Noam Chomsky (1928 – ) Noam Chomsky is an American linguist who has had a profound impact on philosophy. Chomsky’s linguistic work has been motivated by the observation that nearly all adult human beings have the ability to effortlessly produce and understand a potentially infinite number of sentences. For instance, it is very likely that … Continue reading Noam Chomsky →.

During the debates about the legalization of Voluntary Assisted Dying in Victoria, Australia, the presence of anti-VAD health professionals in the medical community and reported high rates of conscientious objection to VAD suggested access may be limited. Most empirical research on CO has been conducted in the sexual and reproductive health context. However, given the fundamental differences in the nature of such procedures and the legislation governing it, these findings may not be directly transferable to VAD. Accordingly, we sought to (...) understand how CO operates in the context of VAD. Prior to the implementation of the VAD legislation in June 2019, we conducted semi-structured interviews with seventeen health professionals with a self-declared CO to VAD, to explore what motivated their CO. Participants identified multiple motivations, which can be broadly categorized as: concerns for oneself; concerns for patients; concerns about the current Victorian legislation; and concerns for the medical profession. Participants’ moral commitments included personal, professional, and political commitments. In some cases, one’s CO was specific to Victoria’s current legislation rather than VAD more broadly. Our findings suggest CO motivations extend beyond those traditionally cited and suggest a need to better understand and manage CO in the healthcare context. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between organizational ethical culture in two large international CPA firms, auditors'' personal values and the ethical orientation that those values dictate, and judgments in ethical dilemmas typical of those that accountants face. Using an experimental task consisting of multiple judgments designed to vary in "moral intensity" (Jones, 1991), and unique as well as tried-and-true approaches to variable measurements, this study examined the judgments of more than three hundred participants in our study. ANCOVA and path analysis (...) results indicate that: (1) Ethical judgments in situations of high moral intensity are affected by personal values and by environmental variables, such as the professional code of conduct (direct and indirect effects) and previous ethics instruction (direct effect only). (2) Corporate ethical culture, and a relatively strong firm rules-orientation, affect auditors'' idealism but not relativism, and therefore indirectly affect ethical judgments. Jones'' (1991) moral intensity argument is supported: differences in the characteristics of specific judgment tasks apparently result in different decision processes. (shrink)

This is an interview with Edward S. Casey, conducted by Donald A. Landes.

What would the world be like if we no longer needed meaning? Australian sociologist Michael Casey's revealing work charts the collapse of the metaphysical world and the innate human need for meaning. With the decline of Christianity and the demise of secular universalism in the west, the meaning and value of metaphysical culture has been replaced by an entirely new post-metaphysical world. In Meaninglessness, Casey revisits the social theory of Nietzsche, Freud, and Rorty, in order to conceive how (...) this post-metaphysical culture may take shape in the third millennium. Framing questions of enduring significance to contemporary social and political theory in a new methodological light, this work will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in sociology, post-modernism, cultural studies, political theory, and philosophy. (shrink)

This essay traces the historical development of the relationship between eschatology and statecraft in the thought of Paul Ramsey. At the outset of his career, as exemplified in Basic Christian Ethics, Ramsey outlined a position in which the Christian doctrine of eschatology could be construed as a source of positive theological warrants for engagement in politics. By the end of his career Ramsey's political realism had trumped this earlier theological position on eschatology such that eschatology was seen as a permanent (...) limiting factor that restrained what he saw as Enlightenment stained utopian Christian political schemes. (shrink)

The inner ache: an experiential perspective on IonelinessThis paper examines the various theoretical approaches that have informed both the conceptualizations and the research approaches to investigations of loneliness. A focus on phenomenological and existential perspectives of loneliness can assist in an understanding of what is essentially a subjective distressing experience. The elderly, particularly those residing in nursing homes, are vulnerable to feelings of existential loneliness because following busy lives, often they are left without meaningful roles. Concomitant to this sense of (...) loss of meaning is an alteration in the perception of lived time. It is the purpose of this paper to stimulate research into what is a common but profoundly distressing experience. (shrink)

An interview with Ed Casey where we discuss the intersections of his philosophical work with current political issues, including the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Combined oral contraceptives have been demonstrated to have significant benefits for the treatment and prevention of disease. These medications also are associated with untoward health effects, and they may be directly contraceptive. Prescribers and users must compare and weigh the intended beneficial health effects against foreseeable but unintended possible adverse effects in their decisions to prescribe and use. Additionally, those who intend to abide by Catholic teachings must consider prohibitions against contraception. Ethical judgments concerning both health benefits and contraception are (...) approached in this essay through an overview of the therapeutic, prophylactic, untoward, and contraceptive effects of COC and discussion of magisterial and traditional Catholic teachings from natural law. Discerning through the principle of double effect, proportionate reason, and evidence gathered from the sciences, medical and moral conclusions are drawn that we believe to be fully compliant with good medicine and Catholic teaching. (shrink)

