This article sets out a framework for distinguishing three kinds of norms governing past sexual (mis)conduct and our responses to it: wrongfulness norms, excusability norms, and accountability norms. The framework provides conceptual tools for making sense of (and understanding the limits of) three distinct responses commonly offered by those accused of past sexual misconduct: “But that used to be okay!” “But everybody used to think that was okay!” and “But that was so long ago!”.

This is an introduction to a special number of Midwest Studies discussing the 2008 global financial crisis and the ethical issues it raised. The immediate origins of the crisis are discussed, as are some of the exotic financial instruments involved, and some of the strategies for valuing and trading these instruments. This is necessary background for attributions of moral responsibility and blame to both individuals and institutions in the American financial system and its counterparts elsewhere in the developed world.

The strong embodied mind thesis holds that the particular details of one’s embodiment shape the phenomenological and cognitive nature of one’s mind. On the face of it, this is an attractive thesis. Yet strong embodiment faces a number of challenges. In particular, there are three prominent misconceptions about the scope and nature of strong embodiment: 1) that it violates the supposed multiple realizability of mentality; 2) that it cannot accommodate mental representation; and 3) that it is inconsistent with the extended (...) mind thesis according to which mentality extends, not only beyond brain, but beyond body as well. In this paper, we seek to dispel these three misconceptions by explaining what strong embodiment does and does not entail. (shrink)

Since the seventeenth century, mind-body dualism has undergone an evolution, both in its metaphysics and its supporting arguments. In particular, debates in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England prepared the way for the fall of substance dualism—the view that the human mind is an immaterial substance capable of independent existence—and the rise of a much less radical property dualism. The evolution from the faltering plausibility of substance dualism to the growing appeal of property dualism depended on at least two factors. On the (...) one hand, there was an increasing recognition of the causal and ontological interdependence of mind and body. Important here was a growing appreciation of the dependence of thought and perception on complex activities in the brain. On the other hand, there was a reconceptualization of the nature of matter; no longer inert and passive, matter came to be viewed as active in its own right. The old arguments lost much of their force, opening the door to a new sort of argument. Rather than appealing to the supposed immaterial nature of mental substance and volition, arguments for dualism began to appeal to the subjective nature of conscious experience—and its inexplicable emergence from the brain—as proof of the ontological distinctiveness of conscious properties. Consequently, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the ascent of a more plausible, but still very problematic, property dualism, a position that to this day enjoys significant support. (shrink)

In the course of his painstaking study of ancient verse, Ferdinand de Saussure came up with an intriguing theory about the phonetics of the poetry he scrutinised. He postulated that the “jeux phoniques” he detected in the texts he analysed was proof that their authors were attempting to “parasite” the surface level meaning of their verse with a “hypotexte.” This hypotexte consisted of “anagrams” of “mots thèmes” whose phonetic properties were “isosyllabically diffracted” throughout the rest of the host text. Today (...) it is generally accepted that Saussure was wrong about this. Few however maintain that what he discerned in the phonetic depths of the verse he auscultated was no more than the figment of a fertile imagination. But if this be so, what exactly had he detected? This paper maintains that what Saussure stumbled upon was the trace of a contribution made to ancient verse by melodically and metrically organised sounds. This was inevitable. Virtually all the texts he probed were “carmina sacra” that were composed to be sung and accompanied by music. This musical accompaniment had a decisive impact on the phonetics of the “lexemic” words in the Poetry that has survived. This is so because sung verse cannot “euphoniously” accommodate a musical accompaniment unless its phonetics constituents are selected, concatenated and intoned in such a way as to follow the melodic contours and rhythm patterns that modulate their articulation. In addition, the point of making verse consist both of melodically organised arrangements of sound and of organisations of sound in which one can recognise ordinary words was not simply ornamental. The real point was to bi-nature what one was hearing. In other words, the goal was to “over-signify” the usual meanings of the “logocentric” words in the verse with a separate but complementary meaning and narrative encoded in melodised tones and metered rhythms. Why qualify the accompanying music as “acousmatic voices”? Because the music in question was added to song to give a voice to whichever tutelary divinity the song was performed to honour. That’s what makes “acousmatic voices” an especially apt epithet for characterising the melodically and rhythmically structured bodies of sound Saussure so presciently discerned in the phonetic depths of the poésie phonisante he probed. The point of their being in poetry was to give a voice to the agencies to whom the object or occasion of verse is beholden for its Being-in-the-world. (shrink)

