La relacion entre la etica y la medicina tiene una larga historia y tradicion que se puede remontar hasta la Grecia, China e India clasicas. La relacion entre ambas disciplinas es muy intensa porque la pregunta etica sobre el que debo hacer se aplica sobre la pregunta medica sobre que es mejor para la salud y el bienestar de una persona. Los textos que componen este libro tienen como hilo conductor el principio de autonomia. Este principio implica que las elecciones (...) individuales de planes de vida son valiosas y, por lo tanto, el Estado no debe interferir en ellas (dimension negativa) y debe disenar instituciones que faciliten la persecucion individual de estos planes de vida (dimension positiva). En los textos se observa que este enfoque eminentemente subjetivo se enfrenta a un enfoque colectivo (dimension relacional) que recuerda que las decisiones individuales se adoptan y repercuten positiva y negativamente en un entorno social. Este enfrentamiento permitiria observar que las elecciones individuales solo tienen un valor prima facie, pudiendose en algunos justificar limites mas amplios. (shrink)

In the past twenty years, the field of science and technology studies (S&TS) has made considerable progress toward illuminating the relationship between scientific knowledge and political power. These insights have not yet been synthesized or presented in a form that systematically highlights the connections between S&TS and other social sciences. This timely collection of essays by some of the leading scholars in the field attempts to fill that gap. The book develops the theme of "co-production", showing how scientific knowledge both (...) embeds and is embedded in social identities, institutions, representations and discourses. Accordingly, the authors argue, ways of knowing the world are inseparably linked to the ways in which people seek to organize and control it. Through studies of emerging knowledges, research practices and political institutions, the authors demonstrate that the idiom of co-production importantly extends the vocabulary of the traditional social sciences, offering fresh analytic perspectiveson the nexus of science, power and culture. (shrink)

The power of technology? -- Risk and responsibility? -- The ethical anatomy of disasters? -- Remaking nature? -- Tinkering with humans? -- Information's wild frontiers? -- Whose knowledge, whose property? -- Reclaiming the future? -- The ethics of invention?

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted data collection for longitudinal studies in developmental sciences to an immeasurable extent. Restrictions on conducting in-person standardized assessments have led to disruptive innovation, in which novel methods are applied to increase participant engagement. Here, we focus on remote administration of behavioral assessment. We argue that these innovations in remote assessment should become part of the new standard protocol in developmental sciences to facilitate data collection in populations that may be hard to reach or engage due (...) to burdensome requirements. We present a series of adaptations to developmental assessments and a detailed discussion of data analytic approaches to be applied in the less-than-ideal circumstances encountered during the pandemic-related shutdown. Ultimately, these remote approaches actually strengthen the ability to gain insight into developmental populations and foster pragmatic innovation that should result in enduring change. (shrink)

Logics for generally were introduced for handling assertions with vague notions,such as generally, most, several, etc., by generalized quantifiers, ultrafilter logic being an interesting case. Here, we show that ultrafilter logic can be faithfully embedded into a first-order theory of certain functions, called coherent. We also use generic functions (akin to Skolem functions) to enable elimination of the generalized quantifier. These devices permit using methods for classical first-order logic to reason about consequence in ultrafilter logic.

The focus of this research concentrated on ascertaining the presence of ethical climate types and the level of analysis from which ethical decisions were based as perceived by lodging managers. In agreement with Victor and Cullen (1987, 1988), ethical work climates are multidimensional and multi-determined. The results of this study indicated that: (a) benevolence is the predominate dimension of ethical climate present in the lodging organization as perceived by lodging managers, and (b) the local level of analysis (e.g. immediate workplace (...) norms and values) is the predominate determinant of ethical decisions in the organization.The implication of this study is that the knowledge gained from understanding that ethical decision making in an organization is multidimensional and multi-determined will foster understanding of ethical decision formation in the organizational context. (shrink)

We compare fork arrow logic, an extension of arrow logic, and its natural first-order counterpart (the correspondence language) and show that both have the same expressive power. Arrow logic is a modal logic for reasoning about arrow structures, its expressive power is limited to a bounded fragment of first-order logic. Fork arrow logic is obtained by adding to arrow logic the fork modality (related to parallelism and synchronization). As a result, fork arrow logic attains the expressive power of its first-order (...) correspondence language, so both can express the same input–output behavior of processes. (shrink)

