Hickman situates Dewey’s critique of technological culture within the debates of 20th-century Western philosophy by engaging the work of Richard Rorty, Albert Borgmann, Jacques Ellul, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, and Martin ...

In March 1996, the General Accounting Office issued the report Scientific Research: Continued Vigilance Critical to Protecting Human Subjects. It stated that “an inherent conflict of interest exists when physician-researchers include their patients in research protocols. If the physicians do not clearly distinguish between research and treatment in their attempt to inform subjects, the possible benefits of a study can be overemphasized and the risks minimized.” The report also acknowledged that “the line between research and treatment is not always clear (...) to clinicians. Controversy exists regarding whether certain medical procedures should be categorized as research.”This problem currently plagues gene transfer research. A few months prior to the GAO report, an ad hoc committee appointed by National Institutes of Health Director Harold Varmus expressed similar concerns in its assessment of NIH investment in research on gene therapy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Distinguishing Different Kinds of Egalitarianism Equality, Fairness, Luck, and Responsibility Equality of What? The Subsistence Level, Sufficiency, and Compassion Prioritarianism and the Leveling Down Objection19 Equality or Priority? Illustrating Egalitarianism's Distinct Appeal Conclusion Notes.

This book, the result of cooperation between the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and the Dewey Center at the University of ...

The Chinese room argument is a thought experiment of John Searle (1980a) and associated (1984) derivation. It is one of the best known and widely credited counters to claims of artificial intelligence (AI)—that is, to claims that computers do or at least can (someday might) think. According to Searle’s original presentation, the argument is based on two key claims: brains cause minds and syntax doesn’t suffice for semantics. Its target is what Searle dubs “strong AI.” According to strong AI, Searle (...) says, “the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind, rather the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to understand and have other cognitive states” (1980a, p. 417). Searle contrasts strong AI with “weak AI.” According to weak AI, computers just simulate thought, their seeming understanding isn’t real understanding (just as-if), their seeming calculation is only as-if calculation, etc. Nevertheless, computer simulation is useful for studying the mind (as for studying the weather and other things). (shrink)

Barbara Fried described John Rawls’s response to libertarianism as “the unwritten theory of justice.” This paper argues that while there is no need for a new theory of justice to address the libertarian challenge, there is a need for an additional chapter. Taking up Fried’s suggestion that the Rawlsian response would benefit from a revised list of primary goods, I propose to add employment to the list, thus leading to adoption of a full employment principle in the original position that (...) ensures that anyone who wants to work will be able to do so. I argue that although Rawls famously proposed government as employer of last resort, he never integrated that comment into his theory, which lacks a full employment principle and says nothing about the injustice of involuntary unemployment in its ideal theory. I first refute the received view of Rawls’s treatment of employment as required by its importance for citizens’ self-respect, then show that in fact, the full employment assumption is the result of the role of general equilibrium theory in Rawls’s model of a well-ordered society, and indicate why developments in economic theory and economic policy support the proposed revision. (shrink)

This paper connects Merleau-Ponty’s conception of chiasm with his philosophy of history. I argue that history gives us an exemplary form of a chiastic relation and that Merleau-Ponty presages his later ontology of flesh when he investigates the paradox of thinking history. In brief, the paradox is this: history takes on significance only in light of a given reflection on it. At the same time, “the given reflection” is overlaid and shot through with historical meaning and is nothing but the (...) result of a historical inheritance. I claim that, for Merleau-Ponty, to think history is to think that which is external to oneself and that which one is, in a deferred simultaneity or “circularity” that can be called chiastic. (shrink)

