This book explores how thinking with Alfred North Whitehead and various continental philosophers can advance ideas about sustainability and civilization writ large. Contributors employ Whitehead and one or more continental thinkers around a given topic, whether philosophical or social, to produce the dislocations necessary for generating new ideas.

In complex philosophical ways, theology is, should, and can be a "theopoetics" of multiplicity. The ambivalent term theopoetics is associated with poetry and aesthetic theory; theology and literature; and repressed literary qualities, myths, and metaphorical theologies. On a more profound basis, it questions the establishment of the difference between philosophy and theology and resides in the dangerous realm of relativism. The chapters in this book explore how the term theopoetics contributes to cutting-edge work in theology, philosophy, literature, and sociology.

Considered together, Butler and Whitehead draw from a wide palette of disciplines to develop distinctive theories of becoming, of syntactical violence, and creative opportunities of limitation. The contributors of this volume offer a unique contribution to and for the humanities in the struggles of politics, economy, ecology, and the arts.

Among the reasons that Whitehead is such an interesting philosopher is that his work resonates across philosophical traditions. This collection develops connections between Whiteheadian concepts and recent European thinkers. The purpose is not simply to compare, however, but, as editor Jeremy Fackenthal suggests, to develop a Whiteheadian thinking “in tandem” with European philosophers in order to create disruptions or “dislocations” in thought that can engender creative approaches to contemporary problems.One general feature of the book deserves mention at the (...) outset, though I will return to it later in the review: although phenomenology and hermeneutics are each represented in the volume, roughly half of the essays focus on the work of Gilles Deleuze (if we group these together with essays focused on “new materialism,” which is connected with Deleuze, the proportion is more like two-thirds). This will be no surprise, since Deleuze is the European philosopher who was most appreciative of Whitehead. And yet, the result is that the conversation with “continental philosophy” is highly selective.The book is organized into three parts, each comprised of three essays. In part 1, “Technological and Systematic Dislocations,” William S. Hamrick brings Whitehead into conversation with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of “the flesh” to suggest an ecological ontology capable of overcoming the instrumentalization of nature. Hamrick's strategy is to read Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty as contributing to an “ontological foundation” for a sustainable civilization (18). Bo Eberle writes about the “quantified self” suggested in new, wearable self-monitoring technologies. Drawing on Whitehead's notion of causal efficacy, Eberle argues that devices such as Fitbit give us access to bodily states that bypasses the standard ways we are aware of ourselves (i.e., through consciousness). He goes further to argue that, like all ways of knowing, wearable technologies are selective, and that the selection reflects the interests of the manufacturers and promotes a certain kind of subjectivity (in the case of Fitbit, a subjectivity that is oriented toward “getting your steps in”). Whitehead's epistemology thus enables the critic of wearable technologies to understand how contemporary experience and self-understanding is shaped not simply by recent technological mediations but by the material interests embedded in them. J.R. Hustwit and Carl Dyke take on what they call “activist” uses of Whitehead that naively (in their judgment) suggest that a non-relational substance metaphysics is to blame for most of our social ills. They employ the theory of complex adaptive systems in conversation with Whitehead and Antonio Gramsci to show that, in fact, achieving significant social change is far more difficult and even unpredictable than mere insertion of better ideas into public discourse. Dominant hegemonies have ways of adapting and absorbing attempts to undermine them. Here Hustwit and Dyke draw on the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur to suggest that resistance to the dominant hegemony is nevertheless always possible because of the vagueness of discourse, allowing a plurality of competing interpretations and thus fractures in the dominant hegemony. However, even this kind of resistance is impossible to control and its effects incapable of being entirely predicted. To the essay's titular question, “Can Whitehead save the world?” the authors answer, “No.”In part 2, “Animal/Human Dislocations,” Jeremy Fackenthal draws on the new materialism of Rosi Braidotti (and Deleuze) along with Whitehead to argue for a “process-relational” nomadism that culminates in a “becoming-imperceptible.” His reading together of