Drawing on the moving story of the last year of the life of her own treasured dog, Ody, she presents an in-depth exploration of the practical, medical, and moral issues that trouble pet owners confronted with the decline and death of their ...

Scientists have long counseled against interpreting animal behavior in terms of human emotions, warning that such anthropomorphizing limits our ability to understand animals as they really are. Yet what are we to make of a female gorilla in a German zoo who spent days mourning the death of her baby? Or a wild female elephant who cared for a younger one after she was injured by a rambunctious teenage male? Or a rat who refused to push a lever for food (...) when he saw that doing so caused another rat to be shocked? Aren’t these clear signs that animals have recognizable emotions and moral intelligence? With _Wild Justice_ Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce unequivocally answer yes. Marrying years of behavioral and cognitive research with compelling and moving anecdotes, Bekoff and Pierce reveal that animals exhibit a broad repertoire of moral behaviors, including fairness, empathy, trust, and reciprocity. Underlying these behaviors is a complex and nuanced range of emotions, backed by a high degree of intelligence and surprising behavioral flexibility. Animals, in short, are incredibly adept social beings, relying on rules of conduct to navigate intricate social networks that are essential to their survival. Ultimately, Bekoff and Pierce draw the astonishing conclusion that there is no moral gap between humans and other species: morality is an evolved trait that we unquestionably share with other social mammals. Sure to be controversial, _Wild Justice_ offers not just cutting-edge science, but a provocative call to rethink our relationship with—and our responsibilities toward—our fellow animals. (shrink)

Ecological feminism (or ecofeminism) and feminist bioethics seem to have much in common. They share certain methodological and epistemological concerns, offer similar challenges to traditional philosophy, and take up a number of the same practical issues. The two disciplines have thus far had little or no direct interaction; this is one attempt to begin some conversation and perhaps stimulate some cross-pollination of ideas. The email dialogue engaged an active ecofeminist scholar, Karen Warren, and an active feminist bioethicist, Hilde Nelson, in (...) an exchange of ideas. Jessica Pierce, whose research cuts between environmental philosophy and bioethics, served as moderator. (shrink)

A quick tour through an average U.S. hospital gives pause to anyone with even a rudimentary concern for environmental issues. To a careful observer, the typical U.S. hospital presents an array of challenges to the health of ecosystems. For example, hospitals consume vast quantities of natural resources. The most obvious of these are fossil fuels, which form the basic building blocks of the industrialized medical care industry. Aside from the worry that our healthcare systems are technologically and functionally dependent upon (...) nonrenewable, relatively scarce, and politically volatile resources, our heavy reliance on fossil fuels has important ill effects, including unfavorable health outcomes for humans. For example, the combustion of fossil fuels is the driving force behind global warming, which will likely result in increasing heat-related mortality and morbidity and may contribute to the spread and resurgence of infectious diseases around the world. Also, the combustion of coal and oil releases pollutants such as sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and ground-level ozone that contribute to various respiratory ailments. In addition to being energy intensive, the modern hospital uses a great deal of water, wood, paper, metals, minerals, plastics, chemicals, food, and land. (shrink)

Significant changes in the natural environment over the past 40 years pose key challenges to health and health care in the 21st century. Health care has not yet given serious attention to what the current environmental situation means for human health, or for maintaining an effective health care system. Bioethics is in a good position to help health professionals engage environmental questions. But bioethics, as a field, will first need to explore and integrate ecological thinking —thinking based in the concept (...) of connectedness and committed to viewing humans are part of nature rather than exempt from it. (shrink)

This book shows how environmental decline relates to human health and to health care practices in the U.S. and other industrialized countries. It outlines the environmental trends that will strongly affect health, and challenges us to see the connections between ways of practicing medicine and the very environmental problems that damage ecosystems and make people sick. In addition to philosophical analysis of the converging values of bioethics and envrionmental ethics, the book offers case studies as well as a number of (...) practical suggestions for moving health care toward sustainability. (shrink)

The study of animal death is poised to blossom into an exciting new interdisciplinary field—and one with profound relevance for bioethics. Areas of interest include the biology and evolution of death-related behavior in nonhuman animals, as well as human social, psychological, cultural, and moral attitudes toward and practices related to animal death. In this paper, I offer a brief overview of what we know about death-related behavior in animals. I will then sketch some of the bioethical implications of this emerging (...) field of research. (shrink)

