This study examines the role of codes of ethics in reducing the extent to which managers act opportunistically in reporting earnings. Corporate codes of ethics, by clarifying the boundaries of ethical corporate behaviors and making relevant social norms more salient, have the potential to deter managers from engaging in opportunistic financial reporting practices. In a sample of international companies, we find that the quality of corporate codes of ethics is associated with higher earnings quality, i.e., lower discretionary accruals. Our results (...) are confirmed for a subsample of firms more likely to be engaging in opportunistic reporting behavior, i.e., firms that just meet or beat analysts’ forecasts. Further, codes of ethics play a greater role in reducing earnings management for firms in countries with weaker investor protection mechanisms. Our results suggest that corporate codes of ethics can be a viable alternative to country-level investor protection mechanisms in curbing aggressive reporting behaviors. (shrink)

On February 2,2004,U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno issued the final order and judgment authorizing a settlement between the HMO CIGNA Healthcare and the physicians who treated patients covered by CIGNA, ending the companys involvement in the larger class action In re Managed Care Litigation, which stil includes eight other HMOs. The settlement, estimated by plaintiffs experts to be worth 1.3 billion, mandates changes in the companys business and disclosure practices, establishes a non-profit foundation dedicated to the promotion of high quality (...) health care, and guarantees at least 70 million in payments to the physicians. Similar in scope to the settlement approved between the physician class and Aetna Healthcare in October 2003,the settlement could potentially set a new standard for transparency and physician involvement in billing practices; however, much depends on the outcome of the remainder of the class action, which is set to go to trial later this year. (shrink)

This study provided a content analysis of studies aiming to disclose how artificial intelligence has been applied to the education sector and explore the potential research trends and challenges of AI in education. A total of 100 papers including 63 empirical papers and 37 analytic papers were selected from the education and educational research category of Social Sciences Citation Index database from 2010 to 2020. The content analysis showed that the research questions could be classified into development layer, application layer, (...) and integration layer. Moreover, four research trends, including Internet of Things, swarm intelligence, deep learning, and neuroscience, as well as an assessment of AI in education, were suggested for further investigation. However, we also proposed the challenges in education may be caused by AI with regard to inappropriate use of AI techniques, changing roles of teachers and students, as well as social and ethical issues. The results provide insights into an overview of the AI used for education domain, which helps to strengthen the theoretical foundation of AI in education and provides a promising channel for educators and AI engineers to carry out further collaborative research. (shrink)

Anna J Dare,1 Anthony RJ Phillips,1–3 Michael Chu,1 Anthony JR Hickey,2 Adam SJR Bartlett1–31Department of Surgery, 2Maurice Wilkins Centre for Biodiscovery, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; 3New Zealand Liver Transplant Unit, Auckland City Hospital, Auckland, New ZealandBackground: Hepatic steatosis is increasingly encountered among organ donors. Currently, there is no consensus guideline as to the type or degree of donor steatosis considered acceptable for liver transplantation, and little is known about local practices in this area. The aim of this (...) survey was to evaluate current clinical practices amongst liver transplant surgeons in Australia and New Zealand in the evaluation and use of steatotic donor livers in LT.Methods: An anonymous online twelve-question survey was emailed to all practicing LT surgeons in ANZ in January 2010.Results: The response rate was 83%. Estimated prevalence of steatosis in donor livers was between 40% and 60%. In determining suitability for LT, 90% of respondents reported rejecting organs with "severe" steatosis based on visual and palpation grounds alone. A total of 68% sought further histological assessment if the donor liver looked bad and there were risk factors for steatosis. The majority of respondents performed only one biopsy of the liver, using hematoxylin and eosin staining for fat assessment. There was wide variation in the upper limit of steatosis considered to be acceptable for LT. A total of 21% of respondents still considered microvesicular steatosis a risk factor for primary graft nonfunction.Conclusion: This survey highlights the significant variation in the appraisal and use of steatotic grafts by LT surgeons in ANZ. Accurate evaluation and judicious use of mild and moderately steatotic grafts is required if we are to utilize the available donor pool best.Keywords: liver transplantation, steatosis, fatty liver, organ donors. (shrink)

We show that numerous distinctive concepts of constructive mathematics arise automatically from an “antithesis” translation of affine logic into intuitionistic logic via a Chu/Dialectica construction. This includes apartness relations, complemented subsets, anti-subgroups and anti-ideals, strict and non-strict order pairs, cut-valued metrics, and apartness spaces. We also explain the constructive bifurcation of some classical concepts using the choice between multiplicative and additive affine connectives. Affine logic and the antithesis construction thus systematically “constructivize” classical definitions, handling the resulting bookkeeping automatically.

