On one view, limb transplants cross technological frontiers but not ethical ones; the only issues to be resolved concern professional competence, under the assumption of patient autonomy. Given that the benefits of limb transplant do not outweigh the risks, however, the autonomy and rationality of the patient are not necessarily self‐evident. In addition to questions of resource allocation and informed consent, limb, and particularly hand, allograft also raises important issues of personal identity and bodily integrity. We present two linked schemas (...) for exploring ethical issues in limb transplants. The first, relying on conventional concepts in biomedical ethics, asks whether the procedure is research or therapy, whether the costs outweigh the benefits, and whether it should be up to the patient to decide. The second introduces more speculative and theoretically challenging questions, including bodily integrity, the argument from unnaturalness, and the function of the hand in expressing personal identity and intimacy. We conclude that limb transplants are not ruled out a priori, unlike some procedures that are prima facie wrong to perform, such as amputation of healthy limbs to relieve body dysmorphic disorders. However, their legitimacy is not proven by appeals to the interests of scientific research, cost‐benefit, or patient autonomy. (shrink)

To speak of being religious lucky certainly sounds odd. But then, so does “My faith holds value in God’s plan, while yours does not.” This book argues that these two concerns — with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value — are inextricably connected. It argues that religious luck attributions can profitably be studied from a number of directions, not just theological, but also social scientific and philosophical. There is a strong tendency (...) among adherents of different faith traditions to invoke asymmetric explanations of the religious value or salvific status of the home religion vis-à-vis all others. Attributions of good/bad religious luck and exclusivist dismissal of the significance of religious disagreement are the central phenomena that the book studies. Part I lays out a taxonomy of kinds of religious luck, a taxonomy that draws upon but extends work on moral and epistemic luck. It asks: What is going on when persons, theologies, or purported revelations ascribe various kinds of religiously-relevant traits to insiders and outsiders of a faith tradition in sharply asymmetric fashion? “I am saved but you are lost”; “My religion is holy but yours is idolatrous”; “My faith tradition is true, and valued by God, but yours is false and valueless.” Part II further develops the theory introduced in Part I, pushing forward both the descriptive/explanatory and normative sides of what the author terms his inductive risk account. Firstly, the concept of inductive risk is shown to contribute to the needed field of comparative fundamentalism by suggesting new psychological markers of fundamentalist orientation. The second side of what is termed an inductive risk account is concerned with the epistemology of religious belief, but more especially with an account of the limits of reasonable religious disagreement. Problems of inductively risky modes of belief-formation problematize claims to religion-specific knowledge. But the inductive risk account does not aim to set religion apart, or to challenge the reasonableness of religious belief tout court. Rather the burden of the argument is to challenge the reasonableness of attitudes of religious exclusivism, and to demotivate the “polemical apologetics” that exclusivists practice and hope to normalize. Lexington Books Pages: 290 978-1-4985-5017-8 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00) 978-1-4985-5018-5 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00) ISBN 978-1-4985-5018-5 (pbk: alk. paper) (coming 2020) [Download the 30% personal use Discount Order Form I uploaded for hardcover or e-book, and please ask your library to purchase a copy for their collection.]. (shrink)

Contract cheating refers to students paying a third party to complete university assessments for them. Although opportunities for comercial contract cheating are widely available in the form of essay mills, only about 3% of students engage in this behaviour. This study examined the reasons why most students do not engage in contract cheating. Students (n = 1291) completed a survey on why they do not engage in contract cheating as well as measures of several individual differences, including self-control, grit and (...) the Dark Triad traits. Motivation for learning and morality received the greatest endorsement for why students do not engage in contract cheating. Controlling for gender, individual differences predicted students’ reasons for not contract cheating. This study supports the use of criminological theories relating to self-control and opportunity to explain why students do not engage in contract cheating. Practically, this study may inform academic policies and assessment design that may reduce contract cheating. (shrink)

