This paper documents the growing awareness of the sexual exploitation of women who seek help from priests and ministers. Over the six years that MACSAS has been in existence, 100 women and three men have contacted the organisation concerning sexual abuse as adults by clergy and ministers. Typically leaders of Christian denominations to whom they have reported this abuse characterise it as 'an affair' and often blame women for seducing male clergy. Drawing from literature on the sexual abuse of clients (...) by professionals, this paper vigorously calls for clergy and ministers to be regarded as professionals and for women and men who seek the pastoral help of clergy to be viewed as clients. Concepts of 'vulnerability' and 'consent' are also explored in order to clarify the nature of clergy abuse. (shrink)

A critical opportunity for identifying children experiencing domestic minor sex trafficking exists in healthcare settings. This quantitative study documented the disconnect between youth seeking help and interventions offered by healthcare providers. Ninety-one sex youth exploited through sex trafficking answered questions detailing their experiences of seeking medical treatment for injuries associated with selling or trading sex. Healthcare providers who were aware that injuries were sustained due to sex trafficking did not always alert legal or mandated reporting authorities. This analysis identified violations (...) of the four pillars of ethical healthcare. This investigation revealed lost opportunities to intervene on behalf of youth suffering trauma and abuse from sex trafficking highlighting the necessity for a formal protocol in healthcare settings to effectively intervene. (shrink)

: Many have asked how and why feminist theory makes a distinctive contribution to bioethics. In this essay, I outline two ways in which feminist reflection can enrich bioethical studies. First, feminist theory may expose certain themes of androcentric reasoning that can affect, in sometimes crude but often subtle ways, the substantive analysis of topics in bioethics; second, it can unearth the gendered nature of certain basic philosophical concepts that form the working tools of ethical theory.

Procurement of organs from non-heart-beating cadaver donors raises concerns. Standards for optimal patient care during withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy are evolving and continue to be debated and studied. Consensus on specific procedures and methods has not been attained, however, and protocols for the procurement of organs from patients following the withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies may compromise the evolving standards and harm the patient and the attendant family. In addition, there is little evidence to suggest that such protocols will significantly increase (...) the number of organs procured. "Non-heart-beating cadaver" protocols that do not give comprehensive attention to optimal patient/family care at the time of withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy ought not to be endorsed. (shrink)

