In the recent history of philosophy few works have appeared which favorably portray Idealism as a plausible philosophical view of the world. Considerably less has been written about Idealism as a viable framework for doing theology. While the most recent and significant works on Idealism, composed by the late John Foster (Case for Idealism and A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenological Idealism), have put this theory back on the philosophical map, no such attempt has been made to re-introduce (...) Idealism to contemporary Christian theology. Idealism and Christian Theology is such a work, retrieving ideas and arguments from its most significant modern exponents (especially George Berkeley and Jonathan Edwards) in order to assess its value for present and future theological construction. As a piece of constructive philosophical-theology itself, this volume considers the explanatory power an Idealist ontology has for contemporary Christian theology. (shrink)

Ever since George Berkeley first published Principles of Human Knowledge his metaphysics has been opposed by, among others, some Christian philosophers who allege that his ideas fly in the face of orthodox Christian belief. The irony is that Berkeley’s entire professional career is marked by an unwavering commitment to demonstrating the reasonableness of the Christian faith. In fact, Berkeley’s immaterialist metaphysical system can be seen as an apologetic device. In this paper, I inquire into the question whether Berkeley’s immaterialist metaphysics (...) is congruent with the Christian scriptures. I conclude that not only are Berkeley’s principles consistent with scripture, a case can be made for the claim that certain biblical passages actually recommend his brand of immaterialism. (shrink)

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The MRCT Center Post-trial Responsibilities: Continued Access to an Investigational Medicine Framework outlines a case-based, principled, stakeholder approach to evaluate and guide ethical responsibilities to provide continued access to an investigational medicine at the conclusion of a patient’s participation in a clinical trial. The Post-trial Responsibilities (PTR) Framework includes this Guidance Document as well as the accompanying Toolkit. A 41-member international multi-stakeholder Workgroup convened by the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University (...) (MRCT Center) developed this Guidance and Toolkit. Project Motivation A number of international organizations have discussed the responsibilities stakeholders have to provide continued access to investigational medicines. The World Medical Association, for example, addressed post-trial access to medicines in Paragraph 34 of the Declaration of Helsinki (WMA, 2013): “In advance of a clinical trial, sponsors, researchers and host country governments should make provisions for post-trial access for all participants who still need an intervention identified as beneficial in the trial. This information must also be disclosed to participants during the informed consent process.” This paragraph and other international guidance documents converge on several consensus points: • Post-trial access (hereafter referred to as “continued access” in this Framework [for terminology clarification – see definitions]) is the responsibility of sponsors, researchers, and host country governments; • The plan for continued access should be determined before the trial begins, and before any individual gives their informed consent; • The protocol should delineate continued access plans; and • The plan should be transparent to potential participants and explained during the informed consent process. -/- However, there is no guidance on how to fulfill these responsibilities (i.e., linking specific responsibilities with specific stakeholders, conditions, and duration). To fill this gap, the MRCT Center convened a working group in September of 2014 to develop a framework to guide stakeholders with identified responsibilities. This resultant Framework sets forth applicable principles, approaches, recommendations and ethical rationales for PTR regarding continued access to investigational medicines for research participants. (shrink)

If humans are not capable of immortality, then eschatological doctrines of heaven and hell make little sense. On that Christians agree. But not all Christians agree on whether humans are essentially immortal. Some hold that the early church was right to borrow from the ancient Greek philosophers and to bring their sense of immortality to bear on the interpretation of biblical passages about the afterlife. Others, however, suggest that we are inherently mortal, and only conditionally immortal. This latter view is (...) usually associated with an annihilationist interpretation of the doctrine of hell and a rejection of eternal torment. In a philosophical analysis and argument, McLeod-Harrison proposes that humans are, indeed, immortal, but not essentially so. But neither are we immortal accidentally or conditionally. Instead, immortality is an enduring property--a property we cannot lose once created. McLeod-Harrison carefully delineates the sense of immortality he defends and provides a broadly Christian philosophical argument for it. The argument, if correct, leaves the recent suggestion that the unredeemed are annihilated on unsteady metaphysical feet. However, McLeod-Harrison does not defend eternal conscious punishment for the unredeemed, but suggests some ways to think about the possibility of a universal salvation. ""McLeod-Harrison provides an admirably careful metaphysical analysis of the concept of human immortality, ultimately arguing for the impossibility of personal annihilation. Whether or not one finally agrees with his thesis, this work is an immensely valuable resource, especially as regards discussions of philosophical anthropology and the doctrine of hell."" --James S. Spiegel, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Taylor University ""In this fascinating, albeit complicated, argument against conditional immortality (annihilationism), the author makes no claim that the human soul is essentially immortal; he argues instead that, once a human offspring acquires a fully robust free will and thus becomes fully human, it is metaphysically impossible that it should cease to exist altogether. Whether or not one accepts every detail of this argument, it provides an original and intriguing twist to theological discussions of free will."" --Thomas Talbott, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Willamette University, Author of The Inescapable Love of God ""I often say the future of the hell debate is between conditional immortality and universal reconciliation, and it is no secret that I think the biblical case for the former is unassailable. However, while I am not persuaded by this volume's case for enduring and universal human immortality, it nevertheless promises to add precision to the language of immortality and to feature prominently in the philosophical side of that debate moving forward."" --Christopher M. Date, editor of Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism Mark S. McLeod-Harrison is Professor of Philosophy at George Fox University. (shrink)

