At first blush, the notion a “feminist epistemology” appears, at best, peculiar—not, as Sandra Harding suggests, because “‘woman the knower’ appears to be a contradiction in terms” but because it is hard to see how an epistemology, a philosophical theory of knowledge, can be either feminist or anti-feminist since it is not clear how such a theory might benefit or harm women.

Sabellianism, the doctrine that the Persons of the Trinity are roles that a single divine being plays either simultaneously or successively, is commonly thought to entail that the Father is the Son. I argue that there is at least one version of Sabellianism that does not have this result and meets the requirements for a minimally decent doctrine of the Trinity insofar as it affirms that each Person of the Trinity is God and that the Trinity of Persons is God (...) while maintaining monotheism without undermining the distinctness of Persons. (shrink)

Can a materialist look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come? Dean Zimmerman’s Falling Elevator Model is a speculative account of how persons, understood as material beings, might survive in a post-mortem resurrected state—a just-so story. It assumes endurantism, the doctrine that persons and other ordinary objects are three-dimensional beings which are wholly present at every time they exist. I argue that neither endurantism, nor purdurantism, according to which persons are four-dimensional ‘worms’ who (...) have proper temporal parts at every time that they exist, provides a plausible account of personal survival. If you want to be a Christian materialist you should embrace exdurantism, the ‘stage theory’, according which persons are instantaneous stages and are not identical to their temporal successors either in this world or in any world to come. Exdurantism provides a plausible account of survival in ordinary cases and extraordinary cases of this-worldly fission, and of post-mortem survival. (shrink)

There appear to be at least two important disanalogies between the situation of women and that of racial and ethnic minorities whose members are generally regarded as paradigmatic victims of oppression. First, in the case of oppressed racial and ethnic minorities it is relatively easy to identify the oppressors and the policies which serve to keep the oppressed in their place; it is not so easy to determine who the oppressors of women are--surely men are not universally blameworthy--nor even to (...) ascertain which policies are oppressive. Secondly, unlike most members of disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities, many women seem actively to support the very policies and institutions which contribute to their oppression. (shrink)

Currently a number of feminists in philosophy and religious studies as well as other academic disciplines have argued that policies, practices and doctrines assumed to be sexneutral are in fact male-biased. Thus, Rosemary Reuther, reflecting on the development of theology in the Judeo-Christian tradition suggests that the long-term exclusion of women from leadership and theological education has rendered the “official theological culture” repressive to women and dismissive of women’s experience: “To begin to take women seriously,” she notes, “will involve a (...) profound and radical transformation of our religions.”3 Such a project exists in tension with what is generally regarded as Christian orthodoxy and so, as Reuther suggests, challenges the assumptions and categories of traditional theology. (shrink)

I was an altar girl at St. Mary the Virgin, New York City–one of the first, in fact. In the mid‑70s, one of my friends approached the Rector and negotiated a deal: we women, who were interested in acolyting, would be allowed to serve at mass during the week, in street clothes, on the condition that we form and staff an altar guild.

Introduction: is multiculturism good for anyone? -- Do people like their cultures? -- A philosophical prelude: what is multiculturalism? -- The costs of multiculturalism -- The diversity trap: why everybody wants to be an X -- White privilege and the asymmetry of choice -- Communities: respecting the establishment of religion -- Multiculturalism and the good life -- The cult of cultural self-affirmation -- Identity-making -- Identity politics: the making of a mystique -- Policy.

Modal counterpart theory identifies a thing’s possibly being F with its having a counterpart that is F at another possible world; temporal counterpart theory, the stage view, according to which people and other ordinary objects are instantaneous stages, identifies a thing’s having been F or going to be F, with its having a counterpart that is F at another time. Both counterpart theories invite what has been called ‘the argument from concern’ (Rosen, G. 1990. “Modal Fictionalism.” Mind 99 (395): 327–54). (...) Why should I be concerned about my counterparts at other possible worlds or other times? I care about how things might have gone for me—not how they go for other people at other possible worlds; I care about my prospects—not the way go for other people at other times. Jiri Benovsky has argued that while modal counterpart theory can be defended against this style of argument, temporal counterpart theory cannot (Benovsky, J. 2015. “Alethic Modalities, Temporal Modalities, and Representation.” Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy 29: 18–34). I argue that temporal counterpart theory, like modal counterpart theory, resists the argument from concern. (shrink)

