According to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, only when lower or basic needs are satisfied will an individual be able to concentrate on higher needs. The motivation for the doing of original and creative philosophizing, theorizing in sciences and original work in disciplines or socio-cultural practices are some of the highest 'needs', values and attitudes. What are the values, attitudes and beliefs that groups of individuals subscribe to and employ to constitute their selves and realities? These things(that individuals experience as it (...) is their nature, their selves, their motivations, values and attitudes) are determined by genotypes, phenotypes, personality-types and other factors. (shrink)

Current distance education practices can be susceptible to the types of content-heavy, top-down instruction often seen in physical classrooms. These practices are similar to the activities of corporations, which use recommendation systems and game theory to mold the public sphere and fragment it. We propose that free knowledge creation through open, multichannel communication needs to be used in distance education to permit both individual and collective agency for students to process knowledge and develop higher order reflectivity. Such frameworks would help (...) students of distance education and instructors to use critical thinking to discuss concepts as equal stakeholders and develop varied ideological outcomes that could contribute to creating social change. This conceptual paper places current distance education practices within Habermasian theory, discusses ways in which the Internet and its educative potential has come to be viewed thus far, and suggests platforms that could open distance learning to new possibilities. (shrink)

I show that the act-type theories of Soames and Hanks entail that every sentence with alternative analyses (including every atomic sentence with a polyadic predicate) is ambiguous, many of them massively so. I assume that act types directed toward distinct objects are themselves distinct, plus some standard semantic axioms, and infer that act-type theorists are committed to saying that ‘Mary loves John’ expresses both the act type of predicating [loving John] of Mary and that of predicating [being loved by (...) Mary] of John. Since the two properties are distinct, so are the act types. Hence, the sentence expresses two propositions. I also discuss a non-standard “pluralist” act-type theory, as well as some retreat positions, which all come with considerable problems. Finally, I extrapolate to a general constraint on theories of structured propositions, and find that Jeffrey King’s theory has the same unacceptable consequence as the act-type theory. (shrink)

This article answers the question raised by the special issue of this journal in a positive way: managerial practices do need philosophy. In particular, it argues for a more concrete claim: managerial practices have needed philosophy in the past to develop some important intellectual tools, and today they still need to be open to the continuous conceptual and methodological innovations introduced by competing philosophical research programmes, because loyalty to just one favourite philosophical paradigm can hinder the ability of managerial practices (...) to express their full potential, whereas openness to philosophical innovation can help managers keep their conceptual tools up to their tasks. The authors argue for this thesis in concreto: they discuss a specific branch of managerial practice—marketing—and illustrate that a preeminent form thereof, i.e. Experiential Marketing, has needed philosophy, and still needs it nowadays, in order to achieve its goals and overcome certain problems. They also point out that Experiential Marketing needs to renew and integrate some of its philosophical assumptions and conceptual tools in the light of innovations brought about by a recent philosophical turn. In particular, the authors argue that philosophy has provided essential conceptual tools for the articulation of the notions of experience and authenticity used in Experiential Marketing; they claim that the excessive reliance of Experiential Marketing upon a problematic and somewhat outdated ontology produces paradoxes with important repercussions upon managerial practice; and they show that those problems can be overcome by integrating and partially renewing its assumptions and conceptual tools, in the light of a fresher philosophical framework. Shortcomings and solutions are discussed with reference to a specific case study: Venice as an experientially rewarding and authentic tourist destination during the Covid19 crisis, but also as a World Heritage property whose management entails difficult choices. The fruitfulness of the paradigm revision is shown also by integrating the conceptual toolkit of Experiential Marketing with three relatively new notions, deriving from a new realist framework: independence, attrition and perception. (shrink)

Work on representing women's voices in ethics has produced a vision of moral understanding profoundly subversive of the traditional philosophical conception of moral knowledge. 1 explicate this alternative moral “epistemology,” identify how it challenges the prevailing view, and indicate some of its resources for a liberatory feminist critique of philosophical ethics.

