In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Case for Hume's Nonutilitarianism ARYEH BOTWINICK IN MANY HISTORIES OF WESTERN THOUGHTI--as well as in those devoted more specifically to the history of Western political thought2--the designation of Hume as a utilitarian in his ethical and political theory is taken for granted. The word "utility" occurs frequently in both the Treatise and the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, and this has led most commentators to posit a (...) natural continuity between Hume's invocation of the term and later philosophical elaboration of it. However, more is involved here than simply a repetition of a key word or phrase. The doctrine of sympathy that plays a crucial role in nineteenth-century utilitarian thought 3 also appears to be central to Hume's ethical and political thought. Moreover, Hume's views on such a fundamental question as political obligation would appear to have been adopted directly by the utilitarians. Bentham, for example, when dealing with the question of the ground of political obligation, cites Hume directly in order to reaffirm his position," which seems to suggest that degree of shared assumptions and insight among thinkers that goes to constitute a particular tradition. Yet, it is my contention s that the historical categorization described in the previous paragraph 6is too facile in that it overlooks important discontinuities separating Hume from utilitarian thought. Although many interpreters have claimed that Hume was not a utilitarian simply because he was a noncognitivist, the theories of morals and politics often attributed to him are extensionally equivalent with I am grateful to Professor Thomas Scanlon of the Department of Philosophy at Princeton for his comments on earlier drafts of this paper. ' See, for instance, J. Bronowski and Bruce Mazlish, The Western Intellectual Tradition (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1960), p. 475. 2 See, for example, George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 3rd ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), p. 602, where, however, Hume's utilitarianism is regarded as having more in common with John Stuart Mill's than with Bentham's. 3 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1971), pp. 183-194. 4 Jeremy Bentham, A Fragment of Government, ed. Wilfrid Harrison (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), pp. 49-56. 5Rawls, to some extent, supports an interpretation of Hume as a nonutilitarian. See, for instance, how he construes Hume's rejection of an original contract (Theory of Justice, pp. 32-33). Yet on the crucial question of a doctrine of sympathy he posits a continuity between Hume and utilitarian thought, which I find unacceptable. 6 John Plamenatz, in his history of utilitarian thought, specifically supports this categorization (The English Utilitarians [Oxford: Basil Blackwell], pp. 22-45). See below, final pages, for a further discussion of Plamenatz's scheme of categorization. [4231 424 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY utilitarianism. 7 It is precisely this claim that I wish to dispute. With regard to the doctrines of utility and sympathy, I shall try to pinpoint the import they carried for Bentham and his followers and compare this with the meanings these doctrines have in the context of Hume's thought. I shall also attempt to relate his thought to the important English philosophers in the social contract tradition--Hobbes and Locke-exploring the possibility that Hume's deepest affinities might lie with his contractarian predecessors, rather than with his utilitarian successors. As a preliminary question we might consider how Hume defines the concept of utility. It seems that for him the term remains a fairly vacuous one to be identified with an unspecified tendency of an action "to the good of mankind. ''8 He does not appear to connect the notion of utility with that of pleasure the way the utilitarians do. 9 Hume's invocation of the concept of utility outside the context of its association with pleasure would not necessarily prevent our considering him a utilitarian if in the structure of his theory of moral judgment (where he supplies some content to the notion of "the good of mankind") the notion of "pleasure" serves as the common denominator in terms of which a balancing process can be carried out. However, an examination of the arguments where Hume makes use... (shrink)

I argue social and political freedom is not primarily about the absence of constraints, whether those constraints be in the form of interference or domination. Instead, social freedom is centrally about what makes us free. That is, the question of social freedom is first and foremost about determining the positive preconditions of being a free person within society. Social freedom is about what I call the social bases of freedom, or those features of our social world that we have a (...) reason to rely on in making plans or going about our business. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have argued that democratic provenance of law establishes moral requirements to obey it. We argue against this view, claiming that, rather than establishing moral requirements to obey the law, democratic provenance grounds only requirements to respect it. Establishing what we view as this more plausible account makes clear not only exactly what democracy itself contributes to requirements to obey the law but also important difficulties proponents of democratic authority must overcome in order successfully to make their (...) case. To establish our claims, we focus on Thomas Christiano’s book, The Constitution of Equality, and a recent article by Daniel Viehoff. (shrink)

