Benedict de Spinoza is one of the most controversial and enigmatic thinkers in the history of philosophy. His greatest work, Ethics (1677), developed a comprehensive philosophical system and argued that God and Nature are identical. His scandalous Theological-Political Treatise (1670) provoked outrage during his lifetime due to its biblical criticism, anticlericalism, and defense of the freedom to philosophize. Together, these works earned Spinoza a reputation as a singularly radical thinker. -/- In this book, Steinberg and Viljanen offer a concise and (...) up-to-date account of Spinoza’s thought and its philosophical legacy. They explore the full range of Spinoza’s ideas, from politics and theology to ontology and epistemology. Drawing broadly on Spinoza’s impressive oeuvre, they have crafted a lucid introduction for readers unfamiliar with this important philosopher, as well as a nuanced and enlightening study for more experienced readers. (shrink)

This book is a critical survey of and guidebook to the literature on biological functions. It ties in with current debates and developments, and at the same time, it looks back on the state of discourse in naturalized teleology prior to the 1970s. It also presents three significant new proposals. First, it describes the generalized selected effects theory, which is one version of the selected effects theory, maintaining that the function of a trait consists in the activity that led to (...) its differential persistence or reproduction in a population, and not merely its differential reproduction. Secondly, it advances “within-discipline pluralism” (as opposed to between-discipline pluralism) a new form of function pluralism, which emphasizes the coexistence of function concepts within diverse biological sub-disciplines. Lastly, it provides a critical assessment of recent alternatives to the selected effects theory of function, namely, the weak etiological theory and the systems-theoretic theory. The book argues that, to the extent that functions purport to offer causal explanations for the existence of a trait, there are no viable alternatives to the selected effects view. -/- The debate about biological functions is still as relevant and important to biology and philosophy as it ever was. Recent controversies surrounding the ENCODE Project Consortium in genetics, the nature of psychiatric classification, and the value of ecological restoration, all point to the continuing relevance to biology of philosophical discussion about the nature of functions. In philosophy, ongoing debates about the nature of biological information, intentionality, health and disease, mechanism, and even biological trait classification, are closely related to debates about biological functions. (shrink)

People have always been xenophobic, but an explicit philosophical and scientific view of human racial difference only began to emerge during the modern period. Why and how did this happen? Surveying a range of philosophical and natural-scientific texts, dating from the Spanish Renaissance to the German Enlightenment, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference charts the evolution of the modern concept of race and shows that natural philosophy, particularly efforts to taxonomize and to order nature, played a crucial role. Smith demonstrates (...) how the denial of moral equality between Europeans and non-Europeans resulted from converging philosophical and scientific developments, including a declining belief in human nature's universality and the rise of biological classification. The racial typing of human beings grew from the need to understand humanity within an all-encompassing system of nature, alongside plants, minerals, primates, and other animals. While racial difference as seen through science did not arise in order to justify the enslavement of people, it became a rationalization and buttress for the practices of trans-Atlantic slavery. From the work of François Bernier to G. W. Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and others, Smith delves into philosophy's part in the legacy and damages of modern racism. With a broad narrative stretching over two centuries, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference takes a critical historical look at how the racial categories that we divide ourselves into came into being. (shrink)

_The first unabridged English translation of the correspondence between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Georg Ernst Stahl detailing their opposing philosophies_ The correspondence between the eighteenth-century mathematician and philosopher G. W. Leibniz and G. E. Stahl, a chemist and physician at the court of King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia, known as the Leibniz-Stahl Controversy, is one of the most important intellectual contributions on theoretical issues concerning pre-biological thinking. Editors François Duchesneau and Justin E. H. Smith offer readers the first (...) fully annotated English translation of this fascinating exchange of philosophical views on divine action, the order of nature, causality and teleology, and the soul-body relationship. (shrink)

