A Humean Critique of David Hume's Theory of Knowledge provides the first full-length Aristotilian-Thomistic critique of Hume's most mature and familiar work. While giving Hume proper respect and appreciation for his achievement, Jeremy White engages in a thoughtful critique through an approach based in Hume's own method.

We report on the small-scale (0.5 13 h - 1M, a large-scale bias of ~2.0 and a satellite fraction of 12 ± 2 per cent. Thus, these galaxies occupy haloes with average masses in between those of the higher redshift BOSS CMASS sample and the original SDSS I/II luminous red galaxy sample © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society © doi:10.1093/mnras/sts314.

Contemporary understanding of the mechanisms of disease increasingly points to examples of “genetic diseases” with an infectious component and of “infectious diseases” with a genetic component. Such blurred boundaries generate ethical, legal, and social issues and highlight historical contexts that must be examined when incorporating host genomic information into the prevention, outbreak control, and treatment of infectious diseases.

One recent shift in the ever-expanding crackdown on migration and implementation of a hostile environment for migrants in the EU has been the criminalization of migrant solidarity. Using various legal tools, EU governments have been trying to hinder solidarity actions from civil society. In particular, a narrative depicting civilians helping migrants as criminals has been elaborated by European organizations and strengthened by far-right groups and dominant press outlets. In reaction, a counter-narrative has been constructed and spread by pro-migrant groups and (...) liberal media, which presents criminalized activists as criminalized heroes and their actions as humanitarian. Based on a critical discourse analysis of academic texts, press articles, and empirical research with pro-migrant activists, this article examines two criminal figures from the civilian search and rescue field: the “activist associated with smugglers” and its counterpart, the “criminalized hero.” Through the lens of figuration of crime and social justice, the article brings a new understanding of the de- and repoliticization processes that occur in the field of humanitarian help and migration. By analyzing these two figures, the paper also contributes to a better understanding of the competing moral orders underpinning criminal and social justice claims in the field of solidarity toward migrants. On the one hand, the figure of the activist associated with smuggler is part of a criminal justice narrative depicting migration as a threat to political, social, and economic stability. On the other hand, the criminalized hero figure includes a counter-narrative to this moral order based on the defense of a social justice frame of solidarity and the protection of human rights. Within the pro-migrant activist’s scene, the criminalized hero and its social justice frame are criticized for reproducing racist and post-colonial practices of humanitarianism. (shrink)

This volume collects Jeremy Waldron's challenging and influential work on the moral, political and legal issues surrounding the response to terrorism since 9/11. The volume will be essential reading for all those engaged with contemporary politics and security law, and the continuing struggle for an ethical response to terrorism.

