A rich literature in public health has demonstrated that health is strongly influenced by a host of environmental factors that can vary according to social, economic, geographic, cultural or physical contexts. Bioethicists should, we argue, recognize this and – where appropriate – work to integrate environmental concerns into their field of study and their ethical deliberations. In this article, we present an argument grounded in scientific research at the molecular level that will be familiar to – and so hopefully more (...) persuasive for – the biomedically-inclined in the bioethics community. Specifically, we argue that the relatively new field of molecular epigenetics provides novel information that should serve as additional justification for expanding the scope of bioethics to include environmental and public health concerns. We begin by presenting two distinct visions of bioethics: the individualistic and rights-oriented and the communitarian and responsibility-oriented. We follow with a description of biochemical characteristics distinguishing epigenetics from genetics, in order to emphasize the very close relationship that exists between the environment and gene expression. This then leads to a discussion of the importance of the environment in determining individual and population health, which, we argue, should shift bioethics towards a Potterian view that promotes a communitarian-based sense of responsibility for the environment, in order to fully account for justice considerations and improve public health. (shrink)

The question is: how does the thought of Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein lead to such different postfoundationalist views as those of Charles Taylor and Richard Rorty? I consider how the "phenomenology of everyday life" in Heidegger and Wittgenstein shows (1) that understanding is dependent on a social background of meanings, and (2) that the sense of reality embodied in our actions is prestructured by language. This picture of everydayness is holistic, antidualistic and nonfoundationalist. I conclude by focusing the (...) debate between Taylor and Rorty, suggesting that Taylor's reading of our current philosophical situation is more viable. (shrink)

When philosophers undertake to say what it is that makes life worth living, they generally display a procrustean habit of thought which the practice of philosophy itself does much to encourage. As a result, they arrive at an image of the human good that is far more controversial than they suspect. The canonical view among philosophers ancient and modern has been, in essence, that the life lived well is the life lived in accord with a rational plan. To me this (...) conception of the human good seems manifestly wrong. The idea that life should be the object of a plan is false to the human condition. It misses the important truth which Proust, by contrast, discerned and made into one of the organizing themes of his great meditation on disappointment and revelation, A la recherche du temps perdu : The happiness that life affords is less often the good we have reason to pursue than the good that befalls us unexpectedly. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a view about machine autonomy grounded in the theoretical frameworks of 4E cognition and PF Strawson’s reactive attitudes. I begin with critical discussion of White, and conclude that his view is strongly committed to functionalism as it has developed in mainstream analytic philosophy since the 1950s. After suggesting that there is good reason to resist this view by appeal to developments in 4E cognition, I propose an alternative view of machine autonomy. Namely, machines count as (...) autonomous when we members of the moral community adopt reactive attitudes in response to their actions. I distinguish this view from White’s and suggest assets and liabilities of this approach. (shrink)

We investigate whether air pollution harms business ethics from the perspective of earnings manipulation, which exerts a real effect on the economy and social welfare. Using a large sample and a comprehensive air quality index in China, we find that firms located in cities with more severe air pollution exhibit higher levels of discretionary accruals and are more likely to restate their financial statements, consistent with exposure to air pollution leading to more earnings manipulation. We further provide causal evidence using (...) propensity score matching and a discontinuity regression design exploiting the Qinling Mountain–Huai River Heating Policy Line, which exogenously leads to more air pollution to cities located immediately north of the Line but not those in the south. Our findings are robust to controlling for weather conditions and alternative samples and measures of air pollution and earnings manipulation. Overall, this study unveils how the ecological environment shapes business ethics. (shrink)

Though some doubts about the principle that every proposition is either true or false were entertained even by Aristotle, both the number and the vigor of criticisms of this principle have been increasing in recent years. This paper attempts a restatement and a re-examination of the issues involved in this dispute, and in particular an evaluation of the effects on the argument of such recent discoveries as that of the “many-valued logics.”.

