Have I made a mistake in my Anarchism, or has the editor of Liberty himself tripped? At any rate, I must challenge the Anarchism of one sentence in his otherwise masterful paper upon 'State Socialism and Anarchism.' If I am wrong, I stand open to conviction. It is this. 'They [Anarchists] look forward to a time...when the children born of these relations shall belong exclusively to the mothers until old enough to belong to themselves.'.

There you are at the opera house. The soprano has just hit her high note – a glassshattering high C that fills the hall – and she holds it. She holds it. She holds it. She holds it. She holds it. She holds the note for such a long time that after a while a funny thing happens: you no longer seem only to hear it, the note as it is currently sounding, that glass-shattering high C that is loud and (...) high and pure. In addition, you also seem to hear something more. It is difficult to express precisely what this extra feature is. One is tempted to say, however, that the note now sounds like it has been going on for a very long time. Perhaps it even sounds like a note that has been going on for too long. In any event, what you hear no longer seems to be limited to the pitch, timbre, loudness, and other strictly audible qualities of the note. You seem in addition to experience, even to hear, something about its temporal extent. (shrink)

Many theorists have dismissed a priori the idea that distributional information could play a significant role in syntactic category acquisition. We demonstrate empirically that such information provides a powerful cue to syntactic category membership, which can be exploited by a variety of simple, psychologically plausible mechanisms. We present a range of results using a large corpus of child‐directed speech and explore their psychological implications. While our results show that a considerable amount of information concerning the syntactic categories can be obtained (...) from distributional information alone, we stress that many other sources of information may also be potential contributors to the identification of syntactic classes. (shrink)

Although informed consent models for prescribing hormone replacement therapy are becoming increasingly prevalent, many physicians continue to require an assessment and referral letter from a mental health professional prior to prescription. Drawing on personal and communal experience, the author argues that assessment and referral requirements are dehumanising and unethical, foregrounding the ways in which these requirements evidence a mistrust of trans people, suppress the diversity of their experiences and sustain an unjustified double standard in contrast to other forms of clinical (...) care. Physicians should abandon this unethical requirement in favour of an informed consent approach to transgender care. (shrink)

ArgumentBetween 1838 and 1863 the Grimm brothers led a collaborative research project to create a new kind of dictionary documenting the history of the German language. They imagined the work would present a scientific account of linguistic cohesiveness and strengthen German unity. However, their dictionary volumes (most of which were arranged and written by Jacob Grimm) would be variously criticized for their idiosyncratic character and ultimately seen as a poor, and even prejudicial, piece of scholarship. This paper argues that such (...) criticisms may reflect a misunderstanding of the dictionary. I claim it can be best understood as an artifact of romanticist science and its epistemological privileging of subjective perception coupled with a deeply-held faith in inter-subjective congruence. Thus situated, it is a rare and detailed case of Romantic ideas and ideals applied to the scientific study of social artifacts. Moreover, the dictionary's organization, reception, and legacy provide insights into the changing landscape of scientific practice in Germany, showcasing the difficulties of implementing a romanticist vision of science amidst widening gaps between the public and professionals, generalists and specialists. (shrink)

There is renewed interest in the logic of discovery as well as in the position that there is no reason for philosophers to bother with it. This essay shows that the traditional, philosophical arguments for the latter position are bankrupt. Moreover, no interesting defense of the philosophical irrelevance or impossibility of the logic of discovery can be formulated or defended in isolation from computation-theoretic considerations.

Drawing on the principle of subsidiarity, this article develops a framework for allocating medical decision-making authority in the absence of capacity to consent and argues that decisional authority in paediatric transgender healthcare should generally lie in the patient. Regardless of patients’ capacity, there is usually nobody better positioned to make medical decisions that go to the heart of a patient’s identity than the patients themselves. Under the principle of subsidiarity, decisional authority should only be held by a higher level decision-maker, (...) such as parents or judges, if lower level decision-makers are incapable of satisfactorily addressing the issue even with support and the higher level decision-maker is better positioned to satisfactorily address the issue than all lower level decision-makers. Because gender uniquely pertains to personal identity and self-realisation, parents and judges are rarely better positioned to make complex medical decisions. Instead of taking away trans youth’s authority over their healthcare decisions, we should focus on supporting their ability to take the best possible decision for themselves. (shrink)

