Contextualists such as Cohen and DeRose claim that the truth conditions of knowledge attributions vary contextually, in particular that the strength of epistemic position required for one to be truly ascribed knowledge depends on features of the attributor's context. Contextualists support their view by appeal to our intuitions about when it's correct (or incorrect) to ascribe knowledge. Someone might argue that some of these intuitions merely reflect when it is conversationally appropriate to ascribe knowledge, not when knowledge is truly ascribed, (...) and so try to accommodate these intuitions even on an invariantist view. DeRose (Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, 1998; Philosophical Review, 2002) argues that any such 'warranted assertibility manoeuvre', or 'WAM', against contextualism is unlikely to succeed. Here, I argue that his objections to a WAM against contextualism are not persuasive and offer a pragmatic account of the data about ascriptions of knowledge. (shrink)

While he was in the employ of the Elector of Mainz, between 1668 and 1671, Leibniz produced a series of important studies in natural law. One of these, dated between 1670 and 1671, is especially noteworthy since it contains Leibniz's earliest sustained attempt to develop an account of justice. Central to this account is the notion of what Leibniz would later come to call `disinterested love', a notion that remained essentially unchanged in Leibniz's work from this period to the end (...) of his life. Through his notion of disinterested love, Leibniz sought to resolve the supposed conflict between self- and other-regarding motives. For a variety of reasons, many commentators have failed to understand the basis of Leibniz's proposed resolution. My purpose in the present paper is to clarify the terms in which Leibniz effected this resolution, as well as to point out important developments in his later thought concerning the relation between pleasure, good, and happiness. (shrink)

The Chronicle of Jerome states that Gaius Lucilius was born in 148 B.C. and died in 103 B.C. in his forty-sixth year. The Oxford Classical Dictionary says that Gaius Lucilius was probably born in 180 B.C. and died in 102/1 B.C.

Editors Rachel Brown and Deva Woodly bring together Mara Marin, Shatema Threadcraft, Christopher Paul Harris, Jasmine Syedullah, and Miriam Ticktin to examine the question: what would be required for care to be an ethic and political practice that orients people to a new way of living, relating, and governing? The answer they propose is that a 21st-century approach to the politics of care must aim at unmaking racial capitalism, cisheteropatriarchy, the carceral state, and the colonial present. The politics of (...) care is an approach to political thought and action that moves beyond the liberal approach which situates care as a finite resource to be distributed among autonomous individuals, or as a necessarily feminine virtue. Instead, those elucidating the politics of care for the contemporary era draw on rich interdisciplinary traditions and social movements to theorize and practice care as an inherently interdependent survival strategy, a foundation for political organizing, and a prefigurative politics for building a world in which all people can live and thrive. (shrink)

In a recent judgment1 the Court of Protection was highly critical of health professionals for continuing to provide clinically-assisted nutrition and hydration in the face of disagreement about the patient’s best interests, without seeking to resolve the issue. This hearing had been set up specifically to consider whether GU’s dignity had been properly protected, and if not why not, given concerns raised by the Official Solicitor about what she considered to be “a complete abrogation of responsibility to consider properly or (...) at all, and to determine whether it was in GU’s best interests and therefore lawful to continue to give him an invasive medical treatment, CANH.” In April 2014, at 63 years old and living in Thailand, GU sustained severe injuries after suffering from an electrocution accident. He sustained a cardiorespiratory arrest with a significant delay before cardiopulmonary resuscitation was started and was unconscious and unresponsive. In September 2014 he was transferred to the UK. In August 2018, GU’s brother made a request for a best interests decision concerning the continuation of CANH. The family met to discuss this and all except GU’s son, agreed that continuing CANH was not in GU’s best interests. In view of the fact that there was not unanimity among the family, a decision was made that CANH should continue. Commenting on this decision, Mr Justice Hayden said ‘the apparent assumption that in the face of family disagreement ‘ therefore will continue to be cared for by nursing staff ” is a troubling non sequitur’ and stressed that ‘family dissent to a medical consensus should never stand in the way of an incapacitated patients’ best interests being properly identified’. He also made clear that the responsibility for ensuring that a best interests assessment is undertaken rests with the …. (shrink)

