Professor Donaldson in his book Corporations and Morality has attempted to use a social contract theory to develop moral principles for regulating corporate conduct. I argue in this paper that his attempt fails in large measure because what he refers to as a social contract theory is, in fact, a weak functionalist theory which provides no independent basis for evaluating business corporations. I further argue that given the nature of a morality based on contract and the nature of the modern (...) corporation, it is highly unlikely that any plausible contract theory of business ethics can be developed. (shrink)

The chapters of Judith Butler's Giving an Account of Oneself originally were given as the Spinoza Lectures for the Department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam in the spring of 2002. In this work, Butler returns to the problem of subjectivity and subject formation, but this time in the context of ethics and ethical philosophy. Pulling together ethical considerations and theories of the self from authors including Nietzsche, Foucault, Adorno, and Levinas, Butler deftly and successfully decenters and refocuses ethical (...) analysis by claiming that the subject is not the ground for ethics but rather the problem for ethics. Central to this thesis is the claim that the self is inherently relational, and emerges .. (shrink)

This text gives business students a sense that problems of business policy can be resolved, in part, by ideas from philosophy, social theory, and law. It enables students to view ethical principles as a response to an evolving set of problems related to harmonizing values in a pluralistic society.

This book integrates insights from philosophy, gender studies, political theory, and media studies to present an in depth analysis of masculinity politics in contemporary U.S. culture. While primarily a philosophical work, this book also creates a discussion committed to feminist theory and progressive gender politics.

The present study investigated the construct validity of the Test Anxiety Questionnaire, a revised and shortened version of the German Test Anxiety Inventory, by comparing it with math anxiety. A sample of German fifth- and sixth-grade students was analyzed. Math anxiety was measured by a German adaptation of the Math Anxiety Questionnaire. A significant but moderate correlation between test anxiety and math anxiety was found. In regression analyses, math anxiety predicted math performance whereas test anxiety explained additional variance for both (...) math and overall performance. It can be concluded that math and test anxiety have overlaps, but do not constitute the same construct. Thus, the results support the construct validity of the PAF indicating its usefulness in practical application. (shrink)

2. Daugman, J. G. Brain metaphor and brain theory 3. Mundale, J. Neuroanatomical Foundations of Cognition: Connecting the Neuronal Level with the Study of Higher Brain Areas.

An impressive body of recent literature posits that traditional notions of civil disobedience prevent us from properly considering potentially legitimate types of ‘uncivil’ political lawbreaking. When might uncivil (covert, legally evasive, morally offensive and potentially violent) lawbreaking prove normatively acceptable? If justifiable, what conditions should its practitioners be reasonably expected to meet? Despite some important insights, defenders of uncivil disobedience rely on a narrow and sometimes misleading view of civil disobedience, as previously practiced and theorized. Notwithstanding legitimate skepticism about Rawlsian (...) notions of civil disobedience, they reproduce its troublesome binary or ‘all-or-nothing’ view of political lawbreaking. Uncivil disobedience’s proponents tend to group a vast array of distinctive types of lawbreaking under one amorphous categorical rubric, impeding the suitably complex, nuanced analysis we need. A superior approach would pay careful attention to uncivil disobedience’s ambivalent historical record, a record suggesting that UD is more likely to reproduce authoritarian populism’s disturbing political logic than counteract it. (shrink)

This book analyzes the support that should be given to minority views, reconsidering classic debates in Science and Technology Studies and examining numerous case studies.

Taking reduction in the traditional deductive sense, the programmatic claim that most of genetics can be reduced by molecular genetics is defended as feasible and significant. Arguments by Ruse and Hull that either the relationship is replacement or at best a weaker form of reduction are shown to rest on a mixture of historical and logical confusions about the nature of the theories involved.

Modern professionals wield considerable power by virtue of their knowledge. However, they also feel beleaguered by the constraints they face and the public disapproval they often experience. These pressures combine to diminish the professional's sense of public responsibility and convert him or her in self-perception to a careerist.

