The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a host of ethical challenges, but key among these has been the possibility that health care systems might need to ration scarce critical care resources. Rationing p...

This book is a qualitative, interpretive, phenomenological, and interdisciplinary, examination of food and food practices and their meanings in the modern world. Each chapter thematically focuses upon a particular food practice and on some key details of the examined practice, or on the practice’s social and cultural impact.

This book is the first sustained inquiry into the new epistemology of fake news. The chapters, authored by established and emerging names in the field, pursue three goals. First, to analyse the meaning and novelty of 'fake news' and related notions, such as 'conspiracy theory.' Second, to discuss the mechanics of fake news, exploring various practices that generate or promote fake news. Third, to investigate potential therapies for fake news.

As one approach to examining the way ethical decisions are made, we asked experts and novices to review a set of scenarios that depict some important ethical tensions in research. The method employed was “protocol analysis,” a talk-aloud technique pioneered by cognitive scientists for the analysis of expert performance. The participants were asked to verbalize their normally unexpressed thought processes as they responded to the scenarios, and to make recommendations for courses of action. We found that experts spent more time (...) working through the decision-making process than novices and also raised substantially more concerns than novices. Differences also exist among the three groups of experts. (shrink)

This volume contains thirteen papers that were presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/Société canadienne d’histoire et de philosophie des mathématiques, which was held at Ryerson University in Toronto. It showcases rigorously reviewed modern scholarship on an interesting variety of topics in the history and philosophy of mathematics from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century. A series of chapters all set in the eighteenth century consider topics such as John Marsh’s techniques (...) for the computation of decimal fractions, Euler’s efforts to compute the surface area of scalene cones, a little-known work by John Playfair on the practical aspects of mathematics, and Monge’s use of descriptive geometry. After a brief stop in the nineteenth century to consider the culture of research mathematics in 1860s Prussia, the book moves into the twentieth century with an examination of the historical context within which the Axiom of Choice was developed and a paper discussing Anatoly Vlasov’s adaptation of the Boltzmann equation to ionized gases. The remaining chapters deal with the philosophy of twentieth-century mathematics through topics such as an historically informed discussion of finitism and its limits; a reexamination of Mary Leng’s defenses of mathematical fictionalism through an alternative, anti-realist approach to mathematics; and a look at the reasons that mathematicians select specific problems to pursue. Written by leading scholars in the field, these papers are accessible to not only mathematicians and students of the history and philosophy of mathematics, but also anyone with a general interest in mathematics. (shrink)

A collection of personal narratives and essays, Living Professionalism is designed to help medical students and residents understand and internalize various aspects of professionalism. These essays are meant for personal reflection and above all, for thoughtful discussion with mentors, with peers, with others throughout the health care provider community who care about acting professionally.

BackgroundIn the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM) cohort, participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, heart, and abdomen, that generated incidental findings (IFs). The approach to managing these unexpected results remain a complex issue. Our objectives were to describe the CAHHM policy for the management of IFs, to understand the impact of disclosing IFs to healthy research participants, and to reflect on the ethical obligations of researchers in future MRI studies.MethodsBetween 2013 and 2019, 8252 participants (...) (mean age 58 ± 9 years, 54% women) were recruited with a follow-up questionnaire administered to 909 participants (40% response rate) at 1-year. The CAHHM policy followed a restricted approach, whereby routine feedback on IFs was not provided. Only IFs of severe structural abnormalities were reported.ResultsSevere structural abnormalities occurred in 8.3% (95% confidence interval 7.7–8.9%) of participants, with the highest proportions found in the brain (4.2%) and abdomen (3.1%). The majority of participants (97%) informed of an IF reported no change in quality of life, with 3% of participants reporting that the knowledge of an IF negatively impacted their quality of life. Furthermore, 50% reported increased stress in learning about an IF, and in 95%, the discovery of an IF did not adversely impact his/her life insurance policy. Most participants (90%) would enrol in the study again and perceived the MRI scan to be beneficial, regardless of whether they were informed of IFs. While the implications of a restricted approach to IF management was perceived to be mostly positive, a degree of diagnostic misconception was present amongst participants, indicating the importance of a more thorough consent process to support participant autonomy.ConclusionThe management of IFs from research MRI scans remain a challenging issue, as participants may experience stress and a reduced quality of life when IFs are disclosed. The restricted approach to IF management in CAHHM demonstrated a fair fulfillment of the overarching ethical principles of respect for autonomy, concern for wellbeing, and justice. The approach outlined in the CAHHM policy may serve as a framework for future research studies.Clinical trial registrationhttps://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/nct02220582. (shrink)

