Silence sometimes constitutes moral complicity. We see this when protestors take to the streets against racial injustice. Think of signs with the words: “Silence is complicity.” We see this in instances of sexual harassment, when we learn that many knew and said nothing. We see this in cases of wrongdoing within a company or organization, when it becomes clear that many were aware of the negligent or criminal activity and stayed silent. In cases like this we consider agents morally complicit (...) in virtue of their silence. Flagrant injustices cry out for action, and sometimes remaining silent amounts to complicity in those injustices. What philosophy owes us is an account of how it could be that silence constitutes complicity. In this paper I argue that one possibility is an account grounded in problematic deliberative contribution. The core idea of “deliberative complicity,” as I call it, is that agents have moral duties concerning the moral deliberation of other agents, and failures in these duties can amount to moral complicity. For example, an agent aware that a colleague is sexually harassing his students has a deliberative obligation to report the misconduct, and their silence in failing to report constitutes a failure to fulfill their deliberative obligation, a failure that grounds their moral complicity in the harassment. If my argument is successful, it provides a distinctive reason to prefer a deliberative account of moral complicity: it can capture cases of silent complicity that other views of moral complicity cannot. And further, by turning our attention toward our interpersonal deliberative obligations, a deliberative account of complicity can incorporate helpful resources from recent work in social epistemology and speech act theory as we set out to determine when and why silence amounts to complicity. And when it does, we cannot stay silent. We must speak. (shrink)

"Remarkable how well Bouwsma understood Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems and how intelligently he was able to recount Wittgenstein's discussions. The bits about sensation are especially good. And the asides about the other philosophers--e.g. Dewey, Russell, Anscombe--are, while not frivolous, gossipy and titillating." --Riley Wallihan, Western Oregon University.

‘Unfair to Facts’ is a follow-up on Ch. 5, addressing objections Peter Strawson raised against Austin’s view of truth as a description of the conditions that must be satisfied if we are to say of a statement that it is true. Austin addresses the objection that his description of these conditions is due to a misunderstanding about the use of ‘fact’, arguing, against Strawson, that facts are not pseudo-entities and that the notion of ‘fitting the facts’ is not a useless (...) notion. (shrink)

Austin takes on the problem of other minds, of how to respond to the question ‘how do you know?’, if this question is raised with regard to the thoughts, feelings, sensations, minds of other creatures. This problem has traditionally been understood as the problem of justifying our belief in the existence of other minds. Austin argues that believing in other persons, in authority and testimony, is an essential part of the act of communicating, and as such is an irreducible part (...) of our experience. While we can state certain advantages of communicative performances, there is no justification for our doing them as such. (shrink)

Deals with the question of whether there is a use of ‘is true’ that is the primary or generic name for that which at bottom we are always saying ‘is true’. Austin discusses the views that truth is primarily a property of beliefs and of true statements. He goes on to argue that the word ‘true’ denotes the validity of an intended correspondence between a representation and what it represents, and dismantles confusions about the meaning of the words that underlie (...) such a view, such as ‘fact that’ and ‘corresponds’. (shrink)

Motivated by an old construction due to J. Kalman that relates distributive lattices and centered Kleene algebras we define the functor K • relating integral residuated lattices with 0 with certain involutive residuated lattices. Our work is also based on the results obtained by Cignoli about an adjunction between Heyting and Nelson algebras, which is an enrichment of the basic adjunction between lattices and Kleene algebras. The lifting of the functor to the category of residuated lattices leads us to study (...) other adjunctions and equivalences. For example, we treat the functor C whose domain is cuRL, the category of involutive residuated lattices M whose unit is fixed by the involution and has a Boolean complement c. If we restrict to the full subcategory NRL of cuRL of those objects that have a nilpotent c, then C is an equivalence. In fact, C M is isomorphic to C e M, and C e is adjoint to, where assigns to an object A of IRL0 the product A × A 0 which is an object of NRL. (shrink)

