Jewish parables from the Hasidic masters and their lessons are illustrated by the interactions of Fishel the beggar, the slick thief, the rich businessman, the fat governor, the Russian soldiers, and other village characters.

One rationale policy-makers sometimes give for declining to fund a service or intervention is on the grounds that it would be ‘unaffordable’, which is to say, that the total cost of providing the service or intervention for all eligible recipients would exceed the budget limit. But does the mere fact that a service or intervention is unaffordable present a reason not to fund it? Thus far, the philosophical literature has remained largely silent on this issue. However, in this article, we (...) consider this kind of thinking in depth. Albeit with certain important caveats, we argue that the use of affordability criteria in matters of public financing commits what Parfit might have called a ‘mistake in moral mathematics’. First, it fails to abide by what we term a principle of ‘non-perfectionism’ in moral action: the mere fact that it is practically impossible for you to do all the good that you have reason to do does not present a reason not to do whatever good you can do. And second, when used as a means of arbitrating between which services to fund, affordability criteria can lead to a kind of ‘numerical discrimination’. Various attendant issues around fairness and lotteries are also discussed. (shrink)

ArgumentUntil the fifteenth century, celibacy was the rule among Christian scholars of northwestern Europe. Celibacy was a major element of the codified cultural representation of the scholar and his specific way of life, sustained by peculiar institutional arrangements and daily routines. Founding family households implied therefore a major reorganization of the scholar’s way of life. Broadly speaking, this involved refashioning the scholarly habitus, redefining social relations, and developing the necessary material infrastructure. The paper focuses on three aspects of this process (...) during a period characterized by uncertainty and experimentation. It discusses the structure of scholars’ families, arguing that at least until the middle of the sixteenth century, received models still persisted, while new viable models for articulating family reproduction with the transmission of scholarly dispositions had not yet crystallized. It then turns to the reorganization of domestic space, focusing on the different uses of the study to manage social distance and regulate domestic relations. Finally, among the different manifestations of the scholarly habitus, it argues that the emotional detachment of learned men was itself a learned habit. The well-documented discussion of competing options for organizing scholars’ family households and cultivating an acquired nature in academic settings provides an exceptional occasion to examine the way a group habitus is reshaped and, explore the cultural work involved in this process. (shrink)

Among the characteristic features of depression is a diminishment in or lack of action and motivation. In this paper, I consider a dominant philosophical account which purports to explain this lack of action or motivation. This approach comes in different versions but a common theme is, I argue, an over reliance on psychologistic assumptions about action–explanation and the nature of motivation. As a corrective I consider an alternative view that gives a prominent place to the body in motivation. Central to (...) the experience of depression are changes to how a person is motivated to act and, also as central, are changes to bodily feelings and capacities. I argue that broadly characterizing motivation in terms of bodily capacities can, in particular, provide a more compelling account of depressive motivational pathology. (shrink)

The study tests the hypothesis that conditional probability judgments can be influenced by causal links between the target event and the evidence even when the statistical relations among variables are held constant. Three experiments varied the causal structure relating three variables and found that (a) the target event was perceived as more probable when it was linked to evidence by a causal chain than when both variables shared a common cause; (b) predictive chains in which evidence is a cause of (...) the hypothesis gave rise to higher judgments than diagnostic chains in which evidence is an effect of the hypothesis; and (c) direct chains gave rise to higher judgments than indirect chains. A Bayesian learning model was applied to our data but failed to explain them. An explanation-based hypothesis stating that statistical information will affect judgments only to the extent that it changes beliefs about causal structure is consistent with the results. (shrink)

Background: The phenomenon of forceful physical restraint in pediatric care is an ethical issue because it confronts professionals with the dilemma of using force for the child’s best interest. This is a paradox. The perspective of healthcare professional working in pediatric wards needs further in-depth investigations. Purpose: To explore the perspectives and behaviors of healthcare professionals toward forceful physical restraint in pediatric care. Methods: This qualitative ethnographic study used focus groups with purposeful sampling. Thirty volunteer healthcare professionals (nurses, hospital aids, (...) physiotherapists, and health educators) were recruited in five pediatric facilities in four hospitals around Paris, France, from March to June 2013. The data were processed using NVIVO software (QSR International Ltd. 1999–2013). The data analysis followed a qualitative methodological process. Ethical Considerations: The research was conducted in compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Written informed consent was collected systematically from participants. Findings: This study provides elements to help understand why restraint remains common despite its contradiction with the duty to protect the child and the child’s rights. All participants considered the use of forceful physical restraint to be a frequent difficulty in pediatrics. Greater interest in the child’s health was systematically used to justify the use of force, with little consideration for contradictory or ethical aspects. Raising the issue of forceful restraint always triggered discomfort, unease and an outpour of emotions among healthcare professionals. The findings have highlighted a form of hierarchy of duties that give priority to the execution of the technical procedure and legitimize the use of restraint. Professionals seemed to temporarily suspend their ability to empathize in order to apply restraint to carry out a technical procedure. This observation has allowed us to suggest the concept of “transient empathic blindness.” Conclusion: Using physical restraint during pediatric care was considered a common problem by participants. This practice must be questioned, and professionals must have access to training to find alternatives to strong restraint. Conceptualizing this phenomenon with the concept of “transient empathic blindness” could help professionals understand what happens in their minds when using forceful restraint. (shrink)