As global warming continues to attract growing levels of attention, various stakeholders have put climate change on corporate agendas and expect firms to disclose relevant greenhouse gas information. In this paper, we investigate the consistency of the GHG information voluntarily disclosed by French listed firms through two different communication channels: corporate reports and the Carbon Disclosure Project. More precisely, we contrast the amounts of GHG emissions reported and the methodological explanations provided in each channel. Consistent with a stakeholder theory perspective, (...) we find that GHG amounts are significantly lower in the CR than in the CDP. We also find that firms increase the CR figures’ traceability when there is a discrepancy between disclosures in the two channels. We suggest that the aim of this greater traceability is to enhance information credibility across the different channels used. (shrink)

The terms of debate over insurance coverage of transition-related interventions, which includes facial feminization surgery (FFS), has been defined through the reconstructive versus cosmetic dichot...

An inordinate number of low wage workers in essential industries are Black, Hispanic, or Latino, immigrants or refugees — groups beset by centuries of discrimination and burdened with disproportionate but preventable harms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The emergence of the field of health care at a distance, or “telehealth,” has been embedded within discourses of high ambition about health improvement, seamless services, empowerment, and independence for patients. In this article, the authors examine how telehealthcare technologies assume certain forms of patients—or “telepatients”—who can be mobilized and combined with images and artifacts that speak for them in the clinical encounter. Second, a tentative intervention is made in these emerging identities in the form of facilitating some alternative discourses (...) about telehealthcare. The aim is to stimulate debate by presenting and contrasting these different approaches to technology development. Such differences take material and discursive shape in the making and unmaking of telepatients, showing important interferences in the shaping of identity and possibilities for governance and participation. (shrink)

Each year, millions of individuals in the United States are treated for a variety of serious medical conditions with prescription drugs whose therapeutic benefits are well known. The vast majority of these medications are used to treat medical and psychiatric illnesses. Generally, they are used as prescribed, and contribute to a better quality of life for persons suffering from debilitating or life-threatening disorders.The fact that a small portion of these medications is diverted by those who seek their psychoactive effects raises (...) the important policy issue: how to make drugs easily available for medical use while limiting access for purposes of abuse.Such a responsibility poses challenges very different from those of the so-called “war” on illicit drugs, because this control must be achieved without impeding patients’ access to medical care. A rational public policy would attempt to achieve a balance between the need to minimize abuse and the need to provide relief. (shrink)

Medieval literature is argumentative, since it argues for an idealized vision of reality acceptable to a proposed audience. Its narrative mode is description, performed according to the principles of the art of topical invention, derived from Cicero's De Inventione. The topoi or loci are features (circumstantiae) of a person or thing that are common to it as a class, such as tempus or locus for things. When filled out, according to the point of view desired by the author, public, context, (...) etc., they become the attributes (argumenta) of a particular human being or action.According to the author, all descriptions should be interpreted by reference to such a technique of topical invention, a method which will allow new explanations of the texts. The examples of the locus amoenus in various Latin and French works show how traditional and conventional models were adapted and specialized, by various devices, to fit new formal or conceptual intentions and new contexts. The examples and models proposed to the student learning composition by Masters such as Matthew of Vendôme, were given not to be copied, but to be imitated through topical invention, that is adaptation to a particular intention, through specializing devices. (shrink)

The phrase "applied ethics" has lost much of the charm it initially had for philosophers. Alasdair MacIntyre, Tom Beauchamp, and others pointed out a decade ago that it is a mistake to think of ethics as a body of theory that can be carted in, when necessary, to sort out some particularly messy real-world moral dilemma.(1) According to these critics' line of thought there may be good reasons to distinguish pure from applied mathematics, for example, but ethics is not (and (...) should not pretend to be) the same sort of inquiry as mathematics. Every time we advertise a course in applied ethics, we implicitly suggest a separation between theory and practice. This separation rings especially false for those of us whose philosophical orientation derives from the work of the classical American pragmatists. In this paper I want to discuss a conception of applied ethics -- call it "applying ethics" -- that is rooted in pragmatic philosophy, and to suggest a kind of practice which I think could be quite valuable both for society at large and for the society of philosophers concerned with ethics. (shrink)

