Property rights are the rules governing ownership in society. This Element offers an analytical framework to understand the origins and consequences of property rights. It conceptualizes of the political economy of property rights as a concern with the follow questions: What explains the origins of economic and legal property rights? What are the consequences of different property rights institutions for wealth creation, conservation, and political order? Why do property institutions change? Why do legal reforms relating to property rights such as (...) land redistribution and legal titling improve livelihoods in some contexts but not others? In analyzing property rights, the authors emphasize the complementarity of insights from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, including Austrian economics, public choice, and institutional economics, including the Bloomington School of institutional analysis and political economy. (shrink)

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...

Recreational Drugs European Network (ReDNet) project aims to use the Psychonaut Web Mapping Project database (Psychonaut Web Mapping Group, 2009) containing novel psychoactive compounds usually not mentioned in the scientific literature and thus unknown to clinicians as a unique source of information. The database will be used to develop an integrated ICT prevention approach targeted at vulnerable individuals and focused on novel synthetic and herbal compounds and combinations. Particular care will be taken in keeping the health professionals working directly with (...) young people showing problematic behaviors regularly updated in terms of novel compounds and combinations as well. A user-friendly project website will be developed aimed primarily at delivering the information/prevention approaches, but will also be a way of communicating with project partners and relevant stakeholders (e.g. thematic forum facilities, instant messages, blogs, video chat, wikiblog, newsletters distributed via mailing list). The website will support various ICT prevention tools, including an SMS alert service. Different areas and sections will be aimed specifically at the different target groups. -/- . (shrink)

This novel's plot, if one may speak of a plot, appears to have been hatched, if one may speak of something not an egg being hatched, at Oxford. The plotters, who have unlikely names even for plotters, met in Wellington Square, a place I know well. I once drank whiskey in the afternoon there with Jane Minto, as likely a character as any in a city that breeds characters (as any follower of Inspector Morse will know). The plotters, however, drank (...) tea, from a tin teapot, while wearing wellingtons. Making something up is, in general, not that hard; making something up about Kurt Schwitters is, because his life itself was so abundant a collage. I once met a woman in front of one of his portraits: “That's me,” she said, “but I never liked it; nor did my husband; we put it under the bed.” She could have appeared in this novel but does not. Plenty of others do—relations and friends of the inventor of Merz.Merz was a fragment, a piece of Humpty Dumpty who fell off the wall in 1914 and could not be put together again. Not for want of trying by the likes of El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin, Ivan Puni, and Schwitters, especially the last, collecting the Dumpty pieces into a Merzbau that was no more than an assemblage—not a Gesamtkunstwerk and not a cathedral, but what in England was once called a PreFab, a hopeful gesture in an age of helplessness. Schwitters was a collector of the discarded, of the disregarded, of the unregarded, and out of the debris he made beauty. He made poetry (if poetry it may be called) out of sounds, noises sounding in the ear like those made by the guns that had daily blown men, women, and horses to pieces.Clearly, Draesner, the author of this novel, has been totally beSchwittered. I myself became so at Oxford in 1959 and have never wavered in my beSchwitterment, albeit adding over the years beBeuysment, beFluxusment, and beKieferment to my inventory. Thus beSchwittered, I have been a pilgrim to Cylinders, though not finding it; to the grave at Ambleside, with no body in it; to Wordsworth's cottage, where I left my book of Kurt's poems; and to Hannover, to be photographed on Schwitters Square. Kurt's Hannover might have been Hanover (with a single n) had not Bismarck stolen it; Bomber Harris might, in that case, have thought twice about bombing it; and we might not have been asking of this Scheinkünstlerroman how German is it, but instead telling ourselves just how English it is. (shrink)

"There is in Ethicks as in most Sciences," Thomas Reid told the students in his moral philosophy class, "a Speculative and a practical Part. … The proper object of the Theory of Morals is to explain the Constitution of the human Mind so far as regards Morals, that is to explain the Moral and active Powers of the human Mind." He continued: "The various Theorists disagree not about what is to be accounted virtuous Conduct but why it is so to (...) be accounted." It was as a theorist of morals that, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith distinguished between the questions of, first, what virtue consists in, and, secondly, "by what... (shrink)