Whitehead and Braidotti creates the opportunity to recast the former's concept of objective immortality in such a way that it does not refer to death so much as to being diffused into a relational network. The satisfaction of an actual occasion may be taken as its translation into its effects among its relations. Fackenthal argues that this becoming-imperceptible makes possible a sustainable presence within a fragile network of life. Deena M. Lin uses Whitehead, Braidotti, and Judith Butler to lay out a vision of human life as precarious and deserving attention, care, and solidarity. She presses this vision as a direct moral assault on US (Trump's) policy toward Syrian refugees. Going further, she draws on Braidotti's posthuman account of zoe to argue for universal connection and solidarity with all life that should foster, as the title of her essay puts it, “Welcoming of Syrian Life.” Tano Posteraro offers an intriguing essay drawing on Jakob von Uexküll's account of animal experience. Posteraro argues that Uexküll's notion of an animal's Umwelt, shaped by its distinctive perceptual apparatus, needs to be supplemented by Whitehead's notion of prehension to account for the active dimension of animal perception. Rather than a passive registering of animal environments, Posteraro argues that the latter are constructed, and that concepts (or conceptual prehensions) should be understood as tools with which such environments are constructed.In part 3, “Time, the World, and Abstraction,” three essays probe ways that Whiteheadian and Deleuzian themes may resonate critically and constructively. Kris Klotz brings the thought of Whitehead and Deleuze together to inquire about how alternatives to present social forms are envisioned. He argues that, for Whitehead, every actual occasion involves a selection of some features of the past, and, further, that every selection is also an abstraction from the concrete welter of influences impinging on it. For Whitehead, then, to envision alternatives involves a critique of abstractions, a reinstatement of the concrete plurality of possibilities. This, for Whitehead, is what rationality does: it works at restoring the concrete, and, with it, a series of alternatives that have been eclipsed. To this Whiteheadian analysis, Klotz adds Deleuze and Guattari's critique of “opinion.” For Deleuze and Guattari, opinion is not an idiosyncrasy but a consensus to which differences of experience are subjected. Philosophy, for Deleuze and Guattari, must always struggle against opinion in order to bring alternatives to light. These conceptions of reason/philosophy, Klotz argues, represent useful ways to critique inequalities and other social wrongs that are embedded in the social forms that are routinely taken for granted. Elijah Prewitt-Davis uses a scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, along with philosophical innovations of Foucault, Deleuze, and Whitehead, to offer a distinctive account of power. Prewitt-Davis calls attention to Deleuze's important book on Leibniz, The Fold, and to how Whitehead's concept of prehension lies at its center. The upshot is that power is not reduced to dominance but, instead, is at work wherever any occasion of experience persists amid the onslaught of the influence of other occasions. Power, as Deleuze wrote, is the capacity to be affected—and to decide how to constitute oneself anew. Keith Robinson offers a detailed account of Whitehead's epistemology along with a reading of Deleuze's analysis of temporality to suggest that there is a common trajectory that seeks to undermine what the title of the essay describes as the “Bifurcation of Nature” (i.e., the separation of natural phenomena and human experience) within the dominant Western philosophical tradition.There is much of value in the volume as a whole. Aside from staging what Spinoza might have called good encounters between Whitehead and a number of continental philosophers, enhancing the conceptual power of each, the contributors are able to make a case that these philosophical trajectories, when read together, have much to contribute to our understanding of and response to the pressing issues of the day. In addition, readers who are interested in the relationship between Whitehead and the new materialism will find this volume to be a helpful resource, stocked with fine examples of how to sharpen new materialist thinking with Whitehead and how to read contemporary contexts through these lenses. On the other hand, this book is not a handbook nor a comprehensive reference. The organizational logic behind its division into sections is murky and the amount of attention given to particular continental philosophers as opposed to others appears somewhat arbitrary: there are recent continental philosophers who get little to no attention at (Derrida, Malabou, Žižek, Agamben, Latour, Nancy, for example), several of whom might prove to be quite interesting to read “in tandem” with Whitehead. Perhaps that is just to say that there are many more essays to be written. (shrink)