Many have asked how and why feminist theory makes a distinctive contribution to bioethics. In this essay, I outline two ways in which feminist reflection can enrich bioethical studies. First, feminist theory may expose certain themes of androcentric reasoning that can affect, in sometimes crude but often subtle ways, the substantive analysis of topics in bioethics; second, it can unearth the gendered nature of certain basic philosophical concepts that form the working tools of ethical theory.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Procreative Liberty, Biological Connections, and MotherhoodMargaret Olivia Little (bio)Given the complex and dramatic array of issues currently facing us in reproductive ethics, bioethicists working on the topic might be forgiven feelings of trepidation when they cast their minds toward the next century. Currently, technologies such as artificial insemination by donor (AID), once the source of intense controversy, are used on a routine basis; mainstream newspapers carry advertisements offering “excellent (...) compensation” to ova “donors;” courts are arguing whether women who serve as gestational or “surrogate” mothers have any parental rights; and proposals resurface to jail pregnant women who take street drugs. Sorting out which developments are to be welcomed and which are to be resisted—and why—will require us not only to clarify some of our most basic value commitments, but also to reflect on our understanding of concepts, such as motherhood, that we previously had the luxury of thinking obvious. Let me highlight two issues I think we will be forced to confront as we try to navigate the ethics of reproduction into the twenty-first century—namely, the value of biological connection and the meaning of motherhood.Procreative Liberty and the Value of Biological ReproductionPeople who are unable to conceive a child or to carry one to term now face a variety of extraordinary means of procreative assistance: they can buy sperm and ova, undergo in vitro fertilization, or contract another woman to gestate and give birth to the baby. Those who are enthusiastic about these new technologies [End Page 392] and arrangements often explain their support in terms of many people’s deep desire or even right to bear children biologically related to them; those who are suspicious of the techniques often explain their resistance by criticizing our culture’s “pronatalist” emphasis on biological rather than social relations with children. Focusing on such clear-cut positions, though, undersells the complexity and difficulty of the issues involved. Few want to dismiss altogether the importance of biological connection; but the question remains, what measure of importance should it be granted? Or again, while most agree that procreative liberty is one of our most fundamental rights, the question remains, whose procreation, in what context, and by which means? The truly difficult questions, that is, pertain to how we are to value biological relatedness and how we are to draw the contours of procreative liberty.One perspective emerging in current debates urges an expansive answer to these questions, arguing that the new reproductive technologies and arrangements deserve constitutional protection. Procreative liberty is deeply important, it is urged, given how fundamental the decision to have or to refrain from having children is to our sense of dignity, identity, and meaning of life. But if we recognize a right to reproduce coitally, it is claimed, we should also recognize a right to reproduce noncoitally: people with infertile partners should no more be barred from exercising their right to “beget, bear, and raise” children biologically linked to them by using surrogate arrangements or AID than those who are blind should be barred from exercising their right to written information by using Braille texts. 1The fundamental question is whether the value of biological reproduction persists when pursued outside of the intimacies of marriage and family that form its traditional home. The new reproductive technologies and arrangements, after all, represent a departure not simply because they are noncoital but because they involve reproduction with strangers, under contract, and for pay. One question that demands our reflection, then, is whether the procreative liberty we value attaches to individuals atomistically, as it were, or to individuals only insofar as they are in relationships of an intimate and ongoing nature.Other developments on the horizon sound a restrictive note about procreative liberty. Many IVF clinics, for instance, have denied services to would-be single parents or to gay or lesbian couples. Some legislators have proposed making certain welfare payments for women conditional upon their use of contraceptives such as Norplant—an odd view if one regards procreative liberty as a fundamental right. After all, we do not usually make the receipt of public aid contingent on waiving a constitutional right. (Imagine the government stipulating that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionMargaret Olivia Little (bio)Increasingly, conversations in bioethics include questions or claims about the contribution that feminist analyses might offer the field. In March 1995, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics devoted its annual Advanced Bioethics Course to an exploration of feminist approaches to bioethics. This special issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, which supplements the September 1995 issue on principlism and several alternative approaches to health (...) care ethics, grew out of that course, containing articles written by those who presented its central lectures.The first article serves as an introduction to the topic. I take seriously the often-asked questions of why and in what way feminism should be thought relevant to bioethics. Appreciating feminism’s distinctive contribution to the field requires appreciating some of the central themes common to virtually all feminist theory. Accordingly, I set out and develop two themes that are basic to feminism; I then give several examples of how various bioethical issues might be framed and analyzed differently when approached with awareness of these tenets. Feminist theory offers a critical tool for bioethics, I argue, both by revealing androcentric reasoning that can affect—sometimes subtly and sometimes crudely—substantive analyses of bioethical issues, and by helping us to re-think and refine aspects of ethical theory that form the conceptual tools of use to bioethicists.In the second article, Alisa Carse and Hilde Lindemann Nelson take up one of the most famous theories associated with feminist philosophy, the “ethic of care,” inspired originally by Carol Gilligan’s work. While the ethic is much touted, it is also much criticized—sometimes, importantly, from distinctly feminist angles. Carse and Nelson deepen the debate by suggesting directions that a sophisticated version of the theory should take. They address four common criticisms of the care approach, some from “mainstream” theorists and some from feminist voices, and then outline how the ethic can be developed to answer these concerns.It is often pointed out that feminism is not a monolithic theory. While the diversity of approaches and policy recommendations contained within feminism is in many ways a healthy one, such diversity can be frustrating and potentially undermining of feminism’s contribution to fields such as bioethics. In the third article, Rosemarie Tong discusses the differences and commonalities among various feminist theories, with an eye [End Page vii] toward developing a strategy that feminists might take in their attempts to advance conversations in bioethics. She first provides a lucid outline of the three main branches of feminist theory—liberal, cultural, and radical—and illustrates their distinct approaches by contrasting how each would approach the controversial topic of “surrogate” or contract motherhood. Having highlighted the differences among the three approaches, she then indicates their shared theoretical base. She ends by suggesting strategies that feminists might want to take, in light of these common factors, to maximize the influence their voices can and should have in bioethics.One question commonly asked is what difference feminism’s distinctive theoretical approach makes when applied to the concrete issues bioethicists have traditionally discussed. In the fourth article, James Lindemann Nelson considers a topic of central importance to modern bioethics, the distribution of scarce health care resources, and demonstrates how differently we might analyze the issue if we view it through the lens of feminist theory. More specifically, he examines the work of several sophisticated, mainstream authors writing on the subject, such as Frances Kamm, Norman Daniels, Dan Brock, and Ezekiel Emanuel, and indicates various places in which a feminist analysis will reveal problems in the analyses that might otherwise remain hidden—problems, for instance, in methodology, in how the issues are framed, in the conceptions of justice employed, and in the relative insensitivity to questions about power distribution. At the same time, Nelson explores ways in which such mainstream work offers material that is valuable to a feminist picture of allocation questions. In the end, he urges, both sides have lost by the lack of dialogue between them.In the final article, Karen Rothenberg discusses the intersection of bioethics, feminist theory, and the law. She traces how the differences among the three central camps of feminist theory yield different theories of feminist jurisprudence... (shrink)

