Recent developments in the business world have caused the academic community to address the coverage of ethics in the accounting curriculum. This study surveyed accounting faculty to: (1) examine perceptions about ethics coverage in the undergraduate accounting courses; (2) identify teaching methods used to include ethics in the undergraduate accounting courses, the perceived effectiveness of those methods and the amount of time spent on ethics coverage; and (3) to identify problems encountered in including ethics in accounting courses. The study found (...) that although a large majority of the professors surveyed (77%) said they include ethics, 69% felt that there was a need for more ethics coverage. Also, the study revealed that while the lecture method was the most commonly used method, the written case was deemed the most effective method. The average time spent covering ethics was a little over 3 hours per course. The most significant problems encountered by faculty who include ethics in their undergraduate accounting courses was not enough time and lack of appropriate ethics materials. (shrink)

Alva Noë’s strategy to solve the puzzle of perceptual presence entirely relies on the principle of presence as access. Unaccessed or unattended parts or details of objects are perceptually present insofar as they are accessible, and they are accessible insofar as one possesses sensorimotor skills that can secure their access. In this paper, I consider several arguments that can be opposed to this claim and that are chiefly related to the modal status of action, i.e. the fact that the action (...) that would secure access to the absent aspects is a possibility, something that can be done. The main difficulty Noë’s account must face is –as several situations demonstrate– that the action that should be performed for the absent aspects to be actually accessed does not have to be itself available for these aspects to be perceptually present. What matters for the absent aspects to be present is not their de facto accessibility, but their de jure accessibility. To overcome those difficulties, I propose to rely on a ternary model of the role of action possibilities in perceptual awareness. This model builds on Husserl’s analysis of the role of perceptual circumstances in perception and connection between sense registering and horizontal intentionality. (shrink)

Austrian economics emphasizes a priori components of social scientific theory. Most emphatically, Ludwig Mises and Murray Rothbard champion praxeology, a methodology often criticized as extremely aprioristic. Among the numerous justifications and interpretations of praxeology to be found in the primary and secondary literature, conventionalism avoids the charge of extreme apriorism by construing the fundamental axiom of praxeology as analytic instead of synthetic. This paper (1) explicates the tentative structure of the fundamental axiom, (2) clarifies some aspects of a conventionalist defense (...) of praxeology, and (3) appraises conventionalist praxeology according to Rothbardian criteria. While Rothbard provides an essentialist justification of praxeology and embraces extreme apriorism, a mildly aprioristic conventionalist defense of praxeology fares better on Rothbard’s own criteria and is much more compatible with other contemporary methodological positions and economic theories. (shrink)

RCLIB is a 2-D graphical interface package available as an addition to the Poplog software development system. "RC" stands for "Relative Coordinates": all the graphical commands are relative to a frame of reference, which can be changed without altering the commands, making it easy to draw the same thing in different parts of a display, using different sizes or orientations, and possibly stretched or sheared.

Often, regret implies the wish not to have performed certain actions. In this article I claim that this wish can to some extent be fulfilled: it is possible, in a sense, to influence the character of actions that have already been performed. This possibility arises from combining a first person perspective with an outlook on actions as expressions of tendencies, where tendencies are identified on the basis of a number of actions. The idea is specified within the framework of Carnapian (...) reduction sentences, but this technique is in no sense mandatory: it can be formulated in other vocabularies as well. (shrink)

In light of grand societal challenges, most recently the global Covid-19 pandemic, there is a call for research on responsible leadership. While significant advances have been made in recent years towards a better understanding of the concept, a gap exists in the understanding of responsible leadership in emerging countries, specifically how leaders resolve prevalent moral dilemmas. Following Werhane, we use moral imagination as an analytical approach to analyze a dilemmatic stakeholder conflict through the lense of different responsible leadership mindsets and (...) in light of different ethical principles and moral background theories. Based on this analysis, we arrive at a tentative moral judgement, concluding that the instrumental approach is morally inferior and recommending the integrative approach as the morally superior choice. In the subsequent discussion—focussed on what “could” be done, we apply the integrative script and use moral imagination as a pathway for generating morally justifiable solutions. Through this analysis, we provide novel insights on how to apply an integrative responsible leadership approach to a stakeholder conflict situation, using the single case study to expand the responsible leadership discussion to emerging markets. (shrink)

