Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy is a depressing read. He writes many pages about how suffering is the norm, and any happiness we feel is merely a temporary alleviation of suffering. Even so, his account of suffering rings true to many readers. What are we to do with our lives if Schopenhauer is right, and we are doomed to suffer? In this paper, I use William James’ pragmatic method to find practical implications of Schopenhauer’s pessimism. I provide a model for how we (...) are to live our lives in a suffering world, a model that provides means to reduce suffering. (shrink)

Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy is a depressing read. He writes many pages about how suffering is the norm, and any happiness we feel is merely a temporary alleviation of suffering. Even so, his account of suffering rings true to many readers. What are we to do with our lives if Schopenhauer is right, and we are doomed to suffer? In this paper, I use William James’ pragmatic method to find practical implications of Schopenhauer’s pessimism. I provide a model for how we (...) are to live our lives in a suffering world, a model that provides means to reduce suffering. (shrink)

As social media becomes increasingly popular, human subjects researchers are able to use these platforms to locate, track, and communicate with study participants, thereby increasing participant retention and the generalizability and validity of research. The use of social media; however, raises novel ethical and regulatory issues that have received limited attention in the literature and federal regulations. We review research ethics and regulations and outline the implications for maintaining participant privacy, respecting participant autonomy, and promoting researcher transparency when using social (...) media to locate and track participants. We offer a rubric that can be used in future studies to determine ethical and regulation-consistent use of social media platforms and illustrate the rubric using our study team’s experience with Facebook. We also offer recommendations for both researchers and institutional review boards that emphasize the importance of well-described procedures for social media use as... (shrink)

A probability distribution is regular if it does not assign probability zero to any possible event. While some hold that probabilities should always be regular, three counter-arguments have been posed based on examples where, if regularity holds, then perfectly similar events must have different probabilities. Howson and Benci et al. have raised technical objections to these symmetry arguments, but we see here that their objections fail. Howson says that Williamson’s “isomorphic” events are not in fact isomorphic, but Howson is speaking (...) of set-theoretic representations of events in a probability model. While those sets are not isomorphic, Williamson’s physical events are, in the relevant sense. Benci et al. claim that all three arguments rest on a conflation of different models, but they do not. They are founded on the premise that similar events should have the same probability in the same model, or in one case, on the assumption that a single rotation-invariant distribution is possible. Having failed to refute the symmetry arguments on such technical grounds, one could deny their implicit premises, which is a heavy cost, or adopt varying degrees of instrumentalism or pluralism about regularity, but that would not serve the project of accurately modelling chances. (shrink)

Childhood scholars have found that age inequality can be as profound an axis of meaningful difference as race, gender, or class, and yet the impact of this understanding has not permeated the discipline of sociology as a whole. This is one particularly stark example of the central argument of this article: despite decades of empirical and theoretical work by scholars in “the social studies of childhood,” sociologists in general have not incorporated the central contributions of this subfield: that children are (...) active social agents (not passive), knowing actors strategizing within their constraints (not innocent), with their capacities and challenges shaped by their contexts (not universally the same). I contend that mainstream sociology’s relative imperviousness has led to theoretical costs for both childhood scholars—who must re-assert and re-prove the core insights of the field—and sociologists in general. Using three core theoretical debates in the larger discipline—about independence, insecurity, and inequality—I argue that children’s perspectives can help scholars ask new questions, render the invisible visible, and break through theoretical logjams. Thus would further research utilizing children’s perspectives and the dynamics of age extend the explanatory power of social theory. (shrink)

Recent work has defended “Euclidean” theories of set size, in which Cantor’s Principle (two sets have equally many elements if and only if there is a one-to-one correspondence between them) is abandoned in favor of the Part-Whole Principle (if A is a proper subset of B then A is smaller than B). It has also been suggested that Gödel’s argument for the unique correctness of Cantor’s Principle is inadequate. Here we see from simple examples, not that Euclidean theories of set (...) size are wrong, but that they must be either very weak and narrow or largely arbitrary and misleading. (shrink)

The puzzle of petitionary prayer: if we ask for the best thing, God was already going to do it, and if we ask for something that's not the best, God's not going to grant our request. In this paper, we give a new solution to the puzzle.