For all the talk there has been lately about privilege, few have commented on the moral obligations that are associated with having privilege. Those who have commented haven't gone much beyond the idea that the privileged should be conscious of their privilege, should listen to those who don't have it. Here we want to go further, and build an account of the moral obligations of those with a particular kind of privilege: race privilege. In this paper we articulate an understanding (...) of race privilege, say how a person can know when she has it, and argue that a race-privileged person has obligations to offset her privilege. We make concrete suggestions for how she can, at least approximately, do this. We use particular racial group disparities in the United States as our running example throughout the paper, although our conclusions generalize. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dining Posture in Ancient Rome: Bodies, Values, and StatusJeremy RossiterMatthew B. Roller. Dining Posture in Ancient Rome: Bodies, Values, and Status. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. xvi + 219 pp. 8 color plates. 18 black-and-white figs. Cloth, $39.50.As the author of this volume is quick to point out, a book-length study focusing solely on how the Romans sat, or reclined, at table might not seem like the (...) most compelling reading, even for a specialist reader. Could something so abstruse really warrant such an extensive study? Clearly the author thinks so, and to support his view he starts with some bold claims of what the book promises to accomplish. One of the key aims of the book is to redefine our understanding of Roman dining practices; to challenge the orthodox views presented in the "handbooks" (by which the author seems to mean principally the second edition of Marquardt and Mau's Das Privatleben der Römer, Leipzig 1886) and to replace them with a more measured interpretation of the evidence, not just of the few familiar texts that are often cited in the handbooks but rather of the full range of texts, images, and other source material that contribute in one way or another to what we know about Roman dining. Why do this? Because, Roller argues, the orthodox view is wrong. It depends on too little information, it pays too little attention to the evidence of images, and it fails to see the important link between dining custom and social values. These are bold assertions, the credibility of which can only be judged by comparing the orthodox view of Roman dining practices with the "new" picture of Roman dining given by Roller and by evaluating the methodology he uses to reach his conclusions.What then is the orthodox view of Roman dining posture? Roller summarizes it as follows (4–5): free adult males reclined, free adult women sat (during the Republic) but later reclined (during the Empire), free children sat, and slaves stood. Fast forward to the end of the book (177) and we find a rather different assessment: "persons of any age, sex or status might actually assume, or be represented as assuming, various positions under different circumstances." What Roller does here is to deconstruct the simplistic assertions of the handbooks and replace them with a more nuanced interpretation of the evidence. However, his conclusions, although different from the standard view, are not an entirely radical departure. As he admits, "normal" dining practices can be detected: "certain postures attach persistently to certain categories of person" (178). Free adult males are "normally" represented as reclining, free adult women and children are "commonly" shown either sitting or reclining, and slaves "normally" stand. But the point Roller makes is that these dining postures are not rigid; they are not rules. Indeed there are so many exceptions to the norms, both in the texts and in the images, that one has to question the veracity of these so-called "normal" patterns of behavior. The more important question, as Roller is at pains to emphasize, is to determine the ideology that underlies the texts and images. Why do the sources show what they show? What is their intended message?One of the recurring arguments of this book is that reclining as a dining posture in Roman times always marked social privilege. It was a sign of otium. It [End Page 596] singled the diner out as a member of the elite, as someone with wealth, leisure, and access to "the good life." References in literature and art to reclining diners provide reinforcement of this privileged status. Elite males set the standard for everyone else. Those who did not belong to this class, particularly the subelites, the people just below the upper crust of Roman society, could express their aspirations to elite status by depicting themselves as reclining at dinner, regardless of whether they actually did so in practice.A large part of this book is devoted to the question of women at table. It is here that the evidence is the most convoluted; equally it is here that Roller offers some challenging new insights. He argues... (shrink)

This essay interweaves pedagogy, reflection, and critical synthesis to evaluate an assignment employed in the upper-division seminar, “Race and Gender in the Eighteenth Century”: The Meme Museum. The Meme Museum harnesses social media reaction with the goal of orienting students’ responses and readings to eighteenth-century literature. The Meme Museum also ineluctably reproduces “digital blackface” in that students, who attend a Predominately White Institution, rely on Black celebrities and athletes to express their reactive emotions and affects towards the assigned readings. (...) This essay offers the term “reactive blackness” as a communicative media language and affective comportment that emerges directly from an eighteenth-century archive and admits the intersections of race and gender into its fold. Reactive blackness exploits blackened emotionality and reifies the Black experience as an icon of expressivity. The essay thus interrogates artifacts from the student-generated Meme Museum to consider the transhistorical analyses that such an assignment might avail in the anti-racist teaching of race and gender in the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Drawing on Frederick Douglass’s arguments about racial pride, I develop and defend an account of feeling racial pride that centers on resisting racialized oppression. Such pride is racially ecumenical in that it does not imply partiality towards one’s own racial group. I argue that it can both accurately represent its intentional object and be intrinsically and extrinsically valuable to experience. It follows, I argue, that there is, under certain conditions, a morally unproblematic, and plausibly valuable, kind of racial pride available (...) to white people, though one that could hardly differ more from what is generally meant by “white pride.”. (shrink)

The presidency of Donald Trump saw the rise of a new kind of conspiracy in QAnon. The internet-assembled meta-conspiracy has grown to include elements of other growing conspiracies such as the anti-mask movement and anti-vaxxers. As it has grown, QAnon has attracted significant support for its beliefs from white evangelicals who also supported Trump in huge numbers in both 2016 and 2020. In this integrative review of literature, I explore the reasons that QAnon has performed so well so quickly, (...) finding justification for conspiracy theory support among evangelicals in the theory of cognitive dissonance. QAnon has found a foothold in evangelical circles during worldwide pandemic, which has left many evangelicals unmoored from their spiritual family and susceptible to other realms of community online. The conspiracy theory has infiltrated evangelicalism by using the language and concerns of Christianity in its messaging and by attempting to justify evangelical support of Donald Trump. Although traditional media are quick to point out the theory’s inconsistencies and failed prophecies, this paper finds that the harm QAnon has done to the evangelical community may only be undone through spiritual connection and practice. (shrink)