Numerous studies have documented the detrimental impact of age-based stereotype threat on older adults' cognitive performance and especially on veridical memory. However, far fewer studies have investigated the impact of ABST on older adults' memory distortion. Here, we review the subset of research examining memory distortion and provide evidence for the role of stereotype threat as a powerful socio-emotional factor that impacts age-related susceptibility to memory distortion. In this review we define memory distortion as errors in memory that are associated (...) with gist-based errors or source misattributions. Whereas, some of the reviewed experiments support the conclusion that ABST should be considered in the context of age-related differences in memory distortion, others reported little or no impact of stereotype threat. These discrepancies suggest that the role of ABST, and socio-emotional processes generally, in age-related changes in memory distortion are less clear. In this review, we argue that ABST does play an important role in age-related changes in memory distortion. We present evidence suggesting that discrepancies in the reviewed literature may be reconciled when evaluated in the context of the leading theories about stereotype threat: the Executive Resource Depletion hypothesis and the Regulatory Focus theory. We also discuss how differences in methodology and participant characteristics can account for a priori contradictory results in the literature. Finally, we propose some recommendations for researchers and practitioners when assessing memory in older adults. (shrink)

As one approach to examining the way ethical decisions are made, we asked experts and novices to review a set of scenarios that depict some important ethical tensions in research. The method employed was “protocol analysis,” a talk-aloud technique pioneered by cognitive scientists for the analysis of expert performance. The participants were asked to verbalize their normally unexpressed thought processes as they responded to the scenarios, and to make recommendations for courses of action. We found that experts spent more time (...) working through the decision-making process than novices and also raised substantially more concerns than novices. Differences also exist among the three groups of experts. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

ABSTRACT This article engages with a key interpretive puzzle in Hobbes’s political thought – his seemingly contradictory view of liberty of conscience – and argues that Hobbes theorizes civic education as a powerful tool to confront and refashion prevailing views of conscience in early modernity. While influential accounts have recovered more ‘tolerant’ arguments in Hobbes’s political thought, recent revisionist accounts have argued that Hobbes does not merely advocate for the compulsion of outward conformity but also subjects’ inward persuasion. Yet this (...) nuanced attention to the sovereign’s role in cultivating obedient, peaceful subjects does not attend fully to his shaping of the consciences of his subjects. Situating Hobbes in the early modern discourse on casuistry, as well as political debates on educational reform, reveals that the sovereign can and should try to shape the consciences of subjects, specifically returning to a view of conscience as a kind of ‘knowing with’ others. Reframing Hobbes’s project of civic education as a strategy to ‘gently instill’ the consciences of subjects does not merely shed light on the interpretive puzzle of Hobbes’s ambivalence towards toleration but also draws attention to one of the most powerful and arguably underappreciated ways to overcome the threat of conscience to sovereignty. (shrink)

Philosophy is shaped by life and life is shaped by philosophy. This is reflected in The Philosophical I, a collection of 16 autobiographical essays by prominent philosophers.

At the 2022 Clinical Ethics Unconference, the authors perceived a significant lack of racial and ethnic diversity, which was consistent with their experiences in other clinical ethics settings. As a result, they convened a working group to address the pervasive lack of diversity present in the field of clinical ethics and to propose strategies to increase the representation of people from racial and ethnic minority populations. This article identifies the harms associated with the lack of diversity in the healthcare setting (...) and translates these to the field of clinical ethics. The article then proposes a framework that may be used to help diversify the field of clinical ethics. Specifically, the authors identify existing barriers to appropriate diversity, actionable steps to increase diversity, and tools the field can utilize to systematically assess its progress with respect to achieving diversity. (shrink)

This article evaluates the political implications of Thomas Hobbes’s extensive treatment of religion by taking up the motif of the Eucharist (and accompanying doctrine of transubstantiation) in Leviathan. Hobbes holds out transubstantiation as an exemplar of absurdity and an historical outgrowth of Christianity’s inauspicious meeting with pagan practices. At the same time, Leviathan contains allusions to eucharistic imagery in its narration of the generation of the “Mortal God,” the commonwealth, as the incorporation of a civil body. These conflicting sentiments (...) are illustrative of a wider tension running through Hobbes’s thought. Although Hobbes’s repudiation of superstition is well-known, it stands in stark contrast to Leviathan’s treatment of Christianity as an exemplar of “true” religion. The varied allusions to eucharistic doctrine illustrate how proper use might be made of a persistent “natural religiosity.” Both in its consonance with reason and its political logic, Christianity remains a politically constructive expression of “power invisible.”. (shrink)