Noradrenergic pathways are involved in mediating the central and peripheral effects of physiological arousal. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of noradrenergic transmission in moral decision-making. We studied the effects in healthy volunteers of propranolol (a noradrenergic beta-adrenoceptor antagonist) on moral judgement in a set of moral dilemmas pitting utilitarian outcomes (e.g., saving five lives) against highly aversive harmful actions (e.g., killing an innocent person) in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel group design. Propranolol (40 mg orally) (...) significantly reduced heart rate, but had no effect on self-reported mood. Importantly, propranolol made participants more likely to judge harmful actions as morally unacceptable, but only in dilemmas where harms were ‘up close and personal’. In addition, longer response times for such personal dilemmas were only found for the placebo group. Finally, judgments in personal dilemmas by the propranolol group were more decisive. These findings indicate that noradrenergic pathways play a role in responses to moral dilemmas, in line with recent work implicating emotion in moral decision-making. However, contrary to current theorising, these findings also suggest that aversion to harming is not driven by emotional arousal. Our findings are also of significant practical interest given that propranolol is a widely used drug in different settings, and is currently being considered as a potential treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder in military and rescue service personnel. (shrink)

Clinical ethics support for health care professionals and patients is increasingly seen as part of good health care. However, there is a key drawback to the way CES services are currently offered. They are often performed as isolated and one-off services whose ownership and impact are unclear. This paper describes the development of an integrative approach to CES at the Center of Expertise and Care for Gender Dysphoria at Amsterdam University Medical Center. We specifically aimed to integrate CES into daily (...) work processes at the CEGD. In this paper, we describe the CES services offered there in detail and elaborate on the 16 lessons we learned from the process of developing an integrative approach to CES. These learning points can inform and inspire CES professionals, who wish to bring about greater integration of CES services into clinical practice. (shrink)

A growing number of philosophers are concerned with the epistemic status of culturally nurtured beliefs, beliefs found especially in domains of morals, politics, philosophy, and religion. Plausibly, worries about the deep impact of cultural contingencies on beliefs in these domains of controversial views is a question about well-foundedness: Does it defeat well-foundedness if the agent is rationally convinced that she would take her own reasons for belief as insufficiently well-founded, or would take her own belief as biased, had she been (...) nurtured in a different psychographic community? This chapter will examine the proper scope and force of this epistemic location problem. It sketches an account of well and ill-founded nurtured belief based upon the many markers of doxastic strategies exhibiting low to high degrees of inductive risk: the moral and epistemic risk of ‘getting it wrong’ in an inductive context of inquiry. (shrink)

This paper aims to make explicit the methodological conditions that should be satisfied for the Bayesian model to be used as a normative model of human probability judgment. After noticing the lack of a clear definition of Bayesianism in the psychological literature and the lack of justification for using it, a classic definition of subjective Bayesianism is recalled, based on the following three criteria: an epistemic criterion, a static coherence criterion and a dynamic coherence criterion. Then it is shown that (...) the adoption of this framework has two kinds of implications. The first one regards the methodology of the experimental study of probability judgment. The Bayesian framework creates pragmatic constraints on the methodology that are linked to the interpretation of, and the belief in, the information presented, or referred to, by an experimenter in order for it to be the basis of a probability judgment by individual participants. It is shown that these constraints have not been satisfied in the past, and the question of whether they can be satisfied in principle is raised and answered negatively. The second kind of implications consists of two limitations in the scope of the Bayesian model. They regard (1) the background of revision (the Bayesian model considers only revising situations but not updating situations), and (2) the notorious case of the null priors. In both cases Lewis’ rule is an appropriate alternative to Bayes’ rule, but its use faces the same operational difficulties. (shrink)

This paper provides an empirical defense of credit theories of knowing against Mark Alfano’s challenges to them based on his theses of inferential cognitive situationism and of epistemic situationism. In order to support the claim that credit theories can treat many cases of cognitive success through heuristic cognitive strategies as credit-conferring, the paper develops the compatibility between virtue epistemologies qua credit theories, and dual-process theories in cognitive psychology. It also a response to Lauren Olin and John Doris’ “vicious minds” thesis, (...) and their “tradeoff problem” for virtue theories. A genuine convergence between virtue epistemology and dual-process theory (DPT) is called for, while acknowledging that this effort may demand new and more empirically well-informed projects on both sides of the division between Conservative virtue epistemology (including the credit theory of knowing) and Autonomous virtue epistemology (including virtue responsibility, and meliorative projects for providing guidance to epistemic agents engaged in inquiry). (shrink)

