This is a book of political theory about personal autonomy: its nature, its importance, and its problems. Swaine offers solutions for the defects of personal autonomy, arguing for ethical autonomy, a kind of self-rule that is modified by moral character.

A growing body of empirical literature challenges philosophers’ reliance on intuitions as evidence based on the fact that intuitions vary according to factors such as cultural and educational background, and socio-economic status. Our research extends this challenge, investigating Lehrer’s appeal to the Truetemp Case as evidence against reliabilism. We found that intuitions in response to this case vary according to whether, and which, other thought experiments are considered first. Our results show that compared to subjects who receive the Truetemp Case (...) first, subjects first presented with a clear case of knowledge are less willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case, and subjects first presented with a clear case of nonknowledge are more willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case. We contend that this instability undermines the supposed evidential status of these intuitions, such that philosophers who deal in intuitions can no longer rest comfortably in their armchairs. (shrink)

In vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy have enabled many to achieve their dreams of parenthood. With a turnover of $500 million, reproductive tourism in India has helped transform the country into a “global baby factory.” However, as the surrogacy industry grew, so did concerns of women’s exploitation, commodification of motherhood, and human rights violations. In an effort to prevent women from being exploited, the Indian government had taken successive administrative measures to regulate surrogacy. The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016 and Assisted (...) Reproductive Technologies Bill 2008 were introduced in the Parliament to regulate various aspects of surrogacy arrangements. Yet, it was not until 25 January 2022, that the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 went into effect. The Act does, however, leave certain important points unaddressed. The article claims that the legislation’s purposeful exclusion of the LGBTQ population and emphasis on “familial altruism” stinks of inequity and moral conservatism. It also delineates the mechanics of altruistic surrogacy by examining documents that illustrate how the connections between money and morality are framed via the framing of altruism. The article therefore demands that a comprehensive dialogue must be held considering the socio-economic realities of Indian society, or else India risks enacting yet another law that cannot be implemented or that society dislikes. (shrink)

How the insane asylum became a laboratory of democracy is revealed in this provocative look at the treatment of the mentally ill in nineteenth-century France. Political thinkers reasoned that if government was to rest in the hands of individuals, then measures should be taken to understand the deepest reaches of the self, including the state of madness. Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain maintain that the asylum originally embodied the revolutionary hope of curing all the insane by saving the glimmer (...) of sanity left in them. Their analysis of why this utopian vision failed ultimately constitutes both a powerful argument for liberalism and a direct challenge to Michel Foucault's indictment of liberal institutions. The creation of an artificial environment was meant to encourage the mentally ill to live as social beings, in conditions that resembled as much as possible those prevailing in real life. The asylum was therefore the first instance of a modern utopian community in which a scientifically designed environment was supposed to achieve complete control over the minds of a whole category of human beings. Gauchet and Swain argue that the social domination of the inner self, far from being the hidden truth of emancipation, represented the failure of its overly optimistic beginnings. Madness and Democracy combines rich details of nineteenth-century asylum life with reflections on the crucial role of subjectivity and difference within modernism. Its final achievement is to show that the lessons learned from the failure of the asylum led to the rise of psychoanalysis, an endeavor focused on individual care and on the cooperation between psychiatrist and patient. By linking the rise of liberalism to a chapter in the history of psychiatry, Gauchet and Swain offer a fascinating reassessment of political modernity. (shrink)

We study repeated normal form games where the number of players is large. We argue that it is interesting to look at such games as being divided into subgames, each of which we call a neighbourhood. The structure of such a game is given by a graph G whose nodes are players and edges denote visibility. The neighbourhoods are maximal cliques in G. The game proceeds in rounds where in each round the players of every clique X of G play (...) a strategic form game among each other. A player at a node v strategises based on what she can observe, i.e., the strategies and the outcomes in the previous round of the players at vertices adjacent to v. Based on this, the player may switch strategies in the same neighbourhood, or migrate to another neighbourhood.We are interested in addressing questions regarding the eventual stability of such games. We incrementally impose constraints on the ‘types’ of the players. First, we look at players who are unconstrained in their strategising abilities, in that, players who may use unbounded memory. We then consider the case of memoryless players. We show that in both these cases the eventual stability of the game can be characterised in terms of potentials. We then introduce a simple modal logic in which the types of the players can be specified. We show that when the players play according to these specified types, it can be effectively decided whether the game stabilises. Finally, we look at the important heuristic of imitation. Simple imitative strategies can be specified in the logic introduced by us. We show that in a population of optimisers and imitators, we can decide how ‘worse-off’ the imitators are by playing imitative strategies rather than optimal ones. (shrink)