Austrian economics emphasizes a priori components of social scientific theory. Most emphatically, Ludwig Mises and Murray Rothbard champion praxeology, a methodology often criticized as extremely aprioristic. Among the numerous justifications and interpretations of praxeology to be found in the primary and secondary literature, conventionalism avoids the charge of extreme apriorism by construing the fundamental axiom of praxeology as analytic instead of synthetic. This paper (1) explicates the tentative structure of the fundamental axiom, (2) clarifies some aspects of a conventionalist defense (...) of praxeology, and (3) appraises conventionalist praxeology according to Rothbardian criteria. While Rothbard provides an essentialist justification of praxeology and embraces extreme apriorism, a mildly aprioristic conventionalist defense of praxeology fares better on Rothbard’s own criteria and is much more compatible with other contemporary methodological positions and economic theories. (shrink)

The commission of criminal wrongs is occasionally revealed after the wrongdoer’s death. In such cases, there seems to be a widely-shared intuition, which also frequently motivates many people’s actions, that the dead should still be blamed and that some response, not only stemming from civil society but also the state, to the criminal wrong is necessary. This article explores the possibility of posthumous blame and punishment by the state. After highlighting the deficiencies of the pure versions of retributivism and general (...) deterrence theory, but also the potential in the latter, it argues for a political theory of the criminal law, which views institutions of punishment as the business not only of defendants and victims but also the political community as a whole. Within this normative scheme posthumous responses to wrongs are possible and in some cases necessary for the maintenance of the stability of the political community. Accountability-holding processes may also be possible and necessary for the protection of the reputation of the deceased suspected wrongdoer. (shrink)

An interruption. Rethinking the first three chapters of this book, I have come to suspect that, not unlike Iris Murdoch and Emmanuel Levinas, the way I imagine ‘ethics’ floats on an idea that any ethical substantive position or ethical theory is always shaped through our existential condition and our embodied encounter with others. To Murdoch, existence is the disposition for our responses to the ways in which we perceive reality, and yet, although these responses are always part of who we (...) are, they are not always part of what we do, and so, we set ourselves ethical tasks when we desire to act ethically. As scholar Bridget Clarke argues, “to attend to something [for Murdoch] is to approach it with a just and loving eye, and therewith to perceive it in its unbounded particularity and complexity, and so, as it truly is.” Or as I argue, to attend to the other ‘justly and lovingly’, Murdoch would instruct, is not merely to accurately collect details about the other and then arrive at an approximation of its being, but also to apprehend the other as ‘distinctly singular’ and ‘distinctly foreign’ from oneself–which at once forgoes any assimilation of the other into oneself, incidentally. The recognition of the other as ‘one who embodies human otherness and dignity’ becomes the condition for and coherent way of imagining and accessing moral reality. Moreover, for Diane Davis, this “being-for-the-other names a pre-originary obligation to respond to the other [and] it is in this response that both the self and the other emerge as existents” whose ethical projects are each challenged by the markedly different and infinitely other being. This obligation, Levinas might also say, is an ‘authority’ that is experienced like the effect of the other upon me, so that I am subsequently motivated to enact ethical task-making. I am not, therefore, “pulling everything other into the same, the known, the comprehended,” nor am I looking to any normative theories as authoritative templates from which I act ethically. And so, unlike Husserl, I am not “joining the philosophical tradition in its fundamental disrespect for all things other,” but instead, by dispositioning myself between these theories in responsible Levinasian fashion, I will be tracking them in response to their confronting me, and not as normative theories that are applicable to real and lived experiences. (shrink)

This paper explores the topic of military ethics, what we mean by that term, what it covers, how it is understood, and how it is taught. It suggests that the unifying factor that makes this a coherent subject beyond individual national interpretations of it is the core idea of military professionalism. The paper draws out the distinction between training and education and draws on research conducted by a number of different people and agencies, including the International Committee of (...) the Red Cross, to establish what factors contribute to effective pedagogy and the inculcation of appropriate attitudes and behaviours. The paper concludes by looking at the way military ethics contributes to military outcomes from protecting civilians and the vulnerable to building resilience in our own military personnel to protect their mental health, through to the strategic costs of losing the moral high ground if behaviour is seen to fall short of that expected from military professionals. (shrink)

