We show that a given data ow language l has the property that for any program P and any demand for outputs D (which can be satis ed) there exists a least partial computation of P which satis es D, i all the operators of l are stable. This minimal computation is the demand-driven evaluation of P. We also argue that in order to actually implement this mode of evaluation, the operators of l should be further restricted to be (...) e ectively sequential ones. (shrink)

Der Artikel untersucht einen Fall, in dem jemand von einem Mediziner die Offenlegung der Resultate eines Gentests seines verstorbenen Vaters verlangt. Die vorläufigen Ergebnisse der Studie des Mediziners lassen auf ein um 10% erhöhtes Risiko für Darmkrebs in Verbindung mit der Beschaffenheit eines der Gene des Vaters schließen. Dieser Fall wirft Fragen im Hinblick auf zumindest drei unterschiedliche Aspekte auf: die Offenlegung von Informationen mit geringem Aussagewert; die Offenlegung von Untersuchungsergebnissen gegenüber unmittelbaren Abkömmlingen der Testperson; und die Offenlegung von Untersuchungsergebnissen (...) nach dem Tod der Testperson.Der vorliegende Artikel kommt zu folgenden Ergebnissen: Testresultate mit geringem Aussagewert sollten den Testpersonen auf Anforderung zugänglich gemacht werden; unter bestimmten Umständen sollten genetische Informationen Familienmitgliedern gegenüber offengelegt werden, auch ohne die Zustimmung der Testperson; obwohl die Rechte und Verantwortlichkeiten im Zusammenhang mit der Verpflichtung, das Vertrauensverhältnis gegenüber dem Patienten zu bewahren, normalerweise mit dem Tod des Patienten nicht verringert oder gar aufgehoben werden, könnten im vorliegenden Fall doch bestimmte Faktoren zu einer Verschiebung der Balance hin zu einer Offenlegung der Information führen; und gibt es zu diesem Fall eine Reihe von Varianten, in denen der Mediziner wegen eines Zusammenspiels zwischen den genannten Faktoren berechtigterweise die Testresultate des Vaters dem Sohn gegenüber offenlegen kann. This article explores a case in which a son asks researchers to disclose his deceased father's genetic test results. The preliminary results of the researchers' study suggest a 10% increase in risk of colon cancer associated with the presence of gene. The case raises issues related to at least three distinct policy areas: the disclosure of/ow-value information, the disclosure of research results to immediate biological relatives of research subjects, and the disclosure of research results after the death of a research subject. The article concludes the following: low-value test results should be made available upon request to research subjects, in some circumstances genetic information may be revealed to family members without the subjects' consent, while the rights and responsibilities associated with the obligation to maintain subjects' confidentiality may not generally diminish or end upon their death, certain factors in this case may shift that balance in favor of disclosure, and in this case, because of the interplay between the factors, there are a number of scenarios in which the researchers could justifiably disclose the father's test results to the son. (shrink)

