As the price of pharmaceuticals and biologicals rises so does the number of patients who cannot afford them. In this article, we argue that physicians have a moral duty to help patients access affordable medicines. We offer three grounds to support our argument: (i) the aim of prescribing is to improve health and well-being which can only be realized with secure access to treatment; (ii) there is no morally significant difference between medicines being unavailable and medicines being unaffordable, so the (...) steps physicians are willing to take in the first case should extend to the second; and (iii) as the primary stakeholder with a duty to put the individual patient’s interests first, the medical professional has a duty to address cost-barriers to patient care. In articulating this duty, we take account of important epistemic and control conditions that must be met for the attribution of this duty to be justified. (shrink)

How is women’s conception of self affected by the caregiving responsibilities traditionally assigned to them and by the personal vulnerabilities imposed on them? If institutions of male dominance profoundly influence women’s lives and minds, how can women form judgments about their own best interests and overcome oppression? Can feminist politics survive in face of the diversity of women’s experience, which is shaped by race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, as well as by gender? Exploring such questions, leading feminist thinkers have (...) reinvigorated work on the concept of self and personal identity, as demonstrated by the discussions in this insightful volume.The concerns that animate feminist scholarship have prompted feminist philosophers to sideline the theme of individualism and to focus on the theme of intersubjectivity. In conceptualizing the self, the contributors to this volume highlight emotional bonds among people, the stories people tell one another, and the systems of categories and behavioral norms that unite and divide groups of people. Topics addressed include sexual violence and the self, the social self and autonomy, the narrative self and integrity, self-ownership and the body, forgetting yourself and your race, group membership and personal identity, grief and gender, sympathy and women’s diversity, emotion and emancipatory epistemology, and dependency and justice. This volume will be important reading for students of feminist theory, ethics, and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

The possibility of extraction across awh-island is usually assumed to be dependent on whether or not the constituent in question can undergo “long” (i.e., nonlocal) Ā-movement across the island. However, the question of how to make a principled distinction between those elements which can violate locality and those which cannot is still rather controversial. I will propose that there are no well-formed locality violations in these cases, and that the grammaticality patterns observed derive from a semantic filter on the escape (...) hatch used to bypass the island. In other words, if a phrase is extracted across awh-island, it must adjoin to the island in order to get by. This adjunction site is restricted by the interpretive component: only traces which are interpreted as variables of typee can occur in this position, while higher-order variables are not allowed. This restriction is shown to capture the known facts aboutwh-island violations, as well as some less known phenomena, such as the absence of functional (and pair-list) readings acrosswh-islands. (shrink)

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This book tackles how and why 'landscape' (farms, gardens, countryside) set the scene in the first centuries BCE and CE for Romans keen to talk up and about (but also to scrutinize and understand) what it meant to be a citizen. It investigates what 'landscape' means now and reflects upon how contemporary approaches to 'landscape' can enrich our understanding of ancient experience of the interface between natural and artificial space. It encourages examination of 'landscape' from a range of angles, suggesting (...) alternative ways of thinking about what landscape represents. These methodological approaches (presented initially via a set of key terms and definitions and then deployed thematically across four chapters), combined with a detailed interdisciplinary bibliography and a series of case studies of literary texts and material sites, enable readers to use this survey as a starting point for developing their own in-depth study. (shrink)

According to the standard view, the function of the unlimited dunamis argument (Physics VIII.10, Metaphysics Λ.7 1073a5–11) is to introduce a new property of the first immovable mover, namely its lack of magnitude. The paper challenges this view and argues that the argument at issue serves to prove that the eternal motion of the first heavenly sphere is caused by an immovable mover rather than by a moved mover. Further, the paper shows that, at least in Phys. VIII, the unlimited (...) dunamis argument is the main argument for the immobility of the Prime Mover. (shrink)

The question of what it means to be human has never before been more difficult and more contested. The human, with a complicated social history that his rarely been examined, remains entrenched in traditional Enlightenment thinking. Human, All Too Human considers how we might radicalize our notion of the human. Can the human be thought outside humanism? Any rethinking of the human places us immediately inside an ever-widening field of contrasting labels: animate and inanimate, natural and artificial, living and dead, (...) organic and mechanistic. These and other boundary confusions at the frontier of the human are the subject of this volume, as each essay takes up one of three disputed border identities: animals, things or children. Human, All Too Human examines how we explain our interest in anthropomorphism and our fascination with species categorizations. Essays explore what we mean by "things" and how the integrity of the human may already be compromised by them. The nine essays in this volume all attempt to rethink the category of the human, challenging some of our most cherished cultural classifications. By inviting us to place the traditions subject of knowledge in the unsettling position of object, these writers interrogate the boundary distinctions that, until now, have exempted the human from the vigilant analysis it so urgently requires. Contributors: Nancy Armstrong, Rey Chow, Drucilla Cornell, Diana Fuss, Marjorie Garber, Barbara Johnson, Cora Kaplan, James Kincaid, Harriet Ritvo, David Willis. (shrink)

