When a liberal-democratic state signs a treaty or wages a war, does its whole polity do those things? In this article, we approach this question via the recent social ontological literature on collective agency. We provide arguments that it does and that it does not. The arguments are presented via three considerations: the polity's control over what the state does; the polity's unity; and the influence of individual polity members. We suggest that the answer to our question differs for different (...) liberal-democratic states and depends on two underlying considerations: the amount of discretion held by the state's officeholders; the extent to which the democratic procedure is deliberative rather than aggregative. (shrink)

Philosophers increasingly argue that collective agents can be blameworthy for wrongdoing. Advocates tend to endorse functionalism, on which collectives are analogous to complicated robots. This is puzzling: we don’t hold robots blameworthy. I argue we don’t hold robots blameworthy because blameworthiness presupposes the capacity for a mental state I call ‘moral self-awareness’. This raises a new problem for collective blameworthiness: collectives seem to lack the capacity for moral self-awareness. I solve the problem by giving an account of how collectives have (...) this capacity. The trick is to take seriously individuals’ status as flesh-and-blood material constituents of collectives. The idea will be: under certain conditions that I specify, an individual can be the locus of a collective's moral self-awareness. The account provides general insights concerning collectives’ dependence on members, the boundaries of membership, and the locus of collectives’ phenomenology. (shrink)

Philosophers often talk as though each ability is held by exactly one agent. This paper begins by arguing that abilities can be held by groups of agents, where the group is not an agent. I provide a new argument for—and a new analysis of—non-agentive groups’ abilities. I then provide a new argument that, surprisingly, obligations are different: non-agentive groups cannot bear obligations, at least not if those groups are large-scale such as ‘humanity’ or ‘carbon emitters.’ This pair of conclusions is (...) important, since philosophers who endorse large-scale non-agentive groups’ abilities almost universally endorse their obligations. More importantly, the twin arguments (one for abilities, one against obligations) make the following novel contribution: abilities imply agency-involving explanations, while obligations imply action-guidance. This general conclusion should be of interest beyond social ontology. (shrink)

A standard objection to socioeconomic human rights is that they are not claimable as human rights: their correlative duties are not owed to each human, independently of specific institutional arrangements, in an enforceable manner. I consider recent responses to this ‘claimability objection,’ and argue that none succeeds. There are no human rights to socioeconomic goods. But all is not lost: there are, I suggest, human rights to ‘socioeconomic consideration’. I propose a detailed structure for these rights and their correlative duties, (...) while remaining neutral on substantive moral debates. I argue that socioeconomic-consideration human rights are satisfactorily claimable and sufficiently practical. (shrink)

In this article, we examine how regulators, prosecutors, and courts might support and encourage the efforts of organizations to not only reintegrate after misconduct but also to improve their conduct in a way that reduces their likelihood of re-offense. We explore a novel experiment in creative sentencing in Alberta Canada that aimed to try to change the behaviour of an industry by publicly airing the root causes of a failure of one the industry’s leaders. Drawing on this case and prior (...) work, we articulate a model for a responsive and restorative approach to organizational misconduct that balances the punitive role of regulators and courts with new roles in supporting and overseeing rehabilitation. (shrink)

Some contemporary states are morally culpable for historically distant wrongs. But which states for which wrongs? The answer is not obvious, due to secessions, unions, and the formation of new states in the time since the wrongs occurred. This paper develops a framework for answering the question. The argument begins by outlining a picture of states’ agency on which states’ culpability is distinct from the culpability of states’ members. It then outlines, and rejects, a plausible-seeming answer to our question: that (...) culpability transmits from a past state’s action to a present state just if the two states share a numerical identity, for example as determined by international law. I advocate a different answer: culpability transmits from a past action to a present state to the extent that the present state ‘descends from’ the aspects of the past state that underpinned the past action. One potential upshot is that some present-day settler-colonies (such as Australia) are culpable for the centuries-ago invasion of their lands by European powers—even though these states did not perform these invasions and indeed did not exist at the time. (shrink)

Continuing the posthumous editions of the manuscripts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty started in 1964, we publish the preparation notes for the courses of the College of France of 1959 and 1961. Each of these courses questions in a different way the philosophical exercise. How is philosophy possible today after the phenomenological enterprise? In the course of 1959, Merleau-Ponty presented a study by Husserl and Heidegger. It shows the contributions but also the limits. In addition, he has recourse to the interpretation of (...) the philosophy developed by Hegel and Marx, and his gesture is also given as a work of self-interpretation. The reading he suggests of Descartes makes the different levels of his approach sensitive. It seemed interesting to us to associate with his course notes the first writing of the chapter “Interrogation and intuition” of the Visible and the invisible which is in great affinity with the problems approached in these courses. This draft of the Visible and the Invisible, abandoned by Merleau-Ponty, makes it possible to mark the difference in style from the preparation notes which, as Claude Lefort writes, “do not exactly constitute a writing”. Rather, they offer food for thought to continue to question the philosopher's thinking. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Assistance Principle is common currency to a wide range of moral theories. Roughly, this principle states: if you can fulfil important interests, at not too high a cost, then you have a moral duty to do so. I argue that, in determining whether the ‘not too high a cost’ clause of this principle is met, we must consider three distinct costs: ‘agent-relative costs’, ‘recipient-relative costs’ and ‘ideal-relative costs’.