One of the questions raised by this important and thought-provoking collection of essays on torture is how and why the consensus that torture is wrong - a consensus enshrined in international law for decade - has become so fragile. As Scott Anderson writes in the introduction to this volume, "[h]ow did abusing and torturing prisoners suddenly become so popular?” The chapters in this volume offer insights into this question from the perspectives of history, psychology, law, philosophy, and sociology. This interdisciplinary (...) approach highlights important and often overlooked aspects of the torture debate. Yet, the questions that the authors take to be important (for example, about whether the justification of torture should even be contemplated) reflect different and sometimes incompatible normative assumptions about what torture is and about what matters in the torture debate. These assumptions, I shall argue, are shaped by, and play a role in shaping, the moral, political, and social narratives that contribute to or resist the toleration of torture in the US and elsewhere. Thus, while the disparate nature of the contributions (perhaps inevitably) undermine the cohesiveness of the volume as a whole, it illuminates, even if it does not resolve, larger questions about the place and function of academic debate in the history and use of torture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 75 REASON AND RELIGION Stefan Andersson [email protected] Erik J.Wielenberg. God and the Reach of Reason: C. S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell. Cambridge and NewYork: Cambridge U. P., 2008. Pp. x, 243.£50.13 (hb); us$30.99 (pb). rik J.Wielenberg is Johnson Family University Professor, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at DePauw University. His interest in and affinity for Bertrand Russell’s views on religion came (...) through in his first book Value andVirtue in a Godless Universe, where he used a quotation from What I Believe as the epigraph: “Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world”, and he referred to Russell in several places in discussing religion, naturalism, happiness and courage. b= 76 Reviews The central project of that book is an examination of the ethical implications of “naturalism”, which he uses as a synonym for “atheism”. In the introduction he writes: “In a naturalistic universe, there is no God, no afterlife, and no immortal soul.” He combines these familiar Russellian beliefs with metaethical views that Russell supposedly held until he abandoned Moore’s ethical objectivism and converted to some form of emotivism.1 Wielenberg leaves open the possibility that there are ethical facts that are not reducible to physical or scientific facts. He argues that we have good reasons to be moral and that life can be good and meaningful without believing in God, a soul or immortality (whether in heaven or hell). In the introduction he also outlines a two-part account of “why I am not Christian”, which is along the lines of Russell’s arguments for not having been one also. His latest book starts with a passage from the Phaedo where Socrates, facing execution, said:“… the one aim of those who practise philosophy in the proper manner is to practise for dying and death.” Wielenberg comments: “If the measure of a philosopher is the ability to face death without fear, then Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963), David Hume (1711–1776), and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) were great philosophers indeed” (p. 1). He uses a passage from “How to Grow Old” to illustrate Russell’s philosophy of life, ethic and attitude towards our mortality: An individual human existence should be like a river—small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his ______ 1 Towards the end of his life Russell showed signs of returning to Moorean objectivism and a belief in “absolute values”. In a letter to the editor of The Observer, 20 Oct. 1957, Russell wrote: “I cannot meet the arguments against absolute ethical values, and yet I cannot believe that a dislike of wanton cruelty is merely a matter of taste, like a dislike of oysters. But I am in complete agreement with Professor Ayer in thinking that the question whether ethical values are absolute has no bearing whatever on the question of the existence of God.” A week earlier he had written: “What Mr. Toynbee says in his criticism of my views on ethics has my entire sympathy. I find my own views argumentatively irrefutable, but nevertheless incredible. I do not know the solution.” See Papers 29: 21b and 21a, and Ramsay, Freedom and Immortality, pp. 43– 7. Both Pigden in Russell on Ethics and Potter in Bertrand Russell’s Ethics seem to have overlooked the possibility that Russell in old age returned to metaethical cognitivism and objectivism. Although he had difficulties in defending these positions theoretically, his practical involvement in cnd and protests against theVietnamWar show that he was at heart and in practice a believer in absolute values. See also n. 3. Reviews 77 life in this way, will not suffer from fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue.2 (PfM, p. 52) One... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 525 "an awareness of its perfection in perfect sell-identity" stems from his own theological bias: if God is to be connected with the world, His thinking cannot be merely a thinking about itself; His mind must also contain the Ideas of the sensible world. The inconsistency is quite apparent in the concluding paragraph of the introductory chapter three on "SellKnowledge ": If we study chapters seven and (...) nine of Book Lambda against the background of these texts on the meaning of friendship, it becomes apparent that a fortiori God's thinking must concern his own being and that "the thinking of thinking" is the supreme form of self-knowledge. Far from being an objectless returning to oneself, this knowledge concerns the very being of the First Principle. It would also seem to fot|ow that iust as knowing a friend is a certain degree of self-knowledge because of the ontological kinship between the self and a friend, God, in knowing himself, also knows, to a certain degree, the essential principles of things in so far as he is the first being encompassing within himself the perfections which other beings possess. This would, however, not imply that the first being would know the world as distinct from himself or as dependent on himself (pp. 33-34). How can God (the Unmoved Mover) think only of Himself, and at the same time, to a certain degree (whatever this means) know also the essential principles of things, the perfections which other beings possess? And what textual justification is there for attributing this position to Aristotle? There are a number of errors in the text. Some of them are as follows: (1) On p. 21 Elders quotes from Laws 987b, in spite of the fact that the Laws ends on 969c. The passage referred to would have to be in Epinomis, but at 987b there is nothing of the text he quotes, to wit, vo~g ~v n0ooXQf3o0oa~E~0~tv 6006g 0~tv. (2) On p. 24, note 41, he correctly gives the text at 432a4 as ~ ~oggdSEo~xotg do0n~o~g x6 vo~x6 ~oxt but makes it mean: '~ere are phantasmata in which the intelligible things are contained." Evidently he confuses this with the passage at 431b1--4. (3) On p. 279, p~.~oxr should read p~i~.t~r (4) On p. 5, ~oo~v should read 6.~ao6v. K. W. Hsaa~oroN Emery University In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought. Two Volumes. By Charles Trinkaus. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970. Pp. 985. $22.50) I. Since the appearance of Burckhardt's classic essay more than a century ago, three schools of thought have grown up around the problem of the nature and extent of humanism 's relationship to Christianity. The classic position, represented by Burckhardt, Symends, Dilthey, Gentile, Cassirer, Saitta, and others, has interpreted humanism as an essentiaUy anti-Christian, anti-scholastic, rationatistic, and individualistic phenomenon caught up in an overwhelming concern for attaining to historical greatness in this world. If religion has been considered at all (and it is usually left to take care of itself), it has been so reinterpreted as to become consistent with the interests of emerging secularism, liberalism, and modern science. Opposing the Burckhardtian position, however, is one originally associated with the work of Giuseppe Toffanin and, more recently, Hiram Haydn. Here, Renaissance humanism is seen to be fundamentaUy Catholic, orthodox, and traditional---the two movements joined in perfect harmony by a common concern for antiquity and universaiism, for Latinity, faith, and corporate elitism, and by a common opposition to democratic particularism, heresy, individualism, modernity, and the vernaculars. What makes these two positions extreme, however, is the existence of the largest, most 526 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY moderate, and most diversified camp. Originating with Thode, Pastor, Olgiati, and Joachimsen, among a host of others, it has encompassed the general view that humanism and Christianity are separate yet interrelated. For some, medieval Catholicism is not the antithesis but the fountainhead of Renaissance humanism--the religious cause of a secular effect. For others, humanism is a novel intellectual movement, but one yet operating within a still... (shrink)