New Materialisms brings into focus and explains the significance of the innovative materialist critiques that are emerging across the social sciences and humanities. By gathering essays that exemplify the new thinking about matter and processes of materialization, this important collection shows how scholars are reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges. In the introduction, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost highlight common themes among the distinctive critical projects that (...) comprise the new materialisms. The continuities they discern include a posthumanist conception of matter as lively or exhibiting agency, and a reengagement with both the material realities of everyday life and broader geopolitical and socioeconomic structures. Coole and Frost argue that contemporary economic, environmental, geopolitical, and technological developments demand new accounts of nature, agency, and social and political relationships; modes of inquiry that privilege consciousness and subjectivity are not adequate to the task. New materialist philosophies are needed to do justice to the complexities of twenty-first-century biopolitics and political economy, because they raise fundamental questions about the place of embodied humans in a material world and the ways that we produce, reproduce, and consume our material environment. Contributors Sara Ahmed Jane Bennett Rosi Braidotti Pheng Cheah Rey Chow William E. Connolly Diana Coole Jason Edwards Samantha Frost Elizabeth Grosz Sonia Kruks Melissa A. Orlie. (shrink)

This is an in-depth investigation into the life and work of one of the most prominent philosophers of Russian and Russian-Soviet history, Merab Mamardashvili, all of whose ideas are collected here in one book. However, each of his ideas leads much further - deep into philosophy itself, its cultural origins, and to the basis and roots of all human thought.

Meyers examines the question of personal autonomy. She observes the effects of childrearing practices and sexual biases, and reflects upon the results in women. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

There are theoretical and thematic shifts in African spiritual philosophy literature on the meaning of spirituality. On the one hand, traditional conceptions of spirituality are based on the dimensions of transcendence and supernaturalism. Common themes include ritualism, totemism, incantation, ancestorism, reincarnation, destiny, metempsychosis, witchcraft, death, soul, deities, etc. On the other hand, the evolving trend appeals to naturality and immanence. Common themes include sacrality, piety, respectability, relatability, existential gratitude, sacred feminine, etc. This work explores these recent and developing themes. It (...) aims to show that the understanding of spirituality in African modernity is increasingly linked to psychological traits expressed in attitude and behaviour as against traditional understanding that focused on cultural/ religious practices such as ritualism, ancestorism, and deities. The analysis reveals that recent studies link the experience of spirituality with wholeness and interdependence, and a recognition of one’s place in the connective web of other existents in nature. (shrink)

In this paper I consider recent discussions within the representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness, in particular, the discussions between first order representationalism (FOR) and higher order representationalism (HOR). I aim to show that either there is only a terminological dispute between them or, if the discussion is not simply terminological, then HOR is based on a misunderstanding of the phenomena that a theory of phenomenal consciousness should explain. First, I argue that we can defend first order representationalism from Carruthers' attacks (...) and ignore higher order thoughts in our account of phenomenal consciousness. Then I offer a diagnostic of Carruthers' misunderstanding. In the last section I consider further reasons to include mindreading abilities in an explanation of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Diana Lobel takes readers on a journey across Eastern and Western philosophical and religious traditions to discover a beauty and purpose at the heart of reality that makes life worth living. Guided by the ideas of ancient thinkers and the insight of the philosophical historian Pierre Hadot, _The Quest for God and the Good_ treats philosophy not as an abstract, theoretical discipline, but as a living experience. For centuries, human beings have struggled to know why we are here, whether (...) a higher being or dimension exists, and whether our existence is fundamentally good. Above all, we want to know whether the search for God and the good will bring happiness. Following in the path of the ancient philosophers, Lobel directly connects conceptions of God or an Absolute with notions of the good, illuminating diverse classical texts and thinkers. She explores the Bible and the work of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Maimonides, al-Farabi, and al-Ghazali. She reads the _Tao Te Ching_, _I Ching_, _Bhagavad Gita_, and _Upanishads_, as well as the texts of Theravada, Mahayana, and Zen Buddhism, and traces the repercussions of these works in the modern thought of Alfred North Whitehead, Iris Murdoch, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor. While each of these texts and thinkers sets forth a distinct and unique vision, all maintain that human beings find fulfillment in their contact with beauty and purpose. Rather than arriving at one universal definition of God or the good, Lobel demonstrates the aesthetic value of multiple visions presented by many thinkers across cultures. _The Quest for God and the Good_ sets forth a path of investigation and discovery culminating in intellectual and spiritual communion. (shrink)

