This paper presents a feminist analysis of corporate social responsibility in a male-dominated industry within a developing country context. It seeks to raise awareness of the silencing of women’s voices in CSR reports produced by mining companies in Tanzania. Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in Africa, and women are often marginalised in employment and social policy considerations. Drawing on work by Hélène Cixous, a post-structuralist/radical feminist scholar, the paper challenges the masculinity of CSR discourses that have repeatedly masked (...) the voices and concerns of ‘other’ marginalised social groups, notably women. Using interpretative ethnographic case studies, the paper provides much-needed empirical evidence to show how gender imbalances remain prevalent in the Tanzanian mining sector. This evidence draws attention to the dynamics faced by many women working in or living around mining areas in Tanzania. The paper argues that CSR, a discourse enmeshed with the patriarchal logic of the contemporary capitalist system, is entangled with tensions, class conflicts and struggles which need to be unpacked and acknowledged. The paper considers the possibility of policy reforms in order to promote gender balance in the Tanzanian mining sector and create a platform for women’s concerns to be voiced. (shrink)

Since Mill's seminal work On Liberty, philosophers and political theorists have accepted that we should respect the decisions of individual agents when those decisions affect no one other than themselves. Indeed, to respect autonomy is often understood to be the chief way to bear witness to the intrinsic value of persons. In this book, Sarah Conly rejects the idea of autonomy as inviolable. Drawing on sources from behavioural economics and social psychology, she argues that we are so often irrational (...) in making our decisions that our autonomous choices often undercut the achievement of our own goals. Thus in many cases it would advance our goals more effectively if government were to prevent us from acting in accordance with our decisions. Her argument challenges widely held views of moral agency, democratic values and the public/private distinction, and will interest readers in ethics, political philosophy, political theory and philosophy of law. (shrink)

Plato's Timaeus is one of the most influential and challenging works of ancient philosophy to have come down to us. Sarah Broadie's rich and compelling study proposes new interpretations of major elements of the Timaeus, including the separate Demiurge, the cosmic 'beginning', the 'second mixing', the Receptacle and the Atlantis story. Broadie shows how Plato deploys the mythic themes of the Timaeus to convey fundamental philosophical insights and examines the profoundly differing methods of interpretation which have been brought to (...) bear on the work. Her book is for everyone interested in Ancient Greek philosophy, cosmology and mythology, whether classicists, philosophers, historians of ideas or historians of science. It offers new findings to scholars familiar with the material, but it is also a clear and reliable resource for anyone coming to it for the first time. (shrink)

Among the many practical failures that threaten us, weakness of will or akrasia is often considered to be a paradigm of irrationality. The eleven new essays in this collection, written by an excellent international team of philosophers, some well-established, some younger scholars, give a rich overview of the current debate over weakness of will and practical irrationality more generally. Issues covered include classical questions such as the distinction between weakness and compulsion, the connection between evaluative judgement and motivation, the role (...) of emotions in akrasia, rational agency, and the existence of the will. The also include new topics, such as group akrasia, strength of will, the nature of correct choice, the structure of decision theory, the temporality of prudential reasons, and emotional rationality. Because these questions cut across philosophy of mind and ethics, the collection will be essential reading for scholars, postgraduates, and upper-level undergraduates in both these fields. (shrink)

Synthetic content, which has been produced by generative artificial intelligence, is beginning to spread through the public sphere. Increasingly, we find ourselves exposed to convincing ‘deepfakes’ and powerful chatbots in our online environments. How should we mitigate the emerging risks to individuals and society? This article argues that labelling synthetic content in public forums is an essential first step. While calls for labelling have already been growing in volume, no principled argument has yet been offered to justify this measure (which (...) inevitably comes with some additional costs). Rectifying that deficit, I conduct a close examination of our epistemic and expressive interests in identifying synthetic content as such. In so doing, I develop a cumulative case for social media platforms to enforce a labelling duty. I argue that this represents an important element of good platform governance, helping to shore up the integrity of our contemporary public discourse, which takes place increasingly online. (shrink)