Upon confronting the intellectual crisis spanning the decades of the interwar years, several German philosophers proposed a “new method” to point out the limitation of knowledge derived from the subjective and positivistic methods of philosophy. Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, sympathizers of this viewpoint, were motivated to provide a new voice to the intellectual worldview of the period and, in the process, elevated the level of their contemporary philosophic atmosphere. Their voices reverberated in their respective concepts of Being and Being-in-the (...) world, concepts which encouraged the study of human existence: Existenzphilosophie and Existential Phenomenology. This essay will examine their respective concepts of, being, being-in-the-world, selfhood, existential communication, historicity, and analyze how the family connection of these concepts pertaining to existential phenomenology invite comparisons in their philosophies of human existence to the “dialogical” principle inherent in Buber’s philosophy. Despite Buber’s criticisms, the paper makes an alternative interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy of human existence, and argues for including the latter, with Jaspers, in the discussion of the “philosophy of dialogue.”. (shrink)

The UK Alternative Investment Market (AIM) was launched in 1995 and has been a great success with over 1200 companies now listed. In this article, we examine the development of AIM as it reaches its 15th year and discuss the potential pitfalls of the light touch regulation that is one of the attractions of AIM and identify potential corporate governance and ethical issues that may arise as a result of light touch regulation. We examine the central role of the nominated (...) advisor (NOMAD) and draw on the findings of in depth interviews with 25 AIM participants including AIM company directors, institutional investors, nominated advisors and brokers. We highlight the influence of the NOMAD on these participants and potential governance and ethical implications. We also discuss some of the concerns that AIM participants have about the market. We examine some of the recent scandals on AIM to determine why these scandals occurred — were they, for example, attributable to corporate governance weaknesses? Finally, we offer some concluding comments to discuss the future of AIM. The findings of the article have important implications for investors and policymakers alike. (shrink)