Yi Hwang, better known by his pen name T'oegye, is generally considered Korea's preeminent Neo-Confucian scholar. The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning is his final masterpiece, a distillation of the learning and practice of a lifetime, and one of the most important works of Korean Neo-Confucianism. In it he crystallized the essence of Neo-Confucian philosophy and spiritual practice in ten brief chapters that begin with the grand vision of the universe and conclude with a description of a well-lived day. In (...) To Become a Sage, Michael Kalton supplements a superb translation of this pivotal text with useful commentary that will greatly enhance its value and interest to the lay reader. The Ten Diagrams is the first complete primary text of Korean Neo-Confucianism to be translated into English. Korea's Yi Dynasty, the only East Asian regime founded exclusively under Neo-Confucian auspices, was unique in its allegiance to the orthodox Ch'eng Chu school, predominant in China, Korea, and Japan. Although the Ten Diagrams is a relatively short work, it fully presents the entire vision of Neo-Confucianism as framed in that school. Kalton provides a brief history of Neo-Confucianism in China and Korea as well as commentary that includes extensive passages from T'oegye's voluminous personal correspondence. These annotations expand the meaning distilled in each chapter. They help the uninitiated reader understand the basic elements of the complex Ch'eng Chu school of Neo-Confucianism, while enabling the scholar to distinguish characteristic aspects of Korean Neo-Confucianism as presented in the thought of the nation's leading philosopher of the time. (shrink)

The catalogue entitled Lidai sanbao ji T2034, completed in 598, exerted a profound influence on the shape of the Chinese Buddhist canon. It also features a large number of new ascriptions for canonical texts. Subsequent tradition and modern scholarship have repeatedly found these ascriptions profoundly problematic. Scholarly opinion has been divided about whether the author, Fei Changfang, faithfully reported these suspect ascriptions from other sources, or was himself their originator. This study analyzes three highly suspect patterns in the treatment of (...) new ascriptions in the Lidai sanbao ji: 1) New ascriptions to the same supposed translator are arbitrarily assigned in batches to titles appearing in delimited, contiguous portions of much longer lists of anonymous texts in the earlier Chu sanzang ji ji. 2) Contradictory information is repeatedly given about the same titles in different parts of the work. 3) Information about titles affected by these two problems is ascribed to an implausibly wide range of earlier catalogues. These three patterns affect numerous separate portions of the Lidai sanbao ji. The Lidai sanbao ji, and not its putative earlier sources, is therefore the common denominator―the bottleneck where these problems collect. The most economical and plausible interpretation is that Fei himself was falsifying his information, whether deliberately or by a rather extreme scholarly negligence. These findings make it all the more imperative to critically evaluate all ascriptions appearing for the first time in the Lidai sanbao ji, including a large number of ascriptions still followed in the canon as it is used today. (shrink)

In her 2010 study of the Shi zhu duan jie jing T309, Jan Nattier found that several passages in T309 were copied from earlier Chinese Buddhist texts. She thus proposed that T309 is not a translation from an Indian text, but a “forgery” by Zhu Fonian. Extending Nattier’s analysis with the help of TACL, a tool for computational textual analysis, we conducted a more thorough analysis of Zhu Fonian’s four Mahayana texts, namely, T309, the Pusa chu tai jing T384, the (...) Zhongyin jin T385, and the Pusa yingluo jing T656, and found in T309 and T656 additional content deriving from earlier Chinese texts. On the basis of this analysis of these features of the texts, we propose that all four were likely compiled by Zhu Fonian himself. (shrink)

What is knowledge? What, if anything, can we know? Michael Ayers initiates a fresh approach to these questions by recovering the insight in the distinction between 'knowledge' and 'belief' that was common philosophical currency for two millennia after Plato. He argues that knowledge comes only with direct cognitive contact with reality or truth.