This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored the organizational influences on moral distress for health professionals working in pediatric intensive care units across Canada. Participants were recruited to the study from PICUs across Canada. The PICU is a high-tech, fast-paced, high-pressure environment where caregivers frequently face conflict and ethical tension in the care of critically ill children. A number of themes including relationships with management, organizational structure and processes, workload and resources, and team dynamics were identified. (...) This study provides a rare and important multi-disciplinary perspective on this topic and the findings have implications for administrators and leaders who seek to improve the moral climate of healthcare delivery. (shrink)

In a recent case, a Facebook user in Iran posted “death to Khamenei”, which the platform removed as a violation of its policy against threats and incitement. Facebook ultimately overturned the decision on the grounds that the speech, while contravening its rules, was newsworthy. Yet the company’s Oversight Board offered a distinct rationale for allowing the post: “death to Khamenei” wasn’t a threat or an incitement at all, but rather a rhetorical expression of criticism, disdain, or disgust. Who was right? (...) Drawing on longstanding distinctions in the philosophy of language, we argue that the answer depends on whether platform rules should primarily target an utterance’s illocutionary force or instead its perlocutionary effects. Using this case study to trace broader lessons for the proper governance of online speech, we argue that platforms’ rules should primarily target illocutionary force, only considering perlocutionary effects in cases where illocutionary force is ambiguous. (shrink)

While the great medieval philosopher, theologian, and physician Maimonides is acknowledged as a leading Jewish thinker, his intellectual contacts with his surrounding world are often described as related primarily to Islamic philosophy. Maimonides in His World challenges this view by revealing him to have wholeheartedly lived, breathed, and espoused the rich Mediterranean culture of his time.Sarah Stroumsa argues that Maimonides is most accurately viewed as a Mediterranean thinker who consistently interpreted his own Jewish tradition in contemporary multicultural terms. Maimonides (...) spent his entire life in the Mediterranean region, and the religious and philosophical traditions that fed his thought were those of the wider world in which he lived. Stroumsa demonstrates that he was deeply influenced not only by Islamic philosophy but by Islamic culture as a whole, evidence of which she finds in his philosophy as well as his correspondence and legal and scientific writings. She begins with a concise biography of Maimonides, then carefully examines key aspects of his thought, including his approach to religion and the complex world of theology and religious ideas he encountered among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and even heretics; his views about science; the immense and unacknowledged impact of the Almohads on his thought; and his vision of human perfection.This insightful cultural biography restores Maimonides to his rightful place among medieval philosophers and affirms his central relevance to the study of medieval Islam. (shrink)

Moral distress is defined as the inability to act according to one’s own core values. During the COVID-19 pandemic, moral distress in medical personnel has gained attention, related to the impact of pandemic-associated factors, such as the uncertainty of treatment options for the virus and the accelerated pace of deaths. Measures to provide aid and mitigate the long-term pandemic effect on providers are starting to be designed. Yet, little has been said about the moral distress experienced by patients and the (...) relational and additive effect on provider moral distress. Pandemic-associated factors affecting moral distress in patients include the constraining effects of isolation on spiritual and religious traditions as well as the intentional separation of patients from their families. This paper will explore the idea that patients are suffering their own moral distress and further how this impacts the intensity of moral distress experienced by the providers—nurses and physicians. The paucity of research in this area with the implications on patient’s distress, decision making, and distress experienced by providers compels further investigation and analysis. (shrink)