Whilst the academic literature on leadership has identified authenticity as an important leadership attribute, few studies have examined how authentic leadership is evaluated in naturally occurring discourse. This article explores how authentic leadership was characterised and evaluated in the discourse of the British press during the 2015 Labour Party leadership election—won, against the odds, by veteran left-winger Jeremy Corbyn. Using membership categorisation analysis, we show that the media discourse about authentic leadership was both ambiguous and ambivalent. In their representation (...) of authentic leadership, we found that a discourse of ‘ethical’ leadership was played out in tension with a discourse of ‘effective’ leadership. We propose that this complex and contradictory discursive landscape is also relevant in business contexts where ‘ethical’ leaders are subjected to praise for their virtues but also criticism for their ineffectiveness. Future research could usefully study how ‘ethical’ leaders in different settings can be subject to competing evaluations when their ethical values are discursively contrasted to expectations concerning what it takes to be an ‘effective’ leader. (shrink)

A national survey on researchers’ experiences with their institutional review boards (IRBs) is presented, focused exclusively on social and behavioral researchers. A wide range of experiences is apparent in the data, especially in terms of turnaround time for submitted protocols, incidence of data collection without prior IRB approval, and stated reasons for "going solo." Sixty-two percent felt that the turnaround time they typically experience is "reasonable," and 44% said they had not experienced long delays in obtaining approval. However, 48% of (...) respondents reported either conducting a project without IRB approval or modifying an existing project without IRB approval, with anticipated time for approval being the dominant reason offered for doing so. This adds a new dimension to the widely discussed "national IRB crisis" (e.g., Illinois White Paper, 2005). The article concludes with 2 preliminary recommendations for IRB reform. (shrink)