This chapter examines the views of seventeenth-century British philosophers on passions and affections. It explains that about 8,000 books published during this period mentioned passion and that it started with Thomas Wright's Passions of the Mind in General. The chapter also explores the intellectual basis of the writers who wrote about passion – which includes Augustinianism, Aristotelianism, stoicism, Epicureanism, and medicine – and furthermore, analyzes the relevant works of Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Henry More, and Lord Shaftesbury.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Globalization: The Quest for AlternativesAmy LevadCatholic Social Teaching and Economic Globalization: The Quest for Alternatives John Sniegocki Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 2009. 335 pp. $37.00.John Sniegocki’s dense volume argues for rethinking development policies in light of widespread poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation that have resulted from these policies over the last century. This argument does not mark Sniegocki’s text as particularly original. (...) However, the dialogue that he constructs between Catholic social teaching (CST) and three schools of thought on development, which he describes as “neoconservative,” “radical,” and “grassroots” views, provides a compelling argument for new directions for both CST and economic globalization.Sniegocki’s book begins with three chapters that provide an overview of development theory (beginning with calls for “modernization” of the “Third World” beginning in the 1950s), examine failures of this theory in practice, and discuss the growth of CST concerning development. While these chapters provide important groundwork for understanding the context of Sniegocki’s argument, the heart of the argument comes in the fourth chapter, where he places CST in dialogue with neoconservative and radical approaches to development (represented, respectively, by Michael Novak [End Page 209] and Mary Hobgood). Neoconservatism is clearly incompatible with CST, as any denial of structural inequality or whole-hearted embrace of capitalism— even “democratic capitalism”—would be. However, radical approaches maintain that CST does not sever itself completely from the economic liberalism that underlies neoconservatism. As a result, even when CST recognizes the pitfalls of capitalism and the realities of structural injustice, it still often resorts to liberal assumptions. Radicals maintain that if CST were more consistent, it would more adamantly call for social struggle resulting in “democratic socialism.”Sniegocki finds resources for CST in radicalism but also introduces a third perspective from grassroots critics of development, exemplified by Vandana Shiva. These critics question whether “development equals Westernization via industrialization” (242, quoting Herb Addo), as maintained by both neoconservatives and radicals; they instead call for revitalization of local economies and traditional cultures. Sniegocki concludes that this vision could enhance CST in several ways: resolving the tension in CST between modernization and respect for local cultures, improving its framework for understanding ecological issues, encouraging recognition of grassroots action and social struggle for change, and attending to the role of women in economic and social processes. In the two concluding chapters, Sniegocki proposes that radical and grassroots perspectives together provide a basis for critiquing neoconservatism and improving CST.At least two issues deserve more attention in Sniegocki’s text. First, the principle of subsidiarity, “which asserts that issues should be dealt with at the most decentralized level appropriate to the issue at hand” (121), would seem to offer a strong grounding in CST for many grassroots arguments, yet Sniegocki gives this principle little attention. Second, Sniegocki criticizes the decision-making practices within many international development organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), for suppressing democratic participation. In many ways, this critique could also be leveled against the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Could deficiencies of CST concerning development be an outgrowth of the decision-making practices of the hierarchy, just as problems with IMF, WB, and WTO policies are an outgrowth of their decision-making practices? Sniegocki seems to recognize this possibility in a single sentence: “The resurgence within the Catholic Church in recent years of more top-down, centralized, and secretive ecclesiastical practices, while the church at the same time recommends to the broader world the importance of grassroots participation, dialogue, and human rights, makes ongoing attention to these issues especially urgent” (331). Although this sentence touches on an important question, Sniegocki leaves it here. It seems that addressing this question, however, may be crucial for [End Page 210] bringing about the enhancement of CST by radical and grassroots views that Sniegocki envisions.Amy LevadUniversity of St. Thomas St. Paul, MinnesotaCopyright © 2012 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This article reconstructs a transatlantic community of discourse that used Romantic ideas to mediate between science and religion in order to create a framework for modern belief. The pragmatist William James, Scottish freelance intellectual Thomas Davidson, and ethical culturalist William Mackintire Salter in the United States, and the psychic researcher Frederic Myers and self‐published philosopher Shadworth Hollway Hodgson in England inherited a supreme concept of immanence from Romanticism, which they brought to their fight against dogmatism in religion and materialism (...) in science. Emphasizing the freedom of the individual mind to believe on the basis of experience, these religious mediators oriented their new science of religions by the compass of democratic values. Their approach to modern belief contributes to the current revision of a strictly declensionist secularization by suggesting, in part, that religion among intellectuals was neither exclusively Christian in the late nineteenth century nor necessarily stifled by the impact of Darwinian evolution. (shrink)