Background: Demand for organisational ethics capacity is growing in health organisations, particularly among managers. The role of clinical ethicists in, and perspective on, organisational ethics has not been well described or documented in the literature. Objective: To describe clinical ethicists’ perspectives on organisational ethics issues in their hospitals, their institutional role in relation to organisational ethics, and their perceived effectiveness in helping to address organisational ethics issues. Design and Setting: Qualitative case study involving semi-structured interviews with 18 clinical ethicists across (...) 13 health organisations in Toronto, Canada. Results: From the clinical ethicists’ perspective, the most pressing organisational ethics issues in their organisations are: resource allocation, staff moral distress linked to the organisation’s moral climate, conflicts of interest, and clinical issues with a significant organisational dimension. Clinical ethicists were consulted in particular on issues related to staff moral distress and clinical issues with an organisational dimension. Some ethicists described being increasingly consulted on resource allocation, conflicts of interest, and other corporate decisions. Many clinical ethicists felt they lacked sufficient knowledge and understanding of organisational decision-making processes, training in organisational ethics, and access to organisational ethics tools to deal effectively with the increasing demand for organisational ethics support. Conclusion: Growing demand for organisational ethics expertise in healthcare institutions is reshaping the role of clinical ethicists. Effectiveness in organisational ethics entails a re-evaluation of clinical ethics training to include capacity building in organisational ethics and organisational decision-making processes as a complement to traditional clinical ethics education. (shrink)

Offered here is Part 2 of a two-part critical survey of recent work in philosophy on divine hiddenness. Part 1 surveyed recent development of the discussion initiated by my 1993 book on the subject. Here, I examine some related work that expands the scope of the hiddenness discussion. Some of the enlargements take further the discussion of Stephen Maitzen's work on the demographics of theism. Others introduce new hiddenness problems and ways of dealing with them. A third category of new (...) work urges theological constraints, of one sort or another, on hiddenness reasoning, thus raising new methodological issues. (shrink)

Si le christianisme a survécu en Grande Syrie, c'est en raison de facteurs spécifiques: l'intégrité de la communauté chrétienne arabe indigène dans la région; l'intégration sociale des chrétiens arabes syriens dans la société musulmane; l'échec des musulmans dans le prosélytisme agressif auprès des chrétiens; l'identification ethnique de la population indigène avec les nouvelles arrivées du VIIe siècle. L'arabisation ne signifiait pas systématiquement l'islamisation. Elle encourageait même le contraire dans certaines régions comme la Palestine, coeur d'une Eglise chrétienne arabophone viable.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I support the claim that placing certain restrictions on public access to possible new treatments is morally problematic under some exceptional circumstances. Very ill patients may find that all available standard treatments are unacceptable, either because they are ineffective or have serious adverse effects, and these patients may understandably be desperate to try something new even if this means stepping into the unknown. Faced with certain death, it is rational to want to try something new and (...) to chance a dire outcome. Restricting possible new treatments to research trials may put these treatments scientifically, geographically or economically out of reach of these patients. For those who can get access, research restrictions could weaken, though not necessarily eliminate, the value of consent participants of such trials are able to give. Some participants may therefore be exploited for scientific purposes in the name of public interest. There are nonetheless compelling reasons for keeping some restrictive regulation in this area. (shrink)

‘Agathon and Eudaimonia in the Ethics of Aristotle’ is a response to an article on the meaning of Agathon in the Ethics of Aristotle, published by H. A. Pritchard in 1935. In this paper, Pritchard argued that Aristotle regarded Agathon to mean ‘conducive to our happiness’ and, consequently, that he maintained that every deliberate action stems, ultimately, from the desire to become happy. Austin finds fault with this view: first, Agathon in Aristotle does not have a single meaning, and a (...) fortiori not the one Pritchard suggested; secondly, if one had to summarise the meaning of ‘being agathon’ in one phrase, then ‘being desired’ cannot fulfil this function, for there are other objects of desire besides τό άγαθόν. (shrink)

Austin discusses the existence, origin, and resemblance of concepts, primarily by discussing the meaning of ‘concept’ and ‘universal’. He argues that, although sometimes it may not be harmful to talk about concepts, we neither understand the meaning of ‘concept’, nor the meaning of ‘acquiring and possessing concepts’, nor a view of concept resemblance as non-sensuous acquaintance or awareness, challenging philosophers who couch their theories in such terms to illuminating them first.

Addresses Bedford’s attack on appeals to introspection in the identification of emotions, which lead him to raise the question of how to draw the line between genuine and pretended anger. Austin demonstrates, through a close examination of the speech acts of ‘pretending’ and ‘really being’, that none of the supposed conditional relations between these two notions actually holds. The essay further introduces Austin’s distinction between ‘pretending to do’ and ‘pretending to be’ and emphasises the complex and diverse forms speech acts (...) involving ‘pretending’ can take. (shrink)

A reconstruction based on previously unpublished notes, of Austin’s views of the Line and Cave allegories in Plato’s Republic. In these drafts, Austin discusses the prominent issues that arise in the context of Plato’s Line allegory, e.g. the questions of division and continuity, and shows how the different stages in the Cave allegory correspond to individual sections of the Line.

