Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

One important way in which neuroscience, particularly neuroanatomy, contributes to cognitive science is by providing a model of the brain's architecture, which, in turn, can be utilized as a guide to the architecture of cognition. This project assumes commitment to a view, now well established, that different mental processes, such as perceiving and remembering, employ different parts of the brain (where part is loosely construed so as not to exclude entities which may themselves be composite). These parts may differ according (...) to their internal organizational structure, information processing capacities, and degree of informational connectivity with other parts. Later I will present an example of research in visual processing where researchers are currently attempting to realize the heuristic potential of the brain's architecture in order to understand cognitive organization. Of prior importance, however, is an understanding of how neuroscientists decipher the architecture of the brain itself. This task of mapping the brain, of carving it up into distinct areas, is not as straightforward as one might think. There are, for example, several different criteria by which one might fix a given boundary between brain regions. Below, I not only highlight some of the more interesting facets of brain mapping research but also elaborate on why such research is of interest to cognitive scientists. (shrink)

Curiosity is evident in humans of all sorts from early infancy, and it has also been said to appear in a wide range of other animals, including monkeys, birds, rats, and octopuses. The classical definition of curiosity as an intrinsic desire for knowledge may seem inapplicable to animal curiosity: one might wonder how and indeed whether a rat could have such a fancy desire. Even if rats must learn many things to survive, one might expect their learning must be driven (...) by simpler incentives, such as hunger. One might also wonder what proximal signals could guide animals towards knowledge itself, or how something as abstract as knowledge could ever be a motivational target for an unreflective animal. Taking a cue from recent work in reinforcement learning, I argue that surprise functions as a reward signal for the curious animal, and then show how this amounts to a desire for knowledge gain, where knowledge is conceived of as a cognitive adaptation to reality. This adaptation results in a mental state whose existence depends essentially on the truth of its contents, a factive mental state. Curious creatures benefit from an interaction between the prediction-error correction processes of basic learning and the active surprise-seeking force of their curiosity. This internally adversarial interaction accelerates knowledge gain in ways that are very helpful for agents with the restrictions of biological creatures, in environments with the complexity of our natural world. (shrink)

One challenge posed by climate change education is that, despite the scientific consensus on human induced climate change, the issue is controversial and politicised. A recent poll conducted in the USA revealed that 45% of respondents did not believe that human activity is a key cause of climate change, while 8.3% denied that climate change was occurring at all. The poll also found that those with conservative political beliefs were far more likely to deny anthropogenic climate change. The controversial nature (...) of climate change is a double-edged sword for educators—offering both benefits and risks. Controversial topics can be engaging for students, allowing them to critically examine competing perspectives, justify opinions and, thus, develop and practice critical thinking skills. On the other hand, they may provoke classroom conflict and expose teachers to backlash from students, parents, colleagues or even members of the public, including accusations of indoctrination. This risk has resulted in some teachers adopting problematic approaches to teaching about climate change, such as presenting students with an impartial account of ‘both sides’ of the debate. Some climate change sceptics groups have even developed their own curriculum materials and lobbied for their implementation in schools in order to provide students with a ‘balanced’ account of the issue. These problems, and suggestions for overcoming them, are explored by several papers in this special issue. (shrink)