Examines the circumstances, study, and experience of death in the contemporary United States, surveying key medical, emotional, legal, social, and financial issues as they concern patients, physicians, and survivors.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Peaceful Persuasion: The Geopolitics of Nonviolent RhetoricSarah E. DempseyPeaceful Persuasion: The Geopolitics of Nonviolent Rhetoric. Ellen W. Gorsevski. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004.pp. 262. $55.00, hardcover.The overriding emphasis on violence, militarization, and retribution within current geopolitical contexts demands that we acquire greater understandings of nonviolent communicative practices. In Peaceful Persuasion, author Ellen Gorsevski, Professor of English and Communication at Oregon State University, argues that nonviolent (...) rhetoric tends to be ignored by scholars—that its methods, strategies, and impacts are often passed over and that nonviolence is often framed as hopelessly utopian, unrealistic, and ineffective. Gorsevski situates her study of nonviolent rhetoric less within its humanistic and religious inheritance, drawing instead on a contrast with existing models of rhetoric. As a strategy for rhetorical and political action, Gorsevski takes nonviolence to be instructive of new ways to reconfigure both rhetorical studies and social movement strategy.It is important to note that Gorsevski's need to study peaceful means of relating to others is driven as much by a love of rhetorical theory as by a passion for translating an understanding of nonviolent rhetoric into strategies for activists. As such, this book provides a solid introduction to rhetorical theory, including an appendix on the connection between rhetoric and nonviolence that details what activists have to gain from each. In addition, instructors will find useful a chapter on the specifics of incorporating nonviolence into speech communication classrooms.Peaceful Persuasion's greatest contribution to rhetorical studies is the careful drawing out of the many ways that a rhetorical take on nonviolence has become increasingly necessary. To make this solid case, Gorsevski draws on four very diverse case studies of nonviolent rhetoric. In a move that is both surprising and refreshing, Gorsevski's case studies do more than provide exemplars of how critics may read nonviolence as a powerful rhetorical strategy; each helps to further delineate the key characteristics of what has been, until now, a relatively undefined area of rhetorical action.Gorsevski's gift to her readers is the ability to demonstrate the rich subtleties of nonviolence through very different contexts. The case studies [End Page 89] draw from such different sources that at first seem disorienting. Upon reflection, it becomes clearer that they greatly complicate our notions of nonviolence, redressing the disservices of previous bleary analyses that configured nonviolence only by its lack of violence rather than according to its fruitful range of seemingly contradictory strategies. The cavernous distances each study crosses illuminate the multiplicity of forms, meanings, and strategies that nonviolence may take. As such, any definition of nonviolence that I may provide in this short review does a serious disservice to the depth that Gorsevski creates through her sometimes disjointed case studies.The case studies serve at least dual purposes, as each provides an analysis that extends our understandings of nonviolence in action as it also offers instructive mini-lessons for the further development of rhetorical studies. In the first case study, Gorsevski provides a contextualized analysis of critics' interpretations of the film The Spitfire Grill, which she shows to be reflective of the "predominantly accepting orientation that rhetoric and film critics hold for the idea that humans are characterized by "innate aggression" and violence" (68). For Gorsevski, this study demonstrates that nonviolence as a lens can be applied to a range of texts just as well as any other approach to rhetoric. Gorsevski moves her analysis of nonviolent rhetoric into the geopolitical realm for her study of President of Macedonia Kiro Gligorov's historic first speech before the United Nations. She takes his speech as evidence of the usefulness of pragmatic nonviolence, which entails "noncooperation or defiance of political adversaries in order to decry a perceived injustice" (72). Gligorov's speech illustrates that nonviolence and violence are best seen less as equivalent than, rather, as operating on a sliding scale. For Gorsevski, successful use of pragmatic nonviolence may even include a measure of violence as long as it serves to reduce the escalation of further strife.Next Gorsevski explores the visual rhetoric of the gendered body of Burmese activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi to show... (shrink)

One of the core challenges presented by ascriptions of moral responsibility to corporations is to identify who or what is being held responsible. A significant source of controversy in attempts to answer this challenge is whether or not responsibility can fall on a ‘corporate entity’ distinct from the individuals that make it up. In this article I argue that both sides of this debate have incorrectly assumed that the possession of moral agency is a necessary condition for holding moral responsibility. (...) I go on to argue that it is sufficient for a corporate entity to be a ‘morally significant system’, that is a non-agential system created by moral agents, and I develop an account of such systems. I conclude by setting out the implications of this analysis for our practices of holding corporations morally responsible. (shrink)