: "In this paper we compare computerized environments in which students complete proof construction exercises in formal logic. Afterbeing given a pretest for logical aptitude, three matched groups were presented identical course material on logic for approximately five weeks by a computer. During the treatment, all students were required to complete several hundred proof construction exercises. The three groups did the exercises and the midterm in different environments. The group with a more sophisticated interface performed better on the midterm. Nearly (...) all the difference in performance showed up in the harder problems. In a follow up experiment in which flexible strategic problem solving help was added to the environment, performance improved slightly, but the data are inconclusive.". (shrink)

The relatively new practice of continuous sedation at the end of life (CS) is increasingly being debated in the clinical and ethical literature. This practice received much attention when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling noted that the availability of CS made legalization of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) unnecessary, as CS could alleviate even the most severe suffering. This view has been widely adopted. In this article, we perform an in-depth analysis of four versions of this ?argument of preferable alternative.? Our (...) goal is to determine the extent to which CS can be considered to be an alternative to PAS and to identify the grounds, if any, on which CS may be ethically preferable to PAS. (shrink)

This article discusses the political economy of AI capitalism. It considers AI as a General Purpose Technology and argues we need to investigate the power concentration of Big Tech. AI capitalism is characterised by the commodification of data, data extraction and a concentration in hiring of AI talent and compute capacity. This is behind Big Tech’s unstoppable drive for growth, which leads to monopolisation and enclosure under the winner takes all principle. If we consider AI as a GPT—technologies that alter (...) society’s economic and social structures—we need to come up with alternatives in terms of ownership and governance. The commons is proposed as an alternative for thinking about how to organise AI development and how to distribute the value that can be derived from it. Using the commons framework is also a way of giving society a more prominent role in the debate about what we expect from AI and how we should approach it. (shrink)

According to some, free will requires alternative possibilities. But not any old alternative possibility will do. Sometimes, being able to bring about an alternative does not bestow any control on an agent. In order to bestow control, and so be directly relevant qua alternative to grounding the agent's moral responsibility, alternatives need to be robust. Here, I investigate the nature of robust alternatives. I argue that Derk Pereboom's latest robustness criterion is too strong, and I suggest (...) a different criterion based on the idea that what agents need to be able to do is keep open the possibility of securing their blamelessness, rather than needing to directly ensure their own blamelessness at the time of decision. (shrink)

In this paper we address the issue of how to think about immunity. Many immunological writings suggest a straightforward option: the view that the immune system is primarily a system of defense, which naturally invites the talk of strong immunity and strong immune response. Despite their undisputable positive role in immunology, such metaphors can also pose a risk of establishing a narrow perspective, omitting from consideration phenomena that do not neatly fit those powerful metaphors. Building on this analysis, we argue (...) two things. First, we argue that the immune system is involved not only in defense. Second, by disentangling various possible meanings of ‘strength’ and ‘weakness’ in immunology, we also argue that such a construal of immunity generally contributes to the distortion of the overall picture of what the immune system is, what it does, and why it sometimes fails. Instead, we propose to understand the nature of the immune system in terms of contextuality, regulation, and trade-offs. We suggest that our approach provides lessons for a general understanding of the organizing principles of the immune system in health and disease. For all this to work, we discuss a wide range of immunological phenomena. (shrink)

Within the moral/social order maintained and reproduced by biomedical ethics (i.e., the “peaceable community”), suffering is a senseless accident with no value. Insofar as suffering compromises the fundamental pillar of this order, namely, autonomy, it threatens the existence of the “peaceable community”. Consequently, biomedical ethics is only able to offer those who suffer one moral or practical response: that of elimination, embodied most vividly in the increasingly approved practice of assisted-suicide. Another moral/ social order, however, the “peaceable Kingdom” or the (...) “Body of Christ”, provides an alternative understanding of the meaning, purpose, and significance of suffering, through the Roman Catholic sacrament of anointing of the sick. Recognizing the power of sickness and suffering to “dis-inscribe” bodies of their normative self-understandings, the Church responds with a set of liturgical practices which intend to respond to the dynamics of suffering, re-inscribe these bodies, and assist persons in fulfilling the vocation of “participating in Christ's suffering for the salvation of the world”. (shrink)

Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) have famously served as counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP). The fine-grained version of the flicker defense has become one of the most popular responses to FSCs. Proponents of this defense argue that there is an alternative available to all agents in FSCs such that the cases do not show that PAP is false. Specifically, the agents could have done otherwise than decide on their own, and this available alternative is robust enough (...) to ground moral responsibility. In this paper, I argue that, when relying on definitions of ‘on one’s own’ within the literature on FSCs, a case can be constructed in which the agent could not have done otherwise than make a decision on his own. Insofar as this new case is successful, it will be able to avoid arguments about robustness while showing that moral responsibility does not require alternative possibilities of the type argued for by proponents of the fine-grained version of the flicker defense. (shrink)