Contemporary theories of civic education frequently appeal to an ideal of mutual respect in the context of ethical, ethical and religious disagreement. This paper critically examines two recently popular criticisms of this ideal. The first, coming from a postmodern direction, charges that the ideal is hypocritical in its effort to be maximally impartial and fair. The second, which I associate with such 'new atheists' as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, argues that notions of mutual respect pose a threat to (...) such basic goals of education as the cultivation of critical thinking. (shrink)

This paper provides a critical commentary on the claim advanced by Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift in their book Family Values: The Ethics of Parent–Child Relationships that there is an ineliminable conflict between relationship goods and fair equality of opportunity. I argue there need be no conflict between family values and equality of opportunity in a suitably non-hierarchical society. I also argue that the idea that equality of opportunity might be served by abolishing the family is mistaken. Egalitarian justice does (...) not provide an obstacle to the realization of family values. (shrink)

John Yoo, War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006, pp. 224.

There is a popular and widely accepted version of the precautionary principle which may be expressed thus: “If you are in a hole—stop digging!”. Tom Baldwin, as Deputy Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority , may be excused for rushing to the defence of the indefensible,1 the HFEA’s sex selection report,2 but not surely for recklessly abandoning so prudent a principle. Baldwin has many complaints about my misrepresenting the HFEA and about my supposed elitist contempt for public opinion; (...) readers of this exchange will decide for themselves.REDRAFTING THE REPORTBaldwin begins with a piece of wishful thinking:"Harris objects that in this recommendation “an absurdly high standard of caution is employed”, since a theoretical risk is associated with almost all medical procedures. This objection is misplaced: as paragraph 142 of the report indicates, the phrase “theoretical risk” is to be understood here in the light of the earlier discussion of the risks arising from the fact that flow cytometry exposes sperm to laser energy, a procedure which is known to be liable to damage DNA."Paragraph 142 does not make that clear. It does indeed refer back to a set of earlier paragraphs but these give, if anything, an upbeat assessment of the safety of flow cytometry. Paragraph 121 states: “However whilst potentially less intrusive, and with potentially lower risk to the health of patients, flow cytometry …” .2 But even if the overall burden of the report does indicate unresolved fears, the standard is still absurdly high. However, so far from endorsing the report’s judgement that flow cytometry has “potentially lower risk to the health of patients”, Baldwin now regards the risk of flow cytometry as “serious”1:"Since the application of flow cytometry to humans is a new procedure, the risk of … ". (shrink)

This paper begins by attempting to define midrash as a distinct genre of classical rabbinic literature in order to understand the significance of the term in contemporary discourse. It will then examine what Jewish feminists mean when they apply the term, midrash, to their work and consider the extent to which such appropriation is useful or reasonable. The paper will then outline, with my own suggestions, how midrash might be usefully appropriated for feminist ends and the paper will conclude with (...) a concrete example. (shrink)

Nineteen obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the British Academy: W S Allen; George Anderson; A C de la Mare; John Flemming; James Harris; John Hurst; Casimir Lewy; Donald MacDougall; Colin Matthew; Edward Miller; Michio Morishima; Brian Reddaway; Marjorie Reeves; C Martin Robertson; Conrad Russell, and Arnold Taylor.

Nineteen obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the British Academy: W S Allen; George Anderson; A C de la Mare; John Flemming; James Harris; John Hurst; Casimir Lewy; Donald MacDougall; Colin Matthew; Edward Miller; Michio Morishima; Brian Reddaway; Marjorie Reeves; C Martin Robertson; Conrad Russell, and Arnold Taylor.

In this article, I respond to Augustin Fragnière's recent attempt to understand the demandingness of individual climate duties by appealing to the difference between “concentrated” harm and “spread” harm and the importance of “moral thresholds”. I suggest his arguments don't succeed in securing the conclusion he is after, even from within his own commitments, which themselves are problematic. As this is primarily a critical project, the upshot of this discussion is that if there is a defensible way to justify the (...) intuition that the duty to reduce emissions can't be overly demanding, it has to be found elsewhere. (shrink)

American Journal of Bioethics, Bioethics, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Journal of Medical Ethics, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Nursing Ethics, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics.