This paper considers the so-called explanatory gap between brain activity and conscious experience. A number of different, though closely related, explanatory gaps are distinguished and a monistic account of conscious experience, a version of Herbert Feigl’s “twofold-access theory,” is advocated as a solution to the problems they are taken to pose for physicalist accounts of mind. Although twofold-access theory is a version of the mind-body identity thesis, it in no way “eliminates” conscious experience; rather, it provides a parsimonious and explanatorily (...) fruitful theory of the consciousness-body relation which faithfully preserves the nature of conscious experience while going quite far in “bridging” the various explanatory gaps distinguished below. (shrink)

In whose voice does the criminal law speak, and why does it matter? Miriam Gur-Arye argues that the answer to the first question depends on the kind of duty violated by the crime at issue. In some cases (say, election fraud or tax evasion), the criminal law speaks in the voice of the polity—but in other cases (say, murder or rape), it speaks in the voice of human beings. Or so argues Gur-Ayre. Not surprisingly, perhaps, a lot depends on what (...) one means by the voice of the criminal law. In this paper, I defend two related arguments. First, the criminal law typically claims to speak in the voice of the polity, even if, in practice, it often fails to do so. Second, where the criminal law does speak in the voice of the polity, its doing so can contribute to its own justification. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Although it is unremarkable to hear a corporate culture described as ethical or unethical, it remains quite unclear what such a claim means or how it may be justified. I begin by addressing these two questions by offering an account of corporate culture as the intrinsic values that are shared by organisation members and that underpin organisational goals. I then employ this analysis to offer a new account of how moral responsibility is generated and distributed in business organisations. Since certain (...) corporate values, or culture, will predictably promote wrongdoing by members, all those who participated in that culture will acquire a degree of moral responsibility for the wrongdoing that results. They are, we may say, complicit in the wrongdoing because they helped facilitate it. This is because, by sharing values in the way that creates corporate culture, organisation members give each other reasons for acting in line with those values. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Andy Clark (2008) has argued that the literature on embodied cognition reveals a tension between two prominent strands within this movement. On the one hand, there are those who endorse what Clark refers to as body-centrism, a view which emphasizes the special contribution made by the body to a creature’s mental life. Among other things, body centrism implies that significant differences in embodiment translate into significant differences in cognition and consciousness. On the other hand, there are (...) those who endorse what Clark calls extended functionalism, a view which sees the mind as the joint product of the computational resources presented by (i) intracranial processing, (ii) bodily input, and (iii) environmental scaffolding. As such, extended functionalism allows for the possibility that any contribution of the body to cognition and consciousness can be compensated for by the other two contributing factors. While Clark’s sympathies lie with the latter approach, we argue in favour of the former. In particular, we focus on consciousness and argue that the unique contribution the body makes to a creature’s manifold of phenomenal experience cannot be compensated for, in the manner, and on the scale, that Clark envisages. (shrink)

Isaac Newton’s views on the mind–body relation are of interest not only because of their somewhat unique departure from popular early modern conceptions of mind and its relation to body, but also because of their connections with other aspects of Newton’s thought. In this paper I argue that (1) Newton accepted an interesting sort of mind–body monism, one which defies neat categorization, but which clearly departs from Cartesian substance dualism, and (2) Newton took the power by which we move our (...) bodies by thought alone to be a member of the family of forces that includes gravity and electricity. Time and again, Newton draws an analogy between the ultimate cause and nature of the volitional powers of mind and the ultimate cause and nature of these other forces. (shrink)

This paper considers a seventeenth century argument for (substance) dualism propounded by Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth that appeals to the nature of secondary qualities or sensations. I argue that, despite the widespread acceptance of the primary/secondary quality distinction, this argument is relatively unique for its time since seventeenth century arguments for dualism generally appeal, not to sensory qualities, but to thought, language, rationality, and volition. Indeed, for many, sensations are the most embodied of mental phenomena. I draw points of comparison (...) and contrast between this argument, and nineteenth and twentieth century qualia-based arguments for (property) dualism. Finally, although such an argument might reasonably be called a “Lockean argument for substance dualism,” given Locke’s influential popularization of the primary-secondary quality distinction, I argue that it is not, in fact, an argument to which Locke would subscribe. (shrink)

