Professionals, it is said, have no use for simple lists of virtues and vices. The complexities and constraints of professional roles create peculiar moral demands on the people who occupy them, and traits that are vices in ordinary life are praised as virtues in the context of professional roles. Should this disturb us, or is it naive to presume that things should be otherwise? Taking medical and legal practice as key examples, Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking develop a rigorous (...) articulation and defence of virtue ethics, contrasting it with other types of character-based ethical theories and showing that it offers a promising new approach to the ethics of professional roles. They provide insights into the central notions of professional detachment, professional integrity, and moral character in professional life, and demonstrate how a virtue-based approach can help us better understand what ethical professional-client relationships would be like. (shrink)

Building on recent developments in radical democratic theory, in this article we articulate and explore a fresh perspective for theorists and activists of radical democracy: a ‘living critique of domination’. Characterized by a two-fold analytical effort, a ‘living critique of domination’ calls for a radical critique of contemporary forms of power and control coupled with a reappraisal of emancipatory political experiences created by the political action of the Many. We demonstrate that this project responds to the theoretical and practical challenges (...) faced by a politics of emancipation today. Our article offers a first articulation of this living critique through a discussion of three recent political experiences, namely, the 2016 French uprising, Nuit Debout, as well as the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. (shrink)

Selective scientific realists disagree on which theoretical posits should be regarded as essential to the empirical success of a scientific theory. A satisfactory account of essentialness will show that the (approximate) truth of the selected posits adequately explains the success of the theory. Therefore, (a) the essential elements must be discernible prospectively; (b) there cannot be a priori criteria regarding which type of posit is essential; and (c) the overall success of a theory, or ‘cluster’ of propositions, not only individual (...) derivations, should be explicable. Given these desiderata, I propose a “unification criterion” for identifying essential elements. (shrink)

Formal arguments have proven that avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion is impossible without rejecting one or more highly plausible population principles. To many, such proofs establish not only a deep challenge for axiology, but also pose an important practical problem of how policymaking can confidently proceed without resolving any of the central questions of population ethics. Here we offer deflationary responses: first to the practical challenge, and then to the more fundamental challenge for axiology. Regarding the practical challenge, we provide an (...) overview of recent literature that explores the implications for public policy of the Repugnant Conclusion and related puzzles within population ethics, and shows that there is more commonality in the implications of different population axiologies than is generally recognized. The upshot is that uncertainty about population ethics presents no important problem for policymaking, and the importance of population ethics to policymaking has been overstated. We then turn to more fundamental issues about axiology, and describe a new series of formal proofs that undermine the idea that any plausible axiology could avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, including those that are assumed to avoid it in the literature. The philosophical upshot is that the Repugnant Conclusion cannot plausibly be avoided, and so it is a mistake to assume as a constraint on a plausible axiology that it must be avoided, as is assumed by most of the literature in population ethics, including by all of the fundamental impossibility theorems. (shrink)

Countering claims of its impossibility, this paper argues for economic theology as an intelligible figure of contemporary political rationality and organization, and a distinctive analytical strategy in relation to forms of liberal and neoliberal governmentality and the contemporary management of social life. As an analytical strategy, it has two arms: an institutional one, drawing upon Michel Foucault’s work on the pastorate; and a conceptual one, following from Giorgio Agamben on oikonomia, order and providence. Economic theology was the arcana of 20th-century (...) debates on both political theology and governmentality and a condition for their emergence. It formed the horizon of Carl Schmitt’s intervention of a political theology in response to Max Weber, and, as the pastorate, it was for Foucault the historical background of the emergence of the liberal arts of government. While appearing as a new paradigm, it thus has a measure of priority over our more established ones. Furthermore, to the extent that economic theology comes to occupy the place of political rationality in contemporary liberal-democratic societies, the political becomes less a rational public sphere and more a form of public liturgy. (shrink)