Il s’agit ici de mettre en relief les thématiques portées par des écritures de femmes algériennes, publiées dans les années 90. Thématiques en relation directe avec le réel algérien. Il ne sera pas tenu compte des genres – romans, journaux « de bord », essai… – en tant que tels dans lesquels ces expressions paraissent (ou prétendent paraître), ni de leur qualité littéraire… Le propos est de porter l’attention sur ces écrits en tant que documents forts témoignant de leur temps, (...) de la société qui les a impulsés. Société où se joue, violemment, passionnément, des enjeux essentiels. (shrink)

The British Armed Nation, 1793?1815. By J. E. Cookson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) vi + 286 pp. £45.00/ $87.00 cloth. The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War. By David G. Herrmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) 307 pp. $16.95 paper. State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War. John Horne, ed. (Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997) xv + 292 pp. £35.00/ $59.95 cloth.

The article critically examines the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act 2021, its development process spanning 15 years, and its potential shortcomings in addressing the needs of India’s 27 million infertile couples. By scrutinizing the recommendations presented in the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare’s 129th report, the critique argues that the Act may not effectively cater to the diverse reproductive rights of the population. The article claims that most of its suggestions are in opposition to redefining families and (...) accepting inclusive family structures other than heterosexual marriages. The study posits that the Act, with its inherent limitations, perpetuates the reinforcement of patriarchal family structures that medical science intends to disrupt. In order to foster inclusivity and comprehensibility, the article advocates for necessary amendments that align with the interest of the general populace. (shrink)

Some time ago, F. P. Ramsey (1960) suggested that knowledge is true belief obtained by a reliable process. This suggestion has only recently begun to attract serious attention. In 'Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge', Alvin Goldman (1976) argues that a person has knowl- edge only if that person's belief has been formed as a result of a reliable cognitive mechanism. In Belief, Truth, and Knowledge, David Arm- strong (1973) argues that one has knowledge only if one's belief is a comPletely reliable (...) sign of the truth of the proposition believed. On both of these theories, the reliability of one's belief is a necessary condition of that belief's being an instance of knowledge. These reliability theories have another interesting feature in common, namely, that neither of them explicitly requires or includes the traditional justification requirement for knowledge. Reliability has taken over the role of justification. This naturally leads to the question whether reliability and justification are related in some philosophically interes- ting fashion. In this paper I shall investigate this question. The result will be a positive proposal to the effect that justified belief is reliable belief. This result, in turn, explains why reliability can take over the role of justification in an account of knowledge. Moreover, the identification of justification with reliability constitutes a step toward the naturalization of normative epistemological concepts. (shrink)

The papers collected in this volume were originally presented at a sym posium held at the University of Pennsylvania in December of 1968. Each of the papers has been revised in light of the discussions that took place during this symposium. None of the papers has appeared in print previously. The extensive bibliography that appears at the end of the volume was originally distributed during the symposium and was revised on the basis of many helpful suggestions made by those who (...) participated. The symposium was made possible by a grant from The National Science Foundation and funds contributed by the Philosophy Depart ment of the University of Pennsylvania. On behalf of the contributors to this volume, I would like to express my thanks to these organizations for their generous support. In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to the members of the Graduate Philosophy Students Organization at the University of Penn sylvania for the considerable assistance they gave me during the sym posium. My thanks, also, to Judith Sofranko and Lynn Luckett for their very responsible efforts in the preparation of the manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank Professor James Cornman for his invaluable advice and encouragement. (shrink)

The ideal of personal autonomy enjoys considerable support in educational theory, but close analysis reveals serious problems with its core analytical and psychological components. The core conception of autonomy authorizes individuals to employ their imaginations in troubling and unhealthy ways that clash with sound ideals of moral character. Lucas Swaine argues in this essay that this gives grounds to deny that the core conception of autonomy should be promoted in democratic education. What is more, according to Swaine, young citizens appear (...) to have no right to be educated, in public schools, for the purpose of becoming autonomous individuals of the kind he describes and criticizes in this account. (shrink)

Polemon of Laodicea's Physiognomy explains how to detect someone's character from their appearance. The original 2nd-century text has been lost, but this collection of essays presents translations of the surviving Greek, Latin, and Arabic versions together with a series of masterly studies on the Physiognomy's origins, function, and legacy.