Higher education students experience high rates of negative emotions such as stress, anxiety, and depression. Although emotions are known to influence attitudes per se, previous research has not examined how emotionality may relate to attitudes toward plagiarism. This study sought to examine how positive and negative emotionality relates to students’ positive attitudes, negative attitudes, and subjective norms concerning plagiarism. University students completed the Attitudes Toward Plagiarism questionnaire and measures of anxiety, stress, depression, and negative and positive affect. Extending on previous (...) research, it was found that a lack of positive affect and negative emotionality, specifically stress, were significant predictors of attitudes toward plagiarism. Emotionality predicted 8.9% and 10% of the variance in positive plagiarism attitudes and subjective norms, respectively. Interestingly, gender was unable to predict subjective norms relating to plagiarism. Support for negative and positive emotionality predicting attitudes toward plagiarism challenges the assumption that emotions do not predict attitudes within the plagiarism context. These findings are practically relevant, as they highlight the necessity of implementing interventions directly targeting mental health within the higher education setting. (shrink)

Motivated by the ongoing controversy surrounding corporate tax, this article presents a study that explores stakeholder expectations of corporate tax in the context of UK business. We conduct a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with representatives of community groups, as well as interviews with those representing business groups. We then identify eight themes that together describe “what” companies need to do, “how” they need to do it, and “why” they need to do it, if they wish to appeal to a (...) wide group of interested parties. We discuss our findings based on the corporate social responsibility literature and propose novel ways for community groups and business groups to connect on the topic of corporate tax, suggesting opportunities and themes for dialogue and potential steps to co-create solutions in a stakeholder society. (shrink)

This was my first paper on virtue epistemology, and already highlights the connections with epistemic value and axiology which I would later develop. Although most accounts were either internalist or externalist in an exclusive sense, I suggest an inquiry-focused version through connections with the American pragmatism.

This volume considers forms of information manipulation and restriction in contemporary society. It explores whether and when manipulation of the conditions of inquiry without the consent of those manipulated is morally or epistemically justified. The contributors provide a wealth of examples of manipulation, and debate whether epistemic paternalism is distinct from other forms of paternalism debated in political theory. Special attention is given to medical practice, science communication, and research in science, technology, and society. Some of the contributors argue that (...) unconsenting interference with or "conceptual engineering" of people’s beliefs and ability of inquire is consistent with, and others that it is inconsistent with, efforts to democratize knowledge and decision-making. (shrink)

Working as clinical ethicists in an academic hospital, we find that practitioners tend to take a principle‐based approach to moral dilemmas when it comes to (not) treating patients who feel like a burden, in which respect for autonomy tends to trump other principles. We argue that this approach insufficiently deals with the moral doubts of professionals with regard to feeling that you are a burden as a motive to decline or withdraw from treatment. Neither does it take into adequately account (...) the specific needs of the patient that might underlie their feeling of being a burden to others. We propose a care ethics approach as an alternative. It focuses on being attentive and responsive to the caring needs of those involved in the care process—which can be much more specific than either receiving or withdrawing from treatment. This approach considers these needs in the context of the patient's identity, biography and relationships, and regards autonomy as relational rather than as individual. We illustrate the difference between these two approaches by means of the case of Mrs K. Furthermore, we show that a care ethics approach is in line with interventions that are found to alleviate feeling a burden and maintain that facilitating moral case deliberation among practitioners can supports them in taking a care ethics approach to moral dilemmas in (not) treating patients who feel like a burden. (shrink)

Luck threatens in similar ways our conceptions of both moral and epistemic evaluation. This essay examines the problem of luck as a metaphilosophical problem spanning the division between subfields in philosophy. I first explore the analogies between ethical and epistemic luck by comparing influential attempts to expunge luck from our conceptions of agency in these two subfields. I then focus upon Duncan Pritchard's challenge to the motivations underlying virtue epistemology, based specifically on its handling of the problem of epistemic luck. (...) I argue that (1) consideration of the multifold nature of the problem of epistemic luck to an adequate account of human knowledge drives us to a mixed externalist epistemology; and (2) the virtue-theoretical approach presents a particularly advantageous way of framing and developing a mixed externalist epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Metaphilosophy is the property of Blackwell Publishing Limited and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts). (shrink)

