension. In the developing world, many of the factors that contribute to making the world’s most vulnerable (...) and marginalized populations particularly susceptible to illness also operate to restrict their access to medicines. As a result of dramatic economic inequities and widespread poverty, it is not profitable for most originator pharmaceutical companies to develop new medicines for sale in developing markets or to lower the cost of existing drugs so that they are affordable for the majority of these populations. (shrink)

This paper examines how officials of the Qin (221–207 BCE) and Former Han (202 BCE–9 CE) empires gathered information on their far-flung domains. These empires were able to maintain control over large areas of the East Asian subcontinent because they had an effective system for obtaining information on the things that mattered most to them: people, land, resources, and transport. We have various sources on these information collection systems from both excavated and received texts. These can be considered to include (...) not only maps, surveys, and population records, but also communication infrastructures such as roads, canals, and postal systems. The information-gathering systems of this period are important both because they worked relatively well and because they were recorded in the histories and became a model for later administrators. (shrink)

The Ozark Highlands’ karst topography of caves and hollows has provided refuge and escape for myriad peoples seeking to evade mainstream society throughout history, ranging from displaced Native Americans to counter-cultural back-to-the-landers. This ethnographic and ethnohistorical research moves beyond the popular misconception that the back-to-the-land movement merely represented an offshoot of the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and situates it within a deeper historical context. In this paper, I present the Arcadian evocations in various Ozark-related media and how (...) they relate to homesteading in the region, and demonstrate the shared agrarian values among diverse waves of agrarian Ozark homesteaders, recent and historical. (shrink)

Imagine that one must either lose all of one’s certainty about some very important topic – about the meaning of life, for example – or a small amount of certainty about each of one’s more “mundane” beliefs – beliefs about the color of one’s socks, where one’s keys are, whether it will rain, etc. One ought to take the latter loss, no matter how many mundane beliefs are at stake. Conversely, if one had to give up a tiny bit of (...) certainty about the important topic, or all of one’s certainty about most mundane topics, one ought to take the former loss. These two judgments generate what I call the “epistemic headaches-for-lives challenge,” so called because it resembles a challenge in ethics about the relative values of headaches and lives. In this paper, I argue for two things. First, our epistemic theories should accord with these types of judgments, and so must deal with the headaches-for-lives challenge. Second, this is a serious challenge for formal epistemology. (shrink)

Confidence can dissociate from perceptual accuracy, suggesting distinct computational and neural processes underlie these psychological functions. Recent investigations have therefore sought to experimentally isolate metacognitive processes by creating conditions where perceptual sensitivity is matched but confidence differs (“matched-performance / different-confidence”; MPDC). Despite these endeavors’ success, much remains unknown about MPDC effects and how to best harness them in experimental settings. Here we developed a principled approach to comprehensively characterizing MPDC effects through analyzing metaperceptual (i.e., type 2 psychometric) functions relating objective (...) performance to subjective confidence across widely varying performance levels and experimental manipulations. We found that MPDC effect magnitude depends on stimulus properties, observers’ sensitivity level, and critically on trial type order (blocked or interleaved across stimulus property variations). Our findings provide the first comprehensive exploration of MPDC effects, offer a prescriptive guide to metaperceptual analysis, and suggest optimal experimental paradigms for experimentally isolating metacognition and awareness in future studies. (shrink)

There is growing consensus that reward plays an important role in the control of attention. Until recently, reward was thought to influence attention indirectly by modulating task-specific motivation and its effects on voluntary control over selection. Such an account was consistent with the goal-directed (endogenous) versus stimulus-driven (exogenous) framework that had long dominated the field of attention research. Now, a different perspective is emerging. Demonstrations that previously reward-associated stimuli can automatically capture attention even when physically inconspicuous and task-irrelevant challenge previously (...) held assumptions about attentional control. The idea that attentional selection can be value driven, reflecting a distinct and previously unrecognized control mechanism, has gained traction. Since these early demonstrations, the influence of reward learning on attention has rapidly become an area of intense investigation, sparking many new insights. The result is an emerging picture of how the reward system of the brain automatically biases information processing. Here, I review the progress that has been made in this area, synthesizing a wealth of recent evidence to provide an integrated, up-to-date account of value-driven attention and some of its broader implications. (shrink)

