The rule of rescue describes the moral impulse to save identifiable lives in immediate danger at any expense. Think of the extremes taken to rescue a small child who has fallen down a well, a woman pinned beneath the rubble of an earthquake, or a submarine crew trapped on the ocean floor. No effort is deemed too great. Yet should this same moral instinct to rescue, regardless of cost, be applied in the emergency room, the hospital, or the community clinic? (...) -/- In health care, the desire to save lives at any cost must be reconciled with the reality of resource scarcity. As one example, the estimated cost for prophylactic Factor VIII to treat one patient with hemophilia for one year is $300,000. Costs of this magnitude have been accepted by public and private insurers in the developed world, even though, in principle, these sums could provide greater overall health benefit if allocated to pay for the unmet health care needs of many other patients. Looking forward, however, broad application of the rule of rescue will be increasingly untenable. But the moral instinct will remain: the desire to help those weakest among us, especially when their small numbers allow us to see them as unique individuals. What, then, is the ethical framework that can guide coverage and reimbursement decisions for orphan drugs into the future? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BALTHASAR AND ECKHART: THEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES AND CATHOLICITY CYRIL O'REGAN Yale University New Haven, Connecticut Or pleas'd to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a Fault, and hesitate Dislike; Alike reserv'd to blame or to commend, A tim'rous Foe and a suspitious Friend 1 THE TENDENCY to avoid exclusion is a mark of the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. It represents an identifying habit, an incorrigible (...) feature of style and sensibility. His texts in which theologians, philosophers, poets, dramatists, and saints are christianly praised give testimony to a catholicity that barely brooks limits. Not only in true Gospel fashion are a multitude invited to the eschatological banquet, they constitute the vast medium of tradition, in which Maximus the Confessor rubs shoulders with Plato, in the company of Claudel, Calderon, and Therese of Lisieux. At different times Balthasar thinks of the tradition as one huge symphony in which notes sound only to be transcended and as a conversation between particular perspectives on the great mystery of redemption, no one of which is final and which meet only in the infinity of their object. The decision for plurality and variety in the tradition certainly validates difference and counts against its reduction.2 Yet at the same time tradition, precisely as a matter of variety, exhibits a measure of coherence or concordance that pro1 These couplets are from Alexander Pope's poem Atticus. See Minor Poems, ed. Norman Ault, completed by John Butt (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), p. 143. 2 See, for example, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), pp. 39, 187, 251. 203 204 CYRIL O'REGAN hibits difference from becoming truly excessive. It is this prohibition of excessive difference in Balthasar's reading of tradition that I would like to examine here. I take as my case study of Balthasar's rhetoric of reading his conflicted response to Meister Eckhart, about whose inclusion in the Christian tradition Balthasar expresses no doubts, yet whose theological message is such as to cause anxiety. We shall occupy ourselves in this paper with the way in which Eckhart's nonnegotiable inclusion within the tradition serves to repress the account of those features that present a fundamental challenge, that represent difference that would make the Christian field radically heterogeneous. In the first two sections, focusing mainly on the fifth volume of The Glory of the Lord (=GL),3 I shall offer outlines of both the positive and negative contributions Eckhart is deemed to have made to the theological tradition. Though I do not wish to give the impression of Scholastic pro and contra, Balthasar's positive remarks being imbricated with the negative and vice versa, it will be suggested that the elements adduced in both cases constitute mirror images of each other. Balthasar takes a bifocal, though not stereoscopic, view of a group of five elements: aesthetic disposition, the sameness of Being and God, the whylessness of the divine, Gelassenheit, and Gottesgeburt. This group is in effect read twice, once in a way that affirms and confirms Eckhart's unproblematic inclusion in the tradition (section 1), and again in a way that, in the light of basic Christian principles, raises serious questions about such inclusion (section 2). In a final section the question is raised whether the conflict in interpretation suggests a deeper underlying conflict between Balthasarian commitment to Catholic theological principles and catholicity. I. BALTHASAR'S AFFIRMATIVE RENDERING OF ECKHART On the surface there is little reservation about the approbation Eckhart receives in the fifth volume of The Glory of the 3 The Glory ofthe Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. S, The Realm ofMetaphysics in the Modern Age, trans. Oliver Davies, Andrew Louth, Brian McNeil, C.R.V., John Saward, and Rowan Williams, ed. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. and John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991). BALTHASAR AND ECKHART 205 Lord. If the depths of Balthasar's analyses of the medievals in his volumes on metaphysics (vols. 4 & 5) never reach the level of his account of Anselm and Bonaventure in volume two, it would be caviling to suggest that his intention at the... (shrink)

Emily Elizabeth Constance Jones was an English logician and contemporary of Bertrand Russell, as well as Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge. In this book, originally published in 1911, she argues for the existence of another fundamental law of thought to join the Law of Contradiction and the Law of Excluded Middle: the Law of Significant Assertion. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in logic or in Jones' work.

Bold approaches to data collection and large-scale quantitative advances have long been a preoccupation for social science researchers. In this commentary we further debate over the use of large-scale survey data and official statistics with ‘Big Data’ methodologists, and emphasise the ability of these resources to incorporate the essential social and cultural heredity that is intrinsic to the human sciences. In doing so, we introduce a series of new data-sets that integrate approximately 30 years of survey data on victimisation, fear (...) of crime and disorder and social attitudes with indicators of socio-economic conditions and policy outcomes in Britain. The data-sets that we outline below do not conform to typical conceptions of ‘Big Data’. But, we would contend, they are ‘big’ in terms of the volume, variety and complexity of data which has been collated and ‘big’ also in that they allow us to explore key questions pertaining to how social and economic policy change at the national level alters the attitudes and experiences of citizens. Importantly, they are also ‘small’ in the sense that the task of rendering the data usable, linking it and decoding it, required both manual processing and tacit knowledge of the context of the data and intentions of its creators. (shrink)