In Metaphysics Θ 1, Aristotle claims that the active power is definitionally prior to the passive power. Commentators have been puzzled by this claim, because the definitions appear, and seemingly should be, symmetric. However, their attempts to address this difficulty are dissatisfying, for commentators have not adequately appreciated what the difficulty is: they show (at most) how every kind of active power can be definitionally prior to every kind of passive power, but do not address how the active power (...) as such can be definitionally prior to the passive power as such. We undertake three tasks. First, we clarify the puzzle, demonstrating that it is the claim that the active power as such is definitionally prior to the passive power as such that stands in need of justification. Second, we defend a reading of the definitions which dissolves the appearance of symmetry. Third, we explain why the view that the active power is prior to the passive is philosophically attractive. (shrink)

We commonly face circumstances in which the cumulative negative effects of repeatedly acting in a certain way over time will be significant, although the negative effects of any one such act, taken on its own, are insubstantial. Warren Quinn's puzzle of the self-torturer presents an especially clear example of this type of predicament. This paper considers three different approaches to understanding the rational response to such situations. The first focuses on the conditions under which it is rational to revise one's (...) prior intentions. The second raises the possibility of a fundamental disconnect between the rational assessment of an extended pattern of choices and the assessment of the individual choices that make up that pattern. I show that neither adequately addresses the underlying issues. I propose a third approach, according to which the rational assessment of the “self-torturer's” choices is guided, not by any plan or intention the he has actually adopted, but by the plan or plans it would have been reasonable for him to adopt from the outset. The larger significance of this conclusion is brought out through the identification of conditions under which one's past choices can non-derivatively constrain the rational response to one's present circumstances. (shrink)

Gutter-minded readings of Ovid have a venerable ancient precedent in Martial. As Stephen Hinds points out, the epigrammatist has a particular knack for ‘editorializing on the euphemistic language of elegy by “staining” it, in more or less complicated ways; it can be argued that the intertext between Ovidian and Martialian erotics, as well as differentiating them, tends to give the reader both a more Ovidian Martial and a more Martialian Ovid than before’. The present note will subject a famous and (...) somewhat puzzling Ovidian passage to the kind of treatment that Martial might have given it. The alert reader will notice that this is, on one level, a dodge—an excuse for skirting the issue of Ovid's intentions and abjuring responsibility for whatever ‘staining’ may occur. But perhaps I shall be forgiven if I can show how listening in on an imagined intertextual conversation between two of antiquity's wittiest authors pays dividends in bringing out Martial's Ovidian side, a genius for innuendo combined with literary insight that can be too easily drowned out by his barrage of primary obscenities. (shrink)

The paper dealt with the control on political corruption in Italy, in particular with the reasons why most of the control mechanisms did not work for a long time, allowingfor the development of"tangentopoli". First of all, we briefly discussed the reasons why the controls ''from below"--that is, from citizens or electors--did not function in Italy: the pervasive occupation of the administration and the civil society by the political parties, as well as "secret" agreements between political parties in order to avoid (...) political scandals were discussed.The paper continued by analyzing two types of institutional control: the administrative controls and the judiciary controls. In the second part, we presented some main characteristics of the Italian public administration that hampered internal controls, the informal control of parties over the bureaucrats through clientelism and complicity in corruption being one among them. In the third part, we focused on the peculiar characteristics of a magistracy that enjoyed of a very high degree of format autonomy from the political power, but was "pushed" towards politics for reasons as different as complicity in corruption and the need to "substitute" for the weak policy making capacity of political parties. In the fourth part, we reviewed some reform bills to deal with the control of political corruption. (shrink)

What are causal powers and why should we believe in them? Causal powers are now a central topic in metaphysics but my defence of them does not begin there, but rather in studies of the practices of the sciences, especially in my case, of physics and economics. Both of these use the analytic method: they ascertain the behaviour that would result from the operation of a cause ‘in isolation’; then take this behaviour to provide the ‘contribution’ that that cause (...) makes to the behaviour that occurs even when the cause is not in isolation. What counts as ‘isolation’? And how is the notion of ‘contribution’ to be understood? (shrink)

Unwelcome or unconsented acknowledgments is an unethical practice seldom addressed. It constitutes a form of authorship abuse perpetrated in the acknowledgments section of published research, where the victim is credited as having made a contribution to the paper, without having given their consent, and often without having seen a draft of the paper. The acknowledgment may be written in such a way as to imply endorsement of the study’s data and conclusions. Through a real-life case, this paper explores the issue (...) of unconsented acknowledgments and makes recommendations to prevent its occurrence, thereby promoting research integrity. (shrink)

