This paper argues that several leading theories of subjunctive conditionals are incompatible with ordinary intuitions about what credences we ought to have in subjunctive conditionals. In short, our theory of subjunctives should intuitively display semantic humility, i.e. our semantic theory should deliver the truth conditions of sentences without pronouncing on whether those conditions actually obtain. In addition to describing intuitions about subjunctive conditionals, I argue that we can derive these ordinary intuitions from justified premises, and I answer a possible worry (...) for my derivation by refuting a subjunctive triviality result modeled on (Lewis 1976). I conclude that the debate over the correct theory of subjunctive conditionals requires settling meta-philosophical questions about the relative value of various virtues of first-order theories of subjunctive conditionals. (shrink)

The Archival and Constructive views of memory offer contrasting characterizations of remembering and its relation to memory errors. I evaluate the descriptive adequacy of each by offering a close analysis of one of the most prominent experimental techniques by which memory errors are elicited—the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. Explaining the DRM effect requires appreciating it as a distinct form of memory error, which I refer to as misremembering. Misremembering is a memory error that relies on successful retention of the targeted event. It (...) differs from both successful remembering and from confabulation errors, where the representation produced is wholly inaccurate. As I show, neither the Archival nor the Constructive View can account for the DRM effect because they are insensitive to misremembering’s unique explanatory demands. Fortunately, the explanatory limitations of the Archival and Constructive Views are complementary. This suggests a way.. (shrink)

Letheby’s naturalistic theory of psychedelic therapy argues that the therapeutic power of psychedelics lies in their ability to allow individuals “to discover the contingency, mutability and simulatory nature of their own sense of identity and habitual modes of attention.” The general shape of this project is persuasive; it is hard to see how the claim that successful therapy must involve changes to the self could be objected to, and Letheby sketches a consistent, if speculative, picture of psychedelic experience. But the (...) role of affect in psychedelic therapy is insufficiently explored by Letheby as a comparison to MDMA-assisted therapy indicates. This comparison further suggests that Letheby’s reliance on a particular conceptualization of ego dissolution experiences is in need of further explanation and justification. (shrink)

One thing that has to be considered in this process is the place of philosophy itself (Williams 2011 [1985], 4). Politicians often argue that they have no right to keep their hands clean, and that...

This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored the organizational influences on moral distress for health professionals working in pediatric intensive care units across Canada. Participants were recruited to the study from PICUs across Canada. The PICU is a high-tech, fast-paced, high-pressure environment where caregivers frequently face conflict and ethical tension in the care of critically ill children. A number of themes including relationships with management, organizational structure and processes, workload and resources, and team dynamics were identified. (...) This study provides a rare and important multi-disciplinary perspective on this topic and the findings have implications for administrators and leaders who seek to improve the moral climate of healthcare delivery. (shrink)

What is the role of practical thought in determining the intentional action that is performed? Donald Davidson’s influential answer to this question is that thought plays an efficient-causal role: intentional actions are those events that have the correct causal pedigree in the agent's beliefs and desires. But the Causal Theory of Action has always been plagued with the problem of “deviant causal chains,” in which the right action is caused by the right mental state but in the wrong way. This (...) paper addresses an alternative approach to understanding intentional action inspired by G.E.M. Anscombe, interpreting that view as casting practical thought in the role of formal rather than efficient cause of action and thereby avoiding the problem of deviant (efficient) causal chains. Specifically, on the neo-Anscombean view, it is the agent’s “practical knowledge” – non-observational, non-inferential knowledge of what one is doing – that confers the form of intentional action on an event and is the contribution of thought to determining what is intentionally done. This paper argues that the Anscombean view is subject to its own problematic type of deviance: deviant formal causation. What we know non-observationally about what we are doing often includes more than what we intend to be doing; we also know that we are bringing about the foreseen side effects of acting in the intended way. It is argued that the neo-Anscombean view faces difficulty in excluding the expected side effects from the specification of what is intentionally done, whereas the Causal Theory has no such difficulty. Thus, the discussion amounts to an argument in favor of the Causal Theory of Action. (shrink)