Recently, bioethicists and the UNCRPD have advocated for supported medical decision-making on behalf of patients with intellectual disabilities. But what does supported decision-making really entail? One compelling framework is Anita Silvers and Leslie Francis’ mental prosthesis account, which envisions supported decision-making as a process in which trustees act as mere appendages for the patient’s will; the trustee provides the cognitive tools the patient requires to realize her conception of her own good. We argue that supported decision-making would be better understood (...) as a collaborative process, giving patients with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to make decisions in a respectful relationship with trusted others. We offer an alternative account of supported decision-making where the primary constraint is to protect the patient from domination by the trustee. This is advantageous in its preservation of the prospects for genuine collaboration, for the mental prosthesis approach ultimately reinforces a problematic ideal of isolated patient self-determination. (shrink)

Newton published his deduction of universal gravity in Principia (first ed., 1687). To establish the universality (the particle-to-particle nature) of gravity, Newton must establish the additivity of mass. I call ‘additivity’ the property a body's quantity of matter has just in case, if gravitational force is proportional to that quantity, the force can be taken to be the sum of forces proportional to each particle's quantity of matter. Newton's argument for additivity is obscure. I analyze and assess manuscript versions of (...) Newton's initial argument within his initial deduction, dating from early 1685. Newton's strategy depends on distinguishing two quantities of matter, which I call ‘active’ and ‘passive’, by how they are measured. These measurement procedures frame conditions on the additivity of each quantity so measured. While Newton has direct evidence for the additivity of passive quantity of matter, he does not for that of the active quantity. Instead, he tries to infer the latter from the former via conceptual analyses of the third law of motion grounded largely on analogies to magnetic attractions. The conditions needed to establish passive additivity frustrate Newton's attempted inference to active additivity. (shrink)

Ethics and Organizations provides a rich and valuable overview of an increasingly important issue for management and organizations in contemporary society. Debates about equal opportunities, environmental responsibility, consumer redress, and corporate governance have given ethics a prominent place in the study of organizations in their social and natural environments. Within the organization, new management styles that seek to energize employees by manipulating their beliefs have highlighted the moral-ethical principles at issue in contemporary management. At the same time, debates around postmodernism (...) and relativism have moved ethics to a new centrality in contemporary social theory. This volume addresses the questions that these and other developments raise for the study of management and organizations, from a multidisciplinary perspective. Ethics and Organizations will be invaluable to advanced-level students and academics engaged in analyzing the moral, political, and ethical dimensions of organization theory and organizational practice. (shrink)

Is conceptual engineering feasible? Answering that question requires a theory of semantic change, which is sometimes thought elusive. Fortunately, much is known about semantic change as it occurs in the wild. While usage is chaotic and complex, changes in a word’s use can produce changes in its meaning. There are several under-appreciated empirical constraints on how meanings change that stem from the following observation: word use finely reflects equilibrium between various communicative pressures. Much of the relevant work in linguistics has (...) employed the methods of empirical pragmatics and diachronic semantics. In this way, the study of meaning change can be brought to bear on the conceptual engineer’s normative project. The picture that emerges tells against the sorts of engineering projects most likely to appeal to philosophers. Some may stand to succeed, but they have significantly different contours than the typical ones. (shrink)

This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can share to benefit others.

This book offers a fresh framework for the historical understanding of revolutions and ideas about revolution.

Burnout among health professionals is at epidemic proportions. In response, many health institutions have emphasised the importance of self-care, relying particularly on the idea that doctors who are burned out provide worse care for their patients. Although not made explicit, this suggests that doctors might have a responsibility to their patients (and perhaps others) to practice self-care. This chapter explores the potential grounds for such an obligation. We suggest that while there is potential for a limited obligation of self-care, institutional (...) emphasis on this risks instrumentalising doctors' well-being, minimising institutional responsibilities and workers' rights, and being excessively demanding for individuals. (shrink)

There’s a common line of reasoning which supposes that the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is grounded in a mind-like simple subject. To the contrary, Mādhyamika Buddhist philosophers like Śrīgupta (seventh–eighth century) argue that any kind of mental simple is incoherent and thus metaphysically impossible. Lacking any unifying principle, the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is instead an unfounded illusion. In this paper, I present an analysis of Śrīgupta’s "neither-one-nor-many argument" against mental simples and show how his line of reasoning (...) is driven by a set of implicit questions concerning the nature of and relation between consciousness and its intentional object. These questions not only set the agenda for centuries of intra-Buddhist debate on the topic, but they are also questions to which any defender of unified consciousness or a simple subject of experience arguably owes responses. (shrink)

Animalism in its basic form is the view that we are animals. Whether it is a thesis about anything else – like what the conditions of our persistence through time are or whether we're wholly material things – depends on the facts about the persistence conditions and ontology of animals. Thus, I will argue, there are different varieties of animalism, differing with respect to which other theses are taken in conjunction with animalism in its basic form. The different varieties of (...) animalism vary in credibility: some varieties are supported by arguments that are irrelevant to others, and some varieties are susceptible to objections that others can resist. Adequately distinguishing between varieties of animalism is thus an important preliminary to assessing them. In this paper, I'll present and argue for a taxonomy of the most distinctive varieties. (shrink)

