BackgroundAs hospitals have grown more complex, the ethical concerns they confront have grown correspondingly complicated. Many hospitals have consequently developed health care ethics programs (HCEPs) that include far more than ethics consultation services alone. Yet systematic research on these programs is lacking.MethodsBased on a national, cross-sectional survey of a stratified sample of 600 US hospitals, we report on the prevalence, scope, activities, staffing, workload, financial compensation, and greatest challenges facing HCEPs.ResultsAmong 372 hospitals whose informants responded to an online survey, 97% (...) of hospitals have HCEPs. Their scope includes clinical ethics functions in virtually all hospitals, but includes other functions in far fewer hospitals: ethical leadership (35.7%), regulatory compliance (29.0%), business ethics (26.2%), and research ethics (12.6%). HCEPs are responsible for providing ongoing ethics education to various target audiences including all staff (77.0%), nurses (59.9%), staff physicians (49.0%), hospital leadership (44.2%), medical residents (20.3%) and the community/general public (18.4%). HCEPs staff are most commonly involved in policy work through review of existing policies but are less often involved in development of new policies. HCEPs have an ethics representative in executive leadership in 80.5% of hospitals, have representation on other hospital committees in 40.7%, are actively engaged in community outreach in 22.6%, and lead large-scale ethics quality improvement initiatives in 17.7%. In general, major teaching hospitals and urban hospitals have the most highly integrated ethics programs with the broadest scope and greatest number of activities. Larger hospitals, academically affiliated hospitals, and urban hospitals have significantly more individuals performing HCEP work and significantly more individuals receiving financial compensation specifically for that work. Overall, the most common greatest challenge facing HCEPs is resource shortages, whereas underutilization is the most common greatest challenge for hospitals with fewer than 100 beds. Respondents’ strategies for managing challenges include staff training and additional funds.ConclusionsWhile this study must be cautiously interpreted due to its limitations, the findings may be useful for understanding the characteristics of HCEPs in US hospitals and the factors associated with these characteristics. This information may contribute to exploring ways to strengthen HCEPs. (shrink)

ABSTRACTI argue that the apparently exclusive choice between Suits’ utopia of gameplay and death by suicide is a false dilemma, one which obscures a ‘third way’ of positive boredom. Further, I offe...

In recent years, there has been a philosophical cottage industry producing arguments that our concept of causation is not univocal: that there are in fact two concepts of causation, corresponding to distinct species of causal relation. Papers written in this tradition have borne titles like “Two Concepts of Cause” and “Two Concepts of Causation”. With due apologies to Charles Dickens, I hereby make my own contribution to this genre.

I will argue, pace a great many of my contemporaries, that there's something right about Boltzmann's attempt to ground the second law of thermodynamics in a suitably amended deterministic time-reversal invariant classical dynamics, and that in order to appreciate what's right about (what was at least at one time) Boltzmann's explanatory project, one has to fully apprehend the nature of microphysical causal structure, time-reversal invariance, and the relationship between Boltzmann entropy and the work of Rudolf Clausius.

_Unequivocal Justice_ challenges the prevailing view within political philosophy that broadly free market regimes are inconsistent with the basic principles of liberal egalitarian justice. Freiman argues that the liberal egalitarian rejection of free market regimes rests on a crucial methodological mistake. Liberal egalitarians regularly assume an ideal "public interest" model of political behavior and a nonideal "private interest" model of behavior in the market and civil society. Freiman argues that this asymmetrical application of behavioral assumptions biases the analysis and undercuts (...) ideal theoretical treatments of every major liberal egalitarian principle, including political liberty, economic sufficiency, fair opportunity, and social equality. This book reexamines the institutional implications of each of these principles in nonideal conditions, making novel philosophical use of political psychology and public choice economics along the way. (shrink)

From a corporate governance perspective, one of the most important jobs of a firm's top management team is to create and maintain a positive moral environment. Business ethics has long been considered a cornerstone in the field of strategic management and a number of scholars have called for more research in this area over the years. In this paper 658 articles that appeared in "Strategic Management Journal" over the 10-year period between 1996 and 2005 are reviewed for business ethics focus (...) and content. The results reveal that while business ethics research in "Strategic Management Journal" is on the rise, the overall focus on this research stream has been limited. The most prominent ethics theme during the review period was environmentalism, accounting for 30% of all ethics articles. Author affiliations, future research directions, and implications are also discussed. (shrink)