A moral agent is an individual who is capable of choosing and acting in accordance with judgments about what is right, wrong, good, bad, worthy, or unworthy. Such individuals are thought to be free and hence responsible for what they do. The obstacles to freedom and responsibility raise philosophical problems in regard to moral agency.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE BODY AND THE BLOOD: SACRIFICIAL EXPULSION IN A UREVOIR LES ENFANTS Diana Culbertson Kent State University In Scene 6 ofthe screenplay ofAu Revoir Les Enfants the students are at morning Mass and Father Jean is reading the Gospel: "Truly, truly, I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh ofthe Son ofMan and drink his blood, you will have no life in you." A student with the (...) curiously ironic name of Boulanger ("baker") faints. François comments to his younger brother Julien, "There's nothing to eat... we can't have breakfast before communion." In the back of chapel sit three new students—Bonnet and two other Jewish boys disguised as Christians, protected from the Gestapo by the monks, but prohibited because of their religious identity from Eucharistie communion. Food as scarcity, as plenitude, and as life functions as the signifier ofvalue and of every victim in Louis Malle's unforgettable portrayal of the loss of innocence in the occupied France ofhis childhood. Access to food was access to life in community—both religious and political—and the exchange offood, for what could not be consumed, plunges the small school society into its death. The cause ofthe dissolution of the school society is a failed sacrifice. The farewell to childhood which the title ofthe film suggests is Julien's entry into the world ofviolence and victims, ofmimetic rivalry, ofsacrificial expulsion, and societal destruction. The angle ofperception (Julien Quentin is Malle's quasi-autobiographical alter-ego) lures viewers out their own innocence and shocks theater audiences once again with the implications of all Final Solutions. Three concentric levels identify the communities in dissolution represented in Malle's portrayal: France under the occupying military force, the school administrators and staff, and the pupils in their charge. At each level the Diana Culbertson47 mimetic conflict is at a different state ofsocietal crisis. At the highest level, the German occupation troops and their collaborators represent a moment of Violence Triumphant, a Monstrous divinity who can impose control over the group by terrorizing everyone. This persecutory violence, which has co-opted the judicial system, drives the community of French people into (at least outward) submission and passivity. When the Monster requires victims, the community must consent to offer them. The persecutor's need for victims in this film has its own demonic rationale: "... to rid France of strangers, of Jews," says Müller, the Gestapo officer in one of the final scenes. When persecutory violence is resisted, however, when someone refuses to offer the designatedvictim for expulsion, the unity ofthe submissive society dissolves. Those who will not conform may suffer the violence of those who find their private well being in an alliance with public persecution. Father Jean, director ofthe school where Malle's scenario takes place, is one ofthe instruments ofresistance. Only the other instructors and staff are aware ofhis activities in the French underground. The audience is admitted to his dangerous secret, even as it observes the contrasting immaturity of the students, especially Julien, who cannot bear to leave his mother and is still wetting his bed. When he asks his older brother, "What is a Jew?" he is given the alimentary explanation: "Someone who doesn't eat pork." In this cultural situation, the Jew is more frequently someone who doesn't eat. Quentin's half truth is only one side ofa more ominous reality. Father Jean, aware of that reality, first appears in the film to introduce Bonnet, the "new classmate" and to show the boy his dormitory bed. As the director leaves, the schoolboys display their own societal dynamics, resuming their customary internecine, frenzied battles and rivalries. They throw pillows; they mock the outsider, focusing their ridicule on his name. Later in a classroom scene, they will hiss, "Dubo, Dubon, Dubonnet...."—an apt thematic detail with its allusion to wine and its liturgical translation into blood. In the morning Boulanger leads the attack against the stranger, slipping an icicle behind Bonnet's shirt collar. At recess games disintegrate into private quarrels. Their small brutal society is a microcosm of the larger world of which the schoolboys are apparently innocent but which they are grooming themselves to live in without remorse... (shrink)

In this brief and powerful book, Diana Fuss takes on the debate of pure essence versus social construct, engaging with the work of Luce Irigaray and Monique ...

In Unruly Words, Diana Raffman advances a new theory of vagueness which, unlike previous accounts, is genuinely semantic while preserving bivalence. According to this new approach, called the multiple range theory, vagueness consists essentially in a term's being applicable in multiple arbitrarily different, but equally competent, ways, even when contextual factors are fixed.