Moral enhancement is a topic that has sparked much current interest in the world of bioethics. The possibility of making people ‘better,’ not just in the conventional enhancement sense of improving health and other desirable qualities and capacities, but by making them somehow more moral, more decent, altogether better people, has attracted attention from both advocates 1 2 and sceptics 3 alike. The concept of moral enhancement, however, is fraught with difficult questions, theoretical and practical. What does it actually mean (...) to be ‘more moral’? How would moral enhancement be defined and would it necessarily, as some have claimed, make the world a better or safer place? How would or could such enhancement be achieved safely and without undue constraint on personal liberty and autonomy? On this subject, a recent paper by Crockett et al 4 investigating the effects of the neurotransmitter serotonin on moral decision-making provides an intriguing scientific basis for examining what might or might not constitute moral enhancement. The study involved treatment with citalopram, a drug that increases the action of serotonin in the brain, and subsequent analysis of participants' decision-making behaviour in two different situations involving moral dilemmas: the well-known ‘Trolley Problem’ 5 and the ‘Ultimatum Game’. 6 The researchers found that citalopram promoted what they call ‘prosocial behaviour’, increasing the participants' aversion to causing direct harm to others: in the first scenario, they were less likely to select the option that required killing one in order to save five, and in the second, less likely to reject unfair offers at the expense of others. The Crockett study is fascinating both for its insight into human behaviour and because it appears to demonstrate that, at least on some accounts of moral behaviour, serotonin may in fact be a …. (shrink)

The necessity of wearing masks in response to the spread of the Covid-19 took Europe and the USA by surprise. Legislation needed to be enacted to enforce the obligation on citizens not used to such practices. The authors investigate the semiotic function of masks, legislations enacted to enforce their usage in public places, and the mask-related discourse with a view to seeing how societies reacted to this imposition. A broad semiotic perspective is provided to analyze different attitudes and types of (...) MRD that have emerged in Poland, France, and the USA. (shrink)

What justifies state-sponsored supports for individual welfare within a Kantian political system, as well as the purpose and extent of such supports and the form they may take, are vexed questions. This Element characterizes and assesses main contenders by examining the competing interpretations of Kant's larger political theory that found their social welfare claims. It then develops and defends an alternative based in civic respect. This emphasizes the perspective and institutional commitments that Kant's model of citizenship entails and what is (...) required to respect each as both a person and a participant in joint governance. (shrink)

Dance as a complex human activity is a rich test case for exploring perception in action. In this article, we explore a 4E approach to perception/action in dance, focussing on the intersubjective and ecological aspects of kinaesthetic attunement and their capacity to expand empathic and perceptive experience. We examine the question: what are the ways in which the performance ecology co-created in different dance practices influences empathic and perceptive experience? We adopt an enactive ethnographic and phenomenological approach to explore two (...) distinct dance forms: Contact Improvisation [CI], a duet-system based practice aimed at fostering interkinaesthetic awareness and challenging habits of movement; and Body Weather [BW], an anti-hierarchical movement practice sensitive to the surrounding environment. We argue that through intersubjective kinaesthetic attunement, CI scaffolds the development of perceptive awareness of subtle shifts within ourselves and others, allowing the cultivation of a capacity for flexibly traversing between conscious initiation of action, attuned responding, and the intersection between them. Similarly, we investigate the expansion of perceptive experience through kinaesthetic attunement in BW. We suggest that the capacity for empathy is enhanced in BW through drawing attention to, and perception of, the fullness of a place in a way that we do not typically experience. By focussing on the variations in which embodied perceptual skills are enacted in specific dance forms and the expansion of perceptive experience through kinaesthetic attunement, we stress the potential of the performing arts to cultivate and create new ways of empathic engagement with the world in which we find ourselves. (shrink)

Across cultures, people employ space to construct representations of time. English exhibits two deictic space–time metaphors: the “moving ego” metaphor conceptualizes the ego as moving forward through time and the “moving time” metaphor conceptualizes time as moving forward towards the ego. Earlier research investigating the psychological reality of these metaphors has shown that engaging in certain types of spatial-motion thinking may influence how people reason about events in time. More recently, research has shown that people’s interactions with cultural artifacts may (...) also influence their representations of time. Extending research on space–time mappings in new directions, three experiments investigated the role of cultural artifacts, namely calendars and clocks, in the interpretation of metaphorical expressions about time. Taken together, the results provide initial evidence that, in their interpretation of ambiguous metaphorical expressions about time, people automatically access and use spatial representations of absolute time, whereby moving forward in space corresponds with moving later in time. Moreover, asking participants to use a reverse space–time mapping causes interference, which is reflected through their temporal reasoning. (shrink)