Although Max Scheler (1874–1928) and Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950) were contemporaries and wrote under the influence of the phenomenological movement, the large differences between their initiatives and achievements in philosophy resulted in scholars rarely reading them together. However, they shared one major concept in ethics, that of material value ethics. This ethics is (1) non‐formal, and involves a profound criticism of Kantian ethical formalism, and (2) is founded in a phenomenology of the values themselves, that its, the content, available in intuition, (...) of such values as trust, utility, friendship, or even the Aristotelian virtues. The present article seeks to uncover a latent harmony and consistency in the two men's material value ethics, and considers the possibility of its recovery for contemporary virtue ethics. (shrink)

There are three distinct projects - ontological, phenomenological, and conceptual - to pursue in the philosophy of perception. They are, however, rarely distinguished. Failure to distinguish them has resulted in their being pursued as one. Their completion then requires that they admit of the same solution, while accommodating the existence of misperception and the scientific facts concerning the perceptual process. The lesson to learn from misperceptions and those facts is, however, that no such common solution is possible, and that the (...) projects must, and can, be pursued separately. Pursuit of the phenomenological and conceptual projects then requires a context in which discourse concerning objects of perception is permitted without ontological commitment to such objects. This is supplied by treating certain uses of perceptual locutions as within a context of pretense. (shrink)

O presente artigo resulta da palestra por mim proferida durante o I Simpósio de Filosofia e Literatura Clássica da Universidade Federal de Tocantins “O medo entre os Gregos e os Latinos” e da discussão que a sucedeu. Na época do evento, ocorrido de forma remota na segunda quinzena de maio de 2022, o mundo estava submerso na pandemia de Covid-19 há mais de dois anos e sofria com as inseguranças e os medos que tal situação fomentava. Diante desse contexto, nosso (...) olhar, ao se voltar para a antiguidade clássica procura novas interpretações para a já conhecida literatura grega. No caso particular dessa análise, revisitei as comédias de Aristófanes em busca de como o autor tematizou o medo em suas comédias e pude notar que o comediógrafo registrou vocábulos do campo semântico de ‘medo’ de duas formas: em As Nuvens e Paz, o medo é usado de forma isolada em cenas cômicas de metacomédia para causar humor. Já em As Rãs, o medo é parte constitutiva de estrutura temática da peça e caracteriza o personagem Dioniso como um indivíduo em crise, diante de uma Atenas desestruturada. (shrink)

The standard, non‐repeated prisoner's dilemma poses no true dilemma about rationality, we argue. What the prisoners ought rationally to do, unless they are selfless, depends on the relationship of trust that they have or lack with one another. This helps to diffuse the apparent conflict between individual and collective rationality. If the prisoners have reason to trust one another, pursuing a joint strategy would be rational for them. In the absence of trust, pursuing an individual strategy would be rational. The (...) solution that is supposed to be puzzling – because each prisoner confessing is worse for both than the alternative on which both remain silent – is simply the rational solution for persons who have no reason to trust one another. Philosophers have been misled by the apparent availability of the better alternative. Collective rationality is not relevant for persons who do not stand in a trusting relationship. When they do, there is no unresolved conflict between their individual and collective points of view.1. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page W3-W4.

A recent paper by Teresa Baron and Geoffrey Dierckxsens argues that puberty blockers and hormone therapy should be disallowed before adulthood on prudential and consent-related grounds. This response contends that their argument fails because it is predicated on unsupported premises and misinterpretations of the available evidence. There is no evidence that a large proportion of pubertal and postpubertal youths later discontinue medical transition. Meaningful assent is a viable and commonly accepted alternative to meaningful consent in paediatric bioethics. And finally, the (...) primary purpose of transition-related interventions is to actualise youths’ gendered self-image, not treat an underlying mental illness. (shrink)

Cet article montre que le Livre du Chevalier errant de Thomas iii de Saluces (fin du xive siècle) est un miroir familial visant, à travers la combinaison du souvenir historique et de la fiction légendaire, à sublimer le souvenir des aïeux. Dans cette stratégie d’exaltation généalogique, le rôle des femmes est loin d’être négligeable. Deux cas remarquables d’héroïsme féminin sont analysés, ceux de Richarde de Saluces, la guerrière, et de Grisilidis, l’épouse vertueuse.