This case study explores the use of collaborative book clubs and word sorts to influence teacher positionality in an undergraduate social studies methods course for pre-service teachers. Drawing upon existing literature that suggests the effectiveness of dialogue as a means of navigating prior beliefs and the benefits of collaborative spaces for teachers to engage in collegial discussions, the study utilized books surrounding socio-political themes and educational inequalities to prompt conversation among participants. Results of the study suggest that dialogic and collaborative (...) activities like word sorts and book clubs provide productive opportunities for pre-service teachers to (re)negotiate their positionalities and grapple with their existing assumptions as they learn and co-construct meaning from and with one another. At the same time, the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of privilege and identity seem to remain somewhat unexamined and the teachers remain hesitant about the practical reality of working to dismantle inequalities in their own classrooms. (shrink)

A book chapter for the volume Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope: Experiencing the Twin Disasters of COVID-19 and Climate Change using Nietzsche's philosophy and primarily based on archival research done by William A. B. Parkhurst.

The success of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for movement disorders and the improved understanding of the neurobiologic and neuroanatomic bases of psychiatric diseases have led to proposals to expand current DBS applications. Recent preclinical and clinical work with Alzheimer's disease and obsessive-compulsive disorder, for example, supports the safety of stimulating regions in the hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens in humans. These regions are known to be involved in addiction and overeating associated with obesity. However, the use of DBS targeting these areas (...) as a treatment modality raises common ethical considerations, which include informed consent, coercion, enhancement, threat to personhood, and manipulation of the reward center. Pilot studies for both of these conditions are currently investigational. If these studies show promise, then there is a need to address the ethical concerns related to the initiation of clinical trials including the reliability of preclinical evidence, patient selection, study design, compensation for participation and injury, cost-effectiveness, and the need for long-term follow-up. Multidisciplinary teams are necessary for the ethical execution of such studies. In addition to establishing safety and efficacy, the consideration of these ethical issues is vital to the adoption of DBS as a treatment for these conditions. We offer suggestions about the pursuit of future clinical trials of DBS for the treatment of addiction and overeating associated with obesity and provide a framework for addressing ethical concerns related to treatment. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page 30-31.

Increasing the ethicality of a project and the usefulness of the data enhances the probability that social good will result from the research; a combination of ethical and methodological soundness is therefore crucial. From 1999‐2002 I conducted a qualitative study of women’s, men’s, and mixed Internet chat room conversations. In this article, I discuss the particular ethical issues that arose, outlining my ethical decision‐making process within the context of current debates. I also describe the methodological concerns, demonstrating why a synthesized (...) method responsive to the advantages and disadvantages of cyberspace was necessary, and how the data were enhanced by this choice of method and by certain characteristics of cyberspace. In discussing the details of my study, my overall goal is to provide an assessment of the social good of the project with a view to increasing the probability of more ethical and useful Internet‐based research outcomes more generally. (shrink)

ExcerptIGiven that law is a profession that consists almost entirely in the manipulation of language, and given that, for most lawyers, the profession consists even more in the manipulation of the written than of the spoken word, it is perhaps surprising that, at least in the German-speaking world, lawyers have a decidedly mixed, tending toward bad, reputation as prose stylists. In a 2010 book intended to provide remedial writing instruction to German lawyers, for example, lawyer and journalist Eva Engelken explains (...) the book's necessity by pointing to the disastrous condition of what she disparagingly calls “lawyer German” (Anwaltsdeutsch), noting…. (shrink)

Frequent public uproar over forms of data science that rely on information about people demonstrates the challenges of defining and demonstrating trustworthy digital data research practices. This paper reviews problems of trustworthiness in what we term pervasive data research: scholarship that relies on the rich information generated about people through digital interaction. We highlight the entwined problems of participant unawareness of such research and the relationship of pervasive data research to corporate datafication and surveillance. We suggest a way forward by (...) drawing from the history of a different methodological approach in which researchers have struggled with trustworthy practice: ethnography. To grapple with the colonial legacy of their methods, ethnographers have developed analytic lenses and researcher practices that foreground relations of awareness and power. These lenses are inspiring but also challenging for pervasive data research, given the flattening of contexts inherent in digital data collection. We propose ways that pervasive data researchers can incorporate reflection on awareness and power within their research to support the development of trustworthy data science. (shrink)