Basándome en la explicación que hace Jean-Paul Sartre de la violencia, sostengo que no solo la mala fe es inevitable en la práctica, sino que una mala fe limitada es necesaria para la autenticidad. Aunque violar la libertad de otros es mala fe, es imposible no violar nunca la libertad de alguien. Además, y de manera fundamental, la estructura ontológica del para-sí implica que este solo puede ser auténtico en el modo de no ser auténtico. Tratar de evitar por completo (...) la mala fe es, en sí mismo, un acto de mala fe, porque es un intento de constituirse como esencialmente auténtico, pero el para-sí no tiene esencia preexistente. Sin embargo, al reconocer la total responsabilidad de uno por elegir la mala fe, se limita su alcance. Esta mala fe limitada es, de hecho, necesaria para la autenticidad, un proyecto vivido en situaciones concretas y no una ley moral categórica que prohíbe la mala fe. [This is a Spanish translation by Leandro Sánchez Marín of the article "The Authentic Person's Limited Bad Faith".]. (shrink)

Justice, Gender and the Politics of Multiculturalism explores the tensions that arise when culturally diverse democratic states pursue both justice for religious and cultural minorities and justice for women. Sarah Song provides a distinctive argument about the circumstances under which egalitarian justice requires special accommodations for cultural minorities while emphasizing the value of gender equality as an important limit on cultural accommodation. Drawing on detailed case studies of gendered cultural conflicts, including conflicts over the 'cultural defense' in criminal law, (...) aboriginal membership rules and polygamy, Song offers a fresh perspective on multicultural politics by examining the role of intercultural interactions in shaping such conflicts. In particular, she demonstrates the different ways that majority institutions have reinforced gender inequality in minority communities and, in light of this, argues in favour of resolving gendered cultural dilemmas through intercultural democratic dialogue. (shrink)

Scientific information plays an important role in shaping policies and recommendations for behaviors that are meant to improve the overall health and well-being of the public. However, a subset of the population does not trust information from scientific authorities, and even for those that do trust it, information alone is often not enough to motivate action. Feelings of shame can be motivational, and thus some recent public policies have attempted to leverage shame to motivate the public to act in accordance (...) with science-based recommendations. We argue that because these shame policies are employed in non-communal contexts, they are both practically ineffective and morally problematic: shame is unlikely to be effective at motivating the public to behave in accordance with science-based policy, and shaming citizens is an unethical way to get them to comply. We argue that shame-based policies are likely to contribute to further distrust in scientific authority. (shrink)

This paper defends a version of epistemic contextualism that accounts for the ordinary judgements and theoretical principles that motivate pragmatic encroachment. Adopting this contextualist view, we can avoid the counterintuitive consequences of pragmatic encroachment, while still preserving its attractive applications.

A collection of papers to illustrate new waves in Philosophy of Language: -/- "Linguistic Puzzles and Semantic Pretence" by B. Armour-Garb & J. Woodbridge; "Minimal Semantics and the Nature of Psychological Evidence" by E. Borg; "A Naturalistic Approach to the Philosophy of Language" by J. Collins; "In Praise of our Linguistic Intuitions" by A. Everett; "Phenomenal Continua and Secondary Properties" by P. Greenough; "Semantic Oughts in Context" by A. Hattiangadi; "Content Force and Semantic Norms" by M. Kolbel; "Linguistic Competence and (...) Propositional Knowledge" by G. Longworth; "Expressives and Beyond" by S. Predelli; "Analyticity in Externalist Languages" by G. Russell ; "Names as Predicates" by S. Sawyer; "The Epistemic Reading of Counterfactual Conditionals" by K. Schulz; "Introduction, Transmission, and the Foundations of Meaning" by J. Speaks. (shrink)