Most studies on climate change response have examined reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Yet these studies do not take into account ecosystem services constraints and biophysical disruptions wrought by climate change that may require broader types of response. By studying a firm in the wine industry and using a research approach not constrained by structured methodologies or biased toward GHG emissions, the findings suggest that both “inside out” and “outside in” actions are taken in response to climate change. While (...) attempts are made by the firm to curtail and reverse climate change through management of carbon emissions, evidence suggests a clear pattern of actions designed to adjust to the adverse consequences of climate change as well. The results both confirm and extend previous findings and suggest that the level and breadth of response to climate change is shaped by situated attention, structural controls, and industry type. (shrink)

In this review, I survey theoretical accounts of exploitation in business, chiefly through the example of low wage or sweatshop labor. This labor is associated with wages that fall below a living wage standard and include long working hours. Labor of this kind is often described as self-evidently exploitative and immoral (Van Natta 1995). But for those who defend sweatshop labor as the first rung on a ladder toward greater economic development, the charge that sweatshop labor is self-evidently exploitative fails (...) adequately to explain the nature of the alleged wrongdoing. While all sides might agree that poor working conditions are unfortunate and undesirable, defenders of sweatshop labor argue that they provide the best available employment alternative for some workers and the best chance at economic development for many low and middle income countries (LMICs). Some defenders of sweatshop labor even embrace the label of exploitation. <br><br>Unless there is a clear, widely understood account by which exploitation is a moral wrong, then charging a practice as exploitative will do little to advance debates over whether and why a practice is morally problematic. A considerable body of work has been developed applying a growing literature on exploitation to sweatshop labor. While many forms of moral wrong are associated with sweatshop labor, I will focus specifically on the worry that low wages allow relatively wealthy employers wrongfully to take advantage of or gain from relatively poor workers, especially in LMICs. In particular, I will focus on instances of alleged exploitation in employment relationships that are voluntary and mutually beneficial. I have two reasons for doing so. First, by restricting this review to voluntary and mutually beneficial instances of exploitation, I can isolate the moral wrong of exploitation from other moral wrongs, especially the wrongs of coercion and outright harms to workers. Second, the focus on mutually beneficial and voluntary relationships will allow for arguments that sweatshop labor is not only not exploitative, but is a morally praiseworthy means of helping to encourage economic growth in poor areas of the world and to provide jobs that pay better and are more stable than any existing alternatives.<br><br>In this review, I aim to accomplish three goals. First, I will provide an overview of the many different uses of the charge of exploitation in business practice through an examination of the uses of the term in the literature on sweatshop labor. While it is often not clear what kind of moral wrong is assumed to take place when the charge of exploitation is used, I will demonstrate that many distinct types of exploitation, connected to distinct moral wrongs, are used in the literature on sweatshop labor and elsewhere in business ethics. Specifically, I will identify two broad categories of exploitation—exploitation as unfairness and exploitation as the mere use of others—with subgroups under each main category of exploitation. Second, I will discuss which of these senses of exploitation are defensible as identifying clear moral wrongs that take place in the context of business and, specifically, sweatshop labor. As I will argue, not all uses of the charge of exploitation are capable of persuasively identifying clear moral wrongs. Moreover, there is not a single, clear type of exploitation that takes place in business but, rather, several distinct forms. Third, I will apply the lessons learned from my exploration of exploitation in sweatshop labor to other specific areas of business. As I will argue, there are multiple viable models of exploitation in the sweatshop literature that can illuminate exploitative practices of relatively well compensated employees, customers, suppliers, and entire communities. <br><br>While discussions of theories of exploitation tend to argue for a single, correct account of this moral wrong, my review of the literature on exploitation in sweatshop labor supports the conclusion that there are multiple defensible accounts of the moral wrong of exploitation. For this reason, those who would charge that a relationship is exploitative should specify the form of exploitation that they believe is taking place. (shrink)

A notion called Herbrand saturation is shown to provide the model-theoretic analogue of a proof-theoretic method, Herbrand analysis, yielding uniform model-theoretic proofs of a number of important conservation theorems. A constructive, algebraic variation of the method is described, providing yet a third approach, which is finitary but retains the semantic flavor of the model-theoretic version.