This longitudinal study examines changes in the moral identity of 48 emerging-adult U.S. college graduates in media-related fields from their first year after college to three years later as they progressed into early work life. Results from four moral psychology survey instruments reflect significant shifts in moral reasoning, relativistic thinking and idealism, coupled with stability in personality traits and character strengths. A fifth instrument found largely positive assessments of workplace ethical climate. The findings suggest that emerging adulthood is an important (...) time for the development of a robust professional moral self that is characterized by growing maturity in moral judgment that intersects with a foundation of character developed through a variety of influences before, during and after college. Findings have significant implications for young practitioners entering the workplace, media managers working with them, and media pedagogy. (shrink)

Edward S. Casey provides a thorough description of the varieties of human memory, including recognizing and reminding, reminiscing and commemorating, body memory and place memory. The preface to the new edition extends the scope of the original text to include issues of collective memory, forgetting, and traumatic memory, and aligns this book with Casey's newest work on place and space. This ambitious study demonstrates that nothing in our lives is unaffected by remembering.

In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, _The Fate of Place_ is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of (...) space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century. Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray. (shrink)

Philosophy is commonly criticized for being too abstract and detached from practical spheres. Upon chronicling how philosophy has gained this reputation, the authors explore the philosophical fields of phenomenology and hermeneutics that have explicitly attempted to merge philosophy with everyday life contexts. In recent decades, phenomenology and hermeneutics have been applied to healthcare. In the realm of nursing, Patricia Benner's nursing theory is especially informed by phenomenology, which is briefly explored through her relationship with one of her mentors, the philosopher (...) Hubert Dreyfus. The authors then turn their attention to Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophy in an attempt to mine concepts relevant to the practice of nursing. Gadamer juxtaposed the human sciences from the natural sciences and thought that both needed different approaches: whereas natural sciences are guided by episteme, that is, universal knowledge, human sciences are guided by phronesis, that is, practical wisdom. Gadamer's philosophy is especially helpful in understanding how to cultivate phronesis in nursing wherein a nurse relies upon one's clinical experience to masterfully navigate each unique patient relationship. Nurses must serve as authorities in the realm of healthcare but also be open to the authority of their patients, who ultimately choose their course of treatment in our contemporary era of patient autonomy. Gadamer's philosophy can help us understand why phronesis requires not only practice but also reflection on that practice to be appropriately cultivated. The authors apply this to the realm of nursing in showing how both practice—clinically and via simulation—and reflection—through journaling or dialogue—are necessary for phronesis to emerge. (shrink)

This article explores the opportunities and challenges of using journalistic exemplars in the digital network to explicate intellectual virtues necessary for flourishing in that network. It seeks to advance media ethics theorizing by drawing together exemplar-based virtue theory, specifically Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory, and work on intellectual virtues, in particular Baehr’s delineation of nine intellectual virtues. After a description of theoretical foundations, this article articulates an approach to identifying and explicating intellectual virtues through journalistic exemplars in the digital network. It (...) then applies this approach to the work of two journalists who have frequently and thoughtfully used social media. This exploratory analysis suggests the proposed approach holds promise for explication of individual virtues and identification of patterns among them. The approach also carries challenges and limitations, partly related to the nature and scope of virtual evidence for enactment of virtues by journalists. The authors suggest future research to minimize these limitations and continue advancing theorizing within this framework. (shrink)

Drawing on his own experiences of imagining, Edward S. Casey describes the essential forms that imagination assumes in everyday life. In a detailed analysis of the fundamental features of all imaginative experience, Casey shows imagining to be eidetically distinct from perceiving and defines it as a radically autonomous act, involving a characteristic freedom of mind. A new preface places Imagining within the context of current issues in philosophy and psychology.

Yli-Vakkuri offers a deductive argument for Content Externalism that primarily appeals to two main principles he says should be adopted by all parties to the debate. Sawyer criticizes this argument on the grounds that there are internalist theories that are not consistent with the two principles he offers, although she takes no issue with the derivation itself. While Sawyer’s critique is insightful and largely correct, there is a more fundamental problem with the original argument. The formal proof given in the (...) original paper begs the question. The informal argument is enthymematic, and all the possible valid reconstructions require assumptions that can be legitimately rejected by content internalists. This is significant to point out as someone might think that the internalist views that Sawyer says are not consistent with the two principles that drive Yli-Vakkuri’s argument can be successfully challenged and thereby the original argument defended. (shrink)

Marina Sbisà’s remarks on illocutionary pluralism suggest but do not constitute a full-blown theory. In this chapter I discuss two different attempts to build on those remarks. The first, illocutionary relativism, is my own attempt to develop the ideas presented in Sbisà’s remarks. The second, from Marcin Lewiński, differs in important ways. I then briefly compare these two varieties of illocutionary pluralism.