From the moment when we first open our homes—and our hearts—to a new pet, we know that one day we will have to watch this beloved animal age and die. The pain of that eventual separation is the cruel corollary to the love we share with them, and most of us deal with it by simply ignoring its inevitability. With _The Last Walk_, Jessica Pierce makes a forceful case that our pets, and the love we bear them, deserve (...) better. Drawing on the moving story of the last year of the life of her own treasured dog, Ody, she presents an in-depth exploration of the practical, medical, and moral issues that trouble pet owners confronted with the decline and death of their companion animals. Pierce combines heart-wrenching personal stories, interviews, and scientific research to consider a wide range of questions about animal aging, end-of-life care, and death. She tackles such vexing questions as whether animals are aware of death, whether they're feeling pain, and if and when euthanasia is appropriate. Given what we know and can learn, how should we best honor the lives of our pets, both while they live and after they have left us? The product of a lifetime of loving pets, studying philosophy, and collaborating with scientists at the forefront of the study of animal behavior and cognition, _The Last Walk_ asks—and answers—the toughest questions pet owners face. The result is informative, moving, and consoling in equal parts; no pet lover should miss it. (shrink)

Contemporary Bioethics: A Reader with Cases is the most cutting-edge bioethics anthology/casebook available. Incorporating introductions, readings, and cases that span the breadth of the discipline, this exceptional volume captures the spirit of bioethics as a rich, exciting, and continuously evolving field. Addressing all of the essential topics--including abortion, reproductive ethics, end-of-life care, research ethics, and the allocation of resources--it also moves beyond the "classic" approach of other books by extending into timely and provocative issues like terrorism, cosmetic surgery, immigration, genetic (...) manipulations, links between first- and third-world health, and--unique to this book--environmental sustainability and climate change. In addition, Contemporary Bioethics is the only book of its kind that includes both philosophical and religious perspectives.The text opens with a substantial introduction that presents key ethical principles, theories, and methods and shows students how to use these tools to frame and address ethical dilemmas in medicine. Covering the brief yet captivating history of the field, the introduction also considers the role of religion in the development of bioethics and examines differences between secular and religious modes of argumentation. Each of the seven topical chapters contains an in-depth introduction, a selection of concise readings representing a diverse range of moral perspectives, discussion questions, and a collection of full-length and provocative case studies that enable students to further explore the issues.Ideal for introductory courses in bioethics and biomedical ethics, Contemporary Bioethics is supplemented by a Instructor's Manual on CD and a Companion Website containing resources for both students and professors, including chapter summaries, additional cases with discussion questions, ideas for further reading, vocabulary flashcards, self-quizzes, and more. (shrink)

Empathy refers to a whole class or “cluster” of behaviors based in emotional linkage between individuals. The capacity for empathy is not unique to humans, but has evolved in a range of mammals that live in complex social groups. There is good evidence for empathy in primates, pachyderms, cetaceans, social carnivores, and rodents. Because empathy is grounded in the same neurological architecture as other prosocial behaviors such as trust, reciprocity, cooperation, and fairness, it seems likely that a whole suite of (...) interlinked moral behaviors have coevolved in social mammals. This essay explores the concept of empathy, reviews the scientific evidence for empathy in several species of social mammals, and suggests why empathy is adaptive. The paper concludeswith a discussion of what, if anything, the discovery of empathy in other animals suggests for how we treat them and how we think about our own morality. (shrink)

Empathy refers to a whole class or “cluster” of behaviors based in emotional linkage between individuals. The capacity for empathy is not unique to humans, but has evolved in a range of mammals that live in complex social groups. There is good evidence for empathy in primates, pachyderms, cetaceans, social carnivores, and rodents. Because empathy is grounded in the same neurological architecture as other prosocial behaviors such as trust, reciprocity, cooperation, and fairness, it seems likely that a whole suite of (...) interlinked moral behaviors have coevolved in social mammals. This essay explores the concept of empathy, reviews the scientific evidence for empathy in several species of social mammals, and suggests why empathy is adaptive. The paper concludeswith a discussion of what, if anything, the discovery of empathy in other animals suggests for how we treat them and how we think about our own morality. (shrink)

Crime and punishment -- Life and death -- Habitat and humanity -- Liberty and coercion -- Value and culture.

