At least since Francis Bacon, the slogan “knowledge is power” has been used to capture the relationship between decision-making at a group level and information. We know that being able to shape the informational environment for a group is a way to shape their decisions; it is essentially a way to make decisions for them. This paper focuses on strategies that are intentionally, by design, impactful on the decision-making capacities of groups, effectively shaping their ability to take advantage of information (...) in their environment. Among these, the best known are political rhetoric, propaganda, and misinformation. The phenomenon this paper brings out from these is a relatively new strategy, which we call slopaganda. According to The Guardian, News Corp Australia is currently churning out 3000 “local” generative AI (GAI) stories each week. In the coming years, such “generative AI slop” will present multiple knowledge-related (epistemic) challenges. We draw on contemporary research in cognitive science and artificial intelligence to diagnose the problem of slopaganda, describe some recent troubling cases, then suggest several interventions that may help to counter slopaganda. (shrink)

What moral reasons, if any, do we have to prevent the extinction of humanity? In “Unfinished Business,” Jonathan Knutzen argues that certain further developments in culture would make our history more “collectively meaningful” and that premature extinction would be bad because it would close off that possibility. Here, I critically examine this proposal. I argue that if collective meaningfulness is analogous to individual meaningfulness, then our meaning-based reasons to prevent the extinction of humanity are substantially different from the reasons discussed (...) by Knutzen. (shrink)

Some philosophers believe in improvement: they think that the world is a better place than it used to be, and that future generations will fare even better. Others see decline: they claim that the condition of humanity has deteriorated and will continue to do so. Much ink has also been spilt over what explains these historical patterns. These two disagreements about the shape of history concern largely descriptive issues. But there is also a third, purely normative question that has been (...) neglected: is it better if a history features a pattern of improvement rather than deterioration, holding other things equal? This paper develops an answer to this normative question and explores some of its implications for matters related to the future of humanity. (shrink)

Many people believe that it is better to extend the length of a happy life than to create a new happy life, even if the total welfare is the same in both cases. Despite the popularity of this view, one would be hard-pressed to find a fully compelling justification for it in the literature. This paper develops a novel account of why and when extension is better than replacement that applies not just to persons but also to non-human animals and (...) humanity as a whole. (shrink)

Epistemic consequentialism has been challenged on the grounds that it is overly demanding. According to the Epistemic Junk Problem, this view implies that we are often required to believe junk propositions such as ‘the Great Bear Lake is the largest lake entirely in Canada’ and long disjunctions of things we already believe. According to the Numerosity Problem, this view implies that we are frequently required to have an enormous number of beliefs. This paper puts forward a novel version of epistemic (...) consequentialism that avoids these twin demandingness problems. The key is to recognise, first, that the final epistemic value of a true belief depends at least partially on the duration for which it is retained by the agent and, second, that our cognitive make-up places important constraints on which beliefs are retained and for how long. (shrink)

In their article, Sahan and colleagues have presented ethical dilemmas faced by clinical scientists working in genomics.1 This is a welcome development since thus far little has been published on the ethical issues faced by clinical scientists in general. In their article, the authors present the three themes which emerged from discussions with clinical scientists in respect to three case studies: ‘(1) the redistribution of labour and responsibilities resulting from the practice of genomic medicine; (2) the interpretation and certainty of (...) results and (3) the proposal that better standardisation and consistency of ethical approaches (for example, more guidelines and policy) could resolve some of the challenges arising’.1 One theme which appeared not to emerge is that of ethics education received by clinical scientists during their training, and this is the theme on which this commentary will focus. As noted elsewhere, ‘Clinical Scientists receive some lectures on clinical and research ethics as part of their training, but it amounts to only to a couple of hours of lectures (references omitted)’.2 The usual route to becoming a clinical scientist involves undertaking the 3-year postgraduate Scientist Training Programme (STP), though the ‘equivalence’ route is quite commonly taken by clinical scientists working in …. (shrink)