This book forms part of the multi-disciplinary Studies in Ethics Series from Liverpool Hope University. It explores the slipperiness of ethics as a concept and demonstrates the multiplicity of intellectual inquiry within contemporary Film Studies. At first glance, â ~ethicsâ (TM) is not necessarily a subject conventionally associated with film. Film is often regarded as a form of â ~lowbrowâ (TM) popular culture, either offering bland entertainment or deliberately setting out to shock â " or, more cynically, generate box office (...) revenue â " through gratuitous inclusion of sex and violence. Certainly, there have always been a minority of films based on the stereotypically â ~ethicalâ (TM) subject of religion, but these have often generated the most controversy, from the studio system decree that it was blasphemous to represent the corporeal body of Christ to the furore surrounding Martin Scorseseâ (TM)s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). This book shows that from the silent era to the present day, film has been inherently concerned with ethical issues. In this light, the definition of ethics that informs the volume and is taken as the starting point of each of the chapters is the notion of personal or institutional motivation; most usually because a character or industry figure makes a decision or choice based on their own moral â " or ethical â " code. Once this is defined, the ethical dimension to films is immediately evident. This book takes as its central theme the difficulty of decisions refracted through personal ethical codes, and thus recognises that what counts as ethics, or morality, is always subjective. Some of the chapters explore films which take conventionally â ~goodâ (TM) ethical standpoints, others investigate why â ~badâ (TM) decisions were made; at least one explores the celebration of practices invoking popular disgust, but all the contributions study ethical decisions within film that represent the strongly felt convictions of those involved and, moreover, address aspects of filmmaking which force the spectator to be an active and reciprocal participant in the creation of meaning, thus implicitly acknowledging that ethics are subjective and in perpetual flux rather than fixed, objective truths. (shrink)

The article examines the role of ethnic favoritism in maldistribution of national resources in Kenya and discusses two broad proposals for attacking such corruption. Evidence drawn from research in Kenya disproves the view of Chabal and Daloz, who argue that Africans prefer to distribute goods according to ethnic ties, and shows that frustration with the lack of alternatives to such a system, rather than enthusiasm for it, drives cooperation with corrupt maldistribution. One solution to the problem is to decentralize government (...) so that resources are retained locally. A second solution is to attack the culture of appropriation and push for a fair evaluation of needs and the equitable distribution of national resources to where they are needed most. Drawing on the ideas of Hannah Arendt, the article proposes a modified federalism where government is small enough to enlist the help and support of locals but powerful enough to provide funds to impoverished sectors of the country. (shrink)

Nanotechnology shows great promise in a variety of applications with attractive economic and societal benefits. However, societal issues associated with nanotechnology are still a concern to the general public. While numerous technological advancements in nanotechnology have been achieved over the past decade, research into the broader societal issues of nanotechnology is still in its early phases. Based on the data from the Web of Science database, we applied the main path analysis, cluster analysis and text mining tools to explore the (...) main research fronts and hierarchical structure of these societal issues. We found that the research studies fell into four categories: "General Toxicity and EHS (Environment, Health and Safety)," "Medicine and Cytotoxicity," "Assessment and Regulation," and "Environment and Ecotoxicity." These research studies have disclosed much information about the potential effect of nanotechnology on public health and the environment. Relatively speaking, the studies on the assessment, regulation, preventive solutions, and environmental protection are just emerging. This finding indicates that an abundance of effort should be conducted on these emerging themes to maximize the benefits of nanotechnology while minimizing its potential harm. The implications for various parties in this domain are also presented. (shrink)

The literature on agentive or practical knowledge tends to be focused on knowing what one is doing or what one is going to do. Knowing what one has done and has achieved thereby seems to be another matter. In fact, achievements are often taken to be beyond the ken of practical knowledge. I argue that this is a mistake. The intelligibility of the very idea of practical knowledge depends on the possibility of knowing one's achievements in the (...) same manner. For if it is to be intelligible as knowledge of the actuality of one's action in the material world, knowing what one is doing has to include knowledge of what one has done so far. (shrink)