: This response to the preceding five articles highlights the stubborn persistence of the philosophical perplexities surrounding commodification in the realm of medicine and biotechnology.

: Originally presented during Ethic Rounds at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, this commentary on the case of a patient treated for life-threatening cancer explores the responsibilities of health care providers when addressing the patient's desire to adopt a child.

This paper discusses the ways in which the use of the notion of Asian bioethics since the 1990s has become a tool for building a platform of debate among East Asian countries. In many ways, the use of “Asian bioethics” is in an effort to counter what is perceived as Western bioethics and characterized by what are regarded as Western tendencies of individualism, rationalism, and modernization. I will argue, however, that, just as any notion of “Western bioethics,” the concept of (...) “Asian bioethics” offers little potential to solve issues of bioethical governance. First, although no doubt the notion of “bioethics” has been and is used hegemonically to push certain agendas, the view that bioethical issues in Asia and... (shrink)

We wish to describe and acknowledge the exceptional contributions to medical ethics, both in the UK and internationally, made by Edward Shotter1 who died at home on 3 July 2019. He was founder of the London Medical Group2 3 and instigator of similar student-led medical ethics groups throughout the UK; founder of the Institute of Medical Ethics4 and founder of the Journal of Medical Ethics. Ted Shotter transformed the study of medical ethics in the UK in the interests of patients (...) and professionals alike. In 1963, he established the pioneering ‘Medical Group’ model, an innovative bottom-up method whereby students in the health professions could gain a grounding in ethics that had previously been denied to the profession.5 It was with these Medical Groups that many of the leading figures in contemporary UK medical ethics and law began their careers in the subject including Sir Kenneth Calman, Sir Ian Kennedy, Professor Margaret Brazier OBE, Professor John Harris and Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery to name but …. (shrink)

Margaret Whitford's study provides the ideal introduction to Irigaray's thought, offering a sustained interpretation of her whole corpus, including previously untranslated French texts. Whitford suggests that Irigaray's work should be seen as "philosophy in the feminine," actively opposing the complicity of philosophy with other social practices which exclude or marginalize women.

Through the use of particular pedagogies and the adoption of new modes of thinking, physical literacy promises more realistic models of physical competence and ...

A revision of George Kennedy's translation of, introdution to, and commentary on Aristotle's On Rhetoric. His translation is most accurate, his general introduction is the most thorough and insightful, and his brief introductions to sections of the work, along with his explanatory footnotes, are the most useful available.