We compare fork arrow logic, an extension of arrow logic, and its natural first-order counterpart (the correspondence language) and show that both have the same expressive power. Arrow logic is a modal logic for reasoning about arrow structures, its expressive power is limited to a bounded fragment of first-order logic. Fork arrow logic is obtained by adding to arrow logic the fork modality (related to parallelism and synchronization). As a result, fork arrow logic attains the expressive power of its first-order (...) correspondence language, so both can express the same input-output behavior of processes. (shrink)

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has always been plagued by what queer theorist Judith Butler calls gender trouble. In 2000, the IOC discontinued their practice of sex-testing because medical experts could not agree on what defined a genetic female and so an adequate medical testing measure could not be found. In response to outside pressure, the IOC adopted a policy enabling transsexual athletes to compete in the 2004 Olympic Games. This article argues that the IOC policy on sex reassignment does (...) not operate to guard against discrimination and harassment against transsexual athletes but that it operates to maintain the popular illusion that there are two, binary gender designations. While both transsexual and Olympic bodies have unique histories and vastly different experiences in the social and political realms, using psychoanalysis we contend that the need to test gendered bodies is incited by an anxiety about bodily deterioration, aging, and, ultimately, mortality. (shrink)

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme Business versus Ethics?. The authors of these commentaries seek to transcend the age-old separation fallacy :409–421, 1994) that juxtaposes business and ethics/society, posing a forced choice or trade off. Providing a contemporary take on (...) the classical question “if it’s legal is it ethical?”, David Hess explores the role of the law in promoting or hindering stakeholder-oriented purpose and governance structure. Jeffrey Harrison encourages scholars to move beyond the presupposition that businesses are either strategic or ethical and explore important questions at the intersection of strategy and ethics. The proposition that business models might be inherently ethical or inherently unethical in their design is developed by Sheila Killian, who examines business systems, their morality, and who they serve. However, the conundrum that entrepreneurs are either lauded for their self-belief and risk-taking, or loathed for their self-belief and risk-taking, is discussed by M. Tina Dacin and Julia Roloff using the metaphor of taboos and totems. These commentaries seek to explore positions that advocate multiplicity and tensions in which business ethics is not either/or but both. (shrink)

Environmental aesthetics is an emerging field of study that focuses on nature's aesthetic value as well as on its ethical and environmental implications. Drawing on the research of a number of disciplines, this exciting new area speaks to scholars working in a range of fields, including not only philosophy, but also environmental and cultural studies, public policy and planning, social and political theory, landscape design and management, and art and architecture. _Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty_ addresses the (...) complex relationships between aesthetic appreciation and environmental issues and emphasizes the valuable contribution that environmental aesthetics can make to environmentalism. Allen Carlson, a pioneer in environmental aesthetics, and Sheila Lintott, who has published widely in aesthetics, combine important historical essays on the appreciation of nature with the best contemporary research in the field. They begin with classic pieces by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, John Muir, John Burroughs, and Aldo Leopold, as well as an essay by Eugene Hargrove that lays out the scientific, artistic, and aesthetic foundations of current environmental beliefs and attitudes. The second section of the book addresses prevailing views on the conceptualization of nature and the various debates on how to properly and respectfully appreciate nature. The third section introduces positive aesthetics, the belief that everything in nature is essentially beautiful, even the devastation caused by earthquakes or floods. The essays in the final section explicitly bring together aesthetics, ethics, and environmentalism to explore the ways in which each might affect the others. (shrink)

