Scholars have long debated whether Shiphrah and Puah, the feisty midwives of Exodus 2, were Hebrew or Egyptian. This article takes on the linguistic issue of their ethnicity and the etymology of their names anew, and, as a result, repositions them within Egyptian archaeological space. Situating them as Hebrew overseers of midwives within the central royal harem solves many of the problems of the biblical text while fully preserving its original ambiguity. A secondary objective is to recover yet more of (...) their agency as midwives and their voice as tricksters within the context of both the Exodus account and Near Eastern culture in general. As a result, Shiphrah and Puah are redefined as powerful Israelite prophetesses, rather than lowly uneducated women, who boldly trick mighty Pharaoh with a double entendre retort. We finally propose a new linguistic reading of the denouement: their reward from God. (shrink)

In On Virtue Ethics I offered a criterion for a character trait's being a virtue according to which a virtuous character trait must conduce to, or at least not be inimical to, four ends, one of which is the continuance of the human species. I argue here that this does not commit me to homosexuality's being a vice, since homosexuality is not a character trait and hence not up for assessment as a virtue or a vice. Vegetarianism is not up (...) for such assessment either, for the same reason, but, as a practice, may well be required by the virtue of compassion, and sacrificing one's life for an animal or alien may be required by courage. The clause about the continuance of the human species in my criterion does not specify a foundational value, because, following McDowell, I reject foundationalism. (shrink)

In this unconventional article, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg conduct a three-way ‘conversation’ in which they all take turns outlining how they understand the relationship among postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism. It begins with a short introduction, and then Ros, Sarah and Catherine each define the term they have become associated with. This is followed by another round in which they discuss the overlaps, similarities and disjunctures among the terms, and the article ends with how each (...) one understands the current mediated feminist landscape. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is perhaps the most important development within late twentieth-century moral philosophy. Rosalind Hursthouse, who has made notable contributions to this development, here presents a full exposition and defense of her neo-Aristotelian version of virtue ethics. She shows how virtue ethics can provide guidance for action, illuminate moral dilemmas, and bring out the moral significance of the emotions.

Rosalind Hursthouse took her undergraduate degree in New Zealand and her B. Phil. and D. Phil. at Oxford. She taught in Oxford for six years before joining the Open University in 1975. As part of her work for the O.U. she has published Beginning Lives (Blackwell, 1987) on the morality of abortion; this generated Virtue theory and abortion, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1991) which has already been reprinted five times. She has published numerous other articles on virtue ethics, the (...) most recent of which is virtue ethics and the emotions, in: Virtue Ethics, A Critical Reader, Daniel Statman (ed.) Edinburgh University Press, 1997. (shrink)

This paper reviews the ethical literature on conflicts between health professionals and parents about medical decision-making for children. We present the results of a systematic review which addressed the question ‘when health professionals and parents disagree about the appropriate course of medical treatment for a child, under what circumstances is the health professional ethically justified in overriding the parents’ wishes?’ We identified nine different ethical frameworks that were put forward by their authors as applicable across various ages and clinical scenarios. (...) Each of these frameworks centred on a different key moral concept including harm, constrained parental autonomy, best interests, medically reasonable alternatives, responsible thinking and rationality. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing (...) so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent. (shrink)

Rosalind Hursthouse; IV*—A False Doctrine of the Mean, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 81, Issue 1, 1 June 1981, Pages 57–72, https://doi.org/10.

W.V. Quine, a champion of philosophical naturalism and pioneer of mathematical logic, was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. This volume provides a full picture of the development of Quine's views on structure and how it permeates and shapes his attitude to a range of philosophical questions.

This article introduces a special section concerned with precariousness and cultural work. Its aim is to bring into dialogue three bodies of ideas — the work of the autonomous Marxist `Italian laboratory'; activist writings about precariousness and precarity; and the emerging empirical scholarship concerned with the distinctive features of cultural work, at a moment when artists, designers and (new) media workers have taken centre stage as a supposed `creative class' of model entrepreneurs. The article is divided into three sections. It (...) starts by introducing the ideas of the autonomous Marxist tradition, highlighting arguments about the autonomy of labour, informational capitalism and the `factory without walls', as well as key concepts such as multitude and immaterial labour. The impact of these ideas and of Operaismo politics more generally on the precarity movement is then considered in the second section, discussing some of the issues that have animated debate both within and outside this movement, which has often treated cultural workers as exemplifying the experiences of a new `precariat'. In the third and final section we turn to the empirical literature about cultural work, pointing to its main features before bringing it into debate with the ideas already discussed. Several points of overlap and critique are elaborated — focusing in particular on issues of affect, temporality, subjectivity and solidarity. (shrink)

The Historical Dictionary of Bertrand Russell's Philosophy is the only dictionary to date of Bertrand Russell's ideas. It is a guide to the many elements of Russell's philosophy. A glimpse at Russell's work shows instantly why such a text is needed. Taking his books alone, Russell is author of almost 100. Many are classics, several require technical expertise, and together they address dozens of separate disciplines and domains.