Pamela Sue Anderson argues for an ethical vulnerability which “activates an openness to becoming changed” that “can make possible a relational accountability to one another on ethical matters”. In this essay I pursue Anderson’s solicitation that there is a positive politics to be developed from acknowledging and affirming vulnerability. I propose that this politics is one which has a specific relevance for animating the terms of feminist responses to sexual violence, something which has proved difficult for feminist theorists and activists (...) alike. I will demonstrate the contribution of Anderson’s work to such questions by examining the way in which “ethical vulnerability” as a framework can illuminate the intersectional feminist character of Tarana Burke’s grassroots Me Too movement when compared with the mainstream, viral version of the movement. I conclude by arguing that Anderson’s “ethical vulnerability” contains ontological insights which can allay both activist and academic concerns regarding how to respond to sexual violence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There has been extensive debate among various disciplines about the nature and value of play. From these discussions it seems clear that play is a phenomenon with more than just one dimension: as a specific type of activity, as a form or structure, as an ontologically distinctive phenomenon, as a type of experience, or as a stance or an attitude towards a particular activity. This article focuses on the importance of the playful attitude in sport. It begins by attempting (...) to describe the underpinning features of a playful attitude, and its relation to Suits’ lusory attitude and the concept of gamification. Finally, it considers and critically evaluates the relationship between play and sport and the importance of the playful attitude in sporting activities. The purpose of this paper is a far deeper analysis of the playful attitude and its relationship to sport than has been previously provided, and a more precise definition as to what the playful attitude is. This will ultimately help to answer questions about the value of sport and how sport ought to be played. (shrink)

We describe how the set of tools, practices, and social relations known as “precision agriculture” is defined, promoted, and debated. To do so, we perform a critical discourse analysis of popular and trade press websites. Promoters of precision agriculture champion how big data analytics, automated equipment, and decision-support software will optimize yields in the face of narrow margins and public concern about farming’s environmental impacts. At its core, however, the idea of farmers leveraging digital infrastructure in their operations is not (...) new, as agronomic research in this vein has existed for over 30 years. Contemporary discourse in precision ag tends to favour emerging digital technologies themselves over their embeddedness in longstanding precision management approaches. Following several strands of science and technology studies research, we explore what rhetorical emphasis on technical innovation achieves, and argue that this discourse of novelty is a reinvention of precision agriculture in the context of the growing “smart” agricultural economy. We overview six tensions that remain unresolved in this promotional rhetoric, concerning the definitions, history, goals, adoption, uses, and impacts of precision agriculture. We then synthesize these in a discussion of the extent to which digital tools are believed to displace farmer decision-making and whether digital agriculture addresses the biophysical heterogeneity of farm landscapes or land itself has become an “experimental technology”—a way to advance the general development of artificial intelligence. This discussion ultimately helps us name a larger dilemma: that the smart agricultural economy is perhaps less about supporting land and its stewards than promising future tech and profits. (shrink)

Overview. Consciousness is often considered to have a "hard" part and a not-so-hard part. With the help of work in artificial intelligence and more recently in embodied robotics, there is hope that we shall be able solve the not-so-hard part and make artificial agents that understand their environment, communicate with their friends, and most importantly, have a notion of "self" and "others". But will such agents feel anything? Building the feel into the agent will be the "hard" part.

The first ever history of the places where history and philosophy meet, from the Age of Discovery in the sixteenth century to contemplation of how space travel will affect our understanding of who we are in the twenty-first. This book will reshape your understanding of travel.

H. S. Harris’s Hegel’s Ladder opens up the epic universe of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit by constructing a text that is epic in its dimensions and self-conscious design. It aims at truth. In the first instance, this means adequacy with respect to the Phenomenology ’s epic account of humanity’s movement toward self-certain truth. In the second instance, it means correspondence to the epic design of the Phenomenology. For Harris, it is self-evident that the Phenomenology belongs to the genre of epic, (...) since it repeats in a philosophical idiom the form and content of classical Western epics. That Harris accepts, even celebrates the secondariness of his text, vis-à-vis Hegel’s best-known text, does nothing to diminish its intellectual and narrative power. Indeed, with respect to the latter, I want to claim that Hegel’s Ladder rises to the level of a powerful, original epic precisely in its ascesis. Like all powerful texts, Hegel’s Ladder intimidates. Before interpretation so exhaustive, before discernment so perspicacious, any Hegel commentator will fear that whatever he or she has to say will be parochial, redundant, opaque, and intellectually impoverished. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Grand Manner Aesthetics in LandscapeFrom Canvas to CelluloidEmily E. Auger (bio)Popular films about the environment and related human and material resource issues, particularly colonialism, tend to enhance the appeal of their subject matter by aesthetically transforming it according to audience preferences and tastes. Such mediating strategies are perhaps too familiar to contemporary artists of all types who would prefer to work beyond the limits of what their readers or (...) viewers are prepared to tolerate as entertainment, but the particular emphases and accommodations made by film artists to convey messages about the environment are little changed from those strategies used by painters over the past three centuries to a similar end. The methods by which environmental issues are aestheticized in late-twentieth-century film is directly and historically related to those established for grand manner painters by Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) and taught at the French academy from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. That these fundamentals were part of the training of artists who would be willing and able to enhance the glory of Louis XIV's absolutist monarchy seems not to have undermined the popular enthusiasm their association with the "classical" past generated outside of France. Thus, the grand manner ideal was repeated, elaborated, and adapted by subsequent British and American artists, teachers, and aestheticians, both amateur and professional, including Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), president of the British academy; theoretician Edmund Burke (1729-97); and such American painters as Benjamin West (1738-1820), Thomas Cole (1801-48), Frederic Church (1826-1900), and Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902).Examples of filmic adaptations of grand manner aesthetics considered here include English director John Boorman's The Emerald Forest (1985) and Anglo-French director Roland Joffé's The Mission (1986), both British productions; Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves (1990) and John McTiernan's [End Page 96] Medicine Man (1992), both American productions with American directors; and Australian director Bruce Beresford's Black Robe (1991), a Canadian/Australian production based on Irish-born, Canadian novelist Brian Moore's best-selling novel of the same title (1985). While it might be argued that these films merely show the adaptation of academy-based grand manner ideals and principles to new imperialist interests, this article demonstrates how they educate and draw public sympathy to global environmental concerns, albeit with reference to a recognizably Western aesthetic tradition. Thus, the interest of this study to educators and students of the visual arts is twofold: first, it demonstrates the continued adaptation and application of aesthetic principles originally developed in the seventeenth century to a technology-based medium; and second, it shows how those aesthetic principles are currently applied in film to direct and modulate public opinion on matters well beyond the domain of pure or theoretical aesthetics.The grand manner aesthetic, first defined with reference to seventeenth-century painting and still apparent in twentieth-century film, is largely attributable to Poussin since he was an artist who wrote—and wrote well—about his understanding of artistic quality and priorities. He was deeply committed to classicism; he thought the elements of a painting should be idealized rather than realistic and particularized, that those elements should be clearly delineated in a linear manner, that exotic subjects and excessive color should be avoided as both appeal too much to the senses and not enough to the mind, and that figures should always predominate over landscape. Poussin's ideals became the model for students training at the French Academy, an institution officially formed in 1648 under the direct control of the government. Aspiring academicians were exhorted to produce images that were usually composites of the better, and sometimes imagined, aspects of the appearance, character, and deeds of the fictional and historical people, events, and locations that were their subjects. They were never allowed to forgot the hierarchy of value that placed genre painting forever below history painting, yet it cannot have escaped their notice that a certain number of well-executed examples of the lowly still life, domestic interior, and picturesque landscape on the exhibition walls made the "grandness" of more ambitious works more apparent by contrast.The French Academy soon became the envy of foreign upper-level bureaucrats cognizant... (shrink)