For those open to the possibility that philosophical thought can improve life, David Hume's Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary have something to say. In the first comprehensive study of the Essays, Margaret Watkins engages closely with these neglected texts and shows how they provide important insights into Hume's perspective on the breadth and depth of human life, arguing that the Essays reveal his continued commitment to philosophy as a discipline that can promote both social and individual progress. Addressing topics (...) such as politics, war, slavery, the priesthood, the development of industry, aesthetics, emotional disorders, egoism, friendship, sexuality, gender relations, and the nature of philosophy itself, the volume examines Hume's purposes and aims against the backdrop of the eighteenth century society in which he lived. It will be of interest to scholars of modern thought in philosophy, politics, history, and economics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay from Hume to Hazlitt by Tim MilnesMargaret WatkinsTim Milnes. The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay from Hume to Hazlitt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. viii + 278. Hardback. ISBN: 9780198812739. $91.00.In his brief autobiography, “My Own Life,” Hume reports that “almost all [his] life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations” (E-MOL: xxxi). This is one (...) of at least ten places in this brief work in which he associates himself with “letters” or “literature”—as compared to at most four associations with philosophy. The moral to be inferred is not that Hume considered himself not to be a philosopher. Rather, he conceived of philosophy as a kind of literature. The Treatise was itself a “literary attempt.” Indeed, opposition between the “literary” and “philosophical” aspects of a text would have been foreign to Hume and his contemporaries—a notion for a later age, despite his occasional loose distinction between the relevant genres, as in his list of writings “historical, philosophical, or literary” in “My Own Life” (E-MOL: xxxvi).Yet despite Hume’s own understanding of the continuity between philosophy and literature, broadly conceived, it is still common for contemporary philosophers to ignore literary questions in their examination of Hume’s work, or to presume that one can easily distinguish the “philosophical” parts from the “literary” ones. Tim Milnes’s The Testimony of Sense is therefore a welcome addition to the Hume literature (pun intended). With a particular focus on the essay—a genre of great importance to Hume—Milnes contributes to the small set of engagements with Hume from the disciplinary perspective of English literature. With training in both philosophy and literature, as well as established expertise on Romanticism and its own essays, Milnes is well-qualified for the task. The Testimony of Sense includes sustained engagement with Hume’s contemporaries and successors, but for the purposes of this review, I engage the book primarily as a Hume scholar for Hume scholars.Milnes’s story plays out in three acts. The first establishes the need for public trust created by a skeptical crisis, itself a product of Hume’s criticism of the epistemic program of thinkers in the Cartesian and Lockean traditions. The second explains how the essays of the long eighteenth century constitute a response to that need in various ways. The third reveals in detail how the Romantic essayists, particularly William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb, both respond to and deviate from the “neoclassical” essayists, typified by Hume and Samuel Johnson.The first chapter, “Self and Intersubjectivity,” lays the groundwork by articulating how Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and Dugald Stewart identify the need for what we now call intersubjectivity. Milnes describes the common thread as a kind of “natural transcendentalism.” In what sense are these thinkers properly understood as [End Page 175] transcendentalists? The central idea seems to be that all posit things other than reason as “conditions of meaningful thought” (72). For Hume, it is the social, linguistic experience of a community of virtuous judges. The intricate relations between self and other essential to such a community get “internalized within the specular drama of the impartial spectator” (72) in Smith’s writing, which itself takes part in the drama through his “halting, qualified syntax” that mimics “everyday speech” (44). Reid posits a “prescience” of trust, which grounds our reliance on both human testimony and the uniformity of nature, itself undergirded by the design of a benevolent God. Stewart, who posits axiomatic truths that help constitute the “stamina of intellect,” goes furthest, actually calling these truths transcendental (55). This chapter also puts these eighteenth-century thinkers in conversation with twentieth-century theorists, including Habermas, Davidson, and Rorty.Chapter 2, “The Subject of Trust,” deepens the analysis by situating these “natural transcendentalisms” in the broader enlightenment context. In contrast to Descartes, Bacon, and Locke, who were suspicious of our reliance on the opinions of others, the eighteenth-century thinkers understand trust as prior to reason in various ways—though not prior to solidarity. The particulars in each case depend on their responses to skepticism and their accounts of the relation between... (shrink)

This article argues that Hume's brief essay, "Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion," offers resources for three claims: (1) Delicate taste correlates with self-sufficiency and thus with a particularly Humean form of Magnanimity -- greatness of mind; (2) Delicate taste improves the capacity for profound friendships, characterized by mutual admiration and true compassion; and (3) magnanimity and compassion are thus not necessarily in tension with one another and may even proceed from and support harmony of character. These claims, in (...) turn, provide reasons to take seriously Hume's view that moral character depends, in part, on aesthetic character. (shrink)

Work on representing women's voices in ethics has produced a vision of moral understanding profoundly subversive of the traditional philosophical conception of moral knowledge. 1 explicate this alternative moral “epistemology,” identify how it challenges the prevailing view, and indicate some of its resources for a liberatory feminist critique of philosophical ethics.

Drawing on the work of a wide range of thinkers, the authors offer a program for organizing and leading human activity in all types of organizations, based a ...