A prominent position in the scholarly literature is that there is no duty to obey the law or political obligation. This is in contrast with lay opinion, which suggests widespread acceptance of political obligation. When confronted with this tension, skeptics of political obligation sometimes raise the possibility that lay belief is the product of sinister interests. Against this, I argue that, even if such a belief is false, belief in political obligation may operate as a useful fiction that advances people’s (...) interests. Drawing on empirical work in the social sciences, I suggest a belief in political obligation may contribute to effective governance. Even if political obligation skeptics are correct that there is no such duty to obey the law, lay belief in political obligation may play a valuable ideological function in society. (shrink)

Richard Penny argues that Rawls’s commitment to self-respect puts him at odds with his endorsement of unequalizing incentives. Penny draws on G.A. Cohen’s distinction between ‘lax’ and ‘strict’ readings of the difference principle to make this point. Given this, Penny concludes that Rawls faces a dilemma: either Rawls weakens his endorsement of unequalizing incentives or weakens his commitment to self-respect. By taking the difference principle in isolation, Penny creates a false dilemma. I will argue that once we place the difference (...) principle in the context of Rawls’s theory as a whole, we find that unequalizing incentives pose no danger to the self-respect of the least advantaged. Moreover, I will argue that a strict reading of the difference principle is incompatible with the self-respect of all citizens in a well-ordered society given the fact of reasonable pluralism. My arguments reveal the importance of seeing self-respect as a threshold good, rather than a relative one. (shrink)

We say that a theory [Formula: see text] satisfies arithmetic-is-recursive if any [Formula: see text]-computable model of [Formula: see text] has an [Formula: see text]-computable copy; that is, the models of [Formula: see text] satisfy a sort of jump inversion. We give an example of a theory satisfying arithmetic-is-recursive non-trivially and prove that the theories satisfying arithmetic-is-recursive on a cone are exactly those theories with countably many [Formula: see text]-back-and-forth types.

We study computable Polish spaces and Polish groups up to homeomorphism. We prove a natural effective analogy of Stone duality, and we also develop an effective definability technique which works up to homeomorphism. As an application, we show that there is a $\Delta ^0_2$ Polish space not homeomorphic to a computable one. We apply our techniques to build, for any computable ordinal $\alpha $, an effectively closed set not homeomorphic to any $0^{}$-computable Polish space; this answers a question of Nies. (...) We also prove analogous results for compact Polish groups and locally path-connected spaces. (shrink)

Despite the stereotypical, outsider view of Thailand as a thriving hub of international sex tourism, traditional and local constructions of Thainess instead privilege the position of the ‘good’ Thai woman—a model of sexual propriety, demure physicality and aesthetic perfection. This is the image of femininity that is heralded by Thailand's Tourist Authority and by government agencies alike as a marketable symbol of cultural refinement and national pride. But this disturbing ‘utopian’ construction of femininity might for some be considered a dystopia (...) shaped by forms of power centred on elite urban rule. In mainstream definitions of Thainess, the monstrous and grotesque inverses of ‘good’ womanhood are located in the ‘dystopian’ visions of rural-based folk traditions that abound with malevolent female spirits and demons, and in the contemporary Thai horror films that draw on these tropes. Adopted by Thai feminists and by street protestors in Bangkok at times of recent political unrest, portrayals of a ‘monstrous-feminine’ have been adopted as central to a carnivalesque strategy of response and resistance to elite discourses of control. Such forces serve to symbolically disturb and destabilise middle-class constructions of a Utopian vision of Thainess with Bangkok as its cultural core. This paper examines instances of how and why the counter-strategy of primitivism and monstrosity has developed, and the extent to which it translates ‘dystopian’ expressions of female sexuality in new imaginaries of ‘dystopia’ as a space of liberation from stultifying cultural and political norms. (shrink)

This essay endorses the argument of Donald Lopez's Buddhism and Science and shows how the general thesis of the book is consonant with other historical work on the “discovery” of Buddhism and on the emergence of Western conceptions of religion. It asks whether one of the key claims of Buddhism and Science—that Buddhism pays a price for its flirtation with the modern sciences—might be applicable to science-and-religion discussions more generally.