We present a formal system, E, which provides a faithful model of the proofs in Euclid's Elements, including the use of diagrammatic reasoning.

In a wide range of fields, the word “modular” is used to describe complex systems that can be decomposed into smaller systems with limited interactions between them. This essay argues that mathematical knowledge can fruitfully be understood as having a modular structure and explores the ways in which modularity in mathematics is epistemically advantageous.

Definitions and distinctions -- Classification -- Of the ends of punishment -- Cases unmeet for punishment -- Expense of punishment -- Measure of punishment -- Of the properties to be given to a lot of punishment -- Of analogy between crimes and punishment -- Of retaliation -- Popularity -- Simple afflictive punishments -- Of complex afflictive punishments -- Of restrictive punishments--territorial confinement -- Imprisonment -- Imprisonment--fees -- Imprisonment examined -- General scheme of imprisonment -- Of other species of territorial confinement--quasi-imprisonment--relegation--banishment (...) -- Of simply restrictive punishments -- Of active or laborious punishment -- Capital punishment -- Capital punishment examined -- Punishment analyzed -- Of the punishments belonging to the moral sanction -- Forfeiture of reputation -- Of pecuniary forfeitures -- Forfeiture of condition -- Forfeiture of the protection of the law -- Naturally extravasting punishment--rules concerning it -- Punishment apparently, but not really, mis-seated--civil responsibility -- Mis-seated punishment, varieties of -- Vicarious punishment -- Transitive punishment -- Disadvantages of this mode of punishment -- Collective punishment -- Random punishment -- Cause of the frequency of mis-seated punishment -- Inconveniences of complex punishments -- Of transportation -- Panopticon penitentiary -- Felony -- Of præmunire -- Outlawry -- Excommunication -- Choice of punishment--latitude to be allowed to the judges -- Of subsidiary punishments -- Of surety for good conduct -- Defeazance of punishment. (shrink)

We characterize a type of functional explanation that addresses why a homologous trait originating deep in the evolutionary history of a group remains widespread and largely unchanged across the group’s lineages. We argue that biologists regularly provide this type of explanation when they attribute conserved functions to phenotypic and genetic traits. The concept of conserved function applies broadly to many biological domains, and we illustrate its importance using examples of molecular sequence alignments at the intersection of evolution and cell biology. (...) We use these examples to show how the study of conserved functions can integrate knowledge of a trait’s causal effects on fitness and its history of natural selection without invoking adaptation. We also show how conserved function provides a novel basis for addressing objections against evolutionary functions raised by Robert Cummins. (shrink)

st of these lectures, I present a conception of dignity that preserves its ancient association with rank and station, and a conception of human dignity that amounts to a generalization of high status across all human beings. The lectures argue that this provides a better understanding of human dignity and of the work it does in theories of rights than the better-known Kantian conception. The second lecture focuses particularly on the importance of dignity - understood in this way - as (...) a status defining a person's relation to law: their presentation as persons capable of self-applying the law, capable of presenting and arguing a point of view, and capable of responding to law's demands without brute coercion. Together the two lectures also illuminate the relation between dignity conceived as the ground of rights and dignity conceived as the content of rights; they also illuminate important ideas about dignity as noble bearing and dignity as the subject of a right against degrading treatment; and they help us understand the sense in which dignity is better conceived as a status than as a kind of value. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce a version of perdurantism called Priority Perdurantism, according to which perduring, four-dimensional objects are ontologically fundamental and the temporal parts of those objects are ontologically derivative, depending for their existence and their identity on the four-dimensional wholes of which they are parts. I argue that by switching the order of the priority relations this opens up new solutions to the too-many-thinkers problem and the personite problem – solutions that are more ontologically robust than standard maximality (...) solutions. I then consider and respond to two initial objections to the view: that it no longer counts as a perdurantist theory and that it reintroduces the problem of temporary intrinsics. I conclude by offering two further advantages of priority perdurantism: that it is consistent with hunky time and with the existence of irreducibly temporally-extended actions, such as those pertaining to deliberative agency. (shrink)