This book, first published in 1974, studies the similarities between Rousseau's thought and that of the Stoics, examining Rousseau's ideas on man, society, the state and government. It makes close reference to Rousseau's writings, and to the works of Seneca and other Stoics, presenting an opportunity to really come to grips with a complex and often contradictory mind.

A considerable amount of academic attention has been paid to John Kennedy and to his group of advisors during the Cuban missile crisis. Next to no attention has been accorded other bodies of the Kennedy White House that had daily access to a President's most private moments and possibly to his important deliberations. Drawing on Richard Reeves' account of President Kennedy: Profile of Power, I revisit the early 1960s looking for bodies of power that are culturally sexed (...) female by others and compelled into being as workaday secretaries and confidants, and para-Everythings for Kennedy. In doing so, I draw on the feminist body theorizing of Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti and Elizabeth Grosz, as well as the evocations of bodies in important but abjected places featured in Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. After constructing the historically broad category of the handmaid to Washington power, I reread constructions of decision-making in the Cuban missile crisis offered by Graham Allison and conclude that the feint of mancentred Washington masks bodies given the locations, skills and resources to ooze into spaces of decision and power canonically forbidden to them. (shrink)

Moral epistemology investigates sources and patterns of moral understanding. Its questions include: To what extent does morality consist in or depend on knowledge, and of what kind(s)? What makes possible moral knowledge, and how is such knowledge grounded or justified? What is the relation between philosophical claims about morality and the moral understanding any of us has, that is, what has ethics – the philosophical representation of morality – to do with morality itself? Feminist moral epistemology asks how social divisions (...) of labor, opportunity, power, and recognition which reproduce gender and other hierarchies affect both the ways these questions have in fact been answered, and the ways they might be. (shrink)

The claim that Spinoza has a conception of animal mentality and consciousness that is superior to Descartes's is criticized. It is also argued that Spinoza fails to provide a coherent way of establishing what he considers to be our morally unconstrained “rights” with regard to brutes. Despite Spinoza's claim that brutes “feel,” i.e., are capable of sentience, his view that we are nonetheless entitled to treat animals in any way convenient to us is criticized. Questions are also raised as to (...) whether Spinoza is entitled to distinguish human from bestial nature on the basis of the possession of reason. (shrink)

The book examines issues related to the way modeling and simulation enable us to reconstruct aspects of the world we are investigating. It also investigates the processes by which we extract concrete knowledge from those reconstructions and how that knowledge is legitimated.

This new essay collection by distinguished philosopher Margaret Gilbert provides a richly textured argument for the importance of joint commitment in our personal and public lives. Topics covered by this diverse range of essays range from marital love to patriotism, from promissory obligation to the unity of the European Union.

Moral Repair examines the ethics and moral psychology of responses to wrongdoing. Explaining the emotional bonds and normative expectations that keep human beings responsive to moral standards and responsible to each other, Margaret Urban Walker uses realistic examples of both personal betrayal and political violence to analyze how moral bonds are damaged by serious wrongs and what must be done to repair the damage. Focusing on victims of wrong, their right to validation, and their sense of justice, Walker presents (...) a unified and detailed philosophical account of hope, trust, resentment, forgiveness, and making amends - the emotions and practices that sustain moral relations. Moral Repair joins a multidisciplinary literature concerned with transitional and restorative justice, reparations, and restoring individual dignity and mutual trust in the wake of serious wrongs. (shrink)

Businesses that produce bioscience products—gene tests and therapies, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and medical devices—are regularly confronted with ethical issues concerning these technologies. Conflicts exist between those who support advancements in bioscience and those who fear the consequences of unfettered scientific license. As the debate surrounding bioscience grows, it will be increasingly important for business managers to consider the larger consequences of their work. This groundbreaking book follows industry research, development, and marketing of medical and bioscience products across a variety of fields, (...) including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and bio-agriculture. Compelling and current case studies highlight the ethical decisions business managers frequently face. With the increasing visibility and public expectation placed on businesses in this sector, managers need to understand the ethical and social issues. This book addresses that need and provides a framework for incorporating ethical analysis in business decision making. (shrink)

