This article argues that much of the uproar about insider trading has focused its concerns on the wrong parties. Most of the attention has focused on the adverse effects of insider trading on traders, i.e., individuals who sold while insiders were buying or bought when insiders were selling. The parties that were more likely to be hurt by insider trading are the owners of the companies, i.e., the insiders' employers which for corporations will be the ongoing shareholders, as well as (...) society in general. Since the undesirable acts of employees can occur without transactions involving securities, any reforms may want to view the process of misusing proprietary information as embezzlement or theft. The holding of insiders to a high ethical standard will result in a more efficient operation of the capital markets. (shrink)

We use generic sentences like ‘Blondes are stupid’ to express stereotypes. But why is this? Does the fact that we use generic sentences to express stereotypes mean that stereotypes are themselves, in some sense, generic? I argue that they are. However, stereotypes are mental and generics linguistic, so how can stereotypes be generic? My answer is that stereotypes are generic in virtue of the beliefs they contain. Stereotypes about blondes being stupid contain a belief element, namely a belief that blondes (...) are stupid. This belief is an attitude taken towards the same proposition expressed by the sentence ‘Blondes are stupid’, hence why we use the latter to articulate the former. -/- This generic account of stereotypes can help us better understand their inner workings. I focus on one feature of generics, variability in the types of facts that can make them true, and argue that it can explain how stereotypes shape inferential patterns and thereby guide how we treat members of stereotyped groups. This feature, in turn, illuminates the harms caused by stereotyping and suggests some courses of action. (shrink)

This paper is about an underappreciated aspect of generics: their non-specificity. Many uses of generics, utterances like ‘Seagulls swoop down to steal food’, express non-specific generalisations which do not specify their quantificational force or flavour. I consider whether this non-specificity arises as a by-product of context-sensitivity or semantic incompleteness but argue instead that generics semantically express non-specific generalisations by default as a result of quantifying existentially over more specific ones.

The visual attention (VA) span is defined as the amount of distinct visual elements which can be processed in parallel in a multi-element array. Both recent empirical data and theoretical accounts suggest that a VA span deficit might contribute to developmental dyslexia, independently of a phonological disorder. In this study, this hypothesis was assessed in two large samples of French and British dyslexic children whose performance was compared to that of chronological-age matched control children. Results of the French study show (...) that the VA span capacities account for a substantial amount of unique variance in reading, as do phonological skills. The British study replicates this finding and further reveals that the contribution of the VA span to reading performance remains even after controlling IQ, verbal fluency, vocabulary and single letter identification skills, in addition to phoneme awareness. In both studies, most dyslexic children exhibit a selective phonological or VA span disorder. Overall, these findings support a multi-factorial view of developmental dyslexia. In many cases, developmental reading disorders do not seem to be due to phonological disorders. We propose that a VA span deficit is a likely alternative underlying cognitive deficit in dyslexia. (shrink)

Needs matter; but not all needs do. Needs range from the urgent and dire to the insignificant and even trivial. Given this, a central task for the needs theorist is to give some account of which ne...

The theory of needs has a political problem. Whilst contemporary theorists largely recognise that politics plays an important part in many of the processes surrounding our needs, they nevertheless hang onto the notion that our most important needs can be determined outside of the political. This article challenges that framing. It does so through a taxonomy and critique of the major contemporary approaches to needs. Considering the works of Len Doyal and Ian Gough, Martha Nussbaum, and Lawrence Hamilton, I divide (...) these into three strands: theories that attempt to avoid, solve, and improve the politics of need. Despite some major differences, these approaches share an understanding of the underlying challenges involved in discerning which needs matter. That framing, I argue, is responsible for certain intractable difficulties that leave needs theorists unable to provide the solutions they demand to the theoretical dilemma they posit. Moreover, in attempting to find those solutions, these theories end up ignoring their partisan implications. The conclusion I reach is that the political theory of needs is not very ‘political’ at all, and that this represents the root of the problem. I thus suggest an alternative, politically realist framing that conceptualises needs as constitutively political. (shrink)