This book takes the discursive and postmodern turn in psychotherapy a significant step forward and will be of interest to all those working in mental health who want to work wiht clients in ways that will facilitate challenges to oppression and processes of emancipation. It achieves this by: · reflecting on the role of psychotherapy in contemporary culture · developing critiques of language in psychotherapy that unravel its claims to personal truth · the reworking of a place in the transforative (...) therapeutic practice Deconstruction is brought to bear on the key conceptual and pragmatic issues that therapists and clinical psychologists face, and the project of therapy is opened up to critical attention and reconstruction. The book provides clear reviews of different viewpoints and will help readers to orient themselves on the complex terrain of debates. (shrink)

Arguments in environmental ethics often appeal to information from environmental science, such as information about the causes of environmental problems. Contemporary work in philosophy of science can shed light on the practice of environmental science as well as some of the challenges it faces. This chapter surveys some of this work, focusing on three interrelated topics: the nature of scientific evidence, including connections with uncertainty and consensus; the use and evaluation of scientific models; and values and objectivity in scientific practice. (...) A better understanding of these topics can help to ensure that scientific information is used appropriately and effectively in ethical argumentation. (shrink)

What is citizenship? -- What are choices? -- Choosing to think for yourself -- Choosing to say no -- Choosing to be friendly -- Choosing to be fair -- Choosing what to eat -- Choosing to spend or save money -- Choosing entertainment -- Choosing to be active -- Choosing to follow the rules -- Choosing to tell the truth -- Making choices and happiness.

A passage in Eunapius (476–7, pp. 440–2 Loeb) draws an interesting contrast between the attitudes to divination of the two sophists Maximus and Chrysanthius: Maximus, who manipulates the omens until they say what he wants, and Chrysanthius, who scrupulously obeys their apparent meaning. But a passage a little later (500–1, pp. 542–4 Loeb) apparently ascribes to Chrysanthius the opposite attitude. This article suggests a transposition to restore coherence to the text. Even if the transposition is wrong, the contrast drawn in (...) the first passage between two attitudes to divination, one rigorous and literalist, one manipulative, is important. (shrink)

Realizing the benefits of translating psychiatric genomics research into mental health care is not straightforward. The translation process gives rise to ethical challenges that are distinctive from challenges posed within psychiatric genomics research itself, or that form part of the delivery of clinical psychiatric genetics services. This article outlines and considers three distinct ethical concerns posed by the process of translating genomic research into frontline psychiatric practice and policy making. First, the genetic essentialism that is commonly associated with the genomics (...) revolution in health care might inadvertently exacerbate stigma towards people with mental disorders. Secondly, the promises of genomic medicine advance a narrative of individual empowerment. This narrative could promote a fatalism towards patients' biology in ways that function in practice to undermine patients' agency and autonomy, or, alternatively, a heightened sense of subjective genetic responsibility could become embedded within mental health services that leads to psychosocial therapeutic approaches and the clinician-patient therapeutic alliance being undermined. Finally, adopting a genomics-focused approach to public mental health risks shifting attention away from the complex causal relationships between inequitable socio-economic, political, and cultural structures and negative mental health outcomes. The article concludes by outlining a number of potential pathways for future ethics research that emphasizes the importance of examining appropriate translation mechanisms, the complementarity between genetic and psychosocial models of mental disorder, the implications of genomic information for the clinician-patient relationship, and funding priorities and resource allocation decision making in mental health. (shrink)

This chapter presents an overview of the life, work, and philosophical contributions of Śāntarakṣita (c. 725–788), who is known for his synthesis of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka with elements of the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti tradition of logic and epistemology. His two most important independent treatises, the Compendium of True Principles (Tattvasaṃgraha) and the Ornament of the Middle Way (Madhyamakālaṃkāra), are characterized by an emphasis on the indispensable role of rational analysis on the Buddhist path as well as serious and systematic engagement with competing Buddhist (...) and non-Buddhist schools of thought. Śāntarakṣita employs a pedagogical-rhetorical device of provisionally adopting what he deems to be successively more rational views to reject less rational ones. Using this approach, in the Ornament of the Middle Way, he recommends a gradual path to arrive at an understanding of the Madhyamaka ultimate truth by incorporating Yogācāra idealist ontology into his presentation of conventional truth. In this same text, he presents an influential iteration of the neither-one-nor-many argument for the Madhyamaka ultimate truth, the emptiness of intrinsic nature—i.e., the universal negation of ontologically independent being—leaving a lasting and significant impact on both Indian and Tibetan Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy. (shrink)