In his recent paper Hatherley discusses four reasons given to support mandatory disclosure of the use of machine learning technologies in healthcare, and provides counters to each of these reasons. While I agree with Hatherley’s conclusion that such disclosures should not be mandatory (at least not in an upfront fashion), I raise some problems with his counters to the materiality argument. Finally, I raise another potential problem that exists in a democratic society: that even if Hatherley’s (and other authors who (...) share his conclusions) arguments are sound, in a democratic society the simple fact that most people might wish for such disclosures to be made might be an enough compelling reason to make such disclosures mandatory. (shrink)

In recent years, technology and social media have enabled social workers to provide remote services to their clients. However, Israel's code of ethics, laws, and guidelines on work scarcely mention technology-assisted social work. This article presents a study that maps the technological tools available to social workers in Israel when providing services to clients and identifies the ethical challenges in technology-assisted social work services. Utilizing the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as its conceptual framework, the study explores the technological tools available (...) to social workers in Israel and identifies the challenges they face when utilizing these tools. Method: This qualitative study included 18 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with social workers. Thematic analysis was used to identify major themes. Findings: We identified three major themes. The first theme focused on the impact of technology on service provision, the second on technological barriers, and the third on challenging boundaries of information exchange. Applications: We suggest a uniform policy and guidelines to improve technology-assisted social work services. Based on this study's findings, we recommend practical steps such as providing technological training for social workers, optimizing existing systems, and detailing rules for the use of technology in the therapeutic contract. (shrink)

The year 2023 marked the centenary of the first publication of Buber’s philosophical-poetic classic I and Thou, in which he introduced the foundations of his philosophy of dialogue. To mark the occasion, Peter Šajda has produced the first Slovak translation of the book, which appeared at the end of last year. In the first part of the review study, I give a brief characterization of this most important work by Buber in the context of his entire oeuvre. In the second (...) part, I outline the most important thematic lines of the book. In the third part, I make some comments on the Slovak translation and edition and compare it with the Czech ones. (shrink)

This paper reviews some reasons for us believing that dreams are phenomenally conscious experiences. I point out that if dreams would be such then one should be able to draw analogies between them and waking conscious experiences at the level of folk psychology, behavior, and neuroanatomy. Instead, we find disanalogies at all these levels, so while we may have no strong reason to accept that dreams are unconscious, we have good reason to think they are different from conscious experiences. A (...) safer bet is to think that they form a distinct sui generis psychological category. Sleep science should wait for consciousness science and until then treat its subject matter as distinct. (shrink)

Patients need to be given the relevant information to be able to give informed consent, which might require the disclosure of a provisional diagnosis. Yet, there is no duty to give information to a patient if that patient is aware that this information exists but chooses not to request it. Diagnostic radiographers and healthcare scientists are often responsible for ensuring that patients have given informed consent for the investigations they undertake, but which were requested by other clinicians. Here we examine (...) if they have a duty to disclose a patient’s provisional diagnosis made by a referring clinician if the patient asks for this information as part of the informed consent process to a diagnostic investigation. We first consider aspects of UK law, professional guidance and salient ethical principles, emphasising that while professional codes of practice highlight the need to act in the patient’s best interest, they do not require giving patients information they do not require for the examination or have not requested. We then propose that diagnostic radiographers and healthcare scientists placed in such a position use a ‘minimally necessary disclosure’ framework. This framework fulfils their commitment to their patient and the principle of veracity, while respecting the boundaries of their professional duties. The framework ensures that enough detail is given to the patient for them to be able to give informed consent, while shouldering the diagnostic professional from making a full disclosure, which is the duty of the referring clinician. (shrink)