Modal counterpart theory identifies a thing’s possibly being F with its having a counterpart that is F at another possible world; temporal counterpart theory identifies a thing’s having been F or going to be F, with its having a counterpart that is F at another time. Benovsky, J. 2015. “Alethic Modalities, Temporal Modalities, and Representation.” Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy 29: 18–34 in this journal endorses modal counterpart theory but holds that temporal counterpart theory is untenable because it does not license (...) the ascription of the intuitively correct temporal properties to ordinary objects, and hence that we should understand ordinary objects, including persons, as transtemporal ‘worms’. I argue that the worm theory is problematic when it comes to accounting for what matters in survival and that temporal counterpart theory provides a plausible account of personal persistence. (shrink)

Even in the absence of overt discrimination, women are often channelled into different directions from their male counterparts by the network of incentives and disincentives which constitute what has been called a ‘discriminatory environment’. On the account of freedom and coercion developed in this essay, the incentives and disincentives which typically figure in discriminatory environments are not coercive. Nevertheless such environments, it is argued, are morally objectionable on independent grounds.

According to the Argument for Autonomous Mental Disorder, mental disorder can occur in the absence of brain disorder, just as software problems can occur in the absence of hardware problems in a computer. This article argues that the AAMD is unsound. I begin by introducing the “natural dysfunction analysis” of disorder, before outlining the AAMD. I then analyze the necessary conditions for realizer autonomous dysfunction. Building on this, I show that software functions disassociate from hardware functions in a way that (...) mental functions do not disassociate from brain functions. It follows that mental disorders are brain disorders necessarily. (shrink)

The archive can take many forms but all are marked by a connective sequence: archive, memory, the past, narrative. The author explores this sequence through an account of her engagement with four different types of archive, constructing a phenomenology of the archive which highlights the promises and seductions offered to the researcher. Postmodern questioning may throw in doubt older conceptions, whereby the archive is used to legitimate knowledge claims about the past of a nomological nature. However, in a context where (...) intellectuals become interpreters rather than legislators, the role of the archive as repository of inert meanings is strengthened rather than weakened; using the archive helps us to understand the dialectical nature of the relationship between past and present and our own positioning within this. (shrink)

The jurists of classical Islamic Law defined the interior forum as a limit to the religious validity of the sentences of Muslim judges , because these have neither access to God's knowledge nor to the individual believer’s conscience and motivations. They can base their decisions solely on exterior appearances and can, therefore, neither be sure that their judgments correspond to the facts nor to the intentions and memories of the individuals concerned. This holds especially true for questions of belief and (...) unbelief. From the eighth to the nineteenth century, the norms of Islamic law were the result of learned debates among independent jurists and their schools of law. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was integrated into the codes enacted by the competent institutions of the national states and lost its normative authority in most spheres of the modern state law. It remained dominant only in personal statute law, i.e. the rules concerning marriage and divorce, family and succession. From the early seventies of the twentieth century, opposition against the neglect of religious norms in modern state law was centered on the demand for the “codification of Islamic law” . Its leaders were jurists trained in modern law faculties, who wanted to insert the norms of classical Islamic Law into the codes of the national state with which they are familiar. The ethical debates of classical Islamic law, obviously, did not lend themselves easily to such an approach.The jurists movement for the codification of Islamic law gained in momentum during the eighties when, in a number of states, it succeeded in assuring for the classical apostasy rules a place in the modern criminal codes. In other states, such as Egypt, the highest courts opened the way for apostasy trials. The analysis of one apostasy judgment of the highest Egyptian court shows that the court understands belief and apostasy as objective facts that can be separated from the person who professes or denies them. It is on this question that my lecture focuses. The court effectively claims the role of the highest instance in questions of belief and unbelief. Belief and apostasy thus become depersonalized objective facts without any relation to the intentions of the individuals concerned. The court’s sentence does not refer to the believer’s own interior forum : the concept seems to be irrelevant to the judges. Their definition of apostasy serves to control the ideas that can legitimately be discussed in the public sphere. It denies bold reinterpretations of Islam, but also a number of political persuasions and theories, the right of access to the public space and assigns them the private sphere as their legitimate abode. A new concept of private and public is thus developed in the detailed reasoning by which the court justifies its judgment.There is, to my understanding, nothing in the religion of Islam that renders such a stance necessary. Other courts, in Egypt, develop other ideas of the principles of Islamic normativity and in other Arab states go so far as to develop a concept of privacy that would forbid the debates discussed in this lecture. It seems important to underline that the use of classical elements in the court’s judgment does not conceal the fact that the ethical criteria of classical Muslim law find little place in this jurisdiction that represents a special version of modern legal positivism. (shrink)

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contemporary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one of the (...) sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assumptions and arguments of the manifesto. (shrink)