Adversities in pregnancy, including poor diet and stress, are associated with increased risk of developing both metabolic and mental health disorders later in life, a phenomenon described as fetal programming or developmental origins of disease. Predominant hypotheses proposed to explain this relationship suggest that the adversity imposes direct changes to the developing fetus which are maintained after birth resulting in an increased susceptibility to ill health. However, during pregnancy the mother, the developing fetus, and the placenta are all exposed to (...) the adversity. The same adversities linked to altered offspring outcome can also result in suboptimal maternal care, which is considered an independent adverse exposure for the offspring. Recent key experiments in mice reveal the potential of prenatal adversity to drive alterations in maternal care through abnormal maternal–pup interactions and via alterations in placental signaling. Together, these data highlight the critical importance of viewing fetal programming holistically paying attention to the intimate, bidirectional, and reiterative relationship between mothers and their offspring. (shrink)

Emotion research will leap forward when its focus changes from comparing averaged statistics of self-report data across people experiencing emotion in laboratories to characterizing patterns of data from individuals and clusters of similar individuals experiencing emotion in real life. Such an advance will come about through engineers and psychologists collaborating to create new ways for people to measure, share, analyze, and learn from objective emotional responses in situations that truly matter to people. This approach has the power to greatly advance (...) the science of emotion while also providing personalized help to participants in the research. (shrink)

Susan Stebbing (1885–1943), the UK’s first female professor of philosophy, was a key figure in the development of analytic philosophy. Stebbing wrote the world’s first accessible book on the new polyadic logic and its philosophy. She made major contributions to the philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophical logic, critical thinking, and applied philosophy. Nonetheless she has remained largely neglected by historians of analytic philosophy. This Element provides a thorough yet accessible overview of Stebbing’s positive, original contributions, including her solution to the (...) paradox of analysis, her account of the relation of sense-data to physical objects, and her anti-idealist interpretation of the new Einsteinian physics. Stebbing’s innovative work in these and other areas helped move analytic philosophy from its early phase to its middle period. (shrink)

In this paper I build a case for considering the pioneering behaviourist philosopher Grace de Laguna as one of the grandmothers of analytic philosophy. I argue against the ‘Great Men’ narrative of analytic philosophy as composed of Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein and their followers, and in favour of a more inclusive ‘movement’ narrative of analytic philosophy as a broad and varied movement with an anti-idealist and naturalistic orientation aimed at fitting around novel development in the sciences, including Einsteinian physics and psychology. (...) I compare de Laguna’s prescient early views to Whitehead’s; both share an anti-idealist but also anti-atomist solution to the problem of perception, and both oppose the bifurcation of nature, with de Laguna expressing these views before Whitehead did. I conclude that while both opposed the narrower project of logical atomism, both count as ancestors of the wider analytic movement. (shrink)

Umbilical cord blood has become the focus of intense efforts to collect, screen and bank haematopoietic stem cells in hundreds of repositories around the world. UCB banking has developed through a broad spectrum of overlapping banking practices, sectors and institutional forms. Superficially at least, these sectors have been widely distinguished in bioethical and policy literature between notions of the ‘public’ and the ‘private’, the commons and the market respectively. Our purpose in this paper is to reflect more critically on these (...) distinctions and to articulate the complex practical and hybrid nature of cord blood as a ‘bio-object’ that straddles binary conceptions of the blood economies. The paper draws upon Roberto Esposito’s reflections on biopolitics and his attempt to transcend the dualistic polarisations of immunity and community, or the private and the public. We suggest that his thoughts on immunitary hospitality resonate with many of the actual features and realpolitik of a necessarily internationalised and globally distributed UCB ‘immunitary regime’. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being developed for use in medicine, including for diagnosis and in treatment decision making. The use of AI in medical treatment raises many ethical issues that are yet to be explored in depth by bioethicists. In this paper, I focus specifically on the relationship between the ethical ideal of shared decision making and AI systems that generate treatment recommendations, using the example of IBM’s Watson for Oncology. I argue that use of this type of system (...) creates both important risks and significant opportunities for promoting shared decision making. If value judgements are fixed and covert in AI systems, then we risk a shift back to more paternalistic medical care. However, if designed and used in an ethically informed way, AI could offer a potentially powerful way of supporting shared decision making. It could be used to incorporate explicit value reflection, promoting patient autonomy. In the context of medical treatment, we need value-flexible AI that can both respond to the values and treatment goals of individual patients and support clinicians to engage in shared decision making. (shrink)