Trust is a critical component of research: trust in the work of co-workers and colleagues within the scientific community; trust in the work of research scientists by the non-research community. A wide range of factors, including internally and externally generated pressures and practical and personal limitations, affect the research process. The extent to which these factors are understood and appreciated influence the development of trust in scientific research findings.

This is a response to the critial comments by Anne Schwenkenbecher, Olle Blomberg, Bill Wringe and Gunnar Björnsson.

On June 12, 2016, the world witnessed one of the deadliest single shooter massacres in U.S. history. Fifty persons were killed and fifty-three were critically injured. Of those fifty, twenty-three were Puerto Rican; 90% of those killed were Latinx. Their faces spanned the racial kaleidoscope of the African, Latinx, and Indigenous diaspora. Most of them were working class and extremely young (Ochoa 2016). However, these particularities went largely omitted from the coverage of the event that swept the nation under the (...) label of an LGBTQ hate crime. The ubiquity of death of color in the U.S. cannot be overstated. Indeed, many pulses have been lost outside of Pulse nightclub. To many, June 12 may seem like a day among many, lost to the memorials of death no one really wants to remember. In this paper I explore June 12 as we turn the page on its sixth year of remembrance. I make the case for a reading of June 12 as more than an LGBTQ hate crime, but rather as emblematic of a battleground of a sacred space (Latin night at the gay bar) for queer bodies of color. The project establishes a more complex framework for understanding what took place on June 12 that can appreciate the ethno-racial, spiritual, and queer dimensions that foregrounded the event. I maintain that the method of analysis necessitates a different model of theorizing, one that can crystalize the sexuality of terrorism, the whiteness of homonationalism, and thereby the importance of creating sacred space for Latinx queer subjects, many of whom, in the context of June 12, form part of the Puerto Rican diaspora. (shrink)

Neuroscience research, like all science, is vulnerable to the influence of extraneous values in the practice of research, whether in research design or the selection, analysis and interpretation of data. This is particularly problematic for research into the biological mechanisms that underlie behavior, and especially the neurobiological underpinnings of moral development and ethical reasoning, decision-making and behavior, and the other elements of what is often called the neuroscience of ethics. The problem arises because neuroscientists, like most everyone, bring to their (...) work assumptions, preconceptions and values and other sources of potentially inappropriate bias of which they may be unaware. It is important that the training of neuroscientists, and research practice itself, include open and in-depth discussion and examination of the assumptions that underlie research. Further, policy makers, journalists, and the general public, that is, the consumers of neuroscience research findings (and by extension, neurotechnologies) should be made aware of the limitations as well as the strengths of the science, the evolving nature of scientific understanding, and the often invisible values inherent in science. (shrink)

In this chapter we look at selfhood in contemporary Confucianism and feminism. We will argue that contemporary Confucians and feminists (and, with some caveats, Confucius and Mencius) have three important points in common when considering the self. In our argument, we will reflect on the debate about Chengyang Li's suggestion that there are important similarities between 仁 (ren ), a term that means roughly "humanity;' "human kindness,'' or "humanity at its best;' and the care ethics advocated by feminists Carol Gilligan, (...) Nel Noddings, and others. Our goal here is not to settle the debates between and among differing Confucians and feminists. Instead, we want to argue that the differences among the views of particular contemporary Confucians and feminists in understanding selfhood and relationality may in fact be smaller than the differences between the two looked at categorically. (shrink)

Humans are powerful and clever, and also more ignorant than they know. As a result, they too often fail to acknowledge or even recognize their limitations, and are more arrogant than humble regarding their capabilities. Education that explicitly recognizes and addresses the context of science and technology, their inherent values and ethical implications and concerns, and their problematic as well as beneficial impacts can potentially rescue the human species from itself.