In a sense Maimonides identifies his views on the subject of divine providence with those of Epicurus. He does so by implying an analogy between this Greek philosopher’s atheistic opinions and those put forth by Elihu in the Book of Job. Despite the fact that commentators have discussed Maimonides’ views on providence for eight hundred years the only one to refer to the connection between Elihu and Epicurus was Joseph Ibn Kaspi in the fourteenth century. One of the consequences of (...) this analogy is a modification of our understanding of Maimonides’ concept of “providence according to the intellect.” Whereas Moshe Narboni and other commentators have understood Maimonides’ concept of providence to involve a unification of the human intellect with the Active Intellect, the association with Epicurus suggests an emphasis on the human individual’s material faculties such as the imagination. Indeed, it is possible that, following Al-Fārābī, Maimonides rejected the possibility of conjunction with the Active Intellect altogether, and that “providence according to the intellect” consists of nothing more than the activity of the human individual’s material faculties. (shrink)

In this article, we query binaries of mobility and immobility in language studies via an empirical focus on language/social practices in a site that bridges the global North and global South. To do so, we work from a Southern praxis perspective to analyze discourses/knowledges informing the performance of accounts from Cambodian men, interviewed about transactional same-sex relationship practices between (ostensibly immobile) local men and (ostensibly mobile) male tourists to Cambodia from the global North. The analysis focuses on a process in (...) which participants’ chronotopic awareness of language shapes a negotiation of power, knowledge, and action with respect to these relationships. Encompassing the discursive positioning of selves and others through the deployment of relevant and affective chronotopes, the talk from these Cambodian men allows us to challenge assumptions about (im)mobility, awareness, agency, sexuality, and power, and demonstrate how these are accessed in multiple ways at this site of North/South contact. (shrink)

The Ideal Worlds objection is an objection that purports to identify a potentially fatal flaw in some of our most influential moral theories: including, among others, rule consequentialism, Kant's Law of Nature Formula of the Categorical Imperative and Scanlonian contractualism. In this article, I offer an account of the objection, a survey of some of the ways defenders of affected theories have sought to avoid it, and the problems that those responses can encounter.

Jeff Benedict has seen both good and bad in his career as a journalist. Some of the best are the extraordinary people he has met who have made deliberate choices to live happier lives despite the extreme hardship that each of them have faced. Although life will knock us down from time to time, this book is an important reminder that we all can make a choice to get back up, brush ourselves off, and keep pressing forward. Replace anger with (...) forgiveness through studying the real-life examples of seven inspiring mentors. Avoid discouragement by purposefully recognizing God's hand in your life. Diminish the heartache from tragedy through the concentrated act of serving others. Gain insights from parents who were deliberate in safeguarding their children against harmful influences. Stand strong through life's adversity through the examples of powerful prayer. (shrink)

For all their various disagreements, one point upon which rights theorists often agree is that it is simply part of the nature of rights that they tend to override, outweigh or exclude competing considerations in moral reasoning, that they have ‘peremptory force’, making ‘powerful demands’ that can only be overridden in ‘exceptional circumstances’, Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016, p. 240). In this article I challenge this thought. My aim here is not to prove that the (...) traditional view of rights’ stringency is necessarily false, nor even that we have no good reason to believe it is true. Rather, my aim is only to show that we have good reason to think that the foundation of the traditional position is less stable than we might have otherwise supposed and that an alternative conception of rights—one which takes the stringency of any given right as particular to the kind of right it is—is both viable and attractive. In short, to begin to move us towards a more ‘particularist’ conception of rights’ standing in moral reasoning and judgement. (shrink)

"Characterized by breadth of coverage, a refreshingly balanced approach to controversial issues, & a highly readable style."-Theological Studies.