Over the past decade, sexual rumor spreading, slut-shaming, and homophobic labeling have become central examples of bullying among young women. This article examines the role these practices— what adults increasingly call “bullying” and what girls often call “drama”— play in girls’ gendering processes. Through interviews with 54 class and racially diverse late adolescent girls, I explore the content and functions of “sexual drama.” All participants had experiences with this kind of conflict, and nearly a third had been the subject of (...) other girls’ rumors about their own sexual actions and/or orientations. Their accounts indicate that sexual drama offers girls a socially acceptable site for making claims to, and sense of, gendered sexuality in adolescence. While they reproduce inequality through these practices, sexual drama is also a resource for girls—one that is made useful through the institutional constraints of their high schools, which reinforce traditional gender norms and limit sexuality information. (shrink)

My commentary focuses on Khalidi's defense of episodic memory as a cognitive kind. His argument relies on merging two distinct accounts of episodic memory—the phenomenal and the etiological. I suggest that Khalidi's framework can be used to carve the contemporary memory literature differently. On this view, the phenomenal account supports constructive episodic simulation as a cognitive kind, the etiological account supports event memory as a cognitive kind, and episodic memory ceases to be. The question for Khalidi is, then, how to (...) evaluate this alternative proposal—and more broadly how to adjudicate between competing and overlapping accounts of cognitive kinds. (shrink)

This chapter highlights and assesses an important form of argument that has often been deployed in debates over moral demandingness. 'They can’t take that away from me' arguments claim to identify something which morality cannot ask us to give up — something which morality allegedly cannot take away from us. Does any argument of this kind succeed? This chapter investigates that question by sketching and critiquing three such arguments from the contemporary literature, including a well-known argument of Bernard Williams’. It (...) also considers a further impediment to the scope or power of such arguments, namely how little they show even if they succeed. The closing suggestion is that those eager to resist extreme moral demands ought to object at an earlier stage to the arguments which seem to generate such demands. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

This study seeks to understand the ways in which men who pledge sexual abstinence until marriage negotiate and assert masculine identities before and after marriage. Using longitudinal qualitative data, this work traces the ways in which men who pledge abstinence until marriage manage a tension between both “sacred” and “beastly” discourses surrounding sexuality. The situational and interactional gendered practices of these men highlight their attempts to resolve the incongruity between practices of sexual purity and hegemonic definitions of masculinity. I argue (...) that a decision to pledge sexual abstinence until marriage is an example of hybrid masculinities in that the postmarriage transition to a more hegemonically masculine status suggests that such practices are not challenging current gendered systems of power and inequality. These findings underscore the potential fallacy in using cross-sectional data to illustrate changes in gender relations, and demonstrate the importance of incorporating life course perspectives when theorizing masculinities. (shrink)

Background Rapid ethical access to personal health information to support research is extremely important during pandemics, yet little is known regarding patient preferences for consent during such crises. This follow-up study sought to ascertain whether there were differences in consent preferences between pre-pandemic times compared to during Wave 1 of the COVID-19 global pandemic, and to better understand the reasons behind these preferences. Methods A total of 183 patients in the pandemic cohort completed the survey via email, and responses were (...) compared to the distinct pre-pandemic cohort ; all were patients of a large Canadian cancer center. The survey covered broad versus study-specific consent; opt-in versus opt-out contact approach; levels of comfort sharing with different recipients; perceptions of commercialization; and options to track use of information and be notified of results. Four focus groups were subsequently conducted to elucidate reasons motivating dominant preferences. Results Patients in the pandemic cohort were significantly more comfortable with sharing all information and biological samples, sharing information with the health care institution, sharing information with researchers at other hospitals, sharing PHI provincially, nationally and internationally compared to the pre-pandemic cohort. Discomfort with sharing information with commercial companies remained unchanged between the two cohorts. Significantly more pandemic cohort patients expressed a wish to track use of PHI, and to be notified of results. Thematic analysis uncovered that transparency was strongly desired on outside PHI use, particularly when commercialization was involved. Conclusions In pandemic times, patients were more comfortable sharing information with all parties, except with commercial entities, where levels of discomfort remained unchanged. Focus groups identified that the ability to track and receive results of studies using one’s PHI is an important way to reduce discomfort and increase trust. These findings meaningfully inform wider discussions on the use of personal health information for research during global crises. (shrink)

