While there had been much radical thought before John Stuart Mill, Joseph Persky argues it was Mill, as he moved to the left, who provided the radical wing of liberalism with its first serious analytical foundation, a political economy of progress that still echoes today. A rereading of Mill's mature work suggests his theoretical understanding of accumulation led him to see laissez-faire capitalism as a transitional system. Deeply committed to the egalitarian precepts of the Enlightenment, Mill advocated gradualism and (...) rejected revolutionary expropriation on utilitarian grounds: gradualism, not expropriation, promised meaningful long-term gains for the working classes. He endorsed laissez-faire capitalism because his theory of accumulation saw that system approaching a stationary state characterized by a great reduction in inequality and an expansion of cooperative production. These tendencies, in combination with an aggressive reform agenda made possible by the extension of the franchise, promised to provide a material base for social progress and individual development.The Political Economy of Progress goes on to claim that Mill's radical political economy anticipated more than a little of Marx's analysis of capitalism and laid a foundation for the work of Fabians and other gradualist radicals in the 20th century. More recently, modern philosophic radicals, such as Rawls, have deep links to this Millean political economy. These links are still worthy of development. In particular, a politically meaningful acceptance of Rawls's radical liberalism waits on a movement capable of re-engineering the workplace in a manner consistent with Mill's endorsement of worker management. (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)

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)

BackgroundBioethics and law distinguish between the practices of "physician-assisted death" and "allowing the patient to die."DiscussionAdvances in biotechnology have allowed medical devices to be used as destination therapy that are designed for the permanent support of cardiac function and/or respiration after irreversible loss of these spontaneous vital functions. For permanent support of cardiac function, single ventricle or biventricular mechanical assist devices and total artificial hearts are implanted in the body. Mechanical ventilators extrinsic to the body are used for permanent support (...) of respiration. Clinical studies have shown that destination therapy with ventricular assist devices improves patient survival compared to medical management, but at the cost of a substantial alteration in end-of-life trajectories. The moral and legal assessment of the appropriateness and permissibility of complying with a patient's request to electively discontinue destination therapy in a life-terminating act in non-futile situations has generated controversy. Some argue that complying with this request is ethically justified because patients have the right to request withdrawal of unwanted treatment and be allowed to die of preexisting disease. Other commentators reject the argument that acceding to an elective request for death by discontinuing destination therapy is 'allowing a patient to die' because of serious flaws in interpreting the intention, causation, and moral responsibility of the ensuing death.SummaryDestination therapy with cardiac and/or ventilatory medical devices replaces native physiological functions and successfully treats a preexisting disease. We posit that discontinuing cardiac and/or ventilatory support at the request of a patient or surrogate can be viewed as allowing the patient to die if--and only if--concurrent lethal pathophysiological conditions are present that are unrelated to those functions already supported by medical devices in destination therapy. In all other cases, compliance with a patient's request constitutes physician-assisted death because of the pathophysiology induced by the turning off of these medical devices, as well as the intention, causation, and moral responsibility of the ensuing death. The distinction between allowing the patient to die and physician-assisted death is pivotal to the moral and legal status of elective requests for death by discontinuing destination cardiac and/or ventilatory medical devices in patients who are not imminently dying. This distinction also represents essential information that must be disclosed to patients and surrogates in advance of consent to this type of therapy. (shrink)

Divine commands are typically held, by theists, to be made not only at the foundations of morality, but also in an 'everyday' setting, when there are already moral considerations applicable to the addressee(s). My aim is to show how a particular command could relate to these pre-existing moral considerations, if it is more than just a repetition of them. If it is right that an action be obligatory, wrong or supererogatory, why would God want to change its status? Anyone can (...) make a normative difference by giving information, making co-ordination proposals, or transferring rights, and it is clear why these actions will sometimes by worthwhile. The problem must be focused on when God makes a moral difference directly, using a 'special moral authority', when His commands are efficacious qua commands. Using this authority, God can perfect imperfect duties, which may make it easier to carry them out. He can extend duties, to make sure more value is produced. He can allocate sacrifices, which can be carried by anyone. And He can resolve conflict games, to everyone's benefit. This explains why God should issue commands in the way that theists typically represent him as doing. (shrink)