Recent studies show that returning global health trainees often report having felt inadequately prepared to deal with ethical dilemmas they encountered during outreach clinical work. While global health training guidelines emphasize the importance of developing ethical and cultural competencies before embarking on fieldwork, their practical implementation is often lacking and consists mainly of recommendations regarding professional behavior and discussions of case studies. Evidence suggests that one of the most effective ways to teach certain skills in global health, including ethical and (...) cultural competencies, is through service learning. This approach combines community service with experiential learning. Unfortunately, this approach to global health ethics training is often unattainable due to a lack of supervision and resources available at host locations. This often means that trainees enter global health initiatives unprepared to deal with ethical dilemmas, which has the potential for adverse consequences for patients and host institutions, thus contributing to growing concerns about exploitation and “medical tourism.” From an educational perspective, exposure alone to such ethical dilemmas does not contribute to learning, due to lack of proper guidance. We propose that the tension between the benefits of service learning on the one hand and the respect for patients’ rights and well-being on the other could be resolved by the application of a simulation-based approach to global health ethics education. (shrink)

In their important book, Causation in the Law, H. L. A. Hart and Tony Honore argue that causation in the law is based on causation outside the law, that the causal principles the courts rely on to determine legal responsibility are based on distinctions exercised in ordinary causal judgments. A distinction that particularly concerns them is one that divides factors that are necessary or sine qua non for an effect into those that count as causes for purposes of legal responsibility (...) and those that do not. Hart and Honore claim that this distinction is often one of fact rather than of legal policy, and that the factual basis is to be found in the ordinary distinction we draw between causes and 'mere conditions'. If this claim is correct, we may hope to illuminate the legal distinction by articulating the principles behind the ordinary one. This is a challenging task since, as in the case of most cognitive skills, we are far better at making particular judgments than we are at stating the general principles that underlie them. Hart and Honore devote the first part of their book to this difficult task. We have, then, two large projects. One is to articulate our ordinary notion of causation, especially the distinction between cause and mere condition. This is the project of constructing an 'ordinary model'. The other is to argue for what we may call the 'shared concept claim', the claim that the concept of legal cause is based on the ordinary notion of causation, that 'causal judgments, though the law may have to systematize them, are not specifically legal. They appeal to a notion which is part of everyday life' (1985, p. lv; all references to follow are from this edition). This essay will focus on Hart and Honore's ordinary model, rather than on their shared concept claim. In my judgment, Hart and Honore's case for some version of the shared concept claim is strong, so they are right to maintain that a better understanding of our ordinary notion of.. (shrink)

The idea that emotional experience is capable of lending immediate prima facie epistemic justification to evaluative belief has been amassing significant philosophical support in recent years. The proposal that it is my anger, say, that justifies my belief that I’ve been wronged putatively provides us with an intuitive and naturalised explanation as to how we receive immediate and defeasible justification for our evaluative beliefs. With many notable advocates in the literature, this justificatory thesis of emotion is fast becoming a central (...) facet in how we conceive of the emotions’ epistemic role with respect to our everyday lives. Interestingly, however, despite the fact that the justificatory thesis is fundamentally an epistemological proposal, comparatively little of the philosophical literature has been dedicated to exploring the epistemological avenues through which emotions might be capable of delivering such an epistemic yield. Accordingly, the central purpose of this thesis is to provide a novel and thorough analysis of how emotional experience might be capable of playing this justificatory role. Here, I present and evaluate three broad models of emotional justification: emotional dogmatism, emotional reliabilism, and agent-based views. Emotional dogmatist views, I argue, fail in virtue of being vulnerable to over-generalisation worries and problematic commitments to the contents of emotional awareness. Emotional reliabilism, while possessing the resources to avoid some objections, is vulnerable to worrisome clairvoyance-style challenges which establish the insufficiency of emotional reliability for epistemic justification. Finally, having learned our lessons from the shortcomings of these views, I argue that an agent-based theory grounded in the development of learned emotional competences provides the most plausible account of how emotional experience can epistemically justify evaluative belief. This discussion, I believe, will both illuminate contemporary discussions of the justificatory thesis of emotion found in the literature, and provide novel insight into the epistemic capacities of the emotions. (shrink)

To show how the case of Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein brings light to the ethical and moral issues raised in Institutional Review Board protocols, we nest an imaginary IRB proposal dated August 1790 by Victor Frankenstein within a discussion of the importance and function of the IRB. Considering the world of science as would have appeared in 1790 when Victor was a student at Ingolstadt, we offer a schematic overview of a fecund moment when advances in comparative anatomy, medical experimentation (...) and theories of life involving animalcules and animal electricity sparked intensive debates about the basic principles of life and the relationship between body and soul. Constructing an IRB application based upon myriad speculations circulating up to 1790, we imagine how Victor would have drawn upon his contemporaries’ scientific work to justify the feasibility of his project, as well as how he might have outlined the ethical implications of his plan to animate life from “dead” tissues. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor failed to consider his creature’s autonomy, vulnerability, and welfare. In this IRB proposal, we show Victor facing those issues of justice and emphasize how the novel can be an important component in courses or workshops on research ethics. Had Victor Frankenstein had to submit an IRB proposal tragedy may have been averted, for he would have been compelled to consider the consequences of his experiment and acknowledge, if not fulfill, his concomitant responsibilities to the creature that he abandoned and left to fend for itself. (shrink)