What an agent ought to do is determined by competition between reasons bearing on the options open to her. The popular metaphor of balancing or weighing reasons on a scale to represent this competition encourages a focus on competition between reasons for competing options. But what an agent ought to do also depends on the reasons against those options. The balancing metaphor does not provide an obvious way to represent reasons against. Partly as a result of this, there is a (...) serious lack of work on reasons against. A simple view is that there is no problem here, since reasons against an option are really just more reasons for—in particular, reasons for certain alternatives. This simple view lets us maintain the balancing metaphor, and more importantly, it simplifies theorizing about the competition between reasons. This is because if it’s true, there is really just one kind of competition, the competition between reasons for competing options. This paper challenges the simple view, arguing against several ways of identifying which alternatives to an option the reasons against it are reasons for. I also sketch a competing view, according to which reasons against are distinct from reasons for—these are two different normative relations. If this kind of view is correct, then our theory of the competition between reasons will need to recognize at least two kinds of competition: the one between reasons for competing options, and the one between the reasons for an option and the reasons against it. (shrink)

This paper raises a challenge for the recently popular reasons first approach to normativity, according to which all normative notions can be explained in terms of reasons. The reasons first theorist owes us an account of how these explanations go for all other normative notions. I focus here on requirement, and to a lesser extent, permission. There is a very plausible, widely accepted account of the relationship between your reasons and what you ought to do|roughly, what you ought to do (...) is just what you have most reason to do. But it is important to distinguish what you ought to do and what you are required to do. So we still need to give some account of the relationship between reasons and requirements, and relatedly, between reasons and permission. This is less straightforward than giving an account of ought in terms of reasons. I focus in this paper on a strategy I call the Two Kinds of Reasons strategy, and argue that it faces serious obstacles. (shrink)

Dieser Band stellt Abhandlungen von Udo Müllges (1926-1985), Universitätsprofessor an der RWTH Aachen, vor, die in ihrer Gesamtheit ein pädagogisches Programm spiegeln, das auf der geisteswissenschaftlichen Tradition fußt und sich dieser verpflichtet weiß. Der Bogen ist von der konstitutiv-kritischen Frage nach dem Wissenschaftscharakter der Pädagogik bis hin zu aktuellen schulpolitischen Problemen gespannt. In ihrer Gesamtheit bieten die Beiträge einen Einblick in das breite Feld pädagogischer Forschung und eröffnen die Möglichkeit zur produktiven Auseinandersetzung mit den von Udo Müllges erarbeiteten Konzepten zur (...) Klärung gegenwärtiger theoretischer und praktischer Fragen. Das Buch bietet gleichermaßen Anregungen für Fachkollegen, Studierende und Praktiker des pädagogischen Bereiches. (shrink)

Philosophers who study the problem of biological function often begin their deliberations by reflecting on the functions of parts of animals, or the behavior of animals. Applying theories of biological function to unconventional or borderline cases can help us to better evaluate and refine those theories. This is the case when we consider whether parts of transposable elements —bits of “selfish” DNA that move about within a host genome—have functions of their own, that is, whether the parts of TEs have (...) the function of helping the TE move about within the genome. Here I argue that whether or not the parts of TEs have functions depends crucially on whether collections of TEs form “populations,” by which I mean, here, a group of individuals of the same type that impact one another’s chances of persistence or multiplication, by impacting one another’s access to a shared resource. I think there is suggestive, but not conclusive, evidence that some TEs have functions of their own. Considering the problem of TE functionality, then, has value both for philosophy and for biology. (shrink)

Anne Conway’s Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, first published in 1690, is probably the most ambitious contribution to early modern metaphysics by a woman writing in the English language. This beautifully prepared edition makes Conway’s treatise available to twentieth-century readers in an accessible English translation of the 1690 Latin text—itself a translation of an original English manuscript that has long been lost.

Dupras and Bunnik’s strong statement against the normative approach of genetic exceptionalism, which can no longer be justified in the midst of multi-omic research, is of great importance fo...

Many of us believe that we can and do have individual obligations to refrain from contributing to massive collective harms – say, from producing luxury greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; however, our individual actions are so small as to be practically meaningless. Can we then, justify the intuition that we ought to refrain? In this paper, we argue that this debate may have been mis-framed. Rather than investigating whether or not we have obligations to refrain from contributing to collective action, perhaps (...) we should ask whether we have reason to do so. However, this framing brings challenges of its own, and so we close by asking what problems are generated if we focus on these questions of ‘contributory ethics’. (shrink)

