Background Ethics consultations are established in contemporary health care. Informal ethics consultations often occur and are possibly beneficial, yet they have not been empirically studied. We sought to describe features of informal ethics consultations and to identify facilitators and disruptors of patient participation in such ethics consultations. Methods We used a mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) evaluation design and conveniently sampled 64 sequential informal ethics consultations over a period of 3 years in two academic health care centers in one city (...) in Canada. Data were collected by the two participating ethicists. We used statistical description for the quantitative data and thematic analysis for the qualitative data. Results Patients participated in only two (3%) of the informal ethics consultations. Factors that disrupted patient participation in ethics consultations were related to patients’ issues (mental impairments), family issues (family withholding information from the patient), and team members’ issues (efficiency considerations). Conclusion Informal ethics consultations may be used for ethics capacity building of health care providers rather than for engagement with addressed patients. Further research on informal ethics consultations is required, including in different sites. (shrink)

According to proponents of the extended mind, bio-external resources, such as a notebook or a smartphone, are candidate parts of the cognitive and mental machinery that realises cognitive states and processes. The present chapter discusses three areas of ethical concern associated with the extended mind, namely mental privacy, mental manipulation, and agency. We also examine the ethics of the extended mind from the standpoint of three general normative frameworks, namely, consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics.

Marx’s Inferno reconstructs the major arguments of Karl Marx’s Capital and inaugurates a completely new reading of a seminal classic. Rather than simply a critique of classical political economy, William Roberts argues that Capital was primarily a careful engagement with the motives and aims of the workers’ movement. Understood in this light, Capital emerges as a profound work of political theory. Placing Marx against the background of nineteenth-century socialism, Roberts shows how Capital was ingeniously modeled on Dante’s Inferno, and (...) how Marx, playing the role of Virgil for the proletariat, introduced partisans of workers’ emancipation to the secret depths of the modern “social Hell.” In this manner, Marx revised republican ideas of freedom in response to the rise of capitalism. Combining research on Marx’s interlocutors, textual scholarship, and forays into recent debates, Roberts traces the continuities linking Marx’s theory of capitalism to the tradition of republican political thought. He immerses the reader in socialist debates about the nature of commerce, the experience of labor, the power of bosses and managers, and the possibilities of political organization. Roberts rescues those debates from the past, and shows how they speak to ever-renewed concerns about political life in today’s world. (shrink)

This work is an investigation into part of the human sentence parsing mechanism (HSPM). The major test of the psychological validity of any model of the HSPM is that it fail on precisely those sentences that humans find to be garden paths. It is hypothesized that the HSPM consists of at least two processes. We call the first process the syntactic processor, and the second will be known as the semantic processor.It is hypothesized that the syntactic processor is unconscious, deterministic (...) and fast, but limited. While most ambiguities are resolved on the basis of syntactic information, when the syntactic processor can no longer guarantee a correct analysis, semantic information is used to help resolve the ambiguity. This model leads to a better prediction and explanation of which sentences will cause people to garden path. (shrink)

This article provides a critique of the IWC's traditional focus on anthropocentric conservation in the governance of whaling. It is argued that this position, which relies on accepting the view that we have no direct moral duties to whales, is out of step with the moral status that now tends, in theory and practice, to be granted to animals. More specifically, anthropocentric conservation conflicts with the widespread acceptance, in theory and practice, that non-human animals such as whales have moral standing, (...) that what we do to them matters to them directly. This does not mean that whaling should necessarily be prohibited on ethical grounds, although the animal welfare analysis of whaling sketched in this article does suggest that, on balance, it is difficult to defend morally. Rather, it is being claimed that it is morally objectionable to deny, as the whaling nations do, that the IWC ought to be mandated to consider the welfare implications of whaling. (shrink)

There is something amiss about post-Rawlsian efforts to bring political theory down to earth by insisting upon the political primacy of the question of legitimacy, peace, or order. The intuition driving much realism seems to be that we must first agree to get along, and only then can we get down to the business of pursuing justice. I argue that the ideological narratives of the powerful pose a political problem for this primacy of legitimacy thesis. To prioritize the achievement of (...) democratic legitimacy seems to make sense only to the extent that we already live in a world in which systematic domination—and its ideological baggage—has been stamped out. I draw on the social study of domination for the sake of combatting in political theory the temptation to focus on the static design of the constitutional state at the expense of ignoring or even condemning the social processes that motivate legal and constitutional changes. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1923 edition.

_Presents new ways of thinking about the human and the humanities through a rethinking of Antigone._.