Mark Schroeder’s Slaves of the Passions defends a version of the Humean Theory of Reasons he calls “Hypotheticalism,” according to which all reasons an agent has for action are explained by desires that are in turn explained by reference to her psychology. This paper disputes Schroeder’s claim that his theory has the potential to allay long-standing worries about moral objectivity and normativity within a Humean framework because it fails to attain the requisite level of agent-neutrality for moral reasons. The particular (...) problems, and their concomitant solutions, push us in the direction of a more modest ambition for the objectivity of this neo-Humean morality. Moreover, even if all the pieces of Schroeder’s theory are tweaked just enough to make a roughly universal morality practicable, the kind of universality gained might still omit some putatively desirable features of any moral system. (shrink)

This empirical work attends to the tensions and contradictions medical students articulate when they discuss their objection to industry’s influence in medicine. Findings are based on 50 semi-structured interviews with medical students who are critical of the pharmaceutical industry’s influence in medical education in the United States and Canada. These students advocate evidence-based medicine as one solution to the problems with industry influence in medicine; namely industry bias in medical research. This investigation is an effort to understand why EBM is (...) posed as a solution to industry bias in light of the literature demonstrating the ways that what is considered ‘evidence-based’ is influenced by industry. Participants articulate a struggle to find the ‘best’ evidence in a context where industry interests are integral in the production of medical knowledge. (shrink)

How to account for participants’ psychological and emotional exhaustion with research has been under‐explored in the research ethics literature. Research fatigue, as it is known, has significant impacts on patients’ well‐being and their ongoing and future participation in studies. From the perspective of researchers and researched communities, research fatigue also creates selection bias and opportunity costs, negatively impacting the collective scientific enterprise. Institutional Review Boards should systematically consider research fatigue during the research approval process and strive to mitigate it.

In a previous article, I argued that assessment requirements for transgender hormone replacement therapy (HRT) are unethical and dehumanising. A recent response published by theJournal of Medical Ethicscriticises this proposal. In this reply, I advance that their response misunderstood core parts of my argument and fails to provide independent support for assessment requirements. Though transition-related care may have similarities with cosmetic surgeries, this does not suffice to establish a need for assessments, and nor do the high rates of depression and (...) anxiety justify assessments, especially given the protective role HRT plays towards mental well-being. (shrink)

The United Nations (UN) General Assembly High-Level Meeting (HLM) on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPPR) was a missed opportunity to bring high-level commitment and momentum to the global governance of health emergencies. Intended to bring much-needed attention to a policy issue that is rapidly slipping down the international agenda, the fraught diplomacy among member states, lack of consensus on key issues, and weak UN Political Declaration in New York foreshadow a difficult road ahead for upcoming negotiations under the World (...) Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. This column chronicles the evolving engagement of the UN in global health governance, examines the diplomatic process leading to the UN HLM on PPPR, and assesses the contributions and missed opportunities of its resulting Political Declaration. (shrink)

I am very much in sympathy with the overall approach of John Campbell’s paper, “Reference as Attention”. My sympathy extends to a variety of its features. I think he is right to suppose, for instance, that neuropsychological cases provide important clues about how we should treat some traditional philosophical problems concerning perception and reference. I also think he is right to suppose that there are subtle but important relations between the phenomena of perception, action, consciousness, attention, and reference. I even (...) think that there is probably something importantly right about the main claim of the paper. I take this to be the claim that there is a tight connection – of some sort at any rate – between our capacity to refer demonstratively to perceptually presented objects and our capacity to attend to those objects in our conscious awareness of them. What precisely this connection consists in, however, remains a mystery to me. My goal in these comments is to clarify this result. I will begin, in section 2, with a fairly general statement of the problem I take Campbell to have set himself. Following this, in section 3, I will focus more particularly on what kind of relation Campbell takes to exist, or does exist, or perhaps could exist between attention and demonstrative reference. I examine four options, the first three of which seem to admit of clear counterexamples, and the fourth of which is too weak to be of any real interest. (shrink)

The consistent sentencing of white collar criminals does not exist in today's judicial system. Guidelines for sentencing individuals and corporations have already been developed by the U.S. Sentencing Commission but have not yet been implemented in the courts. Pros and cons of the guidelines are given, as is the extent and form of sentencing deemed appropriate for the individual or corporation. The activities of the sentencing commission are depicted by a timeline.