Discussions about biotechnology tend to assume that it is something to do with genetics or manipulating biological processes in some way. However, the field of biometrics––the measurement of physical characteristics––is also biotechnology and is likely to affect the lives of more people more quickly than any other form. The possibility of social exclusion resulting from the use of biometrics data for such uses as identity cards has not yet been fully explored. Social exclusion is unethical, as it unfairly discriminates against (...) individuals or classes of people. Social exclusion is unethical, as it unfairly discriminates against individuals or classes of people. This article looks at some of the ways in which social exclusion might arise from the use of biometric data, and introduces a model of balancing individual interests with which to analyse whether it is justified to run the risk of excluding some members of society for the benefit of others. (shrink)

This paper expounds the relations between continuous symmetries and conserved quantities, i.e. Noether's ``first theorem'', in both the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian frameworks for classical mechanics. This illustrates one of mechanics' grand themes: exploiting a symmetry so as to reduce the number of variables needed to treat a problem. I emphasise that, for both frameworks, the theorem is underpinned by the idea of cyclic coordinates; and that the Hamiltonian theorem is more powerful. The Lagrangian theorem's main ``ingredient'', apart from cyclic coordinates, (...) is the rectification of vector fields afforded by the local existence and uniqueness of solutions to ordinary differential equations. For the Hamiltonian theorem, the main extra ingredients are the asymmetry of the Poisson bracket, and the fact that a vector field generates canonical transformations iff it is Hamiltonian. (shrink)

The 1-consistency of arithmetic is shown to be equivalent to the existence of fixed points of a certain type of update procedure, which is implicit in the epsilon-substitution method.

It is often argued that certain metaphysical complications surrounding the phenomenon of monozygotic twinning force us to conclude that, prior to the point at which twinning is no longer possible, the zygote or early embryo cannot be considered an individual human organism. In this essay, I argue, on the contrary, that there are in fact several ways of making sense of monozygotic twinning that uphold the humanity of the original zygote, but also that there is no easy answer to what (...) happens when the human zygote twins. All of the options available carry with them one or more surprising, alarming, or otherwise counterintuitive implications. All things considered, I conclude that the “budding option,” according to which the original human organism present before twinning carries on as one of the resulting embryos but not the other, is the most plausible explanation of what happens when a human zygote twins. (shrink)

Midway through How to Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin’s announces a “fresh start” in his efforts to characterize the ways in which speech is action, and introduces a new conceptual framework from the one he has been using up to that point. Against a common reading that portrays this move as simply abandoning the framework so far developed, Marina Sbisà contends that the text takes the argumentative form of a proof by contradiction, such that the initial framework plays an (...) instrumental role as part of a proof in favour of the subsequent one. Despite agreeing with Sbisà’s broad instrumentalist approach, we argue that her regimentation of Austin’s narrative into a proof by contradiction ultimately fails - both as a proof and as an interpretation of Austin. Instead, we suggest that a better way of interpreting the peculiar structure of How to Do Things With Words is as a pedagogical exercise whose point is to bring a concealed alternative into view in a manner that also explains its initial concealment, and that this approach provides richer resources for supporting Sbisà’s own conventionalist understanding of illocution than that afforded by reading the text as a proof by contradiction. (shrink)