On 22 July, 2011, we were confronted with the horror of the actions of Anders Behring Breivik. The instant reaction, as we have seen with similar incidents in the past—such as the Oklahoma City bombings—was to attempt to explain the incident. Whether the reasons given were true or not were irrelevant: the fact that there was a reason was better than if there were none. We should not dismiss those that continue to cling on to the initial claims of a (...) wider Jihadist plot behind the actions of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols as Islamophobes (or merely lacking common sense): for, it is often easier to rely on reason—no matter how fictional—than not to have anything to cling on at all. In many ways, it is even better if the reason is fictional: for, if grounded in a certain fact, or reality, it can then go away. However, if it is in the realm of the imaginary, it is then always already metaphorical: thus, can be applied to any and every situation. And it is this, if we echo Friedrich Nietzsche, that gives us our “metaphysical comfort”; that we can know what is going on. This is why conspiracy theories are so popular: underlying them is the logic that someone—no matter how implausible—is in control of the situation. One would rather believe that all acts of terror stemmed from Osama bin Laden (and the narrative worked even better when he was in a ‘cave in Afghanistan’) than if they were the actions, and decisions, of singular individuals. For, if there is a head organizing everything, it can be cut off; there is no controlling a mass of singularities. As Jean Baudrillard continues to teach us, the term ‘mass’ is not a concept. It is a leitmotif of political demagogy, a soft, sticky, lumpen-analytical notion. A good sociology would attempt to surpass it with ‘more subtle’ categories: socio-professional ones, categories of class, cultural status, etc. This is wrong: it is by prowling around these soft and acritical notions (like ‘mana’ once was) that one can go further than intelligent critical sociology. Besides, it will be noticed retrospectively that the concepts ‘class’, ‘social relations’, ‘power’, ‘status’, ‘institution’, and ‘social’ itself—all these too-explicit concepts which are the glory of the legitimate sciences—but also only ever been muddled notions themselves, but notions upon which agreement has nevertheless been reached for mysterious ends: those of preserving a certain code of analysis. To want to specify the term ‘mass’ is a mistake—it is to provide meaning for that which has none.1 And it is this lack of meaning—this nothingness of not only the mass, but our inability to know in general—that truly scares us. For, if we are never able to legitimately make a generalizing statement, this suggests that we can never actually posit beyond a singular, situational, moment. Hence, we can never claim to know anyone: at best, we can only catch momentary glimpses. It is for this very reason that the insanity plea Breivik’s lawyer will attempt is the one that horrifies us the most. For, if Breivik is insane, this foregrounds our inability to understand, know. And as Aristotle has taught us, it is more important that something is plausible than if something were probable—in this context, we would rather have Breivik as a calculating mass murderer than someone who was completely out of his mind. This is especially ironic in the light of the fact that none of us would say that we have any similarity with Breivik. If that were so, the declaration that he was mad should be no more than a logical consequence. However, we also want Breivik to be accountable for his actions. And in order for that to be so, we need him to be of sound mind. But if that were true, we can then no longer distinguish ourselves from him. And it is precisely this that scares us. For, we are horrified not when there are abnormalities to our way of life. There are usually two different reactions to this—either oppose and destroy it; or subsume it under the dominant logic. We see this most clearly in reactions to immigration: there are either calls for immigrants to ‘pack up and leave’ or pseudo-liberal notions of ‘we are all alike’. Both of which are merely version of “all men are brothers”—the brutal translation of which is that you are my brother if you live the same way as me; otherwise not only are you not my brother, you are also potentially not part of mankind (you might as well be, to echo Giorgio Agamben, bare life ). This is played out in our age of what is commonly termed post-political bio-politics —an instance of horribly awkward theoretical jargon that Slavoj Žižek channeling Agamben unpacks rather elegantly: “ post-politics is a politics which claims to leave behind old ideological struggles and, instead, focus[es] on expert management and administration, while bio-politics designates the regulation of the security and welfare of human lives as its primary goal.”2 Žižek continues: Post-political bio-politics also has two aspects which cannot but appear to belong to two opposite ideological spaces: that of the reduction of humans to ‘bare life,’ to Homo sacer , that so-called sacred being who is the object of expert caretaking knowledge, but is excluded, like prisoners at Guantanamo or Holocaust victims, from all rights; and that of respect for the vulnerable Other brought to an extreme through an attitude of narcissistic subjectivity which experiences the self as vulnerable, constantly exposed to a multitude of potential harassments [….] What these two poles share is precisely the underlying refusal of any higher causes, the notion that the ultimate goal of our lives is life itself. That is why there is no contradiction between the respect for the vulnerable Other and […] the extreme expression of treating individuals as Homini sacer .3 This is why the ones that are harshest towards new immigrants are the recently naturalized citizens of any country. For, if there is no longer any “ideological struggle” and all life is reduced to mere automaton-living, there is the realization that we are all the same—not in a tree-hugging hippie sense—but that the immigrant is the same as us precisely because we are all immigrants. And since all nations, and by extension peoples in a nation (especially those who believe in the notion of nationality, and national identity), have to find some manner, no matter from where or what it is, to distinguish themselves from those around them, the other (in spite, and especially in the light, of its absence) is the most crucial aspect of the discourse of nationality. More precisely, in the interests of what Baudrillard calls “preserving a certain code of analysis” (nationality in this case), what has to be maintained is the absolute otherness of the other. Very rarely is Boris Johnson right: “it is not enough to say he is mad. Anders Breivik is patently mad.”4 However, much like Breivik in his manifesto, he should have stopped whilst he was ahead. By attempting to diagnose Breivik—“the fundamental reasons for their callous behavior lie deep in their own sense of rejection and alienation. It is the ideology that gives them the ostensible cause … that gives them an excuse to dramatize the resentment … and to kill.”