Emergent scholarship on the most radical technological invention of our time confirms what most of us know from first-hand experience - that the internet has fundamentally altered our perceptions and our knowledge, as well as our sense of subjectivity, community and agency (see for example Vries, 2002: 19). The American scholar of religion and communications, Stephen O'Leary, one of the first scholars to analyze the role of the new media for religious communities, claims that the advent of the internet has (...) been as revolutionary for religious growth and dissemination as was the invention of the printing press (O'Leary, 1996). (shrink)

The sort of ethical theory derived from Aristotle, variously described as virtue ethics, virtue-based ethics, or neo-Aristotelianism, is becoming better known, and is now quite widely recognized as at least a possible rival to deontological and utilitarian theories. With recognition has come criticism, of varying quality. In this article I shall discuss nine separate criticisms that I have frequently encountered, most of which seem to me to betray an inadequate grasp either of the structure of virtue theory or of what (...) would be involved in thinking about a real moral issue in its terms. In the first half I aim particularly to secure an understanding that will reveal that many of these criticisms are simply misplaced, and to articulate what I take to be the major criticism of virtue theory. I reject this criticism, but do not claim that it is necessarily misplaced. In the second half I aim to deepen that understanding and highlight the issues raised by the criticisms by illustrating what the theory looks like when it is applied to a particular issue, in this case, abortion. (shrink)

By giving legislatures broad power to override constitutional rights provisions, recent Commonwealth rights charters are said to create a new ‘weaker’ model of constitutional rights protection than the traditional US model of strong-form judicial review. The article, however, argues that to date such powers have rarely if ever been used by Commonwealth legislatures, and thus have had little direct effect on the strength of judicial review in Commonwealth countries. At most, such powers may have had some indirect effect on the (...) strength of review in the Commonwealth, compared to the United States, by encouraging greater deference by courts such as the Supreme Court of Canada to attempts by parliament to engage in ‘dialogue’ via ordinary legislative means. This more limited—and contingent—view of Commonwealth–US constitutional difference also has clear practical implications, the article suggests, for ongoing attempts to ‘borrow’ or adopt the new Commonwealth constitutional model elsewhere. (shrink)

According to the standard account of actions and their explanations, intentional actions are actions done because the agent has a certain desire/belief pair that explains the action by rationalizing it. Any explanation of intentional action in terms of an appetite or occurrent emotion is hence assumed to be elliptical, implicitly appealing to some appropriate belief. In this paper, I challenge this assumption with respect to the " arational " actions of my title---a significant subset of the set of intentional actions (...) explained by occurrent emotion. These actions threaten the standard account, not only by forming a recalcitrant set of counterexamples to it, but also, as we shall see, by undercutting the false semantic theory that holds that account in place. (shrink)

Containing three previously unpublished papers by W.V. Quine as well as historical, exegetical, and critical papers by several leading Quine scholars including Hylton, Ebbs, and Ben-Menahem, this volume aims to remedy the comparative lack of historical investigation of Quine and his philosophical context.

