Allow me to rehearse a familiar scenario. We all know that which ends you have has something to do with what you ought to do. If Ronnie is keen on dancing but Bradley can’t stand it, then the fact that there will be dancing at the party tonight affects what Ronnie and Bradley ought to do in different ways. In short, (HI) you ought, if you have the end, to take the means. But now trouble looms: what if you have (...) dreadful, murderous ends? Ought you to take the means to them? Seemingly not. But fortunately, an assumption made by deontic logics1 comes to the rescue. Since ‘‘ought’’, according to this assumption, is a sentential operator, HI must really be ambiguous. It could be read either as (Narrow) You have the end ! O(you take the means) or as (Wide) O(you have the end ! you take the means). Now if Narrow is true, then you really ought to take the means to your murderous ends. But this doesn’t follow from Wide. All that follows from Wide is that you ought to either take the means to these ends or else give them up. Conclusions: (1) Since HI is on some reading true, but Narrow isn’t, Wide is true. (2) Wide accounts for the relationship between your ends and what you ought to do. This elegant scenario repeats itself in many other domains in which it seems like something can have a bearing on what some particular agent ought to do. Does what you know affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs about what you ought to do affect what you ought to do? Do your promises affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs affect what you ought to believe? On each of these counts, the intuitive answer is ‘‘yes’’. And so each of these questions leaves something for the moral philosopher or the epistemologist to investigate. On each count, it seems that what we all know, is that (Account) you ought, if p, to do A. But on each count, the Narrow-scope reading of the ‘‘ought’’ in this claim yields unintuitive consequences. So since Account is true, it must be true on the Wide-scope reading.. (shrink)

Overview A scope marking structure is characterized by the fact that it has two clauses, each of which contains wh expressions [CP-1...wh1...][CP-2...wh2(...whn)...]. While wh- 1 is a fixed lexical item, wh-2...wh-n are not. A possible answer to the question seems to specify values not for wh1 but for wh2...whn. In recent years such structures have come under a lot of scrutiny and various analyses have been proposed to account for their properties. In spite of differences in detail, these (...) analyses can be classified into two groups on the basis of the status they accord to the wh expressions. The direct dependency approach treats wh-1 as semantically inert and assigns matrix scope to wh- 2...wh-n. The indirect dependency approach, on the other hand, takes wh-1 to play a crucial role in determining what the question quantifies over. Wh-2...wh-n do not have matrix scope but play an indirect role in matrix quantification because CP-2 forms the restriction of wh-1. Seen in this light, the direct and indirect dependency approaches are not tied to particular syntactic claims about the relation between CP-1 and CP-2. Whether a particular analysis can be characterized as direct or indirect depends solely on the status of the wh expressions at transparent LF, von Stechow’s term for the level of syntactic representation that feeds into the interpretive module. (shrink)

In certain languages, scope-marking structures are used to express long-distancewh-dependencies along with or instead of the more familiar extraction structure. The existence of these two strategies raises an interesting question for the mapping between syntactic structure and semantic representation. Should apparent semantic equivalence be taken as a guide and syntactic parallelism posited at an abstract level of syntax? Or should the surface syntactic distinction between them be maintained and an alternative explanation sought for the similarity in meaning? In (...) this paper I show that theoretical as well as empirical considerations argue against the first approach. I present a syntactic analysis of scope-marking structures in which the dependency betweenwh-expressions is indirect (in contrast to extraction structures which encode directwh-dependencies). I draw attention to certain differences between scope marking and extraction structures which show that they are not really equivalent. The interpretive procedure given for indirectwh-dependencies derives the considerable similarity in meaning between the two structures while maintaining the necessary distinctions. (shrink)

What is the communicative value of negative polarity? That is, why do so many languages maintain a stock of special indefinites that occur only in a proper subset of the contexts in which ordinary indefinites can appear? Previous answers include: marking the validity of downward inferences; marking the invalidity of veridical inferences; or triggering strengthening implications. My starting point for exploring a new answer is the fact that an NPI must always take narrow scope with respect to (...) its licensing context. In contrast, ordinary indefinites are notorious for taking wide scope. So whatever other functions NPIs may have, they at least serve as an utterly reliable signal that an indefinite is taking narrow scope. As also proposed in recent work of Kusumoto and Tancredi, I will show that NPIs are only licensed in contexts in which the wide scope construal of an indefinite fails to entail the narrow scope. In other words, weak NPIs occur only in contexts in which taking narrow scope matters for interpretation. Thus one part of the explanation for the ubiquity and robust stability of negative polarity is that it signals scope relations. (shrink)

We have a practical, not merely theoretical interest in freedom. The question that is considered in this paper, is what it is that we value about freedom. It is proposed that what we value is being able to get what we most want (or value), because that is what we most want (or value). This account is compatible with determinism. Certain accounts opposed to determinism are considered and rejected. On these accounts freedom requires either a particular sort of indeterminism, or (...) requires a special form of causation, agent‐causation, or requires that the agent be a certain sort of self‐constituting entity. It is argued that even if these accounts were less metaphysically problematic than they are, they would not give us a ‘freedom’ that we would value, nor would they secure conditions under which an action would be praise – or blameworthy. It is also argued, that a certain sort of capacity to control ourselves is not a precondition for freedom, though such a capacity would add to the scope of our freedom. (shrink)