This paper examines a model of decision-making within the context of current and emerging regimes of accountability being proposed and implemented for school systems in a number of jurisdictions. These approaches to accountability typically involve the use of various measurable student learning outcomes as well as other measures of performance to do with teachers and schools in general, often having high-stakes consequences. Given this context of performativity, the paper proposes a model that uses an objective knowledge growth framework, where teachers (...) can engage in their own professional learning through defined structures for solving the problems of their professional practice. The model is both empowering for teachers while being sensitive to the constraints of cultures of performativity. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous développons l’idée que les genèses du posthumain et du clone sont encore tributaires d’un imaginaire de la matrice. L’antre souterrain, le cocon, l’œuf, le ventre maternel ne demeurent-ils pas les référents majeurs pour penser la création et la naissance, même lorsqu’elles sont artificielles? Les récits anthropotechniques, nouvelles anthropogonies, mettent ainsi en scène une nouvelle matrice — actualisée. In this paper, we develop the idea that the genesis of the posthuman and the clone still depend on an (...) imaginary of the Matrix. Does not the underground cave, the cocoon, the egg and the maternal stomach remain the main referents to think creation and birth, even when they are artificial? Anthropotechnical stories, new “anthropogonies”, thus stage a new, updated, matrix. (shrink)

The precise relationship between callosal morphology and specific connectivity is not yet known. Callosal axons are often presumed to be arranged according to their origin. In humans, this is true for the genu and the splenium, which convey axons from the prefrontal and occipital cortices, respectively, but not for the body, where axons from wide parts of the cortex are intermingled.

Les recherches ayant permis de sortir de l’invisibilité l’histoire de la migration antillaise mettent généralement l’accent sur sa place parmi les « migrations de travail » dans la France des années 1950-1970, sur le rôle de l’État dans l’expatriation des migrants, puis des discriminations subies. Relativement absente de la littérature est une vision des stratégies des individus, stratégies façonnées par les motifs du départ des Antilles puis par les attentes et les projets de vie à plus long terme. S’appuyant sur (...) des sources d’archives, cet article entend contribuer à une littérature qui par sa perspective genrée, révèle comment les normes et représentations des rapports sociaux de sexe agissent sur les choix des individus ainsi que sur l’orientation des politiques migratoires. En articulant les échelles individuelle et institutionnelle, il questionne aussi la dichotomie construite entre autonomie et passivité en migration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“We Need to Cut the Neck!”Confronting Psychological and Moral Distress during Emergency Cricothyrotomy1Stephanie CooperEnoughYou didn’t die in the ER, but rather, began your inexorable demise. The last, first, and only words I ever heard you utter was the weak mewl “tight, tight” as the blood pressure cuff constricted your left arm. You were 98–years–old, bed–bound, at the end. Your world was already partitioning itself from us, your brain tunneling (...) down the uneven corridors of consciousness. A concretion of otoliths muffled your hearing, and fatigue burdened your ancient heart.Your name–band encircled your skinny ankle like a bird. Deformed by arthritis, you were caged within yourself, imprisoned by senescence. You could not declare yourself to us. Words disintegrated into moans and your grimace became animal.When you came back from x–ray—hypotensive with multiple neck fractures confirmed—you could speak no more. Your pulse slowed, your blood pressure plummeted. I jammed a gloved finger against your femoral pulse, faint and tired. [End Page E5]“What’s her DNR status?” I gravely asked your nurse.The DNR paperwork for once had arrived with the patient. “No CPR” she said with relief. But then the paperwork went on, forcing me—the waitress of tragedy—to serve up the hash of an impossible menu.As health care providers, we are all often tasked with performing contradictory actions: the pain of IV insertion followed by the morphine push, drilling deeper into broken bone in order to plate it, the inadvertent cracking of ribs during chest compressions. We sometimes must perform violent action in the hope of sustaining and resurrecting life. We are asked to perform the impossible, the contradictory, the painful. And sometimes the actions we must take catalyze an inexorable chain reaction of actions, which can end in death–prolonging and painful interventions that we did not intend.Although our culture may imagine that one can choose one’s meal at the end–of–life fast–food franchise of death, such is not the case. You can’t suddenly decide you’re a vegetarian. You can’t order the cheeseburger without the cheese—and we all are getting the burger, in the end. Ordering the heart–squeezing drugs without the CPR to circulate them, or the antibiotics without the fluid to counter dehydration, is like ordering the burger without the bun. Sometimes the possible choices are not necessarily realistic choices. You get served what you get served, and perhaps we should question the assumption that we have the ability to choose at all.Your DNR form proclaimed no CPR but then said that antibiotics and intubation were okay—the cheeseburger without the cheese. An unfortunate choice for you, me, and the rest of us, as your death menu led to a very unhappy meal.You were comatose. I stuck a tongue blade deep into your desiccated throat. You did not gag. This means I should have intubated you, but morally, I couldn’t. To what end? You were 98 years old, broken, moribund. If you hadn’t suffered multiple neck fractures, or if you were a vibrant elder who had just walked off Mt. Rainier, maybe the story would have been different. But you? I doubted that you truly had a chance of ever feeling joy again. You were somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother. I knew this step would lead to the domino of unstoppable steps. I refused to flog your corpse.I called your daughter Kay on her cell phone, told her that you were in critical condition and that she should come to the ER immediately. But how to begin to tell a daughter her mother is dying, let alone over a cell phone? Gentle but surreal and impersonal, my voice tried to tell your daughter that the interventions you needed would likely kill you. I have seen enough human suffering to know. To me, the choices were clear: death by nature’s irrefutable course, versus a more painful, protracted, and violent death by what we’d do to you.Kay arrived in a wheelchair and scooted up to your bedside. Like all daughters, she wasn’t ready for you... (shrink)