The debate over whether Frankfurt-style cases are counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities has taken an interesting turn in recent years. Frankfurt originally envisaged his attack as an attempting to show that PAP is false—that the ability to do otherwise is not necessary for moral responsibility. To many this attack has failed. But Frankfurtians have not conceded defeat. Neo-Frankfurtians, as I will call them, argue that the upshot of Frankfurt-style cases is not that PAP is false, but that it (...) is explanatorily irrelevant. Derk Pereboom and David Hunt’s buffer cases are tailor made to establish this conclusion. In this paper I come to the aid of PAP, showing that buffer cases provide no reason for doubting either its truth or relevance with respect to explaining an agent’s moral responsibility. (shrink)

This article examines caller responses to advice on three peer-run social support telephone lines for community mental health clients in the northeastern United States. Straightforward rejection of advice involves reports on past or current activities, known only to the caller, as a way of demonstrating one's competence in thinking up similar options. Straightforward acceptance of advice involves a report on activities the caller might do to adopt the advisable option. The most common responses, minimal acknowledgements, can potentially signify rejection, mere (...) recipiency, and/or acceptance of the advice. Contrary to previous studies, minimal acknowledgements can display hesitant acceptance when subsequently accompanied by descriptions of additional details about a present or future action tied to the advisable option. These methods for accepting and rejecting advice help callers balance their needs for assistance, friendship and autonomy. (shrink)

Francesco Berto proposed a logic for imaginative episodes. The logic establishes certain (in)validities concerning episodic imagination. They are not all equally plausible as principles of episodic imagination. The logic also does not model that the initial input of an imaginative episode is deliberately chosen.Stit-imagination logic models the imagining agent’s deliberate choice of the content of their imagining. However, the logic does not model the episodic nature of imagination. The present paper combines the two logics, thereby modelling imaginative episodes with deliberately (...) chosen initial input. We use a combination ofstit-imagination logic and a content-sensitive variably strict conditional à la Berto, for which we give a Chellas–Segerberg semantics. The proposed semantics has the following advantages over Berto’s: (i) we model thedeliberate choiceof initial input of imaginative episodes (in a multi-agent setting), (ii) we showframe correspondencesfor axiomatic analogues of Berto’s validities, which (iii) allows thepossibility to disregard axiomsthat might be considered not plausible as principles concerning imaginative episodes. We do not take a definite stance on whether theseshouldbe disregarded but give reasons for why one might want to disregard them. Finally, we compare our semantics briefly with recent work, which aims to model voluntary imagination, and argue that our semantics models different aspects. (shrink)

The global turn in media ethics has presented a tough challenge for traditional models of moral theory: How do we assert common moral standards while also showing respect for the values of those from outside the Western tradition? The danger lies in advocating for either extreme: reason-dependent absolutism or cultural relativism. In this paper, I reject Cliff Christian’s attempts to solve the problem and propose instead a moral theory of universal standards that are discovered via a mix of rationally grounded (...) methods. Such universality refutes relativism but, because it is grounded in evolutionary naturalism and life-world philosophy—as opposed to a Kantian or theological transcendentalism—it also avoids absolutism. (shrink)

Joseph Raz’s account of norms provides that a norm requiring an agent to φ is a reason to φ protected by an exclusionary reason not to act on some other reasons. I present a dilemma concerning the determination of the contents of this set of excluded reasons. The question is whether or not the set includes reasons that count in favour of φing. If the answer is yes, the account is committed to a picture of norms that seems inconsistent with (...) the phenomenology, in that it rules out acting on the very reasons on which the norm is based. If the answer is no, the account licenses a problematic form of double counting of reasons. I conclude that Raz’s protected reasons account of norms must be rejected, and tentatively suggest a solution to the problem posed by the dilemma. (shrink)

This essay aims to identify several related themes that regularly appear in posthumanist scholarship but which have not been theorized sufficiently, including the rhetoric of temporal and historical rupture, the logic of dialectical reversal, the effacement of human/animal difference, and above all the critical ascendancy of the term “posthumanism” itself. If one of the aims of posthumanism is to render the face of the human unknowable to itself, then to what extent does the human that re-names itself “posthuman” do so (...) in order to lay claim once again to a dubious self-knowledge? The rhetoric of posthumanism, moreover, implies a progressive narrative that ironically mirrors the Enlightenment principles of perfectibility that it would oppose. Drawing from Derrida’s notion of the “democracy to come,” I argue that the advent of the posthuman must always remain deferred. Just as the promise of democracy remains unfulfilled, the posthuman must infinitely postdate its arrival in any present. (shrink)