Purpose: To determine the relative value that patients place on consent for procedures in the emergency department and to define a set of procedures that fall in the realm of implied consent. Methods: A questionnaire was administered to a convenience sample 134 of 174 patients who were seen in the ED of a Midwestern teaching hospital. The questionnaire asked how much time they believed was necessary to give consent for various procedures. Procedures ranged from simple to complex. Results: Participants valued (...) a simple blood draw at a low mean of 1.02 minutes of extra time and a lumbar puncture at a high mean of 7.78 minutes. Of all participants 52% and 48% noted a time-value of “0” time on blood draw and intravenous line starts, respectively, indicating that they desire no additional consent for these procedures. Conclusion: Defining a set of ED procedures covered under implied consent will be difficult because many patients value formal consent for even the simplest procedure. (shrink)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued an emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19 applicable to private sector employers with 100 or more employees. Among other things, the ETS required employers either to mandate employee vaccination or weekly testing and wearing masks.

Healthcare counts as a morally relevant good whose distribution should neither be left to the free market nor be simply imposed by governmental decisions without further justification. This problem is particularly prevalent in the current boom of anti-ageing medicine. While the public demand for medical interventions which promise a longer, healthier and more active and attractive life has been increasing, public healthcare systems usually do not cover these products and services, thus leaving their allocation to the mechanisms of supply and (...) demand on the free market. This situation raises the question on which basis the underlying preferences for and claims to a longer, healthier life should be evaluated. What makes anti-ageing medicine eligible for public funding? In this article, we discuss the role of anti-ageing medicine with regard to the scope and limits of public healthcare. We will first briefly sketch the basic problem of justifying a particular healthcare scheme within the framework of a modern liberal democracy, focusing on the challenge anti-ageing interventions pose in this regard. In the next section, we will present and discuss three possible solutions to the problem, essentialistic, transcendental, and procedural strategies of defining the scope of public healthcare. We will suggest a procedural solution adopting essentialistic and transcendental elements and discuss its theoretical and practical implications with regard to anti-ageing medicine. (shrink)

The last few decades have given rise to the study of practical reason as a legitimate subfield of philosophy in its own right, concerned with the nature of practical rationality, its relationship to theoretical rationality, and the explanatory relationship between reasons, rationality, and agency in general. Among the most central of the topics whose blossoming study has shaped this field, is the nature and structure of instrumental rationality, the topic to which Kant has to date made perhaps the largest contribution, (...) under the heading of his treatment of hypothetical imperatives. (shrink)

Purpose: To determine the relative value that patients place on consent for procedures in the emergency department (ED) and to define a set of procedures that fall in the realm of implied consent. Methods: A questionnaire was administered to a convenience sample 134 of 174 patients who were seen in the ED of a Midwestern teaching hospital. The questionnaire asked how much time they believed was necessary to give consent for various procedures. Procedures ranged from simple (venipuncture) to complex (procedural (...) sedation). Results: Participants valued a simple blood draw at a low mean of 1.02 minutes of extra time and a lumbar puncture at a high mean of 7.78 minutes. Of all participants 52% and 48% noted a time-value of ?0? time on blood draw and intravenous line starts, respectively, indicating that they desire no additional consent for these procedures. Conclusion: Defining a set of ED procedures covered under implied consent will be difficult because many patients value formal consent for even the simplest procedure. (shrink)

A US Department of Health and Human Services Final Rule, Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care, and a proposed bill in the British House of Lords, the Conscientious Objection Bill, may well warrant a concern that—to borrow a phrase Daniel Callahan applied to self-determination—conscientious objection in health care has “run amok.” Insofar as there are no significant constraints or limitations on accommodation, both rules endorse an approach that is aptly designated “conscience absolutism.” There are two common strategies to counter (...) conscience absolutism and prevent conscientious objection in medicine from running amok. One, non-toleration, is to decline to accommodate physicians who refuse to provide legal, professionally accepted, clinically appropriate medical services within the scope of their clinical competence. The other, compromise or reasonable accommodation, is to impose constraints on accommodation. Several arguments for non-toleration are critically analyzed, and I argue that none warrants its acceptance. I maintain that non-toleration is an excessively blunt instrument to prevent conscientious objection in medicine from running amok. Instead, I defend a more nuanced contextual approach that includes constraints on accommodation. (shrink)

Die wachsende Nachfrage nach Anti-Aging-Medizin wirft die Frage auf, welche medizinischen Leistungen ein solidarisches Gesundheitssystem tragen sollte. Die deutsche Entscheidungspraxis beruft sich auf den Begriff der Krankheit. Im Blick auf Anti-Aging wäre demnach 1) zu klären, was der Krankheitsbegriff bedeutet, 2) zu prüfen, ob das Altern sich unter diesen Begriff subsumieren lässt, um 3) abzuleiten, inwieweit Anti-Aging-Maßnahmen zur Verfügung zu stellen sind. Dieses Prozedere führt jedoch zu keinem brauchbaren Ergebnis. Unter Berufung auf den Krankheitsbegriff allein ist der Umfang solidarischer Gesundheitsversorgung (...) nicht zu bestimmen. Allerdings lässt sich durch Reflexion auftretender Probleme ein gangbarer Entscheidungsweg aufzeigen. Er sieht eine faire Verständigung über die Frage vor, wie wir alt werden wollen. (shrink)