Scholars of the emotions maintain that all anger requires an object of blame. In order to be angry, many writers argue, one must believe than an actor has done serious damage to something that one values. Yet an individual may be angered without blaming another. This kind of emotion, called situational anger, does not entail a corresponding object of blame. Situational anger can be a useful force in public life, enabling citizens to draw attention to the seriousness of social or (...) political problems, without necessarily vilifying political officials. (shrink)

A growing body of empirical literature challenges philosophers’ reliance on intuitions as evidence based on the fact that intuitions vary according to factors such as cultural and educational background, and socio‐economic status. Our research extends this challenge, investigating Lehrer’s appeal to the Truetemp Case as evidence against reliabilism. We found that intuitions in response to this case vary according to whether, and which, other thought‐experiments are considered first. Our results show that compared to subjects who receive the Truetemp Case first, (...) subjects first presented with a clear case of knowledge are less willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case, and subjects first presented with a clear case of non‐knowledge are more willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case. We contend that this instability undermines the supposed evidential status of these intuitions, such that philosophers who deal in intuitions can no longer rest comfortably in their armchairs. (shrink)

More than sixty reporters discuss ethical dilemmas facing the journalist and how they have personally coped with such problems as conflicts of interest, gifts, bribes, news leaks, and confidentiality of sources.

Parent-infant emotional expressions vary according to parent and infant gender. Such parent-infant interactions critically affect infant development. Neuroimaging research is exploring emotion-related brain function that varies according to gender, and regulates parenting thoughts and behaviors in the early postpartum. Through specific brain functions, parenting serves to program the infant brain for the next generation of sex-specific emotional expression.

Theocratic communities ensconced within liberal democracies ought to be treated differently than they are at present. Liberals have neglected to consider carefully the challenges that theocracy presents, largely because none has undertaken to examine the essence of that way of governing. In this there is a serious problem, however, for existing legal structures impede severely the religious free exercise of theocrats, and no appropriate solution to this injustice has yet been given. ;Theocracy is a distinctive mode of governance involving rigid (...) rule and religious authorities, and promoting a particular value above all others. Understanding the nature of theocracy enables one to see its shortcomings; however, it also serves to show how that way of governing may reasonably be important to the devout. If one properly acknowledges the moral right of persons to revise and pursue their conceptions of the good life, one must allow that theocrats should be permitted to live in their uncommon communities without substantial interference from liberal government. The best way to resolve the problem of theocratic communities living inside liberal democracies could be to provide those groups with quasi-sovereign status, allowing them greater freedom to live as they see fit, within certain morally required parameters. (shrink)

Schools of education have seen many changes over the last 100 years (Labaree 2004). More recent modifications have included the slow and steady elimination of the social foundations of education in lieu of a more direct attention to teacher skills and basic training. The increased focus on the so-called ?nuts and bolts? of teacher education trumps the larger vision of the purpose or function of education. This article proposes an alternative view of teacher education?one that places primary importance on the (...) benefits of the social foundations on teacher education. In an effort to subvert the current trend toward technically trained teachers, schools of education should instead look to create teachers capable of critically investigating the context of their classroom within the broader world. (shrink)

Montesquieu's Persian Letters has long been thought to conceal a secret chain uniting the various letters which comprise the work. An examination of the historical context of the Persian Letters, the characters' remarks on justice and self- interest, and the important literary techniques that Montesquieu employs, helps to bring the secret chain to light. The work's letters are written and sequenced to show how self-interest can overawe justice, emphasizing the need for fair and reasonable third party involvement in order to (...) achieve justice in human affairs. Montesquieu calls upon readers to serve as the final link in this chain, prompting the reader ultimately to consolidate the Persian Letters' treatment of politics, philosophy and morality. (shrink)

When two people engage in a conversation, knowingly or unknowingly, they are playing a game. Players of such games have diverse objectives, or winning conditions: an applicant trying to convince her potential employer of her eligibility over that of a competitor, a prosecutor trying to convict a defendant, a politician trying to convince an electorate in a political debate, and so on. We argue that infinitary games offer a natural model for many structural characteristics of such conversations. We call such (...) games message exchange games, and we compare them to existing game theoretic frameworks used in linguistics—for example, signaling games—and show that message exchange games are needed to handle non-cooperative conversation. In this paper, we concentrate on conversational games where players’ interests are opposed. We provide a taxonomy of conversations based on their winning conditions, and we investigate some essential features of winning conditions like consistency and what we call rhetorical cooperativity. We show that these features make our games decomposition sensitive, a property we define formally in the paper. We show that this property has far-reaching implications for the existence of winning strategies and their complexity. There is a class of winning conditions for which message exchange games are equivalent to Banach- Mazur games, which have been extensively studied and enjoy nice topological results. But decomposition sensitive goals are much more the norm and much more interesting linguistically and philosophically. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: References Further reading.

