The success of movies like The Artist and Hugo recreated the wonder and magic of silent film for modern audiences, many of whom might never have experienced a movie without sound. But while the American silent movie was one of the most significant popular art forms of the modern age, it is also one that is largely lost to us, as more than eighty percent of silent films have disappeared, the victims of age, disaster, and neglect. We now know about (...) many of these cinematic masterpieces only from the collections of still portraits and production photographs that were originally created for publicity and reference. Capturing the beauty, horror, and moodiness of silent motion pictures, these images are remarkable pieces of art in their own right. In the first history of still camera work generated by the American silent motion picture industry, David S. Shields chronicles the evolution of silent film aesthetics, glamour, and publicity, and provides unparalleled insight into this influential body of popular imagery. Exploring the work of over sixty camera artists, Still recovers the stories of the photographers who descended on early Hollywood and the stars and starlets who sat for them between 1908 and 1928. Focusing on the most culturally influential types of photographs—the performer portrait and the scene still—Shields follows photographers such as Albert Witzel and W. F. Seely as they devised the poses that newspapers and magazines would bring to Americans, who mimicked the sultry stares and dangerous glances of silent stars. He uncovers scene shots of unprecedented splendor—visions that would ignite the popular imagination. And he details how still photographs changed the film industry, whose growing preoccupation with artistry in imagery caused directors and stars to hire celebrated stage photographers and transformed cameramen into bankable names. Reproducing over one hundred and fifty of these gorgeous black-and-white photographs, Still brings to life an entire long-lost visual culture that a century later still has the power to enchant. (shrink)

In anticipation of extraterritorial application of antiabortion laws, many states have enacted laws that attempt to shield abortion providers, helpers, and patients from civil, professional, or criminal liability associated with legal abortion care. This essay analyzes and compares the statutory schemes of the seven early adopting shield states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. After describing what the laws do and how they operate, we offer reflections on coming disputes, areas of legal uncertainty, and ways to (...) improve future shield laws. (shrink)

One way to determine whether a mental condition should be considered a disorder is to first give necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a disorder and then see if it meets these conditions. But this approach has been criticized for begging normative questions. Concerning autism (and other conditions), a neurodiversity movement has arisen with essentially two aims: (1) advocate for the rights and interests of individuals with autism, and (2) de-pathologize autism. We argue that denying autism’s disorder status (...) could undermine autism’s exculpatory role in cases where individuals with autism are charged with a crime. Our argument raises a dilemma for the neurodiversity movement: advocating for the rights and interests of individuals with autism may require viewing autism as a condition that can be inherently disabling (at least for some individuals). If this is right, autism’s disorder status might be maintained (again, at least for some individuals) without deriving this result from any general account of disorder. (shrink)

This collection of original articles draws from a cross section of distinguished scholars of ancient Greek philosophy. It is focussed primarily on the philosophy of Aristotle but comprises as well studies of the philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Epicurus. Its authors explore a range of complementary topics in value theory, moral psychology, metaphysics, natural philosophy, political theory, and methodology, highlighting the rich and lasting philosophical contributions of the thinkers investigated. Opening with an engaging intellectual autobiography of its honoree, Fred D. (...) Miller, Jr., the volume offers treatments of Socrates as a citizen; Plato’s attitude towards poetry; Socratic self-knowledge; Plato’s conception of law in his Republic; explorations of reason, goodness, and moral conduct in Plato; Platonic metaphysics; Aristotelian causation; Aristotelian metaphysics and normativity; natural philosophy in Aristotle; Aristotelian logic; political theory and approaches to justice in Aristotle’s Politics; methodological reflections on how best to approach Aristotle’s indefensible ideas; and closes with a reconsideration of Epicurus on death and the art of dying. Altogether, the volume reflects the richness of the ongoing community of philosophical scholars dedicated to reconstructing, assessing, and criticizing the principal philosophers of the ancient world, whose epoch-forming explorations of the key elements of human life—considered socially, politically, psychologically, and metaphysically—remain topics of lively investigation today. It will be of interest to philosophers of many stripes, including those with a primary interest in ancient philosophy but extending as well to those with systematic interests in the themes it explores. This volume will be a valuable addition to all libraries serving communities dedicated to researching and studying the origins of Western philosophy. (shrink)

