Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Why is there a felt asymmetry between cases in which agents defer to testifiers for certain moral beliefs, and cases in which agents defer on many other matters? One explanation influential in the literature is that having understanding of a proposition is both in tension with acquiring belief in the proposition by deferring to another's testimony and distinctively important when it comes to moral propositions, as compared with what we might think of as many ‘garden variety’ facts. My project in (...) this paper is to offer a new and more defensible version of this explanation. This will involve re-conceiving understanding as a richer state than it is commonly thought to be, requiring affective and motivational engagement with reasons as well as cognitive facility. I also offer a new explanation of the tension between understanding and deference to testimony. (shrink)

Subjectivist permissivism is a prima facie attractive view. That is, it's plausible to think that what's rational for people to believe on the basis of their evidence can vary if they have different frameworks or sets of epistemic standards. In this paper, I introduce an epistemic existentialist form of subjectivist permissivism, which I argue can better address “the arbitrariness objection” to subjectivist permissivism in general. According to the epistemic existentialist, it's not just that what's rational to believe on the basis (...) of evidence can vary according to agents’ frameworks, understood as passive aspects of individuals’ psychologies. Rather, what's rational to believe on the basis of evidence is sensitive to agents’ choices and active commitments. Here I draw on Chang's work on commitment and voluntarist reasons. The epistemic existentialist maintains that what's rational for us to believe on the basis of evidence is, at least in part, up to us. It can vary not only across individuals but for a single individual, over time, as she makes differing epistemic commitments. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 3, Page 623-638, May 2022.

Is religious faith consistent with being an intellectually virtuous thinker? In seeking to answer this question, one quickly finds others, each of which has been the focus of recent renewed attention by epistemologists: What is it to be an intellectually virtuous thinker? Must all reasonable belief be grounded in public evidence? Under what circumstances is a person rationally justified in believing something on trust, on the testimony of another, or because of the conclusions drawn by an intellectual authority? Can it (...) be reasonable to hold a belief on a topic over which there is significant, entrenched disagreement among informed inquirers, or should such disagreement lead all parties to modify or suspend their own judgments? Is there anything about faith that exempts it from measurement against such epistemic norms? And if we would so evaluate it, how exactly should we understand the intellectual commitments faith requires? The volume's introduction provides a roadmap of the central issues and controversies as currently discussed by philosophers. In fourteen new essays written to engage nonspecialists as well as philosophers working in religion and epistemology, a diverse and distinguished group of thinkers then consider the place of intellectual virtue in religious faith, exploring one or more of the specific issues noted above. (shrink)

Matthew Benton, John Hawthorne, and Yoaav Isaacs (BHI) claim that evil must be evidence against God’s existence, because the absence of evil would be (presumably excellent) evidence for it. Their argument is obviously valid on standard Bayesian epistemology. But in addition to raising a few reasons one might doubt its premise, I here highlight the rather misleading meaning, in BHI’s argument, of evil’s being evidence against God. BHI seek to establish that if one learned simply “that there was evil,” perhaps (...) via an oracle, one would gain evidence of some strength or other against God. But when we commonly observe that there is evil in the world, we learn a stronger proposition. And determining the evidential impact of that stronger proposition is not so easy. The interesting questions about the evidential impact of even a general awareness of evil in the world remain open. (shrink)

Woollard and Porter argue that mothers have no moral duty to breastfeed their babies. Rather, mothers simply have moral reason(s) to breastfeed, stemming from the benefits of breast feeding for babies. According to Woollard and Porter, doing what one has moral reason to do is often supererogatory, not obligatory. I agree that mothers have no moral duty to breastfeed. However, it is misleading to suggest that mothers in general have moral reason to breastfeed and to liken not breastfeeding to not (...) performing some supererogatory action. I will suggest mothers in general have pro tanto, but not all-things-considered, moral reason to breastfeed. Moreover, I suggest many mothers also have pro tanto moral reasons not to breastfeed. Breastfeeding is not always supererogatory; indeed, sometimes not breastfeeding is morally better. This is important because it contradicts dangerous assumptions in public discourse. One way of characterising popular consensus about breastfeeding is as Woollard and Porter do: mothers have a duty to breastfeed. But we might also characterise popular consensus differently: all moral reasons for/against breastfeeding are on the ’pro’ breastfeeding side of the issue, whereas if there are any (good) reasons not to breastfeed these are non-moral (prudential). Woollard and Porter’s argument is important and correct in concluding that mothers have no duty to breastfeed, but it leaves this other false and dangerous idea intact and even subtly reinforces it. (shrink)