The problem of the transcendental has haunted philosophy for some time now. How can we think that which is external to our thought without by that token assimilating it to our thought? In other words, how can we speak of the outside without by that very gesture bringing it inside? While this conversation spun its complex tapestry over centuries, there developed alongside various attempts to dismiss or deflate the problem altogether. The most recent manifestation of this deflationary tendency is the (...) “speculative materialism” movement, represented with most clarity by Quentin Meillassoux in his 2006 work After Finitude. He attempts here to restore “the Great Outdoors” to a philosophical tradition mired in what he calls “correlationism,” which he characterizes as a kind of narcissism. So the present conjuncture seems to offer us a choice between the subjective transcendental cellar and the wilderness of speculative materialism. In this essay, we articulate an alternative to this choice rooted in readings of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. Our intent here is not to compare or contrast their bodies of work as wholes, but to trace a distinct philosophical maneuver that is not only common to the two thinkers but reveals a link between them. Rather than annulling the transcendental question, these figures encourage us to reverse it, and ask instead “how can we think the inside without by that very token bringing it outside?” This provides us with a response to the problem of philosophy’s narcissism without recourse to Meillassoux’s “speculative” solution.Le problème du transcendantal a hanté la philosophie depuis un bon moment à présent. Comment pouvons-nous penser ce qui est externe à notre pensée sans l’assimiler par là même à notre pensée? En d’autres termes, comment parler du dehors sans l’amener par ce geste même à l’intérieur? Alors que ce débat a tissé sa toile complexe à travers les siècles, plusieurs tentatives se sont développées pour rejeter ou désamorcer le problème. La manifestation la plus récente de cette dernière tendance est le mouvement du « matérialisme spéculatif » représenté avec le plus de clarté par Quentin Meillassoux dans son oeuvre de 2006, Après la finitude. Il tente dans ce livre de restaurer le « Grand Dehors » dans une tradition philosophique enlisée dans ce qu’il appelle « corrélationnisme », qu’il caractérise comme une forme de narcissisme. Ainsi, la conjoncture actuelle semble donner le choix entre une cave transcendantale subjective et la nature sauvage du matérialisme spéculatif. Dans cet essai, nous articulons une alternative enracinée dans des lectures de Merleau-Ponty et de Deleuze. Notre intention n’est pas de comparer ou de contraster leurs oeuvres prises globalement, mais de tracer une manoeuvre philosophique distincte qui est non seulement commune aux deux penseurs, mais qui révèle un lien entre eux. Plutôt que d’annuler la question transcendantale, ces figures nous encouragent à la renverser et à poser la question à la place : comment pouvons-nous penser l’intérieur sans l’amener par là même vers le dehors? Cela nous fournit une réponse au problème du narcissisme de la philosophie sans recourir à la solution « spéculative » de Meillassoux.Il problema del trascendentale occupa la filosofia ormai da tempo. Come possiamo afferrare con il pensiero qualcosa di esterno al nostro pensiero, senza con questo assimilarlo a esso? In altri termini, come possiamo parlare dell’esterno senza per ciò stesso portarlo all’interno? Mentre questa riflessione intrecciava le proprie complesse fila lungo i secoli, prendevano forma per via collaterale diversi tentativi di sopprimere o ridimensionare il problema che l’aveva originata. La manifestazione più recente di questa tendenza coincide con il movimento del “materialismo speculativo”, rappresentato nel modo più emblematico da Quentin Meillassoux con il suo saggio Après la finitude, pubblicato nel 2006. In questo saggio, l’autore tenta di restituire “il Grande Fuori” a una tradizione filosofica invischiata in quello che egli definisce “correlazionismo” e che descrive come una sorta di narcisismo. La situazione attuale sembra così porci di fronte all’alternativa tra la chiusura angusta del trascendentale soggettivo e l’apertura incontrollata del materialismo speculativo. In questo articolo, sviluppiamo una proposta alternativa basata sulla lettura di Merleau-Ponty e di Deleuze. Il nostro intento non è quello di confrontare o contrapporre le opere dei due autori nel loro complesso, ma quello di evidenziare una precisa mossa filosofica che non solo li accomuna, ma li rivela come effettivamente connessi. Piuttosto che annullare l’interrogativo trascendentale, questi autori ci invitano a capovolgerlo, domandandosi invece: “Come possiamo afferrare con il pensiero l’interno senza per ciò stesso portarlo all’esterno?”. Questa mossa fornisce una risposta al problema del narcisismo della filosofia eludendo il ricorso alla soluzione “speculativa” di Meillassoux. (shrink)

This paper analyzes two forms of “flight from freedom” embodied by characters in Beauvoir’s fiction, connecting these portrayals to the situation of women as described in The Second Sex as well as the discussion of social freedom in The Ethics of Ambiguity. The characters under consideration are Monique from the story “The Woman Destroyed” and Françoise from the novel She Came to Stay, who represent flight from freedom in related but distinct ways. My claim is that considering these two characters (...) in conjunction allows us to see the two decisive moments of Beauvoir’s theory of authentic freedom in negative manifestations. Monique attempts to make herself into an object by abdicating her freedom, while Françoise takes herself for a sovereign subject and is unable to recognize the freedom of others. (shrink)

Schneiderman, Jecker, and Jonsen have written an eloquent essay that both defends the concept of medical futility and describes their own candidate for a practical, working definition. Whether they have provided the best such definition I cannot say, but they are surely right to claim that some such concept is needed—for doctors to practice, for patients to receive good care, for family and friends of the patient to understand and prepare for what is happening, and for society to trust what (...) doctors say and do in delivering care. In brief, futility—or something like it—is a concept with important personal and social value, and more than simple prognostic meaning. One of the... (shrink)

In what follows I want to discuss some of the themes of John Dewey’s “new” book Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, recently published by Southern Illinois University Press. The scholarly world certainly owes a debt of gratitude to Professor Phillip Deen for his efforts to bring this volume to fruition. His careful research among the Dewey Papers in Special Collections of Morris Library at Southern Illinois University Carbondale led him to see what others had overlooked. He discovered...