In this chapter Alessandro Capone’s claim as the intimate relationship between legal reasoning and indirect reports is investigated through looking at legal citation practices, use of case law, and statutory and constitutional interpretation. Capone’s thought is informed in the chapter through a reference to the work of Ronald Dworkin and Edward H. Levi. The conclusion of the chapter is that Capone is correct that use of indirect reporting in law is ubiquitous and therefore warrants careful study. Further, and opposite of (...) Dworkin’s hope for a univocal use of indirect reports, Levi’s analysis emphasizes the bottom-up, conversational and polyvocal aspects of legal reasoning as is noted by Capone. This in turn requires eliminating the hope for finding or imposing a determinate and univocal meaning on legal citation, case law, and statutory and constitutional interpretation. Instead, continuing dialogue is required. Indeed, legal process should try to include as many voices in the construction of meaning as possible. (shrink)

Levinas is famously opposed to the sacred and its association with violence. In Totality and Infinity, he writes that he seeks to describe a relationship with the other that is ‘purified of the vio...

There is an ongoing public debate about sex, gender and identity that is often quite heated. This is an edited transcript of an informal lecture I recorded in 2019 to serve as a friendly guide to these complex issues. It represents my best attempt, not to score political points for any particular side, but to give an introductory map of the territory so that you can think for yourself, investigate further, and reach your own conclusions about such controversial questions as (...) ‘What does mean to be a man or a woman?’. (shrink)

Rather than reading Shaftesbury in anticipation of later forms of disinterestedness, this essay seeks to unpack the larger significance of his aesthetics by tracing his ideas back to their ancient sources. This essay looks to the venerable tradition of world contemplation. It argues that Shaftesbury advances a specifically Stoic model of world contemplation in The Moralists. The text’s principal concern is not with this or that beautiful object but with the whole of which it and the viewer are indivisibly a (...) part; its aim is not so much to account for how we perceive beauty as to foster a characteristically Stoic orientation toward the world, one in which we overcome our egocentric view of things and align ourselves with the natural workings of the world or universe in its entirety. Far from being ‘autonomous’ from the rest of life, the Stoic world contemplation Shaftesbury advocates entails a robust affirmation of existence, clear-eyed gratitude for being part of the universe, whatever the challenges and however fleeting our time in it may be. (shrink)

Following a scholarly account of Thomas Aquinas's life, Davies explores his purposes in writing the Summa Theologiae and works systematically through each of its three Parts. He also relates their contents and Aquinas's teachings to those of other works and other thinkers both theological and philosophical. The concluding chapter considers the impact Aquinas's best-known work has exerted since its first appearance, and why it is still studied today. Intended for students and general readers interested in medieval philosophy and theology, Davies's (...) study is a solid and reflective introduction both to the Summa Theologiae and to Aquinas in general. (shrink)

Analyzing Law offers an important selection of the most influential and challenging work now being done in legal theory. A central focus of the essays in this work is the contribution of the well-known philosopher Jules Coleman to the various topics which are covered by the contributors.

The healthcare ethics consultant holds a widely described role in the modern American hospital. S/he may practice within a clinical discipline and be trained in bioethics, or be a trained phi...

Timothy Williamson has argued that our evidence is what we know. This implies that anything we come to know by inference instantly becomes part of our evidence, and that all of our evidence is true. I argue that neither of these implications is correct. I conclude by noting a rival theory of evidence, one based on a suggestion Jerry Fodor makes in The Modularity of Mind , is not vulnerable to the criticisms I make of Williamson, nor to the criticisms (...) he makes of traditional theories of evidence. (shrink)

Modern legal theory contains a wide range of approaches and topics: from economic analysis of law to feminist legal theory to traditional analytical legal philosophy to a range of theories about justice. This healthy variety of jurisprudential work has created a problem: students and theorists working in one tradition may have difficulty understanding the concepts and terminology of a different tradition. This book works to make terminology and ways of thinking accessible. This dictionary covers topics from 'the autonomy of law' (...) to the 'will theory of rights', from 'autopoiesis' to 'wealth maximization', and from 'John Austin' to 'Ludwig Wittgenstein'. The most important concepts and ideas are presented in a simple dictionary format. There are also many longer entries, where the initial definition gives an accessible explanation, but the entry goes on to give more detailed information about the history of an idea and the debates currently surrounding it. (shrink)

Presents the history of medieval philosophy and includes profiles of notable philosophers, Jewish and Arabic medieval philsophy, and the age of the schoolmen.

Previous ed.: Basingstoke: Marshall Morgan & Scott, 1984.