Puesto que los actuales niveles y modos de consumo no son ambientalmente sostenibles, los consumidores necesitan concienciarse de las cuestiones medioambientales y de las implicaciones políticas de sus prácticas. Este artículo rastrea algunos elementos que afectan al denominado “consumo verde” en varias áreas: vestido, transporte, alimento y gestión doméstica. El consumo ecológico es un fenómeno complejo, con influencias en el ámbito societal de movimientos sociales, boicots o legislación gubernamental, y en el plano individual presenta influencias de la clase social, los (...) ingresos, la educación o el estilo de vida. La mayoría de los estudios que han examinado la relación entre actitudes específicas ante este tipo de consumo y el comportamiento real de los consumidores, revelan inconsistencias entre tales actitudes y las conductas. Esta discrepancia entre actitud y comportamiento puede explicarse por el hecho de que el consumo verde está fuertemente asociado a un específico estilo de vida, el de las clases medias, más que tratarse de un fenómeno de difusión generalizada. (shrink)

Ángel Álvarez de Miranda studied in Rome with Professor Raffaele Pettazzoni, founder in Italy of the «History of Religions» and of a particular method for its study. Back in Spain, Álvarez de Miranda took the position of the newly created chair –in 1954– of «History of Religions» in the university of Madrid. This essay analyses the international practices of the circulation of ideas favouring the role of the personal «encounter» with these ideas abroad and the translation of foreign works. In (...) this last case, following Pierre Bourdieu, it shows the consequences of the circulation of texts without their own context. (shrink)

This book is a unique exploration of the idea of the "second person" in human interaction, the idea that face-to-face interactions involve a distinctive form of reciprocal mental state attributions that mediates their dynamical unfolding. Challenging the view of mental attribution as a sort of "theory of mind", Pérez and Gomila argue that the second person perspective of mental understanding is the conceptually, ontogenetically, and phylogenetically basic way of understanding mentality. Second person interaction provides the opportunity for the acquisition of (...) concepts of mental states of increasing complexity. The book reviews the growing interest in a variety of second person phenomena, both in development and in adulthood, presenting research that shows how participants in human interaction attribute psychological states of a referentially transparent kind to each other. This review documents the spontaneous preference for face-to-face interaction, from eye contact to joint attention, from forms of vitality to communicative intentions, from interaction detection to joint action, and from synchrony to interpersonal coordination. Also looking at the implications and applications of the second person perspective within fields as diverse as art and morality, this book is fascinating reading for students and academics in social and cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy. (shrink)

This paper compares the results of large-scale U.S. and U.K. surveys designed to identify managers' major ethical concerns and to investigate how firms are formulating and communicating ethics policies responsive to these concerns.Our findings indicate some important differences between U.S. and U.K. firms in perceptions of what are important ethical issues, in the means used to communicate ethics policies, and in the issues addressed in ethics policies and employee training. U.K. companies tend to be more likely to communicate ethics policies (...) through senior executives, whereas U.S. companies tend to rely more on their Human Resources and Legal Departments. U.S. firms consider most ethical issues to be more important than do their U.K. counterparts, and are especially concerned with employee behavior which may harm the firm. In contrast, the issues which U.K. managers consider more important tend to be concerned with external corporate stakeholders rather than employees. (shrink)

In Thomas Metzinger, Conscious Experience, Schoningh Verlag. 1995. [ online ].

Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) is an emerging, multidisciplinary field of research that seeks to develop methods and tools for making AI systems more explainable or interpretable. XAI researchers increasingly recognise explainability as a context-, audience- and purpose-sensitive phenomenon, rather than a single well-defined property that can be directly measured and optimised. However, since there is currently no overarching definition of explainability, this poses a risk of miscommunication between the many different researchers within this multidisciplinary space. This is the problem we (...) seek to address in this paper. We outline a framework, called Explanatory Pragmatism, which we argue has two attractive features. First, it allows us to conceptualise explainability in explicitly context-, audience- and purpose-relative terms, while retaining a unified underlying definition of explainability. Second, it makes visible any normative disagreements that may underpin conflicting claims about explainability regarding the purposes for which explanations are sought. Third, it allows us to distinguish several dimensions of AI explainability. We illustrate this framework by applying it to a case study involving a machine learning model for predicting whether patients suffering disorders of consciousness were likely to recover consciousness. (shrink)

This paper aims to review the empirical and theoretical research on engineering ethics education, by focusing on the challenges reported in the literature. The analysis is conducted at four levels of the engineering education system. First, the individual level is dedicated to findings about teaching practices reported by instructors. Second, the institutional level brings together findings about the implementation and presence of ethics within engineering programmes. Third, the level of policy situates findings about engineering ethics education in the context of (...) accreditation. Finally, there is the level of the culture of engineering education. The multi-level analysis allows us to address some of the limitations of higher education research which tends to focus on individual actors such as instructors or remains focused on the levels of policy and practice without examining the deeper levels of paradigm and purpose guiding them. Our approach links some of the challenges of engineering ethics education with wider debates about its guiding paradigms. The main contribution of the paper is to situate the analysis of the theoretical and empirical findings reported in the literature on engineering ethics education in the context of broader discussions about the purpose of engineering education and the aims of reform programmes. We conclude by putting forward a series of recommendations for a socio-technical oriented reform of engineering education for ethics. (shrink)