Robert Fulghum’s new book begins with a question we’ve all asked ourselves: “What on Earth have I done?” As Fulghum finds out, the answer is never easy and, almost always, surprising. For the last couple of years, Fulghum has been traveling the world - from Seattle to the Moab Desert to Crete - looking for a few fellow travelers interested in thinking along with him as he delights in the unexpected: trick-or-treating with your grandchildren dressed like a large rabbit, (...) pots of daffodils blooming in mid-November, a view of the earth from outer space, the mysterious night sounds of the desert, every man's trip to a department store to buy socks, the raucous all-night long feast that is Easter in Greece, the trials and tribulations of plumbing problems and the friendship one can strike up with someone who doesn't share the same language. What on Earth Have I Done? is an armchair tour of everyday life as seen by Robert Fulghum, one of America’s great essayists, a man who has two feet planted firmly on the earth, one eye on the heavens and, at times, a tongue planted firmly in his cheek. Fulghum writes to his fellow travelers, with a sometimes light heart, about the deep and vexing mysteries of being alive and says, “This is my way of bringing the small boat of my life within speaking distance of yours. Hello…”. (shrink)

This article investigates how we should understand the prayer ‘But thy will not mine be done’, using Wittgenstein’s ordinary language approach. The later Wittgenstein argued that philosophy’s task is to assemble reminders of how language is used in daily life for a particular purpose. This approach offers a way to understand how, despite what theologians have argued, ‘Thy will be done’ is neither making prayer useless, nor is it fundamental to all petitionary prayers. Firstly, the framework and method of (...) Wittgenstein’s ordinary language will be explained. Secondly, reminders will be assembled for the purpose of showing that the prayer ‘Thy will be done’ does not need to make praying useless. Thirdly, the appropriate reminders to refute the statement that ‘Thy will be done’ is fundamental to all petitionary prayers will be presented. And, finally, these two sets of reminders will be connected to one another to provide a more truthful understanding of the prayer ‘Thy will be done’. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen notes: "... almost all philosophers agree that a necessary condition for holding an agent responsible for an act is believing that the agent could have refrained from performing that act." Perhaps van Inwagen is right; perhaps most philosophers agree on this. If so, this shared assumption, which I will call CDO (for "could have done otherwise"), is a good candidate for denial, especially since there turns out to be so little to be said in support of it, (...) once it is called in question. I will argue that, just like those people who are famous only for being famous, this assumption owes its traditional high regard to nothing more than its traditional high regard. It is almost never questioned. And the tradition itself, I will claim, is initially motivated by little more than inattentive extrapolation from familiar cases. To engage the issue, I assert that it simply does not matter at all to moral responsibility whether the agent in question could have done otherwise in the circumstances. (shrink)

Self-driving cars currently face a lot of technological problems that need to be solved before the cars can be widely used. However, they also face ethical problems, among which the question of crash-optimization algorithms is most prominently discussed. Reviewing current debates about whether we should use the ethics of the Trolley Dilemma as a guide towards designing self-driving cars will provide us with insights about what exactly ethical research does. It will result in the view that although we need (...) the ethics of the Trolley Dilemma as important input for self-driving cars, the route towards simply implementing it into automated cars is blocked. (shrink)

I explain why I think that considerations regarding the opposing rights involved in the practice of circumcision—rights of the individual to bodily integrity and rights of the community to practice its religion—would not help us decide on the desirable policy towards this controversial practice. I then suggest a few measures that are not in conflict with either religious or community rights but that can both reduce the harm that circumcision as currently practiced involves and bring about a change in attitude (...) towards the practice, thus further reducing its frequency. These measures are the compulsory administration of anaesthetics; the banning of the metzitzah b’peh; and having an upper age limit of a few months on nontherapeutic circumcision of minors. I conclude with general considerations on why the steps taken towards the reform of circumcision should be moderate. (shrink)

I argue that the phenomenon underlying Bernard Williams’ (1976) “agent-regret” is considerably broader than appreciated by Williams and others. Agent-regret— an anguished response that agents have for harms they have caused, even if faultlessly— I maintain, is a species of a more general response to harms that need not be one’s fault, but which nonetheless impact one’s practical identity in a special way. This broader genus includes as a species what I call “relation-regret”, a pained response to harm caused (...) by a person to whom one is intimately related, as a co-member of a group partly constitutive of one’s practical identity (e.g. one’s family). After providing an account of the moral psychology of relation-regret, I attend to its normative significance, proposing in particular that acceptance of relation-regret provides us with reasons for accepting a novel form of moral luck, namely associative luck: the luck of being vulnerable to responsibility-responses in virtue of one’s attachments to others, despite one’s personal faultlessness. (shrink)