This paper contributes an analysis and formalisation of Damasio’s theory on core consciousness. Three important concepts in this theory are ‘emotion’, ‘feeling’ and ‘feeling a feeling’ . In particular, a simulation model is described of the dynamics of basic mechanisms leading via emotion and feeling to core consciousness, and dynamic properties are formally specified that hold for these dynamics at a more global level. These properties have been automatically checked for the simulation model. Moreover, a formal analysis is made of (...) relevant notions of representation used by Damasio. As part of this analysis, specifications of representation relations have been verified and confirmed against the simulation model. (shrink)

Moral theory -- Abortion -- Genetic engineering, cloning, and stem cell research -- Euthanasia and assisted suicide -- The death penalty -- Drug and alcohol use -- Sexual intimacy and marriage -- Feminism, motherhood, and the workplace -- Freedom of speech -- Racial discrimination and global justice.

What kind of thing is a reason for action? What is it to act for a reason? And what is the connection between acting for a reason and rationality? There is controversy about the many issues raised by these questions. In this paper I shall answer the first question with a conception of practical reasons that I call ‘Factualism’, which says that all reasons are facts. I defend this conception against its main rival, Psychologism, which says that practical reasons are (...) mental states or mental facts, and also against a variant of Factualism that says that some practical reasons are facts and others are false beliefs. I argue that the conception of practical reasons defended here provides plausible answers to the second and third questions above; and gives a more unified and satisfactory picture of practical reasons than those offered by its rivals. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a way of characterizing human agency in terms of the concept of a two‐way power. I outline this conception of agency, defend it against some objections, and briefly indicate how it relates to free agency and to moral praise‐ and blameworthiness.

Dans divers textes autobiographiques, Paul Tillich (1886-1965) évoque laconiquement ses années de formation comme placées sous le signe d'une renaissance de l'idéalisme allemand. En quoi cette renaissance consiste-t-clic et quel est son impact sur l'oeuvre d'un des théologiens protestants les plus lus et les plus commentés de sa génération? C'est l'enquête que mène Marc Boss dans ce livre qui fera date. Il y montre comment Tillich combine les positions systématiques de Fichte et de Schelling en une " ellipse à (...) double foyer" pour accomplir l'une des intentions fondamentales du criticisme kantien : concevoir une philosophie de la religion qui ne ferait qu'un avec le système de la liberté. Cette enquête sur les sources de la pensée de Tillich est par conséquent aussi une contribution importante à l'interprétation de ces figures majeures de la philosophie que sont Fichte et Schelling. Elle met enfin en évidence un pan encore peu connu de la réception de la philosophie allemande classique dans les premières décennies du XXe siècle. (shrink)

Ce recueil comprend les textes de sept auteurs — Gilbert Boss, Yvon Lafrance, Pierre Macherey, Michel Malherbe, André de Muralt, Claude Panaccio et Bernhard Taureck —, une discussion impliquant aussi d'autres participants, ainsi qu'une importante bibliographie. — Le rapport de la philosophie à son histoire est envisagé aussi bien comme rapport à l'histoire concrète que comme rapport à l'historiographie de la philosophie. Quelles sont les diverses figures de ce rapport? L'historien de la philosophie peut-il se passer d'être philosophe? Dans (...) quelle pratique l'histoire de la philosophie s'engendre-t-elle? Comment le philosophe peut-il en tirer profit? Y a-t-il des structures de pensée transhistoriques? La diversité des philosophies entraîne-t-elle une forme de scepticisme? Telles sont quelques-unes des questions abordées dans cet ouvrage édité par Gilbert Boss. (shrink)