Within public health, and increasingly other areas of social policy, there are widespread calls to increase or improve the use of evidence for policy-making. Often these calls rest on an assumption that increased evidence utilisation will be a more efficient or effective means of achieving social goals. Yet a clear elucidation of what can be considered “good evidence” for policy is rarely articulated. Many of the current discussions of best practise in the health policy sector derive from the evidence-based medicine (...) movement, embracing the “hierarchy of evidence” that places experimental trials as pre-eminent in terms of methodological quality. However, a number of problems arise if these hierarchies are used to rank or prioritise policy relevance. Challenges in applying evidence hierarchies to policy questions arise from the fact that the EBM hierarchies rank evidence of intervention effect on a specified and limited number of outcomes. Previous authors have noted that evidence forms at the top of... (shrink)

Marx thinks that capitalism is exploitative, and that is a major basis for his objections to it. But what's wrong with exploitation, as Marx sees it? (The paper is exegetical in character: my object is to understand what Marx believed,) The received view, held by Norman Geras, G.A. Cohen, and others, is that Marx thought that capitalism was unjust, because in the crudest sense, capitalists robbed labor of property that was rightfully the workers' because the workers and not the capitalists (...) produced it. This view depends on a Labor Theory of Property (LTP), that property rights are based ultimately on having produced something. (A view oddly enough shared with the libertarian right, though the LTP is better support for egalitarian or socialist views; see my From Libertarianism to Egalitarianism, 18 Social Theory & Prac. 259-288 (1992).) -/- I show that the idea that Marx's objection to exploitation is based on injustice or LTP-grounded theft is mistaken. Marx's real objection to exploitation is based on unfreedom, that capitalist relations of production, he thinks, unnecessarily limit human freedom. In the first place Marx is quite clear that he vehemently rejects the concepts of justice, fairness, or rights as bourgeois ideology. It is true that he uses the language of "theft" on occasion, but either a literal interpretation of that language must be abandoned, or his consistent, life-long objection to rights- and justice talk must be given up. Second, the structure, indeed the point, of his analysis of the laws of motion of capitalism, is that capitalists make profits through exploitation of labor -- without cheating -- by the normal "legitimate" operation of the system. Other arguments make the same point. -/- The unfreedom or force-based view, though not necessarily my specific arguments advocated so far is shared by a minority of other writers, such as Nancy Holmstrom and Richard Arneson. What my paper offers that is novel, part from arguments for the foregoing that are different and better than those found elsewhere (although Holmstrom and Arneson are excellent), is an account of in detail of what Marx regards as the real problem with exploitation. -/- I analyze Marx's objection that capitalist exploitation causes unnecessary unfreedom by distinguishing and spelling out three different kinds of freedom that he invokes: classic negative freedom, or noninterference; positive freedom, understood as control over or access to the resources enabling one to exercise one's negative freedom; and "real" freedom, as he puts it, the ability to "give the law to oneself," to regulate one's own activities under rules chosen by oneself, to develop one's capacities by autonomous choice. This puts Marx in the tradition going back through Hegel and Kant to Rousseau, the first express advocate of this idea. The opposite of real freedom, the unfreedom due to lack of autonomy, is alienation. -/- I conclude by stating that I think that justice-based objections to exploitation that avoid Marx's objections to the concept are possible. I do not attempt to spell these out here. I take up that task in my subsequently published paper Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, and Justice, 17 Legal Stud.,128-168 (1997). -/- The present paper is related to and partly overlaps with my paper In Defense of Exploitation, 11 Econ. & Phil. 49-81 (1995), a critique of John Roemer's equality based account of the nature of exploitation and its wrongness. The research and writing of this paper was financially supported by the philosophy department of The Ohio State University. -/- Keywords: Exploitation, Justice, Unjustice, Theft, Labor Theory of Property, Marx, Freedom, Unfreedom, Rights, Fairness, Critique of Justice, Negative Freedom, Positive Freedom, Real Freedom, Alienation, G.A. Cohen, Norman Geras. (shrink)

What are the differences between philosophy and science, or between the methods of philosophy and the methods of science? Unlike some philosophers we do not find philosophy and the methods of philosophy to be sui generis. Science, and in particular neuroscience, has much to tell us about the nature of the world and the concepts that we must use to understand and explain it. Yet science cannot function well without reflective analysis of the concepts, methods, and practices that constitute it. (...) For example, experimental methods and their resulting empirical data are essential for understanding the world, yet such data is not a-conceptual. Understanding how and what theoretical assumptions, conceptual assumptions, and practical knowledge guide the use of experimental methods is relevant to understanding the results of that use. In this way, philosophy – whether done by philosophers or scientists – has a role to play in understanding the world. Neuroscience is typically individualistic in focus; nonetheless, the mechanisms of learning and linguistic ability that some neuroscientists study also have a role to play in understanding communication. Philosophy cannot offer adequate understanding, even conceptual clarity, in isolation from empirical investigation. Yet, this does not require that science or scientific concepts will replace or reduce philosophical concepts, let alone those of ordinary language. (shrink)