Jansen and Wall suggest a new way of defending hard paternalism in clinical research. They argue that non-therapeutic research exposing people to more than minimal risk should be banned on egalitarian grounds: in preventing poor decision-makers from making bad decisions, we will promote equality of welfare. We argue that their proposal is flawed for four reasons.First, the idea of poor decision-makers is much more problematic than Jansen and Wall allow. Second, pace Jansen and Wall, it may be practicable for regulators (...) to uncover the values that a potential research participant holds when agreeing to enter a research project, so their claim that we must ban such research projects for all if we are to ban them for poor decision-makers looks to be unmotivated. Third, there seem to be cases where the liberty to enter the sort of research project Jansen and Wall discuss is morally weighty, and arguably should outweigh concerns of egalitarian distribution. Fourth, banning certain types of research, which seem on the face of it to offer an unfavourable risk-benefit ratio, would have unwelcome consequences for all clinical research, which Jansen and Wall do not recognize. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I support the claim that placing certain restrictions on public access to possible new treatments is morally problematic under some exceptional circumstances. Very ill patients may find that all available standard treatments are unacceptable, either because they are ineffective or have serious adverse effects, and these patients may understandably be desperate to try something new even if this means stepping into the unknown. Faced with certain death, it is rational to want to try something new and (...) to chance a dire outcome. Restricting possible new treatments to research trials may put these treatments scientifically, geographically or economically out of reach of these patients. For those who can get access, research restrictions could weaken, though not necessarily eliminate, the value of consent participants of such trials are able to give. Some participants may therefore be exploited for scientific purposes in the name of public interest. There are nonetheless compelling reasons for keeping some restrictive regulation in this area. (shrink)

Augustine made a significant contribution to the history of philosophical accounts of affectivity which scholars have not yet noticed. He resolved a problem with the Stoic theory as it was known to him: the question of the cognitive cause of "preliminary passions" ( propatheiai ), reflex-like affective reactions which must be immediately controlled if a morally bad emotion is to be avoided. He identified this cognitive cause as momentary doubt, as I demonstrate by citing passages from sermons spanning twenty-seven years (...) in which Augustine consistently used a particular set of scriptural images and phrases as precise analogies for mental and affective states. (shrink)

The essay argues that Mary Astell’s support of the theocentric philosophy of Nicolas Malebranche embroiled her in the fray of anti-Spinozism in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Because of her dawning awareness of contemporaries’ associations of Malebranche’s occasionalism with the Spinozist doctrine of one substance, Astell retracted her previous endorsement of this theory in 1694. When contemporaries briefly turned the accusation of Spinozism against Locke and his followers in the early 1700s, however, Astell felt free to return to (...) a support of Malebranche. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of moral expertise have raised a host of problems for the very idea of a “moral expert.” This article interrogates the conception of moral expertise that such discussions seem to assume and proposes instead that we understand moral expertise as a species of practical skill. On this model, a skilled moral agent is more similar to a skilled pianist than she is to a theoretical expert (for instance, an expert on the War of 1812). The article argues both (...) that it is more natural to understand the moral “expert” as excelling in a form of skilled practice and that such a conception would render moot many of the concerns which preoccupy contemporary discussions. (shrink)

Newly powerful large language models have burst onto the scene, with applications across a wide range of functions. We can now expect to encounter their outputs at rapidly increasing volumes and frequencies. Some commentators claim that large language models are bullshitting, generating convincing output without regard for the truth. If correct, that would make large language models distinctively dangerous discourse participants. Bullshitters not only undermine the norm of truthfulness (by saying false things) but the normative status of truth itself (by (...) treating it as entirely irrelevant). So, do large language models really bullshit? I argue that they can, in the sense of issuing propositional content in response to fact-seeking prompts, without having first assessed that content for truth or falsity. However, I further argue that they need not bullshit, given appropriate guardrails. So, just as with human speakers, the propensity for a large language model to bullshit depends on its own particular make-up. (shrink)

In this paper I will explore a phenomenology of the menstrual cycle, focusing on the cycle’s rhythm as a form of lived temporality. Drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre and Thomas Fuchs I will outline a key connection between embodiment and rhythmic temporality more generally, before applying this analysis to the rhythm of the menstrual cycle specifically. I will consider the phenomenology of the experience of cycling through the phases of pre-ovulation, ovulation, pre-menstruation and menstruation as a pattern, or (...) specifically an embodied rhythm that constitutes a form of lived temporality. I will consider a way that the subject may potentially be alienated from this rhythm as a result of a dominant cultural narrative of “linear time”. I will argue further that this dissonance between the menstrual body and the contemporary world tends to be compounded by a lack of “menstrual literacy” in education and culture. (shrink)