This essay lays out the historical case for a broader assessment of Kant’s relationship to Blumenbach by focusing first on Kant’s review of Herder in 1785 as the best lens through which to understand not only their respective theories of generation but indeed the specific motivation leading to Kant’s support for Blumenbach at all. The results of this inquiry will suggest that while Kant might have been interested in gaining the support of the rising star of the Göttingen medical faculty, (...) Blumenbach’s own theories did little to influence Kant’s approach to either generation-theory or race. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that political discourse in recent years has become more openly racist and more filled with wildly implausible conspiracy theories. Dogwhistles and Figleaves explores certain ways in which such changes—both of which defied previously settled norms of political speech—have been brought about. Jennifer Saul shows that two linguistic devices, dogwhistles and figleaves, have played a crucial role. Some dogwhistles (such as “88,” used by Nazis online to mean “Heil Hitler”) serve to disguise messages that would otherwise (...) be rejected as unacceptable, allowing them to be transmitted surreptitiously. Other dogwhistles (like the 1988 “Willie Horton” ad) work by influencing people in ways that they are not aware of, and which they would likely reject were they aware. Figleaves (such as “just asking questions”) take messages that could easily be recognized as unacceptable, and provide just enough cover that people become more willing to accept them. Importantly, these work against the background of a divided public. They are particularly effective in influencing people who are conflicted yet malleable—those who don’t want to be racist, for example, but are willing to be convinced that something which seems racist really isn’t. Saul shows how these dogwhistles and figleaves have both exploited and widened existing divisions in society, and normalized racist and conspiracist speech. (shrink)

In this paper I trace the manner in which Herder’s philosophy of language grounds his approach to hermeneutical issues regarding history, interpretation, and translation. Herder’s approach to the question of language has been repeatedly lauded for its important influence on the later work done by Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and Gadamer, but in this discussion I am going to put him more directly in conversation with Wilhelm von Humboldt. Although recent critics have derided Humboldt’s theory as both derivative and wrong, I will (...) argue that we should instead recognize that Humboldt’s philosophy of language represents a significant development of Herder’s thesis. This development is accomplished by way of Humboldt’s application of Kant’s mature theory of reason to a program for comparative linguistics. In Humboldt’s hands, this amounts to a new strain of philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

Focusing on Immanuel Kant's lectures on anthropology, the essay endeavors to address long-standing concerns regarding both the relationship between these empirical investigations and Kant's better known universalism, and more pressingly, between Kant's own racism on display in the lectures, and his simultaneous promotion of a universal moral theory that would unhesitatingly condemn such attitudes. -/- Reprinted in: 'Philosophies of Difference: Nature, Racism, and Sexuate Difference' edited by R. Gustafsson, R. Hill, and H. Ngo (Routledge, 2019), pp. 125-144.

In this essay I lay out the textual materials surrounding the birth of physical anthropology as a racial science in the eighteenth century with a special focus on the development of Kant's own contributions to the new field. Kant’s contributions to natural history demonstrated his commitment to a physical, mental, and moral hierarchy among the races and I spend some time describing both the advantages he drew from this hierarchy for making sense of the social and political history of inequality (...) between peoples, and the obviously problematic relationship that such views would entail for Kant’s universalism as he began to formulate his ethical program in the 1780s. While there is continued scholarly debate regarding a purported moral “turn” made by Kant once he dropped his commitment to a racial hierarchy in the 1790s, what the narrative as a whole reveals is not only the manner by which questions of racial difference defined physical anthropology from its outset, but the easy and uncomplicated manner by which whole member groups of the population could be excluded from lofty pronouncements regarding the “rights of man”—a fact that was as true for Kant in Königsberg, as it was for Jefferson and Hamilton in Philadelphia. (shrink)

Saul_Jennifer, Scepticism and Implicit Bias.

A disjunctivist conception of acting for reasons is introduced by way of showing that a view of acting for reasons must give a place to knowledge. Two principal claims are made. 1. This conception has a rôle analogous to that of the disjunctive conception that John McDowell recommends in thinking about perception; and when the two disjunctivist conceptions are treated as counterparts, they can be shown to have work to do in combination. 2. This conception of acting for reasons safeguards (...) the connection between considerations that move us to act in particular ways and considerations that favour our acting in particular ways. (shrink)

