Growing ties to private industry have prompted many to question the impartiality of academic bioethicists who receive financial support from for-profit corporations in exchange for ethics-related services and research. To the extent that corporate sponsors may view bioethics as little more than a way to strengthen public relations or avoid potential controversy, close ties to industry may pose serious threats to professional independence. New sources of support from private industry may also divert bioethicists from pursuing topics of greater social importance, (...) such as the needs of medically underserved communities. To inform ongoing debates about the financing of bioethics and its transparency to those concerned about potential sources of bias, we examined funding disclosures appearing in original research reports in major bioethics journals. Reviewing research published over a 15-year period, we found little evidence that for-profit corporations are influencing bioethics research directly. Instead, we found evidence that a great number of organizations, both public and private, support bioethics research. These findings suggest that worries about the cooption of bioethics research by a few interested stakeholders are greatly overstated and undersupported by available data. (shrink)

Somewhere between use and mere whim there is a place for the expressivity of affect as a concept. This paper raises the question of how the concept of affect might be mobilized without reducing its expressions to the logic of work. We suggest that the very attempt to put affect to work in order to solve pressing problems may be symptomatic of an anxiety to master the events of the world. With this in mind, we make a case for the (...) importance of Georges Bataille's critique of an instrumentalist form of thinking, which reduces events to objects of human sensemaking. Bataille's “general economy” opens onto all that the restricted economy of use negates; namely, that which exceeds our efforts as humans to make sense of, and thus appropriate, events. Ultimately, Bataille's antihumanist thought limits the potential of the gift economy, by rendering it the negative of the social order. We argue that a more posthumanist thought can realize the immanent potential of affect and apprehend its gift to thinking. (shrink)

Introduction to Education provides pre-service teachers with an overview of the context, craft and practice of teaching in Australian schools as they commence the journey from learner to classroom teacher. Each chapter poses questions about the nature of teaching students, and guides readers though the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Incorporating recent research and theoretical literature, Introduction to Education presents a critical consideration of the professional, policy and curriculum contexts of teaching in Australia. The book covers theoretical topics in chapters (...) addressing assessment, planning, safe learning environments, and working with colleagues, families, carers and communities. More practical chapters discuss professional experience and building a career after graduation. Rigorous in conception and practical in scope, Introduction to Education welcomes new educators to the theory and practical elements of teaching, learning, and professional practice. (shrink)

The debate over the possibility of Christian philosophy remains largely intractable because of the modern assumption of a sharp distinction between philosophy and theology. The metaphysical basis of this assumption is an understanding of the world's relationship to God that emphasizes efficient causality and thus introduces a hiatus between the world and God. This contrastive understanding of transcendence parallels insistence on the disciplinary distinction between philosophy and theology. ;St. Gregory Palamas , in his two major works, the Triads and One (...) Hundred and Fifty Chapters, articulates a metaphysics according to which all beings participate in God as their formal principle. This metaphysics maintains God's transcendence in a non-contrastive manner such that it coincides with divine immanence. The possibility to be explored is whether this metaphysics may support an alternative approach to the Christian philosophy debate. ;In Chapter One I argue that the prevailing, anti-philosophical reading of Palamas is misled by his rhetoric and therefore fails to recognize that the target of his criticism is not philosophy in general, but a nascent Byzantine modernism. Chapter Two details the nature of this target as presented by Palamas's main opponent, Barlaam of Calabria. In Chapter Three I examine the metaphysics of participation, which presents the coincidence of transcendence and immanence that is the basis both of Palamas's well-known distinction between God's ousia and activities and of Palamas's radical Dionysian apophaticism. ;In Chapter Four I develop the implication of this metaphysics: the world is radically and thoroughly theophanic or symbolic. The proper comportment of one's soul before such a reality must be contemplative. Therefore, I argue in Chapter Five, the soul must be transformed by the spiritual exercises that constitute philosophy as such a way of life. For Palamas, philosophy is intrinsically constituted by the soul's eros for God. In Chapter Six I argue that once philosophy is understood in this way, the assumed disciplinary distinction between philosophy and theology disappears. Palamas's antimodern stance, then, undermines the modern presuppositions of the Christian philosophy debate and thus may provide an alternative solution. (shrink)