Justin Garson has recently advanced a Generalised Selected Effects Theory of biological proper function. According to Garson, his theory spells trouble for the Dysfunction Account of Disorder. This paper argues that Garson’s critique of the Dysfunction Account from the Generalised Theory fails, and that we should reject the Generalised Theory outright. I first show that the Generalised Theory does not, as Garson asserts, imply that neurally selected disorders are not dysfunctional. Rather, it implies that they are both functional and dysfunctional. (...) I argue on this basis that the Generalised Theory yields conflicting functional norms, and we that should reject it outright on these grounds. (shrink)

This bibliography seeks to offer a comprehensive overview of nuclear criticism, tracing its development from the 1984 issue of diacritics which saw the publication of Derrida's seminal article “No Apocalypse, Not Now ” to the present day. Particular attention is paid to areas of interest which are underrepresented in the available literature, and every attempt has been made to offer a resource which is wide-ranging in outlook while providing a clear sense of the central texts which have shaped and reshaped (...) what we understand as nuclear criticism. Texts focusing solely on individual works have, by and large, been excluded. Brief notes accompany some of the entries, although it has not been practical to provide these for all the works mentioned: they should be taken as a record of an individual approach to the texts in question rather than as marks of overarching significance. (shrink)

This paper asks when a natural disease kind is truly 'reactive' and when it is merely associated with a corresponding social kind. I begin with a permissive account of real kinds and their structure, distinguishing natural kinds, indifferent kinds and reactive kinds as varieties of real kind characterised by super-explanatory properties. I then situate disease kinds within this framework, arguing that many disease kinds prima facie are both natural and reactive. I proceed to distinguish ‘simple dependence’, ‘secondary dependence’ and ‘essential (...) dependence’ between a natural kind and its classification, and argue that a natural kind is only really reactive, in an important sense, under conditions of essential dependence. On this basis, I offer a principled hypothesis for why psychiatric kinds tend to be more metaphysically unstable than paradigm somatic disease kinds. (shrink)

Background Generally, there is unanimity about the value of community engagement in health-related research. There is also a growing tendency to view genetics and genomics research (GGR) as a special category of research, the conduct of which including community engagement (CE) as needing additional caution. One of the motivations of this study was to establish how differently if at all, we should think about CE in GGR. Aim To assess the perspectives of genetics and genomics researchers in Uganda on CE (...) in GGR. Method A cross-sectional qualitative study was conducted at Makerere University and Uganda Virus Research Institute. Twenty-five individuals participated, the majority being male (sixteen). Participants included nineteen genetics and genomics researchers (researchers and research coordinators), two CE officers, three nurses and one nursing counsellor. Data were collected using in-depth interviews and analyzed in a thematic manner using NVivo version 12 Plus. Study findings Thirteen of the respondents had conducted CE in their GGR in either a geographical and disease-specific community. Some respondents said CE principles are the same and there is no need for special consideration for CE in GGR. Others gave ethical issues in GGR that require special consideration for CE in such research and these were categorized into six themes: GGR is new to communities, Difficulty in communicating GGR by the researchers, Genes are shared in communities, Cultural sensitivities against GGR, Community attitude toward GGR, Some GGR studies take long to end, and Negotiation of research benefits. Special considerations for CE when conducting GGR were suggested and categorized into seven themes: creating awareness of GGR in communities, obtaining both community acceptance and individual consent, CE team composition, involve communities in solving GGR challenges, prolong CE in some GGR, develop guidelines for CE in GGR, and legal considerations on GGR. Conclusion GGR was characterized by special issues that require special CE considerations for such research. (shrink)