Artificially generated content threatens to seriously disrupt the public sphere. Generative AI massively facilitates the production of convincing portrayals of fabricated events. We have already begun to witness the spread of synthetic misinformation, political propaganda, and non-consensual intimate deepfakes. Malicious uses of the new technologies can only be expected to proliferate over time. In the face of this threat, social media platforms must surely act. But how? While it is tempting to think they need new sui generis policies targeting synthetic (...) content, we argue that the challenge posed by generative AI should be met through the enforcement of general platform rules. We demonstrate that the threat posed to individuals and society by AI-generated content is no different in kind from that of ordinary harmful content—a threat which is already well recognised. Generative AI massively increases the problem but, ultimately, it requires the same approach. Therefore, platforms do best to double down on improving and enforcing their existing rules, regardless of whether the content they are dealing with was produced by humans or machines. (shrink)

In his commentary on the first Aphorism of Hippocrates Maimonides lists the seven parts of medicine. Scholars have studied the relation of this text to the work of al-Fārābī. In particular, they have focused on the Iḥṣāʼ al-ʼulῡm, which in its present form does not contain a discussion of medicine, and on al-Fārābīʼs Risāla fi al-ţibb. The article examines the medieval Hebrew versions of the Iḥṣāʼ al-ʽūlum. On the basis of these versions, it is argued that there existed a version (...) of the Ihşāʼ al-ʽulūm which did contain a section on medicine; that the Risala fi al-ţibb could have originated in such a fuller version of the Ihsa' al-'ulum; and that Maimonides's ultimate source for his classification of medicine was probably the Iḥṣāʼ al-ʽulūm. An appendix to the paper examines Maimonides's references to Galen and to Abū Bakr al- Rāzī. These references show Maimonides's perception of al-Fārābīʼs view of physicians who claim to be philosophers. Dans son commentaire sur le premier aphorisme d'Hippocrate, Maïmonide décrit les sept parties de la médecine. Dans le passé, les chercheurs ont étudié le rapport de ce texte avec l'œuvre d'al-Fārābī, surtout le Iḥṣāʼ al-ʼulῡm et la Risāla fi al-ţibb. L'article examine les traductions hébraïques médiévales du Iḥṣāʼ al-ʽulūm. Ces traductions suggèrent l'existence d'une version, aujourd'hui disparue, du Iḥṣāʼ al-ʼulῡm, contenant une section sur la médecine. II est possible que la Risāla fi al-ţibb trouve son origine dans cette version, et il semble que la taxonomie de la médecine offerte par Maïmonide est issue, en dernière analyse, du Iḥṣāʼ al-ʼulῡm. Un appendice examine les références faites par Maïmonide à Galien et à Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, et prend note de ce que Maïmonide croyait être l'opinion d'al- Fār¯bī sur les médecins qui se prennent pour des philosophes. (shrink)

The development and regulation of hormonal contraception has been problematic—with concerns and safety of patients often being disregarded. Better birth control prescribing may lie in genetic testing. Direct-to-consumer genetic testing aimed at "personalizing the pill" exists, but regulations and clinical guidelines must adapt to meet the diverse needs of patients. This article analyzes emerging socio-ethical-legal tensions as hormonal contraceptives enter the pharmacogenomic era. Using a narrative lens, the author concludes that further patient-centered research—grounded in the voices of distinct populations—should inform (...) policy so as to better serve birth control users and avoid the historical injustices with respect to hormonal contraception. (shrink)

Aliénés: Une histoire sociale de la folie au xixe siècle dresse l’histoire – ou devrait-on dire les histoires – des aliénés du xixe siècle dans leurs dimensions les plus fines. Si l’histoire de l’asile se donne à voir à travers les trajectoires des aliénés, l’ambition de l’auteur est davantage de faire une histoire “des malades” que des maladies et des institutions. Anatole Le Bras analyse les façons dont l’asile façonne et travaille les corps, interfère avec les classes sociales, les genres...

