Do the deviant acts carried out by the collective known as Anonymous qualify as vigilante activity, and if so, can they be justified? Addressing this question helps expose the difficulties of morally evaluating technologically enabled deviance. Anonymous is a complex, fluid actor but not as mysterious as popularly portrayed. Under a definition of vigilantism that includes reprobative punishment rather than violence as a key element, Anonymous are vigilantes. Many of its Ops can be justified in view of the mismatch between (...) formal norm enforcement practice and Internet natives’ experience of it. Anons are more like eco-warriors than terrorists. While their actions are contentious, their force is framed in a vision of common good that is not unreasonable. Engaging with online deviants is shown to be a productive way of identifying the weaknesses in concepts underpinning moral evaluation of Internet-enabled phenomena. (shrink)

A person sometimes forms moral beliefs by relying on another person''s moral testimony. In this paper I advance a cognitivist normative account of this phenomenon. I argue that for a person''s actions to be morally good, they must be based on a recognition of the moral reasons bearing on action. Morality requires people to act from an understanding of moral claims, and consequently to have an understanding of moral claims relevant to action. A person sometimes fails to meet this requirement (...) when she relies on another person''s moral testimony, and so there are moral limits on such reliance. (shrink)

Brings together classical and contemporary arguments about pure democracy versus representative government, the role of elites in a democracy, possibilities for greater popular participation, the relationship between democracy and capitalism, democracy and male domination, and the linkage between majority rule and minority rights.

Hilbert's program attempts to show that our mathematical knowledge can be certain because we are able to know for certain the truths of elementary arithmetic. I argue that, in the absence of a theory of mathematical truth, Hilbert does not have a complete theory of our arithmetical knowledge. Further, while his deployment of a Kantian notion of intuition seems to promise an answer to scepticism, there is no way to complete Hilbert's epistemology which would answer to his avowed aims.

Periodic and unexpected shortages of drugs, biologics, and even medical devices have become commonplace in the United States. When shortages occur, hospitals and clinics need to decide how to ration their available stock. When such situations arise, institutions can choose from several different allocation schemes, such as first-come, first-served, a lottery, or a more rational and calculated approach. While the first two approaches sound reasonable at first glance, there are a number of problems associated with them, including the inability to (...) make fine, individual patient-centered decisions. They also do not discriminate between what kinds of patients and what types of uses may be more deserving or reasonable than others. In this article I outline an ethically acceptable procedure for rationing drugs during a shortage in which demand outstrips supply. (shrink)

Some contemporary theories treat phenomena like weakness of will, compulsion and wantonness as practical failures but not as failures of rationality: say, as failures of autonomy or whatever. Other current theories-the majority see the phenomena as failures of rationality but not as distinctively practical failures. They depict them as always involving a theoretical deficiency: a sort of ignorance, error, inattention or illogic. They represent them as failures which are on a par with breakdowns of theoretical reason; the failures may not (...) have exact theoretical analogues, exact analogues in the breakdown of belief, but they are of essentially the same, cognitive kind. Our approach gives us quite a different view of things. The pathologies which we identify in our taxonomy are distinctively rational failures and distinctively practical failures; they are failures of pure practical reason. (shrink)

This pioneering study of Bertrand Russell's social and political thought deals with the years 1896 to 1938, and is the first book to embark on a thorough investigation of the intellectual and cultural context out of which Russell's ideas emerged. Maintaining a sympathetic but critical stance towards Russell's almost innumerable political postures, and focusing in particular on his concern with the intellectual elite, the author renders that thought both plausible and coherent by placing its development against a significant historical background. (...) As well as giving attention to the aspects of Russell's private life which helped determine the direction of his thought, Dr Ironside undertakes an enlightening exploration of the individuals, groups and beliefs by which he was successively influenced. The result is a wide-ranging and highly original view of an important and enduring figure. (shrink)

Arendt Contra Sociology re-assesses the relationship between Hannah Arendt's work and the theoretical foundations of sociology, bringing her insights to bear on key themes within contemporary theoretical sociology. Departing from the view of Arendt as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from society, and political theory from the social sciences, this book re-examines her distinctions between labour, fabrication and action as a theory of the fundamental ontology of human societies, revisiting her criticism of the tendency of many sociological (...) paradigms to conflate the activity of fabrication with that of action. (shrink)