Normativism is the (controversial) view that epistemic reasons for belief are really, genuinely normative. Normativists might wonder – and anti-normativists might press the question – why, or in virtue of what, are epistemic reasons normative? Borrowing Korsgaard's metaphor, what's the “source” of their normativity? Here I argue that this question is both highly interesting and subtly distinct from other common questions in the literature. I also propose an initial taxonomy of stance-dependent and stance-independent answers, and I advocate a novel, hybrid (...) type of view as ultimately most promising for (mostly) vindicating normativism. (shrink)

One of the foremost objections to theological voluntarism is the contingency objection. If God’s will fixes moral facts, then what if God willed that agents engage in cruelty? I argue that even unrestricted theological voluntarists should accept some logical constraints on possible moral systems—hence, some limits on ways that God could have willed morality to be—and these logical constraints are sufficient to blunt the force of the contingency objec­tion. One constraint I defend is a very weak accessibility requirement, related to (...) (but less problematic than) existence internalism in metaethics. The theo­logical voluntarist can maintain: Godcouldn’t have loved cruelty, and even though he could have willed behaviors we find abhorrent, he could only have done so in a world of deeply alien moral agents. We cannot confidently declare such a world unacceptable. (shrink)

In The Transmission of Knowledge (2021), Greco departs significantly from his earlier view of all knowledge as an individual achievement of the knower, allowing that in some testimonial knowledge cases (cases of “transmission”), a hearer’s believing truly will be due to competent joint agency, between herself and the speaker. Greco argues that the new, hybrid view of knowledge as individual or joint achievement is still sufficiently unified and – importantly – still provides a satisfying answer to the value problem for (...) knowledge. I will raise some worries for this latter claim. I begin by raising worries about Greco’s earlier answer to the value problem: that knowledge is distinctively valuable as an (individual’s) achievement. I then argue that these worries are not allayed by expanding the account of knowledge to include joint achievements and indeed are perhaps aggravated by this new move. (shrink)

Philosophical Issues, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 39-53, October 2020.

Many of the decisions mothers face are morally intense. They're experienced as highly morally significant, and they are also often very morally complex, meaning that there aren't black-and-white, obvious answers to questions about what one morally may or must do. For example, I suggest that breastfeeding is complex in this way, despite a good deal of cultural pressure in favour of trying to do it. Acknowledging many of the decisions of motherhood as complex or as ‘grey areas’ is accurate, and (...) also good for mums. But it also burdens mums with the responsibility of researching, discussing, thinking through, and ultimately making significant, complex moral decisions for themselves. I call this the moral load, taking inspiration from Emma's ‘mental load’. In the last section I consider what we could or should do to try to lessen the moral load as a burden on mums. (shrink)

Let me begin with what I take to be the two most significant features of this collection. First, it addresses an area that is woefully under-discussed: the intersection of virtue epistemology and philosophy of religion. Each is a massively influential and important field in its own right, so bringing the two into dialogue makes tremendous sense. This collection accomplishes much in this regard but also underscores the amount of work that needs to be developed. Bringing together virtue epistemology, philosophy of (...) religion, testimony, analyses of trust/faith, disagreement, etc. makes the volume of interest to philosophers working in a wide variety of fields. Second, each contributor is an extremely capable philosopher on the cutting edge of his/her field. The list is a murderer’s row of epistemologists and philosophers of religion, and their contributions will accordingly provide fodder for continued work regarding all of the topics discussed.W. Jay Wood begins with the necessity of fait .. (shrink)

Traditional normative realists are committed to the idea that different individuals manage to pick out on the very same property with terms like ‘morally right’, despite variations in their understanding and use of the term. How is this possible? In this chapter, we sketch a metasemantic account that promises to vindicate traditional normative realism within a broadly rationalist framework. We will first introduce a metasemantic principle that ties reference determination to what is justifiable from the perspective of the conceptually competent (...) subject. This type of metasemantic approach has been andstill is the most influential general model of reference determination. We explain how this metasemantic principle can help vindicate something close to the traditional rationalist claim that normative truths can be known a priori. We will then show how an anti-individualist version of this principle can handle the problem of radical disagreement among competent speakers. Finally, we explain how the principle can help to vindicate the traditional rationalist thesis that moral requirements entail valid reasons for action. (shrink)

As part of “Nanodiagnostics and Nanotherapeutics: Building Research Ethics and Oversight,” an empirical search was conducted to identify publicly available resources that guided understanding about human subjects issues in nanomedicine or nanotechnology including policy statements, guidance documents, or consent forms. The authors conducted 5,083 internet searches and analyzed 175 documents. Results show that very little guidance is publicly available and most documents focused on occupational and environmental concerns.