Life Is Short--Art Is Shorter is not just the first anthology to gather both mini-essays and short-short stories; readers, writers, and teachers will get will get an anthology; a course's worth of writing exercises; a rally for compression, concision, and velocity in an increasingly digital, post-religious age; and a meditation on the brevity of human existence. 1. We are mortal beings. 2. There is no god. 3. We live in a digital culture. 4. Art is related to the body and (...) to the culture. 5. Art should reflect these things. 6. Brevity rules. The book's 40 contributors include Donald Barthelme, Kate Chopin, Lydia Davis, Annie Dillard, Jonathan Safran Foer, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid, Wayne Koestenbaum, Anne Lamott, Daphne Merkin, Rick Moody, Dinty W. Moore, George Orwell, Jayne Anne Phillips, George Saunders, Lauren Slater, James Tate, and Paul Theroux. (shrink)

My purpose in this essay is to provide a critical survey of arguments within recent analytic philosophy regarding the so-called “mind-body problem” with a particular view toward the relationship between these arguments and the philosophy of A.N. Whitehead (and Charles Hartshorne’s closely related views).1In course, I shall argue that Whitehead’s panexperientialist physicalism avoids paradoxes and difficulties of both materialist-physicalism and Cartesian dualismas advocated by a variety of analytic philosophers. However, and I believe that this point is not often sufficiently recognized, (...) analytic philosophy of mind is no monolith, and there are those who have found some form of panexperientialism to be attractive enough to merit serious consideration or even full-fledgedacceptance (David Chalmers, Thomas Nagel, Ralph Pred, William Seager, and Galen Strawson among them). A critical discussion of such thinkers should beincluded in any adequate survey of the relation between process panexperientialism and the analytic tradition. Moreover, the revisionary strain of the analyticaltradition which looks to natural science for its construction of worldviews (Broad, Russell, Bunge, Carnap, Quine, etc.) would move us in the direction of examining arguments concerning Whitehead’s view and contemporary empirical scientific considerations. (For a discussion of the basic nature of analytic philosophy and the descriptive and revisionary approaches contained within it, see my Process and Analysis, 5-9, 12-13, 57; and McHenry.) Here I shall argue that Whiteheadian panexperientialism very naturally accommodates important aspects of quantum theory, including the top-down causation involved in neuroplastic phenomena under a quantum mechanical interpretation of brain processes and in so-called Quantum Zeno Effect. The overall picture which emerges is that Whitehead’s position is (at the very least) a strongly plausible alternative in philosophy of mind.While I must confess that this essay can only represent the merest sketch—indeed an adequate treatment of the richly complex interpretive, comparative, and substantive philosophical issues here requires at the very least a monograph—I nonetheless hope to present a coherent and useful précis of major arguments and comparative conceptual relationships, especially for the reader who may not be readily familiar with this terrain. I thus hope that this essay will serve as a short expository and critical introduction to the interface between process and analytic philosophy of mind, and a presentation of the several theoretical advantages gained by listening to Whitehead’s theory as it connects with concerns of analytic philosophers.I shall proceed by first working though the main outlines of John Searle’s important and widely reaching “The Recent History of Materialism,” an essay which exposes critical flaws in a variety of materialist theories in ways which Whiteheadians should find especially fitting and congenial. I shall then examine defenses of dualism and the relation of Whitehead to such defenses, followed by a separate section on Chalmers, Nagel, and Pred. I will then consider a number ofimportant objections to process panexperientialism, including objections arising from the work of Jaegwon Kim and John Searle. I close with a discussion of thementioned empirical scientific arguments. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Analytic philosophers have criticized A. N. Whitehead's metaphysics for being obscure, yet several such philosophers have espoused positions in metaphysics and philosophy of mind that were advanced by Whitehead in the 1920s. In this paper, we evaluate the merits and demerits of these criticisms by Bertrand Russell, W. V. Quine, Karl Popper, and others and then demonstrate the affinities and contrasts in the positions advanced by Galen Strawson, David Chalmers, Thomas Nagel, and Whitehead regarding so-called ‘analytic panexperientialism’.