This paper defends a hylomorphic version of animalism according to which human persons survive as immaterial, bodiless animals after death. According to the hylomorphism under consideration, human persons have souls that survive death, and according to the animalism under consideration, human persons are necessarily animals. One might think this implies that human persons don't survive their deaths since if they were to survive their deaths, they would be immaterial animals after death, but necessarily animals are material. This paper shows that (...) the hylomorphic animalist can overcome this problem in a way that respects the intuition that animals are material. In addition, the paper defends the hylomorphic animalist survivalist from the objection that her view introduces an insoluble mereological puzzle. (shrink)

Canonical defenders of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), such as Leibniz and Spinoza, are metaphysical foundationalists of one stripe or another. This is curious since the PSR—which says that everything has a ground, cause, or explanation—in effect, denies fundamental entities. In this paper, I explore the apparent inconsistency between metaphysical foundationalism and approaches to metaphysical system building that are driven by a commitment to the PSR. I do so by analyzing how Indian Buddhist philosophers arrive at foundationalist and anti-foundationalist (...) positions motivated by implicit commitments to different versions of the PSR. I begin by introducing the Buddhist principle of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) as a proto-PSR that is restricted to causal explanation. Next, I show how Vasubandhu’s Sautrāntika Abhidharma metaphysics is shaped by a qualified commitment to both causal and metaphysical grounding versions of the PSR. I then reveal how Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka metaphysics is driven by an unrestricted and exceptionless commitment to causal and metaphysical grounding versions of the PSR. Finally, I consider how Nāgārjuna’s account may put him in a unique position to respond to a common contemporary objection to the PSR from necessitarianism. I conclude by addressing a competing interpretation on which Nāgārjuna is best understood as an anti-rationalist rather than an uber-rationalist, as I characterize him. (shrink)

According to Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophers, everything depends for its existence on something else. But what would a world devoid of fundamentalia look like? In this paper, I argue that the anti-foundationalist “neither-one-nor-many argument” of the Indian Mādhyamika Śrīgupta commits him to a position I call “metaphysical indefinitism.” I demonstrate how this view follows from Śrīgupta’s rejection of mereological simples and ontologically independent being, when understood in light of his account of conventional reality. Contra recent claims in the secondary literature, I (...) clarify how the Madhyamaka metaphysical dependence structure is not a straightforward infinitism since it does not honor strict asymmetry or transitivity. Instead, its dependence relations are irreflexive and extendable, admitting of dependence chains of indefinite (though not actually infinite) length and dependence loops of non-zero length. Yet, the flexible ontology of Śrīgupta's Madhyamaka can accommodate a contextualist account of asymmetry and support a revisable theory of conventional truth, delivering significant payoffs for the view, including the capacity to accommodate developments in scientific explanation. (shrink)

Julian Savulescu argues for two principles of reproductive ethics: reproductive autonomy and procreative beneficence, where the principle of procreative beneficence is conceptualised in terms of a duty to have the child, of the possible children that could be had, who will have the best opportunity of the best life. Were it to be accepted, this principle would have significant implications for the ethics of reproductive choice and, in particular, for the use of prenatal testing and other reproductive technologies for the (...) avoidance of disability, and for enhancement. In this paper, it is argued that this principle should be rejected, and it is concluded that while potential parents do have important obligations in relation to the foreseeable lives of their future children, these obligations are not best captured in terms of a duty to have the child with the best opportunity of the best life. (shrink)

Śrīgupta, a Buddhist philosopher in the Middle Way tradition, was born in Bengal in present-day India in the seventh century. He is best known for his Introduction to Reality with its accompanying auto-commentary,1 in which he presents the first Middle Way iteration of the influential "neither-one-nor-many argument."2 This antifoundationalist line of reasoning sets out to prove that nothing enjoys ontologically independent being.Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born some one thousand years later, in the city of Leipzig, situated on the outskirts of (...) European learning and thought. He is best known today for having co-invented the infinitesimal calculus, for his... (shrink)

On a basic level, "cyberpsychology" refers to the comparison of the mind with different kinds of machines. This multidisciplinary collection brings together essays by leading psychologists and cultural theorists working in the spheres of technology and psychology to explore links between popular culture, technoscience, feminism and politics. Tracing historical and contemporary lines of argument around the fascination between different forms of psychological and machine culture, contributors articulate "cyberpsychological" reflections on contemporary crises in psychology with emerging technologies of the self. The (...) volume offers challenging perspectives and insights to anyone interested in the connections between psychology and technological developments in the information age. (shrink)

This accessible text introduces social theory as a set of flexible and practical concepts that can be used to reflect on and make sense of social behavior. It encourages the reader to critically assess social explanations and to construct their own as active theorists in their own right. Drawing on examples chosen to appeal to a wide, international student readership, it offers a resolutely straightforward, practical and student-centered approach to theory, avoiding the heavy emphasis on individual theorists and the often (...) difficult language of many existing texts. (shrink)

The fifteen essays, written by such eminent scholars as Derrida, Heidegger, Deleuze, Klossowski, and Blanchot, focus on the Nietzschean concepts of the Will to ...