The question confronting thought today is: what is a suicide bomber? But this question is a sign of a greater problem: the problem of the worst, which is apocalypse, complete suicide. Deleuze and Guattari and Derrida have given us the philosophical concepts to formulate this problem with more complexity and precision. Deleuze and Guattari have defined our current situation in terms of the post-fascist figure of the war machine, a figure that is worse, more terrifying, than fascism itself. Similarly, (...) Derrida has defined our epoch in terms of a holocaust that is worse than any holocaust seen in the Bible. The problem of the worst then is so bad today that it requires that we make every effort to find a solution. The essay that follows constructs the beginnings of a solution to the problem of the worst. The solution will consist in a hyperbolic or even revolutionary gesture of inclusiveness that opens out onto an “elsewhere” that still needs a name. As we shall see however, no solution will ever be enough, no solution will ever be sufficient. There will never be enough done, said, or written in the name of what prevents the worst. (shrink)

As I understand it, the Sokal affair is about affirmative action for ideas. Should arguments felt to be under-represented in the culture-at-large be admitted into prestigious haunts like Social Text even if they don't meet the standard intellectual tests? Alan Sokal got tired of what he saw as an excess of affirmative action in the ideas purveyed by cultural studies. So he devised a test in the form of a hoax: Could an author who deliberately met no standards whatsoever (...) make it into Social Text merely by parading past the judges their own sympathies, dressed up in a jargon they would recognize and citing these same judges as authoritative? The test came back positive. The issue, then, is what to make of the results. (shrink)

Discusses how nature provides services to mankind, including how birds protect fruit harvests, how coral reefs shield coasts from storms, and how rainforests absorb billions of tons of carbon released from cars and power stations.

This chapter comments on the past and future of the relationship between science and philosophy, and argues that philosophy and science need each other as much as ever. The particular threat to philosophy of the impact agenda is explained. Various predictions are offered as to how we can expect philosophy to evolve.

ABSTRACT This essay argues that recent catastrophizings over freedom of speech are symptoms of a conjunctural crisis in the North Atlantic world. They index, in the main, a crisis of profitability and deindustrialization in the Global North, as seen for instance in the lumpenproletariatization of the working and professional classes; increasing domestic resistance by racially minoritized groups to police violence and murder; sustained insurgencies to imperialism abroad; the militarization of borders; and widespread crises occasioned by climate change. The writings of (...) Hannah Arendt, I argue, offer an acute angle into how a celebrated thinker in the Global North advanced influential analytical categories for policing this conjunctural crisis. Ultimately, I argue, apocalyptic discourses about the unsayable seek to make unthinkable ongoing and emergent radical uprisings, insurgencies, and revolution. (shrink)

In René Descartes’ correspondence with Elizabeth (mainly 1645-1647) as well as his Passions of the Soul (1649), Descartes says that regret is appropriate only when agents act irresolutely, regardless of whether or not their actions bring about good states-of-affairs. In this paper I set out to explain what Descartes views as a novel account of virtue: that being virtuous amounts to being resolute. I show how this account of virtue fits into Descartes’ larger world-view, and then examine his belief (...) that a person should not regret resolute misdeeds. (shrink)

Contemporary debates on decolonising knowledge production, inclusive of research on Africa, are crucial and challenge researchers to reflect on the legacies of colonial power relations that continue to permeate the production of knowledge about the continent, its peoples, and societies. Yet these are not new debates. Sixty years ago, Ghana’s first president and pan-Africanist leader, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, highlighted the importance of Africa-centred knowledge. Similarly, in the 1980s, Claude Ake advocated for endogenous knowledge production on Africa. But progress has been (...) slow at best, indicated by the enduring predominance of non-African writers on African issues within leading scholarly journals. Thus, we examine why decolonisation of knowledge production remains so necessary and what can be done within the context of scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences. These questions are addressed at two levels, one more practical and one more reflective . At both levels, issues of power inequalities and injustice are critical. At the practical level, the asymmetrical power relations between scholars in the Global North and South are highlighted. At a deeper level, the critiques of contemporary African authors are outlined, all contesting the ongoing coloniality and epistemic injustices that affect knowledge production on Africa, and calling for a more fundamental reorientation of ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches in order to decolonise knowledge production. (shrink)