Can we formulate a moral theory that captures the moral significance of patterns of group behaviour we cannot affect through our own action while at the same time avoiding the so-called ‘Ideal Worlds’ objection? In a recent article, Caleb Perl has argued that we can. Specifically, Perl claims that one view that does so is his Patterned View: roughly, you ought to act only in accordance with that set of sufficiently general rules that has optimal moral value (Perl 2021: 98). (...) The Patterned View undoubtedly constitutes a welcome contribution to our existing set of moral theories. However, does it avoid the Ideal Worlds objection? In this article, I argue ‘no’. (shrink)

Kepler’s intricate trajectory, his self-reflective comments about the conditions of production of knowledge in his time, and the wealth of materials preserved make it possible to reconstruct a whole set of regimes of scholarly work around 1600, each with its typical mode of control, forms of subordination, temporal economy, and means of remuneration. Kepler’s maneuvering in this landscape was shaped by his attempts to carve out spaces for the kind of work he considered his very own – his “speculations” or (...) “private studies” – within work relationships involving service and subordination. Thus, we find nonalienated, self-directed scholarly work embedded, constrained, and enabled by heteronomous regimes of work, a field of tensions that I seek to capture in the formula “work within work.” A labor history of science could thus offer us an opportunity for exploring historically documented, nonincidental and partly institutionalized forms of less alienated work, and trace the ways in which they related to and interacted with dominant relations of production. (shrink)

Offers an analysis of three strongly contrasting primitive civilizations, showing how behavior is influenced by custom and tradition.

In the debates on the roles of cultures in the ethics of human rights, one of them concerns Confucianism and Ubuntu, two prominent cultures in East Asia and Southern Africa, respectively. Some scholars assert that both cultures have values that are sharply different from the West, and conclude that the West should learn from these cultures. The aim of this paper is to philosophically investigate the roles of cultures in the ethics of human rights. I first introduce the works of (...) Bell, Metz and others on community values such as relationships and harmony in Confucianism and Ubuntu. I then argue that even if their interpretations were correct, their works still would not justify the conclusion they want. I show that it is better to use consequential evaluation rather than cultural evaluation to justify human rights. An example of human rights to health and privacy is discussed. This paper thus offers some preliminary but important philosophical investigations and addresses practical issues of consequential evaluation related to human rights. Keywords : Confucianism, Ubuntu, Cultural Evaluation, Consequential Evaluation, Human Rights, Health, Privacy. (shrink)

Wood, Kressel, Joshi, and Louie report that published, but not unpublished, studies of masculinity, dominance, symmetry, and health preferences show significant overall effects of cycle phase. They interpret this as evidence that reports of cyclic shifts in mate preferences are artifacts of publication bias. I will first discuss why these conclusions do not necessarily follow straightforwardly from their results. I will then discuss their findings for health preferences specifically, concluding that their dismissal of a significant overall effect of cycle phase (...) is unreasonable. (shrink)

The increasing pressure from different facets of society exerted on multinational companies to become more philanthropic and claim ownership of their impacts is now becoming a standard practice. Although research in corporate social responsibility has arguably been recent, the application of activities taking a voluntary form from MNCs seem to vary reflecting a plethora of factors, particularly one obvious being the backwater local communities of developing countries where most of the natural extraction projects are located. This chapter examines views of (...) two Papua New Guinea local communities hosting large-scale mining operations and explains the demands arising from situational relativities, which are becoming too conspicuous for mine developers not to ignore. The research undertaken with several assertions highlights the perceived imperativeness allowing companies to integrate the CSR into the essential management pursuits of running mines in PNG. (shrink)

Knowledge of what it’s like to have perceptual experiences, e.g. of what it’s like to see red or taste Turkish coffee, is phenomenal knowledge; and it is knowledge the substantial or significant nature of which is widely assumed to pose a challenge for physicalism. Call this the New Challenge to physicalism. The goal of this paper is to take a closer look at the New Challenge. I show, first, that it is surprisingly difficult to spell out clearly and neutrally what (...) the New Challenge is in fact urging the physicalist to explain. What initially look like plausible or promising ways of making sense of it turn out to be either question begging or insufficient to generate a challenge to physicalism at all. I go on to suggest that what the New Challenge may be asking the physicalist to explain may be the fact that we come to token certain higher-order judgments about the significance of phenomenal knowledge. I end with a discussion of the implications of this interpretation of the New Challenge—which turns out to be as much a challenge for the anti-physicalist as it is for the physicalist. (shrink)

Health systems that provide for universal patient access through a scheme of prepayments—whether through taxes, social insurance, or a combination of the two—need to make decisions on the scope of coverage that they secure. Such decisions are inherently controversial, implying, as they do, that some patients will receive less than comprehensive health care, or less than complete protection from the financial consequences of ill-heath, even when there is a clinically effective therapy to which they might have access.Controversial decisions of this (...) sort call for a public justification for covering or not covering a given treatment. Priority-setting agencies play a key role in providing such a justification. A recent... (shrink)