Kit Fine’s logic of essence and his reduction of modality crucially rely on a principle called the ‘monotonicity of essence’. This principle says that for all pluralities, xx and yy, if some xx belong to some yy, then if it is essential to xx that p, it is also essential to yy that p. I argue that on the constitutive notion of essence, this principle is false. In particular, I show that this principle is false because it says that some (...) propositions are essential to yy even though those propositions are only about some of its members. I then consider modifications to the principle appealing to consequential essence and argue that such a modification is inconsistent with a central. (shrink)

Discussion of the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial civilization (ETC) is active on Earth today, is taboo in academia, but the assumptions behind this taboo are faulty. Advances in biology have rendered the notion that complex life is rare in our Galaxy improbable. The objection that no ETC would come to Earth to hide from us does not consider all possible alien motives or means. For an advanced ETC, the convergent instrumental goals of all rational agents – (...) self-preservation and the acquisition of resources – would support the objectives of removing existential threats and gathering strategic and non-strategic information. It could advance these objectives by proactively gathering information about and from inhabited planets, concealing itself while doing so, and terminating potential rivals before they become too dangerous. Other hypotheses of ETC behavior, including the zoo/interdict hypothesis and the dark forest hypothesis, also undercut the objection that the ETH is highly improbable. The ETH does not require support from extraordinary evidence because the presence of an ETC on Earth is not highly unlikely and would overturn none of our well-tested scientific knowledge. The fact that most reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) have natural or human explanations does not count against it. Inference to the best explanation offers a way to find evidence for this hypothesis, and some evidence for it exists, some of it taking the form of reliable witness reports. The most plausible alternative explanation for some UAP reports declines in probability over time. A hypothesis that is not highly improbable, does not contradict any well-established facts or theories, and explains otherwise unexplained evidence is a rational hypothesis. Since the ETH is a rational hypothesis, investigation of it should not be taboo. (shrink)

The disjunction problem and the distality problem each presents a challenge that any theory of mental content must address. Here we consider their bearing on purely probabilistic causal theories. In addition to considering these problems separately, we consider a third challenge—that a theory must solve both. We call this “the hard problem.” We consider 8 basic ppc theories along with 240 hybrids of them, and show that some can handle the disjunction problem and some can handle the distality problem, but (...) none can handle the hard problem. This is our main result. We then discuss three possible responses to that result, and argue that though the first two fail, the third has some promise. (shrink)

Assume [Formula: see text]. Let [Formula: see text] be a [Formula: see text] equivalence relation coded in [Formula: see text]. [Formula: see text] has an ordinal definable equivalence class without any ordinal definable elements if and only if [Formula: see text] is unpinned. [Formula: see text] proves [Formula: see text]-class section uniformization when [Formula: see text] is a [Formula: see text] equivalence relation on [Formula: see text] which is pinned in every transitive model of [Formula: see text] containing the real (...) which codes [Formula: see text]: Suppose [Formula: see text] is a relation on [Formula: see text] such that each section [Formula: see text] is an [Formula: see text]-class, then there is a function [Formula: see text] such that for all [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]. [Formula: see text] proves that [Formula: see text] is Jónsson whenever [Formula: see text] is an ordinal: For every function [Formula: see text], there is an [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text] in bijection with [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

As a clinical geneticist I have been amazed at the speed of discovery over the past 20 years. The specific genetic causes of thousands of rare genetic conditions have been defined due to improvements in genomic sequencing, computing power and international collaborations to phenotype individuals with similar clinical features. This knowledge has resulted in an increased ability to make accurate molecular diagnoses which informs optimal treatment and clinical care, can remove the need for unnecessary investigations and informs reproductive decision-making. However (...) for any given individual, this genetic testing can often take weeks or months before the initial genetic diagnosis is made within a family. Occasionally genetic information is required more quickly to define a clinical action. For years point of care testing (POCT) has been a mainstay of clinical care, for example, in confirming pregnancy or monitoring blood glucose. I had been keen to explore scenarios where a genetic POCT could be employed in clinical practice. To me, an obvious example appeared to be neonatal testing to avoid gentamicin-induced hearing loss. Here was a situation where we had known about the genetic …. (shrink)

Closely related to this are his responses to the so-called Miller-Bode objections, which charged that his philosophy of pure experience could not solve the ...

