In Epistemic injustice, Miranda Fricker employs the critical concept of hermeneutical injustice. Such injustice entails unequal participation in the epistemic practices of a community that often results in an inability of dominated subjects to understand their own experiences and have them understood by their community. I argue that hermeneutical injustice can be an aspect of institutions as well communites?to the extent that they too engage in epistemic practices that seek to understand the problems and experiences of their constituents. My primary (...) example is the case of development theory and international development agencies where human beings were objectified in undesirable ways by the prevailing neoliberal economic theories that guided development practice. Here economic theory and the power to achieve its vision of unconstrained economic growth were combined in various organizations. Consequently such organizations systematically misunderstood the problems of the very people they were supposed to help. I argue that if hermeneutical injustice can be the result of the intersection of science and organizations, we need to create more participatory ways of gleaning information about social ills to alleviate institutionally mediated hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

In these twelve papers notable ethicists use the resources of ethical theory to illuminate important theoretical and practical topics, including the nature of public health, notions of community, population bioethics, the legitimate role of law, the use of cost-effectiveness as a methodology, vaccinations, and the nature of infectious disease.

Angus Fletcher is one of our finest theorists of the arts, the heir to I. A. Richards, Erich Auerbach, Northrop Frye. This, his grandest book since the groundbreaking Allegory of 1964, aims to open another field of study: how thought--the act, the experience of thinking--is represented in literature. Recognizing that the field of formal philosophy is only one demonstration of the uses of thought, Fletcher looks for the ways other languages (and their framing forms) serve the purpose of certain (...) thinking activities. What kinds of thinking accompany the writing of history? How does the gnomic sentence manage to represent some point of belief? The fresh insights Fletcher achieves at every turn suggest an anatomy of poetic and fictional strategies for representing thought--the hazards, the complications, the sufferings, the romance of thought. Fletcher's resources are large, and his step is sure. The reader samples his piercing vision of Milton's Satan, the original Thinker, leaving the pain of thinking as his legacy for mankind; Marvell's mysteriously haunting "green thought in a green shade"; Old Testament and Herodotus, Vico and Coleridge; Crane, Calvino, Stevens. Fletcher ranges over the heights of literature, poetry, music, and film, never losing sight of his central line of inquiry. He includes comments on the essential role of unclear, vague, and even irrational thinking to suggest that ideas often come alive as thoughts only in a process of considerable distress. In the end he gives us literature--not the content of thought, but its form, its shape, the fugitive colors taken on by the mind as represented in art. (shrink)

Interest in credit ratings agencies and their role in financial markets is at an all-time high. Concerns about a lack of transparency concerning process, conflicts of interest, and limited competition are frequently discussed by politicians, regulators and other commentators. These issues we term the credit ratings agency trinity of solicitude. We shed some light on this trinity by considering the unique relationship that exists between corporate borrowers and the CRAs they engage to rate their securities. The exchange relationships literature is (...) used to create a model where commitment plays a central role. Technical qualities, relationship qualities and dependence are theorised as antecedents of commitment, which is described by two constructs of affective commitment and calculative commitment. The issuer’s intention to remain with the CRA, their loyalty, is the consequence of commitment. The model is operationalized by means of a survey questionnaire administered to issuers of corporate debt in the United Kingdom. As expected, perceptions of the quality of the relationship and affective commitment play an important role in CRA-issuer relations. However, contrary to expectations, the technical quality of the rating and issuer dependence on the CRA play little role in determining commitment and continuance. The implications of these findings are discussed along with areas for future research. (shrink)

Contributions to this study are drawn both from health professionals engaged in genetic counselling and from observers and critics with backgrounds in law, philosophy, biology, and the social sciences. This diversity will enable health professonals to examine their activities with a fresh eye, and will help the observer-critic to understand the ethical problems that arise in genetic counselling practice, rather than in imaginary encounters. Most examinations of the ethical issues raised by genetics are concerned in a broad sense with the (...) application of new technology to human reproduction. This volume focuses on genetic counselling and screening as such, providing valuable insights for the health professional, social scientist, philosopher, lawyer, and bioethicist. (shrink)

Although Phillips & Singer's proposal of commonalities seems sound, information theory and artificial neural network modeling omit important detail. An example is given of a distributed neural transformation that has been characterized mathematically and found to have both overall commonalities and differences of detail in different regions. P&S's contextual field is compared to inclusive regions in a formalism relevant for modeling bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence.