Accounts of modal knowledge are many and varied. How should we choose between them? I propose that we employ inference to the best explanation, and I suggest that there are three desiderata that we should use to rank hypotheses: conservatism, simplicity, and the ability to handle disagreement. After examining these desiderata, I contend that they can’t be used to justify belief in the modal epistemology that fares best, but that they can justify our accepting it in an epistemically significant sense. (...) Finally, I outline a modal epistemology that seems to do well by the standards I’ve recommended. (shrink)

Impossible love -- Between nature and culture -- Surviving, forever foreign -- Cryptic crossing -- Touching transcendence, in the flesh -- The tragedy of Christianity.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Cost effectiveness. Economics. This is an introduction, accessible to non-economists as well as to economists, to the practice of cost benifit analysis. It begins from a discussion of financial appraisal. The distinguishing features of cost benifit analysis are then introduced progressively. Practical examples are used whenever possible to aid the exposition. Economic theory is introduced only where it is immediately relevant to practice. Nonetheless the approach is firmly grounded in economic principles and considerable space is devoted to those ideas that (...) are central to practical cost benefit analysis - shadow prices, consumers' surplus, and valuation of unmarked goods. The additional needs of economically trained readers are catered for by a number of appendices which relate the ideas expounded in the book to mainstream economic theory. (shrink)

When Marx dissected the capitalist economy and intervened in the international workers’ movement, he did so in the service of freeing people from alien, uncontrolled power. His political project was the realisation of what he called the social republic, and his theoretical project was to identify the forces that promote or retard this political project. In order to bring out the specificity and cogency of the social-republican Marx, this essay uproots the positive-freedom reading that has overgrown the edifice of his (...) thought. Marx certainly hoped for ‘real freedom’, which is a sort of self-realisation. He also hoped for a sort of collective self-determination. And he thought that collective self-determination was a prerequisite for general self-realisation. But Marx also thought that generalised freedom from domination was a prerequisite for collective self-determination. (shrink)

At many slaughterhouses, if a pregnant cow is killed, then medical companies pay to harvest the fetus's blood. When you communicate the details of this process to people, many of them are disgusted. I submit that those who are repulsed thereby acquire a reason to believe that this practice is morally wrong. However, it is controversial to maintain that disgust can provide moral guidance. So, I develop a theory of disgust’s moral salience that fits with the empirical work that’s been (...) done on it, and I apply it to the collection of bovine fetal blood. I conclude by suggesting how this theory may be of use in animal ethics generally. (shrink)

Although William James formed his philosophical views in direct reaction to the Hegelianism then dominant in American and British institutions, modern critics have tended to reject James’s criticism of G. W. F. Hegel as superficial and outdated. This is in part due to James’s energetic rhetorical style, but also because James at his most polemical tends to present his pluralistic and pragmatist empiricism as diametrically opposed to Hegel’s monistic and intellectualistic idealism, so that it is not clear how the (...) two theories could engage in any meaningful dialogue. This chapter presents a different interpretation of the engagement between James and Hegel. On this interpretation, James’s criticisms of Hegel emerge from what he perceives to be a common starting point: the attempt to find the world to be “a home.” As such, James’s criticisms of Hegel should be understood as offering a kind of internal critique. According to James, Hegel offers too narrow an account of what it is for beings like us to “feel at home” in the world. This is a unique and internal criticism of Hegel which deserves to be taken seriously. (shrink)

This article explores the neglected idea of fate in Simmel’s thought. It examines the specific definition of fate present in Simmel’s writings and the relation of this definition to tragic drama. The argument operates under the assumption that tragic drama represents the ‘natural habitat’ for the exploration and expression of the fate problematic. In this context, it is argued that Simmel’s rediscovery of the relevance of fate emphasizes the modernity of tragedy. The article explores Simmel’s translation of fate from drama (...) and philosophy into sociology, but into a sociology replete with a distinctly existential and metaphysical consciousness. It is argued that Simmel’s application of fate to modern social life constitutes a sociologization of fate, but that rather than involving a reduction of fate to society, this sociologization actually involves a form of re-enchantment of the social through life. In relation to this sociologization and building on the argument of Peter Baehr, it is argued that the concept of fate is uniquely endowed with a capacity to encourage a sense of pathos conducive to the development of a reflexive and critical sense of collective social responsibility and of shared future. In this regard, the article examines Simmel’s engagement with Naturalist tragedy and the transition from ancient to modern drama. Throughout, it is argued that the experience of modernity, where ‘all that is solid melts into air’, is conducive to a rediscovery of the relevance of fate and tragedy. (shrink)