In the UK and USA ‘Hate crime’ has become a topic of public controversy and social mobilization around issues of violence and harassment. This has largely but not exclusively addressed racism, homophobia and gender based violence. This article has three objectives. First, to situate hate crime legislation within a broad theory of modernity;secondly to examine the politics of its emergence as a public issue; thirdly to use data from the authors' recent research in Greater Manchester to illuminate the complexity of (...) the concept of ‘hate crime’. The centrality of ‘hate crime’ to current debates derives from the importance of rights-based regulation of complex societies and the juridical management of emotional life. Hatred and violence have become problematic behaviour thrown into relief by a long term civilizing process. Hate crimes have thus acquired powerful rhetorical focus for mobilization of victim and identity politics. With reference to racist violence in Oldham and elsewhere in Greater Manchester, we argue that in its application and construction, however, ‘hate crime’ is a complex phenomenon that might dramatize rather than regulate the problems it seeks to address. (shrink)

This chapter presents an edited e-mail discussion based on the philosophical conversations at a conference held in Cologne, Germany, in December 2001. The discussion proceeds in three steps. First, the contributors discuss selected questions about their contributions, roughly following the sequence of the chapters in Part II of this book. Second, the contributors ask more general questions about Dewey, Pragmatism, and constructivism. Finally, the chapter ends with brief statements about why Dewey is still an indispensible thinker for them. As they (...) clarify their differences and seek common ground, they articulate concepts such as power, truth, relativism, inquiry, and democracy from Pragmatist and interactive constructivist vantage points, in ways designed to render the preceding essays even more accessible. In their views, the concluding discussion demonstrates both the enduring relevance of classical Pragmatism and the challenge of its reconstruction from the perspective of the Cologne program of interactive constructivism. (shrink)

Letters commenting on Hardwig, J "Is There a Duty to Die?" with a reply to those letters by the author.

This article gives a brief overview of Rethinking the Good, whose impossibility arguments illuminate the difficulty of arriving at a coherent theory of the good. I show that an additive-aggregationistprinciple is plausible for some comparisons, while an anti- additive-aggregationistprinciple is plausible for others. Invoking SpectrumArguments, I show that these principles are incompatible with an empirical premise, and various Axioms of Transitivity. I argue that whether the “all-things-considered better than” relation is transitive is not a matter of language or logic, but (...) the nature of moral ideals. If an Internal Aspects View holds, then many standard assumptions about rationality follow, including the Axioms of Transitivity, but not if an Essentially Comparative View holds. Yet many important ideals are essentially comparative. My results have important implications for the normative significance of economics, and require substantial revision in our understanding of the good, moral ideals, and the nature of practical reasoning. (shrink)

Are individuals responsible for the consequences of actions taken by their community? What about their community's inaction or its attitudes? In this innovative book, Larry May departs from the traditional Western view that moral responsibility is limited to the consequences of overt individual action. Drawing on the insights of Arendt, Jaspers, and Sartre, he argues that even when individuals are not direct participants, they share responsibility for various harms perpetrated by their communities.

Temkin's book is a very original and deeply unsettling work of skeptical philosophy that mounts an important new challenge to contemporary ethics.

In 2009 Larry Alexander and Kimberly Ferzan published Crime and Culpability: A Theory of Criminal Law. The book set out a theory that those who deserve punishment should receive punishment commensurate with, but no greater than, that which they deserve. Reflections on Crime and Culpability: Problems and Puzzles expands on their innovative ideas on the application of punishment in criminal law. Theorists working in criminal law theory presuppose or ignore puzzles that lurk beneath the surface. Now those who wish (...) to examine these topics will have one monograph that combines the disparate puzzles in criminal law through a unified approach to culpability. Along with some suggestions as to how they might resolve the puzzles, Alexander and Ferzan lay out the arguments and analysis so future scholars can engage with questions about our understanding of culpability that very few have addressed. (shrink)

The neo-liberal upsurge of the last twenty years and the neo-liberal case against the welfare state has gained much of its emotional force from a sub-text which is highly gendered. Whereas social liberalism had contained the promise of more autonomy within the private sphere and more caring values in the public sphere, neo-liberalism depicts the results of social liberalism as a loss of self reliance – through ‘over-protection’ by the state in the public sphere and usurpation of male roles in (...) the private sphere. The identification of the welfare state as female (the ‘nanny state’) helps fuel resentment on the part of those already confused by rapidly changing gender roles. This paper tracks the sex change which took place in the image of the liberal state as it evolved out of the night watchman state – the link between the women's suffrage movement and social regulation, maternal principles of distribution and demands for the public organization of caring. It examines the neo-liberal rejection of the breast and neo-liberal claims that the maternal state is incompatible with ‘self-reliance’ and a barrier to competitiveness in the world market. (shrink)