Caring for critically ill and dying patients often triggers both professional and personal growth for physician trainees. In pediatrics, the neonatal intensive care unit is among the most distressing settings for trainees. We used longitudinal narrative writing to gain insight into how physician trainees are challenged by and make sense of repetitive, ongoing conflicts experienced as part of caring for very sick and dying babies. The study took place in a 45-bed, university-based NICU in an urban setting in the United (...) States. From November 2009 to June 2010 we enrolled pediatric residents and neonatology fellows at the beginning of their NICU rotations. Participants were asked to engage in individual, longitudinal narrative writing about their “experience in the NICU.” Thematic narrative analysis was performed. Thirty-seven physician trainees participated in the study. The mean number of narratives per trainee was 12; a total of 441 narratives were available for analysis. Conflict was the most pervasive theme in the narratives. Trainees experienced conflicts with families and conflicts with other clinicians. Trainees also described multiple conflicts of identity as members of the neonatology team, as members of the medical profession, as members of their own families, and as members of society. Physician trainees experience significant conflict and distress while learning to care for critically ill and dying infants. These conflicts often led them to question their own morals and their role in the medical profession. Physician trainees should be educated to expect various types of distress during intensive care rotations, encouraged to identify their own sources of distress, and supported in mitigating their effects. (shrink)

According to an influential research program in cognitive science, philosophy, and linguistics, there is a deep, special connection between generics and pernicious aspects of social cognition such as stereotyping. Specifically, generics are thought to exacerbate our propensity to essentialize, lead us to overgeneralize based on scarce evidence, and lead to other epistemically dubious patterns of inference. Recently, however, several studies have put empirical and theoretical pressure on some of the main tenets of this research program. The goal of this paper (...) is to bring these results together in a comprehensive narrative and systematically evaluate their impact on the hypothesis that generics have a uniquely problematic effect on our social and cognitive capacities. (shrink)

The article proposes an analysis of imperatives and possibility and necessity statements that (i) explains their differences with respect to the licensing of free choice any and (ii) accounts for the related phenomena of free choice disjunction in imperatives, permissions, and statements. Any and or are analyzed as operators introducing sets of alternative propositions. Free choice licensing operators are treated as quantifiers over these sets. In this way their interpretation can be sensitive to the alternatives any and or introduce in (...) their scope. (shrink)

Tyler Andrew Wunder, in his article, “Alvin Plantinga on Paul Draper’s evolutionary atheology: implications of theism’s non-contingency,” argues that Plantinga makes a serious error regarding probabilities in his critique of Draper. Properly modified, Wunder believes the argument “works,” but only in a trivial sense. This paper argues that Wunder’s objection, based on an assumed probability calculus, is merely asserted; whereas, there are other competing axiomatic systems consistent with Plantinga’s treatment of probability. As to the modified argument, it is demonstrated that (...) Wunder mistakenly concludes that two key propositions are contradictory. The consequence of this is not that Plantinga’s argument “works” in a trivial sense, but rather that the argument becomes incoherent. Lastly, this paper will explore the consequences of both Wunder’s and Plantinga’s assumptions concerning conditional probability for Draper’s evidentiary argument and Plantiga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. (shrink)

Responding to the unique challenge posed by the climate crisis, several recent commentators have invoked the concept of basic needs. Whilst that concept proves useful in meeting many of the distinctive practical and normative problems posed by climate change, those commentators largely neglect the politics surrounding our needs. This article responds by distinguishing three notionally sequential political moments – the politics behind needs, in specifying needs, and following needs – showing how each of these problematizes any attempt to determine the (...) normative importance of needs outside of the political. I finish by considering the implications for needs-based approaches to the climate crisis. (shrink)

Within the discipline of psychology, the conventional history outlines the development of two fundamental approaches to the scientific study of emotion—“basic emotion” and “appraisal” traditions. In this article, we outline the development of a third approach to emotion that exists in the psychological literature—the “psychological constructionist” tradition. In the process, we discuss a number of works that have virtually disappeared from the citation trail in psychological discussions of emotion. We also correct some misconceptions about early sources, such as work by (...) Darwin and James. Taken together, these three contributions make for a fuller and more accurate account of ideas about emotion during the century stretching from 1855 to just before 1960. (shrink)