Focus on the evolutionary origins of musicality has been neglected relative to attention on language, so these new proposals are welcome stimulants. We argue for a broad comparative approach to understanding how the elements of musicality evolved, and against the use of overly simplistic evolutionary accounts.

The current discussion of consumerism in higher education focuses largely on what the providers are obliged to do for the consumers, against the background of rising tuition fees. This framework does not always sit comfortably with lecturers in the context of a learning and teaching relationship, as it appears to ignore the reciprocal obligations lecturers and students have to one another. The purpose of this article is to offer an alternative view of what lecturers and students are obliged to do (...) in the learning and teaching relationship, if learning is to be effective. I argue, drawing on Aristotle's function argument, that both students and lecturers in higher education have moral role obligations; that these moral role obligations are derived from the functions of the roles being voluntarily undertaken by each party; that therefore, by ascertaining the functions of a student and of a lecturer, both a descriptive purpose and a normative purpose will be revealed for each; and that using moral role obligations as a basis for the student/lecturer relationship offers a less contentious alternative to the consumerist model. (shrink)

Here, for the first time, the world's two leading authorities—Tom Regan, who argues for animal rights, and Carl Cohen, who argues against them—make their respective case before the public at large. The very terms of the debate will never be the same. This seminal moment in the history of the controversy over animal rights will influence the direction of this debate throughout the rest of the century.

During spring of 2020, environmental ethics students at a medium sized metropolitan university in the Southeastern United States were asked to read and comment on classic essays from Robert Heilbroner and Garrett Hardin, essays regarding our responsibilities towards future generations. In general, students seemed to hold more with Heilbroner’s stance, which left room for compassion, while condemning Hardin’s harshness. Students were then asked to provide written responses stating whether they would personally sacrifice their eventual retirement in order to stop COVID-19 (...) and the reasons for their views. Responses were analyzed and categorized to detect inconsistencies between students’ described views and their willingness to personally sacrifice for the sake of others. Almost 72% of respondents asserted that they would be willing to intervene to stop the novel coronavirus by sacrificing their retirement. A fair number of respondents that stated they would sacrifice said that they would do so because they would benefit personally from the avoidance of guilt and/or from the opportunity to feel good about themselves, suggesting that even seemingly selfless behaviors are sometimes driven by egoistic motivations. Forty percent of all respondents held inconsistent views. Most notably, a number of students condemned Hardin for his lack of compassion, yet were not willing to act compassionately themselves. (shrink)

Librarians often object to Internet filters on the grounds that filters are prone to overblocking and underblocking. This argument implies that a significant problem with contemporary filters is that they are insufficiently fine-grained. In this article, we posit that present-day filters will always be conceptually capable of failure, regardless of how granular their content analysis becomes. This is because, we argue, objections to content are best understood as objections to problematic interactions between content and particular knowers. We import the concept (...) of the situated knower from feminist epistemology to capture the heterogeneous, socially embedded nature of patrons, about whom we cannot make blunt generalizations for filtering purposes. A successful filter would need information about these differently situated patrons, the content they seek, and the interactions between the two. We conclude that a genuinely successful Internet filter would therefore need to be both mind reading and fortune-telling. (shrink)

Some individuals facing dementia contemplate hastening their own death: weighing the possibility of living longer with dementia against the alternative of dying sooner but avoiding the later stages of cognitive and functional impairment. This weighing resonates with an ethical and legal consensus in the United States that individuals can voluntarily choose to forgo life‐sustaining interventions and also that medical professionals can support these choices even when they will result in an earlier death. For these reasons, whether and how a terminally (...) ill individual can choose to control the timing of their death is a topic that cannot be avoided when considering the dementia trajectory. With a focus on the U.S. context, this landscape review considers the status of provisions that would legally permit people facing dementia to hasten death with appropriate support from medical professionals. This review can be used to plan and guide clinical and legal practitioner discussion and policy development concerning evolving questions not fully covered by existing medical decision‐making provisions. (shrink)

The work of women philosophers in the early modern period has traditionally been overlooked, yet their writing on topics such as reality, time, mind and matter holds valuable lessons for our understanding of metaphysics and its history. This volume of new essays explores the work of nine key female figures: Bathsua Makin, Anna Maria van Schurman, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Damaris Cudworth Masham, Mary Astell, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, and Émilie Du Châtelet. Investigating issues from eternity to free (...) will and from body to natural laws, the essays uncover long-neglected perspectives and demonstrate their importance for philosophical debates, both then and now. Combining careful philosophical analysis with discussion of the intellectual and historical context of each thinker, they will set the agenda for future enquiry and will appeal to scholars and students of the history of metaphysics, science, religion and feminism. (shrink)