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

JOSEPH AGASSI 1. Sir Karl Popper has offered two different theories of scientific progress, his theory of conjectures and refutations and corroboration, as well as his theory of verisimilitude increase. The former was attacked by some old-fashioned inductivists, yet is triumphant; the latter has been refuted by Tichy and by Miller to Popper’s own satisfaction. Oddly, however, the theory of verisimilitude was developed because of some deficiency in the theory of corroboration, and though in its present precise formulation it (...) was refuted, Popper still holds it in general terms, and I think he still hopes to find a better precise formulation of it. My aims in the present note are to pin-point the deficiency of Popper’s theory of corroboration and to use this for a precise formulation of verisimilitude increase acceptable to him. For my part, however, I see the situation in a different way, as will be indicated at the end of this note. (shrink)

The removal of controversial names and monuments from the public sphere in the United States has gained traction in the context of efforts to achieve social justice for historically mistreated and marginalized communities. Such debates are increasingly raising issues in the healthcare setting as hospitals and medical schools grapple with the legacies of figures whose scientific contributions are clouded with ethical transgressions. Present efforts to address these challenges have largely occurred at the institutional level. The results have been guidelines that (...) are complex, highly inconsistent across institutions, and largely downplay the symbolic importance of such historical redress. This paper proposes a simpler three-part test for name and monument removal in the medical and hospital settings that places greater weight on the symbolic importance of the renaming process itself instead of only considering the outcomes. (shrink)

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)

Similarity is a philosophically much-maligned concept. Bertrand Russell claimed that its ineliminability forces on us the admission of at least one universal, thereby undermining nominalism. But even if things must be supposed to be similar if our language functions publicly by way of using finitely many terms repeatedly for purposes of designation, reference, and predication, Russell’s insistence has as such no bearing at all on the epistemological questions of sorting the actual similarities among things and of fixing the grounds on (...) which we may be sure that they are what they are alleged to be. It need not even affect nominalism. Speculation about universals oscillates between the metaphysical and the epistemological. No one doubts that things must be similar in some respect if natural languages behave as they do. But the concession is thought to be a vacuous one precisely because the respect required need never be specified in that admission. On the other hand, it is characteristically said to be epistemologically superfluous because to say that a set of things are similar in respect R is just to say that they are R’s, and to know that—so the argument goes—is to out-flank the original need to inquire whether they are merely similar, thereby restoring the viability of nominalism. This, briefly, is Nelson Goodman’s strategy laid out compellingly in The Structure of Appearance and collected, with explicitly greater scope as far as his own work is concerned but not essentially altered, in a comparatively recent paper. Of course, the legitimacy of terming a set of things R’s, predicatively, invites us to consider whether, on some theory, things really are such. This, the problem of realism, signifies that however vacuous the admission of similarity may be, the putative finding that a set of things are R’s threatens to be epistemically arbitrary unless we have a reasonable theory regarding the validity of so construing them. On Goodman’s account, realism concerns a system’s admitting or not admitting “non-particulars as individuals”—which is to say, Goodman views the issue neutrally as between platonism and nominalism. On that view, “an individual is particular if and only if it is exhaustively divisible into unrepeatable complexes; while an individual is universal if and only if it contains no unrepeatable complex.” The denial of platonism is the denial that there are nonindividuals, not nonparticulars. Alternatively put, “universality is … a matter of multiplicity of instances.” And “repeatability” occurs if a complex “occurs with some two individuals of one category. A color, for example, is repeated if it occurs at two places, even at the same time; and a time is repeated if two qualia of some one kind occur at that time.” Qualia, then, colors for instance, are complexes. (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)