Kant emphasizes that moral philosophy must be divided into two parts, a metaphysics of morals, and an empirical application to individuals, which Kant calls 'moral anthropology'. But Kant gives humanity (die Menschheit) a prominent role even in the purely rational part of ethics – for example, one formulation of the categorical imperative is a demand to treat humanity as an end in itself. This paper argues that the only concepts of humanity suited to play such a role are the rational (...) idea of humanity, and the rational ideal derived from this idea, which Kant discusses in Critique of Practical Reason and other texts. (shrink)

AbstractBoardroom backscratching, or cronyism, is an unethical practice where CEOs conspire with directors to receive remuneration beyond performance- and market-related factors. Premised on the theory of planned behavior, this study investigates whether CEO generalist experience magnifies the likelihood of boardroom backscratching. Using 9482 firm-year observations spanning 1999–2018, our analysis shows that firms with greater CEO generalist managerial experience are more likely to engage in boardroom backscratching, via both cash- and equity-based compensation. We provide further evidence that backscratching firms with CEOs (...) that possess greater generalist experience tend to overinvest, particularly via non-capital expenditure, as a channel for empire building and private rent extraction. We also find that a higher portion of female independent directors sitting on the board and the compensation committee mitigates the positive relationship between CEO generalist managerial experience and boardroom backscratching, which we attribute to greater ethicality of, and increased monitoring exercised by, female independent directors. (shrink)

The author records her experiences trying to commune with nature in an effort to make sense of the deaths in quick succession of loved ones, in a profound ...

Computationalism holds that our grasp of notions like ‘computable function’ can be used to account for our putative ability to refer to the standard model of arithmetic. Tennenbaum's Theorem has been repeatedly invoked in service of this claim. I will argue that not only do the relevant class of arguments fail, but that the result itself is most naturally understood as having the opposite of a reference-fixing effect — i.e., rather than securing the determinacy of number-theoretic reference, Tennenbaum's Theorem points (...) towards a sense in which portions of our computational vocabulary should be regarded as model-relative. (shrink)

This study presents scientific theories about the female body in Greece of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. It demonstrates the influence of cultural preconceptions on such theories, and of scientific theories on cultural attitudes.

One formulation of the Categorical Imperative tells us to treat humanity as an end in itself. It has become common to think that ‘humanity’ (die Menschheit) here refers to some minimal power of rationality that is necessarily possessed by any rational agent, but I argue that this common reading is misguided. Instead, ‘humanity’ refers to a good will, the will of a being who is committed to moral principles. This good will reading of ‘humanity’ is not only suggested by passages (...) in which Kant specifically discusses humanity, but also is more consistent with the main ideas of Kant's ethics. (shrink)

Although training in sport is necessary to reach Olympic status, a conditioned body is not the only outcome. Athletes also learn how to be Olympians. This learning involves taking on certain ways of acting, thinking and valuing. Such learning has implications beyond competition, as athletes eventually retire from elite sport and devote their time to other activities. This paper examines processes of learning and transition using the case of Amelia, a former Olympic synchronised swimmer. Through two in-depth interviews, empirical material (...) was generated which focused on the learning that took place during this athlete’s career and after, during her transition to paid employment. A cultural view of learning was used as the theoretical frame to understand the athlete’s experiences. Our reading suggests that the athlete learned in various ways to be productive. Some of these ways of being were useful after retirement; others were less compatible. In fact, Amelia used a two-year period after retirement to reconstruct herself. Key to her eventual successful transition was to distance herself from the sport and to critically reflect upon her sporting experiences. We thus recommend that those involved with high-performance athletes foster a more balanced perspective that acknowledges and promotes ways of being beyond athletic involvement. (shrink)

This conceptual paper presents a radical humanist framing of the relationship between human needs and social welfare. It draws and develops its conceptualisation of radical humanism from the early philosophical writings of Marx in which he identified the radical constitutive needs of the human species. It seeks to translate the definitive characteristics of humanity's ‘species being’ – namely consciousness, ‘work’, sociality and historical development – into overarching claims or social rights to autonomous thinking, creative activity, mutual caring and human progress. (...) It argues for a ‘needs-first ethos’ from within which critically to evaluate welfare policy and practice, and through which to conceptualise approaches that humanise rather than dehumanise. (shrink)