It is in the obscure terrain between the life-world of Greek science and technology and the language of its metaphysics that one sees the attempts of early navigators and map-makers to conceptualize what lies beyond the oikoumene. This interest later effects astronomy in terms of what is “beyond the heavens [ezo tes ouranos]” and then in metaphysics as a “Beyond Being [epekeina tes ousias],” an ideal Beyond proposed by Plato in Republic and one that is to eventually become a mainstay (...) of NeoPlatonism. Thus, the “fundamental act” that Romm describes in the above quote was not only taken up with geographical interest, but is one that can be seen as a preparatory gesture in a culture readying itself for the advent of metaphysics, a gesture that continued to make itself felt up until the last days of the Ancient Academy in the fifth century AD. The threads of the intellectual history of a Beyond Being find technological roots in the increasingly sophisticated acts of representation that one finds in early cartography, astronomy, and cosmology, one of which will be to mark boundaries around the heavens themselves and to call that Being. (shrink)

Osiurak and Reynaud argue that children are not a good methodological choice to examine cumulative technological culture. However, the paper ignores other current work that suggests that young children do display some aspects of creative problem-solving. We argue that using multiple methodologies and examining how technical-reasoning develops in children will provide crucial support for a cognitive approach to CTC.

Background: Post-mortem needle biopsies have been used in resource-poor settings to determine cause of death and there is interest in using them in Bangladesh. However, we did not know how families and communities would perceive this procedure or how they would decide whether or not to consent to a post-mortem needle biopsy. The goal of this study was to better understand family and community concerns and decision-making about post-mortem needle biopsies in this low-income, predominantly Muslim country in order to design (...) an informed consent process. Methods: We conducted 16 group discussions with family members of persons who died during an outbreak of Nipah virus illness during 2004-2008 and 11 key informant interviews with their community and religious leaders. Qualitative researchers first described the post-mortem needle biopsy procedure and asked participants whether they would have agreed to this procedure during the outbreak. Researchers probed participants about the circumstances under which the procedure would be acceptable, if any, their concerns about the procedure, and how they would decide whether or not to consent to the procedure. Results: Overall, most participants agreed that post-mortem needle biopsies would be acceptable in some situations, particularly if they benefitted society. This procedure was deemed more acceptable than full autopsy because it would not require major delays in burial or remove organs, and did not require cutting or stitching of the body. It could be performed before the ritual bathing of the body in either the community or hospital setting. However, before consent would be granted for such a procedure, the research team must gain the trust of the family and community which could be difficult. Although consent may only be provided by the guardians of the body, decisions about consent for the procedure would involve extended family and community and religious leaders. Conclusions: The possible acceptability of this procedure during outbreaks represents an important opportunity to better characterize cause of death in Bangladesh which could lead to improved public health interventions to prevent these deaths. Obstacles for research teams will include engaging all major stakeholders in decision-making and quickly building a trusting relationship with the family and community, which will be difficult given the short window of time prior to the ritual bathing of the body. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Surprised by DisabilityEmily K. MichaelToday I am meeting Diana, one of my young blind students, for coffee. Soon she will enroll in our summer program that teaches blind teenagers independent living skills and self–advocacy. Her teachers explain that she has prepared questions for me.“So,” Diana begins, as we follow the uneven sidewalk toward the restaurant. “What would you do if you wanted to go outside without your sunglasses?”I can (...) guess why she poses this question, but I conceal my theory for now. Instead, I smile and adjust the large, dark sunglasses that fit over my regular glasses. “Why would I want to do that?”“I don’t know... Just say, you wanted to,” she finishes diffidently. She walks slightly in front of me, the familiar sound of her white cane scraping and tapping against the bricks laid in the sidewalk. I rarely travel with other blind people, so the sound of her cane comforts me.“I’m so sensitive to light that I’d be miserable without my shades,” I explain. I’m careful with my tone here. Like me, Diana is unable to read facial expressions—she listens attentively to vocal cues. She is a smart 13–year–old, and she will notice if I start to sound preachy. [End Page 207]“Okay, so what if you wanted to go out without your cane?”I’m ready for this one: “Diana, my cane keeps me safe. I’m happy to have it with me.” The cane alerts me to vital environmental changes, like the textural difference between sidewalks and streets. Unexpected curbs, sudden stairs, perilous sign-posts, and wayward children become apparent to me through the white cane. It is as if the cane helps sketch the boundaries around me; its contact with objects creates a vivid spatial awareness.I sense that my responses fill Diana with a mixture of defeat and frustration. I have not validated her reticence to use the shades or cane. Nor have I handed her a rhetorical placebo, a catchy phrase she can pull out whenever she feels uncomfortable with her disability. Resisting her white cane and dark glasses, she loathes the idea of looking different. Though neither of us can see others staring, we feel the judgment and pity—and the occasional sense of wonder from those for whom we’re still a novelty, the ones who want to point and exclaim, “Look Ma, a real blind girl!”Both Diana and I carry emblems of blindness that are easily recognized from a distance—visible signs of disability. Other disabled people can “pass” as nondisabled. If they don’t use wheelchairs, crutches, canes, dogs, or braces, no one will know that they have disabilities. Hence, the disabilities that don’t require visible accessories are called “invisible disabilities”—a term that strengthens the connection between disability and appearance.Diana doesn’t want to “look” blind. She wants me to give her an out, to divulge the strategies I’ve devised for leaving the house without my cane and shades. Underneath her casual questions lies the prevailing obsession, “What’s the secret to looking normal?” As a successful blind woman, I must have it figured out. The secret, Diana, is easy to articulate and difficult to enforce. I can write it more readily than I can live it.The secret begins with a very broad spectrum of acceptance. First, I must accept myself as a blind woman who needs a cane and dark glasses to travel in safety and confidence. Then I must accept that these mobility aids are uncommon and highly visible—which means that, almost every time I go out, people will approach me. And lastly, I must accept that the attitudes of others do not determine who I am, that their idea of blindness does not define my experience of it.The white cane was not always easy for me to carry. Though I have been legally blind from birth, I did not use the white cane in my daily life until high school. Before my freshman year, I could pass as nondisabled. At high school, I found myself on a large, crowded campus with only six minutes... (shrink)