There are two competing models for how to understand Aquinas’s hylomorphic theory of material substances: the Simple Model, according to which material substances are composed of prime matter and substantial form, and the Expanded Model, according to which material substances are composed of prime matter, substantial form, and all of their accidental forms. In this paper, I first explain the main differences between these two models and show how they situate Aquinas’s theory of material substances in two different places within (...) the contemporary debate on concrete particulars, highlighting several advantages that Aquinas’s approach has over other varieties of substratum and bundle theory along the way. I then offer some reasons to think that the Expanded Model, as a theory of concrete particulars, is preferable. I argue that the Expanded Model avoids two major concerns for the Simple Model: the problem of extrinsicality, and the problem of too-many-possessors. (shrink)

Using a slight generalization, due to Palmgren, of sheaf semantics, we present a term-model construction that assigns a model to any first-order intuitionistic theory. A modification of this construction then assigns a nonstandard model to any theory of arithmetic, enabling us to reproduce conservation results of Moerdijk and Palmgren for nonstandard Heyting arithmetic. Internalizing the construction allows us to strengthen these results with additional transfer rules; we then show that even trivial transfer axioms or minor strengthenings of these rules destroy (...) conservativity over HA. The analysis also shows that nonstandard HA has neither the disjunction property nor the explicit definability property. Finally, careful attention to the complexity of our definitions allows us to show that a certain weak fragment of intuitionistic nonstandard arithmetic is conservative over primitive recursive arithmetic. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper examines the field network – linking together lay observers in geographically distributed locations with a central figure who aggregated their locally produced observations into more general, regional knowledge – as a historically emergent mode of knowledge production. After discussing the significance of weather knowledge as a vital domain in which field networks have operated, it describes and analyzes how a more robust and systematized weather observing field network became established and maintained on the ground in the early twentieth (...) century. This case study, which examines two Kansas City-based local observer networks supervised by the same U.S. Weather Bureau office, demonstrates some of the key issues involved in maintaining field networks, such as the role of communications infrastructure, especially the telegraph, the procedures designed to make local observation more systematic and uniform, and the centralized, hierarchical power relations that underpinned even a low-status example of knowledge production on the periphery. (shrink)

Is the exemplar of modern ethical theory estranged from their intimates because the motive of duty dominates their motivational psychology? While this challenge against modern ethical theory is familiar, I argue that with respect to a certain strand of Kantian ethical theory, it does not so much as make sense. I explain the content and functional role of the motive of duty in the psychology of the moral exemplar, stressing in particular how that motive shapes and informs the content of (...) others, including those characteristic of intimacy. I argue that to the extent that a subject does not integrate their motive of duty with their other motives, their moral and intimate relationships are compromised, and on the same grounds, because intimate relationships are interpersonal relationships and the motive of duty just is the motive to respect another person as a separate person. (shrink)

Decision-making capacity (DMC) is, in many ways, a central organizing concept of modern health care ethics. Patients with DMC have the moral—if not always the legal—authority to make all manner of...

Field Life examines the practice of science in the field in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains of the American West between the 1860s and the 1910s, when the railroad was the dominant form of long-distance transportation. Grounded in approaches from environmental history and the history of technology, it emphasizes the material basis of scientific fieldwork, joining together the human labor that produced knowledge with the natural world in which those practices were embedded. Four distinct modes of field practice, which (...) were shared by different field science disciplines, proliferated during this period—surveys, lay networks, quarries, and stations—and this book explores the dynamics that underpinned each of them. Using two diverse case studies to animate each mode of practice, as well as the making of the field as a place for science, Field Life combines textured analysis of specific examples of field science on the ground with wider discussion of the commonalities in the practices of a diverse array of field sciences, including the earth and physical sciences, the life and agricultural sciences, and the human sciences. By situating science in its regional environmental context, Field Life analyzes the intersection between the cosmopolitan knowledge of science and the experiential knowledge of people living in the field. Examples of field science in the Plains and Rockies range widely: geological surveys and weather observing networks, quarries to uncover dinosaur fossils and archaeological remains, and branch agricultural experiment stations and mountain biological field stations. (shrink)

