While neuroethics is generally thought to be a modern addition to the broader field of bioethics, this subdiscipline has existed in clinical practice throughout the course of the 20th century. In this essay, Fins describes an older tradition of clinical neuroethics that featured such physician-humanists as Sir William Osler, Wilder Penfield, and Fred Plum, whose work and legacy exploring disorders of consciousness is highlighted. Their normative work was clinically grounded and focused on the needs of patients, in contrast to modern (...) neuroethics, which is more speculative and distant from the lived reality of the clinic. Using recent developments in the diagnosis and treatment of disorders of consciousness, and the history of the vegetative and minimally conscious states, Fins asks why modern neuroethics has taken this turn and what can be done to restore clinical neuroethics to a more proportionate place in the field. (shrink)

This text provides an extensive exploration of the relationship between the thought of Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap, providing a new argument for the complementarity of their mature philosophies as part of a collaborative metatheory of science. In arguing that both Neurath and Carnap must be interpreted as proponents of epistemological naturalism, and that their naturalisms rest on shared philosophical ground, it is also demonstrated that the boundaries and possibilities for epistemological naturalism are not as restrictive as Quinean orthodoxy has (...) previously suggested. Both building on and challenging the scholarship of the past four decades, this naturalist reading of Carnap also provides a new interpretation of Carnap’s conception of analyticity, allowing for a refutation of the Quinean argument for the incompatibility of naturalism and the analytic/synthetic distinction. In doing so, the relevance and potential importance of their scientific meta-theory for contemporary questions in the philosophy of science is demonstrated. This text appeals to students and researchers working on Logical Empiricism, Quine, the history of analytic philosophy and the history of philosophy of science, as well as proponents of naturalized epistemology. (shrink)

The paper offers a new account of the rule of law, revising my previous view, and criticising some alternatives. It focuses on the rule of law's aim to avoid arbitrary government, and on its relation to the essential functions of government. The rule of law requires that government action will manifest an intention to protect and advance the interests of the governed. As such it is almost a necessary condition for the law's ability to meet other moral demands, and it (...) facilitate coordination and cooperation internally and internationally. -/- . (shrink)

This chapter evaluates whether AI systems are or will be rights-holders, explaining the conditions under which people should recognize AI systems as rights-holders. It develops a skeptical stance toward the idea that current forms of artificial intelligence are holders of moral rights, beginning with an articulation of one of the most prominent and most plausible theories of moral rights: the Interest Theory of rights. On the Interest Theory, AI systems will be rights-holders only if they have interests or a well-being. (...) Current AI systems are not bearers of well-being, and so fail to meet the necessary condition for being rights-holders. This argument is robust against a range of different objections. However, the chapter also shows why difficulties in assessing whether future AI systems might have interests or be bearers of well-being—and so be rights-holders—raise difficult ethical challenges for certain developments in AI. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation have often been framed by contrast to laws and deductive-nomological explanation. A more adequate conception of lawfulness and nomological necessity, emphasizing the role of modal considerations in scientific reasoning, circumvents such contrasts and enhances understanding of mechanisms and their scientific significance. The first part of the paper sketches this conception of lawfulness, drawing upon Haugeland, Lange, and Rouse. This conception emphasizes the role of lawful stability under relevant counterfactual suppositions in scientific reasoning across (...) the sciences, in place of traditional conceptions of law that are primarily confined to the physical sciences. It also extends lawful stability beyond verbally or mathematically expressed law-statements, to encompass other ways of conjoining patterns in the world with scientific pattern recognition. The remainder of this paper shows how and why mechanisms constructively exemplify this conception of lawfulness in scientific practice: • Mechanisms are robust, counterfactually stable and inductively projectible patterns, even though they are not exceptionless “laws of nature”. • Mechanistic explanations often take non-verbal forms, which consequently resist philosophical inclinations to semantic ascent, but understanding lawfulness in terms of counterfactually stable pattern recognition accounts for these ways in which scientific understanding outruns the expressive capacities of natural languages; • Mechanisms are sometimes characterized as real patterns in the world, and sometimes as epistemic representations; understanding mechanisms as modal patterns shows why both conceptions are needed, as mutually supportive. • Mechanisms are typically open-ended, and only partially specified, in ways open to and directive toward further articulation and revision. Understanding mechanisms as modal patterns incorporates this aspect of mechanistic understanding within a broader conception of scientific understanding as embedded in research practice, rather than in bodies of knowledge extracted from it. • Mechanistic explanation has often been placed on the causal side of an opposition between causal and nomological explanation, but understanding mechanisms as modal patterns helps overcome that opposition, and contributes to a pluralist conception of causal relations and their characteristic forms of counterfactual invariance. • The recognition of mechanisms as modal patterns allows for a new way to think about the relations among distinct levels of a mechanistic hierarchy, and the broader scientific significance of mechanistic understanding. (shrink)

