This essay sets down three directives for conscientiously objecting clinicians—physicians, particularly obstetrician/gynecologists, trained in NaProTechnology by the Pope Paul VI Institute and Creighton University School of Medicine and any medical professionals who share their natural law vision of reproductive health care—to protect their right to well-formed conscientious objection in reproductive medicine. Directive one: understand the nature of a well-formed conscience and its rightful exercise. Directive two: fulfill all reasonable American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ requirements for conscientious refusal. Directive three: (...) execute a political strategy to protect health-care conscience rights. (shrink)

Illustrates the similarities between the enslavement of Black people and the enslavement of animals in both the past and the present.

This essential work is made up of eight interrelated essays grouped to elucidate two major themes -- Descartes's role in the dilemma of modern philosophy, and ...

This paper states the author's understanding of the doctrines of the Christian faith in the light of her scientific background and her interpretation of current evolutionary, neuropsychologi–cal, and other scientific theories. It contains the actual ordination vows and her response to them, based upon an outline of questions suggested by the United Church of Christ.

Marjorie Perloff, among our foremost critics of twentieth-century poetry, argues that Ludwig Wittgenstein provided writers with a radical new aesthetic, a key to recognizing the inescapable strangeness of ordinary language. Taking seriously Wittgenstein's remark that "philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry," Perloff begins by discussing Wittgenstein the "poet." What we learn is that the poetics of everyday life is anything but banal. "This book has the lucidity and the intelligence we have come to (...) expect from Marjorie Perloff.--Linda Munk, American Literature "[Perloff] has brilliantly adapted Wittgenstein's conception of meaning and use to an analysis of contemporary language poetry."--Linda Voris, Boston Review " Wittgenstein's Ladder offers significant insights into the current state of poetry, literature, and literary study. Perloff emphasizes the vitality of reading and thinking about poetry, and the absolute necessity of pushing against the boundaries that define and limit our worlds."--David Clippinger, Chicago Review "Majorie Perloff has done more to illuminate our understanding of twentieth century poetic language than perhaps any other critic. . . . Entertaining, witty, and above all highly original."--Willard Bohn, Sub-Stance. (shrink)

This essay explores some relationships between social structures or systems and the internal psychological structures or systems of individuals. After defining evil, pastoral counseling, and structures or systems, I present examples of persons affected by social systems of power who have sought counseling. I present a form of counseling known as Internal Family System Therapy (IFS) and show with an extended example how I have worked with clients using this approach. In this process the client is guided to use "Self-leadership" (...) in healing and transforming inner conflict between various subpersonalities or "parts." I then compare the IFS approach to one used by mediators in community conflict transformation and peacebuilding. (shrink)

The United States, unlike most developed countries, continues to use the marital couple as the taxable unit for its income tax. This continued use of the marital unit— like its original establishment —rests on cultural preferences. This Article suggests that the roles of marriage, religion and taxation in America are essential factors in America’s retention of the marital unit. Part I examines the distinctive contribution marriage — especially the traditional single-earner breadwinner marriage — makes to the political life of the (...) country. Part II explores the similar role of religion. Part III describes some congressional efforts over the past two decades to aid, ostensibly, married couples through the income tax. Part IV concludes that although these actions have not been the most effective or efficient means of helping married couples, they nevertheless serve an important expressive purpose. Tax has been the arena for many political issues since the founding of the nation. Consequently, congressional actions and rhetoric regarding the income tax’s "marriage penalty" reinforce the marital unit/joint return and reaffirm — even if only symbolically — a national commitment to marriage as instrumental to American democracy. (shrink)

Of course, talking about pragmatist ethics is difficult because Richard Rorty and earlier pragmatists deny that ethics, at least in the way the canonical philosophers have discussed it, is the sort of thing about which one should have views. Ethics, understood as the philosophic inquiry which looks into the meanings, and legitimacy of such terms as good, and so forth, is just the sort of enterprise which we pragmatists lament. Each of the pragmatists had known and dealt with tragedy in (...) his or her life. But, strangely, it is just in the face of tragedy that the pragmatists argue for the moral value of hope. For Rorty the connection depends on what he calls solidarity, social hope and utopian politics. The claim of common hopes is much closer to what John Dewey sees as central to communities – common purposes, in the development and implementation of which each member of the community has a role. (shrink)

