Fair Division: From Cake-Cutting to Dispute Resolution.Steven J. Brams &Alan D. Taylor -1996 - Cambridge University Press.detailsCutting a cake, dividing up the property in an estate, determining the borders in an international dispute - such problems of fair division are ubiquitous. Fair Division treats all these problems and many more through a rigorous analysis of a variety of procedures for allocating goods, or deciding who wins on what issues, when there are disputes. Starting with an analysis of the well-known cake-cutting procedure, 'I cut, you choose', the authors show how it has been adapted in a number (...) of fields and then analyze fair-division procedures applicable to situations in which there are more than two parties, or there is more than one good to be divided. In particular they focus on procedures which provide 'envy-free' allocations, in which everybody thinks he or she has received the largest portion and hence does not envy anybody else. They also discuss the fairness of different auction and election procedures. (shrink)
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Confession-Building, Long-Distance Networks, and the Organization of Jesuit Science.Steven J. Harris -1996 -Early Science and Medicine 1 (3):287-318.detailsThe ability of the Society of Jesus to engage in a broad and enduring tradition of scientific activity is here addressed in terms of its programmatic commitment to the consolidation and extension of the Catholic confession and its mastery of the administrative apparatus necessary to operate long-distance networks. The Society's early move into two major apostolates, one in education and the other in the overseas missions, brought Jesuits into regular contact with the educated elites of Europe and at the same (...) time placed the Society's missionaries in remote parts of the natural world. The modes of organization of travel and communication required by the Society's long-distance networks not only facilitated scientific communication and collaboration within the order, it also provided Jesuits with the resources they needed to engage successfully in 'ministries among the learned'. Evidence of a sustained attempt by Jesuit authors to assume the role of Kulturträger is found in the several genres of scientific publications that dominate the Society's scientific corpus. Thus the Society's early recognition of the "apostolic value" of scientific publications in recruiting friends and allies among Europe's intellectual elites, I argue, allowed a robust interest in natural knowledge to emerge as a legitimate part of the Jesuit vocation. (shrink)
Transposing the Merton Thesis: Apostolic Spirituality and the Establishment of the Jesuit Scientific Tradition.Steven J. Harris -1989 -Science in Context 3 (1):29-65.detailsThe ArgumentDespite more than fifty years of debate on the Merton thesis, there have been few attempts to substantiate Merton's argument through empirically based comparative studies. This study of the Jesuit scientific tradition is intended to serve as a test of some of Merton's central claims.Jesuit science is remarkable for its scope and longevity, and is distinguished by its markedly empirical and utilitarian orientation. In this paper I examine the ideological structure of the Society of Jesus and find at its (...) core an “apostolic spirituality” that explains the legitimation of these forms of science within the Society. The values of apostolic spirituality strongly encouraged an activist mentality among Jesuits, which in turn led to the formation of apostolates in education, at court, and in the overseas missions. The values associated with apostolic spirituality led to the initial acceptance of active-empirical sciences within the Society, which became established as traditions because they were useful in fulfilling the goals of the Society's apostolates.This study, by providing a qualified confirmation of Merton's central claims, suggests the importance of a supra-confessional sanctification of labor and learning in the growth of active-empirical sciences. (shrink)
The Picture Theory of Disability.Steven J. Firth -2023 -Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 1 (2):198-216.detailsThe leading models of disability struggle to fully encompass all aspects of “disability.” This difficulty arises, the author argues, because the models fundamentally misunderstand the nature of disability. Current theoretical approaches to disability can be understood as “nounal,” in that they understand disability as a thing that is caused or embodied. In contrast, this paper presents an adverbial perspective on disability, which shows that disability is experienced as a personally irremediable impediment to daily-living tasks or goals-like-ours. The picture theory of (...) disability technically constitutes a species of relational approach because its analysis references the interplay between an individual and their environment; it differs from other relational accounts, however, by interpreting disability as a certain kind of negative experience—rather than a function of that relationship. This purely descriptive theory makes no normative claims about disability and operates as both a mechanism for the evaluation of the experience of disability and a heuristic device for the proper interpretation of disability. When disability is reframed in this way, the theory offers a particularist perspective which shows if, when, where, and how disability is experienced. (shrink)