: Descartes' conceptual distinction (or distinctio rationis) is commonly understood to be a distinction created by the mind's activity without a foundation in re. This paper challenges this understanding partially based on a letter to an unknown correspondent in which Descartes claims not to admit distinctions without a foundation. He goes on to claim that his conceptual distinction is not a distinctio rationis ratiocinantis (i.e. a distinction of reasoning reason) but is something like a formal distinction or, more precisely, a (...) distinctio ! rationis ratiocinatae (i.e. a distinction of reasoned reason). This remark is then explored through Descartes' other writings and his scholastic intellectual heritage. I conclude that Descartes' conceptual distinction just is a formal distinction understood as a distinctio rationis ratiocinatae as expressed in the works of Scotus, Suarez and Eustachius, and so it has a foundation in re in very much the same way as a formal distinction. (shrink)

In Reasons Without Persons, Brian Hedden argues that a theory of rationality need not provide diachronic norms for reasoning, since we can explain all we need to explain about rationality using purely synchronic norms. This article argues that a theory of rationality should contain at least one diachronic norm for reasoning, namely a norm to fill in the details of one's coarse-grained or partial plans. It also explores a possible synchronic approach to this aspect of rationality.

In this comparative analysis of twelve focus groups conducted in Austria, France, and the Netherlands, we investigate how lay people come to terms with two biomedical technologies. Using the term ‘‘technopolitical culture,’’ we aim to show that the ways in which technosciences are interwoven with a specific society frame how citizens build their individual and collective positions toward them. We investigate how the focus group participants conceptualized organ transplantation and genetic testing, their perceptions of individual agency in relation to the (...) two technologies and to more collective forms of acting and governing, and also their understanding of the two technologies’ relationship to broader societal value systems. Against the background of the sustained political effort to build common European values, we suggest that more fine-grained attention toward the culturally embedded differences in coming to terms with biomedical technologies is needed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There is a disagreement over how to understand Nietzsche's view of science. According to what I call the Negative View, Nietzsche thinks science should be reconceived or superseded by another discourse, such as art, because it is nihilistic. By contrast, what I call the Positive View holds that Nietzsche does not think science is nihilistic, so he denies that it should be reinterpreted or overcome. Interestingly, defenders of each position can appeal to Nietzsche's understanding of naturalism to support their (...) interpretation. I argue that Nietzsche embraces a social constructivist conception of causality that renders his naturalism incompatible with the views of naturalism attributed to him by the two dominant readings. (shrink)

(Schroeder 2007) presents a puzzle about negative reason existentials—claims like ‘There's no reason to cry over spilled milk’. Some of these claims are intuitively true, but we also seem to be committed to the existence of the very reasons that are said not to exist. I argue that Schroeder's own pragmatic solution to this puzzle is unsatisfactory, and propose my own based on a contrastive account of reasons, according to which reasons are fundamentally reasons for one thing rather than another, (...) instead of reasons for things simpliciter, as has been traditionally held. (shrink)

