Recent advances in wireless technologies have led to the development of intelligent, in-vehicle safety applications designed to share information about the actions of nearby vehicles, potential road hazards, and ultimately predict dangerous scenarios or imminent collisions. These vehicle safety communication (VSC) technologies rely on the creation of autonomous, self-organizing, wireless communication networks connecting vehicles with roadside infrastructure and with each other. As the technical standards and communication protocols for VSC technologies are still being developed, certain ethical implications of these new (...) information technologies emerge: Coupled with the predicted safety benefits of VSC applications is a potential rise in the ability to surveil a driver engaging in her everyday activities on the public roads. This paper will explore how the introduction of VSC technologies might disrupt the “contextual integrity” of personal information flows in the context of highway travel and threaten one’s “privacy in public.” Since VSC technologies and their related protocols and standards are still in the developmental stage, the paper will conclude by revealing how close attention to the ethical implications of the remaining design decisions can inform and guide designers of VSC technologies to create innovate safety applications that increase public safety, but without compromising the value of one’s privacy in public. (shrink)

A metaphysical strand of C. S. Peirce’s American pragmatism resonates deeply in potential alliance with “incorporeal feminism”: a transcontinental philosophy with origins in Luce Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference. A psychoanalyst trained by Lacan himself, Irigaray analyzes the unconscious of various philosophical systems, revealing dualism as an underlying phallic structure. In the dualism between idealism and materialism, she explains, the terms become sexually coded: idealism, paternal-masculine; materialism, maternal-feminine. Incorporeal feminism does not merely invert the roles, but radically reimagines the relation (...) between them, postulating the ideal as a maternal condition of possibility for birthing the material into existence; not separate substances but the inseparable activity of materiality making itself. For Peirce, ideas act; and though he was by no means a feminist, his metaphysics lend at least three insights to incorporeal feminism: an alternative to dualism in the trichotomic categories “firstness, secondness, and thirdness”; an evolutionary cosmology where the material universe is a gestating embryo within a womb; and an objective idealism: a model for addressing the dilemma of when sexual difference begins. Within “firstness,” sexual difference is ideal; an incorporeal activity pre-existing and latently imbuing materiality to varying degrees, ultimately expressing itself in certain life-forms as bodily differences. (shrink)

“A New Budget of Paradoxes” will be a section of our Journal devoted to the pathological. It is not mere amusement. The old “Budget of Paradoxes,” edited by Augustus De Morgan is our model both for choice of material and for humaneness toward the Don Quixotes of Thought.

The history of moral dilemma theory often ignores the medieval period, overlooking the sophisticated theorizing by several thinkers who debated the existence of moral dilemmas from 1150 to 1450. In this book Michael V. Dougherty offers a rich and fascinating overview of the debates which were pursued by medieval philosophers, theologians and canon lawyers, illustrating his discussion with a diverse range of examples of the moral dilemmas which they considered. He shows that much of what seems particular to twentieth-century moral (...) theory was well-known long ago - especially the view of some medieval thinkers that some forms of wrongdoing are inescapable, and their emphasis on the principle 'choose the lesser of two evils'. His book will be valuable not only to advanced students and specialists of medieval thought, but also to those interested in the history of ethics. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Enaction as a Lived Experience: Towards a Radical Neurophenomenology” by Claire Petitmengin. Upshot: Petitmengin’s strategy of dissolution of the “hard problem” of consciousness is shown to rely on some radical phenomenological premises that are listed and analyzed. It presupposes a starting point of research in a state of epoché ; it unfolds into a participatory conception of truth; and it ends in a quest for non-dual pristine experience. Each one of these moves is endorsed (...) and amplified. (shrink)

There is a theistic argument which is discussed at least twice in the Hume corpus, both times rather perfunctorily. This perfunctoriness has carried over to some of his commentators, who are not always clear as to what the argument is or about the force of Hume’s comments on it. On page 23 of A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh Hume calls it “the metaphysical Argument a priori” and in Part 9 of Dialogues concerning Natural Religion simply (...) “the argument a priori”.1 It is the argument of Demea. (shrink)

The 14th general election in Malaysia held on May 9, 2018 is anhistoric event that altered the political landscape of the nation. For the firsttime over sixty years this election has caused to change the government fromBarisan Nasional coalition to another coalition named PakatanHarapan, formed in 2015. This article has analysed theelection results and the probable factors that might have contributed to thehistoric change. It argued that since 1999 the ruling Malay elites have becomepermanently divided challenging the dominance of United (...) Malay NationalOrganisation in politics and the prospect for a viable alternativebecame consolidated with the rise of Parti KeAdilan Rakyat offeringan avenue for a new generation politics. The return of Mahathir Mohamad topolitics and a strategic coalition mainly between his party and PKR, party ofthe jailed leader Anwar Ibrahim, made an alternative to BN/UMNO a realitythrough winning the election. (shrink)

Jacob (history, New School for Social Research) proposes that the science of the 17th and 18th centuries was eventually accepted because it was made compatible with larger political and economic interests. A celebration of the recently concluded 33 volume edition of the Collected works of John Stuart Mill, produced over a period of nearly 30 years, the last 20 under the guiding genius (and hand) of general editor Robson. Following a tributary history of the project itself, essays cover Mill's career (...) as a thinker and as a bureaucrat and public servant, exploring the effects of the various milieu--domestic, political, administrative, religious, and cultural--in which he moved. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Le 9e siècle marque un tournant dans l'hagiographie byzantine qui devient de plus en plus sécularisée à la fois dans sa forme et dans son contenu. Deux Vitae datant de la fin du 9e siècle, la vie d'Antoine le jeune et la vie de l'impératrice Theodora jouent un rôle pivot dans ce processus de sécularisation. Elles offrent les modèles d'une piété masculine et d'une piété féminine en témoignant de deux formes antithétiques de l'expérience religieuse : celle monastique et celle séculaire. (...) Cette tension trouve ses racines dans l'iconoclasme et reste vivante dans la période post-iconoclaste dans le conflit qui oppose le patriarche Ignace à Photios. (shrink)