—Johnson falls into the same trap that he accuses others of: “to try to advance any other explanation for their actions … is simply to play their self-important game.” More crucially, and this is the point that Johnson completely misses, attempting to rationalize Breivik’s actions—to rehabilitate reason—is a desperate attempt at maintaining his otherness. In fact, we’ll end up going one step further, insist on Breivik’s sanity, put him on the stand, and hope that he will display such a difference from all of us that we can rest safe that we are unlike him and his kind. That, in itself, is a dangerous game to play. One should not forget that the turning point in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is in the central part of her novel where she lets the monster speak. At that moment, the monster moves from an ‘it’ to a fully subjectivized person; with his own stories, historicities, emotions, and so on. In Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Frankenstein , this is the moment where “the ultimate criminal is thus allowed to present himself as the ultimate victim. The monstrous murderer reveals himself to be a deeply hurt and desperate individual, yearning for company and love.”5 But, in the case of Breivik, this goes beyond just a risk of us feeling for him: for, no right-minded person should ever deny another the opportunity to put forth her or his own case. The problem lies with us trying to deny the madness of Breivik’s act by putting him back under reason. The problem is in our inability to differentiate the act from the person; the singular from the universal.6 In our desperation to preserve the notion that we are rational beings incapable of becoming monsters, we’ve had to deny the meaninglessness—in the strict sense of it lying outside of reason—of Breivik’ act; we’ve had to “provide meaning where there is none.” For, if this act were a moment of madness—a moment that comes from elsewhere—we cannot say that it will not descend upon us one day. If Breivik’s actions were that of a sane person, one who is in control of his being, his self, we can then locate the otherness in his being. More importantly, this would allow us to distinguish ourselves from that said being. Breivik’s sanity is the only thing that allows us to say that ‘this act of terror is borne out of one with an ultra-right ideology’; and ‘since I am not of that ideology, I would never do such a thing’. By doing that, we attempt to protect ourselves by claiming that people who share Breivik’s ideology are foreign to us, other to us. However, if Breivik’s act was a moment of insanity, his otherness is no longer locatable: and the notion of ‘us and them’ shifts from a geographical, physical, religious, or cultural notion, to one in the realm of ideas. And this is what truly scares us. For, if what is foreign is not phenomenological, then it cannot be seen, detected, sensed. Anders Behring Breivik, Timothy McVeigh, and Terry Nichols, terrify us not merely for the fact that they were white in a white society, but more pertinently that their skin color did not matter: we would not be able to spot them even if they were blue, even if they were right next to us, even if we had known them all our lives. Even as we are grappling with holding Breivik accountable by declaring him of sound mind, what truly terrifies us is that deep down we know that Breivik’s act is a moment of madness; beyond all comprehensibility. And this means that we would not be able to spot the idea; even if it were in our heads at this very moment. We have gone to lengths to rehabilitate Breivik, McVeigh, Nichols, and such perpetrators of massive incomprehensible violence, in order to preserve our difference from them. What we have really been trying to deny is the fact that everyone, at any given moment, could have a moment of madness. And this is the true radicality of Mary Shelley: in allowing us to momentarily enter the head of the monster, she shows us not just the fact that he is like any one of us, but that any one of us could, in the right (or wrong) circumstance, be like him. Perhaps here, there is a lesson to be learned from Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street . The most dangerous thing that one could do on Elm Street was to mention Freddy’s name—once you had knowledge of him, you were open to the possibility of a visit during your dreams. This suggests that Freddy is a combination of externalities (after all, when you die, he survives) and your self (if you have never heard of him, he cannot come for you). In this sense, Freddy would be the manifestation par excellence of what Avital Ronell calls a “killer text”—it is one’s relationality with the text (and the ideas, notions, in the said text) that opens oneself to it, to the lessons of the text, to being changed, affected, even to the dangers of the text. After all, one should never forget Plato’s warning that ideas can corrupt, can be perilous. To compound matters, as Ronell reminds us, “the connection to the other is a reading—not an interpretation, assimilation, or even a hermeneutic understanding, but a reading.”7 Thus, in attempting to differentiate ourselves from Breivik by concocting some reason(s) why we are not like him, we have done nothing but read him, open a connection to him. *** Bang bang, he shot me down Bang bang, I hit the ground Bang bang, that awful sound Bang bang, my baby shot me down. “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” Sonny Bono, 1966. This is the part that we all know and remember. Whilst never quite remembering that this is a song that is not so much about violence, love, but about remembering. For, after the bridge comes the accusatory stanza: “Now he's gone, I don't know why/ And till this day, sometimes I cry/ He didn't even say goodbye/ He didn't take the time to lie.” Bang Bang is a game that the two lovers used to play; and all she has now is the memory of the game to remember him by. And the only reason she has to recall this game is: he never provided her a reason for his leaving, his death. Not that she will, can, ever get that satisfactory answer. This is precisely the game we are playing with Anders Behring Breivik. Even though he has left a 1500 page manifesto, even though we will allow him to use the court-room as his platform, we will continue screaming at him “tell me why …” For, what we want him to say is that we are not like him: what we really want him to do is, “take the time to lie …” Perhaps here, we should allow the echo of the infans to resound in baby . As Christopher Fynsk reminds us, the infans is one that is pre-language, pre-knowing, pre-understanding: it is the very finitude, and exteriority, of relationality itself.8 And thus, it is a position of openness to the fullness of possibility—and nothing else. This would be, in Ronell’s terms, a “connection to the other” that knows nothing other than the fact that it is a connection. The true horror of 22 July, 2011, is the fact that it is not Anders Behring Breivik who is mad, but the act itself that is. And this is precisely why only “my baby” that could have “shot me down.” For, it is an act that is from beyond, a sheer act of madness that—as Plato warns us—is whispered into our ears (and can so easily be mistaken for inspiration, and even wisdom), an act that can both seize, and cease, us at the same time. And what can this utter openness to an other, the other, be but a moment of love, a true ‘falling in love’. At the moment of whispering, nothing can be known as we are babies as our baby shoots us down …. Hence, all attempts at analyzing this event (including this one) are not only futile, but border on the farcical. The real tragedy is that we forget that all of us have the possibility of becoming Breivik. NOTES Jean Baudrillard. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities . Trans. Paul Foss, John Johnston, Paul Patton, & Andrew Berardini. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007. p. 37. Slavoj Žižek. Violence: Six Sideway Reflections . London: Profile Books, 2009. p. 34 Ibid: 35-36. Boris Johnson. “ Anders Breivik: There is nothing to study in the mind of Norway’s mass killer .” The Telegraph . (25 July, 2011): Slavoj Žižek. Violence: Six Sideway Reflections . London: Profile Books, 2009. p.39. What is killing us is the notion that Breivik’s act is beyond reason, beyond knowing, outside understanding itself. This is why Boris Johnson’s plea was for us to ignore Breivik as a madman. But to do so, Johnson conflates the notion of the act and the person; the singular and the universal. This is exactly the same gesture as insisting on his sanity: the ‘madman’ is merely the absolute other, one that we are not. Avital Ronell. The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989: 380. Christopher Fynsk. Infant Figures: The Death of the Infans and Other Scenes of Origin . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.  . (shrink)