The mathematical approach to such essentially biological phenomena as perseverative reaching is most welcome. To extend these results and make them more accurate, levels of analysis and neural centers should he distinguished. The navigational nature of sensorimotor control should be characterized more clearly, including the continuous dynamics of neural processes hut not limited to it. In particular, discrete conditions should be formalized mathematically as part of the biological process.

It is argued that to possess the concept of distress is to be able to apply the concept to others, and that this implies a qualified form of altruism, in the sense that to perceive another as being in distress is, other things being equal, to see them as in need of help and be moved to help them.

This a general account of the school of Mo-tzu, its social basis as a movement of craftsmen, its isolated place in the Chinese tradition, and the nature of its later contributions to logic, ethics, and science. It assesses the relation of Mohist thinking to the structure of the Chinese language, and grapples with the textual dynamics of later Mohist writings, particularly in regard to grammar and style, technical terminology, the use and significance of stock examples, and overall organization. Includes edited (...) and annotated Chinese text with an English translation and commentary, a glossary, and a photographic reproduction of the unemended text from the Taoist Patrology. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Preface; Introduction Angus Dawson; Part I. Concepts: 1. Resetting the parameters: public health as the foundation for public health ethics Angus Dawson; 2. Health, disease and the goal of public health Bengt Brülde; 3. Selective reproduction, eugenics and public health Stephen Wilkinson; 4. Risk and precaution Stephen John; Part II. Issues: 5. Smoking, health and ethics Richard Ashcroft; 6. Infectious disease control Marcel Verweij; 7. Population screening Ainsley Newson; 8. Vaccination ethics Angus Dawson; (...) 9. Environment, ethics and public health: the climate change dilemma Anthony Kessel and Carolyn Stephens; 10. Public health research ethics: is non-exploitation the new principle for population-based research ethics? John McMillan; 11. Equity and population health: toward a broader bioethics agenda Norman Daniels; 12. Health inequities James Wilson; Index. (shrink)

Every time we think ahead, we are crafting a story. Every daily plan—and every political vision, social movement, scientific hypothesis, business proposal, and technological breakthrough—starts with “what if?” Linking causes to effects, considering hypotheticals and counterfactuals, asking how other people will react: these are the essence of narrative. So why do we keep overlooking story’s importance to intelligence in favor of logic? This book explains how and why our brains think in stories. Angus Fletcher, an expert in neuroscientific approaches (...) to narrative, identifies this capacity as “storythinking.” He demonstrates that storythinking is fundamental to what makes us human. Artificial intelligence can perform symbolic logic, rational deduction, and mathematical calculation, but it is incapable of deliberating in narrative. Drawing on new research in neuroscience and narrative theory, Fletcher explores the nature of imagination, innovation, and creativity. He provides concise answers to big questions: How does storythinking work? Why did it evolve? How can it misfire? What problems can it solve? Revealing the significance of storythinking from science to business to philosophy, this book also provides ways for readers to harness its power to script better tomorrows. (shrink)

It is argued that reliance on the testimony of others cannot be viewed as reliance on a kind of evidence. Speech being essentially voluntary, the speaker cannot see his own choice of words as evidence of their truth, and so cannot honestly offer them to others as such. Rather, in taking responsibility for the truth of what he says, the speaker offers a guarantee or assurance of its truth, and in believing him the hearer accepts this assurance. I argue that, (...) contrary to appearances, this account is compatible with the hearer acquiring knowledge, and in fact throws interesting light on the idea of knowledge. -/- . (shrink)