Dreyfus’s work is widely known for its critique of artificial intelligence and still stands as an example of how to do excellent philosophical work that is at the same time relevant to contemporary technological and scientific developments. But for philosophers of technology, especially for those sympathetic to using Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein as sources of inspiration, it has much more to offer. This paper outlines Dreyfus’s account of skillful coping and critically evaluates its potential for thinking about technology. First, it (...) is argued that his account of skillful coping can be developed into a general view about handling technology which gives due attention to know-how/implicit knowledge and embodiment. Then a number of outstanding challenges are identified that are difficult to cope with if one remains entirely within the world of Dreyfus’s writings. They concern questions regarding other conceptualizations of technology and human–technology relations, issues concerning how to conceptualize the social and the relation between skill, meaning, and practices, and the question about the ethical and political implications of his view, including how virtue and skill are related. Acknowledging some known discussions about Dreyfus’s work, but also drawing on other material and on the author’s previous writings, the paper suggests that to address these challenges and develop the account of skillful coping into a wider scoped, Dreyfus-inspired philosophy of technology, it could take more distance from Heidegger’s conceptions of technology and benefit from engagement with work in postphenomenology, pragmatism, the later Wittgenstein, and virtue ethics. (shrink)

The new interdisciplinary science of artificial life has had a connection with the arts from its inception. This paper provides an overview of artificial life, reviews its key scientific challenges, and discusses its philosophical implications. It ends with a few words about the implications of artificial life for the arts.

Meaning construction through language requires advanced mental operations also necessary for other higher-order, specifically human behaviors. Biological evolution slowly improved conceptual mapping capacities until human beings reached the level of double-scope blending, perhaps 50 to 80 thousand years ago, at which point language, along with other higher-order human behaviors, became possible. Languages are optimized to be driven by the principles and powers of double-scope blending.

The coevolution of objectivity and subjectivity and the nature of both their division and connection are central to this paper. Section 2 addresses the nature of meaning from the subjective perspective. Initially, I examine the meaningful engagement that exists between the unicellular organism and its environment. In this respect, I focus on the ontological importance of the qualitative biochemical assimilation of the physical rather than on the evolution of form and function. In Section 3, I broaden the discussion to include (...) multicellular organisms and introduce the idea that meaning, at various levels, qualifies different objective and informational constructs of the world. These determine the character of interactive engagement and reveal much about the way in which an agent signifies the external. In Section 4, I review Darwinian evolution from the position of the existential self. I emphasize that meaning is that which qualifies the human concept of objectivity, rather than that objectivity is that which will help humankind qualify or understand meaning. Ultimately, this outlook challenges scientific disciplines that have tended to obscure the relevance of meaning and sought, instead, to explain it from an epistemological footing. In its overall scope, I try to establish the view that the subjective and objective domains are more nuanced, layered, and intertwined ontologically than the default stance that presents a binary juxtaposition between the two. (shrink)

The first two parts of Objectivity and Insight explore the prospects for objectivity on the standard ontological conception, and find that they are not good. In Part I, under the heading of subject-driven scepticism, Sacks addresses the problem of securing epistemic reach that extends beyond subjective content. In so doing, he considers models of mind proposed by Locke, Hume, Kant, James, and Bergson. Part II, under the heading of world-driven scepticism, discusses the scope for universality of normative structure-a problem (...) which survives even after the assumption of an epistemologically significant breach between subject and object has been rejected. In the third part of the book Sacks introduces an alternative conception of objectivity, and shows that there is good reason to accept it. This conception turns on an insight which is taken to be implicit in transcendental idealism, and responsible for its abiding appeal; but Sacks's articulation of that insight is neither idealist nor metaphysical. (shrink)

Consensus is growing among ethicists and lawyers that medical decision making for incompetent patients who were previously competent should be made in accordance with that person's prior wishes and desires. Moreover, this legal and ethical preference for the substituted judgment standard has found its way into the daily practice of medicine. However, what appears on the surface to be an agreement between jurists, bioethicists, and clinicians obscures the very real differences between disciplines regarding the actual implementation of the sub stituted (...) judgment standard. Ethicists and judges have carefully outlined how substituted judgments ought to be made and evaluated. Although differences arise, especially at the state court level, regarding the scope of the substituted judgment standard and its relation to other standards of surrogate decision making, agreement is fairly widespread on the priority of substituted judgment and on the necessity of sufficient evidence being available in order to support a particular substituted judgment. (shrink)

Joseph Raz has introduced an interesting class of statements —detached statements— into the philosophical lexicon. In brief, such statements are normative statements, yet the speaker does not, in so uttering them, express or convey acceptance of the point of view of the hearer to whom they are addressed. I propose to offer a novel analysis of such statements. In brief, such statements will be analysed as wide-scope normative conditionals.