I argue, first, that the deprived individuals whose predicaments Nussbaum cites as examples of "adaptive preference" do not in fact prefer the conditions of their lives to what we should regard as more desirable alternatives, indeed that we believe they are badly off precisely because they are not living the lives they would prefer to live if they had other options and were aware of them. Secondly, I argue that even where individuals in deprived circumstances acquire tastes for conditions that (...) we regard as bad, they are typically better off having their acquired preferences satisfied. If they are badly off it is because they cannot get what we and they, would regard as more desirable alternatives. Preference utilitarianism explains why individuals in such circumstances are badly off whether they have adapted to their deprived circumstances or not. Even if they prefer the conditions of their lives to all other available alternatives, most would prefer alternatives that are not available to them which would, on the preferentist account, make them better off. And that, on the preferentist account, is the basis for a radical critique of unjust institutions that limit people's options and prevent them from getting what they want. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Medical Tourism:Crossing Borders to Access Health CareHarriet Hutson Gray (bio) and Susan Cartier Poland (bio)Traveling abroad for one's health has a long history for the upper social classes who sought spas, mineral baths, innovative therapies, and the fair climate of the Mediterranean as destinations to improve their health. The newest trend in the first decade of the twenty-first century has the middle class traveling from developed countries to those (...) with emerging economies to avoid treatment delays, prohibitive costs for life-saving procedures, or simply high costs for elective surgery. Others leave to have access to assisted suicide in countries that have legalized it: Belgium, The Netherlands, and Switzerland. This new era of globalization in health care has arrived without the benefit of international standards, government oversight, or ethical and legal review.Howard Staab, a self-employed carpenter from North Carolina, flew to India for his medically necessary heart surgery, scheduled a side trip to the Taj Mahal, and returned home to work in North Carolina. He spent a total of less than $10,000, instead of the $200,000 required from the local hospital (I, Milstein and Smith 2006).At first blush, the outsourcing of medical care to India seems to be a particular solution for a particular problem. However, the particularity of Mr. Staab is not unique. His experience is emblematic of those patients in the United States with a medical need for major and elective procedures, but who also must bear the total cost of these procedures. These middle-class, under-insured Americans go abroad.In tandem with increasingly aggressive marketing campaigns, American hospitals and companies have begun to leverage their connections in Asia to grow the medical tourism business into a major economic force. What are the consequences of this?Several authors point to the effect on the host country's population, particularly the poor, to be pushed farther down the queue to receive adequate, affordable care. Resources are applied to the foreign trade instead of building the local [End Page 193] medical infrastructure. Another potential problem is the obligation of the home-country physician to provide follow-up care. What are the legal ramifications when the procedure was illegal to begin with? Are there opportunities for redress for medical errors?These factors may be converging into a "perfect storm" for health care in the U.S., in which the potential participation of the major insurance companies in promoting offshore care will be the tipping point in the precarious structure that represents the economic currents in health care. Third-party administrators and self-funded employers may be on the cutting edge in 2009 by providing incentives to employees to travel overseas for care.I. Economic ConsiderationsConnell, John. Medical Tourism: Sea, Sun, Sand and... Surgery. Tourism Management 27: 1093–1100, 2006.As evidence of the interest of traditional tour operators in this newer twist on the industry, the author explores medical tourism as an element of the growth of world tourism. In promoting medical tourism, he urges consideration of such issues as the privatization of health care, the foundational role of technology, and uneven access to health resources.Dunn, Philip. Medical Tourism Takes Flight. H and HN: Hospitals and Health Networks: 40–44, November 2007.Writing for U.S. health care executives, Dunn emphasizes that the reality of medical tourism competes with the local medical center for patients and their insurance dollars in a significant way. He examines the possibility that U.S. insurance plans soon may offer to pay for what is currently a cash only business and that the economic impact to the local medical center could be significant or even devastating.Frontiers of Health Services Management [Selected Articles] 24 (2), Winter 2007.In "Managing Healthcare Services in the Global Marketplace" (pp. 3–18), Bruce J. Fried and Dean M. Harris consider legal, ethical, and financial implications of the international workforce. In "Globalization of Health Care" (pp. 19–30), Lynn Schroth and Ruthy Khawahja point out that the transfer of comprehensive management expertise and intellectual property from U.S. medical centers to international sites is driving the success of collaboration between U.S. and foreign health care centers. In "Is... (shrink)

Defining Mental Disorder: Jerome Wakefield and His Critics, edited by Denis Forest and Luc Faucher, is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of medicine whose work is informed by that of Jerome Wakefield, or the disease debate in general. If you are anything like me, this book will open the door to a new depth of understanding of the harmful dysfunction analysis (HDA) and its methodical underpinnings, and an enriched appreciation of what is at stake in defining medical (...) disorder. To those confident that they understand Wakefield’s view and the surrounding debate, thinking perhaps that they do not need a refresher, I would say: perhaps you do not understand it as well as you think. Defining Mental Disorder provides much more than an overview of previously well-trodden ground. The chapters themselves, and Wakefield’s own detailed responses, help to elucidate a number of methodological nuances and peculiarities that have rarely been covered in such depth before. I was startled to learn how philosophically complex Wakefield’s position actually is, and how shallow my own understanding of it has been. It emerges as a far more nuanced and sophisticated account than I had given it credit for, and one that deserves serious reevaluation. (shrink)