Is it possible for a liberal society to have an established church? After outlining the conditions for liberal establishment, I take from David Hume a secular argument in its favour that points to the moderating effect of establishment on religious discourse and practice. I examine the claim that state support for religion violates liberal equality, and argue that, with respect to state-provided public goods generally, what matters is that the whole package should be of roughly equal benefit to each (...) citizen; it is not required that every citizen should value each distinct good. I claim that religious establishment can have valuable effects for both believers and non-believers, and thereby count as a public good. I then examine the charge that establishment always conveys a message of disparagement to those outside the favoured church, making them into second-class citizens, as both Martha Nussbaum and Cécile Laborde have claimed. Understood as a claim about the experience of minority groups, however, it is unsupported by empirical evidence. Understood as an interpretative claim about the meaning of establishment, it fails to distinguish between privileging an institution and privileging the people attached to it. Finally, I point out that religious minorities may favour an established church as a shield against the pervasive secularism of most modern liberal societies. (shrink)

With reference to the virtue-ethics tradition, especially the system of St. Thomas Aquinas, this essay interprets the pentangle emblazoned on Gawain’s shield as symbolizing the perfection of interconnected virtues, and the Green Knight as figuring Christ in his martyrdom. Linking these two strands of meaning is the Thomist idea of fortitude, the virtue under particular scrutiny in the poem. Gawain fulfills the secondary part of fortitude, attack, while the Green Knight fulfills the primary part, endurance, and is identified with Christ. (...) His axe, holly bob, and green coloration, and even his menacing aspect, all foster this significance. (shrink)

One of the standard objections against the impossibility of infinite regress is associated with David Hume and Paul Edwards, but originates with William Ockham. They claim that in an infinite regress every member of the series is explained, and nothing is unexplained. Every member is explained by the one before it, and the series as a whole is nothing over and above its members, and so needs no cause of its own. Utilizing the well-known Thomistic distinction between essentially ordered (...) and accidentally ordered causal series, I show that the Hume-Edwards-Ockham objection fails to touch Aquinas’s argument against the impossibility of infinite regress in an essentially ordered series. However, Aquinas also argues that accidentally ordered causal series can only regress infinitely if supported by an everlasting essential cause. The Hume-Edwards-Ockham objection does raise a question about this thesis, but I show how St. Thomas can reply to it convincingly. (shrink)

‘Hoplites are troops who take their name from their shields’. ‘The individual infantryman took his name, hoplites, from the hoplon or shield’. Such is the orthodox view. This paper will endeavour to show that its basis is inadequate. Rather, we shall argue, hoplites took their name from their arms and armour as a whole, their hopla in that all-encompassing sense; so that the original and essential meaning of the word hoplite was nothing more than ‘armed man’.

Early in this volume, David Ehrenfeld describes what prophecy really is. Referring to the biblical prophets, he says they were not the "holy fortunetellers that the word prophet has come to signify....The business of prophecy is not simply foretelling the future; rather it is describing the present with exceptional truthfulness and accuracy." Once this is done, then it can be seen that broad aspects of the future have suddenly become apparent. The twentieth century is drawing to a chaotic close (...) amidst portents of unprecedented change and upheaval. The unravelling of societies and civilizations and the destruction of nature march together--linked--a fact whose enormous significance is often lost. In Beginning Again, David Ehrenfeld has undertaken the difficult task of describing the present clearly enough to reveal the future. Out of his broad vision emerges a glimpse of a new millennium: a vision at once frightening and comforting, a scene of great devastation and great rebuilding. Ehrenfeld ranges far and wide to present a coherent vision of our relationship with Nature--its many aspects and implications--as our century opens into the next millennium. Whether he is writing about the problem of loyalty to organizations, rights versus obligations, our over-managed society, the vanishing of established knowledge, the failure of experts, the triumph of dandelions, Dr. Seuss, Edward Teller, or the future of farming, he is always concerned with the intricate interaction between technology and nature. As in his classic book, The Arrogance of Humanism, Ehrenfeld never loses sight of our fatal love affair with the fantasy of control. We now have no choice, he argues, but to transform the dream of control, of progress, from one of overweening hubris, love of consumption, and the idiot's goal of perpetual growth, to one based on "the inventive imitation of nature," with its honesty, beauty, resilience, and durability. Few American writers and even fewer scientists can describe these timeless, transcendent qualities of nature so well. In "Places," the opening chapter, David Ehrenfeld tells about nightly vigils he spent alone on the moonlit beach of Tortuguero, watching giant sea turtles emerging from the sea to lay their eggs in the black sand where they were born. "I could watch the perfect white spheres falling," he writes. "Falling as they have fallen for a hundred million years, with the same slow cadence, always shielded from the rain or stars by the same massive bulk with the beaked head and the same large, myopic eyes rimmed with crusts of sand washed out by tears. Minutes and hours, days and months dissolve into eons. I am on an Oligocene beach, an Eocene beach, a Cretaceous beach--the scene is the same. It is night, the turtles are coming back, always back; I hear a deep hiss of breath and catch a glint of wet shell as the continents slide and crash, the oceans form and grow.". (shrink)