Mitochondrial replacement therapy is a process whereby a child is created by combining the nuclear DNA of two people wishing to have a child with mitochondrial DNA donated by a third person. It poses a new question as to the extent of a person’s right to know the identity of those from whom their DNA is inherited. In commentary upon Turkmendag’s paper, I evaluate the consistency of UK regulation of this issue with the European Convention of Human Rights. Under UK (...) law, a person created using donated mtDNA is only entitled to information about the procedure which does not identify the donor. I argue that this approach is consistent with the previous European Court of Human Rights and UK judicial decisions on the rights of individuals to information about their identity and ancestry and with the deeper foundational principle which Kai Möller argues the Convention protects existential self-understanding. I conclude that, as mtDNA has not been proven to affect an individual’s life choices and outward characteristics to the extent that gamete donation does, it is acceptable to prioritize the interests that anonymous donation protects over the desire of the recipient to know the identity of their donor. (shrink)

In his book Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics: A Virtue Approach to Craniotomy and Tubal Pregnancies, Martin Rhonheimer offers a virtue approach to vital conflicts in medical ethics. These vital conflicts are those medical situations involving pregnancy in which, if nothing is done, both the mother and her child will die. When analyzed by means of his understanding of the virtue of justice, Rhonheimer concludes that the so-called direct killing of children in the womb or in the fallopian tube is (...) permissible since the child’s death is neither a means to saving the mother’s life nor an end sought for itself and is, therefore, not unjust. Because such a death is not unjust, it is also not a moral evil since only an unjust death can be called a moral evil. The author offers a critique of both his understanding of justice and what constitutes the “object” of the moral act. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.3 : 471–480. (shrink)

This article deals with English causal subordinate clauses introduced by since or as. Both these markers may convey different meanings according to contextual variations, and can express temporal relations, from which their causal value is derived. The semantic closeness between as and since whenever they express a causal relation makes it necessary to harvest a large number of attested examples in order to compare and contrast them. The recourse to large on-line corpora such as the British National Corpus gives rise (...) to specific practical difficulties, however, especially as far as as is concerned; because of the high frequency of the subordinators in question, one is confronted to thousands of examples, few of which turn out to have a clear causal value in the case of as, hence the recourse to other means in order to make up a large enough corpus of examples.The concept of presupposition is examined, as it has often been argued that causal since subordinates, unlike as subordinates, introduce a presupposed content. But when confronted to a large number of examples, this criterion falls short of accounting for the subtle differences between the two conjunctions. A more theoretical approach is required; thanks to the tools provided by A. Culioli’s Theory of Enunciative and Predicative Operations, it becomes possible to formalise the hypothesis that a since causal relationship is presented as unproblematic and is addressee-oriented, whereas an as causal relationship is felt as unproblematic, and is speaker-oriented.This difference can be felt in the fact that it seems to be easier to find examples of causal as clauses in the press, while the causal use of since is more widespread in general, and does not seem to be specific to a genre in particular. In order to put this impression to the test, I have resorted to the multi-lingual parallel corpus Intercorp. (shrink)

The so-called ‘re-identification condition’ (Kelly 2011) has played an important role in the most prominent argument for nonconceptualism, the argument from fineness of grain. A number of authors have recently argued that the condition should be modified or discarded altogether, with devastating implications for the nonconceptualist (see, e.g., Brewer 2005, Chuard 2006). The aim of this paper is to show that the situation is even more dire for nonconceptualists, for even if the re-identification condition remains in its original form, the (...) argument from fineness of grain still fails to make the case for nonconceptualism. The paper's central case rests on two claims: according to the first, if the re-identification condition holds, then some beliefs will represent some properties nonconceptually; and according to the second, if some beliefs represent some properties nonconceptually, the argument from fineness of grain fails to make the case for nonconceptualism in any relevant sense. It follows that if the re-identification condition holds, the argument from fineness of grain fails to make the case for nonconceptualism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEvaluative conditioning is a change in the liking of a stimulus due to its previous pairings with another stimulus. In three...

In philosophical debates on human rights between the East and the West, scholars argue whether rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other international documents (in short, “international human rights”) are universal or culturally relative. Some scholars who emphasize the importance of East Asian cultures (such as the Confucian tradition) have different attitudes toward civil and political rights (CP rights) than toward economic, social, and cultural rights (ESC Rights). They argue that at least some international human rights (...) on the list of CP rights are not universal and believe that East Asian cultures can contribute to the moral justification of ESC rights. This chapter introduces a philosophical argument to support a normative account of human rights. This normative account, called “the minimal account of human rights,” is based on the ideas of minimal values, especially essential necessities of dignity. Based on this account, we can explain why international human rights are both universal and justified by East Asian cultures, especially the Confucian tradition. To explain this minimal account and illustrate how it can be applied to debates on international human rights, this chapter focuses on debates on the international human rights to liberty on the list of CP rights and the human rights to health on the list of ESC rights. (shrink)