When I began to think about a book on Kant and the life sciences, the idea that Kant would ever have been influenced by the ideas coming out of this field seemed impossible to believe. In fact, I spent an entire Summer determined to prove that my thesis was wrong. The problem was, I kept finding evidence in support of it (fully one third of Kant’s Organicism is devoted to a glut of historical research filling up the endnotes, research stemming, (...) for the most part, from an initial disbelief in my own hypothesis). Most of the scholars who had considered this connection before me had had their training in the history of science. My situation was different, I had been trained in philosophy. I knew my Descartes but I had never read Harvey; I had written on Locke but I had never heard of Ray…. (shrink)

The investigation that I am going to pursue here is part of a larger effort on my part to understand the relationship between Kant’s so-called “philosophical anthropology” and the development of early German anthropology since it is my sense that Kant had a determinate, if indirect, effect on the history of that separate field. For now this larger project has three main foci: an account of Kant’s philosophical anthropology in all its parts, an inquiry into Kant’s relationship to the theories (...) engaged by German anthropologists between roughly the 1750s-1790s, and finally, an effort to track the subsequent routes taken by German anthropology in the first half of the 19th-c. In this discussion I am going look at one particular trajectory in anthropological research where we can see Kant’s effect. (shrink)

Painful pains are, paradigmatically, unpleasant and motivating. The dominant view amongst philosophers and pain scientists is that these two features are essentially related and sufficient for painfulness. In this article, I first offer scientifically informed characterizations of both unpleasantness and motivational oomph and argue against other extant accounts. I then draw on folk-characterized cases and current neurobiological and neurobehavioral evidence to argue that both dominant positions are mistaken. Unpleasantness and motivational oomph doubly dissociate and, even taken together, are insufficient for (...) painfulness. (shrink)

Berkeley and Kant are known for having developed philosophical critiques of materialism, critiques leading them to propose instead an epistemology based on the coherence of our mental representations. For all that the two had in common, however, Kant was adamant in distinguishing his own " empirical realism " from the immaterialist consequences entailed by Berkeley's attack on abstract ideas. Kant focused his most explicit criticisms on Berkeley's account of space, and commentators have for the most part decided that Kant either (...) misunderstood or was simply unfamiliar with the Bishop's actual position. Rather than demonstrate that Kant understood Berkeley perfectly well—an argument that has already been forcefully made by Colin Turbayne—I want to take a different tack altogether. For it is by paying attention to Berkeley's actual account of space, an account oriented by his rejection of spatial " geometers " like Descartes, and spatial " absolutists " like Newton, that we discover an account of embodied cognition, of spatial distance and size that can only be known by way of the body's motion and touch. Perhaps even more striking, I will want to suggest, is the manner in which Kant's approach to the problem of incongruent counterparts will equally need to rely on a proprioceptive cognition, one requiring a different geometry of position altogether. My discussion proceeds in three stages, with stage one focused on Kant's efforts to distinguish his philosophical project from Berkeley's own idealist system, and stages two and three describing the manner in which their approach to spatial orientation both challenges and extends the traditional narrative of their differences as laid out in stage one. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the attention paid to Prometheus by Goethe and Schlegel. Prometheus serves as an archetypal figure for Goethe, in particular, and as such the Titan can be viewed as a figure whose various appearances represent genuine metamorphoses or transformations of the archetype in much the same manner that Goethe takes the archetypes of leaf or vertebrae to function in the plant and animal kingdoms. Schlegel’s treatment of Prometheus takes the organic analogy even further. In his fragmentary work (...) Lucinde Schlegel exploits the metaphorical possibilities provided by plant life when thinking about not only the sessile structure of the text as a whole but indeed the internal literary devices capable of simulating the environmental impacts required for the flowering of the plot. The fact that Goethe and Schlegel deliberately leave their discussions in a fragmentary form is discussed in the final section of the essay in a manner that ties the open-ended quality of such productions to Gadamer’s discussion of the Vollzug or performative character of poetry and other works of art. (shrink)