On March, 24, 2020, 818 cases of COVID-19 had been reported in New South Wales, Australia, and new cases were increasing at an exponential rate. In anticipation of resource constraints arising in clinical settings as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a working party of ten ethicists was convened at the University of Sydney to draft an ethics framework to support resource allocation decisions. The framework guides decision-makers using a question-and-answer format, in language that avoids philosophical and medical technicality. The (...) working party met five times over the following week and then submitted a draft Framework for consideration by two groups of intensivists and one group of academic ethicists. It was also presented to a panel on a national current affairs programme. The Framework was then revised on the basis of feedback from these sources and made publicly available online on April 3, ten days after the initial meeting. The framework is published here in full to stimulate ongoing discussion about rapid development of user-friendly clinical ethics resources in ongoing and future pandemics. (shrink)

This book provides an overview of the recent research on saving and consumption, a field in which substantial progress has been made over the last decade.Attempts by economists to understand saving and consumption patterns have generated some of the best science in economics. For more than fifty years, there has been serious empirical and theoretical activity, and data, theory, and policy have never been separated as has happened in many branches of economics. Research has drawn microeconomists interested in household behaviour, (...) as well as macroeconomists, for whom the behaviour of aggregate consumption has always occupied a central role in explaining aggregate fluctuations. Econometricians have also made distinguished contributions, and there has been a steady flow of new methodologies by those working on saving and consumption, in time-series econometrics, as well as in the study of micro and panel data.A coherent account of these developments is presented here, emphasizing the interplay between micro and the macro, between studies of cross-section and panels, and those using aggregate time series data. (shrink)

: Despite the historical importance of Francis Bacon's grand vision of science, the doctrine of Form that supports his program of works is now generally agreed to be incoherent. This paper will argue, however, that Bacon's belief in the convertibility of matter gains a previously unacknowledged coherence when approached through the treatment of axiom conversion expressed in Ramus' 1574 Dialectica. Ultimately this will lead to the conclusion that Bacon did not--like most twentieth-century philosophers--see the universe as a collection of matter (...) understood by humans in terms of law, but as a collection of laws understood in terms of matter. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that bioethics is in crisis and that it will not have a future unless it begins to embrace a more Socratic approach to its leading assumptions. The absence of a critical and sceptical spirit has resulted in little more than a dominant ideology. I focus on three key issues. First, that too often bioethics collapses into medical ethics. Second, that medical ethics itself is beset by a lack of self-reflection that I characterize here as a (...) commitment to three dogmas. Third, I offer a more positive perspective by suggesting how bioethics may benefit from looking towards public health ethics as a new source of inspiration and direction. (shrink)

This original, contemporary synthesis between phenomenology and Marx’s late work begins from Edmund Husserl’s The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology to chart a new program for Socratic phenomenology in the current confrontation between planetary technology and place-based Indigeneity.

Recent paradigmatic shifts in favor of the 'discourse' approach in social theory are explored and debated.

Crossing Borders: Essays In Honour of Ian H. Angus is a collection of original and cutting-edge essays by eighteen outstanding and diverse Canadian and International scholars that engage with Professor Ian Angus's rich contributions to three distinct, albeit overlapping, fields: Canadian Studies, Phenomenology and Critical Theory, and Communication and Media Studies. These contributions are distinct, unique, and have had resonance across the intellectual landscape over the thirty years that Angus has been teaching communications, philosophy, Canadian Studies, theory, (...) and humanities first in the United States and then in Canada. (shrink)

Perception and cognition can be understood either as conscious experience, thought, and behaviour or as bodily functions executed at the level of information processing. Whether or not they are cognitively penetrable depends on the level referred to. Selective attention is the mechanism by which cognition affects perception, theory influences observation and observational reports, culture biases experience, and current knowledge determines what inferences are made. Seeing must be distinguished from seeing as.

This commentary challenges the authors to use their computational modeling techniques to support one of their central claims: that schizophrenic deficits in bottom-up (Gestalt-type tasks) and top-down (cognitive control tasks) context processing tasks arise from the same dysfunction. Further clarification about the limits of cognitive coordination would also strengthen the hypothesis.

The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of the Book” in the Language of Islam. By Sidney H. Griffith. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Pp. xiii + 255. $29.95.

Just as physics determines physically viable movements, the spatial distribution of input excitations allows the cerebellum to choose physiologically viable beams. Cerebellar–motor coherence implies that the ordering and modes of combination of cerebellar beams reflect (1) the way movement invariants are ordered and combined in movement and (2) the way physical principles are integrated in learning to move.