Epistemologists who study credences have a well-developed account of how you should change them when you learn new evidence; that is, when your body of evidence grows. What's more, they boast a diverse range of epistemic and pragmatic arguments that support that account. But they do not have a satisfactory account of when and how you should change your credences when you become aware of possibilities and propositions you have not entertained before; that is, when your awareness grows. (...) In this paper, I consider the arguments for the credal epistemologist's account of how to respond to evidence, and I ask whether they can help us generate an account of how to respond to awareness growth. The results are surprising: the arguments that all support the same norms for responding to evidence growth support a number of different norms when they are applied to awareness growth. Some of these norms seem too weak, others too strong. I ask what we should conclude from this, and argue that our credal response to awareness growth is considerably less rigorously constrained than our credal response to new evidence. (shrink)

Longtermism is the view that the most urgent global priorities, and those to which we should devote the largest portion of our resources, are those that focus on (i) ensuring a long future for humanity, and perhaps sentient or intelligent life more generally, and (ii) improving the quality of the lives that inhabit that long future. While it is by no means the only one, the argument most commonly given for this conclusion is that these interventions have greater expected (...) goodness per unit of resource devoted to them than each of the other available interventions, including those that focus on the health and well-being of the current population. In this paper, I argue that, even if we grant the consequentialist ethics upon which this argument depends, and even if we grant one of the axiologies that are typically paired with that ethics to give the argument, we are not morally required to choose an option that maximises expected utility; indeed, we might not even be permitted to do so. Instead, I will argue, if the argument's consequentialism is correct, we should choose using a decision theory that is sensitive to risk, and allows us to give greater weight to worse-case outcomes than expected utility theory does. And, I will show, such decision theories do not always recommend longtermist interventions. Indeed, sometimes, they recommend exactly the opposite: sometimes, they recommend hastening human extinction. Many, though not all, will take this as a reductio of the consequentialism or the axiology of the argument. I remain agnostic on the conclusion we should draw. (shrink)

Orphan drug policy often gives ‘special treatment’ to rare diseases, by giving additional priority or making exceptions to specific drugs, based on the rarity of the conditions they aim to treat. This essay argues that the goal of orphan drug policy should be to make prevalence irrelevant to funding decisions. It aims to demonstrate that it is severity, not prevalence, which drives our judgments that important claims are being overlooked when treatments for severe rare diseases are not funded. It (...) shows that prioritising severity avoids problems caused by prioritising rarity, and that it is compatible with a range of normative frameworks. The implications of a severity-based view for drug development are then derived. The severity-based view also accounts for what is wrong with how the current system of drug development unfairly neglects common diseases that burden the developing world. Lastly, the implications of a severity-based view for current orphan drug policies are discussed. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Recent work in republican political theory has identified various forms of domination in the structures and relations of capitalist societies. A notable absence in much of this work is the concept of exploitation, which is generally treated as a predictable outcome of certain kinds of domination. This paper argues that the concept of exploitation can instead be conceived as a form of structural domination, understood in republican terms, and that adopting this conception has important implications for republican attempts to theorize (...) modern capitalist societies. Building on existing domination accounts of exploitation, we argue that exploitation is a form of structurally constituted domination that enables a systemic illegitimate extraction of value. However, in contrast to competing accounts, domination is understood here in the republican terms of subjection to arbitrary power. We show that conceiving of domination in these terms not only makes the concept easily accessible from within a republican framework, but has advantages over competing accounts. Our argument also demonstrates why using the concept of exploitation will be useful for republican theorists. We show that a polity based on exploitative relations of production is antithetical to key republican commitments. These asymmetric power relationships undermine the economic and political independence of citizens and, crucially, constrain the political and economic ends that a polity will be effectively able to pursue. As such, exploitation should be a central preoccupation of republican political economy. (shrink)