Lívia Flachbartová’s monograph introduces us to a non-theoretical approach to Cynic practice in the person of Diogenes of Sinope, a literary figure who acted radically with his negation of rational generalizations. Antisthenes in all likelihood created the literary figure of Socrates to present his own epistemic position through him, thereby enabling the emergence of the literary figure Diogenes of Sinope. Understanding Antisthenes’ epistemology is also important for understanding the formation of our current approach to knowledge. Its relationship to the rival (...) Platonic theory allows us to take a look at a critical moment in the development of this understanding. In this manner it is possible to continue with research that is based on the hermeneutic method, which was proposed by Michel Foucault in the last century and is being continued today by, for example, Vladislav Suvák. According to the author of the monograph being reviewed here, the hermeneutic method of proof consisting in the knowledge of the subject allows us to better evaluate Antisthenes’ contribution to the field of knowledge, which according to the surviving texts he gave expression to. In this study, we focus primarily on the monograph of Lívia Flachbartová and her interpretation of cynicism as a way of life. We also focus on two surviving writings authored by Antisthenes: the speeches of Ajax and Odysseus. This allows us to analyze the specifics of Antisthenes’ literary invention, linguistic devices, and methods of proof, which also appear in other authors of Socratic dialogues and in the later Cynics. An attempt to abstract the method of proof can contribute not only to a further approximation of Antisthenes’ specific approach to knowledge, but also to an analysis of his work with language. (shrink)

We define a new type of product of hoops which, in the case of finite hoops, can decompose an arbitrary hoop $$\textbf{A}$$ A into a filter F and the corresponding homomorphic image $$\textbf{A}/F$$ A / F. Since our new product is associative up to isomorphism, we can show that every finite hoop is representable as a product of finite MV-chains.

This book explores the representations of Central and Eastern European histories in digital games. Focusing on games that examine a range of national histories and heritages from across Central and Eastern Europe, the volume looks beyond the diversity of the local histories depicted in games, and the audience reception of these histories, to show a diversity of approaches which can be used in examining historical games - from postcolonialism to identity politics to heritage studies. The book includes chapters on Serbia, (...) Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Hungary, Estonia, Slovakia, Czechia, Finland, and (a Western guest with regional connections) Luxembourg. Through the lens of videogames, the authors address how nations struggle with the legacies of war, colonialism and religious strife that have been a part of nation-building - but also how victimized cultures can survive, resist, and sometimes prevail. Appealing primarily to scholars in the fields of game studies, heritage studies, postcolonial criticism, and media studies, this book will be particularly useful for the subfields of historical game studies and postcolonial game studies. (shrink)

This is the first volume in a new, definitive, seven-volume edition of the works of Michal Kalecki, one of the twentieth century's most distinguished economists. Kalecki was one of the three contemporary economists to arrive at the conclusions publicized by Keynes, although Kalecki arguably presented these views even earlier than Keynes. Volume I contains Kalecki's writings on the theory of the business cycle and full employment. His seminal Essay on the Business Cycle Theory is preceded by his earlier theoretical (...) studies and followed by publications which developed and defended its main concepts and ideas. This volume also contains the 1939 book Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations, the work which established his reputation. Also included are papers documenting his confrontation with Keynes's General Theory, including Kalecki's review of that work, and his various studies on the theory and policies relating to full employment, both the well known `Political Aspects of Full Employment' and `Three Ways to Full Employment', and those which have unfairly received less attention. The editorial comments and annexes at the end of the volume, besides giving valuable information on the background to the main texts, include illuminating exchanges of correspondence between Kalecki and Keynes, Joan Robinson, and others. (shrink)

The seventh volume of the Collected Works of Michal Kalecki, one of the twentieth century's preeminent economists, contains his empirical studies of the wartime and post-war economy in Britain and the USA, together with papers on the work of other economists and miscellanea.The first part of the book collects together his articles on the economic conditions of Britain during the Second World War, focusing on the rationing of consumption and war finance, and its post-war reconstructions. These articles are among (...) Kalecki's best known, and contributed significantly to his world renown as an economist. Part two contains studies of post-war America, comparing the economy with the situation before the War. Part three contains a group of articles under the title `Political economy and economists', and includes book reviews and essays on the study of economics. Part four collects essays on a variety of topics, including Polish economic planning, construction engineering, and the theory of numbers. As in previous volumes, editorial notes and annexes by Professor Osiaty'nski provide invaluable background information and explanatory glosses on the main text. Among other things, they reveal details of Kalecki's work for the United Nations.Since this is the final volume of the Collected Works, it concludes with a chronology of biographical information and a complete bibliography of Kalecki's writings from 1927 to 1987. (shrink)