An Assay on The Hobbesian Trap and Axioms of First Contact.Steven J. Firth -2023 -Space Policy 1.detailsDiscussion surrounding first contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) is hotly debated in the literature. This paper responds to claims made by Jebari and Olsson-Yaouzis that the ‘dominant thought’ in the philosophy of language indicates that communication with ETI would not be possible, and that the resultant uncertainty forces us into the Hobbesian Trap—the proclivity to adopt pre-emptive military strategies as a function of mutual distrust and fear of imminent attack. The ‘dominant thought’ in the philosophy of language constitutes largely behaviourist (...) thinking and hinges on ‘shared human context.’ However, shared universal contexts, together with the potential existence of post-biological ETI, suggest that communication at a level sufficient to interpret basic dispositions (what I call the level of ‘performative function’) may be possible. -/- Deploying both philosophical and game theoretical analyses, this paper provides several refutations and a repudiation of Jebari and Olsson-Yaouzis's claims: I correct the assumption that ETI would necessarily adopt a game theoretical rationality, critique the notion that ETI would choose a risk-dominant strategy rather than a payoff-dominant strategy, repudiate the claim that communication with ETI would not be possible, and show how the Hobbesian equivalence principle is violated in a proximal first-contact situation. Finally, in the absence of game theoretic decision-making (and inline with the calls from the Billingham report), this paper commences work on the development of an incomplete set of Axioms of First Contact from which to generate a definitive groundwork for both post-detection protocol and rules of engagement. An open invitation to other contributors to criticise, augment, and advance this bottom-up approach to first contact is extended. -/- . (shrink)
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Naturalism: A Critical Appraisal.Steven J. Wagner &Richard Wagner (eds.) -1993 - University of Notre Dame Press.detailsNaturalism - the thesis that all facts are natural facts, that is the facts that can be recognised and explained by a natural science - plays a central role in contemporary analytical philosophy. Yet many philosophers reject the claims of naturalism. The essays in this anthology explore the difficulties of naturalism by revealing the ambiguities surrounding it, as well as the tensions that exist among its critics.
Neuromarketing: Ethical Implications of its Use and Potential Misuse.Steven J. Stanton,Walter Sinnott-Armstrong &Scott A. Huettel -2017 -Journal of Business Ethics 144 (4):799-811.detailsNeuromarketing is an emerging field in which academic and industry research scientists employ neuroscience techniques to study marketing practices and consumer behavior. The use of neuroscience techniques, it is argued, facilitates a more direct understanding of how brain states and other physiological mechanisms are related to consumer behavior and decision making. Herein, we will articulate common ethical concerns with neuromarketing as currently practiced, focusing on the potential risks to consumers and the ethical decisions faced by companies. We argue that the (...) most frequently raised concerns—threats to consumer autonomy, privacy, and control—do not rise to meaningful ethical issues given the current capabilities and implementation of neuromarketing research. But, we identify how potentially serious ethical issues may emerge from neuromarketing research practices in industry, which are largely proprietary and opaque. We identify steps that can mitigate associated ethical risks and thus reduce the threats to consumers. We conclude that neuromarketing has clear potential for positive impact on society and consumers, a fact rarely considered in the discussion on the ethics of neuromarketing. (shrink)
Making Sense of Genetics:The Problem of Essentialism.Steven J. Heine,Benjamin Y. Cheung &Anita Schmalor -2019 -Hastings Center Report 49 (S1):19-26.detailsAbstract“Psychological essentialism” refers to our tendency to view the natural world as emerging from the result of deep, hidden, and internal forces called “essences.” People tend to believe that genes underlie a person’s identity. People encounter information about genetics on a regular basis, as through media such as a New York Times piece “Infidelity Lurks in Your Genes” or a 23andMe commercial showing people acquiring new ethnic identities as the result of their genotyping. How do people make sense of new (...) scientific findings that are inherently complex if they don’t have years of specialized training and education at their disposal? Given the substantial overlap between a lay understanding of genetics and lay intuitions about essences, we argue that, when most people are thinking about genes, they are not really thinking about genes in the complex ways that good scientists are. Combating people’s essentialist biases can be a formidable challenge. Although we have identified some promising results of trying to reduce people’s genetic essentialist tendencies, there is still much to learn about how these essentialist biases can be countered. It is important to help people understand genetic information so they are able make well‐informed decisions about their lives. (shrink)
Judging in Good Faith.Steven J. Burton -1992 - New York: Cambridge University Press.detailsThis book offers an original theory of adjudication focused on the ethics of judging in courts of law, and proposes two main theses. One is the good faith thesis, which defends the possibility of lawful judicial decisions even when judges exercise discretion. The other is the permissible discretion thesis, which defends the compatibility of judicial discretion and legal indeterminacy with the legitimacy of adjudication in a constitutional democracy. Together these two theses oppose both conservative theories that would restrict the scope (...) of adjudication unduly, and leftist critical theories that would liberate judges from the rule of law. (shrink)
Good and Evil Actions: A Journey Through Saint Thomas Aquinas.Steven J. Jensen -2010 - Catholic University of America Press.details*Tackles the Thomistic debate surrounding the inherent good and evil of human actions*.