Interested persons upon learning of the title of the present book, ask what it is all about. I customarily give them a few minutes of explanation, only to be greeted at the end by a perfectly blank stare. I wish a candid camera could have witnessed all these performances. Put end to end they would make for an hour of the most hilarious entertainment. ... Evidently the problem has about it an elusiveness which puts it beyond the reach of most, (...) and the plain man can hardly be blamed for failing to come to grips with it. But what of the professional philosopher? I find myself scandalized by the complete ignorance of most with respect to the very concrete entity of their own nervous systems, and of the Mind/Brain problem along with it. In God's name, how can you approach the great questions of the Cosmos, of the nature of Being and Reality if you haven't first formed a clear idea of what's inside and what's outside, and what part your own Brain plays in supporting your ruminations? (shrink)

In clinical research, decision-making capacity is often equated with unspecified conceptions of autonomy, and autonomy is often equated with personhood. On this view, the loss of decision-making capacity is seen as a loss of autonomy, and the loss of autonomy subsumes a loss of personhood. An ethical concern arises at the intersection of those philosophical considerations with the legal considerations in informed consent. Because persons with inadequate decision-making capacity cannot provide legally effective consent, enrollment in research can occur only if (...) a surrogate gives permission on the person’s behalf. Federal regulations and resulting institutional policies allow permission from surrogates empowered under state law to consent to medical treatment procedures, typically in a hierarchy of legislatively prioritized relationships lacking regard for what the surrogate actually knows about the current research-related values and preferences of the potential subject. As a result, the research enterprise often countenances reliance on surrogates who have no relational or informational basis for an enrollment decision that aligns with the values and preferences of the subject. Arguing from the perspective that losing decision-making capacity does not alter the moral status of persons, and that respect for persons rather than respect for autonomy is the central ethical obligation, I assess the ethical implications of allowing persons with no knowledge of the values and preferences of the potential subject to make enrollment decisions, concluding that reliance on uninformed surrogates is not an ethically defensible approach to enrolling subjects in clinical research. (shrink)

The high moral tone of Horace's Reguhls ode makes it unsurprising that the poet should employ the traditional imagery of philosophers, both in the speech of Regulus and in the final simile. I should like here to point out some instances which seem to have escaped the notice of commentators.This passage is intended to illustrate the lost ‘virtus’ of the prisoners in Carthage, who, Regulus claims, will be of no greater use to the Romans if ransomed since they were cowardly (...) enough to surrender in the first place. For the first image of dyeing wool Kiessling–Heinze refer the reader to Lucretius 6.1074–7:purpureusque colos conchyli iungitur unacorpore cum lanae, dirimi qui non queat usquam,non si Neptuni fluctu renovare operam des,non mare si totum velit eluere omnibus undis.This gives the first hint that the image belongs to the philosophical tradition, though it does not seem to occur in the extant remains of Epicurus. This is confirmed by a passage of Plato, who at Rep. 429d ff. has an elaborate image taken from the dyer's art. The Guardians of the ideal city are to be carefully selected and prepared like wool for the dyeing process of education; then, as good wool keeps its colour after dyeing, so the Guardians will keep right opinions when they are taught them. The image is summarized by Socrates at 430a ff. (shrink)

Originally published in 1954, this is the first full-length account of the history of the Working Men’s College in St.Pancras, London. One hundred and fifty years on from its foundation in 1854, it is the oldest adult educational institute in the country. Self-governing and self-financing, it is a rich part of London’s social history. The college stands out as a distinctive monument of the voluntary social service founded by the Victorians, unchanged in all its essentials yet adapting itself to the (...) demands of each generation of students and finding voluntary and unpaid teachers to continue its tradition. (shrink)

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Highlighting the first generation of women to have the vote in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s, this book presents a portrait gallery of sixteen prominent but very different feminists, and underlines the achievements of the British feminist movement in advancing women's political, occupational, and family roles at home and abroad.