Carruthers’s central project in Phenomenal Consciousness is to naturalize consciousness. Given the vast success of naturalism in science, he maintains that we should require powerful reasons to abandon it when constructing philosophical theories of consciousness. Unsurprisingly, he then argues that there are no such reasons. In particular, he claims that the well-known arguments of Thomas Nagel and Frank Jackson fail, as do inverted and absent qualia arguments. Carruthers’s main strategy for defusing these arguments involves first distinguishing a “thin” notion (...) of property from a “thick” notion of property and then arguing that the various antinaturalistic arguments conflate these two different notions. Although he admits that the antinaturalist may not find these considerations wholly convincing, he construes the dialectical situation in such a way as to relieve him of any obligation to do more. As long as it can be shown that the antinaturalistic arguments are not obviously successful, which he takes himself to have done, Carruthers claims that the presumption in favor of naturalism remains. Thus, a theory of consciousness must be compatible with the following two naturalistic claims: first, all mental events occur in accordance with causal laws; and second, all mental events can be given a reductive explanation in physical terms. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The articles in the special issue ofBusiness Ethics Quarterly, “Normative Business Ethics in a Global Economy: New Directions on Donaldsonian Themes,” were written by a set of outstanding scholars: Margaret M. Blair, Joseph P. Gaspar, Nien-hê Hsieh, Peter L. Jennings, Marietta Peytcheva, Andreas Georg Scherer, Amy J. Sepinwall, Andrew Stark, Danielle E. Warren, and Manuel Velasquez. In this commentary I reply to my colleagues, arranging my reply around the following themes: 1) the corporate moral agent; 2) the idea of a (...) social contract for business; 3) managing ethics within corporations; and 4) values in business. I discuss each in turn. However, I reflect first on my idiosyncratic approach to business ethics. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Comment se pratique la philosophie du droit en ce début de XXIe siècle à la suite des bouleversements politiques et théoriques observés lors du siècle précédent? Comment se pose la question du droit pour et dans la philosophie, et quelles sont les spécificités du rapport que les juristes nouent à la philosophie dans le déploiement de leur pratique juridique, ainsi que dans leur propre réflexion sur le droit? Les textes présents dans ce volume, rédigés (...) en l'honneur de Guy Haarscher par des amis et des collègues influencés par son travail, abordent ce questionnement en profitant, à sa suite, de la multiplicité des espaces de croisement entre les discours juridiques et philosophiques, qu'il s'agisse de la spécificité des droits de l'homme ou du droit constitutionnel dans le champ juridique, des choix moraux à l'oeuvre lors des conflits entre droits fondamentaux, de la place de la rhétorique ou de l'utilisation de la philosophie dans la procédure judiciaire, du statut réservé à la technique juridique dans la tradition philosophique occidentale, d'un légalisme commun au jusnaturalisme et au juspositivisme, d'une forme de moralité purement interne à la pratique du droit, de la question du tribunal de l'histoire ou encore du sens juridique de la laïcité.". (shrink)

In Ontology Made Easy and elsewhere Amie Thomasson has made a proposal about the significance of easy arguments for metaphysics. Easy arguments are apparently trivial inferences from premises that seem philosophically innocent to conclusions that seem to be philosophically substantial. In this paper my focus will be on well-know easy arguments for the existence of numbers, properties, and composite objects. I critically investigate Thomasson’s proposal about how to understand easy arguments and what significance they have. In particular, I will focus (...) on the philosophy of language in the background of these arguments, and raise various problems for Thomasson’s account. I will also discuss her critical take on the proposals that others have made about these arguments, in particular her criticism in Ontology Made Easy of my own proposal. (shrink)

Deflationary positions have been defended in many areas of philosophy. Most prominent are semantic deflationism about truth and reference, and meta-ontological deflationism, according to which existence has no deep nature and the standard neo-Quinean approach to ontology is misguided. Although both kinds of views have generated much discussion, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the question of how they relate to each other. Are they independent, is it advisable to hold them all at once, or do they even entail (...) each other? One exception is Amie Thomasson, who has argued that semantic deflationism actually entails meta-ontological deflationism. This is unexpected, since semantic deflationism is usually regarded as much less controversial than meta-ontological deflationism. In our paper, we will argue that Thomasson’s argument fails though, and that the connection between the views is in fact weaker than she makes them out to be. (shrink)

In June 1993, conjoined twins Amy and Angela Lakeberg became the focus of national attention. They shared a complex six‐chambered heart and one liver; only one could survive separation surgery, and even her chances were slim. The medical challenge was great and the ethical challenges were even greater.