The idea that ‘business ethics’ picks out a distinct discipline within ethical theory is contentious; in particular, it is unclear why theoretical approaches to moral and political philosophy cannot satisfactorily address ethical concerns in the context of business activity, just as they can in the context of other human activities. In response, I argue that some features of the business environment require more focused analysis than currently available. This environment is characterised by the presence of large social groups – business (...) organisations – that are not political in nature, but yet wield considerable power and are the vehicles for complex forms of collective action. The most pressing ethical concern raised by such collective action is collective moral responsibility. I develop an account of collective responsibility that is tailored to business organisations and that combines a number of strands of moral thought – a desert-based account of moral responsibility that is of a kind with that typically applied to individual humans; a pluralistic account of how collective responsibility is generated that is rooted in irreducible group-level properties; and a moderate approach to social ontology that sees nothing mysterious in ‘distinct’ collective entities. From this starting point I develop two detailed models that illustrate how business organisations can constitute distinct collective entities that may be held morally responsible. The first shows how such organisations may satisfy the conditions required to hold moral agency, which is typically assumed to be a prerequisite for moral responsibility. The second breaks with this tradition and argues for the possibility of ‘non-agential’ moral responsibility in cases where complex organisational structures mediate the actions of the moral agents that populate them. I conclude by showing how this distinct organisational-level responsibility, far from insulating organisation members from personal culpability, illustrates quite distinct standards against which such individuals may be judged. (shrink)

Integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) has been an influential theory in normative business ethics for well over a decade, drawing attention both as an object of criticism and as a source of inspiration. In this paper I argue that, despite this attention, the fact that it is a genuinely pluralistic theory, in the tradition of pluralistic theories of political philosophy, is often overlooked. It is in the notion of moral free space that this pluralism is most clearly expressed. This oversight (...) is unfortunate for two reasons. Firstly, it prevents the potential of ISCT, as a normative theory of business ethics, from being appreciated fully; secondly, it leads us to ignore resources that could help tackle its most problematic flaws. In this second respect, I show how some of these flaws could be addressed by paying closer attention to the similarities between ISCT and John Rawls' theory of Political Liberalism. (shrink)

It has become popular to distinguish between phenomenal and non-phenomenal kinds of mentality and consciousness, for example, phenomenal and functional kinds of consciousness, or qualia and cognition. As Chalmers has so famously suggested, explaining mental phenomena like functionally “conscious” states constitutes some of the “easy problems” in philosophy of mind; explaining phenomenal consciousness, on the other hand, is the “hard problem.” One difficulty with this distinction is that it leaves open the nomological possibility of systems (“phenomenal zombies”) which are conscious (...) in the functional sense but which have no experiential, subjective life. Chalmers=s response to this challenge is to argue that qualia naturally supervene on functional organization. In defense of this thesis, Chalmers introduces two closely related thought experiments: fading qualia and dancing qualia. In this paper, I challenge the arguments he develops out of these thought experiments. I argue that they are unconvincing - indeed, question begging - and ultimately based on an assumption which suggests that his view of cognition, and the hard/easy problem distinction more generally, is overly simplistic and misleading. (shrink)

This paper considers Galen Strawson's recent defence of panpsychism. Strawson's account has a number of attractive features: it proffers an unflappable commitment to the reality of conscious experience, adduces a relatively novel and constructive appeal to the explanatory gap, and presents a picture which is in certain respects consistent with Herbert Feigl's version of mind-brain identity theory, what I call twofold-access theory. Strawson is right that the experiential and physical are not irreconcilable, for at least some physical phenomena have an (...) intrinsic, experiential side. However, despite Strawson's suggestion to the contrary, Feigl distinguishes his view from panpsychism. In fact, twofold-access theory, as I construe it, does not so much imply a pan-psychism as a local- or neuropsychism: there are physical phenomena that are experiences, experiences only directly accessible to one when they are events in one's own brain and body. Strawson is also correct that there must be facts about the physical phenomena that constitute an experience that determine that it is the experiences it is -- or indeed any experience at all. Ultimately, however, Strawson fails to make the case that this relation of determination implies that physical ultimates are -- themselves -- subjects of experience. In fact, given what I call the Complex Subject Thesis, physical ultimates are the least likely candidates for being subjects of experience, for experience, I contend, is an embodied phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper investigates Isaac Newton's rather unique account of God's relation to matter. According to this account, corpuscles depend on a substantially omnipresent God endowing quantities of objective space with the qualities of shape, solidity, the unfaltering tendency to move in accord with certain laws, and—significantly—the power to interact with created minds. I argue that there are important similarities and differences between Newton's account of matter and Berkeley's idealism. And while the role played by the divine will might at first (...) appear to be a species of occasionalism, I conclude that there are, for Newton, genuine causal relations between minds and bodies. Ultimately, to fully appreciate this account of the creation and persistence of matter, we must consider not only Newton's metaphysical writings, but also his sensorium theory of mind-body interaction, his heterodox theological commitments, and the influences of Descartes, More, and Locke. (shrink)