This paper contributes to our understanding of farm data value chains with assistance from 54 semi-structured interviews and field notes from participant observations. Methodologically, it includes individuals, such as farmers, who hold well-known positionalities within digital agriculture spaces—platforms that include precision farming techniques, farm equipment built on machine learning architecture and algorithms, and robotics—while also including less visible elements and practices. The actors interviewed and materialities and performances observed thus came from spaces and places inhabited by, for example, farmers, crop (...) scientists, statisticians, programmers, and senior leadership in firms located in the U.S. and Canada. The stability of “the” artifacts followed for this project proved challenging, which led to me rethinking how to approach the subject conceptually. The paper is animated by a posthumanist commitment, drawing heavily from assemblage thinking and critical data scholarship coming out of Science and Technology Studies. The argument’s understanding of “chains” therefore lies on an alternative conceptual plane relative to most commodity chain scholarship. To speak of a data value chain is to foreground an orchestrating set of relations among humans, non-humans, products, spaces, places, and practices. The paper’s principle contribution involves interrogating lock-in tendencies at different “points” along the digital farm platform assemblage while pushing for a varied understanding of governance depending on the roles of the actors and actants involved. (shrink)

Michael J. Loux here presents a fresh reading of two of the most important books of the Metaphysics, Books Z and H, in which Aristotle presents his mature theory of primary substances. Focusing on the interplay of Aristotle's early and late views, Loux maintans that the later concept of ousia should be understood in terms of a theory of predication that carries interesting implications for contemporary metaphysics. Loux argues that in his first attempt in identifying ousiai in the Categories, (...) Aristotle encountered a set of ontological problems which he wrestled with again in Metaphysics Z and H. In the Categories, where the primary realities are basic subjects of predication construed in essentialist terms as things falling under natural kinds, familiar particulars are the primary ousiai. In subsequent works, Aristotle holds that since familiar particulars come into being and pass away, they must be composites of matter and form; and in Metaphysics Z and H, he explores the implications of this insight for the search for ousia. Maintaining that the substantial forms of familiar particulars are the primary ousiai, the later Aristotle interprets forms as predicable universals rather than as particulars, each uniquely possessed by a single object. (shrink)

Michael J. Almeida presents a bold new defence of the existence of God. He argues that entrenched principles in philosophical theology which have served as basic assumptions in apriori, atheological arguments are in fact philosophical dogmas. Almeida argues that not only are such principles false - they are necessarily false.

Young migrants have been the major migrant labor force in urban China. But they may be more vulnerable in quality of life and mental health than other groups, due to their personal characteristic and some social/community policies or management measures. It highlights the need to focus on psychological wellbeing and probe driving and reinforcing factors that influence their mental health. This study aimed to investigate the influence of subjective/objective status and possible pathways of young migrants’ life satisfaction and psychological distress. (...) Data on 9838 young migrants in the China Migrants Dynamic Survey were analyzed by LISREL 8.8. A total of 94.03% migrated for jobs or business. Subjective status, including subjective socioeconomic status, social adaptation, and psychological integration, had positive effects on life satisfaction, whereas social adaptation and psychological integration negatively affected psychological distress. Objective status, including objective socioeconomic status and health insurance, had adverse effects on life satisfaction, whereas they positively affected psychological distress. Social participation and city belonging had only significant positive mediating roles on life satisfaction. It is essential to increase social adaptation and decrease integration stress according to younger internal migrants’ practical needs. It is also necessary to enhance community/social resources and activities in the context of developing sustainability in the community to assist in mental health promotion. (shrink)

Transpersonal Psychology concerns the study of those states and processes in which people experience a deeper sense of who they are, or a greater sense of connectedness with others, with nature, or the spiritual dimension. Pioneered by respected researchers such as Jung, Maslow and Tart, it has nonetheless struggled to find recognition among mainstream scientists. Now that is starting to change. Dr. Michael Daniels teaches the subject as part of a broadly-based psychology curriculum, and this book brings together the (...) fruits of his studies over recent years. It will be of special value to students, and its accessible style will appeal also to all who are interested in the spiritual dimension of human experience. The book includes a detailed 38-page glossary of terms and detailed indexes. (shrink)

Michael Bacon gives a critical presentation of Rorty's writings on pragmatism and political theory, comparing and contrasting him with pragmatists such as Hilary Putnam and Susan Haack and liberals such as John Rawls and Brian Barry. The result is an imaginative presentation of one of contemporary philosophy's most innovative and important thinkers.

