This paper suggests that the imbrication of user-friendly software and the posthuman has increasingly been revealed as an intrinsically arborescent relationship, one premised upon the striation of personal information through different forms of software media and allowing for unprecedented avenues of control and subjective manipulation. My analysis begins with a conceptualisation of user-friendliness, tracing its development as the majoritarian style of software design. In assessing the effects of this process of subjective imbrication with arborescent software technology, it is suggested that (...) one effect of the pathological asignification of instrumentality in the representation of software is the genesis of a topological space which allows for a capacity for control over the subjective becoming of others through control over digitally mediated perception. To illustrate this point, the revelations concerning Cambridge Analytica's use of targeted advertisements on Facebook to affect voting preferences during the 2016 American presidential election are examined as an example of the quotidian domination which is characteristic of the subjective condition of arbormosis. This analysis can be applied to issues of gender, technology, and modes of subjective control. (shrink)

T.L.S. Sprigge; VIII*—Intrinsic Connectedness, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 129–146, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

The Unknowable, arguably the greatest Russian philosophical work of the 20th century, was the culmination of S. L. Frank's intellectual and spiritual development, the boldest and most imaginative of all his writings, containing a synthesis of epistemology, ontology, social philosophy, religious philosophy, and personal spiritual experience.

Among various cases that equally admit of evidentialist reasoning, the supposedly evidentialist solution has varying degrees of intuitive attractiveness. I suggest that cooperative reasoning may account for the appeal of apparently evidentialist behavior in the cases in which it is intuitively attractive, while the inapplicability of cooperative reasoning may account for the unattractiveness of evidentialist behaviour in other cases. A collective causal power with respect to agreed outcomes, not evidentialist reasoning, makes cooperation attractive in the Prisoners' Dilemma. And a natural (...) though unwarranted assumption of such a power may account for the intuitive appeal of the one-box response in Newcomb's Problem. (shrink)

S. L. Hurley; VIII*—Kant on Spontaneity and the Myth of the Giving, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 137–164, htt.

Joachim Schulte’s introduction provides a distinctive and masterful account of the full range of Wittgenstein’s thought. It is concise but not compressed, substantive but not overloaded with developmental or technical detail, informed by the latest scholarship but not pedantic. Beginners will find it accessible and seasoned students of Wittgenstein will appreciate it for the illuminating overview it provides.

"Seymon Lyudvigovich Frank, the author of the volume here made available for the first time in English translation, was one of the leading Russian philosophers of this century; some authorities consider him the most outstanding Russian philosopher of any age...._ " _Man's Soul__ is a book which perfectly exemplifies the generous conception of the mission and competence of philosophy characteristic of Frank and the other members of the Russian metaphysical movement. Frank's stated aim in the treatise is to reclaim for (...) philosophy a field of investigation which, from the time of Plato and Aristotle to that of the Russian Idealists, philosophers had viewed as properly theirs, but which, since the mid-nineteenth century, they had allowed to fall into almost complete neglect: the study of the nature of the human soul...._ "The moral message of _Man's Soul__ is well summed up by its epigraph, quoted from St. Augustine: 'Let man first of all return to his own self, so that once he has, as it were, stepped therein, he may rise from thence and be elevated to God.'" -- from the foreword by Philip J. Swoboda. (shrink)

Objective: To identify factors that predict physicians’ intent to comply with the American Medical Association’s ethical guidelines on gifts from the pharmaceutical industry.Methods: A survey was designed and mailed in June 2004 to a random sample of 850 physicians in Florida, USA, excluding physicians with inactive licences, incomplete addresses, addresses in other states and pretest participants. Factor analysis extracted six factors: attitude towards following the guidelines, subjective norms , facilitating conditions , profession-specific precedents , individual-specific precedents and intent. Multivariate regression (...) modelling was conducted.Results: Surveys were received from 213 physicians representing all specialties, with a net response rate of 25.5%. 62% of respondents were aware of the guidelines; 50% had read them. 48% thought that following the guidelines would increase physicians’ credibility and professional image; 68% agreed that it was important to do so. Intent to comply was positively associated with attitude, subjective norms, facilitators and sponsorship of continuing medical education events, while individual-specific precedents had a negative relationship with intent to comply. Predictors of intent were attitude, subjective norms, the interaction term , sponsorship of CME events and individual-specific precedents.Conclusions: Physicians are more likely to follow the AMA guidelines if they have positive attitudes towards the guidelines, greater subjective norms, fewer expectations of CME sponsorship and fewer individual-specific precedents. Physicians believing that important individuals or organisations expect them to comply with the guidelines are more likely to express intent, despite having fewer beliefs that positive outcomes would result through compliance. (shrink)