This article analyzes testimony before four Congressional subcommittees, between 1972 and 1975, on a proposed federal shield law. it is argued that within the testimony the press articulates a public, professional mission, but it fails to clearly define who qualifies for protection as a journalist. Following Jurgen Habermas's idea of communicative ethics, it is suggested that the testimony reveals how closely journalism is tied to the public sphere, but also how questions of journalistic practice are raised outside of that public (...) sphere. (shrink)

I argue that most of the pre-modern Chinese schools of thought contain elements of humor that can be analyzed in a differentiated and systematic manner. This article provides the first of two parts of this investigation. As a preparatory part, its scope is outlined on the basis of a traditional ideograph that represents the basic Chinese schools of thought as a whole. This is followed by an introduction to the present analytical framework. It is shown that it is compatible with (...) the most basic ancient and modern concepts in the Chinese philosophy of humor. Based on this, the investigation turns to the Analects. It is shown that Confucius uses elaborate forms of humor as an allusive manner of teaching. Afterwards, the parallel Confucian refusal of comical entertainment and mass humor is discussed. A comparative discussion of evolved forms of humor in Confucian contexts and the Daoist classic Zhuangzi provides the transition to the more specific perspectives in the narrative of “Huzi, the Face Changer.” This is followed by a further in-depth comparison of Confucius and Zhuangzi’s high-level transformative humor. This leads to the discussion of the shielding function of humor as alluded to in the Daoist story of Hundun in the Zhuangzi. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Comedy of Menander: Convention, Variation and OriginalityDavid KonstanZagagi, Netta. The Comedy of Menander: Convention, Variation and Originality. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995. 210 pp. Cloth, $39.95.In his comedies, Menander exploits a relatively limited range of characters and scenes. His achievement, as Netta Zagagi shows, lies in subtle variations on inherited formulas rather than in radical departures from them. As an example of Menander’s art, Zagagi (...) (32–33) cites the characterization of the young Moschion in Perikeiromene, who is gloriosior than Polemon, the love-sick miles. Again, Chrysis in Samia, because she acts in league with Moschion against his father, “represents a pattern of behaviour traditionally reserved for the character of the mother in comedy” (33). Behind these modifications and mergings of types, Zagagi sees an ethical motivation, best illustrated in Micio’s condemnation of his stepson’s behavior toward the woman he has raped; Terence’s Adelphi, based on Menander’s, is “the only play known to us in which any serious consideration is given to the problematic nature of the story pattern under review” (43). Surely Charisius’ soliloquy in Epitrepontes is another example. Zagagi’s reflections on Menander’s sensitivity to his personae, in contrast to Aristophanes’ delight in caricature (45), are fair enough. It is less clear that Menander differs significantly from the practice of other poets of New Comedy, as Zagagi suggests (32).In the second chapter, Zagagi explains Menander’s method of composition by invoking three principles or techniques that are fundamental to his plays: “polyphony,” “economy,” and “emphasis on human interaction.” These are catch-all terms. “Economy,” for example, refers to Menander’s restraint in the development of scenes that might have “diverted the spectator’s attention from the main subject” of an episode (60). The same term covers Menander’s ability to set out necessary information without undue repetition (62), as well as his thrifty use of devices such as Knemon’s bucket, which first gets dropped in the well and subsequently causes the misanthrope himself to fall in (64). Such dramatic parsimony is the stock-in-trade of well-made plays.Polyphony too, designates three different things. Zagagi ignores Bakhtin’s now classic use of the term to refer to the amalgamation of generic voices characteristic of the novel. Instead, she describes as polyphony the mixture of registers achieved by crossing para-tragic bits of dialogue with the plain style of comedy (54), divine intervention in mortal affairs (57), which is treated in detail in the sixth chapter, and the interweaving of two plot lines in a single play—not contaminatio, precisely, but rather a deft combination of two or more story patterns. [End Page 127]Thus, Dyskolos is analyzed (47) into a “romantic” strand, involving Sostratos’ efforts to win Knemon’s daughter as his bride, and a story line centered on the character of the misanthrope (Zagagi adds for good measure two “minor strands”: the sacrifice to Pan and the Gorgias plot). Zagagi sees as the price of this complexity a loss of dramatic unity: in order to avoid compromising the sketch of Knemon’s grumpiness, Menander does his best to keep the two plots of the comedy separate: “It is precisely from Menander’s constant effort to preserve the credibility of his main hero’s [i.e., Knemon’s] character by shielding him from the romantic action of the play, that the disunity of the Dyskolos stems” (47). This interpretation illustrates a major weakness in Zagagi’s search for elementary units of narrative as the basis of Menandrean composition. Every romantic plot requires not only a lover, but an obstacle or blocking figure (in Northrop Frye’s expression) as well, who, for motives of his own, inhibits the realization of the lover’s passion. In many plays, this function falls to the father of the adulescens, who disapproves of his son’s liaison with a slave-girl or otherwise unsuitable partner. In Dyskolos, the father of the girl (who by the same token is represented as a citizen) plays this role. This is as simple a scheme as one can have, and violates no presumed rule of unity of action. Menander... (shrink)