Nanotechnology not only offers the promise of new enhancements to existing materials but also allows for the development of new materials and devices. The potential applications of nanotechnology range from medicine to agriculture to health and environmental science and beyond. Nanotechnology is growing at such a rate that Lux Research in 2007 estimated that nanotechnology will be incorporated into 15% of global manufactured goods by 2014. The U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative defines nanotechnology as the following: “ Research and technology development (...) involving structures with at least one dimension in the range of 1-100 nanometers, frequently with atomic/molecular precision; Creating and using structures, devices, and systems that have unique properties and functions because of their nanoscale dimensions; The ability to control or manipulate on the atomic scale.” Nanomedicine and its subcategories of nanotherapeutics and in vivo nanodiagnostics incorporate nanoscale materials with unique properties that can enable new or improved treatments and diagnostics for many diseases and disorders. (shrink)

Lorenzo Sacconi and his coauthors have put forward the hypothesis that impartial agreements on distributive rules may generate a conditional preference for conformity. The observable effect of this preference would be compliance with fair distributive rules chosen behind a veil of ignorance, even in the absence of external coercion. This paper uses a Dictator Game with production and taking option to compare two ways in which the device of the veil of ignorance may be thought to generate a motivation for, (...) and compliance with a fair distributive rule: individually-as a thought experiment that should work as a moral cue- and collectively-as an actual process of agreement among subjects. The main result is that actual agreement proves to be necessary for agents to be led towards a fair distributive principle and to generate a significant amount of compliance in absence of external authority. This conclusion vindicates the role of actual agreements in generating motivational power in correspondence with fair distributive rules. (shrink)

Letters commenting on Hardwig, J "Is There a Duty to Die?" with a reply to those letters by the author.

Feminist bioethicists of a variety of persuasions discuss the 2013 case of Marlise Munoz, a pregnant woman whose medical care was in dispute after she became brain dead.

The relationship between emotion comprehension and social competence from very young ages has been addressed in numerous studies in the field of developmental psychology. Emotion knowledge in childhood seems to have its roots in the conversations and explanations children hear about what emotions are and how to manage them. Given that behavioral interventions often do not achieve medium-term improvements or generalization to other contexts, this study evaluates the results of an intervention using the Thinking Emotions program. This program uses Philosophy (...) for Children as the work format and is based on the idea that reflection and dialogue among peers is one of the most effective ways to interiorize significant knowledge. The program was applied during one school year in two preschool classrooms . Comparisons of the pre- and post-treatment measures of the control and experimental groups show significant improvements in emotion comprehension and social competence in the 5-year-old children and improvements related to social competence in the 4-year-olds. (shrink)

Il n'est pas fruit du hasard cette rencontre qui a précédé l'édition de ce livre. Les rapports entre philosophes français et catalans viennent de loin. Le XIXe était modèle des "voyages philosophiques". Est parmi les plus connus celui de Cousin en Allemagne. Moins connus, mais également fructifères étaient ceux des philosophes exilés qui partirent sous les régimes de persécutions pour trouver en France non seulement un lieu d'accueil, mais également l'opportunité de confrontation de leurs idées avec celles des philosophes français. (...) De la même manière, certains exilés de la commune avaient trouvé un lieu d'accueil dans la Barcelone révolutionnaire des années républicaines. Ces rencontres n'ont jamais totalement fini de se produire au long du XXe siècle, période au cours de laquelle l'exil avait constitué la manière d'échapper à une morte sûre dans l'Espagne de la guerre civile. La période actuelle vit une nouvelle revitalisation des échanges, et ce livre en est un exemple."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Lafayette's American Plants English Agrarian Influences Transforming La Grange Planting Politics at La Grange Notes.

