Jamie Horder reviews The Stuff of Thought (London: Allen Lane, 2007) by Steven Pinker.

When should someone who may have intentionally or knowingly committed criminal wrongdoing be excused? Excusing Crime examines what excusing conditions are, and why familiar excuses, such as duress, are thought to fulfil those conditions. Setting himself against the 'classical' view of excuses, which has a long heritage, and is enshrined in different forms in many of the world's criminal codes, both liberal and non-liberal; Jeremy Horder argues that it is now time to move forwards. He contends that a wider (...) range of excuses - 'diminished capacity', 'due diligence' and 'demands of conscience' - should be recognised in law. (shrink)

Since the 1970s, sexual assault laws have evolved to include prohibitions of sexual acts with cognitively impaired individuals. The argument justifying this prohibition is typically as follows: A sex act that is forced (without the legally valid consent of) someone is sexual assault. Cognitively impaired individuals, because they lack certain intellectual abilities, cannot give legally valid consent. Therefore, cognitively impaired individuals cannot consent to sex. Therefore, sex acts with cognitively impaired individuals is sexual assault. The prohibition of sex with such (...) individuals is regarded by many as a significant advance. It certainly seems to be an improvement upon the days in which individuals could engage in sex with cognitively impaired adults with impunity regardless of the physical, emotional and psychological consequences such sex acts caused for those individuals. Yet, this legislation raises serious puzzles. For example, in the U.S., cognitively impaired individuals are routinely convicted for sexual assault with non-cognitively impaired minors. How should we think about the conviction of a cognitively impaired individual who has sex with an underage, non-cognitively impaired individual? Does this imply that cognitively impaired persons are capable of understanding the criminality of failing to obtain legal consent while being, nonetheless, incapable of giving such consent? Should the law address only those cases in which either both or neither of the individuals involved are cognitively impaired? If so, why? -/- In this paper, I claim that shifting the analysis to one based on harms (away from legal standards of consent) better captures our intuitions about sex acts involving cognitively impaired individuals. (Indeed, a review of case law reveals a focus within these cases on the harms experienced by the impaired individuals involved.) I close the paper by identifying the difficulties that plague any legislation concerning individuals with mental impairments. (shrink)

Amie Thomasson's Norms and Necessity offers a non-factualist theory of the language of metaphysical necessity, centering on the idea that statements of necessity express semantic norms. This article identifies a potential problem for the view by distinguishing two kinds of conditional necessity, investigates a solution derived from a well-known parallel pair of conditional necessities in deontic logic, but finds it is not up to the job. The last part of the paper suggests a different route, largely in keeping with the (...) underlying ideas behind Thomasson's approach. (shrink)

Focusing on the body as a visual and discursive platform across public space, this book explores marginalization as a sociocultural practice and hegemonic schema. The chapters center upon physical contexts, discursive spaces, and philosophical arenas to deconstruct seemingly intrinsic connections between body and behavior, whiteness, and normativity.

In this work, Jamie Mayerfeld undertakes a careful inquiry into the meaning and moral significance of suffering. Understanding suffering in hedonistic terms as an affliction of feeling, he claims that it is an objective psychological condition, amenable to measurement and interpersonal comparison, although its accurate assessment is never easy. Mayerfeld goes on to examine the content of the duty to prevent suffering and the weight it has relative to other moral considerations. He argues that the prevention of suffering is (...) morally more important than the promotion of happiness, and that the duty to relieve suffering is much stronger than most of us acknowledge. (shrink)

This investigation is motivated by the lack of scholarship examining the content of what firms are communicating to various stakeholders about their commitment to socially responsible behaviors. To address this query, a qualitative study of the legal, ethical and moral statements available on the websites of Forbes Magazine''s top 50 U.S. and top 50 multinational firms of non-U.S. origin were analyzed within the context of stakeholder theory. The results are presented thematically, and the close provides implications for social responsibility among (...) managers of global organizations as well as researchers interested in business ethics. (shrink)

In the following review essay I provide some background in order to place Margaret Archer's edited Volume 3 text, Generative Mechanisms, in context of the series from which it derives. In doing so I provide some sense of the significance of the series. Thereafter, I provide an overview of the key substantive claims of the essays, with some comment on how they may be linked together in terms of the theme of the series.

The first detailed study of the effect of provocation on culpability in morality and law, this book traces the fascinating history of the legal doctrine of provocation, right up to present-day controversies over the scope of the doctrine's application in murder cases.