While top-down descriptors have received much attention in explaining corruption, we develop a grassroots model to describe structural factors that may influence the emergence and spread of an individual’s (un)ethical behavior within organizations. We begin with a discussion of the economics justification of the benefits of competition, a rationale used by firms to adopt structural aides such as the ‹stacking’ practice that was implemented at Enron. We discuss and develop an individual-level theory of planned behavior, then extend it to the (...) dyadic level in an internally competitive organization, and finally extend the dyadic model to the social network. We apply social network theory to predict favorable and unfavorable conditions for the emergence and diffusion of an intraorganizational instance of unethical behavior and find that network conditions favoring the suppression of the emergence of unethical behavior also promote its diffusion. For illustrative purposes, we utilize examples from Enron’s internally competitive structure to embed our arguments in a real world context and bring reality to our theorizing. Implications for both researchers and managers are discussed. (shrink)

The primary objective of this article is to detail how two teachers in the same school site, in the American Southeast, taught war to the children of soldiers. Taken from an extensive qualitative case study involving eight teachers, this article examines the pedagogies engaged in by two teachers who expressed a desire to teach war more critically to their students. Critically here means but is not exclusive to raising student consciousness to issues of war not typically taught including investigating how (...) power, race, gender, and sex operate in war, more closely examining decisions evaluating them for their justness or unjustness. In short a more authentic exploration of war. One teacher engaged a pedagogy of tension the other a pedagogy of facts. Both resulted in a less than critical examination of war. A pedagogy of tension reflected this teacher's reaction to pressure from the community and fear of surfacing or inflicting trauma upon students. A pedagogy of facts reflected the second teachers’ beliefs that focusing teaching on facts will allow her to teach a more critical rendition of war. A qualitative empirical study, data was collected through interview and classroom observation. (shrink)

The pragmatic theory of truth (PTT) seeks to illuminate the concept of truth by focusing on concepts like usefulness or adaptivity. However, contrary to common opinion, PTT does not merely face a narrow band of (perhaps) rather artificial counterexamples (as in a case of empirically unfounded but life-extending optimism in a cancer patient); instead, PTT is faced with a fast psychological research literature which suggests that inaccurate beliefs are both (1) pervasive in human beings and, nonetheless, (2) fully adaptive in (...) many cases. Call this the "pervasive adaptive illusions" (PAI) objection to PTT. According to PAI, the kind of connection drawn by PTT between the beliefs that we (intuitively or pretheoretically) regard as "true" and the beliefs we regard as useful is undercut by hard-nosed empirical work in psychology -- work that no empirically minded pragmatist can ignore. According to PAI, the connection drawn between truth and utility by PTT is subject to a simply overwhelming set of counterexamples (drawn from psychological research, and reviewed below). Thus, PTT is a theory any sensible theorist of truth must reject. (shrink)

Adolescents present a puzzle. There are foundational unclarities about how they should be regarded as decision-makers. Although superficially adolescents may appear to have mature decisional capacity, their decision-making is in many ways unlike that of adults. Despite this seemingly obvious fact, a concern for the claims of autonomy has led to the development of the legal doctrine of the mature minor. This legal construct considers adolescents, as far as possible, as equivalent to adults for the purpose of medical decision-making. The (...) movement to support independent decision-making by adolescents through providing information to them and securing their consent apart from their parents is encouraged by those legal understandings that hold that unemancipated minors should generally be considered as possessing effective decisional capacity. Such legal structures, however, do not adequately take account of the wide variations in adolescent capacities, the immaturity of most adolescent decision-makers, or the important contributions made by parents to the development of their adolescents through parental partnering in the adolescent’s decision-making. The data available indicate that in general adolescents should be regarded as apprentice decision-makers who should make decisions in collaboration with their parents until at least the age of 18. Steps should not be taken pre-emptively to isolate adolescents from the guidance of their parents. As a general rule, what Piker has referred to as “collaborative paternalism” appears most likely both to protect adolescents from their own untoward choices, while also very importantly helping them with parental guidance to develop into mature decision-makers with the capacity to make medical choices on their own. (shrink)

Drawing from the work of Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, this book aims to relate a series of philosophic insights to the practice of engaging in design research for change. These insights are explored and presented as a set of potential strategies for grounding transformative design research within an intellectual context which both embraces and celebrates experience, process, and uncertainty. Chapter by chapter, through theory, practical examples, and case studies an accessible narrative opens up around the coupled themes of existence and (...) experience, language and meaning, and knowing and truth. The outcome is a rich and detailed perspective on the ways in which philosophy may afford design research for change a means to both explain, as well as understand, not only what it is and what it does, but also what it could be. The book will be of interest to scholars working in design studies, design theory and design research. (shrink)