Freedom of thought has been lauded in political theory and celebrated in human rights discourse. But what kind of freedom is it? I propose that freedom of thought deserves status as a basic liberty, given the significance of thought to human life, the fundamental importance of freedom of thought in establishing and sustaining crucial rights and freedoms, and the value of being able to develop and experience one’s thoughts without undue influence from others.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Being Sure of One's Self: Hume on Personal Identity1 Corliss Gayda Swain A number of papers recently published on Hume's theory of personal identityhavebeen devoted to the question: Whyin the Appendix to the Treatise did Hume express complete or acute dissatisfaction with his account of personal identity in book 1 of that work?2 In this paper I shall argue that no adequate answer can be given to this (...) question because its presupposition—namely, that Hume discovered some reason to be dissatisfied with his account—is false. My thesis is that Hume did not write the section ofthe Appendix dealing with personal identity in order to raise new questions about the adequacy ofhisbook 1 account of the mind; he wrote it in order to defend that account by showing that alternative explanations of personal identity are incoherent.3 Very briefly, this defense is as follows. In the Appendix Hume considers two hypotheses concerning the nature of the human mind: the first is the hypothesis accepted by many of the modern philosophers, namely, that the mind is a thinking substance which is both unitary and simple; the secondis Hume's own account ofpersonal identity, according to which "the true idea of the human mind, is to consider it as a system ofdifferent perceptions or different existences, which are link'd togetherby the relation ofcause and effect."4 Drawing on arguments he had developed in Treatise 1.4.5 and 6, Hume shows in the Appendix that the first hypothesis, while pretending to account for the identityand simplicityofthe selfin terms ofamental substance and to offer a new foundation for knowledge, actually leads us into the same labyrinth of obscurities and contradictions in which the ancient philosophy was involved when it tried to account for the identity and simplicity of material objects in terms of material substances. The modern philosophy tried to solve the same kind of problem as did the ancients, using the same kind of resources as the ancients used, and for this reason it is involved in the same contradictions and obscurities when it tries to explain the nature of the mind as the ancients were when they tried to explain the nature of matter. Hume's response to this situationisnotmerelytorejectbothmetaphysical systemsbutalso to reject their formulation of the problems ofidentity through change and unity in diversity and thè attendant criterion ofadequacy for the solution. Hume is sceptical that the problem which both the ancient Volume XVII Number 2 107 CORLISS GAYDA SWAIN andthemodernmetaphysicians setthemselves canbe solved,5but this does not mean that he is sceptical about personal identity or his own account ofit. In book 1 Hume had argued that a proper understanding ofthe real problem of personal identity leads to a real solution. In the Appendix he is concerned to show that this solution is not a solution to the (insoluble) problem that so preoccupied the metaphysicians. It is Hume's insistence that the metaphysicians' problem is insoluble that seems to have led commentators to think that Hume was dissatisfied with his own solution to the problem ofpersonal identity. On this view, the labyrinth ofcontradictions in which Hume finds himselfin the Appendix is not a labyrinth he gets into upon accepting his own account of personal identity, but rather a labyrinth he finds himself in without that account. What the Appendix adds to Hume's positive account of personal identity is a clear statement of the destructive argument againstmetaphysical systems that try to have it both ways. Thus, the Appendix should be read not as a renunciation but as a defense. I. Hume's "Renunciation" Commentators who hold that Hume found a new problem that was connected with his book 1 account of personal identity seem to have some strong textual support for their view.6 In the introductory paragraph of the section in the Appendix dealing with personal identity, Hume says, "But upon a more strict review of the section concerningpersonal identity, I find myselfinvoWd in such a labyrinth, that, I must confess, I neither know how to correct my former opinions, nor how to render them consistent" (T 633).7 He confesses that his account ofpersonal identity is "very defective" (T 635) and claims that... (shrink)

This article analyzes the moral and political implications of strong moral character for political action. The treatment provides reason to hold that strong moral character should play a role in a robust normative account of political leadership. The case is supported by empirical findings on character dispositions and the political viability of the account’s normative prescriptions.

In this article, I consider the extent to which heteronomous people can be positive contributors to political deliberation. I examine the normative potential of heteronomous people as participants in public debate, and address the overall effects that inclusion of heteronomous people can provide for group deliberations. I subsequently consider empirical findings that bear upon the case I develop, and conclude that liberals ought to reconsider the importance of heteronomous people in healthy liberal democracy. This philosophical recognition lays groundwork for a (...) more morally and politically compelling version of liberalism, one that outstrips comprehensive schemes that vaunt personal autonomy as liberalism's primary normative commitment. (shrink)