Computer simulations can be useful tools to support philosophers in validating their theories, especially when these theories concern phenomena showing nontrivial dynamics. Such theories are usually informal, whilst for computer simulation a formally described model is needed. In this paper, a methodology is proposed to gradually formalise philosophical theories in terms of logically formalised dynamic properties. One outcome of this process is an executable logic-based temporal specification, which within a dedicated software environment can be used as a simulation model to (...) perform simulations. This specification provides a logical formalisation at the lowest aggregation level of the basic mechanisms underlying a process. In addition, dynamic properties at a higher aggregation level that may emerge from the mechanisms specified by the lower level properties, can be specified. Software tools are available to support specification, and to automatically check such higher level properties against the lower level properties and against generated simulation traces. As an illustration, three case studies are discussed showing successful applications of the approach to formalise and analyse, among others, Clark’s theory on extended mind, Damasio’s theory on core consciousness, and Dennett’s perspective on intertemporal decision making and altruism. (shrink)

Children in foster care are considered a “vulnerable population” in clinical care and research, with good reason. These children face multiple medical, psychological, and social risks that obligate the child welfare and healthcare systems to protect them from further harms. An unintended consequence of the “vulnerable population” designation for children in foster care is that it may impose barriers on tracking and studying their health that creates gaps in knowledge that are key to their receipt of medical care and good (...) outcomes. These gaps in knowledge have implications for justice, beneficence, and maleficence and serve to undermine “protection” of this population. Here we review the challenges of research regarding children in foster care, particularly medically complex children, and offer specific recommendations to include children in foster care in medical research. (shrink)

Kritik af tidens fremherskende funktionalistiske, historieløse kultur, der fratager os evnen til at koncentrere og fordybe os, og efterlader et samfund uden rødder og retning.

Aristotle wrote that "the ultimate purpose in studying ethics is not as it is in other inquiries, the attainment of theoretical knowledge; we are not conducting this inquiry in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, else there would be no advantage in studying it." Ethics for Life is a multicultural and interdisciplinary introductory ethics textbook that provides students with an ethics curriculum that has been shown to significantly improve students' ability to make real-life moral (...) decisions. (shrink)

This article introduces a novel approach for the analysis of the dynamics of reasoning processes and explores its applicability for the reasoning pattern called reasoning by assumption. More specifically, for a case study in the domain of a Master Mind game, it is shown how empirical human reasoning traces can be formalized and automatically analyzed against dynamic properties they fulfill. To this end, for the pattern of reasoning by assumption a variety of dynamic properties have been specified, some of which (...) are considered characteristic for the reasoning pattern, whereas some other properties can be used to discriminate among different approaches to the reasoning. These properties have been automatically checked for the traces acquired in experiments undertaken. The approach turned out to be beneficial from two perspectives. First, checking characteristic properties contributes to the empirical validation of a theory on reasoning by assumption. Second, checking discriminating properties allows the analyst to identify different classes of human reasoners. (shrink)

In the past few years considerable attention has been given to a relatively new method of prenatal diagnosis known as chorionic villus sampling (CVS). Because CVS can be performed in the first trimester it is hailed by many as a significant advance over amniocentesis. What has not been as publicized, however, are the disadvantages of CVS and earlier prenatal diagnosis. The emotional costs of CVS in terms of the greater number of both spontaneous and selective abortions following CVS, the use (...) of CVS for sex selection and, because of the greater social acceptability of first trimester abortion, the possibility of increased pressure on women to undergo prenatal diagnosis by health insurance companies, medical professionals and government agencies, all need to be weighed against the advantages of early prenatal diagnosis. (shrink)

Since the late nineteenth century ‘Scientific Philosophy’ has become a label ascribed to many research programs. German theoretical philosophy of the early twentieth century was dominated by three different trends—Phenomenology, Neo-Kantianism, and Logical Empiricism: Each trend claimed to represent the ‘Scientific Philosophy’. In this context it is astonishing that we know almost nothing about the relationships between these schools. It is true, all of them rejected the speculative metaphysics found, for example, in German Idealism, but knowledge about other connections is (...) scarce. Starting with the question what exactly ‘Scientific Philosophy’ means and how these meanings relate to each other, a thorough investigation of the connections between all three trends has yet to take place.The main goal of the conference was, therefore, to better understand the relationships of these schools through their notions of ‘Scientific Philosophy’. In this context the works of Edmund Husserl (for Ph .. (shrink)

Les ordinateurs, peuvent-ils être un instrument pour faire de la philosophie? La réponse proposée par cet article développe dix moments dont les thèmes sont.