This article examines the study of Indigenous religions and ethics in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Over the past few decades, scholars have grappled with the colonial origins of religious studies. This essay focuses on the history of anthropological scholarship on Indigenous religions and the significance of this work for the growth of the academic study of religious and ethical systems. I first consider scholarship on Indigenous ethical systems produced by theologians and comparative religionists. I next consider how anthropological concepts (...) of cultural relativity offered scholars of religion important tools to broaden and deepen understandings of Indigenous cultures. Finally, I address the limits of these anthropological tools. During this era, scholars increasingly argued that Indigenous cultural traditions were worthy of study; however, the prevailing racialized assumptions contributed to assessments of these ethical systems as inferior to Euro-American religio-ethical systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Liberty and Human Nature in the Works of Faustus Socinus and His ReadersSarah MortimerI.Few issues were more hotly contested by early modern theologians than the extent of human liberty and its implications for both religion and society. In the Protestant world, the sixteenth century saw increasingly strident statements of mankind's bondage to sin and the importance of God's eternal decree of predestination, but the concept of human moral (...) responsibility still had its defenders. One influential proponent of human liberty was Faustus Socinus (1539–1604), the Italian scholar known most commonly today for his denial of the trinity. Yet the central theme of his theology was his insistence that Christian virtues must be carried out voluntarily; it was from this principle that his more heterodox ideas flowed. He made a sharp distinction between natural and voluntary action, and argued that the practice of Christianity must be an act of human will, not one to which men were drawn by nature. Separating Christianity from the natural order, Socinus argued that eternal life awaited those who chose to follow the law of Christ rather than the natural law. His argument challenged the Protestant commitment to the unity of natural and divine law and it opened up conceptual space for voluntary action outside the natural law. In this article, I shall sketch the Socinian position on human liberty and Christianity, and suggest how and why the Italian's ideas were developed by Protestants in the early seventeenth century. His readers included the eminent Dutch scholar Hugo [End Page 191] Grotius (1583–1645), and the exchange between Grotius and the Socinians reveals the concern on both sides to explain the relationship between human liberty, Christianity, and natural law.Socinus' life, like his theology, began within the reform movement in Italy and ended among the marginalised anti-trinitarians in Poland. Born of a long line of Italian jurists, he shared both his family's legal interests and their critical approach to the Catholic Church. In his youth he had been a courtier in Florence but his increasingly critical attitude towards Catholicism—and the death of his patron Grand-Duke Cosimo I—resulted in his departure from Italy in 1574. After a period in Basel he found a home among the Polish Anabaptists at Rakow, a young and precarious community which he helped to sustain through his advice and through the tracts which he penned on their behalf.1 During these years, he was also able to develop his own interpretation of Christianity, and to explain it in numerous works issuing from the community's press. Although his ideas generated a lively debate from the start, both in Poland and Germany, it was only after his death that they began to be absorbed into the mainstream of European intellectual discussions. Socinus' theological ideas had their attractions for some Protestant readers, but they became entangled with more political questions and their implications for civil life began to cause serious alarm. For this reason my focus will be upon the responses of Dutch and German readers, particularly Hugo Grotius and Johan Crell (1590–1633), both of whom addressed the civil as well as the theological aspects of Socinus' legacy. First, however, I shall draw out the salient points from Socinus' rich and complex theology, paying particular attention to his understanding of human liberty. Unlike his orthodox Protestant contemporaries, Socinus believed that liberty was the precondition for virtue.Socinus shared with the broader Christian humanist tradition the belief that Christ demanded works as well as faith from his followers. Christians must follow the pattern of ethical living laid down by their master; like Erasmus before him, and like the Italian exiles he met in Basel, Socinus saw Christianity as a religion of action.2 For this reason, he was determined to protect the liberty and capacity of each individual to act virtuously, and therefore to defend what he understood as human free will. It was, he felt, [End Page 192] a pressing task, for these qualities were being undermined by his contemporaries and particularly by those on the Protestant side. Most Protestants followed Luther's belief, expressed most forcefully in De Servo Arbitrio (1525... (shrink)