David Hume's relatively short essay 'Of the Standard of Taste' deals with some of the most difficult issues in aesthetic theory. Apart from giving a few pregnant remarks, near the end of his discussion, on the role of morality in aesthetic evaluation, Hume tries to reconcile the idea that tastes are subjective (in the sense of not being answerable to the facts) with the idea that some objects of taste are better than others. 'Tastes', in this context, are the pleasures (...) or displeasures that a person can take in the beauties of poems, paintings, and other artistic compositions (though Hume also wants to stress the continuities between tastes, so understood, and the bodily sense of taste). The position at which Hume arrives in the essay (despite some dialectical unclarity) is that some people – the 'true judges'– determine by their 'joint verdict' which works are meritorious. This solution continues to exercise a fascination, as does Hume's complicated route to it. Author Recommends: Paul Guyer, 'The Standard of Taste and the "Most Ardent Desire of Society" ', Values of Beauty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 37–76. This paper places 'Of the Standard of Taste' in an especially rich context, and asks why Hume concentrates on true judges instead of the improvement of one's own taste. Mary Mothersill, 'Hume: "Of the Standard of Taste" ', Beauty Restored (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 177–208. This chapter, embedded in an exposition of Mothersill's 'First Thesis' (the denial that there are principles of taste) and 'Second Thesis' (the affirmation that some judgments of taste are genuine judgments), gives a detailed running commentary on Hume's essay. A shorter self-contained version of the chapter appeared as 'Hume and the Paradox of Taste' in Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology , 2nd ed., eds. George Dickie, Richard Sclafani, and Ronald Roblin (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1989, 269–86). Jerrold Levinson, 'Hume's Standard of Taste: The Real Problem', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (2002): 227–38. An importance recent article, Levinson's piece argues that the 'real' difficulty with Hume's essay has gone unnoticed: why should I care about what Hume's true judges think? Christopher Williams, 'Some Questions in Hume's Aesthetics', Philosophy Compass 2/2 (2007). This article provides a brief overview of the topics discussed under weeks 3–5 in the sample syllabus below. It is intended to provide a roadmap for the particular set of readings listed there. David Wiggins, 'A Sensible Subjectivism?', Needs, Values, and Truth , 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 185–214. This is a stimulating paper in moral philosophy that treats Hume's essay on taste as a model for a serious subjectivism. Wiggins then presents his own brand of subjectivism as an alternative to Hume's. Online Materials: Hume's Aesthetics (Ted Gracyk): http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-aesthetics/ Sample Syllabus: Recommended background reading on Hume's historical context: Peter Kivy, The Seventh Sense: Francis Hutcheson and Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics , 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), especially Part III. Recommended background reading on the general topic of taste: David A. Whewell, 'Taste', Blackwell Companion to Aesthetics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 415–18. Dabney Townsend and Carolyn Korsmeyer, 'Taste', Encyclopedia of Aesthetics , ed. Michael Kelly (New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4:355–62. Ted Cohen, 'The Philosophy of Taste: Thoughts on the Idea', Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics , ed. Peter Kivy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 167–73. Week 1: Hume on beauty, art, and aesthetic judgment in the Treatise of Human Nature and the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals The following references are usable for any complete edition of the Treatise or Enquiry Treatise , 2.1.8 ('Of Beauty and Deformity') Treatise , 2.2.5 ('Of Our Esteem for the Rich and Powerful') Treatise , 2.2.8 ('Of Malice and Envy'), final three paragraphs Treatise , 2.2.11 ('Of the Amorous Passion, or Love Betwixt the Sexes') Treatise , 3.1.2 ('Moral Distinctions Deriv'd from a Moral Sense') Treatise , 3.3.1 ('Of the Origin of the Natural Virtues') Treatise , 3.3.5 ('Some Farther Reflexions Concerning the Natural Virtues') Enquiry , Appendix 1 ('Of moral sentiment') Week 2: Hume's essays Essays Moral, Political, and Literary , ed. Eugene Miller (Indianapolis, IN: LibertyClassics, 1985) is the most commonly used edition today. 'Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion' 'Of Eloquence' 'Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences' 'Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing' 'Of Tragedy' 'Of the Standard of Taste' Week 3: Circularity–Virtuous or Vicious? Peter Kivy, 'Hume's Standard of Taste: Breaking the Circle', British Journal of Aesthetics (1967): 57–66. David Wiggins, 'A Sensible Subjectivism?', Needs, Values, and Truth , 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 185–214. Week 4: Rules of Art Mary Mothersill, 'Hume: "Of the Standard of Taste" ', Beauty Restored (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), 177–208. James Shelley, 'Hume's Double Standard of Taste', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (1994): 437–45. Nick Zangwill, 'Hume, Taste, and Teleology', The Metaphysics of Beauty (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 149–65. Week 5: The True Judge Malcolm Budd, 'Hume and Kant', 'Hume's Standard of Taste', 'Hume and Human Nature', Values of Art (London: Allen Lane, 1995), 16–24 . Paul Guyer, 'The Standard of Taste and the "Most Ardent Desire of Society" ', Values of Beauty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 37–76. Jerrold Levinson, 'Hume's Standard of Taste: The Real Problem', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (2002): 227–38. Week 6: Moralism in Aesthetic Judgment: Hume and Beyond Kendall Walton, 'Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1994): 27–50. Richard Moran, 'The Expression of Feeling in Imagination', Philosophical Review (1994): 75–106. Tamar Szabo-Gendler, 'The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance', Journal of Philosophy (2000): 55–81. Focus Questions 1. How does Hume distinguish between matters of 'fact' and 'sentiment'? 2. What is a 'rule of art', and are there any rules? 3. Can a bad critic be 'silenced'? 4. What are the characteristics of good critics? 5. Should we expect good critics to agree on the merits of a work, and should I care about becoming a good critic myself? 6. Is it possible to distinguish variations in taste for which we should expect a standard and variations for which it is 'vain' to have such an expectation? 7. How is the excellence of a work related to the exercise of taste? 8. If a work of literature has a moral outlook that differs from our own, should we consider the work defective on literary grounds? (shrink)