The ‘Ordinary Language’ philosophy of the early 20th century is widely thought to have failed. It is identified with the broader so-called ‘linguistic turn’, a common criticism of which is captured by Devitt and Sterelny (1999), who quip: “When the naturalistic philosopher points his finger at reality, the linguistic philosopher discusses the finger.” (p 280) The implication is that according to ‘linguistic’ philosophy, we are not to study reality or truth or morality etc, but the meaning of the words ‘reality’, (...) ‘truth’, ‘morality’ etc. Ordinary Language philosophy has fallen so thoroughly into disrepute because it is supposed to advocate that not only are we to study words and meanings rather than the phenomena themselves (which is apparently bad enough), but we must restrict that study to words and meanings as they occur in the language used by the ordinary speaker. A number of preposterous corollaries have been taken to follow from this view. Most seriously, perhaps, and irritatingly, is that any theory which contains ‘non-ordinary’ uses of expressions is thereby ‘meaningless’ or simply false – which is clearly absurd. In this paper I show that this is a completely inaccurate picture of Ordinary Language philosophy. My aim is to correct these persistent misinterpretations, and make possible a more sensible reassessment of the philosophy. (shrink)

The practice of medicine frequently involves the unconsented restriction of liberty. The reasons for unilateral liberty restrictions are typically that being confined, strapped down, or sedated are necessary to prevent the person from harming themselves or others. In this paper, we target the ethics of chemical restraints, which are medications that are used to intentionally restrict the mental states associated with the unwanted behaviors, and are typically not specifically indicated for the condition for which the patient is being treated. Specifically, (...) we aim to identify the conditions under which chemical restraints are ethically permissible. It is wrong to assume that what is morally true of physical restraints is also true of chemical restraints. Our aim is thus to identify the conditions under which chemical restraints are permissible while distinguishing these conditions from those of the application of physical restraints. (shrink)

When I classify Fluffy as a cat, I appear to do so out of an appreciation of a prior metaphysical fact, namely, that she has a nature or essence common to creatures we classify as cats. Locke turns this picture on its head. Our actual practices of naming and sorting individuals into kinds proceed according to ideas in the mind. As Locke puts it, species (kinds) are ‘the Workmanship of the Understanding,’ not the workmanship of nature, because their essences consist (...) in abstract ideas, or ‘nominal essences,’ we make. Many take Locke to mean that the observable similarities and differences between things leave it undetermined how we are to group and distinguish them, so that classification is, and must be, a matter of convention. And while Locke never denies that individuals have real essences, it is argued that knowledge of them would not reveal natural boundaries, either. On this influential reading, nature does not draw boundaries between kinds, and she makes this fact apparent to us. I argue that Locke’s claim that nature does not determine the ‘Boundaries of the Species of Things’ should be understood as the claim that nature does not draw the variable boundaries set out in the nominal essences we make. Differences in our nominal essences reflect differences in speakers’ knowledge of external ‘standards,’ which we latch on to by way of their ‘leading’ qualities, which present the mind with a limited number of unique and highly salient bases for classification. On my reading, nature may very well draw boundaries of her own. (shrink)

Making decisions with an, often significant, element of risk seems to be an integral part of many of the projects of the diverse profession of engineering. Whether it be decisions about the design of products, manufacturing processes, public works, or developing technological solutions to environmental, social and global problems, risk taking seems inherent to the profession. Despite this, little attention has been paid to the topic and specifically to how our understanding of engineering as a distinctive profession might affect how (...) we should make decisions under risk. This paper seeks to remedy this, firstly by offering a nuanced account of risk and then by considering how specific claims about our understanding of engineering as a social profession, with corresponding social values and obligations, should inform how we make decisions about risk in this context. (shrink)

This book explores the thinking of philosophers and theologians about controversies concerning animal consciousness and animal rights. The special contribution of the book is a presentation of Bernard Lonergan's theory about consciousness and the operations of the mind. The author tests this theory against present-day research with apes.