Critics suggest that without some "objective" account of well-being we cannot explain why satisfying some preferences is, as we believe, better than satisfying others, why satisfying some preferences may leave us on net worse off or why, in a range of cases, we should reject life-adjustment in favor of life-improvement. I defend a subjective welfarist understanding of well-being against such objections by reconstructing the Amartya Sen's capability approach as a preferentist account of well-being. According to the proposed account preference satisfaction (...) alone—possible as well as actual—is of value. States of affairs contribute to well-being because and to the extent that they satisfy actual or nearby possible preferences, and are fruitful, that is, compatible with a range states that satisfy further actual or nearby possible preferences. The proposed account solves the problem of adaptive preference. Individuals whose preferences are "deformed" are satisfied with fruitless states of affairs, which constrain their options so that they are incapable of satisfying a wide range of nearby possible preferences—preferences they "could easily have had." Recognizing the value of capabilities as well as actual attainments allows us to explain why individuals who satisfy "deformed" or perverse preferences may not on net benefit from doing so. More fundamentally, it explains why some states are, as Sen suggests, bad, awful or gruesome while others are good, excellent or superb without appeal to any objective account of value. (shrink)

Open access: Philosophers and policy-makers concerned with the ethics, economics, and politics of development argue that the phenomenon of “adaptive preference” makes preference-utilitarian measures of well-being untenable. Poor women in the Global South, they suggest, adapt to deprivation and oppression and may come to prefer states of affairs that are not conducive to flourishing. This critique, however, assumes a questionable understanding of preference utilitarianism and, more fundamentally, of the concept of preference that figures in such accounts. If well-being is understood (...) as preference satisfaction, it is easy to see why poor women in the Global South are badly off: even if they do not desire more favorable conditions, they nevertheless prefer them, and that preference is not satisfied. Preferentism provides a rationale for improving economic conditions and dismantling the unjust institutions that prevent them from climbing higher on their preference rankings. Utilitarianism, therefore, insofar as utility is understood as preference satisfaction, is good for women. (shrink)

Utilising empirical ethics analysis, we evaluate the merits of systems proposed to increase deceased organ donation in South Africa. We conclude that SA should maintain its soft opt-in policy, and enhance it with ‘required transplant referral’ in order to maximise donor numbers within an ethically and legally acceptable framework. In SA, as is the case worldwide, the demand for donor organs far exceeds the supply thereof. Currently utilising a soft opt-in system, SA faces the challenge of how to increase donor (...) numbers in a context which is imbued with inequalities in access to healthcare, multiplicitous personal beliefs and practices, distrust of organ transplant and varying levels of education and health literacy. We argue that a hard opt-in, opt-out or mandated consent system would be problematic, and we present empirical data from Gauteng Province illustrating barriers to ethically sound practice in soft consent systems. Ultimately, we argue that in spite of some limitations, a soft opt-in system is most realistic for SA because its implementation does not require extensive public education campaigns at national level, and it does not threaten to further erode trust at a clinical level. However, to circumvent some of the clinical-level barriers identified in our empirical study, we propose a contextually sensitive option for “enabling” soft opt-in through “required transplant referral”. We argue that this system is legally defensible, enhances ethical practice and could also increase donor numbers as it has in many other countries. (shrink)

During the past four decades the governance of environmental problems – the definition of issues and their political and practical resolution – has evolved to include a wider range of stakeholders in more extensive open discussions. In the introduction to this issue of Environmental Values on ‘Environment, Policy and Participation’, we outline some features of these recent developments in participatory environmental governance, indicate some key questions that arise, and give an overview of the collection of papers in this special issue.

All authors in this symposium use a food regime perspective to ask questions about the present which—as these articles demonstrate—have several possible answers. History suggests a time perspective of 25–40 year cycles so far—a food regime 1870–1914, an experimental and chaotic era 1914–1947, and a food regime 1947–1973. It has been less than 40 years since 1973, when food regime analysts agree that a contested and experimental period began. There is no consensus on whether it has already ended or how (...) it might issue into a new food regime. The conversation is more fruitful than the conclusions. I intend these comments as an invitation to join in. (shrink)

This reflection item provides an edited account of human rights lawyer Harriet Wistrich’s conversation with Manvir Grewal, Visiting Lecturer and Ph.D. student, and Harriet Samuels, Reader in Law at the University of Westminster. It summarises the exchange which focused on Harriet Wistrich’s career trajectory and the many public interest law cases that she has brought on behalf her clients, mainly women, in both domestic and international forums. It also includes a condensed version of the question and answer (...) session with the audience. Questions included the broader issues around domestic violence, rape, coercive control, sex work and the nature of feminism. (shrink)

The examination of a scene of crime provides both an interesting case study and analogy for consideration of Distributed Cognition. In this paper, Distribution is defined by the number of agents involved in the criminal justice process, and in terms of the relationship between a Crime Scene Examiner and the environment being searched.