Uncertainty is a necessary condition for the sound moral and scientific conduct of research involving human subjects. If the expert scientific communities, medical or otherwise, lacked uncertainty about the interventions under investigation, it would be unethical to knowingly subject individuals to inferior or harmful treatment. Moreover, if the relative merits of the interventions were previously established, as indicated by the lack of uncertainty within the relevant expert community, the results of the trial would be of little, if any, scientific value. (...) Despite the important role that uncertainty plays in the formulation and conduct of research involving human subjects, the concept has received inadequate treatment in the research ethics literature. To the limited extent that uncertainty is addressed, much of the emphasis remains on the ethical, not epistemic, aspects of uncertainty. What is left insufficiently examined is the nature and scope of the uncertainty. Often, uncertainty is glossed as agnosticism, indifference, and conflict. Yet these terms represent distinct types of uncertainty, and the type that obtains impacts the epistemic and ethical justifications for a proposed trial. A failure to recognize and clearly articulate the parameters of uncertainty in particular situations compromises our ability to respond to important moral and scientific concerns in the development and conduct of research. This problem is particularly pronounced in public health research that investigates problems resulting not only from uncertainties in scientific knowledge but from institutional failures, economic and social constraints, and lack of political will. Indeed, the role of research in public health is tied to its capacities to successfully navigate such complex questions. The way in which a study is designed and carried out, as well as ethically and scientifically justified, must reflect a robust and systematic characterization of the uncertainties present. Using an example from a study examining the efficacy of using treated sewage sludgeto remediate lead-contaminated soil, I explore and analyze the aforementioned deficiencies in understanding uncertainty among researchers and ethicists. The case study serves as a vehicle through which to illustrate (1) important considerations in characterizing and addressing uncertainty; (2) the influence of the uncertainty characterization on the formulation of parameters used to evaluate the ethical permissibility of the research; and (3) ways in which these parameters might be operationalized in the context of a particular study. (shrink)

This groundbreaking interactive book contains the tools that you will need in order to clean your emotional house from top to bottom. It includes a journal as well as access to audio meditations for you to listen along to as you read. The meditations will help you dig deep into past trauma and discover when and how trauma took root, learn to get in touch with various parts of the physical and energy body, and how to use them to let (...) go of stored traumas. From this, you will learn to live from a new mindful and powerful space. (shrink)

Alleged refutations of utilitarianism are not uncommon, so it is unlikely that the title of the present essay will raise eye-brows. ‘Another paper about utility's failure to account for our duty to be just’, is apt to be the prevailing reaction to the title's stated objective. This is understandable. For utilitarianism has been taken to task on just this score more than a score of times. And rightly so, I believe, though I shall not argue that point here. Here I (...) intend to offer a refutation of utilitarianism which turns, not on the duty of justice, but on the value of friendship, a refutation which, so far as I am aware, has never previously been advanced in the not inconsiderable body of literature critical of that theory. (shrink)

Interest in the use of medical data for health research is increasing. Yet, as Elizabeth Ford and colleagues rightly note, there are open questions about the suitability of existing ethical and regulatory oversight frameworks for these research approaches. In their feature article, ‘Should free text data in electronic medical records be shared for research? A citizen’s jury study in the United Kingdom’, Ford et al report the results of a deliberative engagement study in which 18 members of the public were (...) asked whether and under what conditions free text data from medical records should be shared for research purposes. The authors’ explicit aim was to inform national policy on sharing medical text. Public attitudes—stated otherwise, the attitudes of patients whose medical information will ultimately be used under any data sharing policy—are a necessary input into ethical and regulatory decision-making about use of medical data for health research. Though public attitudes will rarely be determinative, they must be weighed in order to uphold the ethical principle of respect for persons.1 Ford et al ’s article is, therefore, an important contribution to …. (shrink)

In this article, I propose that the ethical work of John Dewey can better evaluate, enhance, and nurture human/nonhuman animal relationships. While Peter Singer’s utilitarianism and Tom Regan’s deontology are considered the dominant ethical theories in the field of animal ethics and have provided indispensable scholarship to the field, I argue that they cannot fully attend to the complexities of human/nonhuman animal relationships. Some of the shortcomings of Singer’s and Regan’s theories are the absence of context, the dichotomization (...) of reason/emotion and human/animal, the calculative sterility of moral deliberation, and the problematic language of ‘rights.’ A supplemented Deweyan ethic—enhanced by care ethics and ecofeminism—can better attend to the ethical messiness of human/nonhuman animal relationships. I offer five characteristics of Dewey’s ethical work—naturalism, ethical pluralism, experimentalism, fallibilism, and meliorism—as an alternative way to evaluate and nurture these relationships. (shrink)

We argued last year in this journal that extensive integration of research and care is a worthy goal of health system design, and we second the call from Ruth Faden and colleagues to move toward learning health care systems. As they recognize, learning health care systems demand the coordination of research and medical ethics—two sets of normative commitments that have long been considered distinct. In offering a novel ethics framework for such systems, Faden et al. advance the scholarly debate about (...) how best to do this and challenge us to think more deeply about its practical implications. However, we believe that at least three issues they raise require additional attention. First, the research‐care distinction has more normative bite than they are willing to concede. Second, the role for independent oversight requires clarification. Finally, they neglect the concept of stewardship as a guiding obligation of learning health care systems. (shrink)

What kinds of issues does the global crisis of climate change present to aesthetics, and how will they challenge the field to respond? This paper argues that a new research agenda is needed for aesthetics with respect to global climate change (GCC) and outlines a set of foundational issues which are especially pressing: (1) attention to environments that have been neglected by philosophers, for example, the cryosphere and aerosphere; (2) negative aesthetics of environment, in order to grasp aesthetic experiences, meanings, (...) and dis/values in light of the catastrophic effects of GCC; (3) bringing intergenerational thinking into aesthetics through concepts of temporality and ‘future aesthetics’ (4) understanding the relationship between aesthetic and ethical values as they arise in regard to GCC. (shrink)

