This is a collection of essays on themes of legal philosophy which have all been generated or affected by Hart's work. The topics covered include legal theory, responsibility, and enforcement of morals, with contributions from Ronald Dworkin, Rolf Sartorius, Neil MacCormach, David Lyons, Kent Greenawalt, Michael Moore, Joseph Raz, and C.L. Ten, among others.

A representation is a remnant of previous experience that allows that experience to affect later behavior. This paper develops a metatheoretical view of representation and applies it to issues concerning representation in animals. To describe a representational system one must specify the following: thedomainor range of situations in the represented world to which the system applies; thecontentor set of features encoded and preserved by the system; thecodeor transformational rules relating features of the representation to the corresponding features of the represented (...) world; themedium, or the representation's physical instantiation; and thedynamics, or how the system changes with time. In part because of the behaviorist assumption that the hypothetical, covert changes occurring in an organism during learning correspond to the overt physical changes that are observed, issues of representation in animal behavior have been largely ignored as irrelevant or misleading. However, it can be inferred that representations, acting as models of environmental regularities, operate at many levels of behavioral functioning, both cognitive and noncognitive. Objections to the use of this concept in explanations of animal behavior, based on the claim that it is indeterminate and on behaviorist considerations of parsimony, can be answered. Animal representations may be specialized in terms of tasks and species. Data from tasks involving spatial memory, delayed matching-to-sample, and sequence learning suggest some foundations for a general theory of animal representations. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION: Delusional misidentification syndromes (DMS) are a group of psychopathological experiences occurring in psychosis, involving the misidentification of a person or place. DMS are often accompanied by hostility towards the object of delusional misidentification. This is of a particular concern in perinatal mental illness due to the potential disruption of the mother-infant bond, and risk of neglect, violence, or infanticide towards a misidentified child. This review aimed to collate all published cases of DMS in postpartum psychosis to further understand how (...) these syndromes present in perinatal mental illness. METHODS: In August 2021, an online database search was conducted using PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and Embase to identify all publications reporting DMS in the perinatal period. RESULTS: Nine papers were included in the review involving 8 case reports of Capgras syndrome and one case series involving 4 cases of Fregoli syndrome. Three cases identified organic pathology, which may have contributed to the presentation. The most common subject of misidentification was the patient’s husband (n = 7), followed by their baby (n = 6), hospital staff (n = 4), other family members (n = 3), and self (n = 1). Five cases remark on the impact of perinatal illness on the maternal-infant bond, of which four result in the mother being unwilling to care for the infant as the result of their delusional beliefs. CONCLUSION: This is the first systematic review of the literature in this field. Although small in number, these cases reveal several important learning points including that DMS can occur with or without underlying organic disease. Active exploration of the nature of delusions in postpartum psychosis is required to mitigate the risk of harm to the infant and mother-infant bond. It may also uncover that these syndromes are more common in postpartum psychosis than previously realized. (shrink)

This incisive book deals with the use of the criminal law to enforce morality, in particular sexual morality, a subject of particular interest and importance since the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957. Professor Hart first considers John Stuart Mill's famous declaration: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community is to prevent harm to others." During the last hundred years this doctrine has twice been sharply challenged by two great (...) lawyers: Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the great Victorian judge and historian of the common law, and Lord Devlin, who both argue that the use of the criminal law to enforce morality is justified. The author examines their arguments in some detail, and sets out to demonstrate that they fail to recognize distinction of vital importance for legal and political theory, and that they espouse a conception of the function of legal punishment that few would now share. (shrink)

This classic collection of essays, first published in 1968, represents H.L.A. Hart's landmark contribution to the philosophy of criminal responsibility and punishment. Unavailable for ten years, this new edition reproduces the original text, adding a new critical introduction by John Gardner, a leading contemporary criminal law theorist.

Although the popular view of design as enhancing beauty and functionality is not wrong, it is not enough. By thinking of design as not only aesthetic (enhancing beauty) and purposive (enhancing functionality) but also as discursive, this paper addresses the increasing prominence of design, and gives a criterion for evaluating design, by asking what kind of discourse it should be. Design, I contend, ought to participate in rational, as compared to commercial or authoritarian, discourse. Commercial discourse reduces humans to consumers, (...) and authoritarian discourse divides humans into masters and slaves. Rational discourse envisions humans in the highest possible terms, as holding equal place within the real, and equal standing before the truth, and therefore as sharing common cause with one another, at all times and places, and under any conditions. Commercial and authoritarian discourse both attempt to consolidate agency in the hands of a few; rational discourse, to distribute agency equally to all. Design is among the enterprises for which the obligatory work is rational discourse, and the stakes thus the fullness of our humanity and the humanity of others. (shrink)

Background: The Taiwan Nursing Accreditation Council has proposed eight core professional nursing qualities including ethical literacy. Consequently, nursing ethics education is a required course for student nurses. These courses are intended to improve the ethical literacy. Moral sensitivity is the cornerstone of ethical literacy, and learning moral sensitivity is the initial step towards developing ethical literacy. Objectives: To explore the effect of nursing ethics educational interventions based on multiple teaching strategies on student nurses moral sensitivity. Based on the visual, auditory (...) and kinaesthetic model, three strategies were developed for determining the programme components and corresponding learning styles. Research design: This was a quasi-experimental study. Participants: A total of 234 junior-college student nurses participated in this study. All participants were aged 18–19 years. Ethical considerations: The study protocol was approved by the institutional review boards of Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital. Only the participants who signed an informed consent form took part in the study. The participants were permitted to withdraw from the study at any point if they wished to do so without affecting their academic score. Results: The scores of Modified Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire for Student Nurses were significantly improved after the intervention of integrating multiple teaching strategies ( p =.042). Significant relationships were observed between the satisfaction scores of two teaching strategies and moral sensitivity. The results indicated that using multiple teaching strategies is effective for promoting nursing ethics learning. Conclusion: This strategy was consistent with the student nurses’ preferred learning style and was used to correct their erroneous ethical conceptions, assisting in developing their ethical knowledge. (shrink)