This second edition of the book contains a new chapter on the notions of natural-kind words and natural kinds.

In Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, author Mark Evan Bonds examines how writers have struggled to isolate the essence of music in ways that account for its profound effects on the human spirit. By carefully tracing the evolution of absolute music from Ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to twentieth-century America, Bonds provides the first comprehensive history of this pivotal concept, and provokes new thoughts on the essence of music and how this essence explains music's effect. A (...) long awaited book from one of the most respected senior scholars in the field. (shrink)

Epistemology -- Power I -- Power II -- Subjectivity -- Resistance -- Critique -- Ethics.

This paper will examine the social and ethical impacts of using artificial intelligence (AI) in the agricultural sector. It will identify what are some of the most prevalent challenges and impacts identified in the literature, how this correlates with those discussed in the domain of AI ethics, and are being implemented into AI ethics guidelines. This will be achieved by examining published articles and conference proceedings that focus on societal or ethical impacts of AI in the agri-food sector, through a (...) thematic analysis of the literature. The thematic analysis will be divided based on the classifications outlined through 11 overarching principles, from an established lexicon (transparency, justice and fairness, non-maleficence, responsibility, privacy, beneficence, freedom and autonomy, trust, dignity, sustainability, and solidarity). While research on AI agriculture is still relatively new, this paper aims to map the debate and illustrate what the literature says in the context of social and ethical impacts. It aim is to analyse these impacts, based on these 11 principles. This research will contrast which impacts are not being discussed in agricultural AI and which issues are not being discussed in AI ethics guidelines, but which are discussed in relation to agricultural AI. The aim of this is to identify gaps within the agricultural literature, and gaps in AI ethics guidelines, that may need to be addressed. (shrink)

Recently there has been more attention to the cultural aspects of social robots. This paper contributes to this effort by offering a philosophical, in particular Wittgensteinian framework for conceptualizing in what sense and how robots are related to culture and by exploring what it would mean to create an “Ubuntu Robot”. In addition, the paper gestures towards a more culturally diverse and more relational approach to social robotics and emphasizes the role technology can play in addressing the challenges of modernity (...) and in assisting cultural change: it argues that robots can help us to engage in cultural dialogue, reflect on our own culture, and change how we do things. In this way, the paper contributes to the growing literature on cross-cultural approaches to social robotics. (shrink)

Adam Pautz (Pautz, Nanay (ed), Current Controversies in philosophy of perception, Routledge, New York and London, 2017, Pautz, Philosophical Issues 30:257–272, 2020 ) coined the phrase “the Laws of Appearance” for some underappreciated features of perceptual experience. Pautz suggests that the modal status of the Laws presents a puzzle: it is problematic to regard them as necessary, and also problematic to regard them as contingent. This paper presents possible counterexamples to the laws, suggesting that they are contingent as originally stated (...) (Sect. 1 ). But the laws are readily modified so as to express constitutive features of normal human visual experience, and thus understood they are metaphysically necessary (Sect. 2 ). Analogous pictorial laws govern representational painting, and these can be explained by appealing to the representational format of the medium (Sect. 3 ). This invites the question whether there might be format-based explanations of the Laws of Appearance. If so, can the contingency of the format facts be squared with the necessity of the Laws? The paper answers “Yes” to both questions (Sect. 4 ). (shrink)

In relation to education, there is in Foucault's approach a double emphasis which constitutes an ordering principle for this work.