Important advances in biomedical and behavioral research ethics have occurred over the past few decades, many of them centered on identifying and eliminating significant harms to human subjects of research. Comprehensive attention has not been paid to the totality of harms experienced by animal subjects, although scientific and moral progress require explicit appraisal of these harms. Science is a public good and the prioritizing within, conduct of, generation of, and application of research must soundly address questions about which research is (...) morally defensible and valuable enough to support through funding, publication, tenure, and promotion. Likewise, educational pathways of re-imagined science are critical. (shrink)

Many are calling for concrete mechanisms of oversight for health research involving artificial intelligence (AI). In response, institutional review boards (IRBs) are being turned to as a familiar model of governance. Here, we examine the IRB model as a form of ethics oversight for health research that uses AI. We consider the model's origins, analyze the challenges IRBs are facing in the contexts of both industry and academia, and offer concrete recommendations for how these committees might be adapted in order (...) to provide an effective mechanism of oversight for health‐related AI research. (shrink)

At the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation, a host of noted environmentalists and business ethicists examine ethical issues in consumption from the points of view of environmental sustainability, economic development, and free enterprise.

In her book Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets, bioethicist Jessica Pierce attempts to explore a narrower field of Animal Ethics, the ethics of keeping pets, as the title indicates. Τhere has not been much research in this field, although contemporary literature has dealt with certain issues within its context, such as the issue of euthanasia. The author states that her main aim is to lead the reader, by the time he reaches the last page of (...) the book, to no longer be sure if the very practice of keeping pets is moral. Although the author proposes the use of a kinder language for discussing about pet keeping, she uses the accepted language throughout her book. (shrink)

Resenha do livro The Ethics of Environmentally Responsible Health Care.

Quão próxima está a ética do cuidado com a saúde da ética da responsabilidade ambiental? Enxergamos os problemas ambientais e também os problemas de saúde das pessoas, mas conseguimos ver realmente uma ligação entre eles?

Pt. I. The apparent good. Evaluative cognition -- Perceiving the good -- Phantasia and the apparent good -- pt. II. The apparent good and non-rational motivation. Passions and the apparent good -- Akrasia and the apparent good -- pt. III. The apparent good and rational motivation. Phantasia and deliberation -- Happiness, virtue, and the apparent good -- Practical induction -- Conclusion : Aristotle's practical empiricism.

Is there a need for a distinctively diachronic conception of metaphysical emergence? Here I argue to the contrary. In the main, my strategy consists in considering a representative sample of accounts of purportedly diachronic metaphysical emergence, and arguing that in each case, the purportedly diachronic emergence at issue either can (and should) be subsumed under a broadly synchronic account of metaphysical emergence, or else is better seen as simply a case of causation. In addition, I consider and argue against the (...) suggestion that 'in-principle unpredictability' accounts of diachronic emergence support there being distinctively diachronic metaphysical emergence. (shrink)

Fallibilists claim that one can know a proposition on the basis of evidence that supports it even if the evidence doesn't guarantee its truth. Jessica Brown offers a compelling defence of this view against infallibilists, who claim that it is contradictory to claim to know and yet to admit the possibility of error.

Plato's Epistemology presents an original interpretation of one of the central topics in Plato's work: epistemology. Moss argues, against the grain of much modern scholarship, that Plato's epistemology is radically different from our own.

A core principle of modern science holds that a scientific explanation must not attribute will or agency to natural phenomena.The Restless Clock examines the origins and history of this, in particular as it applies to the science of living things. This is also the story of a tradition of radicals—dissenters who embraced the opposite view, that agency is an essential and ineradicable part of nature. Beginning with the church and courtly automata of early modern Europe, Jessica Riskin guides us (...) through our thinking about the extent to which animals might be understood as mere machines. We encounter fantastic robots and cyborgs as well as a cast of scientific and philosophical luminaries, including Descartes and Leibnitz, Lamarck and Darwin, whose ideas gain new relevance in Riskin's hands. The book ends with a riveting discussion of how the dialectic continues in genetics, epigenetics, and evolutionary biology, where work continues to naturalize different forms of agency.The Restless Clock reveals the deeply buried roots of current debates in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology. (shrink)

did plato and aristotle have anything to say about belief? The answer to this question might seem blindingly obvious: of course they did. Plato distinguishes belief from knowledge in the Meno, Republic, and Theaetetus, and Aristotle does so in the Posterior Analytics. Plato distinguishes belief from perception in the Theaetetus, and Aristotle does so in the De anima. They talk about the distinction between true and false beliefs, and the ways in which belief can mislead and the ways in which (...) it can steer us aright. Indeed, they make belief a central component of their epistemologies.The view underlying these claims—one so widespread these days as to remain largely unquestioned—is that when Plato and Aristotle talk... (shrink)