A number of sociologists have identified the emergence of a ‘new paradigm’ of health, based on the principle that the National Health Service should seek to prevent ill-health rather than simply treat the sick. The sociology of health promotion that has emerged over the past 15 years has contributed to debates about risk, lifestyle and consumerism, but the gendered nature of what some refer to as the ‘new morality of health’, and in particular its urging of feminine attributes, has largely (...) been neglected. This article provides a critical examination of the ‘new paradigm’ of health and its relationship to femininity. I suggest that femininity involves a certain attitude to the body that we also find in current health policy, and cultural representations of health more generally: that the body is essentially uncontrollable (yet something we should seek to control, as a matter of virtue), that it is a good in and of itself, and that it is synonymous with the self. (shrink)

Historically developed along gender lines and arguably the most sex segregated of institutions, U.S. prisons are organized around the assumption of a gender binary. In this context, the existence and increasing visibility of transgender prisoners raise questions about how gender is accomplished by transgender prisoners in prisons for men. This analysis draws on official data and original interview data from 315 transgender inmates in 27 California prisons for men to focus analytic attention on the pursuit of “the real deal”—a concept (...) we develop to reference a dynamic related to how gender is accomplished by transgender inmates. Specifically, among transgender inmates in prisons for men, there is competition for the attention and affection of “real men” in prisons: the demonstrable and well-articulated desire to secure standing as “the best girl” in sex segregated institutional environments. Our empirical examination sheds light on the gender order that underpins prison life, the lived experience of gender and sexuality for transgender inmates in prisons for men, and how that experience reveals new aspects of the workings of gender accountability. (shrink)

This is the first in a series of five papers on the role, remit and function of research ethics committees which are intended to provide for REC members a broad understanding of the most important issues in research ethics and governance. The first considers the rationale for having ethics review by committee at all; seeking to explain why ethics committees, as we currently have them, are so important to the wider system of governing research.

In the euthanasia debate, the argument from mercy holds that if someone is in unbearable pain and is hopelessly ill or injured, then mercy dictates that inflicting death may be morally justified. One common way of setting the stage for the argument from mercy is to draw parallels between human and animal suffering, and to suggest that insofar as we are prepared to relieve an animal’s suffering by putting it out of its misery we should likewise be prepared to offer (...) the same relief to human beings. In this paper, I will argue that the use of parallels between human and animal suffering in the argument from mercy relies upon truncated views of how the concept of a human being enters our moral thought and responsiveness. In particular, the focus on the nature and extent of the empirical similarities between human beings and animals obscures the significance for our moral lives of the kind of human fellowship which is not reducible to the shared possession of empirical capacities. I will suggest that although a critical examination of the blindspots in these arguments does not license the conclusion that euthanasia for mercy’s sake is never morally permissible, it does limit the power of arguments such as those provided by Rachels and Singer to justify it. I will further suggest that examination of these blindspots helps to deepen our understanding of what is at stake in the question of euthanasia in ways that tend otherwise to remain obscured. (shrink)

This paper discusses the contribution of Madame Du Châtelet to the reception of Newtonianism in France prior to her translation of Newton’s Principia. It focuses on her Institutions de physique, a work normally considered for its contribution to the reception of Leibniz in France. By comparing the different editions of the Institutions, I argue that her interest in Newton antedated her interest in Leibniz, and that she did not see Leibniz’s metaphysics as incompatible with Newtonian science. Her Newtonianism can be (...) seen to be in the course of development between 1738 and 1742 and it was shaped by contemporary French debates and the achievement of French Newtonians like Maupertuis in confirming his theories. Her Institutions therefore is linked to the same drive to disseminate Newtonianism undertaken by popularisations such as Voltaire’s Elements de la philosophie de Newton and Algarotti’s Newtonianismo per le dame.Author Keywords: Emilie du Châtelet; Isaac Newton; Voltaire; French reception of Newtonianism. (shrink)

(2003). The Bioethics of Fiction: The Chimera in Film and Print. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 22-24. doi: 10.1162/15265160360706787.