Offers a description of what happens to survivors after a death, based on the effect this death has on the survivor's relation to the spatial and temporal world occupied after the loss of the deceased.

A source of profound insights into human existence and the nature of lived experience, phenomenology is among the most influential intellectual movements of the last hundred years. The Oxford Handbook of the Phenomenology of Music Cultures brings ideas from the phenomenological tradition of Continental European philosophy into conversation with theoretical, ethnographic, and historical work from ethnomusicology, anthropology, sound studies, folklore studies, and allied disciplines to develop new perspectives on musical practices and auditory cultures.

Mass incarceration in the United States of America, Palestine/Israel in a renewed war since October 7, 2023, and displacement of the underclass in nation-states throughout the planet—these are moral situations of group conflicts and catastrophes at national and international levels. These three situations are our main practical points of reflection for moral inquiry and criticism. We discuss these three moral situations of group conflict and catastrophes in the context of critical pragmatism, largely following and analyzing the moral philosophy of critical (...) pragmatist Alain LeRoy Locke (1885—1954). There is also an emphasis on the moral imperative against necro-being—experiencing living death and being prevented, especially by social conditions, from leading good lives. Necro-being should be eradicated in all its forms. Racism explains the experience of destruction in our lives when race is invoked in its most pernicious forms. Racism is a type of necro-being. Universal human liberation from necro-being is a laudable goal every nation on the planet should pursue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Conflict, Culture, Change: Engaged Buddhism in a Globalizing WorldMarwood Larson-HarrisConflict, Culture, Change: Engaged Buddhism in a Globalizing World. By Sulak Sivaraksa. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005. 145 pp.Sulak Sivaraksa's Conflict, Culture, Change is a useful if uneven collection of essays that touch on many of the basic aspects of Engaged Buddhism. The book does not make an original contribution to the field, yet it serves as a good introduction (...) to the tenets and practice of socially responsible Buddhism.Though not as prolific as Thich Nhat Hanh or the Dalai Lama, Sulak Sivaraksa's contributions as a grassroots organizer and spokesperson are widely recognized, and he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his resistance to Thailand's military dictatorship. His few books bear witness to the ways that he and similar peacemakers have found innovative methods to prevent globalization from destroying traditional ways of life.It does not seem entirely relevant to criticize a book that is so well intentioned and written by such an exemplary human being. Nonetheless, Conflict, Culture, Change is an odd collection of essays. Most have been published elsewhere, and taken together they tend to be repetitive. They are loosely grouped into three sections; the first two—"Peace, Nonviolence, and Social Justice" and "Simplicity, Compassion, and Education"—lay out a range of ways that classic Theravada Buddhist values could bring sanity to a world out of balance, discussing global conflict, nonviolence, reconciliation, consumerism, and environmentalism. What ties them together is the use of Buddhist ideas to analyze and respond to current problems, but the ensuing discussion does not progress beyond an introductory level. While it is certainly true that the onslaught of capitalism is traceable to the three poisons (greed, hatred, and ignorance) and that sincere humility on the part of world leaders would help facilitate global diplomacy, [End Page 166] this kind of analysis will probably not convince anyone who is not already a fellow traveler.Indeed, some scholars have waited for the leaders of Engaged Buddhism to articulate a more consistent philosophical basis for their praxis. In some ways, this criticism is ironic. After all, the energies of Engaged Buddhism are appropriately directed toward action and not theory, and Sivaraksa and others rightly criticize the single-minded pursuit of meditation unless it is balanced by an active response to social problems. Sivaraksa is careful to balance these dimensions, arguing that either one without the other is unable to bring about real change. He also combines classical Buddhist concepts with modern approaches—liberation theology, for example. What is needed, in this regard, is a more sustained exploration of where precisely traditional Buddhism can be supplemented by modern critical discourse without losing its nature as a dharma-based soteriology. On the other hand, if Sivaraksa's book were more focused on practical steps and concrete agendas, it could have served as a blueprint for organizers. That it does neither philosophy nor pragmatics limits its shelf life.A third section, "Culture and Change," is the book's most coherent, focusing on Thailand and the rise and fall of its dictatorships and the decline of Thai Buddhism. Sivaraksa's many stories attest to an all-too-common dynamic in South Asian Theravada countries: monks becoming politically powerful and their spiritual discipline waning. Sivaraksa also finds reason for hope: some Buddhists have remained true to the values of simplicity and humility, and new movements have arisen to help the old culture resist the new. At times his descriptions seem, at least to the Western reader, to border on a romantic nostalgia for an agrarian, temple-centered past, when monks were the revered authorities in their villages and families sent their sons to be ordained early. Now, he points out, many monks have VCRs and air conditioning and sleep on "soft, fluffy mattresses." Sivaraksa's book vividly conveys the cultural memory of rural Thailand to the West, and one would want all CEOs of multinational companies to read these stories before they set about modernizing the Thai countryside. Yet modernity cannot be uninvented; there can be no return to the simplicity of yesterday. After an extended chapter describing how the Thai elites' fascination... (shrink)