This Article discusses a triangle of forces that affect the activity of small-medium enterprises. These forces are: limited liability, shareholder guarantees, and bankruptcy. Limited liability encourages entrepreneurship by reducing the personal risks shareholders are exposed to as a result of business failure. However, the limited liability shield creates the potential moral hazard of overinvestment. That is, the entrepreneur may involve the corporation in overly risky projects. To combat this risk, the lending practice requires entrepreneurs to sign a personal guarantee for (...) corporate debt. The guarantee serves as a bonding device that forces the entrepreneur to internalize the costs of the corporate activity. This Article first argues that while personal guarantees can serve this economic goal, the lending industry demands them excessively and they are overused. The overuse of guarantees unnecessarily subjects good corporate borrowers as well as bad ones to this practice and causes underinvestment. The third force of the triangle, a discharge of the shareholder’s debts in bankruptcy, may balance this inefficiency. It potentially softens the effect of the guarantee and thus requires the lender to further gather borrowerspecific information at the lending stage. Unfortunately, personal bankruptcy is underused by individual debtors mainly because of the stigma it implies. To rebalance the triangle, this Article proposes to encourage the shareholder’s partial relief of the guarantee through an amicable procedure. I call this procedure Velvet Bankruptcy. Velvet Bankruptcy would first procedurally consolidate the private collection from the shareholder-guarantor with the pending corporate bankruptcy case, by authorizing the court to extend the automatic stay to protect the shareholder-guarantor. To the extent the court is convinced that the collection would render the shareholder insolvent, it could reduce the guarantor’s liability. This would effectively constitute discharge without officially declaring the shareholder bankrupt. (shrink)

ExcerptHuman rights organizations for the past few decades have generally attempted to promote international law against the principle of state sovereignty in order to establish human rights norms worldwide. This approach presumes the universality of human rights is in fundamental opposition to the principle of sovereignty because this principle can be used by governments to shield themselves from outside criticism. By contrast, the U.S. State Department’s Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights has outlined an approach that emphasizes not just (...) the compatibility between universal human rights and state sovereignty but even their dependence on each other.1 We see the results of this clash in the response to the Report by Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch and one of the expert witnesses during the commission’s proceedings.2 He sees in the Report’s foregrounding of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “a frontal assault on international human rights law” because it shifts attention away from international law and toward more informal documents such as the Universal Declaration, which lays out a set of goals rather than legally binding commitments. (shrink)

With reference to the virtue-ethics tradition, especially the system of St. Thomas Aquinas, this essay interprets the pentangle emblazoned on Gawain’s shield as symbolizing the perfection of interconnected virtues, and the Green Knight as figuring Christ in his martyrdom. Linking these two strands of meaning is the Thomist idea of fortitude, the virtue under particular scrutiny in the poem. Gawain fulfills the secondary part of fortitude, attack, while the Green Knight fulfills the primary part, endurance, and is identified with Christ. (...) His axe, holly bob, and green coloration, and even his menacing aspect, all foster this significance. (shrink)

Adorning the cover of Mourning Becomes the Law is a replica of Gathering the Ashes of Phocion, a painting by Nicholas Poussin. An Athenian beyond reproach, Phocion had been put to death by tyrants who had taken control of the city, his ashes left on the pyre. In the darkened foreground, Phocion’s wife gathers her husband’s ashes on her hands and knees while her female attendant shields her from the view of the city, which rises up behind them. With (...) its glittering architecture and recreating citizens, the city seems impervious to this scene of mourning. Yet, Rose warns, there is not an unmediated opposition of individual love and worldly injustice here; rather, this act by Phocion’s wife is a finite act of justice that will have its bearing on the political life of the city. Mourning, “which draws on transcendent but representable justice”, becomes the law. Mourning Becomes the Law is the philosophical counterpart to Love’s Work, a memoir in which Rose reflects on the deaths of loved ones and, ultimately, her own impending death from cancer. Yet, while death haunts Love’s Work, she does not succumb to melancholia, but, rather, reaffirms her commitment to “staying in the fray.” In Mourning Becomes the Law, her final work, Rose again grapples with the meaning of death, but this time only as part of a broader theme that has preoccupied her for many years, namely, the nihilistic implications of postmodernism. Rose seeks to reveal the incoherence of postmodernism’s search for a “new ethics” that is divorced from the metaphysical inquiries of the tradition. By tearing ethics from metaphysics to give “the other” its absolute due, she argues, postmodernism has deprived itself of the resources necessary for an ethical project, and has thus “condemned itself to impotence and failure.” These resources, which are only to be found “in the politics which has been disowned, and in the theology which has been more thoroughly suppressed,” are drawn upon by Rose herself, who would “renew and reinvent” classical reflection “on the analogies between the soul, the city and the sacred”. (shrink)