Unprecedented levels of access to adolescents' time and attention provide opportunities to convert traditional character and socioemotional competencies interventions into behavioral intervention technologies. However, these new tools must be evaluated rather than assuming previously validated activities will be efficacious when converted to a mobile platform. Thus, we sought to design and provide initial data on the effectiveness of the CharacterMe smartphone app to build self-control and patience, which are built on underlying social-emotional regulation competencies, in a sample of 618 adolescents. (...) We also sought to examine whether framing the app activities as having a transcendent rather than instrumental purpose would increase engagement and change in self-control, patience, and emotion regulation. Finally, we tested the impact of framing activities as building strengths vs. fixing weaknesses. Results highlight the difficulty of translating psychological interventions to behavioral intervention technologies. Overall, the CharacterMe smartphone app was unsuccessful in increasing self-control, patience, or emotion regulation in adolescents, with analyses showing no significant mean changes over time. Framing conditions and user engagement were largely not significant predictors of change in self-control, patience, and emotion regulation. (shrink)

Empathy plays a fundamental role in successful social interactions. However, most tasks currently available for measuring empathy have limited ecological validity and therefore may not elicit true emotional responses in observers. To address this gap, we developed the Empathic Measure of True Emotion (EMOTE), the first emotion stimuli set to include footage of genuine positive and negative emotions unfolding in naturalistic contexts. We validated the EMOTE in a sample of 216 participants. The EMOTE demonstrated acceptable internal consistency, construct validity, and (...) alternate forms reliability for both cognitive and affective empathy. We also found that, relative to conventional empathy measures, the EMOTE elicited stronger affective empathy ratings in observers, and the stimuli were rated higher in both genuineness and emotional intensity. Together, these findings demonstrate that the EMOTE is a reliable and valid measure of cognitive and affective empathy with enhanced ecological validity, providing a valuable new tool for measuring empathy in both clinical and research settings. (shrink)

Abstract We act so as to make things better than they would have been but for the action; we are horrified by an uncontrollable catastrophe because it made things so much worse than they would have been without it. Such attitudes are reasonable only if it is reasonable to make the associated counterfactual conditional judgments. But making such judgments cannot be reasonable if one holds both (1) that this world is absolutely and uniquely actual (?absolute actualism?), and (2) that everything (...) is settled (?ES?). Determinism (strictly understood) figures as the most obvious example of ES theory, but ES can occur in an indeterministic form too: both forms are considered. (shrink)