The article elaborates on the emergence of a new social category: the “worker incapable of working,” which has not yet been recognized in the scientific literature. In Germany, people excluded from the labour market are increasingly employed in workshops for people with disabilities due to what is defined as a total incapacity to work. In addition to the objective of labour market participation of people with disabilities, these workshops assume the aim of (re)establishing their performance and monitoring their reintegration into (...) the general labour market. Changes in the profiles of people working in the workshops and their recent expansion are described, as well as the transformation of working processes and conditions, especially through digitalisation. The consequences of these transformations are studied within the framework of “activating” policies. (shrink)

The theory of consequences was one of the most important developments in logic during the Middle Ages. The distinction between formal consequences and material consequences was probably introduced by Ockham and soon became the main division of consequences, to be found in nearly all 14th-century treatises on the theory of consequences. This paper discusses the concept of a formal and material consequence according to the English tradition. It is based mainly on Richard Bil­lingham’s De consequentiis, but also takes into account (...) other 14th-century authors. Billingham defines the formal consequence as one where the consequent is understood in the antecedent and differentiates this kind of consequence from the material one. The definition is followed by a list of rules for valid consequences. However, with respect to some of these valid consequences the question arises whether they are formal or not and, if they are formal, how it is possible to explain the criterion of the intelligitur in. After explaining the material and the formal consequence and discussing these difficulties, the question is raised whether the intelligitur in is an appropriate structural criterion to distinguish between formal and material consequences. Finally, two interpretations for the intelligitur in compatible with the text situation are proposed. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been heralded as a canonical text of feminist theory. The book focuses on providing an account of the lived experience of woman that generates a condition of otherness. However, I contend that it falls short of being able to account for the multidimensionality of identity insofar as Beauvoir's argument rests upon the comparison between racial and gendered oppression that is understood through the black–white binary. The result of this framework is the imperceptibility of (...) identities at the crossroads between categories of race and gender. Hence, the goal of this article is to explore the margins of Beauvoir's work in order to decenter the “other” of The Second Sex and make known what is made imperceptible by its architecture, using Latina identity as an interventional guide. I conclude that given the prominence of The Second Sex in feminist theory, this shortcoming must be addressed if feminist theorists are to use it responsibly. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of altruism that purport to explain helping behavior are vulnerable to empirical falsification. John Campbell argues that the Good Samaritan study adds to a growing body of evidence that helping behavior is not best explained by appeal to altruism, thus jeopardizing those accounts. I propose that philosophical accounts of altruism can be empirically challenged only if it is shown that altruistic motivations are undermined by normative conflict in the agent, and that the relevant studies do not provide this (...) sort of evidence. Non-normative, purely causal, psychological factors would be empirically relevant only if the notion of altruism is broadened to include the requirement that one recognize certain situations as calling for altruism. But even in that case, the relevant studies are not designed in such a way that could threaten philosophical theories of altruism. (shrink)

On June 12, 2016, the world witnessed one of the deadliest single shooter massacres in U.S. history. Fifty persons were killed and fifty-three were critically injured. Of those fifty, twenty-three were Puerto Rican; 90% of those killed were Latinx. Their faces spanned the racial kaleidoscope of the African, Latinx, and Indigenous diaspora. Most of them were working class and extremely young (Ochoa 2016). However, these particularities went largely omitted from the coverage of the event that swept the nation under the (...) label of an LGBTQ hate crime. The ubiquity of death of color in the U.S. cannot be overstated. Indeed, many pulses have been lost outside of Pulse nightclub. To many, June 12 may seem like a day among many, lost to the memorials of death no one really wants to remember. In this paper I explore June 12 as we turn the page on its sixth year of remembrance. I make the case for a reading of June 12 as more than an LGBTQ hate crime, but rather as emblematic of a battleground of a sacred space (Latin night at the gay bar) for queer bodies of color. The project establishes a more complex framework for understanding what took place on June 12 that can appreciate the ethno-racial, spiritual, and queer dimensions that foregrounded the event. I maintain that the method of analysis necessitates a different model of theorizing, one that can crystalize the sexuality of terrorism, the whiteness of homonationalism, and thereby the importance of creating sacred space for Latinx queer subjects, many of whom, in the context of June 12, form part of the Puerto Rican diaspora. (shrink)