This is an important work, which demands that we sit up and take notice of the ever-increasing effects of science on the way we live our lives. In this thrilling and compelling exploration of the human condition, Brian Appleyard exposes the central role of science in shaping our lives and our beliefs, tracing the history of science from Copernicus, Newton, and Descartes to Einstein, Feynman, and Hawking. He argues that the birth of environmentalism and the diminished importance of religion and (...) philosophy in today’s society are direct results of science’s 400 year assault on our view of ourselves and the universe. (shrink)

This study employs a pretest-posttest experimental design to extend recent research pertaining to the effects of teaching business ethics material. Results on a variety of perceptual and attitudinal measures are compared across three groups of students — one which discussed the ethicality of brief business situations (the business scenario discussion approach), one which was given a more philosophically oriented lecture (the philosophical lecture approach), and a third group which received no specific lecture or discussion pertaining to business ethics. Results showed (...) some significant differences across the three groups and demonstrated that for a single lecture, the method used to teach ethics can differentially impact ethical attitudes and perceptions. Various demographic and background variables did not moderate the relationship between the teaching method and the dependent variables, but the sex of the student was strongly associated with the ethical attitude and perception measures. (shrink)

The physician who upholds the Hippocratic oath is supposed to be loyal to his or her patients. This requires choosing only the therapy that the physician believes is best for the patient. However, knowing what is best requires randomized clinical trials. Thus, clinicians must be willing to recruit their patients to be assigned at random to one of two therapies in order to determine which is best based on the highest standards of pharmacological science.

: Recent controversial decisions to terminate several large clinical trials have called attention to the need for developing a sound ethical framework to determine when trials should be stopped in light of emerging efficacy data. Currently, the fundamental rationale for stopping trials early is based on the principle that equipoise has been disturbed. We present an analysis of the ethical and practical problems with the "equipoise disturbed" position and describe an alternative ethical framework based on the principle of nonexploitation. (...) This framework acknowledges the need for balancing the dual ethical obligations of clinical research, the protection of human subjects and the generation of new medical knowledge. Based on this framework, we put forward a proposal to make early stopping guidelines more stringent under specified conditions. The temporary withholding of apparent benefits in certain circumstances is justified by achieving a fair contract with the research participants, one that protects them from undue harm and exploitation while reducing the many uncertainties surrounding new investigational treatments that arise when trials are stopped prematurely. (shrink)

This is the third in a series of articles that address what is known or knowledgeably held about the consciousness of fully commissurotomized people. This installment discusses three alternative conceptions with which the present author does not agree. They are Eccles's dualist-interactionist conception, Gillett's linguistic conception, and Rey's eliminative conception. With regard to the first two of these, issues are raised with the intention of helping the respective proponent to improve his conception. In the case of the third, it (...) is urged that the view not be promoted, for moral reasons, unless very strong evidence sometimes becomes available in its favor. (shrink)

Are cures for cancer being suppressed by the mainstream medical profession to protect corporate profits? Is what we are being told about global warming true, or is there a hidden agenda? How many alternative scientific theories and 'fringe' practitioners have been suppressed by the power elite to maintain their stranglehold on what, and what not, the American public is allowed to know?In Suppressed Science: Radiation, Global Warming, Alzheimer's, Grizzly Bears, Crop Circles and More, chemical engineer, amateur climatologist, author, AMERICAN (...) FREE PRESS columnist, USAF major (Retired) and, yes, rocket scientist Jack Phillips delves into these questions and many more as he uncovers the facts behind the facade of lies that fronts for modern science. (shrink)

The paper is a contribution to intuitionistic reverse mathematics. We introduce a formal system called Basic Intuitionistic Mathematics BIM, and then search for statements that are, over BIM, equivalent to Brouwer’s Fan Theorem or to its positive denial, Kleene’s Alternative to the Fan Theorem. The Fan Theorem is true under the intended intuitionistic interpretation and Kleene’s Alternative is true in the model of BIM consisting of the Turing-computable functions. The task of finding equivalents of Kleene’s Alternative is, (...) intuitionistically, a nontrivial extension of the task of finding equivalents of the Fan Theorem, although there is a certain symmetry in the arguments that we shall try to make transparent. We introduce closed-and-separable subsets of Baire space $${\mathcal{N}}$$ and of the set $${\mathcal{R}}$$ of the real numbers. Such sets may be compact and also positively noncompact. The Fan Theorem is the statement that Cantor space $${\mathcal{C}}$$, or, equivalently, the unit interval [0, 1], is compact and Kleene’s Alternative is the statement that $${\mathcal{C}}$$, or, equivalently, [0, 1], is positively noncompact. The class of the compact closed-and-separable sets and also the class of the closed-and-separable sets that are positively noncompact are characterized in many different ways and a host of equivalents of both the Fan Theorem and Kleene’s Alternative is found. (shrink)