The seven volumes will comprise the definitive scholarly edition of the works of Micha/l Kalecki, one of the most distinguished of twentieth-century economists and one of the trio who arrived at the conclusions promulgated by Keynes around the same time as - and in Kalecki's case, arguably earlier than - Keynes himself. Nearly half the material to appear in the seven volumes has never been previously published in English and includes revisions and additions made in the light of recent research, (...) including information about the relationship of Kalecki's ideas to the ideas of contemporary economic theory. This volume deals with the capitalist economy and contains Kalecki's studies on the theory of income distribution in oligopolistic capitalism and on its economic dynamics. Each part of the book consists of essays devoted to a similar topic and individual papers in each part are arranged in chronological order. The editorial comments and annexes at the end of the volume, besides giving valuable information on the background to the main texts, include illuminating exchanges of correspondence between Kalecki and Keynes, Joan Robinson, and others. (shrink)

Containing nearly all the material which has survived on Kalecki's activity - both theoretical and practical - from 1955 to 1964.

This volume contains Kalecki's writings on the theory of growth of a socialist economy and the theory of economic efficiency of investment. These are supplemented by essays on some economic and social problems of People's Poland. Though quite theoretical in nature, both the Introduction to the Theory of Growth in a Socialist Economy and Kalecki's many studies in the theory of economic efficiency of investment projects are deeply rooted in his practical experience as an economic planner. It is only in (...) this light that the significance of his contributions to the theory of economic efficiency of investments can be assessed, and his ideas on socialist reproduction can be seen as a whole. Its central point is economic planning, which for Kalecki was the fundamental feature of a socialist economy. (shrink)

The sixth volume of the Collected Works of Micha/l Kalecki, one of the twentieth-century's pre-eminent economists, contains his empirical studies of the capitalist economy, published primarily in pre-war Poland. The first part of the book collects together reviews of business conditions in commodity markets, studies of the structure and operations of large companies and cartels, and articles on international economic relations. These studies, written between 1928 and 1935, demonstrate Kalecki's keen insight into the international consequences of the Great Crisis of (...) 1929-33, and into the developments in Nazi Germany. The second part contains Kalecki's papers on the methodological problems of examining business fluctuations and on constructing indicators of economic trends. Part 3 comprises, Kalecki's estimates (together with Ludwik Landau) of the national income in Poland and of its structure. These studies, conducted between 1931 and 1935, were unique at the time in taking into account the distribution of aggregate income between the main social classes. The editorial notes and annexes at the end of the volume not only provide invaluable background information and explanatory glosses on the main text, but also give invaluable insights into the development of Kalecki's thought. (shrink)

In a recent series of papers, Jane Friedman argues that suspended judgment is a sui generis first-order attitude, with a question as its content. In this paper, I offer a critique of Friedman’s project. I begin by responding to her arguments against reductive higher-order propositional accounts of suspended judgment, and thus undercut the negative case for her own view. Further, I raise worries about the details of her positive account, and in particular about her claim that one suspends judgment about (...) some matter if and only if one inquires into this matter. Subsequently, I use conclusions drawn from the preceding discussion to offer a tentative account: S suspends judgment about p iff S believes that she neither believes nor disbelieves that p, S neither believes nor disbelieves that p, and S intends to judge that p or not-p. (shrink)