In this essay I position Kant's "psychology" portion of the lectures on metaphysics against the backdrop of Kant's work to develop a new lecture course on anthropology during the 1770s. I argue that the development of this course caused significant trouble for Kant in three distinct ways, though in each case the difficulty would turn on Kant's approach to "empirical psychology." The first problem for Kant had to do with refashioning psychology such that empirical psychology could be reassigned to anthropology (...) and rational psychology protected from the spectre of subreption. The second problem, and in many way the larger one for Kant during this time period, followed from Kant's desire to make use of empirical psychology's account of the mental faculties in his own transcendental theory of cognition. This introduced a separate problem for Kant, however, since this was a time during which physiological psychology was on the rise, a psychology that was being promoted by Ernst Platner and his followers, as "anthropology." This left Kant with the unwelcome task of simultaneously distinguishing his own philosophical anthropology from Platner's, and distancing his own transcendental theory of cognition from the likes of Herder and Tetens, given their embrace of the "embodied mind" approach being advanced by the physiological psychologists. (shrink)

Kant’s use of epigenesis differed according to the context within his remarks were made and can be seen to be falling within three main types of consideration. The first of these considered epigenesis as a theory of biological generation. A second group of related uses of the term epigenesis consider whether the biological account impacts discussions of the transference of soul from parent to child. The third type of consideration stems from Kant’s efforts, primarily in the 1770s, to use epigenesis (...) as a model for understanding the spontaneous generation of ideas, with reason positioned thereby as a self-formative capacity. (shrink)

This is an article-length summary of the argument in my book, Kant's Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 2013; 2015).

Kant was well versed in many of the debates taking place in the life sciences during his day. One of the more central areas of contention concerned the proper means for discriminating between material bodies composed of organised parts (like clocks or automatons) and living material bodies composed of organised parts (like plants and animals). For many theorists, it seemed clear that the physically organised structure of a body was distinct from any vital forces responsible for the life processes or (...) metabolism at work within it. This was the approach taken by the chemist Georg Stahl (1659-1734), for example, who resisted attempts to provide a mechanical account of metabolism, arguing instead that only something like a physis or anima could explain a living body’s capacity for the movement of otherwise inert material parts. This was a position which Kant appears to have appreciated when, in discussing the issue in 1766, he exclaimed “I am convinced that Stahl, who is disposed to explain animal processes in organic terms, was frequently closer to the truth than [the mechanists] Hofmann or Boerhaave, to name but a few” (2:331). And indeed, by 1790 Kant would reach conclusions similar to Stahl’s regarding the manner by which we must reflectively judge animal processes to be operating, given that for Stahl the biological body was best taken to be a complex, self-organising system of material parts and a purposive force or physis responsible for their ongoing interrelation. (shrink)

My discussion in this essay begins with a short rehearsal of Kant’s approach to anthropology and history in order to provide the framework for my subsequent focus on the political commentary that has surrounded the Black Lives Matter movement. This movement presents the most recent political challenge to white America’s belief in the inevitability of progress and I am interested in the light that might be shed on this challenge when viewed through the lens of Enlightenment conceptions of not just (...) history, but cultural and racial fitness for progressive development. I conclude with suggestions for the direction a new political imaginary might take, one capable of acknowledging the real history of race in America even as it makes room for the still necessary role played by our hope for progress, and the possibility of an expanded moral horizon. (shrink)

This paper takes up the possibilities for thinking about human solidarity that can be found in Immanuel Kant’s writings on history. One way of approaching Kant’s philosophy of history is to focus on what would seem to be an antinomy in Kant’s account between the role of nature and the demands of freedom. Whereas nature, according to Kant, ruthlessly drives us into a state of perpetual war until finally, exhausted and bankrupt, we are forced into an international treaty for peace, (...) freedom, and the morality that flows from it, requires that each individual obey the supreme moral principle, namely, that we treat all people as ends in themselves and never merely as means; that we never, in other words, wage war. This antinomy is resolved once we see that, for Kant, a community of moral agents can only arise as a result of a perfect political constitution; a constitution that itself can only arise at the end of a history of war. (shrink)