Despite triggering one of the largest civilian death tolls in modern history, the policy and human consequences of economic sanctions on Iraq between 1990-2003 remain largely unexamined. This lack of scrutiny mirrors the euphemism and mis-information surrounding the embargo itself and the Oil-for-Food program ostensibly adopted to protect Iraq's civilian population. But it also reflects incomprehension among Western publics - long removed from the realities of hunger and economic destitution - of the intimate link between economic conditions and mortality. Iraq (...) suffered an estimated 1.5 million excess deaths because of a catastrophic undermining of civilian livelihood triggered by the embargo; an outcome termed slow famine in the demographic literature. With much of the population fully dependent on daily food rations of less than 21 cents per person for much of the sanctions period, OfF `relief' was inherently incapable of substituting for a functioning civil economy. Recent positive accounts of the impact of OfF, in the form of the Independent Inquiry Committee into the Oil-for-Food Program, are refuted by close analysis of malnutrition and mortality rates across the sanctions period. The example of Iraq reveals the danger in treating economic sanctions as a cheap, `non-violent' tool for conflict resolution. In reality their deadly power is terrorizing for societies not protected from their application by permanent member status on the UN Security Council, a threat which continues to generate global insecurity. The Iraq experience reveals how current, narrowly framed, international law prohibitions on starvation as a weapon of war need to be extended to cover interference with civilian livelihood and hence access to food. (shrink)

In calling for the transformation of military medical education and training, the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommended relocating basic and specialty enlisted medical training to a single site to take advantage of economies of scale and the opportunity for joint training. As a result, a joint medical education and training campus (METC) has been established at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Two of METC's primary long-term goals are to become a high-performing learning organization and to seek accreditation as a (...) community college. Such goals require a clear model of organizational improvement with well-defined metrics for measuring its performance and using research and evaluation to assess and improve that performance. Lessons learned from a review of practices at institutions with similar missions -- such as community colleges, corporate universities, the UK's Defence Medical Education and Training Agency, and other federal agencies, such as the Veterans Health Administration -- establish a clear need for an office of institutional research to help METC attain its organizational goals. They also provide useful recommendations regarding the METC office's structure, scope, and governance. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

STS research has devoted relatively little attention to the promotion and reception of science and technology by non-scientific actors and institutions. One consequence is that the relationship of science and technology to political power has tended to remain undertheorized. This article aims to fill that gap by introducing the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. Through a comparative examination of the development and regulation of nuclear power in the US and South Korea, the article demonstrates the analytic potential of the imaginaries concept. (...) Although nuclear power and nationhood have long been imagined together in both countries, the nature of those imaginations has remained strikingly different. In the US, the state’s central move was to present itself as a responsible regulator of a potentially runaway technology that demands effective containment. In South Korea, the dominant imaginary was of atoms for development which the state not only imported but incorporated into its scientific, technological and political practices. In turn, these disparate imaginaries have underwritten very different responses to a variety of nuclear shocks and challenges, such as Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl, and the spread of the anti-nuclear movement. (shrink)

It is my purpose in this thesis to explore the "reality" of illness, using philosophical phenomenology as a guide. In particular, I am concerned to show that the experience of illness, rather than representing a shared "reality" between physician and patient, represents in effect two quite distinct "realities". Philosophical phenomenology focuses on the nature of experience, and particularly upon the manner in which all experience is structured by the activity of consciousness. In so doing phenomenology emphasizes the unique nature of (...) experiencing and particularly the correlation between the perceiver and that which is perceived. Meaning is seen to be a function of the activity of individual consciousness. In the first chapter consideration is given to some basic concepts which are fundamental for phenomenology and a distinction is made between "own world" and "common world." In the second chapter these concepts are shown to provide insights into the nature of the discrepancy between the physician's and the patient's understanding of illness. Consideration is given to the manner in which the separate worlds of the physician and patient are constituted. It is argued that it is through attentional focusing that the sense of illness is made explicit for the individual. An analysis is provided of the manner in which such attentional focusing is determined. In the third chapter consideration is given to the question of how it is possible to construct a shared world of meaning between patient and physician, given the unique nature of experiencing. An eidetic interpretation of illness is proposed and attention is directed towards some ways in which we do, in fact, come to some understanding of the Other. In the final chapter it is suggested that the notion of healing presupposes a shared world between physician and patient. A distinction is made between healing and curing disease. It is noted that the manner in which the "reality" of illness is defined directly influences the way in which the end of the patient/physician relationship is defined. It is argued that the end of the patient/ physician relationship is healing and that healing is a mutual act which is accomplished within the context of a shared world between physician and patient. (shrink)

Este estudo enfoca os estilos de vida de adolescentes escolares a fim de identificar tanto as práticas protetivas quanto as arriscadas entre grupos de adolescentes. O estudo transversal contou com uma amostra de 1210 adolescentes escolares de nono ano do ensino fundamental de 66 escolas públicas est.