Using “big data” from sensors worn continuously outside the lab, researchers have observed patterns of objective physiology that challenge some of the long-standing theoretical concepts of emotion and its measurement. One challenge is that emotional arousal, when measured as sympathetic nervous system activation through electrodermal activity, can sometimes differ significantly across the two halves of the upper body. We show that traditional measures on only one side may lead to misjudgment of arousal. This article presents daily life and controlled study (...) data, as well as existing evidence from neuroscience, supporting the influence of multiple emotional substrates in the brain causing innervation on different sides of the body. We describe how a theory of multiple arousals explains the asymmetric EDA findings. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant formulates a principle he calls the “supreme principle of pure reason” (hereafter, ‘SP’). According to SP, if a conditioned object is given, then the whole series of its conditions and hence something unconditioned is also given (A308/B365). Most interpreters take SP to be Kant’s rendering of the rationalist’s Principle of Sufficient Reason (hereafter, ‘PSR’), which says that everything has a sufficient reason that explains why it is the way it is. I argue that this obscures (...) an important distinction in Kant’s philosophy between two different explanatory demands. For Kant, SP’s demand for unconditioned conditions expresses a demand for what I call explanatory completeness, i.e., for explanations to come to an end in things that do not require explanation. In contrast, the PSR as Kant understands it expresses a demand for what I call exceptionless explicability, i.e., for nothing to lack an explanation. These demands are not the same, and they even stand in tension in Kant’s view if neither is subject to restriction. Once we see this, we better understand the predicament Kant thinks we face as rational inquirers who seek both explanatory completeness and exceptionless explicability. (shrink)

In ‘Putnam’s Paradox’, Lewis defended global descriptivism and reference magnetism. According to Schwarz [2014], Lewis didn’t mean what he said there, and really held neither position. We present evidence from Lewis’s correspondence and publications which shows conclusively that Lewis endorsed both.

This paper argues that doctors' ethical challenges can be usefully conceptualised as role virtue conflicts. The hospital environment requires doctors to be simultaneously good doctors, good team members, good learners and good employees. I articulate a possible set of role virtues for each of these four roles, as a basis for a virtue ethics approach to analysing doctors' ethical challenges. Using one junior doctor's story, I argue that understanding doctors' ethical challenges as role virtue conflicts enables recognition of important moral (...) considerations that are overlooked by other approaches to ethical analysis. (shrink)

This paper takes as its point of departure two striking incongruities between scientiªc practice and trends in modern history and philosophy of science. (1) Many modern historians of science are so preoccupied with local scientiªc practices that they fail to recognize important non-local elements. (2) Many modern philosophers of science make a sharp distinction between explanation and evidence, whereas in scientiªc practice explanatory power is routinely used as evidence for scientiªc claims. I draw attention to one speciªc way in..

The use of coercive measures in the care for the addicted has changed over the past 20 years. Laws that have adopted the “dangerousness” criterion in order to secure patients’ rights to non-intervention are increasingly subjected to critique as many authors plead for wider dangerousness criteria. One of the most salient moral issues at stake is whether addicts who are at risk of causing danger to themselves should be involuntarily admitted and/or treated. In this article, it is argued that the (...) dilemma between coercion on the one hand and abandonment on the other cannot be analysed without differentiated perspectives on the key notions that are used in these debates. The ambiguity these notions carry within care practice indicates that the conflict between the prevention of danger and respect for autonomy is not as sharp as the legal systems seem to imply. Some coercive measures need not be interpreted as an infringement of autonomy—rather, they should be interpreted as a way to provide good care. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis essay argues that a prime source of contemporary technological pessimism is the loss of place that accompanied the conquest of space through the construction of large technological systems of transportation and communication. This loss may involve physical destruction, or it may involve the more subtle withdrawal of economic, political, and cultural meaning and power from localities in favor of these far-flung systems.The argument proceeds in five stages. First, key terms are defined, notably “environmental damage” and “technological system.” Second, (...) the origins of the modern ideology of circulation are traced in the development of a capitalist world-economy, and in the historical theories of Enlightenmentphilosophes(with special attention to Turgot and Condorcet). Third, possible relations between that ideology and nineteenth-century systems-building are briefly sketched. Fourth, the ambiguous political character of these systems — at once liberating and constraining — is noted. Finally, the cultural challenge of overcoming spatial alienation is described with reference to some late nineteenth-century writers who sought to trace new pathways both spatially and linguistically. (shrink)

En este artículo reúno los resultados de una serie de estudios sobre el trabajo en los empleos vinculados con las nuevas tecnologías (incluyendo mi propia investigación en el Reino Unido, los Estados Unidos y los Países Bajos), para explorar lo que significa gestionar las vidas en estos nuevos medios. Utilizo aquí la gestión no en su sentido convencional o de escuela de negocios, sino con una inflexión más crítica que proviene del pensamiento marxista, feminista y posestructuralista. Me interesa cómo los (...) propios trabajadores y trabajadoras gestionan vidas, una gestión que se caracteriza por procesos de aceleración, intensificación y contingencia. Usando una óptica foucaultiana, sugiero que trabajar en estos nuevos medios implica múltiples prácticas de autogestión en condiciones de incertidumbre radical.In this article I pull together the findings of a number of studies of new media work (including my own research in the UK, US and Netherlands) to explore what it means to manage lives in new media. I use management here not in its conventional or business school sense but with a more critical inflection that comes from Marxist, feminist and poststructuralist thinking. I am interested in how workers themselves manage lives that are characterised by processes of speeding up, intensification and contingency. Using a Foucauldian optic, I will suggest that working in new media involves multiple practices of managing the self in conditions of radical uncertainty. (shrink)