The use of terms like “collaboration” and “co-workers” to describe interactions between human beings and certain artificial intelligence (AI) systems has gained significant traction in recent years. Yet, it remains an open question whether such anthropomorphic metaphors provide either a fertile or even a purely innocuous lens through which to conceptualize designed commercial products. Rather, a respect for human dignity and the principle of transparency may require us to draw a sharp distinction between real and faux peers. At the heart (...) of the concept of collaboration lies the assumption that the collaborating parties are (or behave as if they are) of similar status: two agents capable of comparable forms of intentional action, moral agency, or moral responsibility. In application to current AI systems, this not only seems to fail ontologically but also from a socio-political perspective. AI in the workplace is primarily an extension of capital, not of labor, and the AI “co-workers” of most individuals will likely be owned and operated by their employer. In this paper, we critically assess both the accuracy and desirability of using the term “collaboration” to describe interactions between humans and AI systems. We begin by proposing an alternative ontology of human–machine interaction, one which features not two equivalently autonomous agents, but rather one machine that exists in a relationship of heteronomy to one or more human agents. In this sense, while the machine may have a significant degree of independence concerning the means by which it achieves its ends, the ends themselves are always chosen by at least one human agent, whose interests may differ from those of the individuals interacting with the machine. We finally consider the motivations and risks inherent to the continued use of the term “collaboration,” exploring its strained relation to the concept of transparency, and consequences for the future of work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 37.1 (2004) 42-71 [Access article in PDF] Narrative as Argument in Indian Philosophy: The Astavakra Gita as Multivalent Narrative Scott R. Stroud Department of Philosophy Temple University Indian philosophy has often been described as radically different in nature than Western philosophy due to its frequent use of narrative structure. By employing poetic elements in their use of language, such texts attempt to convey deep metaphysical (...) truths and philosophical positions about reality that are in many cases quite different from Western ideas (Babbili 1997). Often, these ways of conveying truths are an integral part of that truth. One particularly useful form is narrative, taking instantiations such as a dialogue between characters. Philosophical dialogues such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Astavakra Gita (also known as the Astavakra Samhita ) use a portrayed conversation involving a guru or deity to convey didactic lessons and values to the receptive audience, both ancient and modern. As texts such as the Bhagavad Gita gain in popularity and circulation in the Western world (Minor 1982; Paine 1998; Sharpe 1985), philosophical and rhetorical inquiry must be extended to explain how these texts function in an argumentative philosophical context.Stroud (2002a, 2002b) has advanced the idea that such ancient Indian narratives argue through the use of contradictions and conflicting value structures;1 he labels such texts as multivalent narratives since their use of contradictory value structures compel audience members to reconstruct the narrative's message and allow for the acceptance of novel views. Multivalent narratives are to be distinguished from polysemic narratives (Fiske 1986) in that the latter concern different audience members finding a preferred position from the ambiguous story. Polysemic narratives involve the difference in meaning of the same story to different auditors. Condit criticizes this notion of polysemic narratives and advances her own concept of polyvalent narratives. The concept of a polyvalent narrative involves different auditors understanding the same story in similar ways, but differing in how they evaluate its message. Condit's research with a popular television [End Page 42] show and two students from radically different backgrounds on abortion finds that they understood what occurred in a very similar fashion; they differed in that they "disagree[d] about the valuation of those denotations to such a degree that they produce[d] noticeably different interpretations" (1989, 106). Thus, the auditors differ as to their response to a certain story and how it treats their own cherished values. Stroud (2002a) provides a thorough justification as to why the concepts of polysemic and polyvalent narratives do not capture what can be called multivalent narratives. The important factor in distinguishing these three concepts is that the third involves contradictions at the level of values within a text and the reader's necessitated activity of trying to synthesize or reconcile such contradictions. It is this activity that is the hallmark of multivalent narratives.This employment of multivalent narrative offers a challenge to familiar Western conceptions of argumentative discourse and demands further investigation. This study explores the ways a particular text, the Astavakra Gita, argues its philosophical positions to its audience of potential "pupils."2 Using the insights provided by theories of narrative and reader-response theory, I will argue that this text advances its claims not through overt syllogism or validity claim redemption, but through textual indeterminacy between the audience's disposition and the foregrounded theme of non-individuation in the text. This tension, increased by certain textual devices, results in consistency building by the audience, which enables the transcendence of these two viewpoints (reader and text); it is this experience, not claim, that the Astavakra Gita seems to be advancing to any given audience.In order to explore this interpretation of this text and its argumentative relationship to an audience, insights from both literary studies and rhetorical theory must be used in laying a foundation. The work of Wolfgang Iser (1980, 1989, 1993) and Walter Fisher (1987) will assume roles of particular importance in this endeavor. Iser's theory of aesthetic response provides a useful description of the phenomenological process of reading such a... (shrink)

Ceci et al.'s (2006) findings remind us that tenure rarely serves its intended purpose. I argue that tenure often fails in part because many faculty members possess an insufficient appreciation for the heuristic value of controversy in science and other disciplines. Using two case examples from clinical/personality psychology, I show how controversial positions can draw sharp criticism while facilitating scientific progress. (Published Online February 8 2007).