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 15-30, January 2022. We offer an account of mental health and well-being using the predictive processing framework. According to this framework, the difference between mental health and psychopathology can be located in the goodness of the predictive model as a regulator of action. What is crucial for avoiding the rigid patterns of thinking, feeling and acting associated with psychopathology is the regulation of action based on the valence of affective states. In PPF, valence (...) is modelled as error dynamics—the change in prediction errors over time. Our aim in this paper is to show how error dynamics can account for both momentary happiness and longer term well-being. What will emerge is a new neurocomputational framework for making sense of human flourishing. (shrink)

A higher order potential analysis of moral status clarifies the issues that divide Human Being Theorists who oppose embryo research from Person Theorists who favor embryo research. Higher order potential personhood is transitive if it is active, identity preserving and morally relevant. If the transition from the Second Order Potential of the embryo to the First Order Potential of an infant is transitive, opponents of embryo research make a powerful case for the moral status of the embryo. If it is (...) intransitive, then the Person Theorist can draw lines between levels of moral status that permit embryo research to proceed. (shrink)

In "Behavioral Law and Economics: The Assault on Consent, Will, and Dignity," Mark D. White uses the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to examine the intersection of economics, psychology, and law known as "behavioral law and economics." Scholars in this relatively new field claim that, because of various cognitive biases and failures, people often make choices that are not in their own interests. The policy implications of this are that public and private organizations, such as the state and employers, (...) can and should design the presentation of options and default choices in order to "steer" people to the decision they would make, were they able to make choices in the absence of their cognitive biases and failures. Such policies are promoted under the name "libertarian paternalism," because choice is not blocked or co-opted, but simply "nudged." White argues that such manipulation of choice is impossible to conduct in people's true interests, and any other goal pursed by policymakers substitutes their own ends, however benevolent they may be, for people's true ends. Normatively, such manipulation should not be conducted because it fails to respect the dignity and autonomy of persons, what some hold to be the central idea in Kant's ethical system, and which serves to protect the individual from coercion, however subtle, from other persons or the state. (shrink)

This book is a must-read for researchers interested in taking a high-level, non-mechanistic approach to answering age-old fundamental questions in the brain ...

Political communities across the world have recently sought to tackle rising rates of vaccine hesitancy and refusal, by implementing coercive immunization programs, or by making existing immunization programs more coercive. Many academics and advocates of public health have applauded these policy developments, and they have invoked ethical reasons for implementing or strengthening vaccine mandates. Others have criticized these policies on ethical grounds, for undermining liberty, and as symptoms of broader government overreach. But such arguments often obscure or abstract away from (...) the diverse values that are relevant to the ethical justifications of particular political communities’ vaccine‐mandate policies. We argue for an expansive conception of the normative issues relevant to deciding whether and how to establish or reform vaccine mandates, and we propose a schema by which to organize our thoughts about the ways in which different kinds of vaccine‐mandate policies implicate various values. (shrink)

As the average age of the population increases, so too do the number of people living with chronic illnesses. With limited resources available, the development of dialogue-based e-health systems that provide justified general health advice offers a cost-effective solution to the management of chronic conditions. It is however imperative that such systems are responsible in their approach. We present in this paper two main challenges for the deployment of e-health systems, that have a particular relevance to dialogue and argumentation: collecting (...) and handling health data, and trust. For both challenges, we look at specific issues therein, outlining their importance in general, and describing their relevance to dialogue and argumentation. Finally, we go on to propose six recommendations for handling these issues, towards addressing the main challenges themselves, that act both as general advice for dialogue and argumentation research in the e-health domain, and as a foundation for future work on this topic. (shrink)

The purpose of this quantitative study of 401 students is to identify common motivations for Chinese students to plagiarize on written English assignments and ultimately to demystify and understand the mindset of Chinese students who do plagiarize. According to a regression analysis of these data, the most significant factor relating to likelihood to self-report plagiarism for Chinese students is the belief in a “standard answer,” which represents the correct answer to a given question. The regression results also suggest that students (...) who believe that imitation of experts is important to learning are more likely to self-report plagiarism, and that business students are more likely to self-report than non-business students. The other factors examined in our model, such as English writing ability; ability to express one’s self in English writing; embarrassment about English writing ability; concern for accuracy of English writing; and concerns about grade point average, were not significant predictors of self-reported plagiarism. These results give a key insight into the English writing plagiarism behaviors of Chinese students studying in Western higher education. (shrink)

Mark Hearn, pastor of a church in Duluth, Georgia, one of the most diverse counties in America, shares their transition from a monolithic Anglo-American congregation to a cross-cultural community with members from thirty-seven different countries.