The hashtag #RepresentationMatters is widely used among disability activists on social media because disabled people are often simply ignored in popular culture. Several disabled characters inhabit the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe, but Toph Beifong is the most prominent. Toph is a major character who plays an essential role in the victory over the Fire Nation's imperialism. A rarity in media, Toph's character has as much depth as any member of Team Avatar. The “Irrationally and Infectiously Happy Disabled Person” is (...) a master narrative that contrasts with Disabled Person Better Off Dead, but which is also damaging to disabled people. Barnes argues that hermeneutical injustice appears when disabled people try but fail to make sense of their experience of flourishing with a disability because it is so commonly assumed that disability consigns a person to a horrific, tragic fate. (shrink)

This paper surveys current theories on the nature of conscious experience, from traditional central state identity theories and functionalism, to more recent higher-order and representationalist theories. It is concluded that no current theory really solves the fundamental problem of how to incorporate conscious experience into the physical world, though much progress has been made.

This chapter contains sections titled: Responsibility for environmental harm to humans Responsibilities to the natural world Business ethics in the age of sustainable economics.

This book applies the various principles of Stoicism, as explicated by these founders, practitioners, and evangelists, to the realities of modern life, particularly as lived by educators—teachers, principals, para-educators, and all of the others who toil in schools—post Covid.

Attempts to penetrate behind Plotinus' statements to the problem that faced his philosophy to show its function in bridging the inconsistencies that arise when existential considerations are not clearly distinguished.

This chapter argues that, sometimes, disabled bioethicists actually have a duty to do public philosophy. It contends that this duty can be justified with ethical, epistemic, and prudential reasons. Any triage protocol will discriminate against disabled people if one uses a broadly inclusive definition of disability that subsumes diseases or chronic illnesses that can be disabling in their effects, like cancer or kidney failure. The most obvious reasons justifying a duty to do public philosophy as a disabled bioethicist are ethical. (...) One example of this testimonial injustice vis à vis disability and well‐being occurred during the early days of the COVID‐19 pandemic when medical triage protocols were being developed to ration critical care resources. Discriminatory triage protocols also diminish a disabled person's autonomy. The COVID‐19 pandemic amplified these costs in many ways but also created an opportunity for philosophical reflection that demonstrates the importance of more public‐facing work. (shrink)

Parkinson, Joseph Research shows that sexual orientation is neither well defined nor ultimately defining for adolescents seeking self-identity. Rather, the data on instability of sexual orientation among youth and young adults suggest that most of the time unquestioning affirmation of an adolescent's claimed same-sex attraction will do more long-term harm than good. This article explores this complexity and proposes more appropriate ways to provide excellent pastoral care in schools.

Several recent systematic and targeted reviews have highlighted limitations in our understanding of talent in sport. However, a comprehensive profile of where the scientific research has focused would help identify gaps in current knowledge. Our goal in this scoping review was to better understand what others have done in the field of research, to summarize the constituent areas of research in a meaningful way, to help identify gaps in the research, and to encourage future research to address these gaps. Peer-reviewed (...) articles written in English that met several inclusion criteria were analyzed. A total of 1,899 articles were identified, and the descriptive findings revealed a relatively narrow focus of research on talent in sport. Specifically, the majority of examined articles focused on males only, the sport of soccer, perceptual cognitive variables, developing athletes, adult samples, and cross-sectional designs. For better or worse, the concept of talent remains a central element of how coaches, practitioners, and scientists think about athlete development. Findings from this scoping review highlight the continued need to explore issues related to talent identification, selection, and development in more diverse samples and contexts. There is also a clear necessity to focus on under-researched areas using alternative methodologies. (shrink)