Many philosophers have discussed problems of additive aggregation across lives. In this article, I suggest that anti-additive aggregationist principles sometimes apply within lives, as well as between lives, and hence that we should reject a widely accepted conception of individual self-interest. The article has eight sections. Section I is introductory. Section II offers a general account of aggregation. Section III presents two examples of problems of additive aggregation across lives: Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion, and my Lollipops for Life Case Section (...) IV suggests that many may have misdiagnosed the source and scope of anti-additive aggregationist considerations, due to the influence of Rawls's and Nozick's claims about the separateness of individuals. Accordingly, many leave Sidgwick's conception of self-interest—which incorporates an additive aggregationist approach to valuing individual lives—unchallenged. Section V suggests that the separateness of individuals may have led some to conflate the issues of compensation and moral balancing. Section VI argues that an additive aggregationist approach is often deeply implausible for determining the overall value of a life. Section VII discusses a Single Life Repugnant Conclusion, first considered by McTaggart. Section VIII concludes with a summary, and a brief indication of work remaining. (shrink)

Can a society be just if it ignores the plight of other societies? Does it matter whether those societies are contemporaries? Moral “purists” are likely to assume that the answer to these questions must be “no.” Relying on familiar claims about impartiality or universalizability, the purist is likely to assert that the dictates of justice have no bounds, that they extend with equal strength across space and time. On this view, if, for example, justice requires us to maximize the expectations (...) of the worst-off group in our society, it also requires us to maximize the expectations of the worst-off group in any society, at any time, so far as it is in our power to do so. Is such a position plausible? Is it more plausible than alternative positions? I am unsure about the answers to these questions, but both the questions, and the answers, are important. Clearly, the nature and extent of a just society's obligations will vary markedly depending on the scope of the correct principles of justice. (shrink)

This essay contains a partial exploration of some key concepts associated with the epistemology of realist philosophies of science. It shows that neither reference nor approximate truth will do the explanatory jobs that realists expect of them. Equally, several widely-held realist theses about the nature of inter-theoretic relations and scientific progress are scrutinized and found wanting. Finally, it is argued that the history of science, far from confirming scientific realism, decisively confutes several extant versions of avowedly 'naturalistic' forms of scientific (...) realism. (shrink)

This book consists of a collection of essays written between 1965 and 1981. Some have been published elsewhere; others appear here for the first time. Although dealing with different figures and different periods, they have a common theme: all are concerned with examining how the method of hy pothesis came to be the ruling orthodoxy in the philosophy of science and the quasi-official methodology of the scientific community. It might have been otherwise. Barely three centuries ago, hypothetico deduction was in (...) both disfavor and disarray. Numerous rival methods for scientific inquiry - including eliminative and enumerative induction, analogy and derivation from first principles - were widely touted. The method of hypothesis, known since antiquity, found few proponents between 1700 and 1850. During the last century, of course, that ordering has been inverted and - despite an almost universal acknowledgement of its weaknesses - the method of hypothesis (usually under such descriptions as 'hypothetico deduction' or 'conjectures and refutations') has become the orthodoxy of the 20th century. Behind the waxing and waning of the method of hypothesis, embedded within the vicissitudes of its fortunes, there is a fascinating story to be told. It is a story that forms an integral part of modern science and its philosophy. (shrink)

This short but highly ambitious book asks us to rethink the evolution of the ideas on which modern states are built. Larry Siedentop argues that the core of what is now our system of beliefs, liberalism, emerged much earlier than generally recognised, established not in the Renaissance but by the arguments of lawyers and philosophers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There are large parts of the world--fundamentalist Islam; quasi-capitalist China--where other belief systems flourish. Faced with these challenges, understanding (...) our own ideas' origins is more than ever an important part of knowing who we are."--Publisher's Web site. (shrink)

How should the well-off respond to the world's needy? Renowned ethicist Larry S. Temkin challenges common beliefs about philanthropy and Effective Altruism, exploring the complex ways that global aid may do more harm than good, and considers the alternatives available when neglecting the needy is morally impermissible.

In this book Larry Temkin examines the concepts of equality and inequality, and addresses one particular question in depth: how can we judge between different sorts of inequality? When is one inequality worse than another? Temkin shows that there are many different factors underlying and influencing our egalitarian judgments and that the notion of inequality is surprisingly complex. He looks at inequality as applied to individuals and to groups, and at the standard measures of inequality employed by economists and (...) others, and considers whether inequality matters more in a poor society than a rich one. The arguments of non-egalitarians are also examined. Temkin's book presents a new way of thinking about equality and inequality which challenges the assumptions of philosophers, welfare economists, and others concerned with these notions on a practical as well as a theoretical level. (shrink)