Despite their ethical intentions, ethically minded consumers rarely purchase ethical products (Auger and Devinney: 2007, Journal of Business Ethics76, 361–383). This intentions–behaviour gap is important to researchers and industry, yet poorly understood (Belk et al.: 2005, Consumption, Markets and Culture8(3), 275–289). In order to push the understanding of ethical consumption forward, we draw on what is known about the intention–behaviour gap from the social psychology and consumer behaviour literatures and apply these insights to ethical consumerism. We bring together three separate (...) insights – implementation intentions (Gollwitzer: 1999, American Psychologist54(7), 493–503), actual behavioural control (ABC) (Ajzen and Madden: 1986, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology22, 453–474; Sheeran et al.: 2003, Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 393–410) and situational context (SC) (Belk: 1975, Journal of Consumer Research2, 157–164) – to construct an integrated, holistic conceptual model of the intention–behaviour gap of ethically minded consumers. This holistic conceptual model addresses significant limitations within the ethical consumerism literature, and moves the understanding of ethical consumer behaviour forward. Further, the operationalisation of this model offers insight and strategic direction for marketing managers attempting to bridge the intention–behaviour gap of the ethically minded consumer. (shrink)

According to the orthodox view, the goodness of a life depends exclusively on the things that actually happened within it, such as its pleasures and pains, the satisfaction of its subject’s preferences, or the presence of various objective goods and bads. In this paper, I argue that the goodness of a life also depends on what could have happened, but didn’t. I then propose that this view helps us resolve ethical puzzles concerning the standards for a life worth living for (...) animals and the significance of a life’s shape. (shrink)

This book offers a new definition of metaphor-as an ontological and visual construction, whose roots are external visual forms, and its motivation is our attachment to forms. This definition, which Michalle Gal names “visualist,” challenges the ruling conceptualist theory of metaphors and places a new emphasis on how we experience rather than understand metaphors. In doing so, she responds to the visual turn that is taking place in literature and the media, demanding that the visual become a site of philosophical (...) analysis. This focus on the external visual world allows Gal to employ visual theories to capture the essence of metaphor. She looks beyond conceptual or semantic mechanism, and returns to theories of Arnheim and Gombrich and the current evolution of ideas about the visual or material and embodied cognition. Proposing to see visual metaphors in their basic form, she uses a new externalist terminology of ontology, visuality, composition, affordance, construction, and emergence. Setting out a new theory that takes into account that humans are visual no less than cognitive creatures, Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics lays the foundation for a new vocabulary to talk about metaphors. (shrink)

This essay presents the Aestheticism of the 19th century as the foundational movement of modernist-formalist aesthetics of the 20th century. The main principle of this movement is what I denominate “productive opacity”. Aestheticism has not been recognized as a philosophical aesthetic theory. However, its definition of artwork as an exclusive kind of form—a deep, opaque form—is among the most precise ever given in the discipline. This essay offers an interpretation of aestheticism as a formalist theory, referred to here as “deep (...) formalism”, focusing on the thinking of leading aestheticists, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and James Whistler. These three thinkers defined artwork as a form saturated with an inextricable content, viz. opaque form. (shrink)

Dating and hookup apps (DHAs) are now widely used and may be transforming our intimate relationships. The apps are beneficial in fostering intimate connections among those who are lonely, who are members of minority or marginalized groups, or who live nomadic lifestyles because of work or recreational travel. However, the wider social and relational changes that DHAs portend are merely beginning to be seriously discussed by academics (Arias et al., 2017). In this chapter, we employ concepts from the philosophy of (...) technology that inform our analysis of these changes. We also collate some of the morally significant impacts of DHAs and present some of the elements of the architecture of DHAs that facilitate them. Although there are many reasons to be concerned about DHAs, we argue that there is room for cautious optimism that DHAs may be vehicles of positive social and moral change. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to measure professional and personal values among nurses, and to identify the factors affecting these values. The participants were 323 Israeli nurses, who were asked about 36 personal values and 20 professional values. The three fundamental professional nursing values of human dignity, equality among patients, and prevention of suffering, were rated first. The top 10 rated values all concerned nurses' responsibility towards patients. Altruism and confidentiality were not highly rated, and health promotion and nursing (...) research were rated among the last three professional values. For personal (instrumental) values, honesty, responsibility and intelligence were rated first, while ambition and imagination were rated 14th and 16th respectively out of 18. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were found among some personal and professional values rated as functions of culture, education, professional seniority, position and field of expertise. The results may assist in understanding the motives of nurses with different characteristics and help to promote their work according to professional ethical values. (shrink)