A central tenet of constructivist models of conceptual development is that children's initial conceptual level constrains how they make sense of new evidence and thus whether exposure to evidence will prompt conceptual change. Yet little experimental evidence directly examines this claim for the case of sustained, fundamental conceptual achievements. The present study combined scaling and experimental microgenetic methods to examine the processes underlying conceptual change in the context of an important conceptual achievement of early childhood—the development of a representational theory (...) of mind. Results from 47 children (M age = 3.7 years) indicate that only children who were conceptually close to understanding false belief at the beginning of the study, and who were experimentally exposed to evidence of people acting on false beliefs, reliably developed representational theories of minds. Combined scaling and microgenetic data revealed how prior conceptual level interacts with experience, thereby providing critical experimental evidence for how conceptual change results from the interplay between conceptions and evidence. (shrink)

“Talking Back to Frida: Houses of Emotional Mestizaje” is, in part, a historical meditation on the silencing of three women, Frida Kahlo, Maria Enríquez, a Mexican woman who was sexually assaulted in 1924, and me. Written in an innovative historical fashion that joins techniques drawn from fiction, journalism, and history, the article attempts to understand specific assaults on women’s voices by drawing readers into the historical worlds of the protagonists. “Talking Back” also seeks to respond to Hans Kellner’s incisive theoretical (...) challenge: how do historians’ person histories affect their historical choices? The article’s organization depends on my understanding of language, color, and physicality, as the emotional architecture of the Deep Southern and Mexican places tend to both enclose and partially free the protagonists. The essay begins by leading the reader into my own past in the Deep South, a past where German Jewish and Russian Jewish relatives engaged in a cultural battle over form, personal style, and will. Confronting a German Jewish world where only things—never feelings—seemed to matter, I found solace in the friendship of a black servant. That friendship, in turn, helped prompt a particularly empathic historical voice. The southern section is followed by a journey into Frida Kahlo’s Mexican world. In that world, Kahlo’s severe physical pain and solitude construct inner and outer universes. The people who populate these worlds are friends, lovers, husband, and the Mexican poor. Kahlo’s artistic renditions of these people reflect, the article suggests, both the depth of her love for them and a tendency to use them in response to her despair. Finally, “Talking Back” reconstructs the world of María Enríquez, a Michoacán peasant woman assaulted in public by her former boyfriend. Abandoned by friend, sister, and Catholic women on the way to church, Enríquez develops a voice laced with generosity, cultural insight, and a rare self-possession. (shrink)

Endeavours to map out a piece of the intellectual history of this century which once almost faded from memory. In 1941 William Temple, then Archbishop of York, called for a Christian social philosophy and in so doing voiced a concern that had been gathering momentum all through the 30s, sharpened by the challenge of authoritarian regimes, left and right, and had formed the focus of the Oxford Conference of Church, Community and State in 1937.

Norwegian health professionals, elderly people and family members experience ethical problems involving end-of-life decision making for elders in the context of the values of Norwegian society. This study used ethical inquiry and qualitative methodology to conduct and analyze interviews carried out with 25 health professionals, six elderly people and five family members about the ethical problems they encountered in end-of-life decision making in Norway. All three participant groups experienced ethical problems involving the adequacy of health care for elderly Norwegians. Older (...) people were concerned about being a burden to their families at the end of their life. However, health professionals wished to protect families from the burden of difficult decisions regarding health care for elderly parents at the end of life. Strategies are suggested for dialogue about end-of-life decisions and the integration of palliative care approaches into health care services for frail elderly people. (shrink)

La cohabitation avec la dialyse à domicile, ce lieu privé habituellement préservé de la maladie, invite à des questionnements sur la dynamique du couple au regard du nouveau rôle de soignant endossé par le conjoint et de celui de patient assigné au conjoint malade. Les auteurs, psychologues cliniciennes, interrogent ici les motivations conscientes et inconscientes qui conduisent à cette décision commune et leurs retentissements sur la dynamique du couple. Différentes configurations relationnelles observées dans notre clinique seront abordées. L’article, cas clinique (...) à l’appui, montre l’intérêt d’un groupe thérapeutique avec malades et conjoints pour mettre à jour les enjeux, au niveau de la relation de couple, d’une prise en charge à domicile. (shrink)