Currently in the United Kingdom, anyone donating gametes has the status of an open-identity donor. This means that, at the age of 18, persons conceived with gametes donated since April 1, 2005 have a right to access certain pieces of identifying information about their donor. However, in early 2015, the UK Parliament approved new regulations that make mitochondrial donors anonymous. Both mitochondrial donation and gamete donation are similar in the basic sense that they involve the contribution of gamete materials to (...) create future persons. Given this similarity, this paper presumes that both types of donor should be treated the same and made open-identity under the law, unless there is a convincing argument for treating them differently. I argue that none of the existing arguments that have been made so far in favor of mitochondrial donor anonymity are convincing and mitochondrial donors should therefore be treated as open-identity donors under UK law. (shrink)

Strategies to increase influenza vaccination rates have typically targeted healthcare professionals and individuals in various high-risk groups such as the elderly. We argue that they should focus on increasing vaccination rates in children. Because children suffer higher influenza incidence rates than any other demographic group, and are major drivers of seasonal influenza epidemics, we argue that influenza vaccination strategies that serve to increase uptake rates in children are likely to be more effective in reducing influenza-related morbidity and mortality than (...) those targeting HCPs or the elderly. This is true even though influenza-related morbidity and mortality amongst children are low, except in the very young. Further, we argue that there are no decisive reasons to suppose that children-focused strategies are less ethically acceptable than elderly or HCP-focused strategies. (shrink)

Although many accept the Rawlsian distinction between ‘end-state’ and ‘transitional’ principles, theorists disagree strongly over which feasibility constraint to use when selecting the former. While ‘minimalists’ favor a scientific-laws-only constraint, ‘non-minimalists’ believe that end-state principles should also be constrained by what people could (empirically) accept after reasoned discussion. I argue that a theorist who follows ‘non-minimalism’ will devise end-state principles that cannot be realized (as end-state principles), or cannot be stabilized (as end-state principles), or are indistinguishable in content from (...) those she would have selected had she followed ‘minimalism.’ The paper ends by outlining the implications of my analysis for the broader methodological map of political philosophy. (shrink)

Dreams provide a compelling problem for sensorimotor enactivists like Alva Noë: they seem to replicate our perceptual experiences without sensorimotor interaction with distal sensory stimuli. Noë has responded by saying that dreams actually fail to replicate perceptual experiences in virtue of their lack of detail and stability. Noë's opponents have replied by pointing out that some dreams are richly detailed and stable, and that instability and a lack of detail in dreams can anyway be explained in terms of the underlying (...) neural activity. In this paper, I develop how the sensorimotor enactivist should respond: dreams fail to replicate perceptual experiences because they are exhausted by what shows up at a given moment in phenomenal consciousness, while perceptual experiences go beyond this to include everything accessible via sensorimotor exploration. This difference permeates all levels of experience, so that dreams can't even replicate perceptual experiences of simple shapes and colors. Further, unlike detail and stability, there are not obvious neural explanations of this phenomenal difference. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 1, Page 55-74, February 2022. Many find that the objectionable nature of paternalism has something to do with belief. However, since it is commonly held that beliefs are directly governed by epistemic as opposed to moral norms, how could it be objectionable to hold paternalistic beliefs about others if they are supported by the evidence? Drawing on central elements of relational egalitarianism, this paper attempts to bridge this gap. In a first step, it (...) argues that holding paternalistic beliefs about others implies a failure to regard them as equals in terms of their moral agency. In a second step, it shows that the fact that we should regard others as equals in this sense raises the threshold for sufficiency of evidence for paternalistic beliefs to be epistemically justified. That is, moral reasons of relational equality encroach on the epistemic. However, these reasons are not decisive. In cases where others are about to jeopardize critical goods such as their lives, mobility or future autonomy, relational equality sometimes calls for paternalistic action and, by extension, the formation of beliefs that render such action rational. The upshot is that in order to meet demands of relational equality we have a pro tanto reason to not hold paternalistic beliefs about others. (shrink)