This article examines Robbie McCauley’s Sugar, focusing on how this solo performance work opens up discursive spaces for a range of voices and perspectives. I argue that the ideas expressed in Sugar work as a type of vernacular theorizing, questioning the means by which certain perspectives and ways of knowing are valued over others. In the conclusion, I suggest how Sugar could serve as a model for health professionals involved in the fight again diabetes, as it opens up opportunities for (...) dialogue and makes visible the processual nature of people’s attempts to make sense of the disease. (shrink)

Institutional review board delays may hinder the successful completion of federally funded research in the U.S. military. When this happens, time-sensitive, mission-relevant questions go unanswered. Research participants face unnecessary burdens and risks if delays squeeze recruitment timelines, resulting in inadequate sample sizes for definitive analyses. More broadly, military members are exposed to untested or undertested interventions, implemented by well-intentioned leaders who bypass the research process altogether. To illustrate, we offer two case examples. We posit that IRB delays often appear in (...) the service of managing institutional risk, rather than protecting research participants. Regulators may see more risk associated with moving quickly than risk related to delay, choosing to err on the side of bureaucracy. The authors of this article, all of whom are military-funded researchers, government stakeholders, and/or human subject protection experts, offer feasible recommendations to improv... (shrink)

Britain's Royal Society of Arts has recently produced a report on the conditions of future successful business in Britain, entitled Tomorrow's Company, in which the idea of the “inclusive company” is seen to be central to such success. How, and to what extent, does business ethics figure in this prospect for the future? The author is Vice‐Chairman of the Institute of Management and former Chair of its Professional Practice Committee.

Britain's Royal Society of Arts has recently produced a report on the conditions of future successful business in Britain, entitled Tomorrow's Company, in which the idea of the “inclusive company” is seen to be central to such success. How, and to what extent, does business ethics figure in this prospect for the future? The author is Vice‐Chairman of the Institute of Management and former Chair of its Professional Practice Committee.

Part One of Montesquieu's Idea of Justice comprises a survey of the currency in philosophical, ethical and aesthetic debate during the second half of the 17th century of the terms rapport and convenance, which are central to the enigmatic definition given to justice by Mon tesquieu in Lettres Persanes LXXXllI. In this survey, attention is concen trated on the way in which the connotations of these terms fluctuate with the divergent development of the methodological and speculative outgrowths of Cartesian ism (...) into two schools of thought, materialist and idealist, often widely at variance in their views of the nature and orga nization of the universe. In Part Two, Montesquieu's definition of justice is set against this background, whose doctrinal conflicts, because of the characteristic as sociations of its key terms, it may be taken to reflect, just as it may be held to epitomize, by virtue of its elaboration in the opening chapter of De l' Esprit des Lois and its close terminological affinities with the defini tion of law there given, an undoubtedly related conflict between the implications of causal determinism and the aspirations of idealist meta physics surviving at the heart of Montesquieu's outlook, and, remaining unresolved, often said to impair the coherence if not the validity of his theory of society. (shrink)

Scholars in science and technology studies (STS) have recently been called upon to advise governments on the design of procedures for public engagement. Any such instrumental function should be carried out consistently with STS’s interpretive and normative obligations as a social science discipline. This article illustrates how such threefold integration can be achieved by reviewing current US participatory politics against a 70-year backdrop of tacit constitutional developments in governing science and technology. Two broad cycles of constitutional adjustment are discerned: the (...) first enlarging the scope of state action as well as public participation, with liberalized rules of access and sympathetic judicial review; the second cutting back on the role of the state, fostering the rise of an academic-industrial complex for technology transfer, and privatizing value debates through increasing delegation to professional ethicists. New rules for public engagement in the United Sates should take account of these historical developments and seek to counteract some of the anti-democratic tendencies observable in recent decades. (shrink)