The last half-century has seen enormous changes in society’s attitude toward sexuality. In the 1950s, homosexuals in the United States were routinely arrested; today, homosexual activity between consenting adults is legal in every state, with same-sex marriage legal in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In the 1950s, ambitious women were often seen as psychopathological and were told by psychoanalysts that they had penis envy that needed treatment; today, a woman has campaigned for President of the United States. Mark Blechner has lived and (...) worked through these startling changes in society, and _Sex Changes _collects papers he has written over the last 45 years on sex, gender, and sexuality. Interspersed with these papers are reflections on the changes that have occurred during that time period, both within the scope of society at large as well as in his personal experiences inside and outside of the therapeutic setting. He shows how changes in society, changes in his life, and changes in his writing on sexuality - as well as changes within psychoanalysis itself - have affected one another. One hundred years ago, psychoanalysis was at the cutting edge of new ideas about sex and gender, but in the latter half of the 20 th Century, psychoanalysts were often seen as reactionary upholders of society’s prejudices. _Sex Changes _seeks to restore the place of psychoanalysis as the "once and future queer science," and aims for a radical shift in psychoanalytic thinking about sexuality, gender, normalcy, prejudice, and the relationship of therapeutic aims and values. (shrink)

A recent widely reported study found that some participants would prefer to self-administer a small electric shock than be bored. This flawed study serves as a departure point to diagram pain and sensation beyond the boundaries of the individual body, consisting of four sections. First, in terms of laboratory-based experimentation and auto-experimentation with pain, there is a long history of viewing pain and touch through introspective means. Second, later theories of pain successively widened the scope of the physiological mechanisms (...) and external influences on the organism, such as Melzack and Wall’s cybernetics-influenced gate control theory. Third, we briefly consider the nervous system as a homeostatic system, which finds an historical parallel in explanations of the milieu intérieur of the organism, via Claude Bernard and Kurt Goldstein. Fourth, pain helps tip the organism as a whole from perception to action, but also operates beyond the organism as a biopsychosocial phenomenon. (shrink)

The age of information, media, and virtuality is transforming every aspect of human experience. Questions that have long haunted the philosophical imagination are becoming urgent practical concerns: Where does the natural end and the artificial begin? Is there a difference between the material and the immaterial? In his new work, Mark C. Taylor extends his ongoing investigation of postmodern worlds by critically examining a wide range of contemporary cultural practices. Nothing defines postmodernism so well as its refusal of depth, its (...) emphasis on appearance and spectacle, its tendency to collapse a three-dimensional world in which image and reality are distinct into a two-dimensional world in which they merge. The postmodern world, Taylor argues, is a world of surfaces, and the postmodern condition is one of profound superficiality. For many cultural commentators, postmodernism's inescapable play of surfaces is cause for despair. Taylor, on the other hand, shows that the disappearance of depth in postmodern culture is actually a liberation repleat with creative possibilities. Taylor introduces readers to a popular culture in which detectives--the postmodern heroes of Paul Auster and Dennis Potter--lift surfaces only to find more surfaces, and in which fashion advertising plays transparency against hiding. Taylor looks at the contemporary preoccupation with body piercing and tattooing, and asks whether these practices actually reveal or conceal. Phrenology and skin diseases, the "religious" architecture of Las Vegas, the limitless spread of computer networks--all are brought within the scope of Taylor's brilliant analysis. Postmodernism, he shows, has given us a new sense of the superficial, one in which the issue is not the absence of meaning but its uncontrollable, ecstatic proliferation. Embodying the very tendencies it analyzes, Hiding is unique. Conceived and developed with well-known designers Michael Rock and Susan Sellars, this work transgresses the boundary that customarily separates graphic design from the story within a text. The product of nearly three decades of reflection and writing, Hiding opens a window on contemporary culture. To follow the remarkable course Taylor charts is to see both our present and past differently and to encounter a future as disorienting as it is alluring. (shrink)

The natural duty theory holds that "we have a natural duty to support the laws and institutions of a just state" (Jeremy Waldron). We owe this not because we ever promised to support these laws and institutions, nor because fair play requires we support the cooperative ventures from which we receive benefits. The claim is that we have a general duty to promote institutions that do something justice requires wherever these institutions may be, a duty that does not depend on (...) our having special ties to these institutions, special ties of the sort we have to the institutions of our own government. I argue that we do not need to appeal to the idea of a natural duty to justify compliance with many laws. For example, New Zealanders must not murder, rape, or steal while in France, not because they have a duty to obey laws of a just state, but because it is wrong to murder, rape, or steal. If the natural duty theory is taken to be a statement of the conditions necessary for an obligation to exist, it would wrongly conclude there is no duty to obey laws against murder or rape in a state whose institutions and laws are not just. A second class of laws reflect not moral judgments but, rather, local conventions, conventions that are morally arbitrary but which may be useful in coordinating action. For example, New Zealanders visiting France must drive on the right side of the road, as dictated by French convention. Here, too, the natural duty theory fails to provide a suitable account of the relation noncitizens have to such laws. Our reasons for driving on the right side of the road when this is accepted convention have nothing to do with the justice of the institutions of the state. To flout this convention is not to undermine justice since there is nothing just or unjust about driving on one side of the road or another. I question the advantages of the natural duty theory, especially in light of important ambiguities in the theory. (shrink)