This article explores some conceptual issues regarding criminalization at the domestic and international levels. It attempts to explain what it means to say that a particular kind of conduct has been criminalized, and considers how the processes of criminalization differ in domestic and international law. In unpacking these issues, the article takes the examples of rape and sex trafficking in domestic and international legal systems, explores whether these offenses are criminalized more broadly in international criminal law as compared to domestic (...) criminal law, and briefly outlines possible explanations for this disparity. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that while supervenience accounts of mental causation in general have difficulty avoiding epiphenomenalism, the situation is particularly bad in the case of conscious experiences since the function-realizer relation, arguably present in the case of intentional properties, does not obtain, and thus, the metaphysical link between supervenient and subvenient properties is absent. I contend, however, that the identification of experiential types with their neural correlates dispels the spectre epiphenomenalism, squares nicely both with the phenomenology of embodiment (...) and the subjectivity of experience, and does not conflict with the supposed multiple realizability of consciousness. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Consciousness, Supervenience, and Identity: Marras and Kim on the Efficacy of Conscious ExperienceVolume 51, Issue 3LIAM P. DEMPSEY DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000662Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Consciousness, Supervenience, and Identity: Marras and Kim on the Efficacy of Conscious ExperienceVolume 51, Issue 3LIAM P. DEMPSEY DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000662Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Consciousness, Supervenience, and Identity: Marras and Kim on the Efficacy of Conscious ExperienceVolume 51, Issue 3LIAM P. DEMPSEY DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000662Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

In this paper I consider a cluster of positions which depart from the immortalist and dualist anthropologies of Rene Descartes and Henry More. In particular, I argue that John Locke and Isaac Newton are attracted to a monistic mind-body metaphysics, which while resisting neat characterization, occupies a conceptual space distinct from the dualism of the immortalists, on the one hand, and thoroughgoing materialism of Thomas Hobbes, on the other. They propound a sort of property monism: mind and body are distinct, (...) with distinct characteristics and functions, but are, nevertheless, ontologically interdependent. Consciousness ? the locus of personhood, and thus, a necessary condition for personal immortality ? is an embodied phenomenon; its preservation requires the life and proper functioning of the body. Dying with the dissolution of his body, then, man is a compound wholly mortal. Nevertheless, both Locke and Newton accepted the possibility of personal immortality; with Hobbes, both looked to the Biblical promise of bodily resurrection. For with the re-vitalization of the body ? and a subsequent restoration of consciousness and memory ? personal identity is preserved, even beyond the grave. (shrink)

This article examines the normative force of consent, explaining how consent works its “moral magic” in transforming the moral quality of conduct that would otherwise constitute a wrong against the consenting person. Dempsey offers an original account of the normative force of consent, according to which consent (when valid) creates an exclusionary permission . When this permission is taken up, the moral quality of the consented-to conduct is transformed, such that it no longer constitutes a wrong against the consenting (...) person. Building on this account of how consent works, Dempsey identifies two sets of cases in which consent fails to transform the moral quality of one’s conduct: cases in which one is consent-insensitive to the rational force of another’s consent, and cases in which one acts for sadistic reasons. (shrink)

This book provides the first serious, sustained philosophical investigation of the criminal prosecution of domestic violence. It provides a theoretical framework for understanding ongoing debates regarding the criminal justice system's response to domestic violence.

In this paper, I consider Isaac Newton’s fevered accusation that John Locke is a ‘Hobbist.’ I suggest a number of ways in which Locke’s account of the mind–body relation could plausibly be construed as Hobbesian. Whereas Newton conceives of the human mind as an immaterial substance and venerates it as a finite image of the Divine Mind, I argue that Locke utterly deflates the religious, ethical, and metaphysical significance of an immaterial soul. Even stronger, I contend that there is good (...) reason to suspect that Locke is a crypto-materialist, at least with respect to human beings, and in this respect, could reasonably be labeled a ‘Hobbist.’. (shrink)

This article provides a comparative analysis of various methodologies employed in building arguments regarding prostitution law and policy, and reflects on the proper aims of legal philosophy more generally. Taking Peter de Marneffe’s Liberalism and Prostitution (OUP 2010 ) as a launching point for these reflections, the article offers a mostly favourable review of the book as a whole, and defends the philosophical method as one (amongst other) valuable ways to argue about prostitution.

Water. One cannot think of Michigan without the image of water. Water as vast as the Great Lakes, as serene as the inland lakes, and as long and lazy or sleek and fast as the numerous byways that run between and among them. Waters of Michigan is a tribute to this treasured resource of Michigan. Combining the vision of internationally renowned photographer David Lubbers with the stewardship focus of environmentalist Dave Dempsey, this collection presents a truly unique view and (...) understanding of the waters of Michigan. Foreword by Governor Willim G. Milliken. (shrink)