Related Works: Part I: Michael Zakharyaschev. Canonical Formulas for $K4$. Part I: Basic Results. J. Symbolic Logic, Volume 57, Issue 4 , 1377--1402. Project Euclid: euclid.jsl/1183744119 Part III: Michael Zakharyaschev. Canonical Formulas for K4. Part III: The Finite Model Property. J. Symbolic Logic, Volume 62, Issue 3 , 950--975. Project Euclid: euclid.jsl/1183745306.

Hegel's philosophy has often been compared to a circle of circles: an ascending spiral to its admirers, but a vortex to its critics. The metaphor reflects Hegel's claim to offer a conception of philosophical reason so comprehensive as to include all others as partial forms of itself. It is a claim which faces the writer on Hegel with peculiar difficulties. Criticism, it would appear, can always be outflanked; criticism of the system can be turned back into criticism within the system. (...) Michael Rosen discusses the philosophical issues involved in historical interpretation before presenting a novel and challenging solution to the problem of Hegel's openness to criticism. Contrary to received opinion, Hegel's philosophy does not, he argues, draw upon a universal and pre-suppositionless conception of rationality. Rather, Hegel's originality lies in founding his system upon a particular, avowedly mystical conception of philosophical experience. This experience - Hegel calls it 'pure Thought' - is fundamental. Pure Thought makes speculative reasoning intelligible and, hence, underpins the claim to rationality of the entire system. Dr Rosen's conclusion is that all attempts at rehabilitation of Hegel are based on misunderstanding. When restored to their speculative-mystical shell the irrational kernel of Hegel's concepts becomes apparent. (shrink)

Michael B. Gill offers a new account of Humean moral pluralism: the view that there are different moral reasons for action, which are based on human sentiments. He explores its historical origins, and argues that it offers the most compelling view of our moral experience. Together, pluralism and Humeanism make a philosophically powerful couple.

Dewey scholar Michael Eldridge provides a thorough and well-researched interpretation of Dewey's philosophy that focuses on the role of intelligence in human ...

The Darwinian Revolution--the change in thinking sparked by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which argued that all organisms including humans are the end product of a long, slow, natural process of evolution rather than the miraculous creation of an all-powerful God--is one of the truly momentous cultural events in Western Civilization. Darwinism as Religion is an innovative and exciting approach to this revolution through creative writing, showing how the theory of evolution as expressed by Darwin has, from the (...) first, functioned as a secular religion. Drawing on a deep understanding of both the science and the history, Michael Ruse surveys the naturalistic thinking about the origins of organisms, including the origins of humankind, as portrayed in novels and in poetry, taking the story from its beginnings in the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century right up to the present. He shows that, contrary to the opinion of many historians of the era, there was indeed a revolution in thought and that the English naturalist Charles Darwin was at the heart of it. However, contrary also to what many think, this revolution was not primarily scientific as such, but more religious or metaphysical, as people were taken from the secure world of the Christian faith into a darker, more hostile world of evolutionism. In a fashion unusual for the history of ideas, Ruse turns to the novelists and poets of the period for inspiration and information. His book covers a wide range of creative writers - from novelists like Voltaire and poets like Erasmus Darwin in the eighteenth century, through the nineteenth century with novelists including Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James and H. G. Wells and poets including Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and on to the twentieth century with novelists including Edith Wharton, D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, William Golding, Graham Greene, Ian McEwan and Marilynne Robinson, and poets including Robert Frost, Edna St Vincent Millay and Philip Appleman. Covering such topics as God, origins, humans, race and class, morality, sexuality, and sin and redemption, and written in an engaging manner and spiced with wry humor, Darwinism as Religion gives us an entirely fresh, engaging and provocative view of one of the cultural highpoints of Western thought. (shrink)