The order of discovery can have a profound effect upon the way in which we think about the function of a gene. In E. coli, recA is nearly essential for cell survival in the presence of DNA damage. However, recA was originally identified, as a gene required to obtain recombinant DNA molecules in conjugating bacteria. As a result, it has been frequently assumed that recA promotes the survival of bacteria containing DNA damage by recombination in which DNA strand exchanges occur. (...) We now know that several of the processes that interact with or are controlled by recA, such as excision repair and translesion synthesis, operate to ensure that DNA replication occurs processively without strand exchanges. Yet the view persists in the literature that recA functions primarily to promote recombination during DNA repair. With the benefit of hindsight and more than three decades of additional research, we reexamine some of the classical experiments that established the concept of DNA repair by recombination, and we consider the possibilities that recombination is not an efficient mechanism for rescuing damaged cells, and that recA may be important for maintaining processive replication in a manner that does not generally promote recombination. BioEssays 23:463–470, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed (...) by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a point) so that they can manipulate it for profit. Their survival in the marketplace often depends on their competitive success in doing so. The fact that their interventions into nature, driven by class interest, often succeed, is evidence of the reliability and truth of their natural scientific theories. -/- With social science, capitalists have a partial interest in understanding the world, so that they may maintain their class power, ideological hegemony, and a reasonably stable and self-reproducing economy. Some bourgeois social science, Marx thinks, is therefore vindicated the same way that natural science is, because of, not despite, its success in promoting the class interests that cause it. But the capitalist class, Marx thinks, also has an interest in obfuscating the truth about the social world. It would undermine the stability of capitalism, for example, for the bourgeoisie to adopt what Marx thinks to be the correct social theory, Marxism, and proclaim to the world that capitalism is exploitative and unstable. Capitalism creates a a need for ideological social theories that, driven by class interest, represent capitalism as just, natural, inevitable, and unalterable. If Marxism is correct, while these theories may further capitalist interests, they will not withstand the test of time as capitalist exploitation and instability engenders countersystemic political action. -/- How, then can we know, according to Marx, that Marxism is correct, as applied to itself? In part it is whether it succeeds in further the class interests that cause it. If workers adopt bourgeois theories and Marxism is right, they will find themselves frustrated in pursuit of goals that they have, such as improving their well-being, and if Marxism is wrong, then those theories will help them further their own goals. Similarly with Marxism: if it is right, then workers who adopt it should in the long run have more success in furthering their own goals, and if not, then not. But it is question begging to say that our confidence in the reliability of Marxism is enhanced by its successful promotion of goals that capitalists do not have but (according to Marxism) workers do. To avoid this problem it is necessary to compare the relative success of each sort of theory in promoting the interests and needs that the respective classes have independently of the theory, as well as by the usual criteria of scientific theory choice. -/- Thus the Soviet variant of Marxism was fairly decisively refuted by its failure to generate the support of its own designated constituency necessary to grow and survive. Whether the same is true of other varieties of Marxism or of capitalist social theory, it is, as Zhou En Lai said when asked whether the French Revolution had succeeded, too soon to tell, at least in any definitive way. However, and this is the point of the paper, an objective test of Marxism is possible even though Marxism says that all theory is informed by class interest. The question is whether the interests are in discovering or obfuscating the truth. The point is not limited to Marx, but applies to any self-referential social scientific theory that includes itself in its scope. -/- Keywords: ideology, self-referential theory, self-reference, reliabilism, objectivity, Marx, Marxism, sociology of science, class interest, classes, capitalism, bourgeoisie, workers, working class, social theory of knowledge, confirmation of scientific theory. (shrink)

Boris Hessen’s ‘The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Principia’ (see https://doi.org./10.1163/1569206X-00002041) is considered a pioneering work in the historiography of the natural sciences. For some, it marks the founding moment of the ‘externalist’ approach to this field of study. Previously, Hessen published another paper on Newton entitled ‘Preface to Articles by A. Einstein and J.J. Thomson’, which, some maintain, bears a stronger resemblance to works in the ‘internalist’ camp of the historiography of the natural sciences. For decades, scholars have (...) puzzled over why Hessen chose to argue for, seemingly, diametrically opposed positions. In this paper, however, I argue that Hessen does not advance two different historiographical methods, but a single, dialectical-materialist approach that accounts for the ‘unity in opposition’ of the external and internal dimensions of natural-scientific theory. I draw from Hessen’s two papers on Newton, his previously untranslated writings, as well as selections from the secondary literature. (shrink)

