Two deficiencies characterize the vast critical literature that has accumulated around Dworkin's theory of law. On the one hand, the main lines of the debate tend to get lost in the crossfire of objections by critics and rejoinders by Dworkin — with little dialogue between the critics, or any systematic interrelation or resolution of these largely isolated disputes. On the other hand, such arguments on various points of Dworkin's Jurisprudence tend to neglect or obscure underlying issues in philosophical ethics. (...) The present essay is a critical analysis addressing each of these deficiencies in an attempt both to clarify and to advance the debate. The analysis hinges on three basic propositions: (1) that this debate in Jurisprudence has overlooked relevant issues about the nature of moral values; (2) that theories of law, in general, are best assessed in terms of separate descriptive and normative issues, corresponding to a fact/value distinction in ethics; and (3) that the debate on Dworkinian rights has assumed a confused and historically superficial contrast with the utilitarian tradition, in ethical theory as well as in philosophy of law. (shrink)

_Philosophy Beside Itself _ was first published in 1986. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The writings of French philosopher Jacques Derrida have been the single most powerful influence on critical theory and practice in the United States over the past decade. But with few exceptions American philosophers have taken little or no interest in Derrida's work, and the task of (...) reception, translation, and commentary has been left to literary critics. As a result, Derrida has appeared as a figure already defined by essentially literary critical activities and interests. Stephen Melville's aim in _Philosophy Beside Itself _ is to insist upon and clarify the distinctions between philosophy and criticism. He argues that until we grasp Derrida's philosophical project as such, we remain fundamentally unable to see his significance for criticism. In terms derived from Stanley Cavell's writings on modernism, Melville develops a case for Derrida as a modernist philosopher, working at once within and against that tradition and discipline. Melville first places Derrida in a Hegelian context, the structure of which he explores by examining the work of Heidegger, Lacan, and Bataille. With this foundation, he is able to reappraise the project of deconstructive criticism as developed in Paul de Man's _Blindness and Insight _and further articulated by other Yale critics. Central to this critique is the ambivalent relationship between deconstructive criticism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Criticism—radical self-criticism—is a central means through which the difficult facts of human community come to recognition, and Melville argues for criticism as an activity intimately bound to the ways in which we do and do not belong in time and in community. Derrida's achievement has been to find a new and necessary way to assert that the task of philosophy is criticism; the task of literary criticism is to assume the burden of that achievement. Stephen Melville is an assistant professor of English at Syracuse University, and Donald Marshall is a professor of English at the University of Iowa. (shrink)

Despite the importance of the interorganizational nature of the marketing research process, very little research has addressed how research organizations differ and how they affect each other in the conduct of ethical marketing research. The purpose of this study is to examine differences among three typical participants in the research process: corporate research departments, marketing research firms, and data subcontractors. These organizations were examined with respect to having and enforcing internal codes of conduct and the awareness and enforcement of (...) external codes of conduct. By exploring these differences, this study should help marketing researchers better understand the relationships among participants in the research process. Understanding these differences is the first step toward controlling the potential for ethical conflict among research participants. (shrink)

One of the finest private collections of Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian art in America is owned by James and Marilynn Alsdorf. This catalogue provides an opportunity for individuals other than scholars and specialists to view the works of art.

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

This paper investigates the determinants of cost-(in)effective giving to public goods. We conduct a pre-registered experiment to elucidate how factors at the institutional and individual levels shape individual contributions and the cost-effectiveness of those contributions in a novel public good game. In particular, we examine the role of consequential uncertainty over the value of public good contributions (institutional level) as well as individual characteristics like risk and ambiguity attitudes, giving type, and demographics (individual level). We find cost-ineffective contributions in all (...) institutions, but total contribution levels and the degree of cost-ineffectiveness are similar across institutions. Meanwhile, cost-effectiveness varies by giving type—which is a novel result that is consistent with hypotheses we generate from theory—but other individual characteristics have little influence on the cost-effectiveness of contributions. Our work has important positive and normative implications for charitable giving and public good provision in the real world, and it is particularly germane to emerging online crowdfunding and patronage platforms that confront users with a multitude of competing opportunities for giving. (shrink)