Coregulation refers to the process by which relationship partners form a dyadic emotional system involving an oscillating pattern of affective arousal and dampening that dynamically maintains an optimal emotional state. Coregulation may represent an important form of interpersonal emotion regulation, but confusion exists in the literature due to a lack of precision in the usage of the term. We propose an operational definition for coregulation as a bidirectional linkage of oscillating emotional channels between partners, which contributes to emotional stability for (...) both partners. We propose several distinctions and raise unanswered questions that will need to be addressed in order to understand the relevance of coregulation for well-being in adulthood. (shrink)

In The Case for Rage, Myisha Cherry makes the case for a specific kind of rage, a qualified anger at racial injustice that she calls Lordean rage. Drawing on Audre Lorde's classic essay ‘The Uses of Anger’, Cherry develops the concept of Lordean rage as a productive, liberatory anger and defends it from a variety of objections, ranging from neo-Stoic concerns about anger's capacity for destruction to contemporary worries about the misuse of anger by white allies. The brilliance of the (...) book, I think, lies in its capacity to integrate a wide range of philosophical perspectives and arguments, including those from feminist and critical race theory and analytic philosophy of emotion, and present them in a way that speaks directly to our political and historical moment. The audience for this book is broad: anyone who has ever felt anger at racial injustice will have a stake in this book.Cherry begins with some philosophical distinctions to help delineate the contours of this kind of anger. Lordean rage has a particular object—racial injustice—and a specific motivational stance: ‘It aims at nothing less than transforming our world’ (p. 40). (She leaves it as an open, and interesting, question whether a variation of Lordean rage occurs in other cases of oppression.) For these reasons, Lordean rage demands a non-trivial degree of optimism and hope. It also requires a basic respect for both the victim and the perpetrator of racial injustice (p. 37). This last criterion distinguishes it from other motivating kinds of rage, such as ‘wipe rage’, which seeks to eliminate the object of the rage and ‘narcissistic rage’, which is only concerned with injustices that immediately effect oneself. These distinctions, and other helpful ones, are the subject of Chapter 1, which argues against the tendency to understand anger as a homogeneous or uniform phenomenon. We can’t, Cherry argues, paint anger in such ‘broad strokes’ but need a more nuanced account of how different kinds of angers are operative in different kinds of contexts. (shrink)

Buddhist philosophical traditions share the Hellenistic orientation toward therapy, particularly with regard to therapeutic interventions in our emotional life. As Pierre Hadot and Martha Nussbaum have ably argued, for the Hellenistic philosophers, philosophy itself is a therapy of the emotions. In this paper, I shift the focus of the contemporary philosophical literature on therapies of the emotions, which investigates almost exclusively the Hellenistic philosophers, and instead draw on the therapies developed by Tibetan Buddhist philosophers and yogis, in particular Gampopa (1079–1153), (...) Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), and Patrul Rinpoche (1808–87). The texts I use are in the genre of Tibetan literature called lo jong (blo sbyong), or mind (blo)- training (sbyong). I argue that the philosophical analysis of the Tibetan Buddhist therapies gives us a model of moral improve- ment that is both novel and promising. This model focuses on the morally improving agent’s capacity for self-awareness and relaxation, her playful approach to emotional-ethical obstacles, and the cultivation of sophisticated, context-sensitive and appropriately flexible judgments about her emotional-ethical life. I also offer a rough taxonomy of Tibetan therapies of the emotions, which will serve as a vehicle to understanding the view of moral improvement described above. (shrink)

Forber and Smead (2014) analyze how increasing the fitness benefits associated with prosocial behavior can increase the fitness of spiteful individuals relative to their prosocial counterparts, so that selection favors spite over prosociality. This poses a problem for the evolution of prosocial behavior: As the benefits of prosocial behavior increase, it becomes more likely that spite, not prosocial behavior, will evolve in any given population. In this article, I develop two game-theoretic models that, taken together, illustrate how synergistic costs and (...) benefits may provide partial solutions to Forber and Smead’s paradox. (shrink)

Our in-the-moment experience of the world can feel vivid and rich, even when we cannot describe our experience due to limitations of attention, memory or other cognitive processes. But the nature of visual awareness is quite sparse, as suggested by the phenomena of failures of awareness, such as change blindness and inattentional blindness. I will argue that once failures of memory or failures of comparison are ruled out as explanations for these phenomena, they present strong evidence against rich awareness. To (...) accommodate and explain these massive failures of awareness, any theory of phenomenal consciousness must downgrade phenomenology to a degree where it is functionless or, ironically, does not reflect what we experience. (shrink)

Programmes serving international patients are increasingly common throughout the USA. These programmes aim to expand access to resources and clinical expertise not readily available in the requesting patients’ home country. However, they exist within the US healthcare system where domestic healthcare needs are unmet for many children. Focusing our analysis on US children’s hospitals that have a societal mandate to provide medical care to a defined geographic population while simultaneously offering highly specialised healthcare services for the general population, we assume (...) that, given their mandate, priority will be given to patients within their catchment area over other patients. We argue that beyond prioritising patients within their region and addressing inequities within US healthcare, US institutions should also provide care to children from countries where access to vital medical services is unavailable or deficient. In the paper, we raise and attempt to answer the following: (1) Do paediatric healthcare institutions have a duty to care for all children in need irrespective of their place of residence, including international patients? (2) If there is such a duty, how should this general duty be balanced against the special duty to serve children within a defined geographical area to which an institution is committed, when resources are strained? (3) Finally, how are institutional obligations manifest in paradigm cases involving international patients? We start with cases, evaluating clinical and contextual features as they inform the strength of ethical claim and priority for access. We then proceed to develop a general prioritisation framework based on them. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic elevated global attention to the complex problem of allocating and disseminating newly approved vaccines. Following early calls for vaccine equity,1 global health leaders made progress but struggled to fully realize distribution goals.2 With respect to vaccination rates, low and middle income countries have not achieved full parity with high income countries.3 In this issue, Harmon, Kholina, and Graham follow longstanding critiques of market-based vaccine procurement to propose “legal and practical solutions for realizing a new access to vaccines (...) environment”4 that will, they suggest, further the goal of global health justice. (shrink)