Following a synthesis of naturalistic and experimental studies of language creation, we propose a theoretical model that describes the process through which human communication systems might arise and evolve. Three key processes are proposed that give rise to effective, efficient and shared human communication systems: motivated signs that directly resemble their meaning facilitate cognitive alignment, improving communication success; behavioral alignment onto an inventory of shared sign-to-meaning mappings bolsters cognitive alignment between interacting partners; sign refinement, through interactive feedback, enhances the efficiency (...) of the evolving communication system. By integrating the findings across a range of diverse studies, we propose a theoretical model of the process through which the earliest human communication systems might have arisen and evolved. Importantly, because our model is not bound to a single modality it can describe the creation of shared sign systems across a range of contexts, informing theories of language creation and evolution. (shrink)

Suppose I make an utterance, intending it to be a command. You don’t take it to be one. Must one of us be wrong? In other words, must each utterance have, at most, one illocutionary force? Current debates over the constitutive norm of assertion and over illocutionary silencing, tend to assume that the answer is yes—that each utterance must be either an assertion, or a command, or a question, but not more than one of these. While I think that this (...) assumption is intuitive, I will argue in this paper that it is not sustainable. I’ll argue that this assumption makes it hard to explain what determines illocutionary force in a consistent and non-ad hoc way. I will demonstrate this is not fatal for the notion of illocutionary force writ large by offering some alternatives. (shrink)

This chapter examines an epistemological disjunctivist treatment of self-knowledge of belief. More specifically, it considers whether such a Disjunctivism is confronted by a familiar objection facing Disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge. The objection is this: given that good and bad cases are subjectively indistinguishable, one cannot take oneself to be in the good case, when one is, by reflection alone, as Disjunctivists claim. Some philosophers have argued that the objection does not apply to the case of self-knowledge; I argue they are (...) wrong. There are “ringers” for belief, and their existence may undermine our claims to self-knowledge, even in good cases. I suggest that whether the objection applies to the case of self-knowledge depends on how we conceive of conscious judgment. I end by considering an alternative conception that rules out the possibility of bad cases for self-knowledge. (shrink)

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

I argue that the debates over which norm constitutes assertion can be abandoned by challenging the three main motivations for a constitutive norm. The first motivation is the alleged analogy between language and games. The second motivation is the intuition that some assertions are worthy of criticism. The third is the discursive responsibilities incurred by asserting. I demonstrate that none of these offer good reasons to believe in a constitutive norm of assertion, as such a norm is understood in the (...) literature. Others who have made similar arguments conclude that assertion does not exist at all—that there is no such thing as assertion. I disagree: we do not have to relinquish the category of assertion just because it is not normatively constituted. There are alternative ways to understand and individuate assertion that do not rely on a constitutive norm. (shrink)

Offers a philosophical exploration of the pervasiveness of place. Presenting an account of the role of place in human experience, this book points to place's indispensability in navigation and orientation. The role of the lived body in matters of place isconsidered, and the characteristics of built places are explored.

This study developed and tested a model of culture’s effect on budgeting systems, and hypothesized that system variables and reactions to them are influenced by culture-specific work-related and ethical values. Most organizational and behavioral views of budgeting fail to acknowledge the ethical components of the problem, and have largely ignored the role of culture in shaping organizational and individual values. Cross-cultural differences in reactions to system design variables, and in the behaviors motivated or mitigated by those variables, has implications for (...) the design and effectiveness of budgeting systems. The data largely support our research model, demonstrating the hypothesized national cultural differences in system design variables (e.g., participation, standards tightness, budget emphasis, etc. which we characterized as the opportunity and incentives to create budgetary slack), and the expected relationship between incentives (but not opportunity) to create slack and slack creation behavior. The data demonstrate hypothesized cultural differences in ethical ideology but show ethical ideology related to slack creation behavior only for U.S. managers. A discussion of the results and their implications is included. (shrink)

What happens when we glance around a room? How do we trust what we see in fleeting moments? In The World at a Glance, Edward S. Casey describes how glancing counts for more of human perception than previously imagined. An entire universe is perceived in a glance, but our quick and uncommitted attention prevents examination of these rapid acts and processes. While breaking down this paradox, Casey surveys the glance as an essential way by which we acquaint ourselves (...) with the world. This experiential tour-de-force reveals what happens in a blink of an eye. It will become a landmark study in phenomenology, philosophy, environmental philosophy, and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)