This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia documents and discusses the life and work of an important but neglected early British convert to Islam, the fifth Baron Headley, Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn, and also comments on the nature of the kind of xenophilia that can lead to conversion. The essay argues that Lord Headley's attraction to the Muslim world and his religious conversion in 1913 were typical of a small minority of Britons who chose Islam with the guidance (...) of Indian Muslim missionaries in the first half of the twentieth century. But it also shows that Headley's privileged social position enabled him to become a leader of the nascent British Muslim community and an international ambassador for Islam between the wars. A staunch defender of Islam and Muslims, Headley was not wholly uncritical of them and made public pronouncements especially about the spread of sectarianism in Islam and about how that faith needed to be practiced differently in the West. (shrink)

A selection of essays dedicated to Hans Herzberger with affection and gratitude for both his profound work and his lasting example. Contributors: I. Levi (on whether and how a rational agent should be seen as a maximizer of some cognitive value), C. Normore (on medieval accounts of logical validity), J. P. Tappenden (on the local influences on Frege's doctrines), A. Urquhart (on the inexpressible), A. C. Varzi (on dimensionality and the sense of possibility), and S. Yablo (on content and carvings, (...) and from there to mathematical realism). (shrink)

Le choix de définitions « naturelles » ou « correctes » est un aspect fondamental de la recherche mathématique qui a été négligé dans l’étude de la connaissance mathématique. L’une des raisons qui expliquent cet abandon tient au sentiment qu’ont eu de nombreux auteurs que la préférence pour une définition au détriment d’une autre ne pouvait être que « simplement psychologique » ou « subjective » en sorte que de tels jugements ne pouvaient pas être philosophiquement intéressants. Je discute ici (...) d’un sens minimal du terme « objectif » selon lequel on pourrait de manière défendable argumenter que de tels choix de définitions préférées sont objectivement corrects, en dépit des raisons apparemment « esthétiques » qui soutiennent un tel jugement.Choosing « natural » or « correct » definitions is a fundamental aspect of mathematical research that has been neglected in studies of mathematical knowledge. One reason for this neglect may be a sense that many writers seem to have that a preference for one definition over another can only be « merely psychological » and « subjective » in a way that prevents such judgments from being philosophically interesting. I discuss a minimal sense of « objective » according to which such choices of preferred definitions can be defensibly argued to be objectively correct, despite the seemingly « aesthetic » grounds for the judgement. (shrink)

Amongst intellectuals and activists, neoliberalism has become a potent signifier for the kind of free-market thinking that has dominated politics for the past three decades. Forever associated with the conviction politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the free-market project has since become synonymous with the 'Washington consensus' on international development policy and the phenomenon of corporate globalization, where it has come to mean privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of new markets. But beyond its utility as a protest slogan (...) or buzzword as shorthand for the political-economic Zeitgeist, what do we know about where neoliberalism came from and how it spread? Who are the neoliberals, and why do they studiously avoid the label? Constructions of Neoliberal Reason presents a radical critique of the free-market project, from its origins in the first half of the 20th Century through to the recent global economic crisis, from the utopian dreams of Friedrich von Hayek through the dogmatic theories of the Chicago School to the hope and hubris of Obamanomics. The book traces how neoliberalism went from crank science to common sense in the period between the Great Depression and the age of Obama. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason dramatizes the rise of neoliberalism and its uneven spread as an intellectual, political, and cultural project, combining genealogical analysis with situated case studies of formative moments throughout the world, like New York City's bankruptcy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Wall Street crisis of 2008. The book names and tracks some of neoliberalism's key protagonists, as well as some of the less visible bit-part players. It explores how this adaptive regime of market rule was produced and reproduced, its logics and limits, its faults and its fate. (shrink)

In 2006 Jamie Tworkowski wrote a story called "To Write Love on Her Arms" about helping a friend through her struggle with drug addiction, depression, and self-injury. The piece was so hauntingly beautiful that it quickly went viral, giving birth to a non-profit organization of the same name. Nine years later, To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) is an internationally-recognized leader in suicide prevention and a source of hope, encouragement, and resources for people worldwide. Jamie's words have (...) been shared hundreds of thousands of times online. They've shown up on T-shirts and posters and even tattoos. Now, for the first time, Jamie's writing is available in the form of a book. If You Feel Too Much is a celebration of hope, wonder, and what it means to be human. From personal stories of struggling on days most people celebrate to offering words of strength and encouragement in moments of loss, the essays in this book invite readers to believe that it's okay to admit to pain and it's okay to ask for help. If You Feel Too Much is an important book from one of this generation's most important voices. (shrink)