I've long been haunted by the image of Cosette, in the film adaptation of Les Misérables, singing from her lavish bedroom about wanting to be free. Her life would have seemed charmed from the outside, especially by those in nineteenth-century France who struggled to stay alive, yet she envied the freedom of those outside her door. She couldn't, of course, know how hard the lives were of those whom she watched, and those she watched would have scoffed at the suggestion (...) that they had it better than she did. I, however, keenly saw and felt her struggle. I've spent my life constructing a cage for myself, with bars built out of societal and familial expectations for women. But inside the cage, I simultaneously long to be free and am afraid to leave. In my desire to appear normal, to fit in, I have constrained myself out of fear of what will happen if I leave this cage. So I watch the world around me, and like Cosette, I wonder what it's like to live outside the walls I've carefully constructed to make it appear as if I'm embodying, or at least trying to, Western societal expectations for what it means to be a woman. (shrink)

La notion de transition énergétique est aujourd’hui l’une des figures de proue du concept plus général de développement durable. Elle est marquée par la double temporalité de l’urgence de sa mise en œuvre et du temps long dont elle se réclame. La mise en politique de cette transition génère des conflits – notamment autour des grands projets d’infrastructures – que cet article analyse en cherchant à croiser les temporalités et les échelles d’action des différents acteurs impliqués. Il met en évidence (...) un certain nombre de tensions qui existent entre urgence climatique et durabilité dans la mise en politique de la transition énergétique, mais aussi la complexité des temporalités dont se réclament les acteurs, qui s’emboîtent, se contredisent parfois et peuvent être source de conflit. Le propos s’articule en trois temps, organisés autour des échelles européennes, nationales et locales de la transition énergétique. Trois terrains viennent étayer les analyses proposées : une enquête auprès du réseau européen des gestionnaires de réseaux d’électricité chargé du plan d’investissement dans les réseaux de transports d’électricité, l’étude des conflits liés à l’implantation des énergies marines renouvelables en France et un cas d’étude grec sur les conflits liés à des projets de parcs éoliens en Crête. (shrink)

En la actualidad, el festival literario Centroamérica Cuenta tiene en su haber seis ediciones realizadas desde 2013. Esta iniciativa internacional, coordinada por el escritor nicaragüense Sergio Ramírez, año con año ha forjado un espacio de intercambio y reflexión para la narrativa centroamericana, proyectando las identidades, literaturas y realidades de la región a diversas zonas del orbe. Desde su inicio, el festival ha contado con la participación de más de 500 escritores del istmo, entre los cuales se encuentran la salvadoreña Vanessa (...) Núñez y el nicaragüense Alberto Sánchez Argüello, representantes de una nueva generación centroamericana de narradores. En el caso de la escritora Vanesa Núñez (1973, San Salvador), también abogada, docente y editora, incluimos un cuento inédito; “La familia”, de carácter amargo y afilado en su desenlace, como las vidas de muchas personas centroamericanas. Núñez ha publicado los libros: Los locos mueren de viejos (FyG Editores, 2008 y La Pereza, 2015), Dios tenía miedo (FyG Editores, 2011 y Editorial Piedrasanta, 2016), La caja de cuentos (libro objeto) (Alas de Barrilete, 2015), Espejos (Uruk Editores, 2015), Animales Interiores (en coautoría con Frida Larios, 2015), así como varios relatos en diversas antologías y revistas de España, Francia, Alemania, Suiza, Estados Unidos, Colombia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala y México. Su obra ha sido igualmente traducida al francés, alemán e inglés. En cuanto al narrador Alberto Sánchez Argüello (1976, Managua), también psicólogo, ilustrador y reconocido tuitero (de la aplicación Twitter), quien ha creado varios libros de micro-relatos a partir de tuits entrelazados (Parafernalia Ediciones Digitales), publicamos el micro-cuento “La estatua”. El relato se encuentra en diálogo con el cuento de Núñez, a partir de una visión cruda de los mandatos patriarcales imperantes en nuestras sociedades. Sánchez se ha enfocado en literatura juvenil e infantil, con la publicación de las siguientes obras: La casa del agua (Fondo Editorial Libros para niños, 2003), Mi amigo el dragón (Fondo Editorial Libros para niños, 2014), Los Monstruos bajo la cama (Loqueleo Santillana, 2016), Chico Largo y Charco Verde (Loqueleo Santillana, 2017) e Ítaca (Fondo Editorial Libros para niños, 2017). Su obra se ha publicado en antologías en Nicaragua, México, España, El Salvador, Bolivia, Chile y Perú. Algunos de sus cuentos están traducidos al inglés, portugués, italiano, alemán y vietnamita. (shrink)