Each year individuals are required to execute millions of authorizations for the release of their health records as a condition of employment, applying for various types of insurance, and submitting claims for benefits. Generally, there are no restrictions on the scope of information released pursuant to these compelled authorizations, and the development of a nationwide system of interoperable electronic health records will increase the amount of health information released. After quantifying the extent of these disclosures, this article discusses why (...) it is important to limit disclosures of health information for nonmedical purposes as well as how it may be possible to do so. (shrink)

Historically associated with military service, conscientious objection has become a significant phenomenon in health care. Mark Wicclair offers a comprehensive ethical analysis of conscientious objection in three representative health care professions: medicine, nursing and pharmacy. He critically examines two extreme positions: the 'incompatibility thesis', that it is contrary to the professional obligations of practitioners to refuse provision of any service within the scope of their professional competence; and 'conscience absolutism', that they should be exempted from performing any action contrary (...) to their conscience. He argues for a compromise approach that accommodates conscience-based refusals within the limits of specified ethical constraints. He also explores conscientious objection by students in each of the three professions, discusses conscience protection legislation and conscience-based refusals by pharmacies and hospitals, and analyzes several cases. His book is a valuable resource for scholars, professionals, trainees, students, and anyone interested in this increasingly important aspect of health care. (shrink)

In this chapter, the author analyzes Foucault's conception of subjectivity and his history of technologies of the self, the collections of practices by which subjectivity constitutes itself. The first section situates Foucault's conception of subjectivity in his overall body of work and intellectual context, particularly in relation to two figures in French philosophy. The second section explores the conception of the subject that Foucault develops in his late work. Having explained the importance of historical practices to his conception of subjectivity, (...) the third section considers his history of Western practices of the self, mapping the relative fortunes of what Foucault calls the “technologies” of ethics and spirituality. The fourth section explores Foucault's consideration of the contemporary implications of his position, his assessment of the scope for and importance of spiritual or ethical practices today. (shrink)

The scope of this book is to revisit the ancient Aristotelian and Plotinian philosophical and metaphysical problem of dualism and monism with respect to the first principle. Essentially, it defends Aristotle’s position of the primacy of an intelligible first principle over the Plotinian philosophical move to affirm a principle above Intellect.

First, we explain the conception of trustworthiness that we employ. We model trustworthiness as a relation among a trustor, a trustee, and a field of trust defined and delimited by its scope. In addition, both potential trustors and potential trustees are modeled as being more or less reliable in signaling either their willingness to trust or their willingness to prove trustworthy in various fields in relation to various other agents. Second, following Alfano (forthcoming) we argue that the social scale (...) of a potential trust relationship partly determines both explanatory and normative aspects of the relation. Most of the philosophical literature focuses on dyadic trust between a pair of agents (Baier 1986, Jones 1996, Jones 2012, McGeer 2008, Pettit 1995), but there are also small communities of trust (Alfano forthcoming) and trust in large institutions (Potter 2002, Govier 1997, Townley & Garfield 2013, Hardin 2002). The mechanisms that induce people to extend their trust vary depending on the size of the community in question, and the ways in which trustworthiness can be established and trusting warranted vary with these mechanisms. Mechanisms that work in dyads and small communities are often unavailable in the context of trusting an institution or branch of government. Establishing trust on this larger social scale therefore requires new or modified mechanisms. In the third section of the paper, we recommend three policies that – we argue – tend to make institutions more trustworthy and to reliably signal that trustworthiness to the public. First, they should ensure that their decision-making processes are as open and transparent as possible. Second, they should make efforts to engage stakeholders in dialogue with decision-makers such as managers, members of the C-Suite, and highly-placed policy-makers. Third, they should foster diversity – gender, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic background, disability, etc. – in their workforce at all levels, but especially in management and positions of power. We conclude by discussing the warrant for distrust in institutions that do not adopt these policies, which we contend is especially pertinent for people who belong to groups that have historically faced (and in many cases still do face) oppression. (shrink)

Context In response to outbreaks of vaccine‐preventable disease and increasing rates of vaccine refusal, some political communities have recently implemented coercive childhood immunization programs, or they have made existing childhood immunization programs more coercive. Many other political communities possess coercive vaccination policies, and others are considering developing them. Scholars and policymakers generally refer to coercive immunization policies as “vaccine mandates.” However, mandatory vaccination is not a unitary concept. Rather, coercive childhood immunization policies are complex, context‐specific instruments. Their legally and morally (...) significant features often differ, and they are imposed by political communities in varying circumstances and upon diverse populations. Methods In this paper, we introduce a taxonomy for classifying real‐world and theoretical mandatory childhood vaccination policies, according to their scope (which vaccines to require), sanctions and severity (which kind of penalty to impose on vaccine refusers, and how much of that penalty to impose), and selectivity (how to enforce or exempt people from vaccine mandates). Findings A full understanding of the operation of a vaccine mandate policy (real or potential) requires attention to the separate components of that policy. However, we can synthesize information about a policy's scope, sanctions, severity, and selectivity to identify a further attribute—salience —which identifies the magnitude of the burdens the state imposes on those who are not vaccinated. Conclusion Our taxonomy provides a framework for forensic examination of current and potential mandatory vaccination policies, by focusing attention on those features of vaccine mandates that are most relevant for comparative judgments. (shrink)