This essay seeks to bring into focus the latent political theory of CLR James’s World Revolution, 1917-1936, and to show, on this basis, how World Revolution explains certain difficult aspects of The Black Jacobins. The core of James’s theory is the thesis that social classes are organically and internally identified, and that each has a preformed and unitary interest, which can be articulated as a set of political principles. A class is called to act by the voice that expresses the (...) class’s interest in the terms of its political principles. Once these points are made clear, several problems regarding the interpretation of The Black Jacobins disappear. First, James’s claim that the slaves of San Domingo were “closer to a modern proletariat than any group of workers in existence at the time” follows from his organic concept of the proletariat. Second, James’s revision of his account of the Haitian Revolution over the decades does not signify a move in the direction of “history from below” but a changed estimation of the conditions under which the mirroring operation he assigned to political leadership might take place. What seems to be James’s inordinate interest in the individual leader, finally, is more properly understood to be his antipathy to institutions and organizations. (shrink)

Meat-eating has been the norm in most human societies. Historically, it has not had many defenders, but this is probably because few thought that it was in need of defense. In the contemporary philosophical literature, however, the pro-vegetarian arguments are usually taken to be quite strong, and omnivores have assumed the burden of proof. The purpose of this entry is to explain this shift by surveying the various frameworks that offer neutral or positive moral assessments of meat-eating. After briefly tracing (...) the evolution of these frameworks from the ancient to modern period, the entry outlines the three most prominent contemporary approaches. It closes by considering possibilities for future research. (shrink)

The ongoing critical redeployment of primitive accumulation proceeds under two premises. First, it is argued that Marx, erroneously, confined primitive accumulation to the earliest history of capit...

A revised edition of an undergraduate text for students in history of psychology courses. Designed for one semester, covers: the history of psychology in ancient philosophy, structuralism, neurophysiology, functionalism, behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and gestalt theories. The new edition has expanded.

We aren’t particularly sympathetic to modal realism (MR). Still, it isn’t clear to us that David Lewis argues for it in the wrong way. “The hypothesis is serviceable,” he says, “and that is a reason to think that it is true” (1986, p. 3). Let’s grant him the first claim: MR is serviceable, which is to say that it allows us “to reduce the diversity of notions we must accept as primitive, and thereby to improve the unity and economy of (...) the theory that is our professional concern – total theory, the whole of what we take to be true” (1986, p. 4). Our interest here is in the second claim, the thesis to the effect that a hypothesis’s being serviceable can provide reason to believe it. A number of philosophers maintain that this latter is false; others insist that it’s of no help to Lewis. So on one basis or the other, they conclude that Lewis’ argument for MR doesn’t get off the ground.1 We disagree. Our aim here is to show that there isn’t a cogent objection to Lewis’ use of serviceability that doesn’t rely a premise that he is justified in rejecting. (shrink)

AI systems play an increasingly important role in shaping and regulating the lives of millions of human beings across the world. Calls for greater _transparency_ from such systems have been widespread. However, there is considerable ambiguity concerning what “transparency” actually means, and therefore, what greater transparency might entail. While, according to some debates, transparency requires _seeing through_ the artefact or device, widespread calls for transparency imply _seeing into_ different aspects of AI systems. These two notions are in apparent tension with (...) each other, and they are present in two lively but largely disconnected debates. In this paper, we aim to further analyse what these calls for transparency entail, and in so doing, clarify the sorts of transparency that we should want from AI systems. We do so by offering a taxonomy that classifies different notions of transparency. After a careful exploration of the different varieties of transparency, we show how this taxonomy can help us to navigate various domains of human–technology interactions, and more usefully discuss the relationship between technological transparency and human agency. We conclude by arguing that all of these different notions of transparency should be taken into account when designing more ethically adequate AI systems. (shrink)

First published in 1981 this unique study discusses the evolution of Plato's thought through the actual developments in Athenian democracy, the book also demonstrates Plato's continuing responses to changes in political theory and argues for a new understanding of Plato's goals for the state and his ultimate concern for the moral well-being of the citizens.

Antigone fascinates G. W. F. Hegel and Luce Irigaray, both of whom turn to her in their explorations and articulations of ethics. Hegel and Irigaray make these re-turns to Antigone through the double and related lenses of nature and sexual difference. This essay investigates these figures of Antigone and the accompanying ethical accounts of nature and sexual difference as a way of examining Irigaray's complex relation to and creative uses of Hegel's thought.