Recent legislation, such as the Patient Self-Determination Act, establishes advance directives as an acceptable procedural means of incorporating patients’ preferences for life-sustaining treatments into their medical care. Advance directives can enhance medical decision making since they provide patients with an opportunity to communicate their preferences before suffering from an acute illness that may preclude their ability to do so.Although patients expect discussions about life-sustaining therapies to be initiated by their physicians, very little is known about what prompts physicians to discuss (...) advance directives with their patients. As in other areas of clinical decision making, there is evidence that patients’ sociodemographic factors influence whether discussions about advance directives occur between patients and their physicians. In one study of persons with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, those who had not had discussions about advance directives with their physicians tended to be non-white, have no prior hospitalization, and were more likely to have been cared for in a health maintenance organization than in a teaching hospital. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that recidivism scoring algorithms like COMPAS have significant racial bias: Black defendants are roughly twice as likely as white defendants to be mistakenly classified as medium- or high-risk. This has led some to call for abolishing COMPAS. But many others have argued that algorithms should instead be given access to a defendant's race, which, perhaps counterintuitively, is likely to improve outcomes. This approach can involve either establishing race-sensitive risk thresholds, or distinct racial ‘tracks’. Is there (...) a moral difference between these two approaches? We first consider Deborah Hellman's view that the use of distinct racial tracks (but not distinct thresholds) does not constitute disparate treatment since the effects on individuals are indirect and does not rely on a racial generalization. We argue that this is mistaken: the use of different racial tracks seems both to have direct effects on and to rely on a racial generalization. We then offer an alternative understanding of the distinction between these two approaches—namely, that the use of different cut points is to the counterfactual comparative disadvantage, ex ante, of all white defendants, while the use of different racial tracks can in principle be to the advantage of all groups, though some defendants in both groups will fare worse. Does this mean that the use of cut points is impermissible? Ultimately, we argue, while there are reasons to be skeptical of the use of distinct cut points, it is an open question whether these reasons suffice to make a difference to their moral permissibility. (shrink)