Whilst natural scientists have forged close links with industry, economists—in their capacity as consultants—with private enterprise, and psychologists with the burgeoning market for counselling services, philosophers have shown little eagerness to “ply their trade” in any commercial form whatsoever. Indeed, the very juxtaposition of concepts like “philosophy,” “money,” and “the marketplace” may already have raised eyebrows or induced mocking smirks. The image of this unworldly species assuming a commercial role comparable in scope or nature to that of practitioners of (...) other disciplines is scarcely imaginable. Thus, the peculiar nature of philosophy—its “subject matter,” “method,” or “corpus of knowledge”—provides one reason for prima facie scepticism. The advent of philosophical counselling in both Europe and America during the last decade may well shake such scepticism. It is primarily with this development that the authors in this volume of Philosophy in the Contemporary World deal. (shrink)

Criminalisation theorists who try to explain when substantive criminal law may appropriately be deployed to shrink the scope of our presumptive initial liberty, often take their project as requiring them to identify the sorts of conduct for which may the state criminally convict. I argue that this is a mistake. While such theories of ‘convictability’ have their place, they do not completely explain the use of substantive criminal law to limit our presumptive initial liberty. Convictions ensue only after pleas (...) of justification and excuse fail, but the substantive criminal law coercively limits liberty well before conviction, when it creates a pro tanto criminal proscription. Even those who can escape conviction by pleading a justificatory or excusatory defence were, in fact, subject to authoritative criminal law guidance proscribing (or sometimes, requiring) specified conduct. Although that guidance is sometimes trumped by the additional guidance contained in defences, it is not null and void, and it continues to have a liberty-limiting effect. In other words, substantive criminal law already shrinks our initial liberty by pro tanto criminally proscribing some conduct. Therefore, I argue that we also need a theory of criminalisation that addresses the appropriate domain of pro tanto criminal proscriptions. (shrink)

Each year individuals are required to execute millions of authorizations for the release of their health records as a condition of employment, applying for various types of insurance, and submitting claims for benefits. Generally, there are no restrictions on the scope of information released pursuant to these compelled authorizations, and the development of a nationwide system of interoperable electronic health records will increase the amount of health information released. After quantifying the extent of these disclosures, this article discusses why (...) it is important to limit disclosures of health information for nonmedical purposes as well as how it may be possible to do so. (shrink)

Physicians' duties to their patients traditionally have been construed narrowly in time and scope to focus on the specific episode of care or clinical encounter. Physicians generally have had no ethical or legal duty to notify patients about new medical information discovered after a visit, notwithstanding the health care benefits to patients that might flow from receiving the information. The rule was based on the relatively high burdens that notification would impose on physicians compared with the likelihood of benefits (...) to patients. This established view, however, no longer may be appropriate in light of new physician-patient relationships and the reduced burden of patient notification using new types of health information technology. This article explores the duty to inform patients and former patients about relevant, medical developments subsequent to their episode of care. It concludes by recommending the recognition in ethics and law of a limited, ongoing duty to notify patients of significant information relevant to their health. (shrink)

Public health is a dynamic field. Outbreaks of new diseases, as well as changing patterns of population growth, economic development, and lifestyle trends all may threaten public health and thus demand a public health response. As the practice of public health evolves, there is an ongoing need to reassess its scientific, ethical, legal, and social underpinnings. Such a reappraisal must consider the disagreement among public health officials, public health scholars, elected officials, and the public about the proper role of public (...) health and the distinctions, for example, between public health and clinical care, and public health and health promotion.In this article I will attempt to characterize the main points of contention as well as offer my own views regarding the proper scope of public health. Greater clarity and consensus on the meaning of public health are likely to lead to more efficient and effective public health interventions as well as increased public and political support for public health activities. (shrink)

Truthmaker semantics is a recent development in formal and philosophical semantics, with similar motivation and scope to possible worlds semantics. The technical background is rather different, however, and results in a more fine-grained hyperintensional notion of content, allowing us to distinguish between classically equivalent propositions. After briefly introducing the main ideas, this entry will describe the technical apparatus of state spaces and the central notions of content and partial content. It will then outline applications of truthmaker semantics in language, (...) logic, and other areas of philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe a model that learns semantic representations from the distributional statistics of language. This model, however, goes beyond the common bag‐of‐words paradigm, and infers semantic representations by taking into account the inherent sequential nature of linguistic data. The model we describe, which we refer to as a Hidden Markov Topics model, is a natural extension of the current state of the art in Bayesian bag‐of‐words models, that is, the Topics model of Griffiths, Steyvers, and Tenenbaum (2007), (...) preserving its strengths while extending its scope to incorporate more fine‐grained linguistic information. (shrink)