Several scholars have recognized the limitations of theories of moral reasoning in explaining moral behavior. They have argued that moral behavior may also be influenced by moral identity, or how central morality is to one’s sense of self. This idea has been supported by findings that people who exemplify moral behavior tend to place more importance on moral traits when defining their self-concepts (Colby & Damon, 1995). This paper takes the next step of examining individual variation in a construct highly (...) associated with immoral behavior — psychopathy. In Study 1, we test the hypothesis that individuals with a greater degree of psychopathic traits have a weaker moral identity. Within a large online sample, we found that individuals who scored higher on a measure of psychopathic traits were less likely to base their self-concepts on moral traits. In Study 2, we test whether this reduced sense of moral identity can be attributed to differences in moral judgment, which is another factor that could influence immoral behavior. Our results indicated that the reduced sense of moral identity among more psychopathic individuals was independent of variation in moral judgment. These results suggest that individuals with psychopathic traits may display immoral behavior partially because they do not construe their personal identities in moral terms. (shrink)

Love's memories, love recalling itself in letters lost and found over an interval of forty years: Cixous's writer-narrator advances here far into a labyrinth of passions long ago delivered and yet still arriving through the mail, through letters and literature, in other words, the poetry of the post. As for the lovers' returning scenes, they have their addresses in Paris and in New York, but also in a lost oasis of the Egyptian desert during the Napoleonic wars, in Athens and (...) along the shores of a great lake centuries ago in the country of myth. The lovers are poets or soldiers, philosophers or students madly in love with poetry and poets. They are as well mermaids or panthers. Panthers? Yes, for it is the passion of the animal that drives all these lovers to bare themselves, and sometimes their claws, before the beloved. Misunderstandings are often, even inevitably the result. Seconded and witnessed by her passionate, truth-telling cats, Cixous's narrator-writer returns unerringly to moments of errancy inflicted on address and language, those errors and faults when love, perhaps, is listening only to itself, without subject or object, lover or beloved, just love itself, l'amour meme, l'amour m'aime, love loving me, in the letter box of memory. (shrink)

The European Union welfare standardsfor intensively kept pigs have steadilyincreased over the past few years and areproposed to continue in the future. It isimportant that the cost implications of thesechanges in welfare standards are assessed. Theaim of this study was to determine theprofitability of rearing pigs in a range ofhousing systems with different standards forpig welfare. Models were constructed tocalculate the cost of pig rearing (6–95 kg) in afully-slatted system (fulfilling minimum EUspace requirements, Directive 91630/EEC); apartly-slatted system; a high-welfare,straw-based system (...) (complying with the UK-basedRoyal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty toAnimals, Freedom Food standards) and afree-range system. The models were also used toassess the consequences of potential increasesin space allowance, and to estimate the cost ofrearing pigs under organic standards.The cost of rearing pigs ranged from92.0 p/kg carcass weight (cw) and 94.6 p/kgcw forthe partly-slatted and fully-slatted systems,to 98.8 p/kgcw and 99.3 p/kgcw for the FreedomFood and free-range systems respectively. Whenspace allowance was increased by 60% to levelsin a recent proposal to revise pig welfareDirective (91/630/EEC), the rearing costs wereunchanged for the free-range system but rose by4.6 p/kgcw for the fully-slatted system. Rearingcosts under organic standards were 31% higherthan in the free-range system. These resultssuggest that improved pig welfare can beachieved with a modest increase in cost. (shrink)

As the usual regulatory framework did not fit well during the last Ebola outbreak, innovative thinking still needed. In the absence of an outbreak, randomised controlled trials of clinical efficacy in humans cannot be done, while during an outbreak such trials will continue to face significant practical, philosophical, and ethical challenges. This article argues that researchers should also test the safety and effectiveness of novel vaccines in wild apes by employing a pluralistic approach to evidence. There are three reasons to (...) test vaccines in wild populations of apes: i) protect apes; ii) reduce Ebola transmission from wild animals to humans; and iii) accelerate vaccine development and licensing for humans. Data obtained from studies of vaccines among wild apes and chimpanzees may even be considered sufficient for licensing new vaccines for humans. This strategy will serve to benefit both wild apes and humans. (shrink)

In this field questions arise which are certainly difficult; but as I listened last time to members of the group, I felt that the main difficulty perhaps lay in determining precisely what questions we are trying to answer. I have the conviction that if we could only say clearly what the questions are, the answers to them might not appear so elusive. So I have begun with a simple list of questions about discretion which in one form or another were, (...) as it seemed to me, expressed by the group last time. I may indeed have omitted something and inserted something useless: if so, no doubt I shall be informed of this later. The central questions then seem to me to be the following: 1. What is discretion, or what is the exercise of discretion? 2. Under what conditions and why do we in fact accept or tolerate discretion in a legal system? 3. Must we accept discretion or tolerate discretion, and if so, why? 4. What values does the use of discretion menace, and what values does it maintain or promote? 5. What can be done to maximize the beneficial operation of the use of discretion and to minimize any harm that it does? (shrink)