A theory of higher-order vagueness for partially-defined, context-sensitive predicates like is blue is offered. According to the theory, the predicate is determinately blue means roughly is an object o such that the claim that o is blue is a necessary consequence of the rules of the language plus the underlying non-linguistic facts in the world. Because the question of which rules count as rules of the language is itself vague, the predicate is determinately blue is both vague and partial in (...) a sense analogous (though not completely identical) to the sense in which is blue is vague and partial. However, higher-order vagueness stops there. Although the anti-extension of is determinately blue differs from that of is blue, further iterations of determinately have no semantic effect. The paper closes with a discussion of the need to posit sharp and precise lines dividing the range of potential application of a vague predicate into semantically distinct categories. It is argued that this is less of a problem for the present theory than for many others, because the categories into which the range is divided by the present theory -- like the category of counting as blue because the rules of the language offer speakers no discretion, as opposed to the category of counting as blue because speakers have invoked an absolute minimum of discretion in adjusting the contextually sensitive boundaries of the predicate -- are not those that the linguistic competence of ordinary speakers equips them to make highly accurate and reliable judgments about. (shrink)

A theory of higher-order vagueness for partially-defined, context-sensitive predicates like is blue is offered. According to the theory, the predicate is determinately blue means roughly is an object o such that the claim that o is blue is a necessary consequence of the rules of the language plus the underlying non-linguistic facts in the world. Because the question of which rules count as rules of the language is itself vague, the predicate is determinately blue is both vague and partial in (...) a sense analogous (though not completely identical) to the sense in which is blue is vague and partial. However, higher-order vagueness stops there. Although the anti-extension of is determinately blue differs from that of is blue, further iterations of determinately have no semantic effect. -/- The paper closes with a discussion of the need to posit sharp and precise lines dividing the range of potential application of a vague predicate into semantically distinct categories. It is argued that this is less of a problem for the present theory than for many others, because the categories into which the range is divided by the present theory -- like the category of counting as blue because the rules of the language offer speakers no discretion, as opposed to the category of counting as blue because speakers have invoked an absolute minimum of discretion in adjusting the contextually sensitive boundaries of the predicate -- are not those that the linguistic competence of ordinary speakers equips them to make highly accurate and reliable judgments about. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Self-Knowledge, Friendship, and the Promulgation of the Natural LawScott J. RonigerKnow Thyself.—Inscription on the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo at DelphiChristian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God's own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Know who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of (...) darkness and brought into the light of the kingdom of God.—Pope St. Leo the GreatIn this essay, I wish to discuss the relationships between self-knowledge, ethics and political life, and our knowledge of the natural law. I hope to show that our knowledge of natural law depends to a large extent on what we take ourselves to be, simply as human beings, and that our knowledge of what it is to be human is foundational for and textured by our social and political life. It is through the lens of these interconnected issues that I will engage Pierre Manent's thoughtful and provocative book, Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason. I will not simply provide an exegesis of Manent's work, which is rich and repays careful reading, nor will I argue directly for or against his fundamental points; rather, I take his work as a springboard to discuss the connection between our knowledge of ourselves, our ethical and political lives, and our knowledge of the natural law. In so doing, I will perhaps confirm and strengthen what I take to be Manent's central thesis. [End Page 287]Manent claims that the project of human rights, with the modern "state" understood as the guarantor of such rights, is inextricably tied to an erroneous understanding of human beings as naturally isolated and apolitical individuals. He shows that this impoverished modern understanding of human nature, and of human rights protected by the state as its offspring, distorts our self-understanding and saps the intelligibility of law, natural or otherwise, as well as the fecundity of human action. According to Manent, and contra Jacques Maritain, modern human rights must be understood as a feeble replacement for, not founded upon, the classical understanding of natural law.1 Further, Manent argues that it is modern political philosophy that generates the modern state as the "sovereign instrument" wielded to protect human rights, with the result that civic and political friendship becomes more difficult as the state becomes more powerful. Modern political philosophy is therefore at the basis of our distorted understanding of ourselves and our inability to engage in the friendships that hold polities together.Before discussing these issues in detail, it will be helpful to say a word about the way in which Manent approaches them and about how my own approach relates to his. Manent says that he is "inside a triangle: politics, philosophy, religion." He claims that he has never been able to devote himself entirely to any one of those three poles and that he finds "a fragile equilibrium, or rather a productive disequilibrium, in this questioning... concerning the very manner in which these three dimensions are articulated throughout Western history."2 Manent's book on natural law and human rights evidences this fecund triangulation of politics, philosophy, and religion. Manent also says that, through his studies, he has come to adopt a "'classic' view of political life, which gives... a better view of the eternal play between the few and the many, beyond the democratic enthusiasm characteristic of modern societies."3 Aristotle, as the political scientist and philosopher par excellence, occupies a prominent place in Manent's classical [End Page 288] view of political life, and the central role of Aristotle's ethics and political philosophy is also on display in Manent's work on natural law, especially in the book's final chapter. Manent's knowledge of modern political philosophy and his Aristotelian view of political life give him a sharp awareness of the differences between ancient and modern approaches to philosophical, ethical, and political questions, an awareness that permeates his previous work on political form and his recent book on natural law.I will concentrate... (shrink)

The review argues that, while Fish's book is undoubtedly a corrective to the most extreme examples of polemical teaching, it oversimplifies the difficulties academics face in trying to create sharp distinctions between politics and scholarship. The radical disconnection he advocates does not address the most difficult situations in which lines cannot be clearly drawn between the substance of academic research and teaching and the politics of the process of knowledge production itself.