I argue that the best explanation of the multiplicity of available frameworks for treating any given philosophical topic is that philosophy currently (though not insuperably) lacks fixed standards; I then go on to identify three barriers to philosophical progress associated with our present epistemic situation. First is that the lack of fixed standards encourages what I call “intra‐disciplinary siloing,” and associated dialectical and argumentative failings; second is that the lack of fixed standards makes room for sociological factors (including elite influence (...) and disciplinary inertia) to be determinative of which philosophical frameworks are embraced; third is that the lack of fixed standards encourages (implicit and/or explicit) bias. I close by offering some suggestions about how to move beyond these barriers, even in the absence of fixed standards. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays written by Bob Hale (three co-authored), with a critical introduction from Kit Fine. They comprise Hale’s final years of work, adding to and extending beyond his landmark monograph Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them (OUP, 2013, 2nd edition 2015). The essays develop and consolidate several key themes in Hale’s work, most notably the notion of definition, especially as it extends beyond definition of a word to definition of (...) a thing more generally, and its relations to essence and existence; how the recently influential notion of truthmaking relates to and illuminates some of these issues; and ontological questions connected with Hale’s metaphysical commitments on the one hand, and his commitments in the foundations of mathematics on the other. Several of the essays engage with and respond to work by Kit Fine, and contributions to Being Necessary: Themes of Ontology and Modality from the Work of Bob Hale (OUP 2018). As such, these essays also demonstrate a rich and fruitful philosophical dialogue between Hale and his critics and friends. (shrink)

What are rules? -- Why are rules important? -- Rules for the classroom -- Rules at school -- Rules in the community -- Follow the law! -- Rules and laws must be fair -- All together now -- It's good to have rules.

O povo Kaingang é o mais populoso do Sul do Brasil e está entre os mais numerosos povos indígenas do país. Neste trabalho faz-se uma relação entre as informações encontradas na literatura e a atualidade na Terra Indígena Kaingang em relação ao conhecimento que possuem sobre o uso de plantas para a cura de doenças e como interpretam a ação da erva no organismo. Para isto, realizou-se uma pesquisa de campo em uma Terra Indígena Kaingang no Paraná, cujo entrevistas forneceram (...) confirmações históricas em relação aos etnoconhecimentos da etnia, da evolução dos aspectos químicos e das atitudes perante a química e os remédios de origem farmacêutica e natural. (shrink)

Horgan (1993) proposed that "superdupervenience" - supervenience preserving physicalistic acceptability - is a matter of robust explanation. I argued against him (1999) that (as nearly all physicalist and emergentist accounts reflect) superdupervenience is a matter of Condition on Causal Powers (CCP): every causal power bestowed by the supervenient property is identical with a causal power bestowed by its base property. Here I show that CCP is, as it stands, unsatisfactory,for on the usual understandings of causal power bestowal, it is trivially (...) satisfied or falsified. I offer a revision of CCP which incorporates the evident fact that causal powers are grounded in fundamental forces. (shrink)

Here I compare two accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy (MI): first, the 'meta-level' approach described by Elizabeth Barnes and Ross Cameron in the companion to this paper, on which every state of affairs (SOA) is itself precise/determinate, and MI is a matter of its being indeterminate which determinate SOA obtains; second, my preferred 'object-level' determinable-based approach, on which MI is a matter of its being determinate---or just plain true---that an indeterminate SOA obtains, where an indeterminate SOA is one whose constitutive object (...) has a determinable property, but no unique determinate of that determinable. In S1, I first note an important difference between our accounts, concerning whether MI is taken to induce propositional indeterminacy; in S2, I highlight and defend certain advantages of my account; in S3, I address certain of Barnes and Cameron's objections to my account. (shrink)

de Anima III.10 characterizes akrasia as a conflict between phantasia (“imagination”) on one side and rational cognition on the other: the akratic agent is torn between an appetite for what appears good to her phantasia and a rational desire for what her intellect believes good. This entails that akrasia is parallel to certain cases of perceptual illusion. Drawing on Aristotle's discussion of such cases in the de Anima and de Insomniis , I use this parallel to illuminate the difficult discussion (...) of akrasia in Nicomachean Ethics VII.3, arguing that its account of akrasia as involving ignorance is compatible with, and in fact crucially supplements, the more straightforward account we find elsewhere in the corpus of akrasia as a struggle between desires. (shrink)

Despite a growing literature on identity theory in the last two decades, much of its current use in archaeology is still driven toward locating and dating static categories such as 'Phoenician,' 'Christian' or 'native.' Previous studies have highlighted the various problems and challenges presented by identity, with the overall effect of deconstructing it to insignificance. As the humanities and social sciences turn to material culture, archaeology provides a unique perspective on the interaction between people and things over the long term. (...) This volume argues that identity is worth studying not despite its slippery nature, but because of it. Identity can be seen as an emergent property of living in a material world, an ongoing process of becoming which archaeologists are particularly well suited to study. The geographic and temporal scale of the papers included is purposefully broad to demonstrate the variety of ways in which archaeology is redefining identity. Research areas span from the Great Lakes to the Mediterranean, with case studies from the Mesolithic to the contemporary world by emerging voices in the field. The volume contains a critical review of theories of identity by the editors, as well as a response and afterword by A. Bernard Knapp"--From publisher's website. (shrink)

The null morpheme POS -- The null morpheme EVAL -- Implicature : a brief review -- Evaluativity as implicature -- Extensions of the evaluativity implicature.