Mathematical investigation, when done well, can confer understanding. This bare observation shouldn’t be controversial; where obstacles appear is rather in the effort to engage this observation with epistemology. The complexity of the issue of course precludes addressing it tout court in one paper, and I’ll just be laying some early foundations here. To this end I’ll narrow the field in two ways. First, I’ll address a specific account of explanation and understanding that applies naturally to mathematical reasoning: the view proposed (...) by Philip Kitcher and Michael Friedman of explanation or understanding as involving the unification of theories that had antecedently appeared heterogeneous. For the second narrowing, I’ll take up one specific feature (among many) of theories and their basic concepts that is sometimes taken to make the theories and concepts preferred: in some fields, for some problems, what is counted as understanding a problem may involve finding a way to represent the problem so that it (or some aspect of it) can be visualized. The final section develops a case study which exemplifies the way that this consideration – the potential for visualizability – can rationally inform decisions as to what the proper framework and axioms should be. The discussion of unification (in sections 3 and 4) leads to a mathematical analogue of Goodman’s problem of identifying a principled basis for distinguishing grue and green. Just as there is a philosophical issue about how we arrive at the predicates we should use when making empirical predictions, so too there is an issue about what properties best support many kinds of mathematical reasoning that are especially valuable to us. The issue becomes pressing via an examination of some physical and mathematical cases that make it seem unlikely that treatments of unification can be as straightforward as the philosophical literature has hoped. Though unification accounts have a grain of truth (since a phenomenon (or cluster of phenomena) called “unification” is in fact important in many cases) we are far from an analysis of what “unification” is.. (shrink)

Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) has been a growing point of interest in medical education yet has not been assessed in the field of bioethics. This study evaluated the accuracy of ChatGPT-3.5 (April 2023 version) in answering text-based, multiple choice bioethics questions at the level of US third-year and fourth-year medical students. A total of 114 bioethical questions were identified from the widely utilised question banks UWorld and AMBOSS. Accuracy, bioethical categories, difficulty levels, specialty data, error analysis and character count (...) were analysed. We found that ChatGPT had an accuracy of 59.6%, with greater accuracy in topics surrounding death and patient–physician relationships and performed poorly on questions pertaining to informed consent. Of all the specialties, it performed best in paediatrics. Yet, certain specialties and bioethical categories were under-represented. Among the errors made, it tended towards content errors and application errors. There were no significant associations between character count and accuracy. Nevertheless, this investigation contributes to the ongoing dialogue on artificial intelligence’s (AI) role in healthcare and medical education, advocating for further research to fully understand AI systems’ capabilities and constraints in the nuanced field of medical bioethics. (shrink)

The government claims that the important decisions it is now making are guided by principles that simply cannot be guiding them. Their decisions must in fact be guided by other considerations. Yet they prefer to peddle nonsense than to reveal their actual thinking (assuming there is some). Why? Why do politicians, who are experts in rhetoric and seek to win public favour, relentlessly and publicly indulge in shoddy reasoning?

As research therapists with hundreds of hours of clinical experience supporting adults with PTSD in Phase 3 trials of MDMA assisted-therapy (MAT), we appreciate the opportunity to respond to this s...

In this paper I apply a suitably developed version of Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority to the debate over the legitimacy of state action aiming to fulfill cosmopolitan moral obligations. I aim to advance two interrelated theses. First, viewed from the perspective of Raz’s service conception of authority, citizens’ moral duties to non-compatriots are an appropriate ground for authoritative intervention by agents of the state. Second, international law based on these duties can also enjoy moral authority over government decision (...) makers. An important source of the moral force of international law is derived from the power of international law to improve officials’ ability to recognize and conform to the totality of their reasons, which contributes to their states’ legitimacy. (shrink)

Bell hooks' work on pedagogy covers a great deal of material in very broad strokes. She relies on the work of John Dewey and Paolo Freire, often drawing upon their critiques of traditional educational models to criticize the values she claims drive current models of education. When hooks addresses critical thinking explicitly, she reorients critical thinking toward practical aims, specifically democratic social progress. In order to better understand the potential value of her approach, and the relationship between critical thinking and (...) democracy, I attempt to situate her conception of critical thinking as practical wisdom within current philosophical scholarship on critical thinking. (shrink)

A cluster of recent papers on Frege have urged variations on the theme that Frege’s conception of logic is in some crucial way incompatible with ‘metatheoretic’ investigation. From this observation, significant consequences for our interpretation of Frege’s understanding of his enterprise are taken to follow. This chapter aims to critically examine this view, and to isolate what I take to be the core of truth in it. However, I will also argue that once we have isolated the defensible kernel, the (...) sense in which Frege was committed to rejecting ‘metatheory’ is too narrow and uninteresting to support the con-. (shrink)

In this analysis of Marcia Baron’s account of excuses, I seek to do two things. I try to draw out the nature of the distinction between forgiving and excusing. I also defend the distinction between excuses (like duress), and denials of responsibility (like insanity).