There is a collection of words being used by Kant when it comes to his discussion of the various processes associated with the English word “generation.” The closest German word, Erzeugung, can be used either generically—to form an idea, to create an effect or event—or as part of a scientific theory. Kant used Erzeugung in both senses repeatedly across his corpus and referred from his earliest works to scientific theories regarding cosmological formation, the generation of earthquakes and volcanoes, and the (...) production of biological life, all by way of Erzeugung. The constellation of theories revolving around questions of organic generation were of special interest to Kant, and he spent time throughout his career considering the various processes by which the generation and subsequent development of an individual might occur. (shrink)

Grief Worlds is a phenomenological exploration of grief experiences and what they may teach us about emotional experience and human experience more generally. Though explicitly and self-consciously...

In current practice, decisions regarding whether or not to resuscitate infants born at the limits of viability are generally made with expectant parents during a prenatal consultation with a neonatologist. This article reviews the current practice of prenatal consultation and describes three areas in which current practice is ethically problematic: (1) risks to competence, (2) risks to information, and (3) risks to trust. It then reviews solutions that have been suggested in the literature, and the drawbacks to each. Finally, it (...) suggests that the model of prenatal consultation be altered in three ways: (1) that the prenatal consultation be viewed as a process over time, rather than a onetime event; (2) that decision making in the prenatal consultation be framed as a choice between nonresuscitation and a trial of neonatal intensive care, rather than a choice between “doing nothing” and “doing everything”; and (3) that the prenatal consultation process devote serious attention to both the transfer of information and the non-informational needs of families, rather than focus on the transfer of information alone. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that moral rules and principles, such as ‘Keep your promises,’ ‘Respect autonomy,’ and ‘Distribute goods according to need ,’ should play an essential role in our moral deliberation. Particularists have challenged this view by arguing that principled guidance leads us to engage in worse decision making because principled guidance is too rigid and it leads individuals to neglect or distort relevant details. However, when we examine empirical literature on the use of rules and principles in other (...) domains, we find that people can learn to use rules discriminately and that rule-based models tend to outperform even expert judgment. I argue that this evidence poses a problem for the moral particularist. If the particularist claims that we should not rely on decision-making rules when making practical decisions and it turns out that these rules help us make better decisions, then the particularists’ prescriptive account is deficient. However, if the particularist claims that we should rely on practical decision-making rules but not on moral rules, she needs to explain how practical rules are different from moral rules and why we should rely on the former but not the latter. (shrink)

This July 2022 issue of the JME contains several articles addressing ethical issues related to COVID-19 as well as reproductive ethics—a timely topic, given the leaked U.S. Supreme Court document, anticipating the overturn of Roe v. Wade. On the COVID-19 front, original articles in this issue include an analysis of ethical issues related to sharing research samples and data between low/middle-income countries and high-income countries,1 a retrospective analysis of European scientific societies’ triage policies early in the pandemic,2 an assessment of (...) the fairness of the allocation framework used by the WHO for their COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility,3 balancing physicians’ freedom to express opinions on medical matters with public interest when they run contrary to each other,4 and a survey of Americans’ views on race-based and place-based COVID-19 vaccine prioritisation.5 The articles include a mix of looking back and …. (shrink)

A characteristically Humean pattern of explanation starts by claiming that we have a certain kind of feeling in response to some objects and then takes our having such feelings to provide an explanation of how we come to think of those objects as having some feature that we would not otherwise be able to think of them as having. This core pattern of explanation is what leads Simon Blackburn to dub Hume ‘the first great projectivist.’ This paper critically examines the (...) philosophical and textual basis for interpreting Hume as a causal projectivist. I argue that projectivist interpretations of Hume's account of causation are motivated by two convictions: that beliefs about causation, according to Hume, are not just beliefs about regularity relations and that believing that two events are necessarily connected, according to Hume, is not merely having a belief about something that occurs in one's mind. I suggest that the latter conviction is worth revisiting, both for textual and philosophical reasons. (shrink)