From the perspectives of both an espoused core underlying value of nursing, and of public policy, the patient's voice should be central to our understanding of patient/client need, appropriate care and intervention. However, accessing and hearing the patient's voice is fraught with difficulty. Edwards reminds us that our raison d’être as nurses is human vulnerability; a vulnerability sometimes brought into sharp focus because of illness or disease. However, when people are at their most vulnerable, they are often least able to (...) identify, or indeed to express, their need – beyond the completely obvious. This paper provides a short descriptive record of one patient's experience of nursing care. This description is placed within the context of moral arguments about the nature of nursing and the impact this may have on decision‐making regarding the appropriate distribution of nursing time. One of our most acute deficits in knowledge, regarding nursing in the UK and Ireland, is a lack of knowledge of the day‐to‐day activities judgements, decisions and interventions of staff nurses at the sharp edge of patient care delivery. We also have little understanding of how, or indeed whether, staff nurses identify or articulate these activities, judgements, decisions and interventions as having a moral dimension that is rooted in respect for the needs and perceptions of the individual patient. Recent empirical work suggests that a substantial proportion of nursing time is spent in prioritizing and delegating care. We have little idea of the impact of prioritization and delegation on the quality of patient care, as perceived by the recipients of that care, our patients. It is urgent that these deficits in our knowledge and understanding are addressed. This is the case both from the perspective of providing high standards of patient care and from the point of view of linking perceptions of the moral dimension of nursing practice, organizational structure, manpower planning, nursing decisions and interventions, to patient outcomes. (shrink)

"One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades."--John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as "a magisterial critique of top-down social planning" by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail--sometimes catastrophically--in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. "Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp (...) relief the nature of the world we now inhabit."--New Yorker "A tour de force."-- Charles Tilly, Columbia University. (shrink)

Historically, academic freedom is a concept aimed at resolving conflicts about the relationship between power and knowledge, politics and truth, action and thought by positing a sharp distinction between them, a distinction that has been difficult to maintain. This paper analyzes those tensions by looking at early statements of the founders of the American Association of University Professors , by exploring the paradoxes of disciplinary authority which at once guarantees and limits professorial autonomy, and by examining several cases in which (...) the question of the meaning of academic responsibility was in dispute. It argues that because the tensions are not susceptible to final resolution, the principle of academic freedom must be preserved in order to mediate them. (shrink)

This dissertation offers a phenomenology of that mode of self-interpretation in which it becomes possible for an interpreter to intentionally participate in the production of moral norms to which the interpreter himself or herself feels bound. Part One draws on Richard Rorty's notion of the "ironist" in order to thematize the phenomenon I call "moral friction"; a condition in which an interpreter becomes explicitly aware of the historical and cultural contingencies of their own moral vocabularies, practices, and concerns and as (...) a result find themselves incapable of feeling the normative weight implicit in these. Part Two draws on Heidegger's existential analytic of human being, Gadamer's development of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, and Hegel's notion of "sublation" in order to map how novel interpretations can irreversibly displace the coherence of older interpretations. I call this form of interpretation "moral phenomenology." Finally, in Part Three, I utilize a selective phenomenology of musical improvisation to plot the unique temporal orientation of self-interpretation that results from intentionally deploying this irreversible displacement of older interpretations that involve normative moral implications. I call the form of life that is marked by this hermeneutic mode the "improviser." The result is a description of a form of life in which it becomes possible to explicitly participate in the production of moral norms within a historical and culturally contingent context that nevertheless preserves standards of rational justification for normative moral judgment without the need for atemporal first principles. The availability of this mode of self-interpretation displaces the sharp distinction between non-normative descriptive phenomenology and normative moral reasoning by placing the latter within a non-teleological historical practice that engages in the production of interpretations which irreversibly displace older interpretations--a practice that is governed by the critical cultivation of contingent moral norms within the open investigation into the good life for human being. (shrink)

Much of the sustained attention on pandemic preparedness has focused on the ethical justification for plans for the “crisis” phase of a surge when, despite augmentation efforts, the demand for life...