The past thirty years have seen a surge of empirical research into political decision making and the influence of framing effects — the phenomenon that occurs when different but equivalent presentations of a decision problem elicit different judgments or preferences. During the same period, political philosophers have become increasingly interested in democratic theory, particularly in deliberative theories of democracy. Unfortunately, the empirical and philosophical studies of democracy have largely proceeded in isolation from each other. As a result, philosophical treatments of (...) democracy have overlooked recent developments in psychology, while the empirical study of framing effects has ignored much contemporary work in political philosophy. In Framing Democracy, Jamie Terence Kelly bridges this divide by explaining the relevance of framing effects for normative theories of democracy. -/- Employing a behavioral approach, Kelly argues for rejecting the rational actor model of decision making and replacing it with an understanding of choice imported from psychology and social science. After surveying the wide array of theories that go under the name of democratic theory, he argues that a behavioral approach enables a focus on three important concerns: moral reasons for endorsing democracy, feasibility considerations governing particular theories, and implications for institutional design. Finally, Kelly assesses a number of methods for addressing framing effects, including proposals to increase the amount of political speech, mechanisms designed to insulate democratic outcomes from flawed decision making, and programs of public education. -/- The first book to develop a behavioral theory of democracy, Framing Democracy has important insights for democratic theory, the social scientific understanding of political decision making, economics, and legal theory. (shrink)

We all know what water is, and we often take it for granted. But the spectre of a worldwide water crisis suggests that there might be something fundamentally wrong with the way we think about water. Jamie Linton dives into the history of water as an abstract concept, stripped of its environmental, social, and cultural contexts. Reduced to a scientific abstraction – to mere H20 – this concept has given modern society licence to dam, divert, and manipulate water with (...) apparent impunity. Part of the solution to the water crisis involves reinvesting water with social content, thus altering the way we see water. An original take on a deceptively complex issue, What Is Water? offers a fresh approach to a fundamental problem. (shrink)

Does law matter regarding public health outcomes? Regardless of what one may think about the answer to this age-old question, in recent years the public health community has increasingly demonstrated and recognized the roles that public health laws and policies play in effectuating long-lasting and broad-based population-wide changes. Public health laws and policies have been instrumental in the following ways: reducing smoking prevalence; reducing underage alcohol-related drinking, driving, crashes, and fatalities; reducing exposure to second-hand smoke; eliminating vaccine–associated paralytic poliomyelitis ; (...) increasing seat-belt use and reducing traffic fatalities; reducing dental carries; and reducing access to and consumption of unhealthy foods and beverages sold in schools and to reductions in caloric intake and overweight. In fact, in a review of the ten greatest public health achievements in the 20th century, all were influenced by policy change. (shrink)

This paper begins with an assessment of the differences between two states of Jacopo Caraglio's engraved Diogenes after Parmigianino, and between each of those states and Parmigianino's preparatory drawing of the composition. What follows is an attempt to trace both the textual sources and the creative development of this unusual iconographie subject, culminating in a hypothesis about the chronological sequence of the earliest prints of Parmigianino's Diogenes. It is argued that, originally, the artist devised the composition in collaboration with a (...) learned advisor. His own interest in geometry then led him, incongruously, to introduce a geometric solid—an error corrected in Ugo da Carpi's chiaroscuro woodcut version. (shrink)

Museum workers have taken a massive hit during the pandemic when many museums closed their doors, cut staff hours, instituted layoffs and furloughs, and pushed more into precarity. For many workers, the effect of the pandemic has highlighted long-standing issues of racial, economic, gender and political inequality. This article engages with how workers are responding to this insecurity by highlighting worker-led feminist mobilizations for transformation in museums based in the United States and the United Kingdom. By focusing on efforts for (...) engaging with the Black Lives Matter movement, decolonizing the museum, unionizing workers and providing mutual aid, this article examines worker-led practices of transformation of the museum amid crisis. A special emphasis is put on how workers articulate the importance of feminist solidarity and collective action in envisioning a more just museum of the future. (shrink)