This article discusses the composition and transmission of early Buddhist texts with specific reference to sutras. After briefly summarizing the main reasons why it is likely that these oral compositions were designed to be memorized and transmitted verbatim, I will discuss the main types of changes that these texts underwent in the course of their transmission and the reasons such changes occurred, then attempt to give an account of the challenge that change, particularly intentional change, posed to the oral transmission (...) of fixed, memorized texts. (shrink)

We show that the fundamental legal structure of a well-written financial contract follows a state-transition logic that can be formalized mathematically as a finite-state machine (specifically, a deterministic finite automaton or DFA). The automaton defines the states that a financial relationship can be in, such as “default,” “delinquency,” “performing,” etc., and it defines an “alphabet” of events that can trigger state transitions, such as “payment arrives,” “due date passes,” etc. The core of a contract describes the rules by which different (...) sequences of events trigger particular sequences of state transitions in the relationship between the counterparties. By conceptualizing and representing the legal structure of a contract in this way, we expose it to a range of powerful tools and results from the theory of computation. These allow, for example, automated reasoning to determine whether a contract is internally coherent and whether it is complete relative to a particular event alphabet. We illustrate the process by representing a simple loan agreement as an automaton. (shrink)

We have used fMRI to measure responses to chromatic and achromatic contrast in retinotopically defined regions of macaque and human visual cortex. We make four observations. Firstly, the relative amplitudes of responses to color and luminance stimuli in macaque area V1 are similar to those previously observed in human fMRI experiments. Secondly, the dorsal and ventral subdivisions of macaque area V4 respond in a similar way to opponent (L j M)-cone chromatic contrast suggesting that they are part of a single (...) functional area. Thirdly, we find that macaque area V4, like area V1, responds preferentially to chromatic contrast compared to luminance contrast and the degree of preference is strongly influenced by the temporal frequency of the stimulus. Finally, we observe that while macaque V4d is a region on the dorsal surface of the macaque visual cortex that responds robustly to chromatic stimuli, human chromatic responses to identical stimuli are largely confined to the ventral surface suggesting a fundamental difference in the topographical organization of higher visual areas between humans and macaques. (shrink)

In his attack on the notion of immediate experience, Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that aesthetic experience should be absorbed into hermeneutics because alone it cannot account for the historical nature of experience ; predicated on an ontological theory of art, the unfathomable, therefore, is the sense we have of these infinite hermeneutic depths. I argue that this account is methodologically and existentially unacceptable: methodologically because it is overly speculative, and existentially because it betrays authentic existence. I critique Gadamer from the perspective (...) of William James’ Pragmatism and argue, inverting Gadamer’s main thesis, that hermeneutics should be reduced to aesthetic experience. The meaning that emerges in aesthetic experience does not ‘rise up’ from the depths but is immanent in what James calls ‘pure experience’. The unfathomable, therefore, is not a glimpse into the metaphysical abyss but a phenomenological insight into the immanent structure of experience. (shrink)

David Steen and co-authors in this journal offer a philosophical argument to support an “Evolutionary Community Concept” to identify what they call “evolutionary communities.” They describe these as “unique collections of species that interact and have co-evolved in a given geographic area” and that include “co-evolved dependencies between different parts of a community.” Steen et al. refer to the coevolution of assemblages, collections, communities, dependencies, interspecific and abiotic interactions, and traits, but they do not define “co-evolution” or provide an example (...) in which co-evolution has been demonstrated. There may be as many ways to explain interactions among species as these interactions themselves; they may result, for example, from ecological fitting and phenotypic plasticity. In this paper, I argue that standard Darwinian Theory explains intraspecific microevolution or descent with modification within an interbreeding and potentially continuous population. The power, mechanism, or force that causes interspecific co-evolution, especially at the community scale, requires further explanation. (shrink)