This paper formulates generalized versions of the general principle of relativity and of the principle of equivalence that can be applied to general abstract spaces. It is shown that when the principles are applied to the Hilbert space of a quantum particle, its law of coupling to electromagnetic fields is obtained. It is suggested to understand the Aharonov-Bohm effect in light of these principles, and the implications for some related foundational controversies are discussed.

Aristotle's zoological writings with their wealth of detailed investigations on diverse species of animals have fascinated medieval and Renaissance culture. This volume explores how these texts have been read in various traditions (Arabic, Hebrew, Latin), and how they have been incorporated in different genres (in philosophical and scientific treatises, in florilegia and encyclopedias, in theological symbolism, in moral allegories, and in manuscript illustrations). This multidisciplinary and multilinguistic approach highlights substantial aspects of Aristotle's animals.

Dyadic coping (DC), how couples cope together to deal with a stressor like chronic illness, has received increased attention over the last three decades. The aim of the current study was to summarize the current state of research on DC in couples. We conducted a scoping review of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies published between 1990 and 2020, assessing DC in couples during three decades. 5,705 studies were identified in three electronic databases and hand searches. We included 643 sources in (...) this review (with a total ofN= 112,923 study participants). Most studies were based in the global North, particularly in the US and Europe. Publication numbers increased constantly over time. A third of study designs were cross-sectional studies followed by qualitative and longitudinal studies. The most prolific DC research areas were related to DC and minor stressors and DC and major physical health stressors. Overall, DC has been established internationally as a highly relevant construct in many disciplines (clinical, social, developmental, personality psychology, social work, nursing etc.). To conclude, the review reveals that future studies should focus on predictors, trajectories, and the importance of very specific DC behaviors for personal and dyadic functioning. (shrink)

Debate over the adequacy of John Hick's conception of religious pluralism is engaged in a comparative manner.

This paper adds a new perspective to recent debates about the political nature of rights through attention to their distinctive role within social movement practices of moral critique and social struggle. The paper proceeds through a critical examination of the Political Constitutionalist theories of rights politics proposed by Jeremy Waldron and Richard Bellamy. While political constitutionalists are correct to argue that rights are ‘contestable’ and require democratic justification, they construe political activity almost exclusively with reference to voting, parties and parliamentary (...) law-making, neglecting the vital role rights play in political struggle outside and against the official institutions of democratic citizenship. In contrast to the political constitutionalist stress on the patient and reciprocal negotiation of rights within formal electoral processes, this paper locates the political nature of rights in their conflictual logic as ‘claims’ in multiple spheres that function to mobilise oppos... (shrink)

In ethical theory, different concepts of autonomy can be distinguished. In this article we explore how these concepts of autonomy are combined in theory in the citizenship paradigm, and how this turns out in the practice of care for people with acquired brain injury. The stories of a professional caregiver and a client with acquired brain injury show that the combination of various concepts of autonomy in practice leads to tensions between caregivers and clients. These dynamics are discussed from a (...) care ethics perspective, stressing the importance of relationships and interdependence, as well as paying attention to various, sometimes conflicting, perspectives in a deliberative dialogue. (shrink)

We congratulate Pearlman and colleagues (2016) on their detailed account of the development of a quality assessment tool for clinical ethics consultation (CEC), based on the evaluation of written r...