It is with sincere appreciation that I commend this edited collection to readers of the AJTP. The collection meets the task of promoting lively discussion that addresses the interface between theology and philosophy, especially as shaped by empiricist, naturalist, process, and pragmatist traditions. As the most recent volume in the series Toward Ecological Civilization, it delivers papers from the Tenth International Whitehead Conference and Ninth International Forum on Ecological Civilization, held in Claremont, California, June 2015, thereby delivering on a second (...) focus for the AJTP: the development of liberal religious thought in America.The authors gathered in this collection take seriously the earnest and... (shrink)

'Elegant Simplicity' teaches the reader to live with less, to respect others, to control one's ego and to try to preserve the precious resources on our planet. We have complicated our lives with possessions, riches and clutter. By demanding less, we should be ready to give more, learn to love with our souls and live without pride.

This book analyses contemporary critiques of political economy and highlights the challenges to rethinking contemporary discourses and practices. It carries out a multi-pronged critical and transformative dialogue involving political economy, moral economy, moral sociology, moral anthropology, and spiritual ecology. The authors discuss diverse themes such as the relationship between consciousness and society, the dialogue between Karl Marx and Carl Gustav Jung, a critical sociology of morality and property relations, moral and political economy of the Indigenous peoples and a critique of (...) modern civilization, economic evaluation, as well as alternative traditions of thinking in Marx, Thoreau, Gandhi, J.C. Kumarappa, Rammanohar Lohia, B.R. Ambedkar and Jayaprakash Narain. A unique transdisciplinary text, the book brings together authors and approaches from both the Global North and South. It will be indispensable to students, research scholars and teachers of humanities and social sciences in such fields as economics, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies and development studies. (shrink)

A rupture has occurred–something is no longer quite as it was. Our current environmental crisis, climate catastrophe,has left us floundering without words for after three decades of popular ecological writing and decades more of scientificstudies nothing has yet been done to avert our path from its terminal arc. It is a weird occurrence for our words seeminsufficient, our categories incapacitated, and our understanding too flawed to comprehend it. Yet, it is a disasterwhich has already occurred–it is a disaster which we (...) live in the midst of and yet still lack the language with which tospeak. The greatest danger of such an epoch, according to Blanchot, is that, out of convenience, we use an outdatedand unsuitable language to attempt reconciliation. Rather than attempting to apply logical and nomical systems andconcepts to a catastrophe, which is catastrophic precisely because it obsolesces such ways of thinking, a new mode ofthought, of language, is required if climate catastrophe is to be properly understood and addressed. Utilizing the textsof Roland Barthes, Karen Barad, Maurice Blanchot and Timothy Morton, as well as the weird fiction of H.P.Lovecraft, I intend to demonstrate not only the pitfalls of our current agrilogistical approach to climate catastrophe,but also a potential eco-deconstructive alternative that would allow significant change to occur. (shrink)

In this essay I propose an alternative theoretical framework for explicating human enhancement. The framework is based on the concepts of reciprocity, which I consider a fundamental aspect of human presence, and of mediation, which I consider a fundamental aspect of the relation between human beings and science and technology. I argue that enhancement is given by the way in which technological and scientific mediation alters the structure of the network of reciprocity characterising human presence. As a matter of (...) fact, technological mediation may turn the reciprocity of presence into a unilateral relation, which prevents any form of response. The lack of responsibility, here understood as the possibility to respond back, is determinant for the generation of a situation of power and for eliciting moral disengagement. The framework will be applied and discussed with reference to robotics technologies. (shrink)