In English law there is a strong (though rebuttable) presumption that life should be maintained. This article contends that this presumption means that it is always unlawful to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from patients in permanent vegetative state (PVS) and minimally conscious state (MCS), and that the reasons for this being the correct legal analysis mean also that such withdrawal will always be ethically unacceptable. There are two reasons for this conclusion. First, the medical uncertainties inherent in the definition and diagnosis (...) of PVS/MCS are such that, as a matter of medical fact, it can never be established, with the degree of certainty necessary to rebut the presumption, that it is not in the patient’s best interest to remain alive. And second (and more controversially and repercussively), that even if permanent unconsciousness can be unequivocally demonstrated, the presumption is not rebutted. This is because there is plainly more to human existence than consciousness (or consciousness the markers of which can ever be demonstrated by medical investigations). It can never be said that the identity of the patient whose best interests are at stake evaporates (so eliminating the legal or ethical subject) when that person ceases to be conscious. Nor can it be said that the best interests of an unconscious person do not mandate continued biological existence. We simply cannot know. That uncertainty is legally conclusive, and (subject to resource allocation questions and views about the relevance of family wishes and the previously expressed wishes of the patient) should be ethically conclusive. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 2, February 2020, Page 33-35.

Hervaeus Natalis distinguishes two types of items that can have esse obiective in the intellect: objects of acts of intellection (man, this cat, etc.) and properties unapprehended by these acts, or background properties (being a species, being a particular, etc.), that are beings of reason. Yet, his conception of the esse obiective of objects evolved. First, he had a neutral conception of esse obiective: items presenting themselves to the intellect are cognized, transparently, without being altered in the process. Later, he (...) developed an ontologically committing conception of the objective being of objects: items presenting themselves to the intellect take on rational being (esse rationis) as such. This evolution transpires because Hervaeus introduces intentional relations as what makes the cognized item be objectively in the intellect and includes them within the class of background properties (being of reason). Both these conceptions manage to account for our access to extra-mental things. -/- . (shrink)

The origins of this book go back to I956 when it was suggested to me that a study on the philosophy of Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola would furnish an important addition to our knowledge of the philoso phy of the Italian Renaissance. It was not, however, until I960 that I could devote a significant portion of my time to a realization of this goal. My work was essentially completed in 1963, at which time it was presented in its original form (...) as a doctoral dissertation in the Phi losophy Department of Columbia University. Since then I have made many minor improvements and several chapters have been extensively reworked. This study represents the first attempt in fifty years to give a detailed account of even a portion of Gianfrancesco Pico's life and thought. The most comprehensive previous study, Gertrude Bramlette Richards, "Gianfrancesco Pico della lv1irandola" (Cornell University Dissertation, I 9 I 5), which I have found very useful in preparing my own book, is largely based on secondary literature and is mistaken in a number of details. Furthermore, Miss Richards' treatment of Gian francesco Pico as a thinker is very sketchy and is not an exhaustive study of his own writings. It is hoped that my present study, built in part on her extensive bibliographical indications, brings forth a certain amount of new information which will be of value for further research. (shrink)

A recent paper, ‘Hume's Immanent God’, )* by George Nathan, contains an insightful interpretation of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion . Insight is no guarantee against error. I shall argue that Nathan's interpretation is mistaken, and then offer my own. Nathan observes that the general tendency in scholarship on D has been to focus on its sceptical side. He proposes to ‘bring out Hume's positive contribution’. Nathan's thesis, briefly, is that D best supports a modestly theistic interpretation according to which (...) God is the ultimate cause of order in the universe. (shrink)

Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures, including Turkish, have both simple and complex meters. In Experiment 1, Turkish and American adults with and without musical training were asked to detect metrical changes in Turkish music with simple and complex meter. Musicians performed significantly better than nonmusicians, and performance was significantly better on simple meter than on complex meter, but Turkish listeners performed no differently than American listeners. In Experiment 2, members of (...) Turkish classical and folk music clubs who were tested on the same materials exhibited comparable sensitivity to simple and complex meters, unlike the American and Turkish listeners in Experiment 1. Together, the findings reveal important effects of musical training and culture on meter perception: trained musicians are generally more sensitive than nonmusicians, regardless of metrical complexity, but sensitivity to complex meter requires sufficient exposure to musical genres featuring such meters. (shrink)