Categorical perception (CP) refers to how similar things look different depending on whether they are classified as the same category. Many studies demonstrate that adult humans show CP for human emotional faces. It is widely debated whether the effect can be accounted for solely by perceptual differences (structural differences among emotional faces) or whether additional perceiver-based conceptual knowledge is required. In this review, I discuss the phenomenon of CP and key studies showing CP for emotional faces. I then discuss a (...) new model of emotion which highlights how perceptual and conceptual knowledge interact to explain how people see discrete emotions in others’ faces. In doing so, I discuss how language (emotion words included in the paradigm) contribute to CP. (shrink)

Dispositions and potentialities seem importantly similar. To talk about what something has the potential or disposition to do is to make a claim about a future possibilitythe "threats and promises" that fill the world (Goodman 1983, 41). In recent years, dispositions have been the subject of much conceptual analysis and metaphysical speculation. The inspiration for this essay is the hope that that work can shed some light on discussions of potentiality. I compare the concepts of disposition and potentiality, consider whether (...) accounts of these concepts are subject to similar difficulties, and whether having a disposition or a potentiality can depend on extrinsic factors. The concept of a disposition I am working with is drawn from the recent literature in metaphysics and philosophy of science that focuses on the analysis of dispositional concepts and their role in a broader ontology. The concept of a potentiality is drawn from the bioethics literature that focuses on the moral relevance of potentialities that subjects of medical decisions mayor may not possess. Some preliminary conclusions I draw are the following: I. Potentialities are dispositions; 2. Due to problematic cases, potentiality ascriptions, like disposition ascriptions, are not reducible to counterfactual statements; and 3. Like dispositions, some potentialities can be extrinsic. Here I do not aim to draw any conclusions about the moral relevance of potentialities but rather to outline conceptual and metaphysical options available to those who seek to employ this concept. However, to the extent that these options are relevant to answering moral questions, I am skeptical about the prospects of finding a value-neutral way to choose between them. I have tried to outline a number of options regarding the nature of potentialities for those who would like that notion to play some role in their theorizing in bioethics, or elsewhere. There still are a number of decisions to make about how to explicate the concept of potentiality that is most relevant for one's purposes. How should one flesh out the associated counterfactuals, regardless of whether they hope to reduce potentiality claims to counterfactual conditionals? How should one circumscribe the relevant possible circumstances of manifestation for a given potentiality? Are the circumstances necessary for the actualization of a given potentiality to be counted circumstances of possession or circumstances of manifestation? Is the kind of which something is potentially a member a natural kind or a class whose membership is determined by convention? My anticipation, and perhaps my worry, is that these questions do not have answers that can be determined independently from the conclusions about the moral relevance of potentiality that a given theorist aims to establish. (shrink)

This concluding chapter assesses the debate over humanitarian intervention in the light of the events of September 11, 2001. On the one hand, it can be argued that 9/11 has reversed the momentum behind the norm of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’. In the course of waging the war on terrorism, the powers of sovereign states have been increased and the willingness of Western states to criticize the treatment of civilians within other sovereign jurisdictions appears to have weakened. On the other, there (...) are three reasons why humanitarian intervention – and the issues associated with it – will continue to preoccupy scholars and statesmen in a post-September 11th world. First, the terrorist attacks of 2001 have reinforced the view that instability within or collapse of a state anywhere in the world can have implications that reach far wider than that particular region. Second, the debate about what constraints should be placed on the use of force – particularly those related to proper authority – are as relevant for the ‘war on terror’ as they are for humanitarian intervention. Finally, as the missions in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 have shown, humanitarian rationale are all-important in justifying the use of force in international society, even when other motives are at work. (shrink)