The theories of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker arise from an existential and psychological analysis of the death terror/anxiety deep in the unconscious of every human. Becker details how this anxiety governs the ideologies and behaviors of our species—something now confirmed by thousands of experiments performed by psychologists engaged in contemporary terror management theory (TMT). Humans manage their anxiety through what Becker terms “hero systems”—concepts, beliefs, and myths we create to give us a sense of significance and meaning during, and even (...) beyond our mortal lives. Today, many dominant economic, technological, and religious hero systems seek to confirm our significance by denying that we are—like all other species—animals who must exist in a decaying, mortal body. Becker shows how this attempt to deny our “creatureliness” (basic biological nature) causes humans to stand against the natural world we are embedded in, leading to an assault on the planet and nonhuman animals. As a result, Becker believed pacifism was the only hero system capable of keeping humankind from destroying itself and the earth. Pacifism is the precursor to the more encompassing ethical concept of “reverence for life,” advocated by Dr. Albert Schweitzer. By respecting the will-to-live in all sentient beings, reverence for life transcends concern for humans alone and extends moral and physical safeguards to life as such. Confronting the fact that humans are increasingly alienated from their commodified world and their own being, reverence for life stands as a vital solution to many of our modern problems. And following contemporary TMT research, reverencing life can also expand one’s self-esteem, which research shows lowers death anxiety, reduces aggression, and offers authentic meaning to life itself. (shrink)

Jeremy Waldron’s essay centres around Martha Nussbaum’s ideas on cosmopolitan education: Nussbaum argues that we should make ‘world citizenship, rather than democratic or national citizenship, the focus for civic education’. The essay provides just a few examples to illustrate the concrete particularity of the world community for which we are urged by Nussbaum to take responsibility, with the aim of refuting the view of those who condemn cosmopolitanism as an abstraction. The arguments for and against Nussbaum’s idea are presented, (...) and one of the opposing views highlighted: that cosmopolitan moral education is not just an education in moral ideas; it is an education in the particular ways in which people have inhabited the world. The different sections of the chapter look at how a society becomes multicultural, the infrastructure of cultural interaction, the identification of citizenship, the language of citizenship, and its concrete reality and its cosmopolitan dimensions. (shrink)

A Correction to this paper has been published: 10.1007/s11229-021-03266-6.

This paper proposes a principle for adjudicating conflicts between estranged couples over whether the frozen embryos they earlier created together ought to be gestated or destroyed. I argue that the fate of the embryos ought to be determined by the party who would be most harmed by having his or her preferences overruled. But I also claim that, when embryos are destroyed against the opposition of one of their co-creators, the individual at whose behest this was done owes compensation to (...) his disappointed opposite number, in an amount that reflects the harm accruing to the latter as a result of the termination of the procreative project. (shrink)

According to theories of wrongful life (WL), the imposition upon a child of an existence of poor quality can constitute an act of harming, and a violation of the child’s rights. The idea that there can be WLs may seem intuitively compelling. But, as this paper argues, liberals who commit themselves to WL theories may have to compromise some of their other beliefs. For they will thereby become committed to the claim that some women are under a stringent moral duty (...) to have an abortion: a duty that could, without injustice, at least sometimes be enforced by the state. WL theories in other words imply that some women will lack a right to choose, under which both the decision to abort, and the decision to carry the fetus to term, are protected against interference. The paper exposes a dilemma, then, for liberals who are committed both to (a) the rights of future people not to be subjected to a harmful existence, and (b) the rights of women to refuse an abortion. (shrink)

I would like to thank all of the respondents to my article both for their expansions on the theme of health worker migration and for their criticisms of my argument against the use of the term ’poaching’ in the context of international health worker migration. In this response, I will clarify my argument in light of the worries raised primarily by Tache and Schillinger and Ari Zivotofsky and Naomi Zivotofsky.