Utilizing an idea that has its first appearance in Gerhard Gentzen’s unpublished manuscripts, we generate an exhaustive repertoire of all the possible inference rules that are related to the left implication inference rule of the sequent calculus from a ground sequent, that is, a logical axiom. We discuss the similarities and differences of these derived rules as well as their interaction with the implication right rule under cut and the structural axiom. We further consider the question of analyticity of cuts (...) in calculi using one of the new rules instead of the standard left implication rule. (shrink)

自由的核心概念在康德的建構中，除了奠定了道德法則與法權法則的普遍性、必然性與約束性之外，它還有一個軸心的關鍵作用，居間連結道德哲學與法權哲學。自由是實踐哲學的基本概念，藉此設定，康德業已以不言而喻的必 然方式，將法權哲學的法權論，與倫理學的德行論，一併歸編列於道德哲學的大系統之內。這樣一個大系統的建構，反過來使法權哲學的法權論能夠具有道德形上學的向度，從外在的強制法，通過意念的反思建立德行，成為可能 。再透過理性本體之自由理念的溯源，自由基本人權明確顯示的，即是「人作為人」不可冒犯的尊嚴。在康德通過道德法則的理性事實證成自由理念的客觀真實性之後，我們可以合理地倒反過來，從存有的觀點來鳥瞰他的道德哲 學的這整個系統的基本架構，是透過一個核心作用的統籌運用：從作為核心的自由概念出發，一方面「縱向貫徹」，另外一方面「橫向一致」，動態交錯地開展出來。.

Michael Halewood uses ideas from analytic philosophy, continental philosophy and social theory to look at how language relates to the world, and the world to language. He primarily draws on the work of Alfred North Whitehead, and incorporating the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, John Dewey and Luce Irigaray, to view the world as 'in process'.

Michael Walzer; Education, Democratic Citizenship and Multiculturalism, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 29, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 181–189, http.

In this expansive and provocative new work, Michael Dango theorizes how aesthetic style manages crisis--and why taking crisis seriously means taking aesthetics seriously. Detoxing, filtering, binging, and ghosting: these are four actions that have come to define how people deal with the stress of living in a world that seems in permanent crisis. As Dango argues, they can also be used to describe contemporary art and literature. Employing what he calls "promiscuous archives," Dango traverses media and re-shuffles literary and (...) art historical genealogies to make his case. The book discusses social media filters alongside the minimalism of Donald Judd and La Monte Young and the television shows West Wing and True Detective. It reflects on the modernist cuisine of Ferran Adrià and the fashion design of Issey Miyake. And, it dissects writing by Jenifer Egan, David Foster Wallace, David Mitchell, and Zadie Smith. Unpacking how the styles of these works detox, filter, binge, or ghost their worlds, Crisis Style is at once a taxonomy of contemporary cultural production and a theorization of action in a world always in need of repair. Ultimately, Dango presents a compelling argument for why we need aesthetic theory to understand what we're doing in our world today. (shrink)

Annotation. In this sequel to his Morality, Politics, and Law, Michael Perry addresses the proper relation of moral convictions to the politics of a morally pluralistic society. While his analysis focuses on religious morality, Perry's argument applies to morality generally. Contending that nojustification of a contested political choice can be neutral among competing conceptions of human good, the author develops an ideal of "ecumenical politics" in which moral convictions about human good can be brought to bear in a productive (...) way in political argument. (shrink)