Animalism is the view that human persons are human animals – biological organisms that belong to the species Homo sapiens. This paper concerns a family of modal objections to animalism based on the essentiality of personhood (persons and animals differ in their persistence conditions; psychological considerations are relevant for the persistence of persons, but not animals; persons, but not animals, are essentially psychological beings). Such arguments are typically used to support constitutionalism, animalism’s main neo-Lockean rival. The problem with such arguments (...) is that they wrongly assume that animalism is incompatible with our essentially being psychological beings. In this paper, I discuss a formulation of animalism, what I call psychologically-serious animalism, according to which human persons are essentially human animals and essentially persons. I show how the availability of this neglected formulation of animalism undermines objections based on the essentiality of personhood. (shrink)

Slavoj Zizek has emerged as the pre-eminent European cultural theorist of the last decade and has been described as the ultimate Marxist/Lacanian cultural studies scholar. His large and growing body of work has generated considerable controversy, yet his texts are not structured as standard academic tomes. In Slavoj Zizek: A Little Piece of the Real, Matthew Sharpe undertakes the difficult task of drawing out an evolving argument from all of Zizek's texts from 1989 to 2001, and reads them as (...) the bearers of a single theoretical project, providing an authoritative, reliable, clearly written and well-structured account of Zizek's demanding body of work. From an exposition of Zizek's social and philosophical critical theory the book moves to a critical analysis of Zizek's theoretical project and its political implications. Sharpe concludes by suggesting that Zizek's work, however, raises as many questions as it answers; questions both about Zizek's theoretical system and to the wider new Left in today's world. (shrink)

Suicide has long been the subject of philosophical, literary, theological and cultural–historical inquiry. But despite the diversity of disciplinary and methodological approaches that have been brought to bear in the study of suicide, we argue that the formal study of suicide, that is, suicidology, is characterized by intellectual, organizational and professional values that distinguish it from other ways of thinking and knowing. Further, we suggest that considering suicidology as a “social practice” offers ways to usefully conceptualize its epistemological, philosophical and (...) practical norms. This study develops the idea of suicidology as a social practice and considers the implications for research, practice and public discourse. (shrink)

This article critiques recent UK transgender law reform. The Gender Recognition Act 2004 is to be welcomed in many respects. Formerly one of the European states most resistant to social change in this area, the UK now occupies pole position among progressive states willing to legally recognise the sex claims of transgender people. This is because the UK is, at least ostensibly, the first state to recognise sex claims irrespective of whether applicants have undertaken any surgical procedures or had hormonal (...) treatments. The article highlights the significance of this development through providing an overview of the trajectory of common law reform around the world. The legislation clearly benefits transgender people unable to undertake surgery due to financial reasons and/or medical contra-indications. It also benefits transgender people whose search for harmony does not require surgical intervention. However, the Act also perpetuates a mental illness model for understanding transgender desires; contributes to the break-up of legally recognised marriages; insists on the permanence of gender crossings and assumes that surgery will occur. The Act also contains exceptions to the generality of legal recognition provided by the state. In this respect the article considers concessions to religious and sporting lobbies. Finally, the article highlights how non-disclosure of gender history prior to a marriage assumes a kind of legal significance under the Act which non-disclosure of other facts generally lacks in relation to marriage. In this regard, the article will contend that a biological understanding of sex operates as a subtext within the Act. (shrink)

This paper wants to draw out a common argument in three great philosophers and littérateurs in modern French thought: Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, and Albert Camus. The argument makes metaphysical and theological scepticism the first premise for a universalistic political ethics, as per Voltaire's: “it is clearer still that we ought to be tolerant of one another, because we are all weak, inconsistent, liable to fickleness and error.” The argument, it seems to me, presents an interestingly overlooked, deeply important and (...) powerful contribution to the philosophical discourse of modernity. On one hand, theological and post-structuralist critics of “humanism” usually take the latter to depend either on an essentialist philosophical anthropology, or a progressive philosophy of history. The former, it is argued, is philosophically contestable and ethically contentious. The latter, for better or worse, is a continuation of theological eschatology by another name. So both, if not “modernity” per se, should somehow be rejected. But an ethical universalism – like that we find in Montaigne, Bayle, Voltaire, or Camus – which does not claim familiarity with metaphysical or eschatological truths, but humbly confesses our epistemic finitude, seeing in this the basis for ethical solidarity, eludes these charges. On the other hand, philosophical scepticism plays a large role in the post-structuralist criticisms of modern institutions and ideas in ways which have been widely taken to license forms of ethics which problematically identify responsibility, with taking a stand unjustifiable by recourse to universalizable reasons. But, in Montaigne, Voltaire and Camus, our ignorance concerning the highest or final truths does not close off, but rather opens up, a new descriptive sensitivity to the foibles and complexities of human experience: a sensitivity reflected amply, and often hilariously, in their literary productions. As such, a critical agnosticism concerning claims about things “in the heavens and beneath the earth” does not, for such a “sceptical humanism,” necessitate decisionism or nihilism. Instead, it demands a redoubled ethical sensitivity to the complexities and plurality of political life which sees the dignity of “really-existing” others, whatever their metaphysical creeds, as an inalienable first datum of ethical conduct and reflection. After tracking these arguments in Montaigne, Voltaire, and Camus, the essay closes by reflecting on, and contesting, one more powerful theological argument against modern agnosticism's allegedly deleterious effects on ethical culture: that acknowledging ignorance concerning the highest things robs us of the basis for awe or wonder, the wellspring of human beings’ highest ethical, aesthetic, and spiritual achievements. (shrink)