Two posttranslational lipid modifications present on all Hedgehog (Hh) morphogens—an N‐terminal palmitate and a C‐terminal cholesterol—are established and essential regulators of Hh biofunction. Yet, for several decades, the question of exactly how both lipids contribute to Hh signaling remained obscure. Recently, cryogenic electron microscopy revealed different modes by which one or both lipids may contribute directly to Hh binding and signaling to its receptor Patched1 (Ptc). Some of these modes demand that the established release factor Dispatched1 (Disp) extracts dual‐lipidated Hh (...) from the cell surface, and that another known upstream signaling modulator called Scube2 chaperones the dual‐lipidated morphogen to Ptc. By mechanistically and biochemically aligning this concept with established in vivo and recent in vitro findings, this reflection identifies remaining questions in lipidated Hh transport and evaluates additional mechanisms of Disp‐ and Scube2‐regulated release of a second bioactive Hh fraction that has one or both lipids removed. (shrink)

Habermas’s argument from human nature, which speaks in favour of holding back the use of human germline editing for purposes of enhancement, has lately received criticism anew. Prominent are objections to its supposedly genetic essentialist and determinist framework, which underestimates social impacts on human development. I argue that this criticism originates from an instrumentalist reading of Habermas’s argument, which wrongly focuses on empirical conditions and means-ends-relations. Drawing on Habermas’s distinction of a threefold use of practical reason, I show how an (...) alternative—the ethical—reading avoids essentialist and determinist objections by addressing an existential level of sense making. I present three reasons that speak in favour of the ethical reading and I demonstrate how it incorporates social aspects of character formation. Habermas’s account therefore offers exactly what the critics claim is missing. The paper concludes with a conceptual challenge that the ethical reading has to face within Habermas’s overall approach to genetic engineering. (shrink)

There has long been acceptance within healthcare that one of the roles that nurses fulfil is to do with patient advocacy. This has historically been positioned as part of the philosophical and inhe...

In a letter to his friend Drury, Wittgenstein claims to have been working on the same problems that Plato was working on in the Theaetetus. In this paper I try to say what that problem might have been. In the alternative reading of the dialogue that I construct here, attention is drawn to Socrates' frequent appeal in the course of discussion to the ordinary ways of speaking that he, and Theaetetus, and everyone else in Athens at the time engaged (...) in. The more abstruse theories of Heraclitus and Protagoras which Socrates and Theaetetus are discussing are found to do violence to these ordinary ways of talking, and found seriously wanting as a result. A case is made that the conventions and presuppositions of ordinary conversational speech are inherently normative, and constitute a valid standard against which philosophical theories may be measured. Lines of affinity are drawn between these claims advanced by Plato and the recent work of contemporary neo-pragmatists, and Robert Brandom's work in particular. (shrink)

There is a growing commitment by different parts of the alternative food movement (AFM) to improve labor conditions for conventional food chain workers, and to develop economically fair alternatives, albeit under a range of conditions that structure mobilization. This has direct implications for the process of intra-movement building and therefore the degree to which the movement ameliorates economic inequality at the point of food labor. This article asks what accounts for the variation in AFM labor commitments across different contexts. (...) It then appraises a range of activist perspectives, practices, and organizational approaches. The answer emerges through a comparative analysis of three California social movement organizations enmeshed in the particularities of local contentious food politics. The cases include a labor union representing grocery store and meatpacking/food processing workers, a food justice organization working to create green jobs and independent funding models, and an organic urban farming and educational organization. Commitment to fair labor standards varies due to differences in organizational capacity, the degree of dedication to ending economic inequality in local activist culture, and the openness of local political and economic institutions to working class struggles. The article concludes with a discussion of how these findings inform our understanding of the process of cooperation and division in the AFM, particularly regarding the complexities and contradictions of using food labor to combat economic inequality. Movement building in the midst of varying institutional, organizational, and cultural contexts reinforces the value of a reflexive approach to this imperfect politics of process. (shrink)

Midwives and nurses play a critical role in safeguarding the lives of women in resource-constrained African countries. Working within the context of scarce resources may undermine their moral agency and hinder their ability to care. The purpose of this paper is to understand the influence of resource scarcity on midwifery and nursing care and practice. A critical ethnography was conducted in the obstetric department of three tertiary-level facilities in Ghana. Purposive sampling was used to recruit 30 midwives and nurses and (...) semistructured interviews, field notes and documentary materials were used to generate in-depth understanding. Ethical approval was granted from Canada and Ghana and written, and ongoing informed consent was obtained from the participants. Five conceptual themes depicting the impact of scarce resources on midwifery and nursing care were discovered: compromised care, constrained care, dehumanized care, missed care and disengaged care. Improving the maternal health of women and averting avoidable maternal morbidity and mortality require governments and institutions to invest in health infrastructure that will support the delivery of ethical and safe midwifery care for women in their most vulnerable period. (shrink)