BackgroundIn June 2019, the Australian state of Victoria joined the growing number of jurisdictions around the world to have legalised some form of voluntary assisted dying. A discourse of safety was prominent during the implementation of the Victorian legislation.Main textIn this paper, we analyse the ethical relationship between legislative “safeguards” and equal access. Drawing primarily on Ruger’s model of equal access to health care services, we analyse the Victorian approach to voluntary assisted dying in terms of four dimensions: horizontal equity, (...) patient agency, high quality care, and supportive social norms. We argue that some provisions framed as safeguards in the legislation create significant barriers to equal access for eligible patients.ConclusionsWhile safety is undoubtedly ethically important, we caution against an overemphasis on safeguarding in voluntary assisted dying legislation given the implications for equal access. (shrink)

The prevailing accounts of Aristotle's view of practical wisdom pay little attention to all the intellectual capacities discussed in Nicomachean Ethics Book 6. They also contrast the phronimos with the wicked, the continent or the incontinent, rather than with those who have 'natural virtue' (innate or habituated), and thereby they neglect the importance of experience, through which those capacities are acquired. When we consider them, we can see what sort of experience is needed and hence what sort aspirants to full (...) virtue should be trying to acquire. It turns out that much of the knowledge such experience yields is just plain worldly knowledge. But it is not to be despised on that account. The phronimos must meet a threshold of knowledge that he will, indeed, share with some of the wicked, but will have a superior version that goes beyond theirs. (shrink)

Jules Janssens a construit une œuvre importante, qui, pour de nombreux chercheurs, a ouvert des perspectives de recherches nouvelles et fécondes. Ses travaux ont fait date. Ils portent principalement sur la philosophie d'Avicenne, ses sources, ses rapports avec la pensée musulmane, son influence sur la théologie ash'arite (al-Ghazālī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī) et sa réception dans le monde latin. Pour lui rendre hommage, quatorze collègues et amis de renommée internationale se sont réunis pour poursuivre ses réflexions sur ces thèmes. L'ouvrage qui (...) en est issu offre un état des lieux de la recherche contemporaine sur Avicenne et sa postérité arabo-latine. (shrink)

Birchley9s critique of the harm threshold for overriding parental decisions is successful in demonstrating that the harm threshold, like the best interests standard, suffers from the problem of indeterminacy. However, his focus on critiquing empirical rather than normative arguments for the harm threshold means that his broad conclusion that it is ‘ill-judged’ is not justified. Advocates of the harm threshold can accept that the concept of harm to a child is indeterminate, yet still invoke strong normative arguments for this way (...) of responding to parental decisions that conflict with medical recommendations. I suggest that Birchley9s discussion, rather than showing that the harm threshold is mistaken, instead highlights the importance of developing a comprehensive account of children9s interests, for proponents of a best interests approach and for advocates of the harm threshold. (shrink)

Ce volume offre l'édition critique de la traduction latine médiévale (partielle) de la troisième partie de la Physique du Shif?' d'Avicenne. Pour l'édition de la peine première partie traduite à Tolède, qui couvre le prologue et le début du premier chapitre, les mêmes principes ont été maintenus que pour l'édition du second traité. Quant à l'édition de la majeure partie, qui fut traduite à Burgos quasiment un siècle après la tolédane et qui n'a été conservée que dans un seul témoin, (...) les cas où la traduction latine ne correspond pas à la lecture du texte arabe sont analysés de façon particulière et, autant que possible, expliqués sur la base de considérations philologiques et/ou doctrinales. En outre, dans la mesure du possible, les sources historiques des doctrines évoquées par Avicenne dans l'ensemble de ces chapitres ont été précisés. (shrink)

The A to Z of Bertrand Russell's Philosophy offers a comprehensive, current guide to the many facets of Russell's work. Through its chronology, introductory essay, bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on concepts, people, works, and technical terms, Russell's impact on philosophy and related fields is made accessible to the reader in this must-have reference.