New insights into the origin of biological chirality.Steven J. Blumenthal -1984 -Bioessays 1 (6):258-260.detailsLife is characterized by a selectivity for asymmetric molecules. A great deal of theoretical and experimental work has yet to explain why living organisms utilize only L‐amino acids in proteins and D‐sugars in RNA and DNA. Also unknown is how a form of life based on asymmetric molecules evolved from an environment containing a racemic mixture of prebiotic molecules. By what mechanism did this selectivity for asymmetric molecules take place?
(1 other version)Whither a Welfare-Funded ’Sex Doula' Programme?Steven J. Firth -2019 -Journal of Medical Ethics 45 (6):361-364.detailsThe sexual citizenship of disabled persons is an ethically contentious issue with important and broad-reaching ramifications. Awareness of the issue has risen considerably due to the increasingly public responses from charitable organisations which have recently sought to respond to the needs of disabled persons—yet this important debate still struggles for traction in academia. In response, this paper continues the debate raised in this journal between Appel and Di Nucci, concurring with Appel’s proposals that sexual pleasure is a fundamental human right (...) and that access to sexual citizenship for the severely disabled should be publicly funded. To that endeavour, this paper refutes Di Nucci’s criticism of Appel’s sex rights for the disabled and shows how Di Nucci’s alternative solution is iniquitous. To advance the debate, I argue that a welfare-funded ‘sex doula' programme would be uniquely positioned to respond to the sexual citizenship issues of disabled persons. (shrink)
Sense and the identity conception of truth.Steven J. Methven -2018 -European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):1041-1056.detailsThe identity conception of truth holds that a thinkable is true just in case it is a fact. As such, it sets itself against correspondence theories of truth, while respecting the substantive role played by truth in respect of enquiry. In this article, I motivate and develop that view, and, in so doing, promote a particular conception of sense. This allows me to defend the view from two substantial criticisms. First, that the identity conception of truth is incoherent in respect (...) of its treatment of objects in the realm of reference, and, second, that it is committed to a view of the world in which ordinary objects have no place. (shrink)
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The Influence of Leader-Follower Cognitive Style Similarity on Followers’ Organizational Citizenship Behaviors.Steven J. Armstrong &Meng Qi -2020 -Frontiers in Psychology 11:526177.detailsWhile cognitive style congruence has been highlighted as a potentially important variable influencing performance outcomes in work-related contexts, studies of its influence are scarce. This paper examines the influence of leader-follower cognitive style similarity on followers’ organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Data from 430 leader-follower dyads were analyzed using polynomial regression and response surface analysis. Results demonstrate that congruence of leader/follower cognitive style is a predictor of follower OCBs. Organizations may therefore benefit from considering issues of similarity of cognitive styles in (...) their attempts to develop effective leader-follower partnerships leading to increased OCBs and concomitant improvements in both individual and organizational level success. (shrink)
Aquinas’s Original Discovery.Steven J. Jensen -2018 -American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 92 (1):73-95.detailsAccording to Michael Barnwell, Aquinas’s explanation of the first cause of moral evil is inadequate. Against Barnwell’s criticisms, this article defends Aquinas, according to whom the first cause of moral evil is the failure to consider the moral rule. According to Barnwell, the ignorance found within Aquinas’s explanation must remove moral responsibility; Barnwell also points out that the failure to consider the moral rule does not explain the sinfulness of the action. Underlying Barnwell’s criticisms are certain presuppositions and oversights. First, (...) he fails to distinguish between explaining how a sinful choice is possible (Aquinas’s concern) and what makes the choice to be sinful (part of Barnwell’s concern). Second, he supposes that an awareness of one’s own ignorance must include detailed awareness of the content of that ignorance. Finally, he supposes that an initial causal defect can be voluntary only when there is full knowledge concerning it. (shrink)
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William of Ockham, the Subalternate Sciences, and Aristotle's Theory of metabasis.Steven J. Livesey -1985 -British Journal for the History of Science 18 (2):127-145.detailsHistorians of fourteenth-century science have long recognized the extraordinary work at both Oxford and Paris in which natural philosophy was becoming highly mathematical. The movement to subject natural philosophy to a mathematical analysis and to quantify such qualities as heat, color, and of course speed surely stands as one of the most significant aspects of late medieval science. Yet as Edith Sylla has observed, because qualities and quantities pertain to different categories in Aristotelian theory, one might expect Aristotelian theorists to (...) avoid quantifying qualities. Even more serious still, the very task of quantifying physical qualities exposes a tension in the nature of science that was discussed first by Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics. (shrink)