In 1906, Frigyes Riesz introduced a preliminary version of the notion of a topological space. He called it a mathematical continuum. This development can be traced back to the end of 1904 when, genuinely interested in taking up Hilbert’s foundations of geometry from 1902, Riesz aimed to extend Hilbert’s notion of a two-dimensional manifold to the three-dimensional case. Starting with the plane as an abstract point-set, Hilbert had postulated the existence of a system of neighbourhoods, thereby introducing the notion of (...) an accumulation point for the point-sets of the plane. Inspired by Hilbert’s technical approach, as well as by recent developments in analysis and point-set topology in France, Riesz defined the concept of a mathematical continuum as an abstract set provided with a notion of an accumulation point. In addition, he developed further elementary concepts in abstract point-set topology. Taking an abstract topological approach, he formulated a concept of three-dimensional continuous space that resembles the modern concept of a three-dimensional topological manifold. In 1908, Riesz presented his concept of mathematical continuum at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rome. His lecture immediately won the attention of people interested in carrying on his research. They promoted his ideas, thus assuring their gradual reception by several future founders of general topology. In this way, Riesz’s work contributed significantly to the emergence of this discipline. (shrink)

Over email a few days after the death of Daniel Callahan, cofounder of The Hastings Center and for many years its director and then president, Joseph Fins, a longtime Hastings colleague, offered this comfort: “[H]enceforth every issue of the Report is a living memorial to Dan the writer, editor, and institution builder.” In the Hastings Center Report's first issue, published in June 1971, Dan stated, “To say that [the work of the Report] must be multi‐disciplinary is only to say (...) the issues [it will address] are as complex as human beings themselves.” This July–August 2019 issue continues the tradition Dan began. An essay by Laura Guidry‐Grimes expands on the importance of interdisciplinary conversations and problem solving—and attends to the complexity of human beings—in recalling a patient who was failed by multiple social institutions. In the lead article, a team of authors led by James Sabin identifies a challenge to conducting ethical research within learning health organizations, where research and care are integrated with the aid of patient data from health insurance providers. (shrink)

La actual pandemia de SARS-CoV-2 pone de relieve una vez más el modelo fallido con el nos enfrentamos a las crisis que afectan a nuestro mundo, desde el cambio climático y las recientes situaciones de emergencia de los refugiados, hasta la ascensión de los extremismos políticos en las sociedades occidentales. Como argumentan la filósofa feminista Donna Haraway y el sociólogo y filósofo Bruno Latour, se hace necesario un cambio de paradigma y una redefinición de la subjetividad para enfrentarnos al Antropoceno. (...) La Bienal de Venecia 2019, “May You Live in Interesting Times”, comisariada por Ralph Rugoff, propuso un modelo experimental de pensamiento artístico (que denominaré “tentacular” haciendo uso de la teoría desarrollada por Haraway) que cuestionaba los paradigmas heredados de la Ilustración, y también, en cierto grado, de la postmodernidad. Por su calado filosófico, la muestra es comparable a “Les Immatériaux” (1985), la histórica exposición comisariada por el filósofo Jean-François Lyotard, quien asimismo conceptualizó la postmodernidad y la experiencia de lo “sublime postmoderno”, concepto que sirve para establecer un contraste con lo “sublime tentacular”, la experiencia contemporánea que aportó la reciente la bienal. (shrink)

Historians influenced by post-structuralism and the linguistic turn and feminist historians concerned to incorporate the category of gender into historical analysis have recently challenged the categories, methodologies, and questions of labor history as it has been practiced in the United States for the past thirty years. Those operating under the influence of the linguistic turn have challenged labor history's foundational assumption of class as both a category of analysis and as a social formation constituted primarily by material and productive relations. (...) They have argued that class and class interest are constituted culturally and discursively rather than materially. Feminist critics have called attention to the importance of gender both as a subject of analysis and as an analytical lens through which to examine the ways in which class and class relations have been constituted on the basis of sexual difference. Their goal is to interrogate the ways in which notions of masculinity and femininity shaped relations of subjugation and domination and governed mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in work and in the labor movement. These challenges to the field have led some to charge that labor history is undergoing an epistemological crisis. Recent work by labor historians of France in Lenard Berlanstein's collection, Rethinking Labor History: Essays on Discourse and Class Analysis and by feminist American labor historians in Ava Baron's Work Engendered: Towards a New History of American Labor has taken up these challenges and demonstrates the potential of these new analytical frameworks to awaken new debates and produce new knowledge in the field. Essays in both collections suggest that labor history is less in crisis than it is in the process of an epistemological and methodological rebirth. (shrink)