The War Inside is a groundbreaking history of the contribution of British psychoanalysis to the making of social democracy, childhood, and the family during World War II and the postwar reconstruction. Psychoanalysts informed understandings not only of individuals, but also of broader political questions. By asserting a link between a real 'war outside' and an emotional 'war inside', psychoanalysts contributed to an increased state responsibility for citizens' mental health. They made understanding children and the mother-child relationship key to the successful (...) creation of a democratic citizenry. Using rich archival sources, the book revises the common view of psychoanalysis as an elite discipline by taking it out of the clinic and into the war nursery, the juvenile court, the state welfare committee, and the children's hospital. It traces the work of the second generation of psychoanalysts after Freud in response to total war and explores its broad postwar effects on British society. (shrink)

Responding to the increasingly influential role of Hannah Arendt's political philosophy in recent years, Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Total Domination: The Holocaust, Plurality, and Resistance, critically engages with Arendt's understanding of totalitarianism. According to Arendt, the main goal of totalitarianism was total domination; namely, the virtual eradication of human legality, morality, individuality, and plurality. This attempt, in her view, was most fully realized in the concentration camps, which served as the major "laboratories" for the regime. While Arendt focused (...) on the perpetrators' logic and drive, Michal Aharony examines the perspectives and experiences of the victims and their ability to resist such an experiment. The first book-length study to juxtapose Arendt's concept of total domination with actual testimonies of Holocaust survivors, this book calls for methodological pluralism and the integration of the voices and narratives of the actors in the construction of political concepts and theoretical systems. To achieve this, Aharony engages with both well-known and non-canonical intellectuals and writers who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Additionally, she analyzes the oral testimonies of survivors who are largely unknown, drawing from interviews conducted in Israel and in the U.S., as well as from videotaped interviews from archives around the world. Revealing various manifestations of unarmed resistance in the camps, this study demonstrates the persistence of morality and free agency even under the most extreme and de-humanizing conditions, while cautiously suggesting that absolute domination is never as absolute as it claims or wishes to be. Scholars of political philosophy, political science, history, and Holocaust studies will find this an original and compelling book. (shrink)

This book offers, for the first time in aesthetics, a comprehensive account of aestheticism of the 19<SUP>th</SUP> century as a philosophical theory of its own right. Taking philosophical and art-historical viewpoints, this cross-disciplinary book presents aestheticism as the foundational movement of modernist aesthetics of the 20<SUP>th</SUP> century. Emerging in the writings of the foremost aestheticists - Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, James Whistler, and their formalist successors such as Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and Clement Greenberg - aestheticism offers a uniquely synthetic (...) definition of art. It captures the artwork’s relations between form and content, art’s independent ontology and autonomy, art’s internal completeness, criticism, immunity to recruitment, the uniqueness of each medium, and musicality, as well as the logical-theoretical affiliation of art for art’s sake to epistemology, ethics and philosophy of language.<BR> Those are used by Michalle Gal to formulate a definition of art in terms of a theory of Deep Formalism, setting aestheticism, which aspires to preserve the artistic medium, as a critique of the current linguistic-conceptual aesthetics that developed after the linguistic turn of aesthetics. (shrink)