This unique volume is a comprehensive,well-illustrated study of the organization of the white matter pathways of the brain. Schmahmann and Pandya have analyzed and synthesized the corticocortical and corticosubcortical connections of the major areas of the cerebral cortex of the rhesus monkey. The result is a detailed understanding of the constituents of the cerebral white matter and the organization of the fiber tracts. The findings from the 36 cases studied are presented on a single template brain, facilitating comparison (...) of the locations of the different fiber pathways. The summary diagrams provide a comprehensive atlas of the cerebral white matter. The text is enriched by close attention to functional aspects of the anatomical observations. The clinical relevance of the pathways is addressed throughout the text and a chapter is devoted to human white matter diseases. The introductory account gives a detailed historical background. Translations of seminal original observations by early investigators are presented, and when these are considered in the light of the authors' new observations, many longstanding conflicts and debates are resolved. This scholarly book is an important addition to systems and cognitive neuroscience that will be of lasting value to neurobiologists, anatomists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, neuroradiologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and to their students and trainees. (shrink)

In this Black Mirror Christmas special, we meet two men in a desolate cabin, who each share stories that center around two different but related technologies: The cookie technology that allows one to make digital copies of individuals and use them as personal assistants, and the Z‐Eye technology, which can be used to block people in real life. As the stories unfold, they make for a very dark Christmas tale and it becomes clear that each of these technologies raise a (...) string of ethical questions, especially related to the trade‐off between the value of privacy vs. the value of access to information. The chapter looks at these problems through different ethical frameworks, in order to explore what solutions each framework would offer to these problems. (shrink)

A history of injustices to diverse groups of human subjects in medical research has resulted in concerted efforts by U.S. policymakers in the second half of the twentieth century to provide greater protection for future subjects. However, in the context of patient populations demanding better therapies, potential medical advances, and greater attention to issues of social justice, Kahn, Mastroianni, and Sugarman set out to reconceptualize the principle of justice in human subjects research to address these urgent concerns. In BeyondConsent, Kahn (...) and colleagues advance a framework of justice in terms of access to participation in research, instead of protection. Their worthy cause, developed out of collaboration on the White House Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, aims to demonstrate how previously unaddressed notions of justice now require greater consideration in research. Specifically, they emphasize how fairness requires a greater distribution of risks and benefits, and that The volume does not report new research findings but rather draws on multidisciplinary approaches, including law, medicine, philosophy, history, and health policy, to argue that justice must go beyond informed consent. The editors posit that this challenge to protectionism is necessary given the heightened urgency for patients to benefit from investigational therapies although they incur increased risks. (shrink)

Jeremy Waldron, Torture, Terror, and Trade-offs: Philosophy for the White House, viii + 357 pp. In Torture, Terror, and Trade-offs, Jeremy Waldron assesses s...

I have two main aims. The first is general, and more philosophical. The second is specific, and more closely related to physics. The first aim is to state my general views about laws and causation at different ”levels’. The main task is to understand how the higher levels sustain notions of law and causation that ”ride free’ of reductions to the lower level or levels. I endeavour to relate my views to those of other symposiasts. The second aim is to (...) give a framework for describing dynamics at different levels, emphasizing how the various levels’ dynamics can mesh or fail to mesh. This framework is essentially that of elementary dynamical systems theory. The main idea will be, for simplicity, to work with just two levels, dubbed ”micro’ and ”macro’, which are related by coarse-graining. I use this framework to describe, in part, the first four of Ellis’ five types of top-down causation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAlthough item-memory for emotional information is enhanced, memory for associations between items is often impaired for negative, emotionally arousing compared to neutral information. We te...

In Section 2, I survey some of the ways that computers are used in mathematics. These raise questions that seem to have a generally epistemological character, although they do not fall squarely under a traditional philosophical purview. The goal of this article is to try to articulate some of these questions more clearly, and assess the philosophical methods that may be brought to bear. In Section 3, I note that most of the issues can be classified under two headings: some (...) deal with the ability of computers to deliver appropriate “evidence” for mathematical assertions, a notion that is explored in Section 4, while others deal with the ability of computers to deliver appropriate mathematical “understanding,” a notion that is considered in Section 5. Final thoughts are provided in Section 6. (shrink)

The 1-consistency of arithmetic is shown to be equivalent to the existence of fixed points of a certain type of update procedure, which is implicit in the epsilon-substitution method.