Preview: “America does not think much of its philosophers,” Douglas Anderson writes in his introduction to Philosophy Americana. “We do not teach philosophy in our high schools. A majority in America have no idea what philosophy is about or why it might be interesting, if not important.” Perhaps that lack of appreciation for philosophy is coeval with its beginnings when the ancient Athenians put Socrates to death. Anderson’s lament is clearly present from the supposed birth of Western philosophy, and vividly (...) so in 1486 in Italian humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s discourse known as The Dignity of Man, where he states, “The whole of philosophy is occasion for contempt and contumely, rather than honor and glory. The deadly and monstrous persuasion has invaded practically all minds, that philosophy ought not to be studied at all or by very few people; as though it were a thing of little worth to have before our eyes and at our fingertips....Thus,” Pico said six centuries ago, “we have reached a point, it is painful to recognize, where the only persons accounted wise are those who can reduce the pursuit of wisdom to a profitable traffic.” So it seems today in America and so it has apparently been and will ever be. Nevertheless, Anderson hopes to open a discussion about how philosophy does and does not manifest itself in American culture, how its practitioners remain “invisible,” and largely misunderstood “in rural, laboring, underclassed, and unschooled settings.” It is not his intention, at least in this book, to take up the issue of race in a discipline as overwhelmingly white as Western philosophy. Yet this has been for me, a black American philosopher, a lifelong meditation, which I will attempt to address in this essay. (shrink)

As a youngster of perhaps 8 years, Charles S. Peirce was given a chemistry laboratory in which he probably did experiments in qualitative analysis. These experiments were modeled on the hypothetico-deductive method of inquiry. I argue that this laboratory experience initiated Peirce’s life-long interest in logic and the logic of science, and flowered in his “pragmaticism.”.

_Russell on Ethics_ presents a coherent and comprehensive collection of Russell's ethical writings, drawing on a wide range of his publications on ethical concerns, many of which have been difficult to access by students and general readers. Charles Pigden provides an accessible introduction to the papers, situating them within the field of ethics as a whole and detailed annotations on the papers themselves, analysing their arguments and exploring their relevance to current concerns. _Russell on Ethics_ represents a valuable insight (...) into Russell as an ethicist, which will be useful to both specialist and non-specialist alike. (shrink)

Epictetus’ discussion of the death of spouse and child in Encheiridion 3 raises interesting problems on the meaning of “person” in his Stoic philosophy. The author uses Epictetus’ discussion as a window into his notion of person, and weighs the strengths and weaknesses of that notion. The Stoic view of person represents an advance over pre-Stoic views. It offers us a better way to look at significant others throughout life, and helps us better to deal with their loss. Yet it (...) falls short of being a fully satisfactory notion of person, because it does not address the fact that I am constituted as person only in relationship to others who are themselves persons. (shrink)

Healthcare ethics committees (HEC) have emerged as institutional forums for addressing bioethical dilemmas. Psychiatrists have important roles to play on these committees. Their skills in group process assessment, mental status examination, and character assessment have diverse applications. Psychiatrists can facilitate communication within the committee and as HEC-based clinical ethics consultants. HECs must be concerned with how they arrive at ethical decisions, guarding against political influence or individual monopolization. Psychiatrists can assist these efforts as organizational consultants to HECs. The perception of (...) psychiatrists as reflective, tolerant of ambiguity, humanizing, and approachable about ethical aspects of health care suggests they would make excellent committee leaders. Psychiatrists also have important committee roles to play as ethics educators and policy makers. More demographic data is needed to investigate psychiatrist participation on HECs. Studies of how they are perceived by their ethics committee colleagues may reveal new roles and potential pitfalls for HEC psychiatrists. (shrink)

This work is the long awaited sequel to the author’s classic Frege: Philosophy of Language. But it is not exactly what the author originally planned. He tells us that when he resumed work on the book in the summer of 1989, after a long interruption, he decided to start afresh. The resulting work followed a different plan from the original drafts. The reader does not know what was lost by their abandonment, but clearly much was gained: The present work may (...) be the most compactly organized of Dummett’s philosophical books, and its value as commentary on Frege is enhanced by its being organized as a study of Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik and selected parts of Grundgesetze. Moreover, since Dummett has been thinking and writing about Frege for forty years, we have a single, mature chronological stage of his thought. (shrink)

Inner experience is proposed as a basis for self-interpretation in both children and adults, but young children's inner experience may not be comparable to our own. I consider evidence on children's attribution of inner experience, experience sampling, and the development of inner speech, concluding that Carruthers' theory should predict a developmental lag between mindreading and metacognition.