This paper examines the seemingly unlikely rapport between the ‘Christian existentialist’, radically Protestant thinker, Søren Kierkegaard and French classicist and historian of philosophy, Pierre Hadot, famous for advocating a return to the ancient pagan sense of philosophy as a way of life. Despite decisive differences we stress in our concluding remarks, we argue that the conception of philosophy in Hadot as a way of life shares decisive features with Kierkegaard’s understanding of the true ‘religious’ life: as something demanding existential engagement (...) from its proponent, as well as the learning or recitation of accepted doctrines. The mediating figure between the two authors, the paper agrees with Irina, is Socrates and his famous irony. In order to appreciate Kierkegaard’s rapport with Hadot, then we first of all consider Hadot’s treatment of the enigmatic ‘old wise man’ who remains central to Kierkegaard’s entire authorship. However, to highlight Hadot’s Socratic proximity to Kierkegaard, we set up Hadot’s Socrates against the contrasting portrait readers can find in John M. Cooper’s recent work on Socrates and philosophy as a way of life. Part II of the essay turns back from Hadot’s and Kierkegaard’s Socrates towards Hadot’s own work, and argues—again moving beyond both Gregor and Irina’s works on Hadot and Kierkegaard—that the shape of Hadot’s ‘authorship’, including his remarkably classical style, can be understood by way of Kierkegaard’s notion of indirect communication. In our concluding remarks, in the spirit of Kierkegaard, we pinpoint the fundamental difference between the two thinkers, arguing that for Hadot in contrast to Kierkegaard, a stress on existential commitment in no way speaks against the philosophical defence of a form of rational universalism. Reading Hadot via Kierkegaard allows us to appreciate Hadot’s novelty as attempting to ‘squaring the circle’ between an emphasis on subjectivity and, as it were, the subjective dimensions of philosophers’ pursuit of rational universality. (shrink)

For John Ziman, 'the essence of the human condition' is the 'two-way, interactive character' of interpersonal relationships, and he argues that '[t]he bias towards atomic individualism not only bedevils the human and social sciences: it also distorts the whole philosophy of nature.' But in spite of his recognition of the importance of 'escap[ing] from the Cartesian cage' of the 'solipsist stance', Ziman himself has not entirely escaped the influence of a residual Cartesianism. This is evident in his tendency to over-intellectualize (...) the character of interactive relationships with talk of 'a theory of mind' and to imply that such relationships are only possible with other people like ourselves. Both of these ideas stem from the Cartesian position that knowledge starts from an introspective awareness of one's own mental states and that the mental states of others can only be inferred by analogy. Having first observed that my mental state x is accompanied by behaviour y, my observation of behaviour y in another is taken as an indication that he is experiencing mental state x. I will argue that our ability to understand the behaviour of others depends neither on a theory of mind nor on their being 'like us'. (shrink)

Arguments are weakly meta-argumentative when they call attention to themselves and purport to be successful as arguments. Arguments are strongly metaargumentative when they take arguments (themselves or other arguments) as objects for evaluation, clarification, or improvement and explicitly use concepts of argument analysis for the task. The ambitious meta-argumentation thesis is that all argumentation is weakly argumentative. The modest meta-argumentation thesis is that there are unique instances of strongly meta-argumentative argument. Here, we show how the two theses are connected and (...) both are plausible. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper is a critical response to Amy Allen’s The End of Progress: Decolonising the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. We take up her book’s call for a “problematizing” history which challenges “taken-for-granted” preconceptions in order to contest Allen’s own representation of the thought of the enlightenment. Allen accepts that all the enlighteners agreed upon a stadial, progressive account of history, which she critiques epistemically and normatively. But we show in Part 2, drawing on the work of Henri Vyverberg and (...) other historians of eighteenth century ideas, that a cyclical, rise and fall account of historical succession was more prominent than the progressive narrative in leading enlighteners such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, D’Alembert, Condillac, Jancourt, Grimm, and Raynal, all of whom Allen does not mention. In Part 3, we show that not all thinkers of the enlightenment were pro-colonial or pro-imperialist, as Allen also presupposes in The End of Progress. By examining Abbé Raynal’s History of The Two Indies in Part 3, and notably its Diderotian interpolations, we show that many enlighteners propounded fierce criticisms of European colonialism and the slave trade, even calling directly for armed resistance against European infractions. In critical theorists’ search for chastened normative foundations, our concluding remarks contend, there is a need to develop more accurate, balanced, post-postmodern reckonings of the enlightenment. (shrink)