Industrial wind turbines (IWTs) are being installed at a fast pace globally. Researchers, medical practitioners, and media have reported adverse health effects resulting from living in the environs of IWTs. While there have been some anecdotal reports from technicians and other workers who work in the environs of IWTs, little is known about the occupational health sector. The purpose of this case study is to raise awareness about the potential for adverse health effects occurring among workers. The authors propose (...) that there is a need for research regarding occupational worker exposure relating to IWTs. (shrink)

In October 1984, Bruno Huisman stated with regards to Jean Cavaillès, ‘Let us be honest, or at least realistic: today, one can be a professor of philosophy without ever having read a single line of Cavaillès. Often invoked, sometimes quoted, the oeuvre of Cavaillès is little attended for itself’ (Huisman 1984). As for Albert Lautman, it would seem that the situation is even more extreme. In 1994, the publisher Hermann, under the impetus of Bruno Huisman and George Canguilhem, collected (...) almost the totality of the Jean Cavaillès papers in one volume (Oeuvres complètes de philosophie des sciences (Cavaillès 1994)). But, the Essai sur l’unité des mathématiques et divers écrits (Lautman 1977), published by the Union générale d’Éditions in 1977, had all but disappeared by the early 1980s and yet was never republished! This will remain one of the great indignities of French publishing, for as Jean Petitot rightly affirms: ‘Regarded as too speculative, in spite of his exceptional mathematical scholarship and his close connection with Hilbertian axiomatic structuralism, his mathematical philosophy has, until now, been devoid of any particular attention …. We would like to state clearly from the start, Albert Lautman represents, in our view, without exaggeration, one of the most inspired philosophers of this century’ (Petitot 1987, 79-80). (shrink)

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a popular-science book on cosmology (the study of the origin and evolution of the universe) by British physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who have no prior knowledge of the universe and people who are interested in learning.

Perhaps the most salient feature of Rawls's theory of justice which at once attracts supporters and repels critics is its apparent egalitarian conclusion as to how economic goods are to be distributed. Indeed, many of Rawls's sympathizers may find this result intuitively appealing, and regard it as Rawls's enduring contribution to the topic of economic justice, despite technical deficiencies in Rawls's contractarian, decision-theoretic argument for it which occupy the bulk of the critical literature. Rawls himself, having proposed a “coherence” theory (...) of justification in metaethics, must regard the claim that his distributive criterion “is a strongly egalitarian conception” as independently a part of the overarching moral argument. The alleged egalitarian impact of Rawls's theory is crucial again in normative ethics where Rawls is thought to have developed a major counter-theory to utilitarianism, one of the most popular criticisms of which has been its alleged inadequacy in handling questions of distributive justice. Utilitarians can argue, however, as Brandt recently has, that the diminishing marginal utility of money, along with ignorance of income-welfare curves, would require a utility-maximizing distribution to be substantially egalitarian. The challenge is therefore for Rawls to show that his theory yields an ethically preferable degree of equality. (shrink)

Theories of economic justice are characteristically based on abstract ethical concerns often unrelated to practical distributive results. Two decades ago, Rawls's theory of justice began as a reaction against the alleged ‘sacrifices’ condoned by utilitarian theory. One variant of this objection is that utilitarianism permits gross inequalities, severe deprivations of individual liberty, or even the enslavement of society's least well-off individuals. There are, however, more subtle forms of the objection. In Rawls, it is often waged without any claim that utilitarianismdoesin (...) fact imply such gross deprivations in actual realworld circumstances. A second variant hinges, rather, on the milder claim that utilitarianismcouldcondone such deprivations or sacrifices in somepossibleworld—the objection being that utilitarianism improperly makes justice contingent, or uncertain, in this way. A third, still more abstract, variant would be that utilitarianism is flawed—not because of any practical distributive result, actual or hypothetical, but intheory—due to the way it treats individuals' interests, or the ‘concept of persons’ it presupposes. (shrink)