This paper examines how professionals (N = 32) working on artificial intelligence (AI) view structural AI ethics challenges like injustices and inequalities beyond individual agents' direct intention and control. This paper answers the research question: What are professionals’ perceptions of the structural challenges of AI (in the agri-food sector)? This empirical paper shows that it is essential to broaden the scope of ethics of AI beyond micro- and meso-levels. While ethics guidelines and AI ethics often focus on the responsibility (...) of designers and the competencies and skills of designers to take this responsibility, our results show that many structural challenges are beyond their reach. This result means that while ethics guidelines and AI ethics frameworks are helpful, there is a risk that they overlook more complicated, nuanced, and intersected structural challenges. In addition, it highlights the need to include diverse stakeholders, such as quadruple helix (QH) participants, in discussions around AI ethics rather than solely focusing on the obligations of AI developers and companies. Overall, this paper demonstrates that addressing structural challenges in AI is challenging and requires an approach that considers four requirements: (1) multi-level, (2) multi-faceted, (3) interdisciplinary, and (4) polycentric governance. (shrink)

Intentions matter. They have some kind of normative impact on our agency. Something goes wrong when an agent intends some end and fails to carry out the means she believes to be necessary for it, and something goes right when, intending the end, she adopts the means she thinks are required. This has even been claimed to be one of the only uncontroversial truths in ethical theory. But not only is there widespread disagreement about why this is so, there is (...) widespread disagreement about in what sense it is so. In this paper I explore an underdeveloped answer to the question of in what sense it is so, and argue that resolving an apparent difficulty with this view leads to an attractive picture about why it is so. (shrink)

A principal goal of this book is to develop and apply the Situation Semantics framework. Jean Mark Gawron and Stanley Peters adopt a version of the theory in which meanings are built up via syntactically driven semantic composition rules. They provide a substantial treatment of English incorporating treatments of pronomial anaphora, quantification, donkey anaphora, and tense. The book focuses on the semantics of pronomial anaphora and quantification. The authors argue that the ambiguities of sentences with pronouns cannot be adequately accounted (...) for with a theory that represents anaphoric relations only syntactically; their relational framework uniformly deals with anaphoric relations as relations between utterances in context. They argue that there is no need for a syntactic representation of anaphoric relations, or for a theory that accounts for anaphoric ambiguities by resorting to two or more kinds of anaphora. Quantifier scope ambiguities are handled analogously to anaphoric ambiguities. This treatment integrates the Cooper Store mechanism with a theory of meaning that provides both a natural setting for it and a convincing account of what, semantically, is going on. Jean Mark Gawron is a researcher for Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto. Stanley Peters is professor of linguistics and symbolic systems at Stanford University and is director of the Center for the Study of Language and Information. (shrink)

This book takes a theoretical enterprise in Christian philosophy of religion and applies it to Buddhism, thus defending Buddhism and presenting it favorably in comparison. Chapters explore how the claims of both Christianity and Theravada Buddhism rest on people's experiences, so the question as to which claimants to religious knowledge are right rests on the evidential value of those experiences. The book examines mysticism and ways to understand what goes on in religious experiences, helping us to understand whether it is (...) good grounds for religious belief. The author argues that religious language in both Christian and Buddhist traditions is intelligible as factual discourse, and so reports of mystical experience are true or false. The book contends that those experiences can be fruitfully thought of as perceptual in kind and that they are therefore good prima facie grounds for religious belief, in the absence of defeating conditions. The work goes on to explore Christian and Buddhist testimony and how the likelihood of self-deception, self-delusion, imaginative elaboration and the like constitutes a defeating condition. It is shown that this defeater has less scope for operation in the Buddhist case than in the Christian case, and therefore Theravada Buddhism is better grounded. This work will appeal to students and scholars of philosophy and philosophy of religion, and those interested in the study of religious experience. (shrink)