Sentences that are ungrammatical and yet intelligible are instances of what I call perfectly thinkable thoughts. I argue that the existence of perfectly thinkable thoughts is revealing in regard to the question of why syntactic islands should exist. If language is an instrument of thought as understood in the biolinguistics tradition, then a uniquely human subset of thoughts is generated in narrow syntax, which suggests that island constraints cannot be rooted in narrow syntax alone and thus must reflect interface (...) conditions imposed on the output of the computational system and its mapping to external systems. (shrink)

If you are an anthropologist wanting to use digital methods or programming as part of your research, where do you start? In this commentary, we discuss three ways in which anthropologists can use computational tools to enhance, support, and complement ethnographic methods. By presenting our reflections, we hope to contribute to the stirring conversations about the potential future role of data science vis-a-vis anthropology and ethnography, and to inspire other anthropologists to take up the use of digital methods, programming, and (...) computational tools in their own research. (shrink)

In this journal, Robert Smithson argues that considerations stemming from Kantian and post-Kantian idealism undermine naturalistic arguments that seek to debunk elements of the ‘manifest image’ in favour of the ‘scientific image’. The idealist tradition, on this view, holds that philosophy’s task is to uncover and clarify the principles and norms which underlie different forms of inquiry, and is thus well placed to dispel the apparent ‘placement’ problems that stem from the collision of our ordinary worldview with contemporary philosophical naturalism. (...) Smithson also argues that this idealist critique of naturalism is preferable to the Liberal Naturalist critique of naturalism. In this response, I argue that Smithson’s view contains a gap which the naturalist can exploit to evade idealist critique, but that a Hegelian idealism contains no such gap, making it the better idealist choice. Further, I argue that that Hegelian idealism is itself plausibly a version of liberal naturalism. (shrink)

The data discussed strongly suggest that neural imaging does not unduly sway judges and jurors; in fact, it is often counterproductive. The percentage of appellate cases in which the decision was favorable to defendants with brain scan data mirrored those of decisions without such proffered evidence. Moreover, fully two-thirds of the scans admitted were either inconclusive or showed normal brain structures. In decisions referencing brain scans, judges mentioned defendant behavior significantly more often than they referred to the defendant’s brain. Finally, (...) in the actual decisions themselves, judges often ignored relevant imaging data in favor of case precedent or misinterpreted the data so that they would fit with the judges’ initial reactions and opinions. (shrink)

The author addresses the question of the necessity of logic courses in undergraduate education, particularly their use as a requirement in the humanities. This paper outlines why logic counts as a humanities subject and why certain virtues of logic are beneficial to a humanities education. The authors explores these two aspects of the question and invites the reader to decide whether the combination of these two aspects of a logic course jointly satisfy the educational needs of their particular institution’s curriculum.

Preliminary assessment of Aristotle’s treatment of justice suggests that he would consider unjust Jesus’s injunction to turn your other cheek to one who has unjustly struck you. Further consideration, however, shows that obeying such an injunction would qualify, even by Aristotle’s criteria, as a more just response than reciprocating the blow. Turning one’s cheek provides the assailant an opportunity to make a choice that could improve his character, which improvement is crucial to the political good that is the primary concern (...) of justice in the full sense. Remaining concerns about rectification are obviated by considering how the megalopsukhos navigates honor. (shrink)

Des Jardins (1976) and Dreher (1990) have suggested that Plato's Line should be thought of as divided in the mean and extreme ('golden') ratio. I examine their arguments, as well as other reasons that could be brought up in support of the 'golden division' of the Line, and show that all of them are wanting.

The proposed law in Ukraine on protection from dangerous human-psychological impacts and on psychological assistance to those who have suffered such an effect has grounds for concern.

While it is often undesirable and difficult to introduce highly complex arguments in large introductory philosophy classes, it is important to do so at least once in the semester as it challenges students, shows how philosophical debates often go beyond one’s initial intuitions, and illustrates how meaningful answers often turn on close attention to logical minutiae. This paper provides an example of an advanced debate on the free-will response to the problem of evil that can be used in introductory courses (...) in the philosophy of religion. The paper provides a skeleton of two lectures that the author has used (suitable for two fifty-minute lectures and one fifty-minute discussion section) and discusses two common difficulties students face when learning this material. (shrink)