Political theorist Jeremy Waldron makes a bracing case against identifying rule of law with predictability. Seeing the rule of law as just one value to which democracies aspire, he embraces thoughtfulness rather than rote rule-following, flexibility even at the cost of vagueness, and emphasizing procedure and argument over predictable outcomes.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

What happened to the doctrine of natural right in the nineteenth century? We know that it flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We know that something like it - the doctrine of human rights and new forms of social contract theory - flourished again in the second half of the twentieth century and continues to flourish in the twenty-first. In between there was a period of decline and hibernation - uneven, to be sure, and never complete - but a (...) period in which to invoke natural right was always to invite intellectual ridicule and accusations of political irresponsibility. Thus article asks: How far can the decline of natural right in the nineteenth century be attributed to the reaction against the revolution in France? How far it was the effect of independent streams of thought, like positivism and historicism? Why was radical thought so ambivalent about natural right throughout the nineteenth century, and why was socialist thought in particular inclined to turn its back on i? As a framework for thought, natural right suffered a radical decline in the social and political sciences. But things were not so clear in jurisprudence, and natural right lived on to a much riper old age in the writings of some prominent economists. So we have to ask: What is it about this theory that allowed it to survive in these environments, when so much of the rest of intellectual endeavor in the nineteenth century was toxic or inhospitable to it. Finally, I shall ask how far American thought represents an exception to all of this. Why and to what extent did the doctrine survive as a way of thinking in the United States, long after it had lost its credibility elsewhere. (shrink)

"With its wide-ranging analyses, this book offers insights of interest to scholars of religion, philosophers, art historians, and students of French ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the long-standing public health practice of contact tracing into the public spotlight. While contact tracing and case investigation have been carefully designed to protect privacy, the huge volume of tracing which is being carried out as part of the pandemic response in the United States is highlighting potential concerns around privacy, legality, and equity. Contact tracing during the pandemic has gained particular attention for the new use of digital technologies—both on the consumer side in the (...) form of Exposure Notification applications, and for public health agencies as digital case management software systems enable massive scaling of operations. While the consumer application side of digital innovation has dominated the news and academic discourse around privacy, people are likely to interact more intensively with public health agencies and their use of digital case management systems. Effective use of digital case management for contact tracing requires revisiting the existing legal frameworks, privacy protections, and security practices for management of sensitive health data. The scale of these tools and demands of an unprecedented pandemic response are introducing new risks through the collection of huge volumes of data, and expanding requirements for more adept data sharing among jurisdictions. Public health agencies must strengthen their best practices for data collection and protection even in the absence of comprehensive or clear guidance. This requires navigating a difficult balance between rigorous data protection and remaining highly adaptive and agile. (shrink)

Differential privacy (DP) aims to confer data processing systems with inherent privacy guarantees, offering strong protections for personal data. But DP’s approach to privacy carries with it certain assumptions about how mathematical abstractions will be translated into real-world systems, which—if left unexamined and unrealized in practice—could function to shield data collectors from liability and criticism, rather than substantively protect data subjects from privacy harms. This article investigates these assumptions and discusses their implications for using DP to govern data-driven systems. In (...) Parts 1 and 2, we introduce DP as, on one hand, a mathematical framework and, on the other hand, a kind of real-world sociotechnical system, using a hypothetical case study to illustrate how the two can diverge. In Parts 3 and 4, we discuss the way DP frames privacy loss, data processing interventions, and data subject participation, arguing it could exacerbate existing problems in privacy regulation. In part 5, we conclude with a discussion of DP’s potential interactions with the endogeneity of privacy law, and we propose principles for best governing DP systems. In making such assumptions and their consequences explicit, we hope to help DP succeed at realizing its promise for better substantive privacy protections. (shrink)