Authority qua empowerment is the weak reading of authority in Hans Kelsen's writings. On the one hand, this reading appears to be unresponsive to the problem of authority as we know it from the tradition. On the other hand, it squares with legal positivism. Is Kelsen a legal positivist?Not without qualification. For he defends a normativity thesis along with the separation thesis, and it is at any rate arguable that the normativity thesis mandates a stronger reading of authority than that (...) modelled on empowerment. I offer, in the paper, a prima facie case on behalf of a stronger reading of authority in Kelsen. I go on to argue, however, that the textual evidence weighs heavily in favour of the weak reading. Both nomostatics and nomodynamics are pervasive points of view in the Pure Theory of Law, and both reflect species of empowerment as the endpoint of Kelsen's reconstructions. (shrink)

S. L. Hurley; II*—Conflict, Akrasia and Cognitivism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 86, Issue 1, 1 June 1986, Pages 23–50, https://doi.org/10.1.

Moral Case Deliberations are reflective dialogues with a group of participants on their own moral dilemmas. Although MCD is successful as clinical ethics support, it also has limitations. 1. Lessons learned from individual MCDs are not shared in order to be used in other contexts 2. Moral learning stays limited to the participants of the MCD; 3. MCD requires quite some organisational effort, 4. MCD deals with one individual concrete case. It does not address other, similar cases. These limitations warrant (...) research into complementary ways of providing CES to healthcare professionals. Our research objective was therefore to develop a low threshold CES tool based on a series of MCDs on autonomy in long-term care. We used a qualitative research design in which we analyzed the process and content of a series of MCDs, combined with reflections on the theoretical background of MCD. In total 28 MCDs were analyzed by means of a thematic content analysis. In various rounds of development, the results of the analysis were combined with theoretical reflections on CES. Consequently, the tool was evaluated in three focus groups and adjusted. The CES tool, called ‘moral compass’, guides the users through a series of six subsequent questions in order to methodically reflect on their concrete moral dilemma, in the form of a booklet of 23 pages. It combines a methodical element that encourages and structures a reflection process with a substantive element, including norms, values, options, strategies, and insights regarding dealing with client autonomy. By using data from a series of MCDs, combined with theoretical reflections on MCD, ethics support and moral learning, we developed a thematic, low-threshold CES tool that supports healthcare professionals in daily practice in dealing with moral questions regarding client autonomy. It integrates examples and insights from earlier MCDs on the same topic. The moral compass is not a replacement of, but can be used complementary to MCD. The feasibility and impact of the moral compass need to be investigated in an evaluative follow-up study. The methodology presented in this paper may be used to develop moral compasses on different topics in various healthcare organizations. (shrink)

Agents and Lives offers an important rethinking of the traditional 'humanist' view of literature.

What fundamental aim should be seen as animating egalitarian views of distributive justice? I want to challenge a certain answer to this question: namely, that the basic aim of egalitarianism is to neutralize the effects of luck on the distribution of goods in society. I shall also sketch part of a different answer, which I think does a better job of supporting egalitarianism.My arguments here are not presented in a way that is intended to win over those who have no (...) sympathy with egalitarianism to begin with; they move within the compass of egalitarian concern. Moreover, it is difficult, for familiar reasons, to separate the question of what the basic aim of egalitarianism is from the question of what it should be. If one aim does a better job of supporting egalitarian results than another, then, even if few egalitarians recognize this, it may be regarded as a stronger candidate for what the basic aim of egalitarianism is. As with other essentially contested concepts, a new conception does not change the subject. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to make a simple observation regarding the Johnson -Carnap continuum of inductive methods. From the outset, a common criticism of this continuum was its failure to permit the confirmation of universal generalizations: that is, if an event has unfailingly occurred in the past, the failure of the continuum to give some weight to the possibility that the event will continue to occur without fail in the future. The Johnson -Carnap continuum is the mathematical consequence (...) of an axiom termed Johnson 's sufficientness postulate, the thesis of this paper is that, properly viewed, the failure of the Johnson -Carnap continuum to confirm universal generalizations is not a deep fact, but rather an immediate consequence of the sufficientness postulate; and that if this postulate is modified in the minimal manner necessary to eliminate such an entailment, then the result is a new continuum that differs from the old one in precisely one respect: it enjoys the desideratum of confirming universal generalizations. (shrink)