The claim that everyone ought to be treated with respect is a familiar and widely accepted prescription in recent moral philosophy, often expressed as a principle of ‘respect for persons.’ I argue that this principle need not be justified by a claim that every person possesses some feature – dignity, autonomy, value, or the like – that makes her worthy of respect. There is abundant conceptual space within many approaches to moral philosophy, including a Kantian approach, to affirm a duty (...) of respect for all persons, while denying that the duty is justified by the respect-worthiness of every person. (shrink)

Corporate political action committees (PACs) play a prominent role in the political strategies of U.S. organizations, and the ability of firms to influence political outcomes is highly controversial. To the extent that PACs enable groups of firms to pursue corporate agendas at the expense of the social good, they promote socially suboptimal outcomes. This study examines the impact of corporate PACs on entry restriction in manufacturing industries and finds a negative relationship between corporate PAC spending and the entry of new (...) firms. Results suggest that PACs are used to shape industry structure to the economic benefit of incumbents. (shrink)

This collection of essays provides a reassessment of the question of sexual difference, taking into account important shifts in feminist thought, post-humanist theories, and queer studies. The contributors offer new and refreshing insights into the complex question of sexual difference from a post-feminist perspective, and how it is reformulated in various related areas of study, such as ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, biology, technology, and mass-media.

In this essay collection, leading physicists, philosophers, and historians attempt to fill the empty theoretical ground in the foundations of information and address the related question of the limits to our knowledge of the world. Over recent decades, our practical approach to information and its exploitation has radically outpaced our theoretical understanding - to such a degree that reflection on the foundations may seem futile. But it is exactly fields such as quantum information, which are shifting the boundaries of the (...) physically possible, that make a foundational understanding of information increasingly important. One of the recurring themes of the book is the claim by Eddington and Wheeler that information involves interaction and putting agents or observers centre stage. Thus, physical reality, in their view, is shaped by the questions we choose to put to it and is built up from the information residing at its core. This is the root of Wheeler's famous phrase "it from bit." After reading the stimulating essays collected in this volume, readers will be in a good position to decide whether they agree with this view. (shrink)

In Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories, historians, sociologists, neuroscientists, lawyers, cultural critics, and literary and media scholars come together to offer an interconnected and comparative collection for understanding how contemporary far-right, neo-fascist, Alt-Right, Identitarian, and New Right movements have proposed revisions and counter-narratives to accepted understandings of history, fact and narrative. The innovative essays found here bring forward urgent questions to diverse public, academic, and politically-minded audiences interested in how historical understandings of race, gender, class, nationalism, religion, (...) law, technology and the sciences have been distorted by these far-right movements. If scholars of the last twenty years, like Francis Fukuyama, believed that neoliberalism marked an "end of history," this volume shows how the far right is effectively threatening democracy and its institutions through the dissemination of alt-facts and histories. (shrink)

Low-carbon innovation is usually depicted as an exemplar of pursuit of the common good, in both mainstream policy discussion and the emerging orthodoxy of transition studies. Yet it may emerge as a key means of intensifying inequality. We analyse low-carbon innovation as a social and political process through the prism of differential risk-classes, focusing on the pivotal global case of emergence of the Chinese middle-class in seaboard megacities, especially regarding the profound challenges of urban e-mobility transition. This approach shows emergence (...) of this still-forming sociopolitical grouping as tightly and complementarily coupled with the assembling of innovations that meaningfully tackle global risks, such as climate change, while also intensifying existing inequalities. Misrecognition of the duality of low-carbon innovations as both moral technologies and as relatively expensive consumer products has the potentiality to be a key mechanism of this process, thereby serving to reproduce, constitute and legitimize inequalities in novel and unexpected ways. (shrink)