John Stuart Mill is generally considered to be a utilitarian; indeed, he himself supposed that he was one. On one principle of division, there are sometimes said to be two kinds of utilitarian, hedonistic utilitarians and agathistic utilitarians. Both of these agree that what makes an act right is whether or not the consequences of performing it are good, or are supposed by the agent to be good, but the hedonistic utilitarian thinks that only pleasure is good, whereas the agathistic (...) utilitarian thinks that other things ate good as well. Commentators frequently complain that john Stuart Mill regarded himself as a hedonistic utilitarian, whereas in fact he was an agathistic one.On another principle of division, there are also two kinds of utilitarian, act utilitarians and rule utilitarians. An act utilitarian thinks that the rightness of an action depends upon the goodness of its consequences; a rule utilitarian thinks that the rightness of an act depends upon the consequence of the rule to which it conforms or fails to conform. (shrink)

The paper uses thompson clark's theory of the relation of perceptual parts and wholes to illuminate certain aspects of our knowledge of other minds. The thesis is that the traditional problem can be usefully broken down into two parts--One of which calls for a better understanding of the logic of perceptual concepts; the other, For a closer look at what happens when we try to take the epistemological skeptic seriously.

While discovery of error provides personal gain for the entrepreneur, does this process automatically allocate value equitably among all stakeholders? We argue that the entrepreneurial process can be used to generate or maintain an entrepreneur’s personal wealth through the exploitation of a stakeholder group. Thus entrepreneurship can be both an equilibrating and a disequilibrating process and that both the visible hand of government and the decisions of an entrepreneur can speed or slow our movement toward value equilibrium. Speed toward value (...) equilibrium is likely to be important to a victimized stakeholder group and deserves further scholarly attention. (shrink)

Individual bacterial cells can communicate via quorum sensing, cooperate to harvest nutrients from their environment, form multicellular biofilms, compete over resources and even kill one another. When the environment that bacteria inhabit is an animal host, these social behaviours mediate virulence. Over the last decade, much attention has focussed on the ecology, evolution and pathology of bacterial cooperation, and the possibility that it could be exploited or destabilised to treat infections. But how far can we really extrapolate from theoretical predictions (...) and laboratory experiments to make inferences about ‘cooperative’ behaviours in hosts and reservoirs? To determine the likely importance and evolution of cooperation ‘in the wild’, several questions must be addressed. A recent paper that reports the dynamics of bacterial cooperation and virulence in a field experiment provides an excellent nucleus for bringing together key empirical and theoretical results which help us to frame – if not completely to answer – these questions. (shrink)

Alexander’s conquest of Persia transformed the way he ruled, with aspects of Achaemenid monarchy becoming prominent. In general, historians have focused on instances of deliberate engagement with Achaemenid practices, leading to the impression that this change resulted from conscious imitation. Here, I nuance this view, arguing that the gradual adoption of aspects of Achaemenid royal space played a pivotal role in transforming Alexander’s monarchy. This approach shifts our focus away from Alexander himself, placing his reign in a wider context, while (...) also demonstrating how space can act as a conduit for cultural interchange. (shrink)

Originally published in 1904, this book discusses the fundamental importance of education and theories of education within the works of Erasmus. Beginning with an outline of the life and characteristics of Erasmus, the text moves through his educational aims, ideas on the beginnings of the educational process and conception of the liberal arts. The second part of the text presents four extracts from the writings of Erasmus which express his views on education. Apart from a short chapter from De Conscribendis (...) Epistolis, which is given in Latin with English headings, these extracts are all translated into English. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Erasmus and the historical development of education. (shrink)

Psychologists can learn from the procedural conventions of experimental economics. But the rationale for those conventions must be examined and understood lest they become constraints. Field referents and the choice of heuristic, matter for behavior. This theme unites the fields of experimental psychology and experimental economics by the simple fact that the object of study in both cases is the same.

This brief study employs Lacan's theory about the self and about the way that our self-image is constituted to highlight some crucial differences between one important Roman Catholic philosophical religious anthropology and one interpretation of the Theravāda Buddhist theory of anattā. It concludes that one persuaded of Lacanian theory would be likely to regard the Roman Catholic model of personal-identity as fostering a particularly tenacious and dangerous illusion, while being likely to view the Theravādan philosophy more favourably, regarding it as (...) encouraging a similar process of ego-deconstruction to that available within Lacanian psychoanalysis. (shrink)