It is widely accepted now that a patient's right to refuse treatment extends to circumstances in which the exercise of that right may lead to the patient's death. However, it is also often effectively assumed, without argument, that this implies a patient's right to request another agent to intervene so as to bring about his or her death, in a way which would render that agent guilty of murder in the absence of such a request. But the right to refuse (...) treatment can, logically, have no such implication, and the mistaken supposition that it does conflates a right to die with a right to be killed. Confusion over this issue is brought out by an examination of conflicting opinion concerning the permissible termination of ventilation for mentally competent patients. A wider lesson may be drawn regarding the need for the ethical assessment of new forms of life-sustaining medical technology. (shrink)

Ethics, of increasing concern to college educators, is being given more attention in public relations and advertising courses. A vast number of respondents to a survey assessing this issue agreed that ethics is important and nearly all (93%) asserted that it is included in course work. Few educational institutions, however, include a separate course for ethics and fewer than half require it. In ethics texts and courses the emphasis is on the journalism aspect, and it is evident that a great (...) deal more attention and emphasis will be required for this critical aspect of education for public relations and advertising. (shrink)

Inducing the rubber hand illusion (RHI) requires that participants look at an imitation hand while it is stroked in synchrony with their occluded biological hand. Previous explanations of the RHI have emphasized multisensory integration, and excluded higher cognitive functions. We investigated the relationship between the RHI and higher cognitive functions by experimentally testing task switch (as measured by switch cost) and mind wandering (as measured by SART score); we also included a questionnaire for attentional control that comprises two subscales, attention-shift (...) and attention-focus. To assess experience of RHI, the Botvinick and Cohen (1998) questionnaire was used and illusion onset time was recorded. Our results indicate that rapidity of onset reliably indicates illusion strength. Regression analysis revealed that participants evincing less switch cost and higher attention-shift scores had faster RHI onset times, and that those with higher attention-shift scores experienced the RHI more vividly. These results suggest that the multi-sensory hypothesis is not sufficient to explain the illusion: higher cognitive functions should be taken into account when explaining variation in the experience of ownership for the rubber hand. (shrink)

According to Heidegger, we are living in an ever worsening ?worldnight?, whose fundamental nihilism is due to an ?abandonment by Being? (Seinsverlassenheit) or a ?forgetting of Being? (Seinsvergessenheit). In this paper, I attempt to clarify the notion of an ?abandonment by Being? through an examination of two themes prominent in Heidegger's later philosophy: Being as ?event? (Ereignis); and the obscure ?mystery? or ?secret? of Being. ?Seinsvergessenheit? is interpreted as a forgetting of the mystery or secret of Being which is the (...) ?ontological difference? between Being and beings, i.e. between some concrete revelation of a world and the conditions which make possible any revelation whatsoever. Since these conditions make up that ontological structure which is Dasein and since Dasein is human being, to forget Being is to be in a condition of profound self?estrangement. The origin and growth of this condition constitutes the history of metaphysics, which unfolds as the history of a progressive increase in ?subjectivism?, culminating in the nihilistic ?will to will? as the mode of revelation of the modern world. Finally, Heidegger's two ?remedies? for Seinsverlassenheit are examined: the first, the need for a cultivation of ?essential thinking? is shown to be fundamentally sterile and unable, therefore, to bear the burden of world?transformation which Heidegger lays upon it, while the second, the exhortation to experience the ?thing? as ?assembler? of the ?foursome?, it is argued, does not grow organically out of Heidegger's central philosophical preoccupations, but represents quite a radical departure from them. (shrink)