Demonstrates that knowledge concerning social and cultural awareness and responsibility (SCAR) is not opposed to efficiency in information systems development. On the contrary, such knowledge is a prerequisite for developing effective systems. An information system is supposed to provide relevant information and help fulfil the â information needsâ of users and potential users. The concepts of â relevanceâ and information needsâ in information science should be defined in a way that reflects social responsibility. Approaches that are not open to consider SCAR in user needs and relevance criteria cannot be regarded as being efficient. Questions related to SCAR are not only relevant for the methodology of information science as a research discipline, but involveâ more or lessâ all kinds of knowledge production. Some theories of knowledge deny this thesis about the role of values, goals, and consequences in scientific activities, while other epistemologies approve it. The hermeneutic insight, that there is no neutral platform from which knowledge can be evaluated, implies that the seemingly neutral epistemologies are wrong: they are never neutral, they just do not acknowledge and discuss their basis, values, and consequences. Epistemological questions should never remain invisible or unconscious.

Do minds ever extend spatially beyond the boundaries of the bodies of their subjects? I argue that they do. More precisely, I argue that some of our visual experiences are constitutively grounded by events that include parts of the world that are not parts of any subject's body. After surveying the development of externalist theories in the philosophy of mind, I present some of the motivations common to ecological, enactive, dynamic sensorimotor and two-level interdependence accounts of perception and explain how some of these accounts support the case for active vehicle externalism about consciousness. I then discuss and respond to three well-known objections. The first concerns whether the extended mind thesis implies that there extended selves, the second concerns what exactly demarcates mental events from non-mental events, and the last concerns what is required to demonstrate constitutive dependence. To address what distinguishes constitutive from nomological or causal forms of dependence, I develop an account of constitutive grounding. My account draws on recent work in analytic metaphysics on the notion of ontological dependence or grounding, where grounding is taken to be a non-causal relation of ontological priority. After showing how this notion is different than any kind of nomological dependence and how it can be constructively used to decipher the spatiotemporal extent of events, I argue positively that the grounds of visual experiences are always temporally extended and often include parts of the world external to the seeing subject's body. My argument for temporally extended vision begins by considering three different models of the temporal structure of consciousness: cinematic, retentional, and extensional. I then draw on the dynamic sensorimotor theory to object to the cinematic model and explore whether enactivists are really committed to retentionalism. I end up arguing that any account one gives of the intentional contents or phenomenal characters of individual conscious visual events will have to make reference to a briefly enduring process and not just an instantaneous event involving the subject. Lastly, I argue as follows: (P1) in the explanation of visual experience, the brain internal parts of the temporally extended events that constitutively ground visual experiences often cannot be decoupled from parts of the non-bodily world; (P2) if event A is a constitutive ground of event E and event B cannot be decoupled from A in the explanation of E, then B is also a constitutive ground of E; therefore, (C) some visual experiences are constitutively grounded by events that include parts of the non-bodily world. I call this conclusion the extended visual consciousness thesis. If my argument for it is sound, our conscious minds do, in some cases, extend beyond our bodies.

I develop a solution to the causal exclusion problem and explore its implications for a broader metaphysics of causation. In a series of three papers, I show that standard approaches to the exclusion problem are inadequate, that the solution to the problem lies not in causation but in the overlooked phenomena of contribution, and that contribution grounds a new kind of theory of causation. In "Trouble with intimacy," I show that the standard solution to the exclusion problem is inadequate. The problem is traditionally framed in terms of causal overdetermination. It charges that (i) if mental events are not identical to their physical realizers, they systematically overdetermine their common effects and (ii) such effects are not overdetermined. Critics often deny (i), claiming that mental events and their realizers are too intimately related to be overdetermining causes. I develop a class of cases that undermine this response. These cases show two things. First, mental events and their realizers overdetermine at least some of their effects. Second, overdetermination is not essential to the exclusion problem. In "Causal contribution and causal exclusion," I develop a solution to the exclusion problem. The exclusion problem is a symptom of our failure to attend not just to causation, but to the conceptually more basic notion of contribution -- the influence that an event has on future states of the world independently of other events. I develop an account of contribution as a constraint on what world states may obtain in an event's wake. The solution to the exclusion problem lies in the relation between the contributions of mental events and those of their realizers. In "Regularity as a form of constraint," I present the groundwork for a new type of regularity theory of causation. Traditional regularity theories have been much too liberal: they entail a wealth of causal relationships that do not exist. We can correct this by grounding regularity/entailment relations in contributions. Traditional regularity theories fail because they identify causation with entailment by a non-redundant sufficient condition. This new breed of regularity theory succeeds by identifying causation with entailment via a minimally restrictive contribution.