Recent scholarship in business ethics has revealed the importance of privacy expectations as they relate to implicit privacy norms and the business practices that may violate these expectations. Yet, it is unclear how and when businesses may violate these expectations, factors that form or influence privacy expectations, or whether or not expectations have in fact been violated by company actions. This article reports the findings of three studies exploring how and when the corporate dissemination of consumer data violates privacy expectations. (...) The results indicate that consumer sentiment is more negative following intentional releases of sensitive consumer data, but the effect of data dissemination is more complex than that of company intentionality and data sensitivity alone. Companies can effectively set, and re-affirm, privacy expectations via consent procedures preceding and succeeding data dissemination notifications. Although implied consent has become more widely used in practice, we show how explicit consent outperforms implied consent in these regards. Importantly, this research provides process evidence that identifies perceived violation of privacy expectations as the underlying mechanism to explain the deleterious effects, on consumer sentiment, when company actions are misaligned with consumers’ privacy expectations. Ethical implications for companies collecting and disseminating consumer information are offered. (shrink)

Why We Argue : A Guide to Political Disagreement presents an accessible and engaging introduction to the theory of argument, with special emphasis on the way argument works in public political debate. The authors develop a view according to which proper argument is necessary for one’s individual cognitive health; this insight is then expanded to the collective health of one’s society. Proper argumentation, then, is seen to play a central role in a well-functioning democracy. Written in a lively style and (...) filled with examples drawn from the real world of contemporary politics, and questions following each chapter to encourage discussion, Why We Argue : A Guide to Political Disagreement reads like a guide for the participation in, and maintenance of, modern democracy. An excellent student resource for courses in critical thinking, political philosophy, and related fields, Why We Argue : A Guide to Political Disagreement is an important contribution to reasoned debate. (shrink)

I will assume here the defenses of epistemic infinitism are adequate and inquire as to the variety standpoints within the view. I will argue that infinitism has three varieties depending on the strength of demandingness of the infinitist requirement and the purity of its conception of epistemic justification, each of which I will term strong pure, strong impure, and weak impure infinitisms. Further, I will argue that impure infinitisms have the dialectical advantage.

As a child brought up among animals, Lynne Sharpe never doubted they were essentially ‘creatures like us’. It came as a shock to learn that others did not agree. Here she exposes the bizarre way in which many philosophers — including even some great and humane ones — have repeatedly talked and written about animals. They have discussed the topic in terms of non-existent abstract ‘animals’, conceived as defective humans, entirely neglecting the experience of people who have wide practical (...) knowledge of companion animals — such as horses and dogs — through working with them. She testifies to the interesting nature of these creatures’ lives, noting that the usual narrow approach to animals carries with it also a distorted notion of human life as essentially cerebral and language-centred. (shrink)

R. A. Sharpe; VIII*—Art and Expertise, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 85, Issue 1, 1 June 1985, Pages 133–148, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristote.

Parents resemble trustees, conservators, and other fiduciaries; they exercise broad discretion while making choices for vulnerable people. Like other fiduciaries, parents can be tempted to neglect their duties or pursue self-interest at the expense of those they should protect. This article argues against treating parents as fiduciaries for three reasons. First, the scope of parental fiduciary duties cannot be narrowed enough to make them tolerable. Arguments limiting fiduciary duties to cases where parents exercise delegated powers or act within parenting roles (...) fail. Most parental decisions involve dual powers or roles. Efforts to address these dual-role cases produce principles that are unduly demanding, complex, arbitrary, and morally unappealing. Second, we could limit parental fiduciary duties by designing parental roles to benefit children. Since children need devoted, happy, well-rounded parents, the principle of designing parental roles to benefit children would produce rules that leave room for parents to flourish. However, this principle does not justify specific legal or moral fiduciary norms. Third, we could redefine fiduciary duties so parents can balance their interests against children’s interests, making fiduciary duties less burdensome. However, expanding the definition of fiduciary threatens to encompass many duties within the fiduciary category, rendering the description almost meaningless. (shrink)

Following up on a 1989 paper on the subject, this essay revisits the question of ethical expertise in the court room. Informed by recent developments in the use of ethics experts, the authors argue 1) that the adversarial nature of court proceedings challenges the integrity of the ethicist's pedagogical role; 2) that the use of ethics experts as normative authorities remains dubious; 3) that clarification of the State's interest in “protecting the ethical integrity of the medical profession” is urgently required; (...) and 4) that the expertise of the ethicist may be more appropriately used in advising the legislature than in influencing the court. (shrink)