This is a comprehensive discussion of determinables, determinates, and their relation ('determination', for short), covering the historical development of these notions, the theoretical options for understanding them, and certain of their contemporary applications.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editor’s NoteJessica HeybachThis issue of education and culture offers readers theoretical in-sights and clarifications to social dilemmas as well as the concerns of the classroom. The authors contained in this issue take up questions of political literacy, moral judgment, the mathematics curriculum and classroom, and the social studies curriculum and classroom. If I had to offer a throughline within these articles, it is the pragmatist conception of judgment that (...) should be cultivated through social relations and classroom practices. These authors are concerned with citizens’ capacity for intelligent judgment within communities and society at large. Pushing back against prevailing logics, these authors offer corrective arguments by positioning Dewey’s thought and pragmatism in contrast to the current logics operating in classrooms and society.Charles Lowery takes up the consequences of modern society’s “conflation of an associated way of living with government, and government with politics, and politics with partisanship” on conceptions of community in his article, “The Role of Education in The Public and Its Problems: A Deweyan Perspective on Political Literacy.” Building on key authors that have previously advanced this line of inquiry central to Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems, Lowery attends to how contemporary education and the development of a politically literate citizenry through democratic habits rather than knowledge accumulation should be centered as the central task of schooling. Lowery highlights current obstacles to cultivating political literacy in the schools such as dogma, disinformation, divisiveness, and de-democratization, and concludes by underscoring the work of school leaders as central to the task of political literacy.Davin Carr-Chellman puts forth a provocative argument which attends to the consequences of instrumental rationality and identity thinking on moral judgment in his article, “Education for Moral Judgment: Situational Creativity and Dewey’s Aesthetics.” Drawing from critical theory, Carr-Chellman emphasizes how dehumanization, moral indifference, and alienation are byproducts of instrumental rationality, measurability, and identity thinking. He then engages Dewey’s aesthetics and Joas’s concept of situational creativity as possible resources to reconstruct human experience and renew the human capacity for moral judgment. According to Carr-Chellman, small acts of creativity and relationship-building become essential to resisting human relations that have become “abstract, impersonal, vague, and competitive.” Thus, an education for moral judgment must humanize through authentic relationships and meaning-making learning opportunities that resist the alienation now culturally rampant. [End Page 1]Marshall Gordon argues that mathematics curriculum and classroom should be understood as a site for developing habits of mind that foster democracy in his article, “Teaching Mathematics with Democracy in Mind.” Gordon elaborates on the problematic persistence of abstracted, procedural mathematics which valorizes memorization and calls for mathematics to capitalize on the unrealized democratic potentials in the mathematics classroom. Drawing on Dewey’s claim in Democracy and Education that “Education is not an affair of ‘telling’ and being told, but an active and constructive process,” Gordon describes a mathematics for democracy. Gordon describes mathematics as a powerful force in the development of students’ reflective intelligence and their capacity for problem-solving by problem-clarifying strategies rather than problem-solving procedures (for example, “take things apart, make the problem simpler, reason by analogy, and tinker”) and collaboration through “multiple-centers” which capitalizes on shared-interest investigations.Dave Powell explores the relationship between inquiry and Dewey’s pragmatic epistemology to advance democratic citizenship education in the social studies classroom in his article, “Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend John? Making the Case for a More Pragmatic Social Studies.” In particular, Powell attends to educators’ stance on truth and how “reframing their epistemological orientations” opens up possibilities for different future actions. He begins by describing how pragmatist thinking and Dewey’s philosophical commitments of child-centeredness could shape conceptions of inquiry and allow a reflective practitioner to ask different kinds of questions associated with social studies. Through a rich discussion of what Deweyan thought makes possible in social studies, Powell advances the promise of a citizenry able to think pragmatically in a democracy. He argues that social studies can reject fixed notions of truth, foster trust among students as they exchange ideas, reject opportunities for reverse indoctrination, and cultivate intelligence, as practical... (shrink)