In this paper, The author discusses rawls's recent argument that the aim of political philosophy is not the pursuit of truth but of "free agreement, Reconciliation through public reason" designed to forge an "overlapping consensus." although the author is prepared to agree that political philosophy should sometimes have this goal, She maintains that there are metaphysical commitments about the nature of human beings underlying philosophy itself which commit the political philosophers to pursuing conditions of freedom and equal respect for all, (...) A pursuit which may fail to create--Even undermine--An overlapping consensus in a community. (shrink)

The paper discusses the active part in the process of perceiving, usually expressed by the Greek word krinein. It is argued that krinein in one of its uses means "to judge" in the sense of judging a case, i. e. deciding it. It is not used for making statements. A second meaning of the Greek word is that of discerning or discriminating, and it is this meaning that plays a central part in Aristotle's theory of perception.

It Isn’t Done Taboo Among the British Islanders Archibald Lyall Originally published in 1930 "An admirably brisk attack on taboos." Observer "An amusingly provocative little essay." Bystander A witty and interesting contribution to the study of what may and may not be done in the British Isles. 90pp Stentor Or the Press of Today and Tomorrow David Ockham Originally published in 1927 "Vigorous and well-written, eminently readable." Yorkshire Post This volume analyzes the press of the early twentieth century, and (...) what actually constitutes news; to what degree public opinion is manipulated by the press, the rise of the tabloid press and the press of the future. 86pp. Nuntius, or Advertising and its Future Gilbert Russell Originally published in 1926 "Expresses the philosophy of advertising concisely and well." Observer This volume discusses the birth of modern advertising, the need for controls within the profession, the effectiveness of advertising and the economics of it. Contents include: Advertising Today: An Economic Necessity Advertising Today: A Social Service Advertising Tomorrow 90pp Cato Or the Future of Censorship William Seagle Originally published in 1930 "Packed with the most useful information and with the most interesting deductions and analysis." Time and Time "This brilliant and witty book" Times Literary Supplement This volume attacks the subject of censorship from numerous aspects. It surveys censorship in the past and analyzes the present-day situation. The author prophesizes a neo-Victorian campaign, which like its predecessors will inevitably fail. 90pp. (shrink)

This paper describes an attempt to introduce philosophy and history of science to pre-service science teachers. I argue briefly for the view that science in the schools cannot be taught without implicitly assuming a particular philosophy of science. Therefore, both philosophy and history of science are necessary components of undergraduate science education courses.

The debate in the Oxford Union on 29 January 2010 was on the motion "This House believes that in politics, money talks loudest". Ted Honderich's speech in support of the motion was followed by those of Stuart Wheeler, known for his contribution of £5,000,000 to the Conservative Party, and of Hugo Rifkind, a columnist for The Times and The Spectator . The motion was opposed by Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute, Lord Oakeshott the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, and (...) Dr. Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. In the vote at the end, the motion was carried. The debate took place the evening of the day when Tony Blair appeared to defend himself in the Chilcott inquiry into the Iraq war. (shrink)

Through the ages we have been fond of monolithic ethics, which is either synthetic or analytic; the former covers ethical interests such as the normative, descriptive, empirical, and the practical and professional, whereas the latter covers the metaethical interests covering those of the analysis of language, and the interface of the ethics, logic and epistemology, particularly the issues of proving, justification and the epistemic claims about moral value. Monolithic ethics has its own problems, which troubles us today more than it (...) did before, as it is difficult to see why both these interests cannot be assimilated though each of them well protected for their specific tasks. Rethinking in ethics today leads us to break away from the monolithic ethics – the paper argues why this should be the case. (shrink)

Moral absolutes have little or no moral standing in our morally diverse modern society. Moral relativism is far more palatable for most ethicists and to the public at large. Yet, when pressed, every moral relativist will finally admit that there are some things which ought never be done. It is the rarest of moral relativists that will take rape, murder, theft, child sacrifice as morally neutral choices. In general ethics, the list of those things that must never be done will (...) vary from person to person. In clinical ethics, however, the nature of the physician–patient relationship is such that certain moral absolutes are essential to the attainment of the good of the patient – the end of the relationship itself. These are all derivatives of the first moral absolute of all morality: Do good and avoid evil. In the clinical encounter, this absolute entails several subsidiary absolutes – act for the good of the patient, do not kill, keep promises, protect the dignity of the patient, do not lie, avoid complicity with evil. Each absolute is intrinsic to the healing and helping ends of the clinical encounter. (shrink)

