The knowability paradox threatens metaphysical or semantical antirealism, the view that truth is epistemic, by revealing an awful consequence of the claim [i] that all truths are knowable. Various attempts have been made to find a way out of the paradox.

Over the last 50 years, the term professionalism has undergone a widespread expansion in its use and a semantic shift in its meaning. As a result, it is at risk of losing its descriptive and analytical value and becoming instead simply an empty evaluative label, a fate described by C. S. Lewis as ‘verbicide’. This article attempts to rescue professionalism from this fate by down-sizing its extension and reassigning some of its work to two other ethical domains, introduced as the (...) neologisms organizationalism and sur-moralism. Professionalism is defined as a morality based in system of obligations that are assumed by physicians over the course of their professional training and which primarily refer to two groups: patients and colleagues, including trainees. Organizationalism is also a morality, but the obligations are owed to the employing organization and on different grounds. A third ethical domain, here called sur-moralism, comprises actions that are not based in obligations. They are discretionary and potentially meritorious; they cannot be required by the profession or organization. This article presents a conceptual model of the three ethical domains and the shifting borders between them. One practical benefit of this typology is that physicians can more accurately understand the nature and sources of obligations that they are asked to accept, and when necessary prioritize them. Another is that physicians will be able to describe the potential tension between the three domains and understand how and why the borders between them can move. Both should help physicians to be more ethically oriented to their work settings. (shrink)

During the years leading up to World War I, America experienced a crisis of civic identity. How could a country founded on liberal principles and composed of increasingly diverse cultures unite to safeguard individuals and promote social justice? In this book, Jonathan Hansen tells the story of a group of American intellectuals who believed the solution to this crisis lay in rethinking the meaning of liberalism. Intellectuals such as William James, John Dewey, Jane Addams, Eugene V. Debs, and W. (...) E. B. Du Bois repudiated liberalism's association with acquisitive individualism and laissez-faire economics, advocating a model of liberal citizenship whose virtues and commitments amount to what Hansen calls cosmopolitan patriotism. Rooted not in war but in dedication to social equity, cosmopolitan patriotism favored the fight against sexism, racism, and political corruption in the United States over battles against foreign foes. Its adherents held the domestic and foreign policy of the United States to its own democratic ideals and maintained that promoting democracy universally constituted the ultimate form of self-defense. Perhaps most important, the cosmopolitan patriots regarded critical engagement with one's country as the essence of patriotism, thereby justifying scrutiny of American militarism in wartime. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the emergence of skilled behaviours, in the form of actions, cognitions and emotions, between professional state level cricket batters and their lesser skilled counterparts. Twenty-two male cricket batsmen (n = 6 state level; n = 8 amateur grade club level, n = 8 junior state representative level) participated in a game scenario training session against right arm pace bowlers (n = 6 amateur senior club). The batsmen were tasked with scoring as many (...) runs as possible during a simulated limited-overs game. The actions, cognitions and emotions of each batsmen were recorded in situ with findings showing differences between state level players and those lesser skilled. State level batsmen played more scoring shots and scored more runs, underpinned by superior bat-ball contact and technical efficiency. Furthermore, the state player’s cognitive evaluations of their own performance differed from junior batters, with more reported strategies based on an external outcome focus, such as where to score runs, rather than a focus on internal processes, such as making technical changes. State level batsmen also reported lower levels of nervousness compared with junior level batsmen. These results highlight the importance of viewing the emergence of skilled behaviour as multi-faceted, rather than simply the acquisition of superior execution and technical proficiency. (shrink)

Certain recent experiments are often taken to show that people are far more likely to classify a foreseen side-effect of an action as intentional when that side-effect has some negative normative valence. While there is some disagreement over the details, there is broad consensus among experimental philosophers that this is the finding. We challenge this consensus by presenting an alternative interpretation of the experiments, according to which they show that a side-effect is classified as intentional only if the agent considered (...) its relative importance when deciding on the action. We present two new experiments whose results can be explained by our hypothesis but not by any version of the consensus view. In the course of doing so, we develop a methodological critique of the previous literature on this topic and draw from it lessons for future experimental philosophy research. (shrink)

"--Daniel Callahan, cofounder of the Hastings Center "Doctors and people who have no choice but to trust doctors--which means all of us--need to read this book.

In Chapter 9 of the first book of the Metaphysics Aristotle criticizes “those who posit the Ideas as causes”. His second group of criticisms urges that “the ways in which we try to prove that the forms exist” are unsatisfactory, and he enumerates five such ‘ways’. Alexander of Aphrodisias, in his commentary on the passage, offers to explain in more detail what the five ways were and why each is a cul-de-sac. Gail Fine’s On Ideas is a commentary on this (...) section of Alexander’s commentary on Aristotle. (shrink)

Is the way in which political philosophy is conducted today too ahistorical? Does such ahistoricism render political philosophy too abstract? Is political philosophy thus incapable of dealing with the realities of political life? This volume brings together some of the world's leading political philosophers to address these crucial questions. The contributors focus especially on political philosophy's pretensions to universality and on its strained relationship with the world of real politics. Some chapters argue that political philosophers should not be cowed by (...) the accusations levied against them from outside of their own field. Others insist that these accusations require a dramatic reshaping of normative political thought. The volume will spark controversy across political philosophy and beyond. (shrink)