The role to be played by multi-stakeholder partnerships in addressing the ‘wicked problems’ of sustainable development is made explicit by the seventeenth Sustainable Development Goal. But how do these partnerships really work? Based on the analysis of four sustainability-oriented innovation initiatives implemented in Belgium, Italy, Germany, and France, this study explores the roles and mechanisms that collaborating actors may enact to facilitate the pursuit of sustainable development, with a particular focus on non-profit organizations. The results suggest that collaborative innovations for (...) sustainability contribute simultaneously to the fulfilment of different Sustainable Development Goals, reaching beyond their original intent, and that the value being created has the potential to reinforce such roles and mechanisms. These partnerships are prompted and managed by non-profit organizations that act as metagovernors of collaborative innovation processes as they play the roles of cultural spreaders, enablers, relational brokers, service provides, and influencers. These findings will help policy-makers and practitioners in the public and non-profit sector to identify and utilize emerging opportunities for value creation through collaborative innovation, and to better design existing and prospective collaborative efforts aimed at sustainable objectives, thereby supporting progress towards the implementation of Agenda 2030. (shrink)

La instalación El archivo de los abuelos, 1995, es el resultado de un proyecto de investigación que el artista Christian Boltanski realizó junto con los estudiantes de la Universidad de Leuphana, Luneburgo (Alemania) en la misma institución. El archivo reúne efectos personales de los abuelos de los estudiantes de aquella generación. Se trata de una pieza significativa dentro de la obra del francés porque no se atiene a las características habituales de sus obras de archivo, a las que denomino «meta-archivos» (...) por su carácter posmoderno de desestabilización del concepto mismo de archivo, y consecuentemente, del de documento y del de historia. El proyecto hizo patente el silencio sobre el Tercer Reich imperante en la época dentro de las familias, e hizo que este pasado reprimido resurgiese. Asimismo, puso de manifiesto los orígenes nazis del campus universitario. Por estos motivos, pese a poder considerarse un «meta-archivo fallido», es una obra de arte relevante y pertinente a nivel socio-cultural, y dentro de la obra de Boltanski, al arrojar luz sobre sus tácitos modus operandi y objetivos habituales precisamente por no cumplirlos. (shrink)