We examined whether positive and negative affect motivates verbal and spatial working memory processes, respectively, which have implications for the expenditure of mental effort. We argue that when emotion promotes cognitive tendencies that are goal incompatible with task demands, greater cognitive effort is required to perform well. We sought to investigate whether this increase in cognitive effort impairs behavioural control over a broad domain of self-control tasks. Moreover, we predicted that individuals with higher behavioural inhibition system (BIS) sensitivities would report (...) more negative affect within the goal incompatible conditions because such individuals report higher negative affect during cognitive challenge. Positive or negative affective states were induced followed by completing a verbal or spatial 2-back working memory task. All participants then completed one of three self-control tasks. Overall, we observed that conditions of emotion and working memory incompatibility (positive/spatial and negative/verbal) performed worse on the self-control tasks, and within the incompatible conditions individuals with higher BIS sensitivities reported more negative affect at the end of the study. The combination of findings suggests that emotion and working memory compatibility reduces cognitive effort and impairs behavioural control. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Die sekundäre Forschungsnutzung von Behandlungsdaten hat Potenzial, medizinisches Wissen zu erweitern und die Patientenbehandlung zu verbessern. Für eine systematische sekundäre Forschungsnutzung spielen Krankenhäuser eine wichtige Rolle: sie erzeugen große Mengen an Behandlungsdaten und müssen für deren Forschungsnutzung die notwendigen Strukturen aufbauen. Damit stellt sich die ethische Frage: Haben Krankenhäuser eine moralische Pflicht, sekundäre Forschungsnutzung von Behandlungsdaten zu unterstützen, indem sie dafür notwendige Ressourcen und Infrastrukturen aufbauen und betreiben? Ziel ist es, eine konzeptionelle Herangehensweise zur Erörterung dieser Frage zu skizzieren (...) und eine erste normative Positionierung vorzuschlagen. Auf Beiträge aus der Wirtschafts- und Organisationsethik zurückgreifend, erarbeiten wir einen begrifflichen Rahmen, der Krankenhäuser als moralische Akteure versteht. Die normativ-ethische Analyse basiert auf einem rekonstruktiven Stakeholder-Ansatz, in dessen Rahmen wir folgende Pflichten von Krankenhäusern ausmachen: Orientierung am Patientenwohl, Kosteneffizienz, Ermöglichung von professionellem Handeln, Unterstützung von öffentlicher Gesundheit, Förderung von Forschung. Es wird untersucht, ob diese allgemeinen Pflichten Gründe für eine spezielle Pflicht von Krankenhäusern darstellen, sekundäre Forschungsnutzung von Behandlungsdaten zu unterstützen. Mögliche Einwände gegen eine solche Pflicht, welche sich u. a. aus anderen, potenziell konfligierenden allgemeinen Pflichten der Krankenhäuser (z. B. Datenschutz), aus der Praxis (z. B. Aufwände) oder eventuellen Ansprüchen (Dateneigentum) ergeben, werden diskutiert. Bestimmte allgemeine Pflichten (Orientierung am Patientenwohl, Kosteneffizienz, Unterstützung öffentlicher Gesundheit) begründen eine Pflicht von Krankenhäusern, sekundäre Forschungsnutzung von Behandlungsdaten zu unterstützen. Die Pflicht zur Ermöglichung professionellen Handelns ist nur ein indirekter Grund; die Pflicht zur Forschungsunterstützung trifft nur auf Universitätskliniken zu. Mögliche Einwände haben teilweise Gewicht, können aber durch gezielte Maßnahmen eingedämmt werden. (shrink)

Federalism as balance between the federal government and the states is a deeply entrenched principle of American constitutional law. Without the idea of balance or some replacement concept, judges and constitutional scholars seem incapable of conceptualizing federalism and resolving federalist conflicts. The thesis of the Article is that federalism as balance must be reexamined to assess whether it is jurisprudentially sound. For this purpose, the Article introduces a framework for understanding balancing discourse generally. Upon examination, federalism as balance does not (...) satisfy the requirements articulated by this framework. The result is that this conception has no discernible content and therefore can play no identifiable analytic role in either conceptualizing or resolving federalist conflicts. The failure of federalism as balance to be an analytically sound element in understanding federalism is an additional reason for reexamining the political safeguards argument for enforcing federalism. Without sufficient analytic content, federalism as balance is merely a rhetorical device which legislators can use just as well or as poorly as judges. (shrink)

This book sheds light on various ethical challenges military and humanitarian health care personnel face while working in adverse conditions. Contexts of armed conflict, hybrid wars or other forms of violence short of war, as well as natural disasters, all have in common that ordinary circumstances can no longer be taken for granted. Hence, the provision of health care has to adapt, for example, to a different level of risk, to scarce resources, or uncommon approaches due to external incentives or (...) requirements. This affects the practice of health care as well as its ethics. This book offers a panoramic overview on various challenges healthcare faces in extraordinary situations and provides new insights from practitioners’ as well as from academic scholars’ perspectives. (shrink)