In this paper I trace the dialogical and narrative dimensions of the philosophical tradition and explore how they are reconfigured in the notion of community of philosophical inquiry (CPI), the mainstay of the collection of novels and discussion plans known as Philosophy for Children. After considering the ontology and epistemology of dialogue, I argue that narrative has replaced exposition in our understanding of philosophical discourse and that CPI represents a narrative context in which truth comes to represent the best story, (...) in a discursive location in which there are always multiple stories. Finally, I raise the issue of children's philosophical voice. Can children philosophize, and if they can, do they do so in a voice different from adults'? If so, what are the distinctive features of that voice? I assert that it is children's historical marginalization in the Western construction of rationality that now – as that rationality undergoes its crisis – makes of them, like women and other “natives,” privileged strangers to the tradition, who are, through CPI, enabled to enter it through dialogue and narrative. (shrink)

This is a revised edition of Walker's well-known book in feminist ethics first published in 1997. Walker's book proposes a view of morality and an approach to ethical theory which uses the critical insights of feminism and race theory to rethink the epistemological and moral position of the ethical theorist, and how moral theory is inescapably shaped by culture and history. The main gist of her book is that morality is embodied in "practices of responsibility" that express our identities, values, (...) and connections to others in socially patterned ways. Thus ethical theory needs to be empirically informed and politically critical to avoid reiterating forms of socially entrenched bias. Responsible ethical theory should reveal and question the moral significance of social differences. The book engages with, and challenges, the work of contemporary analytic philosophers in ethics. Moral Understandings has been influential in reaching a global audience in ethics and feminist philosophy, as well as in tangential fields like nursing ethics; research ethics; disability ethics; environmental ethics, and social and political theory. This revised edition contains a new preface, a substantive postscript to Chapter 1 about "the subject of moral philosophy"; the addition of a new chapter on the importance of emotion in practices of responsibility; and the addition of an afterword, which responds to critics of the book. (shrink)

Humanity and the very notion of the human subject are under threat from postmodernist thinking which has declared not only the 'Death of God' but also the 'Death of Man'. This book is a revindication of the concept of humanity, rejecting contemporary social theory that seeks to diminish human properties and powers. Archer argues that being human depends on an interaction with the real world in which practice takes primacy over language in the emergence of human self-consciousness, thought, emotionality and (...) personal identity - all of which are prior to, and more basic than, our acquisition of a social identity. This original and provocative new book from leading social theorist Margaret S. Archer builds on the themes explored in her previous books Culture and Agency (CUP 1988) and Realist Social Theory (CUP 1995). It will be required reading for academics and students of social theory, cultural theory, political theory, philosophy and theology. (shrink)

In recent years, the free market position has been gaining strength. In this book, Radin provides a nuanced response to its sweeping generalization.

Margaret Canovan argues in this book that much of the published work on Arendt has been flawed by serious misunderstandings, arising from a failure to see her work in its proper context. The author shows how such misunderstanding was possible, and offers a fundamental reinterpretation, drawing on Arendt's unpublished as well as her published work, which sheds new light on most areas of her thought.

One of the most distinguished living social philosophers, Margaret Gilbert develops and extends her application of plural subject theory of human sociality, first introduced in her earlier works On Social Facts and Living Together. Sociality and Responsibility presents an extended discussion of her proposal that joint commitments inherently involve obligations and rights, proposing, in effect, a new theory of obligations and rights. In addition, it demonstrates the extensive range and fruitfulness of plural subject theory by presenting accounts of social (...) rules, scientific change, political obligation, collective remorse, collective guilt, shared intention and an important class of rights and obligations. (shrink)

Margaret Moore offers a comprehensive normative theory of territory.

This book is about the methods used for unifying different scientific theories under one all-embracing theory. The process has characterized much of the history of science and is prominent in contemporary physics; the search for a 'theory of everything' involves the same attempt at unification. Margaret Morrison argues that, contrary to popular philosophical views, unification and explanation often have little to do with each other. The mechanisms that facilitate unification are not those that enable us to explain how or (...) why phenomena behave as they do. A feature of this book is an account of many case studies of theory unification in nineteenth- and twentieth-century physics and of how evolution by natural selection and Mendelian genetics were unified into what we now term evolutionary genetics. (shrink)

Margaret Gilbert presents the first full-length treatment of a central class of rights: demand-rights. To have such a right is to have the standing or authority to demand a particular action of another person. Gilbert argues that joint commitment is a ground of demand-rights, and gives joint commitment accounts of both agreements and promises.