The focus of this chapter is public policy and consequentialism, especially issues that arise in connection with the environment – i.e. the natural world, including non-human animals. We integrate some of the existing literature on environmental economics, welfare economics, and policy with the literature on environmental values and philosophy. The emphasis on environmental policy is motivated by the fact that it is arguably the most philosophically interesting and challenging application of consequentialism to policy, as it includes all the challenges of (...) valuing the distribution of human wealth and power, and has the further challenge of putting these consequences on the same scale as consequences for human health, non-human animals, and nature. We suggest that standard methods of (economic) policy analysis provide a good approximation of correct welfarist analysis, except that they must be supplemented with methods for valuing animal wellbeing and tradeoffs with human wellbeing. We then provide the needed methods. (shrink)

: This paper develops four related claims: 1. Critical thinking should focus more on decision making, 2. the heuristics and bias literature developed by cognitive psychologists and behavioral economists provides many insights into human irrationality which can be useful in critical thinking instruction, 3. unfortunately the “rational choice” norms used by behavioral economists to identify “biased” decision making narrowly equate rational decision making with the efficient pursuit of individual satisfaction; deviations from these norms should not be treated as an irrational (...) bias, 4. a richer, procedural theory of rational decision making should be the basis for critical thinking instruction in decision making. (shrink)

Postphenomenology and posthermeneutics as initiated by Ihde have made important contributions to conceptualizing understanding human–technology relations. However, their focus on individual perception, artifacts, and static embodiment has its limitations when it comes to understanding the embodied use of technology as involving bodily movement, social, and taking place within, and configuring, a temporal horizon. To account for these dimensions of experience, action, and existence with technology, this paper proposes to use a conceptual framework based on performance metaphors. Drawing on metaphors from (...) three performance arts—dance, theatre, and music—and giving examples from social media and other technologies, it is shown that we can helpfully describe technology use and experience as performance involving movement, sociality, and temporality. Moreover, it is argued that these metaphors can also be used to reformulate the idea that in such uses and experiences, now understood as “technoperformances”, technology is not merely a tool but also takes on a stronger, often non-intended role: not so much as “mediator” but as choreographer, director, and conductor of what we experience and do. Performance metaphors thus allow us to recast the phenomenology and hermeneutics of technology use as moving, social, and temporal—indeed historical—affair in which technologies take on the role of organizer and structurer of our performances, and in which humans are not necessarily the ones who are fully in control of the meanings, experiences, and actions that emerge from our engagement with the world, with technology, and with each other. This promises to give us a more comprehensive view of what it means to live with technology and how our lives are increasingly organized by technology—especially by smart technologies. Finally, it is argued that this has normative implications for an ethics and politics of technology, now understood as an ethics and politics of technoperformances. (shrink)

The concept of the "unlevel playing field" is critiqued for its tendency to take the prevailing masculinist managerial paradigm for granted. Rather than assume that both men and women should assimilate to corporate masculinity, feminist alternatives are suggested. The pervasiveness of the masculine ethic and the "myth of meritocracy" in organizations are reviewed, with the space shuttle Challenger disaster serving as a focal point to demonstrate the dysfunctionality of masculine management and the rationale for feminist-based organizational transformation to promote not (...) only gender equity, but more effective and ethical organizational behavior. (shrink)

As with other fields of applied ethics, philosophers engaged in business ethics struggle to carry out substantive philosophical reflection in a way that mirrors the practical reasoning that goes on within business management itself. One manifestation of the philosopher’s struggle is the field’s division into approaches that emphasize moral philosophy and those grounded in the methods of social science. I claim here that the task for those who come to business ethics with philosophical training is to avoid unintentionally widening the (...) gap between philosophical theory and business management by emphasizing the centrality of practical wisdom to both good managment and to the moral life. Distinguishing my own approach from recent emphases on phronesis in management literature, I draw on the concepts of social practice and of narrative to tie practical reasoning to a company’s unique story. Practical reason, social practices and narrative are employed together to give an account of the art of management at Patagonia. The essay hopes to both provide a way for philosophers engaged with business ethics to see family resemblances between their practices and those of business management and to offer a pedagogical example useful for those in any discipline interested in viewing businesses ethically. (shrink)