This concise, well-structured survey examines the problem of evil in the context of the philosophy of religion. One of the core topics in that field, the problem of evil is an enduring challenge that Western philosophers have pondered for almost two thousand years. The main problem of evil consists in reconciling belief in a just and loving God with the evil and suffering in the world. Michael Peterson frames this issue by working through questions such as the following: What (...) is the relation of rational belief to religious faith? What different conceptual moves are possible on either side of the issue? What responses have important thinkers advanced and which seem most promising? Is it possible to maintain religious commitment in light of evil? Peterson relies on the helpful distinction between moral and natural evil to clarify our understanding of the different aspects of the problem as well as avenues for response.The overall format of the text rests on classifying various types of argument from evil: the logical, the probabilistic, the evidential, and the existential arguments. Each type of argument has its own strategy which both theists and nontheists must recognize and develop. Giving both theistic and nontheistic perspectives fair representation, the text works through the issues of whether evil shows theistic belief to be inconsistent, improbable, discredited by the evidence, or threatened by personal crisis.Peterson explains how defensive strategies are particularly geared for responding to the logical and probabilistic arguments from evil while theodicy is an appropriate response to the evidential argument. Theodicy has traditionally been understood as the attempt to justify belief in a God who is all-powerful and all-good in light of evil. The text discusses the theodicies of Augustine, Leibniz, Hick, and Whitehead as enlightening examples of theodicy. This discussion allows Peterson to identify and evaluate a rather dominant theme in most theodicies: that evil can be justified by designating a greater good. In the end, Peterson even explores how certain types of theodicy, based on specifically Christian renditions of theism, might provide a basis for addressing the existential problem of evil. The reader of this book gains not only an intellectual grasp of the debate over God and evil in professional philosophy but also the personal benefit of thinking through one of the most important issues in human life. (shrink)

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), Menzies Centre for Health Policy, The Australian National University, LPO Box 8260, ANU Canberra ACT 2601, Australia. Tel.: +61 (0)2 6125 4355; Mobile: +61 (0)431 124 286; Fax: +61 (0)2 6125 6579; Email: michael.selgelid{at}anu.edu.au ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract Thomas Pogge has proposed a supplement to the standard patent regime whereby innovating companies would be rewarded in proportion to the extent to which their innovations lead (...) to reduction of the global burden of disease (GBD). This paper argues that an expansion of this proposal—whereby provision of already existing medicines are incentivised in a similar way—would provide a more comprehensive solution to the healthcare situation in developing countries. It then considers the practical challenges that the implementation of such a proposal (expanded or otherwise) would entail. Though these include difficulties associated with disease burden metric, I argue that the most serious difficulties are associated with the problem of causal attribution. A basic idea underlying Pogge's proposal is that the disease burden reduction attributable to particular interventions can be determined. Theoretically speaking, in cases involving multiple interacting causal factors, there may be no fact of the matter regarding the extent to which disease burden reduction should be attributed to one intervention as opposed to another; and (even if workable practical solutions to this theoretical challenge can be met) the data requirements for implementation would be daunting. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Michael Strawser provides a new reading of Spinoza as a philosopher of love for whom the ethically qualified conception of noble love is central. Strawser situates Spinoza’s philosophy of love within the Jewish and Cartesian traditions and shows how this active conception of love can conquer hatred and bring people together.

This article highlights that in our rush to call for the democratization of science and expertise we must not forget to speak to what type of democratization we are calling for. In short, not all participatory forms are the same. In developing this argument, I examine one such form that has yet to receive much attention from science and technology studies scholars: the agricultural field day. In examining the field day, we find that its orientation—that is, toward either the conventional (...) or sustainable model of agriculture—shapes significantly its democratic approach to knowledge coproduction. To help inform how we understand conventional and sustainable field days, I turned to two conceptual frameworks of participation: namely, that of Wynne and Funtowicz and Ravetz. In doing this, we find that conventional field days mirror closely that form of public participation detailed by Funtowicz and Ravetz, while sustainable field days reflect that conceptualized by Wynne. (shrink)

This article details how patent law works to create discrete, immutable biological ‘objects’. This socio-legal maneuver is necessary to distinguish these artifacts from the unwieldy realm of the natural world. The creation of ‘objects’ also serves the interests of capital, where a stable, unchanging, immutable object goes hand in hand with commodification. Yet this stabilization is incomplete. Pointing to a variety of different examples, this article illustrates how biotech patents do not speak to specific, immutable things. Biotech patents, rather, are (...) better understood as ontologically fluid, which is to say their identity cannot be ‘fixed’ — or, at least, not without undermining the very existence of today’s biotechnology regime. The article concludes by speaking briefly about how this mutability is perpetuating certain inequalities, particularly between holders of various property forms. (shrink)