This article argues that climate change produces discordances in established ways of understanding the human place in nature, and so offers unique challenges and opportunities for the interpretive social sciences. Scientific assessments such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change helped establish climate change as a global phenomenon, but in the process they detached knowledge from meaning. Climate facts arise from impersonal observation whereas meanings emerge from embedded experience. Climate science thus cuts against the grain of common sense (...) and undermines existing social institutions and ethical commitments at four levels: communal, political, spatial and temporal. The article explores the tensions that arise when the impersonal, apolitical and universal imaginary of climate change projected by science comes into conflict with the subjective, situated and normative imaginations of human actors engaging with nature. It points to current environmental debates in which a reintegration of scientific representations of the climate with social responses to those representations is taking place. It suggests how the interpretive social sciences can foster a more complex understanding of humanity’s climate predicament. An important aim of this analysis is to offer a framework in which to think about the human and the social in a climate that seems to render obsolete important prior categories of solidarity and experience. (shrink)

_Explores the philosophical, literary, and psychoanalytic significance of film endings._ Editing has been called the language of cinema, and thus a film’s ending can be considered the final punctuation mark of this language, framing everything that came before and offering the key to both our interpretation and our enjoyment of a film. In _Cinematic Cuts_, scholars explore the philosophical, literary, and psychoanalytic significance of film endings, analyzing how film endings engage our fantasies of cheating death, finding true love, or determining (...) the meaning of life. They examine how endings offer various forms of enjoyment for the spectator, from the momentary fulfillment of desire in the happy ending to the pleasurable torment of an indeterminate ending. The contributors also consider how film endings open onto larger questions relating to endings in our time. They suggest how a film ending’s hidden counternarrative can be read as a political act, how our interpretation of a film ending parallels the end of a psychoanalytical session, how film endings reveal our anxieties and fears, and how cinema itself might end with the increasing intervention of digital technologies that reorient the spectator’s sense of temporality and closure. Films by Akira Kurosawa, Lars von Trier, Joon-Hwan Jang, Claire Denis, Christopher Nolan, Jane Campion, John Huston, and Spike Jonze, among others, are discussed. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive study of the Odyssey's plot, which shows how the motifs of disguise and recognition are used to articulate the central values of Homeric society. The story of Odysseus' homecoming is discussed in relation to family dynamics, heroic competition, the social institutions of marriage and hospitality, gender relations, and the enduring power of song.

In her 2011 documentary, La Langue de Zahra/Zahra’s Mother Tongue, Algerian/French filmmaker Fatima Sissani “gives voice” to her Kabyle mother, Zahra, who lived in France as an immigrant woman for years after Algerian independence without speaking French. Often considered uneducated and ignorant, these women act as archives of oral tradition, history, and poetry in a language their children often do not speak. In this paper, I will look at how this performative documentary film creates “spaces in-between” cultures through its uses (...) of performance, orality, and cinematic space. A number of recent Maghrebi and sub-Saharan African documentaries have emerged that can be described as performative documentaries in which historical evocation and emotive connection to the subject matter is as important to the filmmaker as factual referencing. The filmmaker plays a self-reflexive role in the text, which often shapes the content.It is important to note that the film is not about being forced to choose between two ge... (shrink)

Processing information in the context of personal survival scenarios elicits a memory advantage, relative to other rich encoding conditions such as self-referencing. However, previous research is unable to distinguish between the influence of survival and self-reference because personal survival is a self-referent encoding context. To resolve this issue, participants in the current study processed items in the context of their own survival and a familiar other person’s survival, as well as in a semantic context. Recognition memory for the items revealed (...) that personal survival elicited a memory advantage relative to semantic encoding, whereas other-survival did not. These findings reinforce suggestions that the survival effect is closely tied with self-referential encoding, ensuring that fitness information of potential importance to self is successfully retained in memory. (shrink)

International human rights treaties and declarations lay out the interconnection of civil and political rights with economic, social, and cultural rights. However, it was not until 1993 at the 2nd UN Conference on Human Rights in Vienna that governments agreed that all of women’s rights are an integral part of human rights. Promoting women’s economic, social, and cultural rights is a critical human rights advocacy issue. Poverty leaves women more exposed to violence and less able to escape it, and severely (...) restricts women’s ability to organize and fight for change. The article describes work by AI and other NGOs on violence against women and its connection with women's poverty and lack of education, healthcare, housing, and access to land in Africa. Besides the burgeoning of African women’s organizations calling for protection of all women’s human rights, a second hopeful development has been approval in July 2003 of an historic Protocol on the Rights of women in Africa. (shrink)