The central claim of this article is that narrative agency, which I will define as a subject’s capacity to make sense of herself as an ‘I’ over time and in relation to other ‘I’s, is a precondition for identity formation. I engage with two critiques of this claim: first, that narrative agency is limited by, rather than primary to, subordinating gender norms and, second, that a view of narrative agency as primary is committed to too ambitious a conception of the (...) communicability of narratives. I argue that the narrative model survives these two criticisms by emphasising its irreducibility, its inherent relationality and its generative potential. I then suggest some of the ways in which a concept of narrative agency might help feminist critical theory to posit mutual recognition and respect as productive criteria for progressive self and social transformation. (shrink)

The issue which I wish to address in this paper is the widespread tendency in Anglophone philosophy to insist on a separation between the history of philosophy and the history of ideas or intellectual history. This separation reflects an anxiety on the part of philosophers lest the special character of philosophy will be dissolved into something else in the hands of historians. And it is borne of a fundamental tension between those who think of philosophy's past as a source of (...) ideas and arguments of interest to the present, and those who hold that the philosophy of the past should be studied on its own terms, in relation to its immediate context, without reference to the present. The challenge, then, is to re-historicise the history of philosophy, and to keep the philosophers onside. (shrink)

To isolate, analyze and explain their most basic commitments, theories of justice typically idealize. They assume for theoretical purposes, for example, that human beings possess far greater knowledge than they do, or that society's members strictly comply with just laws. Yet because it falsifies, idealization undermines the practical applicability of an ideal theory's principles. ;Although ideal theories are unsatisfactory as they stand, their fundamental principles may be invaluable in addressing our problems of justice. From such basic principles we may derive (...) intermediate ones that bridge the gap between ideal world and real, and allow us to determine what ideal theory demands in actual circumstances. ;Going beyond others who recognize the need, but themselves offer only ideal theories, I develop a set of these intermediate principles. I examine Kant's theory of justice as a paradigm, and identify problems it cannot address because they have their source in non-ideal features, including limited knowledge, imperfect will and preexisting social injustice. I then appeal to a modified version of the perspective of the ideal citizen that Kant employs in the Rechtslehre. This modified perspective enables us to articulate principles that give effect to Kant's universal law of justice and categorical imperative in non-ideal circumstances. Illustrating its use in addressing issues such as prison reform and exclusionary zoning, I argue that augmented ideal theory can play a crucial role in our pursuit of social justice. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there are gestalt principles underlying intersubjective interactions and that this means that intersubjective ‘units’, can be recognised as unified gestalt wholes. The nub of the claim is that interactions within a ‘plural subject’ can be perceived by others outside this plural subject. Framed from the first-person perspective: I am able to recognise intersubjective interactions between multiple others who are not me. I argue that the terminology of gestalt structures is helpful in framing and understanding (...) the non-reducible make-up of these relational units. I consequently defend the legitimacy of the claim that we can attend to more than one other person at once, holding multiple others as a single focus of attention insofar as we can attend to multiple others as a gestalt whole. I argue that it is therefore legitimate to talk about attending to, perceiving and addressing multiple others at the same time, in the second-person plural. I argue that this can be identified in the phenomenology of such interactions and in an analysis of the core underlying structures of these interactions. (shrink)

"Charles Marville is widely acknowledged as one of the most talented photographers of the nineteenth century. Accompanying a major retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in honor of Marville's bicentennial, Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris surveys the artist's entire career. This beautiful book, which begins with the city scenes and architectural views Marville made throughout France and Germany in the 1850s, also explores his portraits and landscapes s before turning to his photographs of Paris made both before and (...) after the city's dramatic modernization in the 1850s and 1860s. Commissioned to record the city in transition, Marville created one of the earliest and most powerful photographic series documenting urban transformation on a grand scale. Despite the importance of his work, Marville has long been an enigma in the history of photography, in part because many of the documents about his life were thought to have been lost in a fire that destroyed Paris's city hall in 1871. Based on meticulous research, this volume reveals many new insights into Marville's personal and professional biography, including the central fact that he was born Charles-Franðcois Bossu. He shed this name and adoptedthe pseudonym Marville when he began his career as an illustrator in the 1830s. With five essays by respected scholars, this book offers the first comprehensive examination of Marville's life and career and delivers the much-awaited public recognition his photographs so richly deserve"--. (shrink)

de Carvalho, Evandro Menezes (2011).Semiotics of International Law: Trade and Translation. Springer: New York. ISBN: 978-90-481-9011-9.According to Evandro Menezes de Carvalho in Semiotics of International Law: Trade and Translation, language carries more than meanings; language conveys a means of conceiving the world. In this sense, national legal systems expressed through national languages organize the Law based on their own understanding of reality. International Law becomes, in this context, the meeting point where different legal cultures and different views of world intersect. (...) The diversity of languages and legal systems can enrich the possibilities of understanding and developing international law, but it can also represent an instability and un-safety factor to the international scenario. This multilegal-system and multilingual scenario adds to the complexity of international law and poses new challenges. By analyzing the decision-making process and the legal discourse adopted. (shrink)