As concerns the explication of the intuitive notion of truthmaking, Barry Smith has an insight that deserves more attention. Basically, in his view, an object x makes a proposition true iff (i) x necessitates and (ii) is representationally closely tied with x. To be more specific, he suggests that (ii) is fulfilled only if x is among ’s ontological commitments. I appreciate his basic insight but reject his specific suggestion. I argue that we can make a more attractive proposal from (...) his basic insight if we take into consideration that the close tie can also be realized by ’s being about x. (shrink)

Plato's Laches, the dialogue devoted to the discovery of courage, is generally considered a failure, as the interlocutors' various definitions ultimately prove insufficient. Laches, however, notes that a definition of this kind can only be assessed by considering whether the speaker's words and deeds are in harmony. In fact he goes one step further, and admits that deeds are far more persuasive than words. He therefore declares that he is willing to let Socrates, whose deeds on the battlefield speak volumes, (...) say whatever he pleases. Although himself content to deal with words, Socrates is well aware that, as far as others are concerned, Laches is right. During his defence, for example, Socrates proposes to convince the jury that he is not afraid of death by offering them 'great proofs'; not words, but what they value, namely deeds. On his final day, having undergone a lengthy and complex attempt to persuade his friends that death is nothing to be afraid of, Socrates leaves them with a deed attuned to his word, and thus becomes, in Nietzsche's words, 'the emblem . . . above the entrance gate of science'. (shrink)

Ongoing legislative proposals to overhaul United States immigration policy look very much like a new wave of nativism is sweeping the Congress. The movement, mounted in early 1995, is in full swing to limit immigrant populations from arriving, settling, producing, and benefiting as our parents' generations have done. Legislators and the courts are now considering the most complete antiimmigration social legislation since the decades following the First World War.

An externalist view of intention is developed on broadly Wittgensteinian grounds, and applied to show that the classic Thomist doctrine of double effect, though it has good uses in casuistry, has also been overused because of the internalism about intention that has generally been presupposed by its users. We need a good criterion of what counts as the content of our intentional actions; I argue, again on Wittgensteinian grounds, that the best criterion comes not from foresight, nor from foresight (...) plus some degree of probability, nor from any metaphysics of “closeness”, but simply from our ordinary shared understanding of what counts as doing a given action, and what does not. (shrink)

The paper explores the ethical and psychological issues that arise when family members request that “everything possible” be done for a particular patient. The paper first illustrates this phenomenon by reviewing the well known case of Helga Wanglie. We proceed to argue that in Wanglie and similar cases family members may request futile treatments as a means of conveying that (1) the loss of the patient is tantamount to losing a part of themselves; (2) the patient should not be abandoned (...) or disvalued in any way; or (3) the patient is owed special obligations by virtue of the special relationship in which the family and the patient stand. We maintain that families can best express these important messages by caring for patients, rather than by making requests for futile interventions. Likewise, when life-sustaining measures are futile, health providers can best fulfill their professional obligations by assuring patients' dignity and comfort, rather than by applying futile interventions. (shrink)

Next SectionAccess to medicines, vaccination and care in resource-poor settings is threatened by the emigration of physicians and other health workers. In entire regions of the developing world, low physician density exacerbates child and maternal mortality and hinders treatment of HIV/AIDS. This article invites philosophers to help identify ethical and effective responses to medical brain drain. It reviews existing proposals and their limitations. It makes a case that, in resource-poor countries, ’locally relevant medical training’—teaching primarily locally endemic diseases and practice (...) in scarcity conditions, training in rural communities and admitting rural students preferentially—could help improve retention. Locally relevant training would arguably diminish medical brain drain in five ways. It would (i) make graduates less attractive for Western employers, (ii) align graduates’ expectations with actual practice, diminishing ‘burn-out’, (iii) enhance the professional prestige of local practice, (iv) hold rotations in, and recruit applicants from, rural areas, which is known to improve retention there, and (v) create local career development options that attract practitioners to stay. Such educational reform may raise worries about poor-quality care, breach of the freedom of education and occupation, breach of the freedom of movement, unequal distribution of opportunities among students, hypocrisy and resistance from influential actors. We address these worries. (shrink)