In this article, we outline a novel approach to understanding the role of responsibility in health promotion. Efforts to tackle chronic disease have led to an emphasis on personal responsibility and the identification of ways in which people can ‘take responsibility’ for their health by avoiding risk factors such as smoking and over-eating. We argue that the extent to which agents can be considered responsible for their health-related behaviour is limited, and as such, state health promotion which assumes certain forms (...) of moral responsibility should be avoided. This indicates that some approaches to health promotion ought not to be employed. We suggest, however, that another form of responsibility might be more appropriately identified. This is based on the claim that agents have prudential reasons to maintain their health, in order to pursue those things which make their lives go well—i.e. that maintenance of a certain level of health is rational for many agents, given their pleasures and plans. On this basis, we propose that agents have a self-regarding prudential responsibility to maintain their health. We outline the implications of a prudential responsibility approach to health promotion. (shrink)

Ethics has been identified as an important factor that potentially affects auditors’ professional skepticism. For example, prior research finds that auditors who are more concerned with professional ethics exhibit greater professional skepticism. Further, the literature suggests that professional skepticism may lead the auditor to more vigilantly resist the client’s position in financial reporting disputes. These reporting disputes are generally resolved through negotiations between the auditor and client to arrive at the final reported amounts. To date, the role that professional skepticism (...) potentially plays in the negotiation process has been relatively unexplored. The literature prior to the enactment of Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) suggests that auditors are more likely to approve a client position when the matter in dispute is relatively ambiguous and when changing the client’s position will result in the client failing to meet analysts’ expectations. However, changes resulting from SOX have led auditors to be more vigilant and therefore results found in the pre-SOX environment may not hold in the current environment where auditors are held more accountable for their actions. Results from an experiment with experienced audit managers and partners suggest that in the post-SOX climate, auditors’ negotiations do not appear to be substantively influenced by management being able to meet or beat forecasts. Moreover, we find that when auditors exhibit heightened professional skepticism, they are more ethical by being conservative and they stand more resolute than when auditors do not exhibit heightened professional skepticism. Finally, although we do not find a main effect for the influence of earnings forecast, we do find a significant interaction between earnings forecast and heightened professional skepticism. Implications for practice and research are then presented. (shrink)

The present study examined nonprofessionals' perceptions of culturally based and noncultural ethical violations. One hundred seventy-four undergraduates students read 12 vignettes depicting situations in which a clinician committed either a culturally based violation (e.g., sexist or ageist behavior) or a noncultural violation (e.g., breeching confidentiality or multiple relationship). Results indicated that participants were more likely to have unfavorable views of clinicians who had committed culturally based violations. In addition, results suggested that participants would be more likely to report a clinician (...) who had committed a culturally based violation to a supervisor or ethics board. (shrink)

Recent work in the ontology of music suggests that we will avoid confusion if we distinguish between two kinds of question that are typically posed in music ontology. Thus, a distinction has been made between fundamental ontology and higher-order ontology. The former addresses questions about the basic metaphysical options from which ontologists choose. For instance, are musical works types, indicated types, classes of particulars, or some other kind of entity? Higher-order ontology addresses the question of what lies ‘at the centre’ (...) of a specific form of music, such as rock or jazz—or perhaps classical music. The argument of this essay is, first, that a close examination of the best efforts in two of these territories shows that they have the effect of pressing the music in each sphere into implausible Procrustean beds. Second, it is argued that the general question that higher-order ontologies pose, that is, ‘What work-kind is it that lies at the centre of a given kind of music, F?’ is a question based on a mistaken but seductive assumption, namely that the concept of the work of F has actual application. In fact, these concepts—upon which higher-order ontology depends—are mere artefacts of philosophy. The question is also addressed why the assumption is so seductive. Finally, the question finally is posed about what, if anything, is implied from the foregoing about the traditional ontology of classical music. (shrink)