<p> In my dissertation, I defend John Rawls's claim that the question of the design of the basic structure of society is the central question of distributive justice. The basic structure, on my understanding, and following Samuel Freeman, is the system of basic background institutions within which we pursue our everyday lives. It includes the institutions of our political and legal system, our system of property, our economic system, and the legal structure of the family. </p><p> Rawls argues that any conception of distributive justice appropriate for a liberal democratic society must be a political conception, which means three things. First, a political conception of justice must be freestanding from what Rawls calls comprehensive moral, religious, and philosophical views. This means that it shouldn't depend essentially on any one or any subgroup of reasonable comprehensive doctrines. Second, a political account is expressed in terms of fundamental ideas implicit in liberal democratic culture. Third and finally, a political account of justice, says Rawls, takes as its object of evaluation the basic structure of society. </p><p> I argue that such a system of institutions, consisting of a set of coercively enforceable rules, is a requirement for equal freedom among interacting, embodied persons. In showing that this claim is well founded, I also argue that liberal political philosophy is not merely a form of applied moral philosophy, but instead must be an autonomous area of inquiry within moral philosophy more generally. Moreover, the liberal political conception of justice together with a particular basic structure that conforms to the requirements of justice set constraints on permissible answers to other moral questions that fall outside of the sphere of political philosophy, and so in this way political justice has a form of priority within moral philosophy broadly understood. </p>

Medical research is frequently regarded as not only a laudable, but even an obligatory enterprise. As critics point out, however, the moral foundation for such an obligation is far from clear. Foremost among these critics is bioethicist Daniel Callahan, whose work on this topic remains under-examined. His arguments concerning what he refers to as the research imperative demand careful analysis in order to provoke a rigorous interdisciplinary debate. Central to this project is an understanding of the research imperative's ideological dimensions. I offer a conceptual analysis of ideology before executing a detailed examination of its role in the research imperative, concentrating on Callahan's contributions. I then present a feminist analysis that reveals new concerns—namely the medical research enterprise's influences of androcentrism and medicalization. This attention to the research imperative debate will motivate concrete changes in medical research practice and policy as well as increased feminist scholarship in research ethics. / On reconnaît souvent que la recherche médicale est une poursuite non seulement estimable, mais aussi obligatoire. Cependant, comme certains critiques ont noté, les assises morales d'une telle obligation demeurent nébuleuses. Les travaux de Daniel Callahan, qui est parmi les plus importants de ces critiques, demeurent peu exploités. Les arguments qu'il formule autour de son concept de l'impératif de la recherche exigent une analyse attentive afin d'entamer un débat interdisciplinaire rigoureux. Un entendement des dimensions idéologiques de l'impératif de la recherche est au cœur de cœur de ce projet. Je propose une analyse conceptuelle de l'idéologie avant d'entreprendre un examen minutieux de son rôle dans l'impératif de la recherche, tout en me concentrant sur l'apport de Callahan. Je présente ensuite une analyse féministe qui expose de nouvelles difficultés, soit l'androcentrisme et la médicalisation qui proviennent de l'influence de l'entreprise de la recherche médicale. Ce regard porté sur le débat entourant l'impératif de recherche incitera des changements concrets dans la pratique et la politique de la recherche médicale ainsi qu'une augmentation de recherche féministe dans le domaine de l'éthique de la recherche.

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It would be unfaithful to Croce's own principles to attribute to the historical genesis of his philosophy excessive importance. But though one must recognize that it is not a mere product of circumstances, it is necessary to grasp the nature of the background against which it arose. Only then will its polemical character become apparent, and only then will it assume the place due to it in the chain of philosophical progress. We must not attempt to consider his philosophy of history as a system to be connected with other systems; the changing, prolific nature of Croce's thought as well as his own assertions in his "Autobiography" forbid such an approach; and to systematize where the author himself does not would be too presumptuous a project, and might falsify the understanding of Croce's thought in the process of crystallizing it.

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Lewis' theory of meaning is barely touched by the contemporary trend to substitute a patient examination of the use of words for theorizing in the traditional manner. By way of contrast, some of his epistemological and ethical writings look as if Lewis had fulfilled the promise of linguistic analysis before it was made by Wittgenstein. Lewis' discussion of the good looks like an anticipation of the linguistic method. The question "what is good?" is answered as if it read "how is the word 'good' used?" (1) In comparison, his discussion of meaning has an anachronistic air about it. [...]

An explanation of the system of textual references employed in this paper may perhaps be of convenience to the reader. As a rule, references to other works have here been incorporated in the main body of the text, with the aid of abbreviations usually derived from the initial letters of the main words in their titles. Thus "HLL, p. 21." refers to page twenty-one of Thomas Hobbes: Leben and Lehre, by F. Tonnies. (A table of such abbreviations will be found immediately preceding the Introduction.)