Science’s theory of evolution purports to explain life and its historical dynamics in a physics/material-only fashion. But this entails a broad reliance on DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) for inheritance (and thus blueprints), which appears to be implausible for a number of unusual innate behaviors. The immediate unfolding challenge, though, is that the inheritance role is conveniently testable via searches for the DNA origins of a number of human behavioral and health tendencies, and despite enormous efforts those searches have thus far largely (...) failed (i.e., the “absolutely beyond belief” missing heritability problem). This existing case for DNA’s inadequacies will be briefly reviewed herein. The subsequent main analysis considers some big challenges facing DNA associated with some evolutionary dynamics—the acquisition of color vision in primates; instinctive behaviors including the egg-laying practices of emerald jewel wasps; kin selection; and our natural religious beliefs. Together these challenges strongly suggest that the acceptance of DNA as the (complete) language of life was premature. The haphazard and ambiguous nature of DNA/genetic specifications is very unlikely to have provided a vehicle for the exacting blueprints required for the many instinctive behaviors or capacities. Life appears to be more complex than biologists believe. Two possible alternative explanations are briefly considered in the wake of these discussions. Finally, does anyone—beginning with academics—care about this unfolding foundational failure? (shrink)

Through essays by some of hip-hop's most interesting thinkers, theorists, journalists, writers, emcees, and DJs, Boogie Down Predictions embarks on a quest to understand the connections between time, representation, and identity within hip-hop culture and what that means for the culture at large.

First Published in 2013. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper has three parts; in the first, I look at the question, recently dis­cussed by Mark Murphy, of the role that God plays as an explainer of moral­ity. I argue for a form of explanation that is different from Murphy’s, though I wonder whether there is disagreement here, or simply difference of empha­sis. In the second part, I ask what difference Christianity—and specifically the idea that the Kingdom of heaven is our natural ultimate end—makes to us, as practical and (...) moral agents. I will argue that it makes both a moti­vational and a substantive difference. In the third part I will ask about the way normativity is related to God’s communication of normative matters to us, and I will do this specifically by asking what kinds of speech acts God engages in in communicating normative matters to us. The standard view is that God communicates to us in commands; however, I will suggest some other possibilities. (shrink)

: A distinctive nonconsequentialist argument for criminalisation and punishment claims that the citizens of a state that did not criminalise serious mala in se perpetrated in its jurisdiction would be complicit in their commission. However, one objection to such an argument is that such citizens cannot be complicit because they play no causal role in the commission of the offence. Against this objection, I argue that causal contribution is unnecessary, and that one way in which a secondary agent can become (...) complicit in a principal’s wrongdoing is if they allow that wrongdoing to be carried out in a domain over which they have authority, and with their permission. As a result of giving permission, the agent shares in the principal’s blameworthiness. (shrink)

A work of remarkable cross-disciplinary scholarship, this volume illuminates the origins of the human sciences and offers a new view of the Enlightenment that ...