Recent progress in geroscience holds the promise of significantly slowing down or even reversing ageing and age-related diseases, and thus increasing our healthspans. In this paper, I offer a novel argument in favour of developing such technology and making it unconditionally available to everyone. In particular, I argue that justice requires that each person be provided with sufficient opportunities to have a ‘complete life’, that many people currently lack such opportunities, and that we would substantially improve the status quo by (...) giving them access to anti-ageing technology. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, social scientists across disciplines have been researching how value is extracted and governed in the reproductive bioeconomy, which broadly refers to the various ways reproductive tissues, bodies, services, customers, workers, and data are inserted into capitalist modes of accumulation. While many of these studies are empirically grounded in single country–based analyses, this paper proposes an integrative political economy framework, structured around the concept of “global fertility chains.” The latter articulates the reproductive bioeconomy as a nexus (...) of intraconnected practices, operations, and transactions between enterprises, states, and households across the globe, through which reproductive services and commodities are produced, distributed, and consumed. Employing a diffractive reading of the literature on commodity chains and care chains, this unified approach scrutinizes the coproduction of value, biology, and technoscience and their governance mechanisms in the accumulation of capital by taking into account the unevenly developed geographies of global fertility chains, their reliance on women’s waged and unwaged reproductive labor, and the networked role of multiple actors at multiple scales without losing sight of the constitutive role of national states in creating demand, organizing supply, and accommodating the distribution of surplus value. We empirically ground this integrative political economy approach of the reproductive bioeconomy through collaborative, multisited fieldwork on transnational reproduction networks in Israel/palestine, Romania, Georgia, and Spain. (shrink)

Ectogenesis (artificial wombs) might soon become a reality. This paper will analyse how the development of such technologies will affect Judith Jarvis Thomson’s defence of abortion, and what the potential consequences of this will be for society. Thomson attempts to justify abortion by appealing to the mother’s right to bodily autonomy. We will argue that once these technologies have been developed, the right to abortion can no longer be justified by such appeals. As a result, when justifying abortion, Thomson-style arguments (...) will no longer work, and a very different strategy will have to be adopted by those wishing to justify its permissibility. Anticipating a consequent weaker position of the pro-choice view, we briefly consider some of the practical implications of ectogenesis for society: effects on parental dynamics, governmental expenditure, research, and gender equality. (shrink)

While there is a prolific debate surrounding the issue of conscientious objection of individuals towards performing certain clinical acts, this debate ignores the fact that there are other reasons why clinicians might wish to object providing specific services. This paper briefly discusses the idea that healthcare workers might object to providing specific services because they are against their professional judgement, they want to maintain a specific reputation, or they have pragmatic reasons. Reputation here is not simply understood as being in (...) good standing with a professional body. Rather, reputation is treated in the sense that a craftsman might wish to be known for providing a specific type, quality, and style of service. Professionalism is understood as acting according to the philosophical and scientific principles that are the basis of healthcare (such as acting for the benefit of the patient’s health and following well- evidenced treatment pathways). (shrink)

This paper proposes to define metaphor as a visual-material structure, the sphere of which is ontological rather than cognitive or conceptual. It argues that the essence of metaphor, as either an aesthetic or a communicative unit or both, resides in the qualitative dimension and appearance, or even materiality, of the metaphorical medium and its form. The paper thus offers a new theory of metaphor, focusing on the medium of metaphor, which composes and transfigures or reconstructs its target anew: a composition (...) that is prior to understanding or conceptualizing the target. In doing so, the paper presents a formalist ontology of metaphors, established via an externalist account of metaphors, as opposed to the prevailing cognitivist-conceptualist account which I characterize as internalist. The various kinds of metaphor – linguistic, poetic, visual or material – are based on their external structure, rather than an internal-conceptual mechanism of understanding, as assumed by a significant segment of the literature. Visual metaphor, therefore, is the paradigmatic kind of metaphor, the analysis of which can be generalized to other kinds of metaphor. Furthermore, the paper tries to overcome the current discrepancy between the formalist character of the metaphorical medium and the dominance of cognitivist and conceptualist theories of metaphor. Challenging these, I claim that if the identity of metaphor is indeed based on its composition, then it is actually based on its aesthetic qualities. That is to say, not only are there autonomous visual or material metaphors, that are not based on linguistic or conceptual ones, but linguistic and conceptual metaphors are based on visuality: they are enabled by the structural possibilities offered by visual media. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFacial mimicry has long been considered a main mechanism underlying emotional contagion. A closer look at the empirical evidence, however, rev...