Chilling Effects occur when the risks surrounding a speech restriction inadvertently deter speech that lies outside the restriction’s official scope. Contrary to the standard interpretation of this phenomenon I show how speech deterrence for individuals can sometimes, instead of suppressing discourse at the group level, intensify it – with results that are still unwelcome, but crucially unlike a ‘chill’. Inadvertent deterrence of speech may, counterintuitively, create a Heating Effect. This proposal gives us a promising explanation of the intensity of (...) public debate on topics for which there is, simultaneously, evidence of people self-censoring, for fear of breaching speech restrictions. It also helps to pinpoint two problems with existing theoretical analyses of the Chilling Effect: (i) in how they construe the relation between individual- and group-level discursive phenomena; and (ii) how they characterize the distinctively wrongful nature of inadvertent speech deterrence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Future of ReligionMark WoodThe Future of Religion. By Richard RortyGianni Vattimo. Edited by Santiago Zabala. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. 91 pp.In The Future of Religion, Santiago Zabala, Richard Rorty, and Gianni Vattimo provide contrasting and often complementary reflections on the future of religion after the end of metaphysics. They join a growing number of contemporary theologians, philosophers, and cultural critics who recognize that we are (...) presently undergoing [End Page 162] what may well prove to be the most significant turning point in the history of religious experience, a movement beyond the separatism resulting from absolutist and exclusionary religious claims. In addition to post-Enlightenment critiques of religion, the constitutional separation of church and state, and the retreat of religion resulting from, in Darwin’s words, “the gradual illumination of men’s minds” by advances in science, globalization’s world-transforming integration of individuals from diverse religious backgrounds into communities of shared interest and concern are further weakening the confidence with which any particular religious tradition may claim to possess absolute truth and, even more, fostering transreligious conversation and the formation of a postmetaphysical spiritual culture.The future of religion, writes Vattimo in Vero e falso Universalismo cristiano, lies not in “seeking the triumph of one faith over the others.” Rather we must “rediscover—after the ‘metaphysical’ age of absolutisms and of the identity between truth and authority—the possibility of a postmodern religious experience in which the relation with the divine is no longer corrupted by fear, violence, and superstition” (p. 26). We know all to well the horrific costs of failing to accomplish this goal, and today the union of religious absolutisms and weapons of mass destruction make our failure potentially catastrophic.In his introduction, “A Religion without Theists or Atheists,” Zabala notes that Rorty and Vattimo present a way of thinking beyond the ontotheological tradition that “consists of weakening and dissolving the ancient European concept of ‘Being’ and the very idea of ‘ontological status.’ This new, weak way of thought not only opens up alternative directions, it also recovers tradition: the relationship between the believer and God is not conceived as power-laden but as a gentler relationship, in which God hands over all his power to man” (p. 3). In the “Age of Interpretation” neither science, nor philosophy, nor religion enjoys epistemological or ontological authority over the other. The resulting “Gadamerian culture of dialogue,” which understands that “all positions are equally ‘valid’ because ‘of the lack of confidence in truth’ constitutes the greatest success obtained by the deconstruction of metaphysics” (p. 11). After metaphysics, “postmodern man, no longer needful of the extreme, magical reassurance supplied by the idea of God, accepts the probably that history is not on his side at all and that there is no power capable of guaranteeing him the happiness he seeks” (ibid.). Living without metaphysical foundations means affirming our ontological historicity, epistemological insecurity, and existential finitude. Rather than “search for truth,” says Zabala, we now “seek solidarity, charity, and irony” (pp. 17–18).In “Anticlericalism and Atheism,” Rorty articulates the historical movement to postmetaphysical thinking as one in which “philosophy professors began to stop asking “bad questions—questions like ‘What really exists?’ ‘What are the scope and limits of human knowledge?’ and ‘How does language hook up with reality?’” and began to focus on questions regarding how we can best practice solidarity, charity, and love (p. 29). Rorty’s description of our situation leads him to confess that his earlier self-identification as an atheist was philosophically mistaken. To deny the existence of God assumes one has evidence in support of this claim. But evidence against is equally empirically unavailable as is evidence for the existence of God. President [End Page 163] Bush, Rorty adds, is at least right about this much when he says that “‘atheism is a faith’ because it is ‘subject to neither confirmation nor refutation by means of argument or evidence’” (p. 33). The shift from atheism to anticlericalism is a shift from a metaphysical to a political stance, signifying Rorty’s commitment to challenging antidemocratic structures of power that legitimate their existence by claiming they have been ordained by... (shrink)

Epistemic injustices are wrongs done concerning a person’s capacity as a knower. These actions are usually caused by prejudice and involve the distortion and neglect of certain marginalized groups’ opinions and ways of knowing. A type of epistemic injustice is hermeneutical injustice, which occurs when a person cannot effectively communicate or understand their experience, since it is excluded in scholarship, journalism, and discourse within their community. Indigenous Peoples (IPs) are especially vulnerable to hermeneutical injustice because their way of life is (...) unfamiliar or inaccessible to others. This leads to the exclusion of their ideas from public discourse, especially those important for human and societal development. This phenomenon is particularly evident in instances related to IP education. José Medina claims that there are cases of hermeneutical injustice which hinders the ability of people to share and make meaning, or simply, hermeneutical death. Ben Kotzee, on the other hand, identifies the specific educational dimension of epistemic injustice. Using both of these frameworks and citing the results of local studies on indigenous education as illustrative points, we attempt to show instances and scope of hermeneutical injustice in the education of IPs in the Philippines. (shrink)

Cognitively modern human beings have language, art, science, religion, refined tool use, advanced music and dance, fashions of dress, and mathematics. Blue jays, border collies, dolphins, and bonobos do not. Only human beings have what we have, and this discontinuity in Life, this perspicuous Grand Difference, presents us with the most abiding and compelling scientific riddle of all. In The Way We Think, Gilles FauconnieRAnd I put forward the hypothesis that The Grand Difference arose in the following way . The (...) basic mental operation of conceptual integration, also known as ‘blending’, has been present and evolving in various species foRA long time, probably since early mammals, and there is no reason to doubt that many mammalian species aside from human beings have the ability to execute rudimentary forms of conceptual integration. Human beings evolved not an entirely different kind of mind, but instead the capacity for the strongest form of conceptual integration, known as ‘double- scope’ blending. Human beings are thus on a gradient with other species, but what a difference an extra step makes. Double-scope blending is the hallmark of cognitively modern human beings, and The Grand Difference is the product of double-scope blending. What is blending and why is it so important? As an illustration, consider our perception of a seal. The eyes of a seal are remarkably like the eyes of a human being. When we see a seal at the seashore, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that we and the seal share a category. Compelling and evident analogies leap out at us, between the seal’s appearance and ours, between the seal’s motion and ours. Our human eyes align toward an object as our limbs propel our bodies toward it, and it seems to be no different for the seal. Working from such analogies, we immediately forge a mental blend of ourselves and the seal. The result is a conception of a seal that has not only all of the seal’s appearance and motion but additionally a feature we know only of ourselves the possession of a mind . . (shrink)