Sensitive readers of Dewey will note that his style and the confidence with which he expresses his views often obscure their radical nature. Dewey fully understood that Darwin overthrew both the necessity of human progress and the fixity of nature. Nonetheless, Dewey has been saddled by some critics with a naive intransigence about the hopeful prospects for human inquiry. Fortunately, Melvin Rogers has provided Dewey scholarship with a recovery of the Darwinian grounds of Dewey’s philosophy and its broader consequences for (...) Deweyan thought. Simply put, because the world is fraught with prospects for both failure and success, or evolution and extinction, this makes active inquiry into morality and science all the .. (shrink)

I argue that materialism is unable to account for knowledge deriving from such abstracta as rules of inference, algorithms, and the ideals of infinity, perfection, and eternity. Both reductive and nonreductive materialism subscribe to the causal closure of the physical world, which implies that a creature’s concepts derive exclusively from the interactions of brains with the physical environment. These resources do not explain the acquisition of abstract concepts or the successful use of these concepts in gaining important knowledge about the (...) world. By contrast, if both God and souls exist, we can understand how knowledge based on abstracta is possible. (shrink)

Lynne Rudder Baker maintained that persons are essentially constituted by a first-person perspective. But she argued that this perspective is only an emergent property: it does not require a mental substance. In this paper, I argue that the first-person perspective cannot be a mere mental property, because it presupposes the existence of a mental substance. This makes it incoherent to claim that possession of a first-person perspective is what makes an individual a person. And, intentionality, which is required to have (...) a first-person perspective, also presupposes a mental subject. So the constitution view is not successful in avoiding substance dualism. (shrink)

Proposes a new theory of communication called "comparative media theory.".

ERRATUMWe regret that, due to a technical error, the uncorrected version of Angus Dawson's article was printed in 19:1. We apologise to the author and reprint in full the corrected version of the paper on the following pages. A. Dawson et al.. Bioethics 2005; 19: 72–89. ABSTRACTThere are many different ethical arguments that might be advanced for and against childhood vaccinations. In this paper I will explore one particular argument that focuses on the idea that childhood vaccinations are justifiable (...) because they are held to be in the best interests of a particular child. Two issues arise from this idea. The first issue is how best interests are to be determined in the case of childhood vaccinations. The second issue is what follows from this to justify potential interventions within the family in relation to such vaccinations. I argue that best interests must be characterised objectively in such situations and that this means that, in at least some cases, parental decision‐making about vaccinating their children may be overridden. (shrink)

A number of theoretical ideas have emerged recently in the legal, bioethical and philosophical fields that could usefully be applied to these and other issues ...

Aristotle’s notion of substance and its relation to his investigation of the question of being qua being in the Metaphysics is one of the most important, enduring, and intriguing problems in scholarship focused on Aristotle and the tradition of metaphysics. This article explores some of the more recent developments in this area of scholarship, especially the trend toward more dynamic interpretations of Aristotle’s conception of substance, as a way of renewing the question of what Aristotle really means by being. On (...) this basis, the article reinterprets Aristotle’s investigation of substance as the primary sense of being in the Metaphysics. It argues that there are two primary ways substance may be considered; with respect to the principles of intelligibility of substance and with regard to the causal framework of the real unity and determinacy of substance. The primary principles of the intelligibility of substance, it is argued, are end and fulfilment (telos and entelechy). The causal framework of the real unity and determinacy of substances, on the other hand, can be understood via the notion of act and activity (energeia). (shrink)

Although features of the dentition figure prominently in discussions of early hominid phylogeny, remarkably little is known of the developmental basis of the variations in occlusal morphology and dental proportions that are observed among taxa. Recent experiments on tooth development in mice have identified some of the genes involved in dental patterning and the control of tooth specification. These findings provide valuable new insight into dental evolution and underscore the strong developmental links that exist among the teeth and the jaws (...) and cranium. The latter has important implications for cladistic studies that traditionally consider features of the skull independently from the dentition. BioEssays 23:481–493, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)