Eddo Evink criticizes Emmanuel Levinas’s supposed view that all acts of intentionality and rationality commit transcendental violence against their objects, including the Other. If this is so, Levinas undermines the possibility of his own philosophy. Evink further argues: that there are non-violent forms of intentionality and so intentionality is only potentially violent; that some non-violent counter-pole is needed to define violence; that there are contradictions in Levinas’s notion of violence; that Levinas, like empiricists, aspires to a metaphysical absolute untainted by (...) language; and that he presupposes the philosophical, ontological, and linguistic frameworks he criticizes. However, to answer these objections, one must understand Levinas as developing two distinct modalities of relationship: Being and Otherwise than Being. These modalities clash in the face-to-face relationship when the phenomenon of the face defects into responsibility for the Other. The epistemology and ontology of Being involve distinctive acts, affects, forms of temporality, and experiences of self that undergo a tectonic shift in confrontation with the ethically obligating Other. Here the focus is not on the violence of concepts ever seeking to subjugate the Other but rather on the Other whose summons both provokes knowledge to retreat and is able to be shown in a philosophy, even if that philosophy betrays the saying in the said, while also having the potential to reduce that betrayal. The focus should not be on transcendental violence tracking down and cornering the Other but on the Other ethically disrupting Being. With that focus, it becomes clear that concentrating on transcendental violence is a kind of violence. (shrink)

In 2016, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen officially apologised to the island’s indigenous peoples. This national apology not only plays a persuasive role in informing the general public about the historical wrongdoings inflicted on the Taiwanese aborigines, but also constitutes a therapeutic and restorative role in the process of reconciliation with the indigenous victims. This article provides a critical discourse analysis of President Tsai’s apology. In particular, it examines the power and ideology embedded in both the speech and the related ceremony, (...) and is supplemented with extracts from interviews with a cross-section of key stakeholders, such as a former Constitutional/supreme Court Justice, indigenous/tribal leaders and members/staff/advisers from the Presidential Office Indigenous Historical Justice and Transitional Justice Committee. The analysis reveals that, despite President Tsai’s apology and reconciliation policies, instead of facilitating reconciliation, the apology appears to exacerbate the long-standing latent tension between indigenous and non-indigenous groups. While the apology opens a window for reconciliation, a higher level of commitment is required to promote structural and systemic changes, such as land restitution, before the apology can be deemed adequate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 1, April 1998, pp. 71-94 Hume on the Very Idea of a Relation MICHAEL COSTA I think it is a productive strategy in interpreting Hume's philosophy to examine very carefully exactly what constitutes for Hume the cognitive state of having a certain idea or belief. More often than not, interpretive pressures arise almost immediately when one comes to address the details in such (...) cases. Attempting to relieve these interpretive pressures can have substantial payoffs in understanding and evaluating Hume's philosophy, even when the attempts are not entirely successful.1 In this paper, I am going to raise the question, "What is the very idea of a relation for Hume?" which I will understand to mean, "What exactly constitutes the cognitive state of having an idea of a relation for Hume?" First I will argue for a particular account of what an idea of a relation must consist in for Hume. The account that I describe is essentially the same as one that has already been introduced by some recent work of Don Garrett,2 but I will offer here a new way of arriving at it. Also, I will examine in detail the capacity of the account to deal with each of Hume's categories of relation. Hume has extensive discussions of some of these (the "matters of fact" relations of space, time, identity, and causation), but almost nothing to say about some of the others (the "relations of ideas" of resemblance, contrariety, degree of quality, and quantity and number). All of them raise interpretive problems, and attempting to resolve them will suggest new ways of understanding a number of important issues in Hume's philosophy including: the nature of the cognitive process of comparing ideas and Michael Costa is at the Department of Philosophy, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208 USA. email: costam@garnet.cla.sc.edu 72 Michael Costa deriving a general idea from the comparison, the distinction between having a belief and making an assertion or explicit judgment on the basis of one's beliefs, the nature of a fiction or fictitious idea, how Hume thinks that language and symbols enhance cognitive processing, and how we should understand Hume's empiricist criterion of meaning. The obvious place to start in addressing the question of what ideas of relation consist in for Hume is the section "Of relations" that appears early in the Treatise? Just prior to this section Hume indicates that he thinks of relations as complex ideas. He says, "complex ideas may be divided into Relations, Modes, and Substances" (T 13). He goes on in the section to draw a distinction between natural and philosophical relations as a distinction between those relations that are connected to associations in thought (the natural relations) and all relations whatsoever that can be conceived (the philosophical relations) (T 13-14). But that distinction does not in itself shed any light on the nature of our ideas of the latter as complex ideas. Nor, initially, do Hume's brief remarks on each of the seven categories of relations (T 14-15), although we will find some interesting issues to mine here after getting a better understanding of Hume's account of relations as complex ideas. We can get some help by recalling the way in which Hume draws the distinction between simple and complex ideas. This division is into Simple and Complex. Simple perceptions or impressions and ideas are such as admit of no distinction nor separation. The complex are the contrary to these, and may be distinguished into parts. Tho' a particular colour, taste, and smell are qualities all united together in this apple, 'tis easy to perceive they are not the same, but are at least distinguishable from each other. (T 2) A complex idea is one that can be distinguished into parts. Hume's illustration of the apple can easily mislead. He seems to be talking about an apple (physical object) as a collection of qualities. But for this to serve as an illustration of the distinction under discussion we must read him as talking about an impression or idea of an apple being a collection of impressions... (shrink)

