Until recently, the problem of traumatic brain injury in sports and the problem of performance enhancement via hormone replacement have not been seen as related issues. However, recent evidence suggests that these two problems may actually interact in complex and previously underappreciated ways. A body of recent research has shown that traumatic brain injuries (TBI), at all ranges of severity, have a negative effect upon pituitary function, which results in diminished levels of several endogenous hormones, such as growth hormone and gonadotropin. This is a cause for concern for many popular sports that have high rates of concussion, a mild form of TBI. Emerging research suggests that hormone replacement therapy is an effective treatment for TBIrelated hormone deficiency. However, many athletic organizations ban or severely limit the use of hormone replacing substances because many athletes seek to use them solely for the purposes of performance enhancement. Nevertheless, in the light of the research linking traumatic brain injury to hypopituitarism, this paper argues that athletic organizations' policies and attitudes towards hormone replacement therapy should change. We defend two claims. First, because of the connection between TBI and pituitary function, it is likely many more athletes than previously acknowledged suffer from hormone deficiency and thus could benefit from hormone replacement therapy. Second, athletes' hormone levels should be tested more rigorously and frequently with an emphasis on monitoring TBI and TBI-related issues, rather than simply monitoring policy violations.

Ethical vagueness has garnered little attention. This is rather surprising since many philosophers have remarked that the science of ethics lacks the precision that other fields of inquiry have. 1 Of the few philosophers who have discussed ethical vagueness the majority have focused on the implications of vagueness for moral realism. 2 The relevance of ethical vagueness for other metaethical positions has been underexplored, my aim in this paper is to investigate the ramifications of ethical vagueness for expressivism. 3 Ultimately, I shall argue that expressivism does not have the resources to adequately account for ethical vagueness, while cognitivism does. This demonstrates an advantage that cognitivism holds over expressivism. 1) Expressivism Before I offer my argument showing that ethical vagueness raises problems for expressivism, it will be helpful to briefly review the central tenets of expressivism, and to provide a basic overview of the phenomenon of ethical vagueness. Expressivists maintain that there is a sharp distinction between descriptive claims and normative judgments. On one hand, descriptive claims express factual beliefs about the world, in contrast, normative 1 See especially Aristotle EN 1094b, 12-18. 2 See Constantinescu (Forthcoming); Schiffer (2003); Shafer-Landau (1995); Shafer-Landau (1994). 3 In this paper I am solely concerned with full non-cognitive versions of expressivism. Thus, I will not be considering hybrid theories of expressivism. (e.g. moral, epistemic, practical) judgments express a distinctive non-cognitive mental state with a conative structure. This difference can be explained in terms of the "direction of fit". Cognitivists maintain that normative judgments attempt to represent or fit the world. For example, to hold that 'murder is wrong' is to believe that the world is such a way that it is wrong to murder. In contrast, non-cognitivists hold that normative judgments attempt to direct action and change the world such that the world fits one's normative judgments. For example, to judge that "murder is wrong" is to take a specific attitude towards murder. This attitude expresses the norms concerning murder which one has adopted or hopes to adopt. This feature of expressivism is purported to offer two advantages over other metaethical theories. It clearly demonstrates why normative judgments are motivational-they are conative states rather than belief states. Additionally, since there are no (robust) moral properties, expressivism accords with metaphysical naturalism in a simple way. Expressivism advances upon its predecessor emotivism in two main ways. 4 First, expressivists hold that the current emotional state an agent is in can come apart from the norms she is expressing when she makes a normative judgment. Justin D'Arms and Daniel Jacobson refer to this as the "response dependency thesis" (RDT hereafter).5 A noncognitive formulation of RDT is as follows: RDT: To judge that X has some evaluative property P is to approve of feeling F in response to X.

No abstract

This paper examines Plato’s conception of shame and the role intoxication plays in cultivating it in the Laws. Ultimately, this paper argues that there are two accounts of shame in the Laws. There is a public sense of shame that is more closely tied to the rational faculties and a private sense of shame that is more closely tied to the non-rational faculties. Understanding this division between public and private shame not only informs our understanding of Plato’s moral psychology, but his political and ethical theory as well.

No abstract