Objective: To increase our understanding of moral distress experienced by neonatal registered nurses when directly or indirectly involved in the decision-making process of resuscitating infants who are born extremely premature. Design: A secondary qualitative analysis was conducted on a portion of the data collected from an earlier study which explored the ethical decision-making process among health professionals and parents concerning resuscitation of extremely premature infants. Setting: A regional, tertiary academic referral hospital in Ontario offering a perinatal program. Participants: A total (...) of 15 registered nurses were directly or indirectly involved in the resuscitation of extremely premature infants. Methods: Interview transcripts of nurses from the original study were purposefully selected from the original 42 transcripts of health professionals. Inductive content analysis was conducted to identify themes describing factors and situations contributing to moral distress experienced by nurses regarding resuscitation of extremely premature infants. Ethical considerations: Ethical approval was obtained from the research ethics review board for both the initial study and this secondary data analysis. Results: Five themes, uncertainty, questioning of informed consent, differing perspectives, perceptions of harm and suffering, and being with the family, contribute to the moral distress felt by nurses when exposed to neonatal resuscitation of extremely premature infants. An interesting finding was the nurses’ perceived lack of power and influence in the neonatal resuscitation decision-making process. Conclusion: Moral distress continues to be a significant issue for nursing practice, particularly among neonatal nurses. Strategies are needed to help mediate the moral distress experienced by nurses, such as debriefing sessions, effective communication, role clarification, and interprofessional education and collaboration. (shrink)

According to most views of dispositions or powers, they have “triggers” or activation conditions. Fragile things break when they are struck; explosive things explode when ignited. The notion of an activation event, or “trigger,” is central to the notion of a disposition. Dispositions are defined not only by their manifestations, but also by their triggers. Not everyone who grumbles and complains counts as irritable—just those who do so with little inducement. Not everything that can be broken counts as fragile—just things (...) that can be broken with relatively little force. The idea that triggers are part of the identity conditions of powers is evident in conditional analyses of powers, and even in the claim that certain conditionals are typically true of things with certain powers. The antecedent of the conditional corresponds to a trigger of that power: “If it’s struck, it will break” is true of a fragile thing, and “being struck” is the trigger. In this chapter, I explore the nature of activation events and their relation to the powers they activate. In particular, I will consider what triggers would look like if all properties were powers, as the dispositional monist or pandispositionalist tells us they are. While many have expressed worries about manifestations involving instantiations of only dispositional properties, it is also worth noting that, on a pandispositionalist scenario, the activation event must be equally dispositional. If all properties are powers, it seems that a triggering event must be an acquisition of a power. But how does something acquiring a power activate another power to produce its manifestation? I suggest and evaluate possible answers. I will argue that, as with the case of manifestations, a vicious regress threatens the pandispositionalist picture of power activation. I go on to consider several possible pandispositionalist responses. (shrink)

DISCUSSIONS OF JUSTICE within the classical liberal, libertarian tradition have been universalist. They have aspired to apply to any human community, whatever the makeup of its membership. Certainly some feminists have taken issue with this, arguing that the classical liberal, libertarian understanding of justice fails to address the concerns of women, indeed, does women an injustice. Among these we find Susan Moller Okin, and it will be my task in this essay to explore whether Okin's criticism is well founded. Susan (...) Moller Okin's justice, Gender, and the Family is a landmark feminist discussion of distributive justice that raises issues no political philosophy should ignore. However, libertarians have tended to ignore it. That is perhaps not surprising as Okin would have us believe that libertarian feminism is incoherent. Some libertarians seem to agree, leading one to believe that liberty is incompatible with justice for women. Perhaps libertarians and feminists agree on the "facts," but disagree on the values. Whereas the feminist is willing to sacrifice liberty for justice, the libertarian is willing to sacrifice justice for liberty. Although the libertarian might object to this characterization on the grounds that the demands of justice would be met by a libertarian scheme, the feminist can equally object that the "liberty" she is willing to sacrifice means liberty for men and domestic servitude for women. Okin finds libertarianism problematic for two reasons: its philosophical foundations and its unjust consequences for women. (She focuses, as will I, on women in quasi-democratic industrial societies.) I will argue, contra Okin, that neither the philosophical foundations nor the possible implications of libertarianism are as problematic for feminism as she claims. (shrink)