When I fiddle with my hair, or adjust my posture, it is plausible that these activities fall well below my cognitive radar. Some have argued that these are examples of ‘sub‐intentional actions’, actions which are not intentional under any description at all. If true, they are direct counterexamples to the dominant view on which the difference between actions and other events is their intentionality. In this paper, I argue that the case for sub‐intentional actions fails. Firstly, I show that the (...) main argument for the sub‐intentionality of these actions has a structural fault. Secondly, I argue that two apparently natural ways to remedy this fail. Thirdly, I argue that one of the main arguments for thinking of the phenomena as actions undermines thinking of them as sub‐intentional. Finally, I argue that a natural defensive move for the defender of sub‐intentional actions actually undermines the theoretical significance of the view. Ultimately, my aim is to show that although the case for sub‐intentional actions seemed both simple and compelling, it is in fact deeply troubled. (shrink)

This article updates the author’s 1982 argument that lutetium and lawrencium, rather than lanthanum and actinium, should be assigned to the d-block as the heavier analogs of scandium and yttrium, whereas lanthanum and actinium should be considered as the first members of the f-block with irregular configurations. This update is embedded within a detailed analysis of Lavelle’s abortive 2008 attempt to discredit this suggestion.

The simple systems methodology is a powerful reductionistic research strategy. It has problems as implemented in developmental genetics because the organisms studied are few and unrepresentative. Stronger inferences require independent arguments that key traits are widely distributed phylogenetically. Evolutionary and developmental mechanisms of generative entrenchment and self-organization provide possible support, and are also necessary components of a developmental systems approach.

For much of 2021, allocating the scarce supply of Covid‐19 vaccines was the world's most pressing bioethical challenge, and similar challenges may recur for novel therapies and future vaccines. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) identified three fundamental ethical principles to guide the process: maximize benefits, promote justice, and mitigate health inequities. We argue that critical components of the recommended protocol were internally inconsistent with these principles. Specifically, the ACIP (...) violated its principles by recommending overly broad health care worker priority in phase 1a, using being at least seventy‐five years of age as the only criterion to identify individuals at high risk of death from Covid‐19 during phase 1b, failing to recommend place‐based vaccine distribution, and implicitly endorsing first‐come, first‐served allocation. More rigorous empirical work and the development of a complete ethical framework that recognizes trade‐offs between principles may have prevented these mistakes and saved lives. (shrink)

A response to a recent critique by Cem Bozşahin of the theory of syntactic semantics as it applies to Helen Keller, and some applications of the theory to the philosophy of computer science.

In “Abortion and Ownership” John Martin Fischer argues that in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist case you have a moral obligation not to unplug yourself from the violinist. Fischer comes to this conclusion by comparing the case with Joel Feinberg’s cabin case, in which he contends a stranger is justified in using your cabin to stay alive. I argue that the relevant difference between these cases is that while the stranger’s right to life trumps your right to property in the cabin (...) case, the violinist’s right to life does not trump your right to liberty in the violinist case. (shrink)

Discusses the problems that surround the developing science of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This title introduces and clarifies the basic concepts for understanding these problems and also discusses opposing views and possible solutions. It describes the kinds of research that seem to improve our understanding of the mechanisms of intelligence.

Although the commentary on Aristotle’s problematic discussion of slavery is vast, his discussion of nobility receives little attention. The fragments of his dialogue On Noble Birth constitute his most extensive examination of nobility, and while their similarity to the παμβασιλεύς of the Politics has recently been recognized, their relevance to natural slavery has hitherto gone unnoticed. Yet by declaring that true nobles – particularly the god-like ἀρχηγός – preternaturally possess superhuman characteristics, Aristotle precludes their easy inclusion in the kind “human” (...) in a manner inversely mirroring the preternatural subhumanity of natural slaves. Building on recent scholarship which argues that Aristotle’s “defense” of natural slaves is better understood as an indictment, On Noble Birth becomes most coherent if read as a hypothetical investigation into what would be required for “nobility” to name something true rather than equivocal, with the conclusion that “true nobility” is an empty set. (shrink)