This book offers a roadmap for determining when and how to regulate risky reproductive technologies on behalf of future children. It starts by explaining our intuitive, but paradoxical, belief that reproductive choices can be both life-giving and harmful. Next, it recommends a case-by-case method for reconciling the interests of future children with the reproductive liberty of prospective parents. Finally, it applies this framework to four past and future medical interventions, including cloning and genetic engineering. Drawing lessons from these case studies, (...) it criticizes the current lack of regulatory oversight. (shrink)

Since Euclid defined a point as “that which has no part” it has been widely assumed that points are necessarily unextended. It has also been assumed that this is equivalent to saying that points or, more properly speaking, degenerate segments, have length zero. We challenge these assumptions by providing models of Euclidean geometry where the points are extended despite the fact that the degenerate segments have null lengths, and observe that whereas the extended natures of the points are not recognizable (...) in the given models, they can be recognized and characterized by structures that are suitable expansions of the models. (shrink)

This stunning paperback volume showcases the winners and best entries for the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition and accompanies a major exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in May 2011 and touring the UK and USA thereafter. ‘The contemporary camera maybe a technological marvel but it can’t take photographs, only the photographer can do that. To succeed it involves making an incredible complex of choices and only one chance in the entire history of time to make them (...) as close to perfect as possible. A carefree snap - easy, a composed and considered picture, well, that requires a synergy of skills and perhaps a dash of genius. So that's why this album is such a treat to revel in, its a feast of the worlds best gardens, gardeners, the plants and animals growing and living in them in the very best photographic forms. The images will 'wow' you, make you wish you had been there, wish it was your garden in the picture or wish you had squeezed the button. It’s a testament to a huge array of skills and a catalogue of remarkable beauty’. Chris Packham – BBC Presenter and photographer. (shrink)

We show that assuming modest large cardinals, there is a definable class of ordinals, closed and unbounded beneath every uncountable cardinal, so that for any closed and unbounded subclasses $P, Q, {\langle L[P],\in,P \rangle }$ and ${\langle L[Q],\in,Q \rangle }$ possess the same reals, satisfy the Generalised Continuum Hypothesis, and moreover are elementarily equivalent. Examples of such P are Card, the class of uncountable cardinals, I the uniform indiscernibles, or for any n the class $C^{n}{=_{{\operatorname {df}}}}\{ \lambda \, | \, (...) V_{\lambda } \prec _{{\Sigma }_{n}}V\}$ ; moreover the theory of such models is invariant under ZFC-preserving extensions. They also all have a rich structure satisfying many of the usual combinatorial principles and a definable wellorder of the reals. The inner model constructed using definability in the language augmented by the Härtig quantifier is thus also characterized. (shrink)

Can it make sense for someone who appreciates the explanatory power of modern science to continue believing in a traditional religious account of the ultimate nature and purpose of our universe?

The widespread impression that recent philosophy of science has pioneered exploration of the “social dimensions of scientific knowledge” is shown to be in error, partly due to a lack of appreciation of historical precedent, and partly due to a misunderstanding of how the social sciences and philosophy have been intertwined over the last century. This paper argues that the referents of “democracy” are an important key in the American context, and that orthodoxies in the philosophy of science tend to be (...) molded by the actual regimes of science organization within which they are embedded. These theses are illustrated by consideration of three representative philosophers of science: John Dewey, Hans Reichenbach, and Philip Kitcher.Author Keywords: Social dimensions of science; Logical positivism; Democracy; Context of discovery/justification; Goals of science. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to sound two notes of caution about a beguiling argument for the negative answer: for the Humean view that desires cannot be beliefs, or cognitive states more generally.

In response to the liar’s paradox, Kripke developed the fixed-point semantics for languages expressing their own truth concepts. Kripke’s work suggests a number of related fixed-point theories of truth for such languages. Gupta and Belnap develop their revision theory of truth in contrast to the fixed-point theories. The current paper considers three natural ways to compare the various resulting theories of truth, and establishes the resulting relationships among these theories. The point is to get a sense of the lay of (...) the land amid a variety of options. Our results will also provide technical fodder for the methodological remarks of the companion paper to this one. (shrink)