Recently ethical implications of human resource management have intensified the focus on care perspectives in management and organization studies. Appeals have also been made for the concept of organizational care to be grounded in philosophies of care rather than business theories. Care perspectives see individuals, especially women, as primarily relational and view work as a means by which people can increase in self-esteem, self-develop and be fulfilled. The ethic of care has received attention in feminist ethics and is often socially (...) construed as a feminine ethic. Although well developed in the caring professions there remains no model or definition of the care ethic in management literature with little care research undertaken. This paper develops the concept of the care ethic using Heidegger’s philosophy, namely, care is fundamental to human being. To show Heideggerian care, an individual notices, pays attention to another and responds in ways to empower and enable. In a study which aimed to analyze women’s lived experience of career, we applied the philosophically grounded methodology hermeneutic phenomenology. Findings revealed the power of Heideggerian care, Sorge, as a key factor in creating meaning. From this, we propose that care has potential as a theoretical and philosophically based construct with strong practical implications. It provides a way of understanding the care ethic, lies at the heart of our being, and is essential to meaning in our grelationships and undertakings. Crucially, it can provide reprieve from the existential angst that trademarks our being. (shrink)

On the 24th June 2015, Feminist Legal Studies and the London School of Economics Law Department hosted an afternoon event with Professor Wendy Brown, Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science, University of California. Professor Brown kindly agreed to discuss her scholarship on feminist theory, and its relationship to both the law and neoliberalism. The event included an interview by Dr Katie Cruz and a Q&A session, which are presented here in an edited version of the transcript. (...) Sumi Madhock, Professor of Gender Studies, LSE chaired the interview and discussion and introduced Professor Brown’s work. Katie Cruz asked Wendy Brown to reflect upon topics that span her scholarship and activism, including the state of critical, feminist, and Left approaches to rights, neoliberalism, despair and utopianism, and the future of feminist theory and practice in the context of neoliberalism and current debates about intersectionality. Participants in the discussion asked questions on a wide range of issues, including the limits of feminist engagement with law as a tool for social change, the dominance of neoliberalism, imperialist feminism, Islamophobia, secularism, and our attachment to the figure of homo politicus. (shrink)

Calls for increasing integration of ethical considerations into business education are well documented. Business graduates are perceived to be ethically naive at best, and at worst, constrained in their moral development by the lack of ethical content in their courses. The pedagogic concern is to find effective methods of incorporating ethics into the fabric of business education. The purpose of this paper is to suggest and illustrate role play as an appropriate method for integrating ethical concerns.

In the first section of this paper I discuss what Leibniz meant by a miracle and why Leibniz’s definition of the best of all possible worlds implies that it is a world in which miracles are minimized. In the second part of the paper I argue that human happiness within the best of all possible worlds also requires, on Leibniz’s principles, that miracles must there be minimized. In the third section of the paper I consider what, if any, miracles actually (...) remain possible for Leibniz within the best of all possible worlds. In the final section I discuss one important kind of event upon which Leibniz vacillated whether it required miraculous intervention -- namely, the elevation of the sensitive soul to rationality -- and some speculation about the cause of this vacillation in Leibniz is offered. (shrink)

Transformations in the “behavioral innovativeness” of species—broadly, the capacity to generate new or novel behaviors—have been associated with significant evolutionary shifts in cognition by both philosophers and scientists. Whilst intuitively and theoretically appealing, this assumption lacks strong empirical support. One barrier is the absence of a good measure of behavioral innovation. This paper offers a solution to this problem by breaking down innovation into its components and presenting a novel multi-dimensional framework for characterising and comparing putative cases of behavioral innovation.