Cet article discute la philosophie de Damaris Masham (née Cudworth) (1658-1708), qui a dialogué avec plusieurs philosophes de son époque dans ses deux livres et ses lettres. Parmi ses interlocuteurs philosophiques figurent non seulement de grands philosophes, canoniques (John Locke, Nicolas Malebranche, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz), mais aussi des philosophes considérés aujourd’hui comme « mineurs » (John Norris, et Ralph Cudworth) – ainsi que, plus indirectement, Pierre Bayle et Mary Astell. La plus grande partie de mon analyse portera sur sa discussion (...) avec Locke et Cudworth, mais j’aborde aussi son rapport à Malebranche et Norris. Je retrace son rapport avec Locke et Cudworth afin de clarifier sa position philosophique vis-à-vis de ces interlocuteurs, et d’interroger la valeur d’une histoire de la philosophie dont les paramètres ont été fixés sans prise en compte de la contribution des femmes – dans le cas présent, il s’agit de remettre en cause l’utilité de l’« empirisme » et du « rationalisme » comme catégories classificatoires. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Building the Earth":Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Science, and the Spirituality of the United NationsSarah ShortallDuring a 1982 trip to Paris, Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar raised a glass to toast France's many contributions to the mission of the United Nations. But the Frenchman who received the most fulsome praise from Pérez de Cuéllar was neither an Enlightenment philosopher nor an eminent politician; he was a Jesuit priest and paleontologist (...) by the name of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard had recognized, the Secretary-General explained, that "humanity is undergoing a metamorphosis, a transformation toward a planetary society that is united in its roots and more and more diversified in its component parts and individual lives."1 And this insight made him "the French philosopher who has had the greatest influence on the metaphysical and planetary evolution of the United Nations."2 Pérez de Cuéllar was by no means alone in his thinking. No less than five [End Page 827] Secretaries-General have invoked Teilhard de Chardin as a key influence on their own thought and on the mission of the UN.Why were so many leaders of this ostensibly secular international organization taken with the work of an idiosyncratic Catholic priest-scientist, and what can his story tell us about the role religion has played in postwar projects of global governance more broadly? As its charter makes clear, the United Nations is a secular institution. But in recent years, historians have begun to probe the crucial contributions that religious actors made to the drafting of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948.3 Others have shown how American ecumenical Protestants such as John Foster Dulles contributed to shaping the creation of the UN by means of a highly successful domestic lobbying campaign.4 In both cases, the scholarship has tended to focus on the way religious actors shaped human rights discourse at the UN. For its part, the social-scientific literature on the UN's engagement with religion has tended to emphasize the role of faith-based organizations (religious NGOs), which have proliferated since the 1990s.5 Among the most important of these is the Catholic Church, which holds a unique status; as the only religious institution that is also a state, it has been recognized as a permanent observer state since 1964.6 What is missing from both the historical and social-scientific literature, however, is an account of the distinctive spirituality of the UN itself. Quite apart from the organization's relationship to religious institutions or the influence of religious actors on human rights activism, how have religious ideas informed the way leading UN diplomats have imagined the institution's mission of global governance?This article explores this question by examining the reception of Teilhard de Chardin's Catholic cosmology, and especially his account of globalization—or [End Page 828] "planetization," as he called it—at the UN. Trained as both a Jesuit priest and a professional geologist and paleontologist, Teilhard elaborated a controversial theory of evolution that encompassed everything from inorganic matter to human life to religious salvation. Teilhard's theory that human life on Earth was converging at both a biological and spiritual level earned him the suspicion of Vatican authorities, but it also found an enthusiastic reception at the highest echelons of the UN Secretariat and at UNESCO. What attracted UN bureaucrats to the Jesuit's worldview was precisely its synthetic ambition—the way it promised to reconcile science and religion—and its account of a pan-human convergence capable of preserving the distinct value of local cultures and individual persons. The fascination with Teilhard at the UN was by no means confined to Catholics, however. If the Jesuit's ideas appealed to both Catholics and non-Catholics, it was precisely because they seemed to transcend their author's Catholicism and point toward a universal spirituality that merged the insights of the great "world religions." This sort of spirituality was exactly what many UN diplomats thought the organization needed to support and animate its mission of global governance. Material forces such as technological innovation and economic markets could only ever yield an "external" form... (shrink)

While the teaching of controversial issues has generally been supported by schools and education scholars, new laws and public outcry have impacted whether and how controversial issues are taught. Calls to ban or limit teaching of controversial issues have largely been spurred by conservative parents, policymakers, and political groups. Some teachers and many education scholars are deeply concerned and want to preserve teaching about controversial issues. This situation suggests that inquiry is needed into changes in the educational aims held and (...) practices endorsed by various stakeholders. This article reconsiders the aims used to justify teaching controversial issues and situates them within larger understandings of good citizenship, revealing important differences in the explanations and values endorsed by opposing groups. It categorizes the aims more generally held by teachers, philosophers of education, and citizenship education scholars as: reasoning, engaging, communicating, and sustaining democratic communities. Then, those aims are compared to aims circulating within the discourse of opposing parents, policymakers, and political organizations. Finally, this article argues that pragmatic adjustments to educational aims held by many teachers and education scholars are both warranted and wise. It provides potential ways to better justify the teaching of controversial issues, including through approaches that more strongly ground teaching in American principles, historical examples, and a commitment to living together well. (shrink)