Michel Foucault’s _History of Sexuality_ has been one of the most influential books of the last two decades. It has had an enormous impact on cultural studies and work across many disciplines on gender, sexuality, and the body. Bringing a new set of questions to this key work, Ann Laura Stoler examines volume one of _History of Sexuality_ in an unexplored light. She asks why there has been such a muted engagement with this work among students of colonialism for (...) whom issues of sexuality and power are so essential. Why is the colonial context absent from Foucault’s history of a European sexual discourse that for him defined the bourgeois self? In _Race and the Education of Desire, _Stoler challenges Foucault’s tunnel vision of the West and his marginalization of empire. She also argues that this first volume of _History of Sexuality_ contains a suggestive if not studied treatment of race. Drawing on Foucault’s little-known 1976 College de France lectures, Stoler addresses his treatment of the relationship between biopower, bourgeois sexuality, and what he identified as “racisms of the state.” In this critical and historically grounded analysis based on cultural theory and her own extensive research in Dutch and French colonial archives, Stoler suggests how Foucault’s insights have in the past constrained—and in the future may help shape—the ways we trace the genealogies of race. _Race and the Education of Desire_ will revise current notions of the connections between European and colonial historiography and between the European bourgeois order and the colonial treatment of sexuality. Arguing that a history of European nineteenth-century sexuality must also be a history of race, it will change the way we think about Foucault. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 11.1 (2001) 91-112 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 40 Animals in Research and Education: Ethical Issues Laura Jane Bishop and Anita Lonnes Nolen Scientific enquiry is inexorably tied to animal experimentation in the popular imagination and human history. Many, if not most, of the spectacular innovations in the medical understanding and treatment of today's human maladies have been based on research using (...) animals. However, the use of animals in research and experimentation has been debated, defended, and protested by both individuals and organizations at various levels. Responses range from personal lifestyle decisions and fervent philosophical treatises to strident arguments, violent demonstrations, and direct action. The continuum of attitudes about animals and the human relationship with animals spans the range between those who support no regulation of the human use of animals and those who advocate absolute animal liberation from all human use (see II, Orlans 1993, p. 22). History The first recorded experimentation on animals occurred in ancient Rome, but not until the Renaissance did scholars begin serious study of how the body works. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and other artists and anatomists pursued anatomical investigations of muscle and bone structure. William Harvey (1578-1657) discovered the circulation of the blood via his experiments on live deer. During this period, much live animal experimentation both in England and France was based on the view of French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) that animals are incapable of feeling pain. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the English utilitarian philosopher, thought otherwise. In his "Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation" in 1789, Bentham declared, "The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But can they suffer? Despite Bentham and others, the belief that animals could not perceive pain persisted in many quarters into the twentieth century. Nineteenth century French physiologist Claude Bernard [End Page 91] (1813-1878)-and his teacher, François Magendie (1783-1855)-conducted wide-ranging animal experiments including surgery, use of drugs, and removal of body parts from many species. Bernard argued that while no amount of benefit could justify any harm to human research subjects, even extreme harm and pain for animal research subjects could be justified by the potential benefit to human beings. Although he did use anesthetics in his work after their discovery in 1847, even Bernard's later work was controversial because of the numbers of animals used and the repetitive nature of his research. The experiments of Magendie and Bernard both laid the foundations for animal experimentation as a practice for scientific advance and contributed in large measure to the emergence of the anti-vivisection movement. Public protests over animal experiments conducted in France and the fear that these might come to England led to the passage of the first law controlling animal experimentation, the "1876 Cruelty to Animals Act" in England. This history and the dynamic tension between scientific inquiry and public concern set the stage for the activism and scholarship of the twentieth century.Since the 1960s, the amount of attention, activism, and scholarship related to animal use has increased at a rapid pace. The modern animal protection movement, led by the Australian philosopher Peter Singer in his book, Animal Liberation (II, 1975), based its advocacy on animals' ability to experience pain and suffering (Bentham's argument). Singer's book and other investigations into animal research, such as LIFE magazine's photojournalism piece on pet theft, animal cruelty, and animal experimentation (Concentration Camps for Dogs. LIFE (4 February 1966), pp. 22-29), brought the use of animals in research, testing, and education to the attention of the general public. Activists, advocates, laypersons, scientists, lawmakers, and animals themselves, have created the interesting, complicated, and complex history of animal rights and animal welfare over the last several decades. Current Statistics Worldwide, approximately 35 million animals are used in research each year; the United States alone uses 12 million animals annually--more than any other country. In 1998, the official number of research animals recorded in the United States was 1... (shrink)

This paper reviews the development of socially responsible investment (SRI) in the Spanish financial market. The year, 1997 saw the appearance in Spain of the first SRI mutual fund, but it was not until late 1999, that major Spanish fund managers offered SRI mutual funds on the retail market. The development of SRI in the Spanish financial market has not experienced the high levels of development seen in other European countries, such as France or Italy, where interest in SRI began (...) during the same period. This paper presents an analysis of the impact of SRI mutual funds managed by Spanish fund managers comparing the evolution of managed assets and number of investors. We also analyse the investment strategies adopted by these funds, which mainly use negative screening criteria and the participation of non-governmental organisations as institutional investors. An analysis of the take up of socially responsible investment in the Spanish financial market shows majors deficits in this process. This is due to Spanish investors having limited sensitivity to social issues and knowledge of SRI, and a lack of development of SRI investment strategies, such as engagement or shareholder activism by fund managers. Furthermore, the take-up of SRI mutual funds in the Spanish financial market coincided with a fall in the stock market at the beginning of the 21st Century. We conclude with an analysis of the relationship between SRI and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). (shrink)

Où en sommes-nous dans l'étude des rapports entre femmes et mouvement ouvrier en France? A faire le bilan on remarque d'abord que ce travail a surtout porté sur la période de l'avant Première Guerre mondiale, et ce pour de bonnes raisons. Le XIXe siècle est bel et bien la période de l'essor du capitalisme industriel en France et aussi de la prolétarisation pour de nombreux ouvriers et ouvrières. C'est aussi l'âge héroïque du commencement de la revendication ouvrière, du socialisme et...