In 1990‐92 Britain's Institute of Management commissioned a working party of its Professional Practice Committee to review the Institute's Code of Conduct and Guides to Professional Management Practice. Sheila Evers, currently Vice‐Chairman of the Institute of Management, chaired the working party; and based on further discussions she has now written and compiled a supporting document, “The Manager as a Professional”, with checklists for the individual manager. Copyright of the documents, reproduced here with permission, rests with The Institute of Management, (...) which is, however, willing to permit their being used and quoted with due acknowledgement. (shrink)

A personal history of life, love and women’s liberation In this powerful memoir Sheila Rowbotham looks back at her life as a participant in the women’s liberation movement, left politics and the creative radical culture of a decade in which freedom and equality seemed possible. She reveals the tremendous efforts that were made to transform attitudes and feelings, as well as daily life. After addressing the first British Women’s Liberation Conference at Ruskin College, Oxford in 1970, she went on (...) to encourage night cleaners to unionise, to campaign for nurseries and abortion rights. She played an influential role in discussions of socialist feminist ideas and her books and journalism attracted an international readership. Written with generosity and humour Daring to Hope recreates grassroots networks, communal houses and squats, bringing alive a shared impetus to organise collectively and to love without jealousy or domination. It conveys the shifts occurring in politics and society through kernels of personal experience. The result is a book about liberation in the widest sense. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Adjudicating the Debate Over Two Models of Nature AppreciationSheila Lintott (bio)It seems commonplace to point out that we aesthetically appreciate a wide variety of objects: that is, art objects are not the only good candidates for aesthetic appreciation.1 We know from experience that one can aesthetically appreciate not only Georgia O'Keefe's White Trumpet Flower, but also a white trumpet flower. Similarly, we can aesthetically appreciate both a pictorial representation (...) of the human form and that form instantiated in certain prime specimens. We do so, moreover, without classifying either flowers or human beings as art objects. Yet, the paradigm of aesthetic appreciation today, in both everyday life and in educative contexts, is the appreciation of art, which explains why we tend to try to understand what makes aesthetic appreciation appropriate in terms of what makes art appreciation appropriate. This approach may not be entirely mistaken, for beginning with the familiar is always a good plan. However, it must be done with care, otherwise important differences between our relationships with the art we appreciate and with the nature we appreciate may be overlooked, thereby obscuring salient differences in the appreciation of each.In this essay, I focus on the issue of the appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature and offer an overview of a contemporary debate on the topic. I begin with a general discussion of art and nature appreciation. I then summarize Kendall Walton's theory of appropriate art appreciation and explain his skepticism regarding the possibility of appropriate and inappropriate nature appreciation. Next, I discuss two models according to which Walton is mistaken, as the philosophers who present these models, Allen Carlson and Noël Carroll, do so to illustrate how nature appreciation can be properly considered appropriate or inappropriate. It may seem that given the recent proliferation of models of nature appreciation, the last thing we should seek is yet another model. However, in the end, I shall argue the need for a new and different kind of model, one that is a revisionist and extensionist model of nature appreciation. [End Page 52]Art and Nature AppreciationConcerning the perceptual activity of the audience, how we ought to appreciate artworks is largely uncontroversial. Perhaps this is why Carlson opens his attempt to understand the aesthetic appreciation of nature with a presentation of the aesthetic appreciation of art, explaining that "with art objects there is a straightforward sense in which we know both what and how to aesthetically appreciate."2 Although not all artworks offer "straightforward" examples of aesthetic appreciation, Carlson's general point is reasonably motivated. As Kendall Walton succinctly explains: "Paintings and sculptures are to be looked at; sonatas and songs are to be heard. What is important about these works of art, as works of art, is what can be seen or heard in them."3 That we ought to look at paintings and listen to sonatas seems obvious for at least two reasons. First, via formal education and informal interactions, we have grown familiar with the conventions of art appreciation; second, such conventions find experiential reinforcement when, for example, our auditory sense is tickled by a Mozart concerto.4Underlying our relative lack of confidence when it comes to nature appreciation is the obvious fact that nature, unlike art, is not an artifact. Nature was