Can an assessment of individuals’ narcissism help explain the quality of a respondent’s ethical judgment? How is the relationship between religiosity and ethical judgment moderated by the effects of narcissism? With a sample of 385 undergraduate business majors, this study uses a taxonomic approach to examine the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity as well as orthodox Christian beliefs on ethical judgment. Three distinct clusters were identified: Skeptics, Nominals, and Devouts. Surprisingly, of the three clusters, Nominals and Devouts were the (...) only groups impacted by narcissism, although Skeptics overall demonstrate the worst ethical judgment. (shrink)

Social categorization is an early emerging and robust component of social cognition, yet the role that social categories play in children's understanding of the social world has remained unclear. The present studies examined children's explanations of social behavior to provide a window into their intuitive theories of how social categories constrain human action. Children systematically referenced category memberships and social relationships as causal-explanatory factors for specific types of social interactions: harm among members of different categories more than harm among members (...) of the same category. In contrast, they systematically referred to agents' mental states to explain the reverse patterns of behaviors: harm among members of the same category more than harm among members of different categories. These data suggest that children view social category memberships as playing a causal-explanatory role in constraining social interactions. (shrink)

Metaseiulus occidentalis is a representative of an important family of mites (Arthropoda: Chelicerata: Acari: Phytoseiidae) that are effective predators of pest mites in agricultural crops around the world. Like many arthropods, this mite contains multiple genomes, including the genomes of several microbial symbionts as well as its own mitochondrial and nuclear genomes. The mitochondrial genome is “mitey” large at 25 kb, due to duplication and triplication of genes. By contrast, the nuclear genome is “mitey” small at 88 Mb. This mite (...) has a parahaploid genetic system, tolerates inbreeding, and has a haploid chromosome number of 3. This predator was genetically improved for use in agriculture by developing strains that lacked the ability to overwinter in diapause or were resistant to multiple pesticides, and can be genetically modified using recombinant DNA methods. Sequencing the nuclear genome would provide useful insights that could enhance genetic improvement programs that would result in improved pest management, could provide genes needed to resolve the evolutionary relationships of this family, and could serve as a model for understanding the evolution and genetics of chelicerate arthropod predators. (shrink)

When the world's first face transplant was performed in France in 2005, the complex medical procedure and accompanying worldwide media attention sparked many ethical issues, including how the media covered the story. This study uses framing theory to examine what happens when media ethics intersect with bioethics by analyzing French, American, and British media coverage on the transplant and its aftermath. This study looks at how this story was framed and which bioethical issues were focused upon. The media ethical implications (...) of these findings are then discussed. By doing so, this article attempts to contribute to the debate on how complex medical stories with bioethical components can be reported in an ethical manner. (shrink)

Infinite Awareness pairs Woollacott’s research as a neuroscientist with her self-revelations about the her mind’s spiritual power. Between the scientific and spiritual worlds, she breaks open the definition of human consciousness to investigate the existence of a non-physical mind.

This paper examines the foreign direct investment decision from an ethical perspective, and considers the moral agency involved in such decisions, with emphasis upon the corporate decision-maker. Historical capital allocation models once regarded as both financially and ethically normative are shown to be deficient in today's environment. Work of modern western philososphical and theological ethicists is included in analyses of the applicability of selected ethical approaches or metaphors to multinational foreign direct investment decisions and the corporate manager's role and responsibility (...) as corporate decision-maker and moral agent. The ethical perspectives reviewed can serve as an aid to the individual manager's determination of what constitutes a responsible exercise of decision-making power. (shrink)

La cohabitation avec la dialyse à domicile, ce lieu privé habituellement préservé de la maladie, invite à des questionnements sur la dynamique du couple au regard du nouveau rôle de soignant endossé par le conjoint et de celui de patient assigné au conjoint malade. Les auteurs, psychologues cliniciennes, interrogent ici les motivations conscientes et inconscientes qui conduisent à cette décision commune et leurs retentissements sur la dynamique du couple. Différentes configurations relationnelles observées dans notre clinique seront abordées. L’article, cas clinique (...) à l’appui, montre l’intérêt d’un groupe thérapeutique avec malades et conjoints pour mettre à jour les enjeux, au niveau de la relation de couple, d’une prise en charge à domicile. (shrink)