If one were to write a book titled TheVarieties of Self-Consciousness, one would start off with some distinctions. It will help to locate my topic in relation to those distinctions.The first distinction concerns that kind of self-consciousness which involves only the minimal ability on the part of a subject to self-represent, to be in mental states with first person content, be it conceptual or nonconceptual. This minimal ability involves very little as compared with the more sophisticated states of which humans (...) are capable. First person content can be present in the perceptual states of a creature capable of representing only some of its physical states and its relations to the physical environment, and not capable of representing anything beyond that. So the first distinction is between this minimal case, and richer varieties of self-consciousness. Some writers use ‘self-conscious’ to apply to a subject who is in any mental state involving first person content, and so they would appl. (shrink)

Comparatives are among the most extensively investigated constructions in generative grammar, yet comparatives involving attributive adjectives have received a relatively small amount of attention. This paper investigates a complex array of facts in this domain that shows that attributive comparatives, unlike other comparatives, are well-formed only if some type of ellipsis operation applies within the comparative clause. Incorporating data from English, Polish, Czech, Greek, and Bulgarian, we argue that these facts support two important conclusions. First, violations of Ross’s Left Branch (...) Condition that involve attributive modifiers should not be accounted for in terms of constraints on LF representations (such as the Empty Category Principle), but rather in terms of the principle of Full Interpretation at the PF interface. Second, ellipsis must be analyzed as deletion of syntactic material from the phonological representation. In addition, we present new evidence from pseudogapping constructions that favors an articulated syntax of attributive modification in which certain types of attributive modifiers may occur outside DP. (shrink)

Within this paper I draw on short vignettes and quotes taken from a two-year ethnographic study of boxing to think through the continuing academic merit of the notion of the male preserve. This is an important task due to evidence of shifts in social patterns of gender that have developed since the idea was first proposed in the 1970s. In aligning theoretical contributions from Lefebvre and Butler to discussions of the male preserve, we are able to add nuance to our (...) understanding of how such social spaces are engrained with and produced by the lingering grasp of patriarchal narratives. In particular, by situating the male preserve within shifting social processes, whereby certain men’s power is increasingly undermined, I highlight the production of space within which narratives connecting men to violence, aggression, and physical power can be consumed, performed, and reified in a relatively unrestricted form. This specific case study contributes to gender theory as an illustration of a way in which we might explore and understand social enclaves where certain people are able to lay claim to space and power. As such, I argue that the notion of the male preserve is still a useful conceptual, theoretical, and political device, especially when considered as produced by the tyranny of gender power through the dramatic representation and reification of behaviors symbolically linked to patriarchal narrations of manhood. (shrink)

The third volume in the Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers.

Oakeshott's tradition-centric account of rational-ity in Rationalism in Politics is usually considered in its capac-ity as a major part of his political philosophy, forming as it does so the constructive part of his critique of 'rationalism'. The present article, in contrast, considers it as a methodologi-cal notion, since it forms too the core of a theory of rational explanation that is at the same time a theory of social expla-nation. In this, Oakeshott argues that the sociologist or politi-cal scientist explains (...) human behaviour by identifying the reasons for her subjects doing what they did, with the right kind of reasons being those that concern not any expressed motivations on the original agents' part, but how they could only have acted relative to a certain 'tradition'. Seeking to both expound and analyse Oakeshott's theory, this article high-lights how it involves a not uncontroversial 'externalist' con-ception of practical reason that, nonetheless, is open to sympathetic reconstruction. Even so, the imperialistic preten-sions of Oakeshott's argument--and in particular, his claim that his tradition-centric conception of rational explanation is fundamentally superior to its more orthodox 'instrumentalist' rival--is found questionable, the sheer variety of his own examples misleading him about his theory's real scope. (shrink)