I reject Norton and Earman's hole argument that spacetime substantivalism is incompatible with determinism. I reconcile these both technically and philosophically. There is a technical definition of determinism that is not violated by pairs of models of the kind used in the hole argument. And technicalities aside, the basic idea of determinism is not violated if we claim that at most one of the two models represents a possible world. This claim can be justified either by metrical essentialism, or by (...) denying transworld identity for points: I prefer the latter. (shrink)

In _Nonsense upon Stilts¸_ first published in 1987, Waldron includes and discusses extracts from three classic critiques of the idea of natural rights embodied in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Each text is prefaced by an historical introduction and an analysis of its main themes. The collection as a whole in introduced with an essay tracing the philosophical background to the three critiques as well as the eighteenth-century idea of natural rights which they attacked. (...) But the point of reproducing these works is not merely historical. Modern attacks on ‘rights-based’ political philosophy mirror the concerns of Bentham, Burke and Marx. Jeremy Waldron has therefore added an extensive concluding essay which relates these classic texts to the modern discussion of rights and re-examines the idea of rights in the light of contemporary critiques. This text provides an invaluable teaching tool for courses in politics and philosophy. (shrink)

Frankfurt-type examples seem to show that agents can be morally responsible for their actions and omissions even if they could not have done otherwise. Fischer and Ravizza's influential account of moral responsibility is largely based on such examples. I examine a problem with their account of responsibility in cases where we fail to act. The solution to this problem has a surprising and far reaching implication concerning the construction of successful Frankfurt-type examples. I argue that the role of the counterfactual (...) intervener in such examples can only be filled by a rational agent. (shrink)

In a previous paper, we have proposed assigning as the value of a physical quantity in quantum theory, a certain kind of set (a sieve) of quantities that are functions of the given quantity. The motivation was in part physical---such a valuation illuminates the Kochen-Specker theorem; and in part mathematical---the valuation arises naturally in the topos theory of presheaves. This paper discusses the conceptual aspects of this proposal. We also undertake two other tasks. First, we explain how the proposed valuations (...) could arise much more generally than just in quantum physics; in particular, they arise as naturally in classical physics. Second, we give another motivation for such valuations (that applies equally to classical and quantum physics). This arises from applying to propositions about the values of physical quantities some general axioms governing partial truth for any kind of proposition. (shrink)

In place of Tomasello's explanation for the source of moral obligation, we suggest that it develops from the concern for others already implicit in the human developmental system. Mutual affection and caring make the development of communication and thinking possible. Humans develop as persons within such relationships and this develops into respect and moral obligation.

In this essay, the author shows how Foucault's discussions of pastoral power relate to a wider “analytics” of religious power set down in 1975 and 1976 before he deploys the language of the “pastoral”. In shifting the discussion of pastoral power to a wider trajectory, the author considers the question of whether pastoral power persists after the historical shift to governmentality. The chapter maps the specific features of Foucault's idea of pastoral power in the 1977–78 College de France course and, (...) aided by the “dry and schematic character” of the lectures. It examines one of the most neglected aspects of pastoral power, the theological relation of pastoral power, something brought to light in the 1977–78 course. The priority Foucault gave to pastoral power is significant not only for its “decisive” historical importance, but also in showing something of how “religion is a political force”. (shrink)

I show that locality, as it occurs in EPR arguments for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics, can be construed as causal independence understood in terms of Lewis' counterfactual analysis of causation. This construal has two benefits. It supplements recent analyses, which have not treated locality in detail. And it clarifies the relation between two EPR arguments that have recently been distinguished. It shows that the simpler of the two is more complex than has been thought; and that the other argument (...) does not need 'counterfactual definiteness'. (shrink)

Can there be `peaceful coexistence' between quantum theory and special relativity? Thirty years ago, Shimony hoped that isolating the culprit in proofs of Bell inequalities as Outcome Independence would secure such peaceful coexistence: or, if not secure it, at least show a way---maybe the best or only way---to secure it. In this paper, I begin by being sceptical of Shimony's approach, urging that we need a relativistic solution to the quantum measurement problem. Then I analyse Outcome Independence in Kent's realist (...) one-world Lorentz-invariant interpretation of quantum theory. Then I consider Shimony's other condition, Parameter Independence, both in Kent's proposal and more generally, in the light of recent remarkable theorems by Colbeck, Renner and Leegwater. For both Outcome Independence and Parameter Independence, there is a striking analogy with the situation in pilot-wave theory. Finally, I will suggest that these recent theorems make some kind of peaceful coexistence mandatory for someone who, like Shimony, endorses Parameter Independence. (shrink)

Understanding Torture surveys the massive literature surrounding torture, arguing that, once properly understood, there can be no defence of torture in any circumstances.