In Knowing and Seeing, Michael Ayers presents a view of what he calls primary knowledge according to which one who knows in that way both knows perspicuously and knows how they know. Here, I use some general considerations about seeing, knowing, and knowing how one knows in order to raise some questions about this view. More specifically, I consider some putative limits on one’s capacity to know how one knows. The main question I pursue concerns whether perspicuity should be thought (...) of either (i) as a condition of sensory experience, (ii) as a condition of sense-based cognition, or (iii) as an interface condition, involving interrelations between sensory experience and sense-based cognition. (shrink)

“Guy Bennett-Hunter dans «Tillich and Divine lneffabililty» affirme l‘étroite correlation entre l’affirmation tillichienne de l’ineffabilité divine et le rejet de l’ontothéologie. L’affirmation de leur incompatibilité lui semble une contribution majeure de Tillich à la pensée religieuse. Guy Bennett-Hunter part des déclarations bien connues où Tillich affirme que l’on ne saurait, à proprement parler, attribuer l’existence a Dieu puisque Dieu est «être même au-delà de l’essence et de l’existence». En d’autres termes, Dieu «mystére de l’être», «fondement et abîme de la raison», (...) résiste à la connaissance coneeptuelle et à l’articulation linguistique.” — Anne Marie Reijnen & France Farago. (shrink)

In Greek mythology the Muses –patron goddesses of fine arts, history, humanities, and sciences– are tellingly portrayed as the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess Memory, who is of the race of Titans, older still than Zeus and other Olympian deities. The relationship between memory and such fields as epic poetry, history, music and dance is easily recognizable to moderns. But bards/poets like Homer and Hesiod, who began oral storytelling by “invoking the Muses” with their audience, knew well that (...) remembering, forgetting, and imagining are each to be esteemed as, in Hesiod’s words, “gifts of the goddesses.” The economy of memory is an important concern for moral psychology, philosophy of emotions, and philosophy of imagination. This chapter examines ways that amusements, both classically and today, can function to educate moral emotions in and though their multi-faceted engagements with the economy of memory. (shrink)

Summary If action theory is to be relevant for the study of social phenomena, its scope has to be enlarged so as to include social structures. A hermeneutic theory of action, which draws on the thoughts of Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur and Giddens, can meet this requirement. The hermeneutic concept of action, which emphasises the importance of tradition, style and rituals, demonstrates that action and structure presuppose and explain each other. The mutual relationship between action and structure is particularly clear in (...) theories of human development in the domain of psychology, psychotherapy and education. These theories can be used to construct a theory of social evolution, as has been developed by Habermas. By integrating structural, theoretical and critical points of view, a hermeneutic theory of action opens a perspective in which action theory and social theory might be successfully combined. (shrink)

This paper will consider the metamorphoses, the translations, of the divine occurring in the ecstatic and aesthetic naturalisms of Robert S. Corrington, the poetic philosophizing of Wallace Stevens, and the syntheism of Alexander Bard. In Corrington’s aesthetic naturalism, the notion of the divine elides but also translates into the notion of the sublime. Of great import in this elision, this translation, is Corrington’s reading of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer, read by Corrington, sees the self as the highest objectification of the Will.2 The (...) genius, the epitome of the self as this highest objectification of the Will, brings the Forms to the spatiotemporal flux of the Will’s violent and aimless.. (shrink)

This article seeks explore the complex relations between Beauty and the Sublime. The exploration is guided by two very powerful, but very different, thinkers: Swiss Catholic metaphysical theologian Hans Urs von Balthasat and American naturalist metaphysician Robert S. Corrington. Through reflection upon von Balthasar’s themes of Beauty, Splendor and Being and Corrington’s themes of the Sublime and the Encompassing it is hoped implications of the complex relations between Beauty and the Sublime might be evoked and engaged.

L'auteur se demande en quoi la sémiotique se distingue d'une part des approches traditionnelles de la littérature, d'autre part du structuralisme. Trois thèmes circulent à travers les divers chapitres: (1) la relativisation de l'analyse structurale au profit de la "sémio-stylistique"; (2) la promotion de la description aux dépens de la narration; (3) l'importance de la pastorale dans l'histoire de la littérature. Ces thèmes sont développés clairement, et l'auteur tient compte, entre autres, des apports de la philosophie contemporaine à la théorie (...) de la littérature. On peut toutefois déplorer l'absence d'une conclusion rassemblant les éléments théoriques éparpillés dans les divers chapitres et approfondissant les concepts de base, dont certains sont plutôt problématiques. (shrink)