Picks up on a previous discussion of responsibility, freedom, and excuses, in which Austin argues that, in order to discover whether someone acted freely, we must discover whether certain excuses relevant to the situation at hand are acceptable. The notion of freedom, according to this view, is intractably linked to the notion of responsibility. Chapter 12 refines the previous discussion, by illuminating the differences between the notions of purpose, intention, and deliberation in a variety of speech acts.

Physical arguments stemming from the theory of black-hole thermodynamics are used to put constraints on the dynamics of closed-string tachyon condensation in Scherk–Schwarz compactifications. A geometrical interpretation of the tachyon condensation involves an effective capping of a noncontractible cycle, thus removing the very topology that supports the tachyons. A semiclassical regime is identified in which the matching between the tachyon condensation and the black-hole instability flow is possible. We formulate a generalized correspondence principle and illustrate it in several different circumstances: (...) an Euclidean interpretation of the transition from strings to black holes across the Hagedorn temperature and instabilities in the brane-antibrane system. (shrink)

John Leslie Mackie (1917–81) was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His published works spanned many areas, but he is not well known as a political philosopher. In the late 1970s, however, Mackie turned his attention to issues concerning justice. In a series of writings Mackie built a case for a unique right-based approach to political philosophy, in part by delivering incisive critiques of theories dominant at the time. His most comprehensive work in this area is (...) Theories of Justice and Rights—a previously unpublished manuscript that finally sees the light of day in this volume. Also included are two of Mackie’s previously published papers, written during the same period: ‘Can There Be a Right-Based Moral Theory?’ (1978) and ‘Rights, Utility, and External Costs’ (1985). Some of Mackie’s arguments in these works draw on the metaethical conclusions in his seminal book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). The editorial introduction of this volume canvasses the initially puzzling relation between Mackie’s moral error theory and his account of justice and rights, addresses some exegetical queries, and connects to present-day debates. In addition, the introduction provides summaries of Mackie’s theory of rights, his critique of Rawls’s liberalism, and of Nozick’s libertarianism. (shrink)

Infant A was born at term with an antenatal diagnosis of gastroschisis. His parents were well informed about the condition and understood that he would require surgery. However, at delivery, his bowel was found to be severely compromised. Infant A returned from theatre with only four centimeters of small bowel. This is physiologically devastating and easily qualifies as ultrashort bowel syndrome (USBS). Whilst the prognosis from ultrashort bowel syndrome is greatly improving, the condition continues to carry a significant risk of (...) mortality and morbidity, in part attributable to treatment itself. The cornerstone of management of USBS is provision of intravenous parenteral nutrition (PN). This is not a physiologically normal route of nutrition; it is a medical treatment. Infant A’s parents questioned whether continuation of active treatment was appropriate. If a treatment is not in the patient’s best interests, then it can be argued it is not justified to administer it. Decisions about quality of life are intensely personal. Where there is a significant burden of treatment, even when there is a potential for increased survival, whether the course of treatment is in the child’s best interests must be taken with huge emphasis on the parental perspective and their family values. For well-informed, realistic parents who are welcoming of the full picture of information and implications of their decision, I argue that parents are best placed to make the decision for their child. Long-term PN for USBS may well be a medically encouraged treatment. However, it should not be medically mandated. (shrink)

This is an invited response to Peter Forrest’s review of my trilogy on the philosophy of religion, which appeared in a previous issue of this journal.

In this paper we construct the ortholattices arising in quantum logic starting from the phenomenologically plausible idea of a collection of ensembles subject to passing or failing various “tests.” A collection of ensembles forms a certain kind of preordered set with extra structure called anorthospace; we show that complete ortholattices arise as canonical completions of orthospaces in much the same way as arbitrary complete lattices arise as canonical completions of partially ordered sets. We also show that the canonical completion of (...) an orthospace of ensembles is naturally identifiable as the complete lattice of properties of the ensembles, thereby revealing exactlywhy ortholattices arise in the analysis of “tests” or experimental propositions. Finally, we axiomatize the hitherto implicit concept of “test” and show how they may be correlated with properties of ensembles. (shrink)