Perhaps we should change our focus from constitutionalized practices of democracy to democratized practices of constitutionalism. Dworkin and Perry both seek to respond to democratic objections to judicial review by relying on a theory of the legitimacy constraints of democracy itself. According to this view, on some matters, legitimate democracy requires getting the right moral answers. Thus democratic processes must be constitutionalized to ensure such right outcomes on fundamental moral matters. To the extent that judges are better positioned to engage (...) in principled moral reasoning, the arguments continue, we ought to entrust them with ensuring the constitutionalized legitimacy conditions of democracy. I argued that this latter institutional move, however, threatened to simply revive the paternalist worries forcefully articulated by Learned Hand. Waldron’s rights-based objection to rightsbased judicial review, although not dispositive, provided further warning of the moral costs of treating fellow citizens as incapable of reasoning together about the content and proper scope of the legal rights required for democracy. An alternative strategy for justifying judicial review that this chapter investigates is to understand a constitution itself as a product of true democracy, of real popular sovereignty. It is then up to the people, exercising their constituent power at the level of a constitutional assembly, to decide what particular institutional arrangements will best carry forward their collective ideals and decisions. The specific character and structure of those arrangements—whether they are populist or elitist, deliberative or aggregative, sensitive or insulated, electorally accountable or politically independent, and so on—is then a secondary matter. What is central is that the constitutional arrangements the people decide on are, first and foremost, democratically legitimated by the fact that they are the result of authentic popular sovereignty.. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the empirical phenomenon of large multinational corporations acquiring socially oriented enterprises, such as the Unilever–Ben & Jerry’s, and the L`Oréal-The Body Shop takeovers. When focusing on these cases, we argue that variance in organisational identity orientations, as the dominant logic of managers within the acquiring organisations, determines whether MNCs consider the transaction not only in financial terms, but also decide to adopt “social technology” in the form of CSR-related organisational practices from the acquired unit. We (...) argue that in turn based on a “match” with the organisational identity of the acquired unit, managers will opt to adopt CSR practices more fully or selectively, and in more substantial or symbolic ways. With these propositional arguments we not only aim to contribute to the literature on CSR adoption by MNCs, but we also set out to develop theory on the widespread but so far undocumented phenomenon of MNCs “buying CSR” by acquiring socially oriented enterprises. (shrink)

Some commentators have argued that there is no room in Aristotle's natural science for simple, or unconditional, physical necessity, for the only necessity that governs all natural substances is hypothetical and teleological. Against this view I argue that, according to Aristotle, there are two types of unconditional physical necessity at work in the material elements, the one teleological, governing their natural motions, and the other non-teleological, governing their physical interaction. I argue as well that these two types of simple necessity (...) also govern everything made out of the elements, that is, all other natural substances and artifacts. (shrink)

We present a system for deciding whether a given sentence can be inferred from text. Each sentence is represented as a directed graph (extracted from a dependency parser) in which the nodes represent words or phrases, and the links represent syntactic and semantic relationships. We develop a learned graph matching model to approximate entailment by the amount of the sentence’s semantic content which is contained in the text. We present results on the Recognizing Textual Entailment dataset (Dagan et al., 2005), (...) and show that our approach outperforms Bag- Of-Words and TF-IDF models. (shrink)

This paper examines Rorty's notion of philosophy as cultural politics. Highlighting its explicitly Deweyan origins, I trace this idea to Rorty's call in the 1970s for philosophers to be more involved in the cause of enlarging human freedom. Rorty brings philosophy into his project of expanding the conversation beyond the West to include excluded voices through literature and narrative. After underscoring Rorty's important contributions, I argue that rather than merely assimilating non-Western voices to "our" conversation, cultural politics demands that privileged (...) philosophers start joining the conversations of others. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the almost forgotten early dissertation of the phenomenologist Hans Reiner Freiheit, Wollen und Aktivität. Phänomenologische Untersuchungen in Richtung auf das Problem der Willensfreiheit engages with what I call the unity problem of activity. This problem concerns the question whether there is a structure in virtue of which all instances of human activity—and not only “full-blown” intentional actions—can be unified. After a brief systematic elucidation of this problem, which is closely related to the contemporary “problem (...) of action,” I elaborate and critically discuss two relevant threads running through Reiner’s work. The first view concerns the alleged motivational asymmetry between activity and passivity according to which it is essential only for active experiences to be motivated by an underlying passivity. The second view focuses on Reiner’s phenomenology of the will, especially on his notions of “ego-centrality” and “inner will” the latter being introduced in analogy to Brentano’s notion of “inner consciousness.” These two notions are supposed to unify all manifestations of the human will, including “full-blown” intentional actions and non-intentional doings such as laughter. Reiner’s extension of will-based actions to non-intentional activity is one of the most remarkable aspects of his early work. Finally, I show that Reiner ultimately answers the unity problem in the negative because he ends up with the view that besides will-based agency he also acknowledges so-called “motor activity” which is not intrinsically related to the will. I close with a couple of tentative proposals how volitional and motor actions might be unified nonetheless. (shrink)