For centuries, philosophers of time have produced texts containing words and pictures. Although some historians study visual representations of time, I have not found any history of philosophy on pictures of time within texts. This paper argues that studying such pictures can be rewarding. I will make this case by studying pictures of time in the works of Leibniz, Arthur Eddington and C. D. Broad, and argue they play subtle roles. Further, I will argue that historians of philosophy more widely (...) could benefit from paying more attention to pictures. (shrink)

Perhaps nothing has become more evident in the months and years since 9/11 than the tension that exists between the publics access to information and concerns about protecting national security. This tension raises fundamental questions regarding how and to what extent national security secrecy is consistent with American notions of democracy; how institutions governing determinations about secrecy and disclosure should be designed; and the proper role of Congress, the courts, the public, and the media when it comes to government assertions (...) of secrecy. The materials in this book will provide the interested reader a window into the current shape of the eternal push-and-pull between secrecy and access to information in a democracy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kant on the Method of MathematicsEmily Carson1. INTRODUCTIONThis paper will touch on three very general but closely related questions about Kant’s philosophy. First, on the role of mathematics as a paradigm of knowledge in the development of Kant’s Critical philosophy; second, on the nature of Kant’s opposition to his Leibnizean predecessors and its role in the development of the Critical philosophy; and finally, on the specific role of intuition (...) in Kant’s philosophy of mathematics. One of the points that I want to make is that recognizing the importance of these first two issues is essential to giving an adequate account of the third. That is, only by appreciating how Kant uses the example of mathematical knowledge, and in particular the objections he had to previous accounts of such knowledge, can we understand the philosophical role that he ascribes to intuition in his own account of mathematics.I don’t propose to explain the details of Kant’s philosophy of mathematics, but rather to compare his views on mathematics in the pre-Critical Prize Essay of 1764 to those of the Critique of Pure Reason, with the aim of showing how Kant’s doctrine of construction in pure intuition arises out of a combination of two factors: first, his attempt to ground the distinction between the respective methods of mathematics and philosophy, and second, his concern to defend the reality of mathematical knowledge against the views of those he called ‘the metaphysicians.’ The first factor demands an account of the certainty of mathematics, the second requires an account of its content. I shall argue that there is a possible conflict between Kant’s accounts of these features in the Prize Essay, a possibility which is finally ruled out only by means of the Critical doctrine of pure intuition. So I hope to show that there is a significant philosophical role for intuition in Kant’s account of mathematical knowledge (over and above the more logical role attributed to it on readings [End Page 629] such as those of Friedman, Beth, and Hintikka1) in reconciling the content of mathematics and its certainty.2. THE MATHEMATICIANS VS. THE METAPHYSICIANSThroughout his early writings, Kant appealed to the evidence and certainty of mathematics; his attitude towards metaphysics, however, underwent a dramatic shift. In the Physical Monadology of 1756, Kant asked how metaphysics and geometry can be united,[f] or the former peremptorily denies that space is infinitely divisible, while the latter, with its usual certainty, asserts that it is infinitely divisible. Geometry contends that empty space is necessary for free motion, while metaphysics hisses the idea off the stage. Geometry holds universal attraction or gravitation to be hardly explicable by mechanical causes but shows that it derives from the forces which are inherent in bodies at rest and which act at a distance, whereas metaphysics dismisses the notion as an empty delusion of the imagination [1:475–6].2He attempted in this work to reconcile the respective positions of metaphysics and geometry regarding infinite divisibility, thereby demonstrating that “it is neither the case that the geometer is mistaken nor that the opinion to be found among metaphysicians deviates from the truth” [1:480]. But in a series of works from 1762–3, Kant reveals a markedly different attitude towards metaphysics. For example, in “The only possible argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of God,” Kant says:the mania for method and the imitation of the mathematician, who advances with a sure step along a well-surfaced road, have occasioned a large number of such mishaps on the slippery ground of metaphysics. These mishaps are constantly before one’s eyes, but there is little hope that people will be warned by them, or that they will learn to be more circumspect as a result [2:71].In contrast, Kant describes the geometer as uncovering “with the greatest certainty” the most secret properties of that which is extended [2:70]. But the less conciliatory attitude to metaphysics comes out most clearly in Kant’s actual procedure in “The only possible argument.” In the Seventh Reflection, he presents an attempt to explain the origin of... (shrink)

This wise, stirring book argues that the search for meaning can immeasurably deepen our lives and is far more fulfilling than the pursuit of personal happiness. There is a myth in our culture that the search for meaning is some esoteric pursuit--that you have to travel to a distant monastery or page through dusty volumes to figure out life's great secret. The truth is, there are untapped sources of meaning all around us--right here, right now. Drawing on the latest research (...) in positive psychology; on insights from George Eliot, Viktor Frankl, Aristotle, the Buddha, and other great minds; and on interviews with seekers of meaning, Emily Esfahani Smith lays out the four pillars upon which meaning rests. Belonging: We all need to find our tribe and forge relationships in which we feel understood, recognized, and valued--to know we matter to others. Purpose: We all need a far-reaching goal that motivates us, serves as the organizing principle of our lives, and drives us to make a contribution to the world. Storytelling: We are all storytellers, taking our disparate experiences and assembling them into a coherent narrative that allows us to make sense of ourselves and the world. Transcendence: During a transcendent or mystical experience, we feel we have risen above the everyday world and are connected to something vast and meaningful. To bring those concepts to life, Smith visits a tight-knit fishing village on the Chesapeake Bay, stargazes in West Texas, attends a dinner where young people gather to share their experiences of untimely loss, and more. And she explores how we might begin to build a culture of meaning in our schools, our workplaces, and our communities. Inspiring and story-driven, The Power of Meaning will strike a profound chord in anyone seeking a richer, more satisfying life. (shrink)