Though modern non-cognitivists in ethics characteristically believe that values are irreducible to facts, they nevertheless believe that values are determined by facts, viz., those specified in functionalist, explanatory theories of the evolutionary origin of morality. The present paper probes the consistency of this position. The conventionalist theories of Hume and Harman are examined, and are seen not to establish a tight determinative reduction of values to facts. This result is illustrated by reference to recent theories of the sociobiological mechanisms involved (...) in moral evolution. Though explanatory theories have linguistic implications,exaggerated in Harman's linguistic form of social relativism, there is also failure to establish the semantic reductionism which non-cognitivists reject under the rubric of ethical naturalism. It is concluded that explanatory forms of naturalism, the best of which is a functionalist-utilitarian account, are compatible with the fact/value distinction. (shrink)

A political history exploring the concept of demos in the French government during the period of 1800 to 1850. In his previous book, Demos Assembled, historian Stephen W. Sawyer offered a transatlantic account of the birth and transformation of the modern democratic state. In Demos Rising, he presents readers of political history with a prequel whose ambitious claim is that a genuine demos became possible in France only with the development of government regulation and administration. Focusing on democracy as (...) a form of administration rather than as a form of sovereignty allows Sawyer to explore urban planning, work and private enterprise, health administration, and much more, as cornerstones of a self-governing society of equals. Focusing on the period between 1800 and 1850, Sawyer examines a set of thinkers who debated at length over the material problems of everyday life, sparking calls for political action and social reform in the face of conflict wrought by issues like deforestation, urbanization, health crises, labor relations, industrial capitalism, religious tensions, and imperial expansion. The solutions to these problems, Sawyer argues, were sought and sometimes found, not through elections, as one might assume, but rather through the "care for all" promised by modern administrative power, regulatory intervention, and social welfare programs. By studying this profound transformation in governance, the book wagers, we can better understand the origin and meaning of democracy when events in our own time have thrown the concept into doubt. (shrink)

Gibbard''s theory of rationality is evolutionary in terms of its result as well as its underpinning argument. The result is that judgments about what is rational are analyzed as being similar to judgments of morality — in view of what Darwin suggests concerning the latter. According to the Darwinian theory, moral judgments are based on sentiments which evolve to promote the survival and welfare of human societies. On Gibbard''s theory, rationality judgments should be similarly regarded as expressing emotional attachments to (...) behavioral norms which originate and function to coordinate social interaction. Consequently, Gibbard''s theory of rationality might be used to illuminate Darwin''s theory of morality, and vice versa. Additionally, as argued in the present essay, both can be further elaborated, and defended, by developing related themes in philosophical ethics: viz., connected with Hume and 20th-century emotivists. The main problem is that this general Darwinian approach faces widespread opposition nowadays, not only in ethics but in philosophy of science. The purpose of this essay is to analyze Gibbard''s theory, critically and constructively, with emphasis on the pertinent commonalities in Darwin, Hume and the emotivists, while also critically addressing their common enemies. The pervasive methodological orientation is to relate this analysis to (philosophy of) science in general, and biological science in particular. (shrink)

This book reads Ernest Becker both as a prophet of modernity and as a sensitive observer of its decline. Situated within the disciplinary approach of 'theology of culture,' the book discerns in dialogue with Becker the contours of modern vision in its depth-dimension. Taking note of Becker's works as a whole, it identifies the two master images of human existence—homo poeta and homo heroica—which articulate this dimension, situating them in scholarly debate and comparing and relating them to the contemporary situation.

Those involved in end-of-life decision making must take into account both legal and ethical issues. This book starts with a critical reflection of ethical principles including ideas such as moral status, the value of life, acts and omissions, harm, autonomy, dignity and paternalism. It then explores the practical difficulties of regulating end-of-life decisions, focusing on patients, healthcare professionals, the wider community and issues surrounding 'slippery slope' arguments. By evaluating the available empirical evidence, the author identifies preferred ways to regulate decisions (...) and minimise abuses at the end of life, and outlines an ethical theory which can provide practical guidance for those engaged in end-of-life decisions"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)