The Ethics of Access: Who Is Offered a Cesarean Delivery, and Why?Steven J. Ralston &Ruth M. Farrell -2015 -Hastings Center Report 45 (6):15-19.detailsMuch of the discourse in the bioethics literature on what is often called “cesarean delivery on maternal request” has focused on balancing respect for patient autonomy with attention to the short- and long-term risks of this procedure to maternal and neonatal well-being. And while there has been some analysis of the social and economic costs inherent in performing cesareans, much of the clinical and ethical analysis has concluded that, given the degree of risk to the mother and neonate from a (...) primary or single repeat cesarean delivery, there is sufficient justification for pregnant women to request and obtain this procedure from obstetricians willing to meet such requests. However, these same analyses often caution that physicians should not offer these elective cesareans to all women, but only to those who initiate the request. This paper analyzes recommendations that do not promote universal access to these procedures and concludes that such a policy is ethically unjustifiable, as it treats women who do not inquire about such procedures differently. Depriving appropriate candidates—for example, healthy women who are good surgical candidates and desire only one or two children—of information about elective cesarean delivery is a form of undue influence on women's decision-making. (shrink)
Evolutionary Psychology: Alternative Approaches.Steven J. Scher &Frederick Rauscher (eds.) -2002 - Kluwer Academic Publishers.detailsThe aim of this collection is not to reject evolutionary psychology but to open up new vistas which students and researchers can use to ensure that evolutionary ...
Governing the Global Antimicrobial Commons: Introduction to Special Issue.Steven J. Hoffman,Julian Savulescu,Alberto Giubilini,Claas Kirchhelle,Susan Rogers Van Katwyk,Isaac Weldon,Brooke Campus,Mark Harrison,Hannah Maslen &Angela McLean -2023 -Health Care Analysis 31 (1):1-8.detailsAntimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest public health crises of our time. The natural biological process that causes microbes to become resistant to antimicrobial drugs presents a complex social challenge requiring more effective and sustainable management of the global antimicrobial commons—the common pool of effective antimicrobials. This special issue of Health Care Analysis explores the potential of two legal approaches—one long-term and one short-term—for managing the antimicrobial commons. The first article explores the lessons for antimicrobial resistance that can be (...) learned from recent climate change agreements, and the second article explores how existing international laws can be adapted to better support global action in the short-term. (shrink)
Comets and the Origin of Life by Janaki Wickramasinghe, Chandra Wickramasinghe, and William Napier.Steven J. Dick -2012 -Journal of Scientific Exploration 26 (2).detailsThis volume is the latest in a series of books and articles stretching back more than three decades on a theme quite startling in its claims and implications: that terrestrial life did not originate on Earth but arrived in the form of cells or bacteria from outer space. The idea of “panspermia,” that the seeds of life are spread from planet to planet, dates to the 19th century with the ideas of Lord Kelvin. It was championed by the Swedish physicist, (...) chemist, and Nobelist Svante Arrhenius at the beginning of the 20th century. Once scientists recognized the difficulties of life surviving in the conditions of interplanetary and interstellar space, by the 1960s a neo-panspermia became popular: not life itself, but prebiotic chemicals were the new seeds of life, made more likely by the discovery of numerous complex organic molecules in meteorites, comets, and interstellar molecular clouds. But the difficulties of synthesizing anything more complicated than amino acids in the wake of the famous Miller-Urey experiment in 1953 kept alive the idea that life itself may be spread throughout the universe. At the center of this work is Chandra Wickramasinghe, a research student of the maverick astronomer Fred Hoyle. In 1962 Hoyle became interested in the origin and nature of interstellar dust, in particular as found in dense molecular clouds, and he and Wickramasinghe set to work on the problem. They became convinced that dust could not form inside molecular clouds, but must have originated in the atmospheres of cool stars, protoplanetary discs, or supernova ejecta, a theory now widely accepted. It was the next steps that became increasingly controversial: that the spectroscopic signature of dust was best explained by complex biomolecules such as cellulose; that biomolecules were assembled into still more complex forms inside comets; and that the living cells and bacteria generated there were responsible for the origin of life on Earth. And not only that: Hoyle and Wickramasinghe argued that the delivery of bacteria from space continues, affecting both the origin and the ongoing evolution of life, and may even be responsible for certain diseases on Earth. These theories were not only reported in reputable scientific journals such as Nature, but also in popular books including Lifecloud (1978), Diseases from Space (1979), and Evolution from Space (1981). Biologists were not impressed; Lynn Margulis, not known for the timidity of her own theories such as endosymbiosis, called the first book “wanton, amusing, promiscuous fiction.”. (shrink)
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