Interactive narratives are inextricable from the way that we understand our encounters with digital technology. This is based upon the way that these encounters are processually formed into a narrative of episodic events, arranged and re-arranged by various levels of agency. After describing past research conducted at the iCinema Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, this paper sets out a framework within which to build a relational theory of interactive narrative formation, outlining future research in the area.

The thesis that certain competing scientific theories are incommensurable was introduced by Kuhn and Feyerabend in 1962 and has been a subject of widespread critique. Critics have generally taken incommensurable theories to be theories which cannot be compared in a rational manner, but both Kuhn and Feyerabend have explicitly rejected this interpretation, and Feyerabend has discussed ways in which such comparisons can be made in a number of his writings. This paper attempts to clarify the incommensurability thesis through the examination (...) of a number of examples, both scientific and nonscientific, of cases in which incommensurable points of view compete. There follows a discussion of Kuhn's analogy between paradigm change and gestalt shifts, the ways in which incommensurable theories can be compared, and one key reason why the incommensurability thesis has been so often misinterpreted by its critics. (shrink)

Made famous by Ernst Mayr (1961), the distinction between proximate and ultimate causation in biological explanation is widely seen as a key tenet of evolutionary theory and a central organizing principle for evolutionary research. The study of immediate, individual-level mechanistic causes of development or physiology (“proximate causation”) is distinguished from the study of historical, population-level statistical causes in evolutionary biology (“ultimate causation”). Since evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) is a field that explicitly uses so-called “proximate” sciences such as developmental biology, morphology, (...) and embryology in the study of evolution, it challenges the standard construal of the proximate-ultimate distinction and its associated account of causation. The exact nature of the challenge and its ramifications for the viability of the distinction more broadly are contested, but these conceptual questions are central to the status and significance of evo-devo in contemporary evolutionary biology. (shrink)

The question of how actin filaments are attached to membranes is of central importance to an understanding of how actin gives rise to shape and movement in cells. A number of approaches to this question have been taken, but there have been few definitive answers. Some of the limitations of these approaches are discussed, as well as possible avenues for overcoming them.

This paper considers the use of outcome measures in the British National Health Service (NHS). Measuring outcomes is a major conceptual and practical problem. Many different measures are currently available yet no consensus has been reached on which should be preferred over others, or about which should take priority when they conflict. Some currently used measures are described, the relationship between these measures and the measured activities are discussed, and fundamental problems with both the measures and their use are revealed. (...) It is shown that however assiduous the search, the ‘perfect’ outcome measure will always remain elusive. (shrink)

Environmental actions require a willingness to act, which, in turn, is stimulated partially by the belief that an action will yield the desired consequences. In determining whether an actor was justified in exerting the will to act, therefore, it is essential to examine the nature of evidence offered by the actor in support of any beliefs about the environment. In this paper we explore the points in environmental risk analyses at which evidence is brought to bear in support of inferences (...) conceming environmental effects of regulatory actions. The intent is to provide a framework for discussing the manner in which evidence may provide a sufficient basis for ethically sound decisions for environmental actions. (shrink)

If classical Western theism is correct that God's timeless omniscience is compatible with human free will, then it is incoherent to hold that this God can in any strict sense be immutable and a se as well as omniscient. That is my thesis. ‘Classical theism’ shall refer here to the tradition of philosophical theology centring on such mainstream authors as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. ‘Divine omniscience’ shall mean that the eternal God knows all events as a timeless observer of them. (...) ‘Human free will’ shall mean that human beings are, at least sometimes, self-determining agents who make choices not decisively caused to be what they are by external or internal factors other than the free willing itself – choices that these agents have the capacity and the freedom to make differently than they do. Except where stipulated otherwise, ‘divine immutability’ shall ‘mean that God is neither subject to, nor capable of, change in being, knowing, or willing, since God is immune to external influences, and without internal needs, of the sorts that might give rise to such change. Finally, ‘aseity’ shall be used to underline the divine immunity to external influences, since a being that is wholly a se or self-caused , cannot be open to such influences, cannot be made to be what or how it is by anything other than itself. (shrink)