One of the key criticisms of understanding health in terms of adaptation to one’s environment is that medical judgments should be able to apply across environments. If we say that a condition is pathological ‘for person X in environment E’, then we quickly run into problems of desirability and social values. However, many key concepts in biology entail an inability to separate the organism from its environment. In other words, it is precisely by referring to ‘organism X in environment E’ (...) that we can determine what is ‘normal and natural’. In this chapter, I will argue that the role of this inseparability of organism and environment for understanding medical norms has been misunderstood and the implications of it for naturalistic theories of health and disease have gone largely unappreciated. To better understand this contextualist approach, I will discuss the ideas of John Ryle and Georges Canguilhem, focusing primarily on the latter. In Canguilhem’s work we find some key arguments for why organismic norms need to be understood relative to environments and how this can help to clarify the concepts of health and disease. I will explore his peculiar form of naturalism that was based on the dynamism and variability of organisms, show how it can be clarified through more recent biological research, and mention some of its limitations. (shrink)

The paper describes a project in which the thesis of the social determinants of health is used in order to help identify groups that will be among the least advantaged members of society, when disadvantage is understood in terms of lack of genuine opportunity for secure functioning. The analysis is derived from the author's work with Avner de-Shalit in Disadvantage (Oxford University Press, 2007).

This paper addresses a number of important issues regarding the ethical practices and recent behaviour of large Australian firms in nine industries. These issues include whether firms have a written code of ethics, whether firms have a forum for the discussion of ethics, whether managers consider that their firm's activities have an environmental impact and whether there are any statistical relationships between the size, industry class, ownership, international involvement and location of the firm and its ethical management practices. These questions (...) are examined by using data collected from a sample of 136 large firms operating in Australia. (shrink)

Experimental manipulations are a key means to establish causal relationships in microbiology. However, challenges remain to establish the applicability of such experiments beyond the precise conditions in which they were conducted. Ecological information can help address these challenges by describing the extent to which an experimentally-determined mechanism can explain the natural phenomenon that it is purported to cause.

Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion is a new annual volume offering a regular snapshot of state-of-the-art work in this longstanding area of philosophy ...

In this essay I examine a recent argument by Steven Weinberg that seeks to establish local quantum field theory as the only type of quantum theory in accord with the relevent evidence and satisfying two basic physical principles. I reconstruct the argument as a demonstrative induction and indicate it's role as a foil to the underdetermination argument in the debate over scientific realism.

A republican theory of social justice specifies how republican freedom should be distributed. The goal of this paper is to assess the plausibility of two recently proposed principles of republican social justice: an aggregative maximizing principle defended by Philip Pettit in Republicanism and a sufficiency principle of republican social justice offered by Pettit in On the People’s Terms. The maximizing principle must be rejected because it permits under-protecting vulnerable members of society in favor of increasing the freedom of the powerful. (...) The sufficiency principle avoids the most basic objection to the maximizing principle, but it is at best an incomplete theory of social justice. Social justice requires principle(s) for determining the justice of distributions above the sufficiency threshold and republican theory does not determine which principle(s) should govern distributions above the threshold. Republicans must decide whether they will incorporate an independent commitment to equality within their theory of social justice. (shrink)

This study examines urban agriculture (UA) in Sacramento, California (USA), the nation's self-branded “Farm-to-Fork Capital,” in order to highlight UA’s distinct yet entangled roots. The study is based on 24 interviews with a diverse array of UA leaders, conducted as part of a five-year transdisciplinary study of UA in Sacramento. In it, we unearth three primary “taproots” of UA projects, each with its own historical legacies, normative visions, and racial dynamics. In particular, we examine UA projects with “justice taproots,” “health (...) taproots,” and “market taproots.” We use this analysis to understand how different kinds of UA projects are embedded in racial capitalism in ways that transform relationships between people, the city, and food systems. Unearthing these entangled roots helps illuminate UA’s underlying politics, showing how these roots grow in both competitive and symbiotic ways within the soil matrix of racial capitalism. We argue that these roots interact differently with racial capitalism, creating disparities in their growth trajectories. In particular, UA projects associated with the justice taproot are historically underrepresented and undervalued. However, we argue that there are some prospects for building alliances between the UA movement’s three roots, and that these are both promising and problematic. (shrink)

Volume 23, Issue 2, June 2020, Page 187-199.

Introduction : ethical economics? -- The sovereign consumer -- Two myths about economic growth -- The politics of pay -- Happiness -- Pricing life and nature -- New worlds of money : public services and beyond -- Conclusion.

Bioethics as a field has been fortunate that its values and concerns have mirrored the values and concerns of society. In light of the September 11th attacks, it is possible that we are witnessing the beginning of a transition in American culture, one fraught with implications for bioethics. The emphasis on autonomy and individual rights may come to be tempered by greater concern over the collective good. Increased emphasis on solidarity over autonomy could greatly alter public response to research abuses (...) aimed at defense from bioterrorism, to privacy of genetic information, and to control of private medical resources to protect the public health. (shrink)

This paper sets out a framework in which we can distinguish between four types of redistributive attention to the disadvantaged: compensation; personal enhancement; targeted resource enhancement; and status enhancement. It is argued that in certain cases many of us will have strong intuitions in favour or against one or more strategies for addressing disadvantage, and it is further argued that in such cases it is likely that our reactions are based on assumptions about the human good. Hence the two issues (...) — addressing disadvantage and the human good — shed light on one another [1]. (shrink)