The Coherence Theory of Truth does not stand upon its own feet; it is the corollary of a metaphysic, without which it has no claim to credence and is without cogency. Likewise, no critique of the theory can have weight against it if it merely assumes an incompatible metaphysic which it does not validate and unless it can demonstrate the falsity of that on which the Coherence Theory rests. If metaphysics is simply a matter of taste and temperament discussion and (...) criticism become futile, but that metaphysics is simply a matter of taste and sentiment is an exploded doctrine. It can obviously not be maintained because it rests upon a metaphysic in its turn, for it follows from the belief that the world and the human mind are such that we can acquire knowledge of facts originally only through particular sense impressions which can never by their nature convey to us ultimate general truths about reality. This is a metaphysical presupposition and is thus incompetent to extrude metaphysics from the sphere of rational knowledge. (shrink)

The explicit ambition of this collection is to move `beyond' the Universal Pragmatics of Jurgen Habermas.

An interaction paradigm continues to predominate in social communication models to this day and yet often tends to be heavily intuitive, epistemologically conservative and acritical. This article seeks to examine some of the implications for our intuitive understanding of interaction when greater instability is introduced into social communication theory where communication is conceptualized as a complex uncertainty. The theoretical architecture of this undertaking is in itself interdisciplinary, comprising concepts from the fields of social theory, logic, information theory and constructivism. In (...) these interdisciplinary considerations, interaction is conceptualized as a fictional construction and thus disabused of the strong transcendental claims which accompany concepts of dialogism, consensus or intersubjectivity. Whereas uncertainty is customarily seen as the opposite of rational inclusive communication and a risk to be somehow avoided, this article explores a different theoretical modelling of the relationship between uncertainty and social communication. Here, communication is conceived as an extremely precarious undertaking. This very precariousness is a fact of everyday life where communication is social construction in progress and norms are constantly regenerated, negotiated and challenged. (shrink)

In this essay I set out to problematize the concepts of intersubjectivity and interaction in the theories of Germany's two foremost social philosophers: Jiirgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann. To do so, I shall briefly reconstruct Husserl's phenomenological concept of intersubjectivity and its relationship with rational horizons and lifeworlds. I shall then demonstrate the importance of Husserl's thought in the theory of (rational) communicative action in Habermas. The third section deals with the radical rethinking of the subject (and hence intersubjectivity) in (...) the theory of Niklas Luhmann. My principal question will then be: is it possible to reconcile critical theory with systems theory? Or, alternatively: is intersubjectivity a reality or a useful fiction? (shrink)

In bringing intentions, understandings, meanings and interactions down to earth this book invites its readers to account for the complex communications between ...

The recovery of theological integrity effected by Karl Barth has very much to do with his polemic against natural theology. Theology has regained credibility, however, at the price of being made unnatural, severed from the world in its own ecclesiastical sphere. This actually represents an indirect endorsement of natural theology inasmuch as the naturalistic understanding of the world is taken for granted as the way the world is. One result of this is the virtual abandonment of nature for theology, reflected (...) in an alienation from science and a disinterest in ecology. The more specific object of Barth's critique of natural theology, Nazism, may also exert a reverse influence on Barth's theology, helping to account for its Christological exclusivism. The implication of this is that the critique of natural theology requires a renewed appreciation of the naturalness of theology. (shrink)