This paper tests the following hypothesis: that the prime matter of classical Aristotelian-Scholastic metaphysics is numerically identical to energy. Is P=E? After outlining the classical Aristotelian concept of prime matter, I provide the master argument for it based on the phenomenon of substantial change. I then outline what we know about energy as a scientific concept, including its role and application in some key fields. Next, I consider the arguments in favour of prime matter being identical to energy, followed by (...) the arguments against. The method used is that of ontological profile comparison: does the profile of prime matter match, in key features, that of energy? An affirmative answer, that P=E, would be a momentous discovery: it would show that one of the most neglected and derided ideas of pre-modern metaphysics – a contributor to its downfall in the wake of the Scientific Revolution – was right all along. From a negative answer we would still learn much about the interaction of science and metaphysics. It turns out, however, given what we currently know, that the answer is not quite as simple as one might hope. (shrink)

Threat avoidance involves both detection of a threatening stimulus and reaction to it. We demonstrate with empirically validated stimuli that threat detection is more pronounced among males, whereas threat reactivity is more pronounced among females. Why women are less efficient detectors of threat challenges Benenson et al.'s conceptual analysis.

This paper outlines different types of knowledge and how they are applied to different problem types. It makes the case that co-created knowledge, generated by innovative and collaborative partnerships of scholars within a transdisciplinary framework is best suited to address the most complex and therefore most important problems in food systems scholarship. It applies Transaction Costs theory to highlight some of the options we scholars face and applies these concepts to the issue of Payments for Ecosystems Services., with an analogy (...) and questions to ponder. (shrink)

This paper defends partiality as an inherent, essential part of ethical decision-making. First, the concept of charity as a kind of universal benevolence is spelled out, drawing on key ideas from classical religious thinking. I then argue that any justification of partiality must appeal to the good first, rather than rights. There follows a justification of partiality via an argument from the idea of control over the good. The next section seeks to harmonize partialistic preference with universal charity, explaining the (...) concept of love of neighbour. There follows an outline of the key principles required for setting out an order of charity based on different kinds of special relationship. While not all of this theistically driven approach to the order of charity translates easily into secular moral thought, enough does to suggest that the view defended is at the least worthy of consideration and not to be dismissed lightly. At best, it has much in it that is commendable to secular common sense. (shrink)

As an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne in the 1980s, I recall a story that used to circulate to the effect that Australian philosophers were realists (the term prefixed by the obligatory adjective "hard-headed") because we lived in a harsh, sunlit environment where no misty meadow or morning fog obscured the objective reality of a mind-independent physical universe.

In a previous article, I attempted to assess the likely impact of the most prominent versions of the therapeutic misconception (TM) on research subjects’ informed consent. I concluded that the TM is not nearly as significant a concern as is commonly thought, and that focusing on it is more likely to undermine than promote research subjects’ informed consent.A recent commentary rejects these conclusions, as least as they pertain to the “consensus” definition of the TM. The authors of the commentary argue (...) that work on the TM remains central to ensuring the appropriateness of research subjects’ consent and, by implication, the ethical acceptability of clinical research.The present work evaluates the arguments offered in support of these claims. This analysis reveals that the authors offer few substantive responses to my arguments, and the responses they do offer fail to undermine my prior conclusions. Furthermore, consideration of an additional issue—the emergence of learning healthcare systems—suggests that the TM is likely to be even less significant in the future, hence, focusing on it may be even more problematic than I argued previously. (shrink)

(1999). Critical hermeneutics and American legal interpretation:A search for the meaning of new york times v. sullivan. Angelaki: Vol. 4, Judging the law, pp. 173-188.