Complexity has emerged as the new norm in the 21st century, and IS projects play a significant role in organisations to address various socio-political concerns. The purpose of this paper is to understand what are the relevant constructs for measuring IS project complexity. A model for measuring IS project complexity is developed using PLS-SEM. The model reveals that organisational complexity, technical complexity, and uncertainty underpin IS project complexity. Organisational complexity in terms of project team, stakeholder management, and strategic drive should (...) be managed by the project manager. Technical complexity was established in terms of project goals, requirements management, technology management, and norms and standards. Uncertainty in IS projects exists in terms of skills management, the triple constraint, and activity management. Suggestions were provided to guide IS project managers on how to manage each construct and alleviate the level of project complexity. This paper presents an updated and different perspective on measuring and managing IS project complexity. The findings would serve as additional building blocks to further elucidate IS project complexity understanding and assist with improving the value of these projects. Furthermore, the suggestions for IS project managers can lead discussions around how IS projects should be managed to ensure complexity is under control. (shrink)

Early Buddhist texts were first being composed and compiled during South Asia’s Iron Age, and thus contain many references to iron and other metal technologies. This article examines one metalworking image that came to play a special role in the imagination of early Buddhists: the red-hot iron ball. I argue that the iron ball, which comes to be a torture device in hell, force-fed by hell wardens, is a mimesis of the pi??ap?ta, or almsfood offered to monks and nuns by (...) the laity. Around iron ball imagery clusters a set of related Buddhist concerns: anxieties about undisciplined and deceitful monks and nuns, especially in relation to taking alms; the public perception of the sa?gha; the conceptualization of Buddhist hells as an unfortunate karmic result of lacking discipline; and the relationship between these hells and Indian juridical forms of punishment. (shrink)

Confirms the importance of literature in Derrida’s development of a postmodern ethics.

The philosophy of physics literature contains conflicting claims on the heuristic significance of general covariance. Some authors maintain that Einstein's general relativity distinguishes itself from other theories in that it must be generally covariant, for example, while others argue that general covariance is a physically vacuous and trivial requirement applicable to virtually any theory. Moreover, when general covariance is invested with heuristic significance, that significance as a rule is assigned to so-called “active” general covariance, underwritten by the principle of background (...) independence, rather than to general covriance as Einstein understood it. While agreeing with the latter group of commentators that general covariance indeed carries heuristic significance, I argue that a background independent theory need not be generally covariant and that instead the Principle of Equivalence as Einstein understood it provides the key to understanding the heuristic power of general covariance as a “mathematical sieve” for determining the gravitational field law. However, heuristic significance accrues to general covariance only indirectly, by its encompassing the relativity of frames underwritten by Einstein's principle of equivalence. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo compare changes in the number and amount of payments received by orthopedic and non-orthopedic surgeons from industry between 2014 and 2017.MethodsUsing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payment database from 2014 to 2017, we conducted a retrospective cohort study of industry payments to surgeons, including general payments and research payments.ResultsAmong orthopedic surgeons, the total number of general payments decreased from 248,698 in 2014 to 241,966 in 2017, but their total value increased from $97.1 million in 2014 (...) to $110.2 million in 2017. Among non-orthopedic surgeons, the total number decreased from 604,884 in 2014 to 582,490 in 2017, while the total value remained stable at approximately $159 million. Between 2014 and 2017, there was a differential increase in the median number of general payments received by non-orthopedic when compared to orthopedic surgeons (incidence rate ratio, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.08–1.09; p < 0.001), but a differential decline in the median value of general payments (− 8.9%; 95% CI, − 9.5%, − 8.4%; p < 0.001). Findings were consistent when stratified by nature of payment. In contrast, between 2014 and 2017, there was neither a differential change in the median number nor median value of research payments received by non-orthopedics.ConclusionExamination of a natural experiment of prior public disclosure of payments to orthopedic surgeons suggests that the Physician Payment Sunshine Act was associated with an increase in the number, but a decline in the value, of general payments received by non-orthopedic surgeons, but not on research payments received. (shrink)