This chapter introduces to the main topic of the volume, namely the influence of the changing nature of warfare on the provision of medical care and the ethical challenges that occur. It presents the main ideas of relevant concepts such as asymmetrical warfare, hybrid warfare, and complex emergencies before illustrating the ethical challenges that new forms of warfare create for military and humanitarian health care providers. Examples of ethical challenges include embedding medical personnel in combating forces, questions regarding the treatment (...) of detainees, the need to uphold medical neutrality, and pitfalls of using medicine to non-medical ends. The chapter concludes with a synopsis of the volume. (shrink)

‘Disease interception’ describes the treatment of a disease in its clinically inapparent phase and is increasingly used in medical literature. However, no precise definition, much less an ethical evaluation, has been developed yet. This article starts with a definition of ‘disease interception’ by distinguishing it from other preventions. It then analyses the ethical and social implications of the concept in light of the four principles of medical ethics by Beauchamp and Childress. The term ‘disease interception’ refers to a form of (...) secondary prevention applied in a short interception window intended to prevent a preclinical disease from developing further. We propose the definition ‘early and targeted secondary prevention by treatment’. The ethical evaluation of the concept shows that while it promises to be beneficial, it raises a number of ethical and social challenges regarding patient autonomy and justice. In order to ensure decision-making that respects patient autonomy, commercially motivated metaphors such as ‘disease interception’ should make way for precise definitions. Future research should not only focus on how to detect clinically inapparent diseases but also on the ethical question, when this is justifiable and what consequences it has for the individual and society as a whole. (shrink)

This timely volume explores pressing questions that relate to democracy and the politics of knowledge, in a dialogue based on developing and applying philosophies that stress the importance of dialogue, democracy and criticism.

This paper argues there are crucial points in Nietzsche’s texts where he offers a priori epistemic justification for views he believes are correct. My reading contrasts with the dominant view that Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism is incompatible with a priori justification. My aim is to develop Nietzsche’s brand of a priori justification, show that he employs this account of justification in the texts, and suggest how it might be compatible with naturalism.

I develop a distinction between two types of psychological hedonism. Inferential hedonism (or “I-hedonism”) holds that each person only has ultimate desires regarding his or her own hedonic states (pleasure and pain). Reinforcement hedonism (or “R–hedonism”) holds that each person's ultimate desires, whatever their contents are, are differentially reinforced in that person’s cognitive system only by virtue of their association with hedonic states. I’ll argue that accepting R-hedonism and rejecting I-hedonism provides a conciliatory position on the traditional altruism debate, and (...) that it coheres well with the neuroscientist Anthony Dickinson’s theory about the evolutionary function of hedonic states, the “hedonic interface theory.” Finally, I’ll defend R-hedonism from potential objections. (shrink)

There is a difficulty in understanding Nietzsche’s epistemology. It is generally accepted that he endorses the naturalized epistemological view that knowledge should be closely connected to the sciences. He also holds the evolutionary epistemological position that knowledge has developed exclusively to benefit human survival. Nietzsche’s evolutionary epistemology, however, appears to imply a debunking argument about the truth of our beliefs that seems to undermine his commitment to a naturalized epistemology. This paper argues that Nietzsche’s evolutionary epistemology does not, in fact, (...) undermine his naturalized epistemology. (shrink)

Since the publication and reception of Levinas’s critique of Heidegger, it has become standard practice among some authors to argue that Heidegger’s thinking of being, both early and late, is an insistent meditation on the alterity of the self in the call of conscience and the alterity of being in relation to beings, and that this thought is consequently already ‘ethical’. This line of argument has been recently pursued by Dastur, Raffoul, and Ricoeur. None of them contests that there is (...) a difference between the alterity of the self and the alterity of the other. But they argue that the experience of the first is the condition of possibility of gaining access to the second. There are several reasons why I have failed to be convinced by this argument. In this paper, I spell out those reasons and argue that Ricoeur’s attempt to carve out a path between Heidegger and Levinas remains unsuccessful. (shrink)

In the Refutation of Idealism, Kant aims to defeat the Cartesian radical skeptical hypothesis that empirical reality might not exist and we cannot have knowledge of it. Kant intends to demonstrate that conscious experience presupposes direct experience of empirical reality. This paper presents new challenges to the conclusions Kant reaches in the Refutation. Kant’s argument turns on the claim that the past must exist, and my challenges concern the possibility that there is no past.