not made by beings like us; it was made neither for our use, nor for our entertainment, nor for our appreciation.5 As Carlson puts it, "art objects are our own creations; it is for this reason that we know what is and what is not part of a work, which of its aspects are of aesthetic significance, and how to appreciate them" (ANE, 41). We need, therefore, a model of nature appreciation that will serve as a source of education regarding how best to appreciate nature and will offer the confidence we lack and the guidance we seek.It might seem that we should simply apply our knowledge of art to nature appreciation — that is, appreciate nature as if it were art. However, as numerous philosophers have noticed, this approach is mistaken.6 The mistake is both theoretical and practical. Theoretically, it is a category error... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 81-85 [Access article in PDF] "What's in the Box Then, Mum?"—Death, Disability, and Dogma Sheila Colman OVERHEARD IN AN EXCHANGE between a bereaved woman and her son outside the church just prior to a funeral service: "What's in the box, then?" "Daddy." The son is in his late 30s and has a learning disability. His mother had prepared him as well as (...) she could; his father had been ill for some time and was not expected to recover. Death, and the rituals surrounding it, had been explained and it was not the first family funeral he had attended.Trying to field such childlike questions is typical of living with a person with a learning disability; trying to find the right words is difficult enough without the added pressure of personal emotional distress.The generally accepted norm in life is that a child is parented within the home until adulthood and then independence is attained. Roles may well be reversed in later life in that the "child" may find responsibilities in caring for, and making decisions for, elderly parents. Few people can stop parenting when their offspring are fledged—even though it is at arms length and any advice may be ignored. Life with a child with a learning disability is unbalanced in this respect; as carers we do not lead lives considered to be normal because our children continue to be childlike for the rest of their, and our, lives. Some of us know that our sons and daughters do not have "apparently limitless potential... to develop skills and autonomy if only they are given the right help" (but try, as a parent or carer, saying that to a professional working in the field of learning disability!) and know that the best we can hope for is mature, rather than immature, dependence.No one tells parents of a learning disabled child—or any other, for that matter—what their responsibilities to that child are. Food, warmth, love, support, and so on are givens, but it takes a conscious effort to move a child toward adulthood when it involves changes in life, for example, moving away from the family home. The debate rages; is it letting go or getting rid of?We all delight in the pleasures our children experience in childhood; we know the magic has gone from the family Christmas once realisation dawns on the youngest child. If you consider that your son or daughter has been dealt a very poor hand in life, the temptation to prolong and promote that innocence is very tempting. It is much easier to prevaricate than to admit that life has its unpleasant sides; that failure and disappointment exist: my son was a great fan of Thomas the Tank engine videos until he was in his early teens, long after it was age appropriate. I passed them onto a younger child, having told him the videos were lost. The fall-out was spectacular [End Page 81] (but fortunately short lived!) and he eventually became very interested in Formula 1 motor racing. I had to push him to grow up.For all of us, the transition from childhood to adulthood is a process, not an event. Although I agree with the professionals that the child with a learning disability should be part of any discussions concerning his or her future, if that child does not have the intellectual capacity to make informed choices, someone else has to do it. That someone else is usually a parent, but is it a parent who is prepared to let go to help that person become an adult with his or her own life away from the family home, or is it a parent who has protected and coddled the child by promising they will never have to go?Lest you think I am a particularly hard, confrontational, and unfeeling mother, I would point out that I have almost 50 years of experience of living with learning disability in the immediate family; my son is 20 but my brother... (shrink)

Feminist philosophy has taken too long to engage seriously with aesthetics and has been even slower in confronting natural beauty in particular. There are various possible reasons for this neglect, including the relative youth of feminist aesthetics, the possibility that feminist philosophy is not relevant to nature aesthetics, the claim that natural beauty is not a serious topic, hesitation among feminists to perpetuate women's associations with beauty and nature, and that the neglect may be merely apparent. Discussing each of these (...) possibilities affords a better understanding of, but none justify the neglect of natural beauty in feminist aesthetics. (shrink)