It is not clear to what the projects of creating an artificial intelligence (AI) that does ethics, is moral, or makes moral judgments amounts. In this paper we discuss some of the extant metaethical theories and debates in moral philosophy by which such projects should be informed, specifically focusing on the project of creating an AI that makes moral judgments. We argue that the scope and aims of that project depend a great deal on antecedent metaethical commitments. Metaethics, therefore, plays (...) the role of an Archimedean fulcrum in this context, very much like the Archimedean role that it is often taken to take in context of normative ethics (Dworkin 1996; Dreier 2002; Fantl 2006; Ehrenberg 2008). (shrink)

The article addresses the theme of spectrality, the givenness of the other who remains here after departure as a ghost. It explores how this spectrality functions in Plato’s funeral oratory in the Menexenus dialogue. In the first part, the article discusses J. Patočka’s account of the specific givenness of the departed, which is experienced as a privation of a former intersubjectively intertwined life. The deceased other causes a twofold crisis. On the one hand, with the death of the other also (...) comes the withering of part of myself, for I am unable to realise possibilities dependent on his or her presence. On the other hand, the meaning of the other’s project, which becomes institutionalised through participation in the events and re-formation of the world, is endangered if no one is willing to take on and realise this meaning as one’s own. The second part of the article discusses how Socrates’ oratory addresses this crisis through specific temporality of the speech, one in which the past provides the present with a paradigm for appropriate civic action which is to be imitated in the future. In this context, he creatively uses the concept of shame to induce an attitude of responsibility for the polis, whose greatness is grounded in the virtuous deeds of spectrally present ancestry. (shrink)

While mainstream CSR research has generally explored and argued for positive ethical, social and environmental performance, critical CSR scholars argue that change has been superficial—at best, and not possible in any substantial way within the current capitalist system. Both views, however, only address the role of business within larger systems. Little attention has been paid to the everyday material CSR practice of individual managers. We go inside the firm to investigate how the micro-level acts of individual managers can aggregate to (...) drive transformation of the macro-level business logic. We draw on the strategy-as-practice approach to organize our research. The study reveals two orientations towards the integration of personal ethics into the workplace: abdication and activism. These orientations are supported by managerial practice such as reproductive and coping tactics and covert and overt tactics ; and, three enabling conditions of activist practice: empowerment and psychological safety, moral shock, and morality praxis. While our findings illustrate the tremendous challenges managers face when attempting to influence organizational practices towards their ethical and environmental aspirations, we also show that under specific conditions, individual managers can become fully engaged advocates and drivers of positive change from the inside. In so doing, our individual-level analysis of intrapreneurship provides a more complex picture of the possibilities for positive change than have been previously put forth by mainstream and critical CSR research. (shrink)

In the posthumously published ‘Future People, the Non-Identity Problem, and Person-Affecting Principles’, Derek Parfit presents a novel axiological principle which he calls the Wide Dual Person-Affecting Principle and claims that it does not imply the Repugnant Conclusion. This paper shows that even the best version of Parfit's principle cannot avoid this conclusion. That said, accepting such a principle makes embracing the Repugnant Conclusion more justifiable. This paper further addresses important questions which Parfit left unanswered concerning: the relative importance of individual (...) and collective goodness, comparisons involving unequal outcomes, how to understand individual goodness, and whether incomparability at the level of individual goodness implies incomparability at the level of overall goodness. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the visual aspect of metaphors, offering a new theory of metaphor that characterizes its syntactic structure, material composition and visuality as its essence. It will accordingly present the metaphorical creating or transfiguring, as well as conceiving or understanding, of one thing as a different one, as a visual ability. It is a predication by means of producing non-conventional compositions – i.e., by compositional, or even aesthetic, means. This definition is aimed to apply to the various kinds of (...) metaphors: conceptual, linguistic, visual, and material. It will thus challenge the definition of metaphor as a conceptual or linguistic phenomenon in nature that is based on its semantic mechanism, broad concepts, and cognitive value. Those definitions have been prevalent since the second half of 20th century, under the influence of the philosophy of language, and later of cognitive studies. (shrink)