Outlines and evaluates the political, legal, and ethical objections to humanitarian intervention. In so doing, it questions not only whether the doctrine of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ has taken hold in international society, but also whether it should – particularly in the form suggested by Western states. The author argues that the ethical position of pluralism – as articulated by non-Western states – represents the most compelling case against humanitarian intervention, by emphasizing the impact on international society of relaxing the norm (...) of non-intervention. Despite these pluralist objections, military intervention in cases of supreme humanitarian emergency can be defended on moral grounds, provided the intervention meets certain tests of legitimacy. Given the unintended consequences of military action, the author also suggests that more attention should be paid to the non-military means of operationalizing ‘sovereignty as responsibility’. (shrink)

Three main themes emerge from this edited collection. First, there has been an increased incidence of intervention for humanitarian purposes since the end of the Cold War. In these cases, the alleged conflict between sovereignty and human rights has been addressed in one of two ways: through an evolution in the notion of sovereignty, from ‘sovereignty as authority’ to ‘sovereignty as responsibility’; and through an expanded definition of what constitutes a threat to international peace and security under Chapter VII of (...) the UN Charter. Second, despite this new climate of permissiveness, humanitarian intervention remains a controversial norm in international relations – largely because of continued opposition from certain members of international society, and concerns about its potentially negative consequences. Third, while the post Cold War period has seen some successful cases of intervention to address humanitarian catastrophes, the current capability of international organizations to undertake humanitarian interventions remains limited. Indeed, as the book demonstrates, the issue of humanitarian intervention has the potential to divide international institutions such as the UN and damage their credibility. (shrink)

The Ainu are still in existence, but their reduced numbers, now around 20,000, indicate how marginal their presence is even in Hokkaido, their ancestral territory. Moreover, they have undergone much metissage, in both ethnic and cultural terms. Legally, the Ainu do not yet constitute an indigenous ethnic minority; they have only recently obtained some gestures of recognition from the government, such as the interruption of a dam project on a ritual site. In 1994, for the first time in history, an (...) Ainu, Kay ano Shigeru, was elected to the senate. The legislation concerning the Ainu lands, dating from 1899, has finally been revised. And with a boost from the International Year of Ethnic Minorities, in 1992, Ainu organizations managed to inflect the official Japanese doctrine that Japanese soil is home to only one community, that of the Japanese. (shrink)

This essay outlines the possibilities and limits of phenomenology as an ecophilic mode of thought in the context of a heightened, posthuman scrutiny of anthropocentrism, and advocates a self-reflexive environmental humanities informed by phenomenological insight. It aims to demonstrate that, despite its privileging of human consciousness, phenomenology offers important ecocritical resources, including methodological reflection on the constitution and limits of a human perspective; a vision of a meaningful lifeworld; a rendering of subjectivity as embodied within a larger vital materiality; and (...) a critical response to human-induced crisis. It is argued that the methodological openness of phenomenology to imaginative variation can foster explorations beyond the human, while curbing the hubris of claiming to speak for the nonhuman world, and that a phenomenological orientation may avoid neutralizing the perspectives of those suffering intra-human harms in the context of environmental injustice while maintaining the human as the respondent in calls for environmental reckoning. (shrink)

We make decisions all day, don't we? Do I pick up the dog's poop when I take him for his walk? Should I tell Mom where I really went after school? When I see something wrong happening, what should I do? Making a good choice, doing the right thing, or even knowing right from wrong can be hard! In What Would You Do? ​you can practice making hard decisions and have some fun while we explore some everyday dilemmas!​.