In Medical Ethics, the editors have developed a completely different type book, focusing upon issues not ordinarily dealt with in texts on bioethics.

This interview took place through email during October-November, 2019. Michael: It’s a real pleasure to engage you in conversation. You were a foundation member of PESA and someone who in the pre-I...

This book explores a hitherto unexamined possibility of justifiable disobedience opened up by John Rawls’ Law of Peoples. This is the possibility of disobedience justified by appeal to standards of decency that are shared by peoples who do not otherwise share commitments to the same principles of justice, and whose societies are organized according to very different basic social institutions. Justified by appeal to shared decency standards, disobedience by diverse state and non-state actors indeed challenge injustices in the international system (...) of states. The book considers three case studies: disobedience by the undocumented, disobedient challenges to global economic inequities, and the disobedient disclosure of government secrets. It proposes a substantial analytical redefinition of civil disobedience in a global perspective, identifying the creation of global solidarity relations as its goal. Michael Allen breaks new ground in our understanding of global justice. Traditional views, such as those of Rawls, see justice as a matter of recognizing the moral status of all free and equal person as citizens in a state. Allen argues that this fails to see things from the global perspective. From this perspective disobedience is not merely a matter of social cooperation. Rather, it is a matter of self determination that guarantees the invulnerability of different types of persons and peoples to domination. This makes the disobedience by the undocumented justified, based on the idea that all persons are moral equals, so that all sovereign peoples need to reject dominating forms of social organization for all persons, and not just their own citizens. In an age of mass movements of people, Allen gives us a strong reason to change our practices in treating the undocumented. James Bohman, St Louis University, Danforth Chair in the Humanities This monograph is an important contribution to our thinking on civil disobedience and practices of dissent in a globalized world. This is an era where non-violent social movements have had a significant role in challenging the abuse of power in contexts as diverse, yet interrelated as the Arab Spring protests and the Occupy protests. Moreover, while protests such as these speak to a local political horizon, they also have a global footprint, catalyzing a transnational dialogue about global justice, political strategy and cosmopolitan solidarity. Speaking directly to such complexities, Allen makes a compelling case for a global perspective regarding civil disobedience. Anyone interested in how the dynamics of non-violent protest have shaped and reshaped the landscape for democratic engagement in a globalized world will find this book rewarding and insightful. Vasuki Nesiah, New York University. (shrink)

This volume of collected essays by Michael Walzer seeks to bring a more concentrated focus on specifically Jewish outlooks regarding three key themes: "Political Order and Civil Society"; "Territory, Sovereignty, and International Society"; and "War and Peace.".