Like many people these days, I believe there is no general moral obligation to obey the law. I shall explain why there is no such moral obligation – and I shall clarify what I mean when I say there is no moral obligation to obey the law – as we proceed. But also like many people, I am unhappy with a position that would say there was no moral obligation to obey the law and then say no more about the (...) law's moral significance. In our thinking about law in a resonably just society, we have a strong inclination to invest law with a sort of moral halo. It does not feel right to suggest that law is a morally neutral social fact, nor to suggest that law is merely a useful social technique. In this essay, I shall try to account in part for law's moral halo. Because I share the widespread inclination to invest law with this halo, I shall not be interested in a merely historical account of how we come to see law with a halo – a pure “error theory” of law's halo, if you will. I want to justify the halo. On the other hand, the main way to justify the halo is to get clear just what law's moral significance is. It is unlikely that at the end of the process of clarification the halo will have exactly the shape or luminance that it had at the beginning. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of climate change have mainly conceived of it as a moral or ethical problem, but climate change also raises new challenges for aesthetics. In this paper I show that, in particular, climate change (1) raises difficult questions about the status of aesthetic judgments about the future, or ‘future aesthetics’; and (2) puts into relief some challenging issues at the intersection of aesthetics and ethics. I maintain that we can rely on aesthetic predictions to enable us to grasp, in (...) some sense, aesthetic value in environments affected by climate change and, through a discussion of three hypothetical cases, I argue that, although moral considerations will press on aesthetic judgments, aesthetic value will not necessarily be trumped by them. (shrink)

This paper suggests that the contemporary feminist debate on relational autonomy is best understood as an attempt at ameliorative inquiry—the concept of autonomy is defined in order to secure political and theoretical advantages. Most theorists adopt some sort of constructionist, or relational, account precisely because of the political and theoretical advantages relational accounts are meant to offer. But there are also significant drawbacks to this approach. I argue that there are reasons to be skeptical of ameliorative inquiries into the concept (...) of autonomy: first, the goals of inquiry have not been made explicit and may not be shared; second, because ameliorative inquiries are guided by unclear and unshared goals, the debate will continue to pull feminists in conflicting directions; and finally, the normative and aspirational nature of ameliorative inquiry unacceptably threatens the exclusion of some women from the category of autonomous agents. (shrink)

Recently there has been a great deal of interest in tabletop experiments intended to exhibit the quantum nature of gravity by demonstrating that it can induce entanglement. In order to evaluate these experiments, we must determine if there is any interesting class of possibilities that will be convincingly ruled out if it turns out that gravity can indeed induce entanglement. In particular, since one argument for the significance of these experiments rests on the claim that they demonstrate the existence of (...) superpositions of spacetimes, it is important to keep in mind that different interpretations of quantum mechanics may make different predictions about superpositions of spacetimes. ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-complete interpretations of quantum mechanics, like the Everett interpretation, almost universally predict the existence of superpositions of spacetimes, whereas in ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-incomplete, ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-nonphysical interpretations it seems more natural to predict that spacetime superpositions are not possible. Meanwhile ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-incomplete, ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-supplemented interpretations present us with a more complex picture where we may or may not end up predicting that spacetime superpositions are possible, depending on the particular way in which the coupling between spacetime and matter is constructed. This line of reasoning suggests that what would be ruled out by a successful result to these tabletop experiments is a class of quantum gravity models that we refer to as ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-incomplete quantum gravity —i.e. models of the interaction between quantum mechanics and gravity in which gravity is coupled to non-quantum beables rather than quantum beables. It follows that the results of tabletop experiments can also be regarded as giving us new evidence about the interpretation of quantum mechanics: roughly speaking, a positive result to these experiments should increase our confidence in ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-complete interpretations, whilst a negative result should instead increase our confidence in ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-incomplete interpretations. We introduce these ideas in Sect. 1, and then in Sect. 2 we make the reasoning more precise by presenting a set of inferences that may be made about the ontology of quantum mechanics based on the results of tabletop experiments. In Sect. 3 we discuss some existing PIQG models and consider what more needs to be done to make these sorts of approaches more appealing. There are two competing paradigms for the interpretation of these experiments, which have been dubbed the ‘Newtonian’ paradigm and the ‘tripartite’ paradigm: here we largely work within the tripartite paradigm, because the tripartite view is specifically concerned with ontological aspects of the mediating gravitational interaction and that makes it a suitable setting for enquiries about the ontology of quantum mechanics, but in Sect. 4 we consider what conclusions can be drawn if one does not presuppose the tripartite view. Finally in Sect. 5 we discuss a cosmological phenomenon which could be regarded as providing evidence for PIQG models. (shrink)

Exploring key topics in contemporary aesthetics, this work analyzes the issues that arise from the unique works of Frank Sibley (1923-1996), who developed a distinctive aesthetic theory through a number of papers published between 1955 and 1995. Here, thirteen philosophical aestheticians bring Sibley's insight into a contemporary framework, exploring the ways his ideas foster important new discussion about issues in aesthetics. This collection will interest anyone interested in philosophy, art theory, and art criticism.

Does a τέχνη, qua τέχνη, need to be good-directed? On the basis of the Gorgias, many scholars have thought the answer is yes; I argue here to the contrary. There are, of course, many beneficial τέχναι, such as medicine and weaving; and there are even unconditionally good τέχναι, like the πολιτικὴ τέχνη; but Plato also happily construes piracy as a τέχνη in the Sophist, and, more normally, all sorts of neutral practices as τέχναι. In order to make this argument, I (...) provide a taxonomy of the different kinds of τέχναι and demonstrate that, across the corpus, there does not seem to be a good-directedness requirement. I then address the evidence of the Gorgias, where most commentators find a connection between τέχνη and good-directedness. I argue that this interpretation is incorrect, and that rhetoric in fact fails to be a τέχνη in the Gorgias solely because it is unable to give a rational account. A close reading of the Gorgias shows that this is a plausible interpretation, and comparison with the Phaedrus reinforces the point: in both dialogues, whether rhetoric will be a τέχνη or not hinges only on the question of rationality, not a good-directedness condition. (shrink)

The rhetoric surrounding the creation of a 'knowledge-based economy/society' emphasizes the interrelationship between ICTs in knowledge and economic development and their continued trajectory throughout the next century. What, however, is really meant by the KBE/S agenda, and how are the important social issues surrounding KBE/S, including access, content, and citizenship being dealt with? Using Canada as an example, this discussion will focus on how Canadian federal policymakers are conceptualizing the issues surrounding KBE/S through recent and ongoing policy explorations.