Albert Camus can be meaningfully read as an agent-focussed virtue ethicist, as David Sherman has suggested. Yet moving far beyond Sherman’s version of this claim, we show here how Camus accepts what are four definitive parameters of the classical authors’ conception of the virtues—the last of which takes him beyond today’s recognised “virtue ethicists.” Firstly, he understands the virtues as lasting, beneficent dispositions to think, feel, and act in certain ways. Secondly, he conceives the virtues as mastering the untethered passions: (...) the sources of epistemic partiality and behavioural excess. Thirdly Camus conceives of the virtues as necessary accomplishments if people are to live fulfilled lives. Finally—and here bidding farewell to a solely theoretical approach—Camus appreciates that such self-mastery can only be achieved through education and habituation, and through the imitation of the kind of exemplars he holds up before us in his literary fiction. (shrink)

What follows is a work of critical reconstruction of Camus' thought. It aims to answer to the wish Camus expressed in his later notebooks, that he at least be read closely. Specifically, I hope to do three things. In Part I, we will show how Camus' famous philosophy of the absurd represents a systematic scepticism whose closest philosophical predecessor is Descartes' method of doubt, and whose consequence, as in Descartes, is the discovery of a single, orienting certainty, on the basis (...) of which Camus would proceed to pass beyond the 'nihilism' that conservative critics continued to level against him (MS 34). Part II will unfold the central tenets of Camus' mature thought of rebellion, and show how Camus' central political claims follow from his para-Cartesian claim to have found an irreducible or 'invincible' basis for a post-metaphysical ethics, consistent with the most thoroughgoing epistemic scepticism. Part III then undertakes to show that the neoclassical rhetoric and positioning Camus claimed for his postwar thought—as a thought of moderation or mesure, and a renewed Greek or Mediterranean naturalism—is more than a stylistic pretension. It represents, so I argue, a singular amalgam of modern and philosophical classical motifs which makes Camus' voice nearly unique in twentieth century ideas, and all the more worth reconsidering today. So let us proceed. (shrink)

This paper examines the apology for the life of the mind Francis Bacon gives in Book I of his 1605 text The Advancement of Learning. Like recent work on Bacon led by the ground-breaking studies of Corneanu, Harrison and Gaukroger, I argue that Bacon’s conception and defence of intellectual inquiry in this extraordinary text is framed by reference to the classical model, which had conceived and justified philosophising as a way of life or means to the care of the inquirer’s (...) soul or psyche. In particular, Bacon’s proximities and debts to the Platonic Apology and Cicero’s defence of intellectual pursuits in Rome are stressed, alongside the acuity and eloquence of Bacon’s descriptions of the intellectual virtues and their advertised contributions to the theologically and civically virtuous life. (shrink)

Carol Gilligan has identified two orientations to moral understanding; the dominant justice orientation and the under-valued care orientation. Based on her discernment of a voice of care, Gilligan challenges the adequacy of a deontological liberal framework for moral development and moral theory. This paper examines how the orientations of justice and care are played out in medical ethical theory. Specifically, I question whether the medical moral domain is adequately described by the norms of impartiality, universality, and equality that characterize the (...) liberal ideal. My analysis of justice -oriented medical ethics, focuses on the libertarian theory of H.T. Engelhardt and the contractarian theory of R.M. Veatch. I suggest that in the work of E.D. Pellegrino and D.C. Thomasma we find not only a more authentic representation of medical morality but also a project that is compatible with the care orientation's emphasis on human need and responsiveness to particular others. (shrink)

• We define a notion of order of indiscernibility type of a structure by analogy with Mitchell order on measures; we use this to define a hierarchy of strong axioms of infinity defined through normal filters, the α-weakly Erdős hierarchy. The filters in this hierarchy can be seen to be generated by sets of ordinals where these indiscernibility orders on structures dominate the canonical functions.• The limit axiom of this is that of greatly Erdős and we use it to calibrate (...) some strengthenings of the Chang property, one of which, CC+, is equiconsistent with a Ramsey cardinal, and implies that where K is the core model built with non-overlapping extenders — if it is rigid, and others which are a little weaker. As one corollary we have:TheoremIf then there is an inner model with a strong cardinal. • We define an α-Jónsson hierarchy to parallel the α-Ramsey hierarchy, and show that κ being α-Jónsson implies that it is α-Ramsey in the core model. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian-born political philosopher and cultural critic. He was described by British literary theorist, Terry Eagleton, as the “most formidably brilliant” recent theorist to have emerged from Continental Europe. Žižek’s work is infamously idiosyncratic. It features striking dialectical reversals of received common sense; a ubiquitous sense of humor; … Continue reading Žižek, Slavoj →.