Comment être l’ami du lointain selon Thomas d’Aquin? Après avoir décrit l’idéal d’amitié ou amitié parfaite selon Aristote et Thomas, l’étude de la vertu d’affabilité, ou amitié imparfaite, fournit certains éléments de réponse à la question posée par cette étude. Comprise comme vertu de l’amour universel, amor generalis, naturellement éprouvé envers le genre humain, la vertu d’affabilité est intégrée par Thomas à l’exercice de la vertu de charité, grâce à la réflexion d’Augustin.

The aim of this book is to investigate the nature and ontological status of fictional characters on the one hand (i. e., entities like Sherlock Holmes, Hamlet, or Anna Karenina) and literary works on the other. The overall question is: What kinds of objects are fictional characters and literary works, and how are they related to our everyday world? Thomasson advocates a realist, non-reductionist theory of fictitious objects whose main principles are: Fictional characters exist – just as literary works exist. (...) Fictional characters as well as literary works are abstract objects (i. e., lack spatiotemporal location), are created (and thus contingent), are brought into existence through the intentional acts of an author, can go on existing without intentional acts of an author, and are existentially dependent objects in a variety of ways. Thomasson develops a subtle theory of ontological dependence. The review contains a detailed account of Thomasson's "artifactual theory" as well as detailed criticism of some pivotal points. While I am, in principle, sympathetic to the non-reductionist approach, I object against some of Thomasson's specific dependency claims. Furthermore, I defend so-called "Meinongian" theories of fiction against Thomasson's objections. Finally, I raise questions concerning, among other things, the relation between a literary work and its "text", the proposed identity conditions for literary works, the relation between a literary work and its (fictitious) objects. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to investigate the nature and ontological status of fictional characters on the one hand (i. e., entities like Sherlock Holmes, Hamlet, or Anna Karenina) and literary works on the other. The overall question is: What kinds of objects are fictional characters and literary works, and how are they related to our everyday world? Thomasson advocates a realist, non-reductionist theory of fictitious objects whose main principles are: Fictional characters exist – just as literary works exist. (...) Fictional characters as well as literary works are abstract objects (i. e., lack spatiotemporal location), are created (and thus contingent), are brought into existence through the intentional acts of an author, can go on existing without intentional acts of an author, and are existentially dependent objects in a variety of ways. Thomasson develops a subtle theory of ontological dependence. The review contains a detailed account of Thomasson's "artifactual theory" as well as detailed criticism of some pivotal points. While I am, in principle, sympathetic to the non-reductionist approach, I object against some of Thomasson's specific dependency claims. Furthermore, I defend so-called "Meinongian" theories of fiction against Thomasson's objections. Finally, I raise questions concerning, among other things, the relation between a literary work and its "text", the proposed identity conditions for literary works, the relation between a literary work and its (fictitious) objects. (shrink)

There are many debates about what constitutes a utopia. Are utopias benign or dangerous? Is the idea of utopianism essential to Christianity or heretical?

We often talk of people as being more or less imaginative than one another – as being better or worse at imagining – and we also compare various feats of imagination to one another in terms of how easy or hard they are. Facts such as these might be taken to suggest that imagination is often implicitly understood as a skill. This implicit understanding, however, has rarely (if ever) been made explicit in the philosophical literature. Such is the task of (...) this chapter. I first attempt to flesh out several conditions for an activity to count as a skill. I then attempt to show how imagination can meet such conditions. The chapter concludes with an attempt to answer various worries that might be raised to the claim that imagination should be thought of as a skill. (shrink)

The authors offer ways to encourage and educate Americans to participate in the public deliberations that make democracy work and lay out the principles of..

Issues of reliability are claiming center-stage in the epistemology of machine learning. This paper unifies different branches in the literature and points to promising research directions, whilst also providing an accessible introduction to key concepts in statistics and machine learning – as far as they are concerned with reliability.