Genomic screening at population scale generates many ethical considerations. One is the normative role that people’s preferences should play in determining access to genomic information in screening contexts, particularly information that falls beyond the scope of screening. We expect both that people will express a preference to receive such results and that there will be interest from the professional community in providing them. In this paper, we consider this issue in relation to the just and equitable design of population screening (...) programs like reproductive genetic carrier screening (RGCS). Drawing on a pluralistic public health ethics perspective, we claim that generating and reporting information about genetic variants beyond the scope of the screening program usually lacks clinical, and perhaps personal, utility. There are both pragmatic and ethical reasons to restrict information provision to that which fits the stated purpose of the program. (shrink)

The concept of autonomy plays a central role in bioethics,1 but there is no consensus as to how we should understand it beyond a general notion of self-determination. The conception of autonomy deployed in applied ethics2 can have crucial ramifications when it is applied in real-world scenarios, so it is important to be clear. However, this clarity is often lacking when autonomy is discussed in the bioethics literature. In this paper we outline three different conceptions of autonomy, and argue that (...) a substantive, perfectionist approach meets the theoretical requirements for an account of autonomy and also provides practical guidance. As Rebecca Walker argues, bioethics requires a more conceptually adequate account... (shrink)

In modern zoos, enrichment programs have become a standard part of animal care routines. Although 'higher' primates usually receive complex enrichment programs, encompassing many types of enrichment, these are less common for prosimians. These animals often largely receive food-based enrichment, as was previously the case at Auckland Zoo, where the ring-tailed lemur enrichment schedule contained only three different items, all food-related. Lemurs tend to be considered less curious and quick to learn than other primates, as well as being less manually (...) dextrous, and for these reasons can be overlooked for complex enrichment. However, they have strong sensory abilities, in particular an acute sense of smell (Sauther et al 1999). This paper describes an enrichment program designed for the lemurs at Auckland Zoo with the aim of stimulating all senses. (shrink)

Implicit in feminist and other critiques of ideal theorizing is a particular view of what normative theory should be like. Although I agree with the rejection of ideal theorizing that oppression theorists (and other theorists of justice) have advocated, the proposed alternative of nonideal theorizing is also problematic. Nonideal theorizing permits one to address oppression by first describing (nonideal) oppressive conditions, and then prescribing the best action that is possible or feasible given the conditions. Borrowing an insight from the "moral (...) dilemmas debate"— namely that moral wrongdoing or failure can be unavoidable—I suggest that offering (only) action-guidance under non-ideal conditions obscures the presence and significance of unavoidable moral failure. An adequate normative theory should be able to issue a further, non-action-guiding evaluative chim, namely that the best that is possible under oppressive conditions is not good enough, and may constitute a moral failure. I find exclusively action-guiding nonideal theory to be both insufficiently nonidealizing (because it idealizes the moral agent by falsely characterizing the agent as always able to avoid moral wrongdoing) and meanwhile too strongly adapted to the nonideal (because normative expectations are lowered and detrimentally adapted to options that, while the best possible, are still unacceptable). (shrink)

This paper argues, on the basis of data from St'át'imcets (Lillooet Salish), for a theory of wide-scope indefinites which is similar, though not identical, to that proposed by Kratzer (1998). I show that a subset of S'át'imcets indefinites takes obligatory wide scope with respect to if-clauses, negation, and modals, and is unable to be distributed over by quantificational phrases. These wide-scope effects cannot be accounted for by movement, but require an analysis involving choice functions (Reinhart 1995, 1997). However, Reinhart's particular (...) choice function analysis is unable to account for the St'át'imcets data. A Kratzer-style theory, on the other hand, accounts not only for the wide-scope effects, but also for the emergence of narrower-than-widest interpretations for indefinites which contain bound variables. I depart from Kratzer's analysis in claiming that St'át'imcets choice function indefinites are not 'specific'; the discourse context does not provide a value for the function variable. Therefore, I utilize wide- scope existential closure over choice functions rather than leaving the variables free. However, my analysis provides support for Kratzer's claim that English indefinites are ambiguous between a choice function interpretation and a quantificational interpretation, since St'át'imcets determiners overtly encode the English ambiguity. I conclude by suggesting that the proposed analysis of wide-scope indefinites may be universally valid. (shrink)

The standard analysis of quantification says that determiner quantifiers (such as every) take an NP predicate and create a generalized quantifier. The goal of this paper is to subject these beliefs to crosslinguistic scrutiny. I begin by showing that in St'á'imcets (Lillooet Salish), quantifiers always require sisters of argumental type, and the creation of a generalized quantifier from an NP predicate always proceeds in two steps rather than one. I then explicitly adopt the strong null hypothesis that the denotations of (...) quantifiers should be crosslinguistically uniform. Since the Salish data cannot be captured by the usual analysis of English, I pursue the idea that English is reducible to the Salish pattern. Reanalysis of many English constructions is required. I argue that the reanalysis has advantages over the standard analysis for partitives, as well as for non-partitive all- and most-phrases, which I analyze as containing bare plurals of argumental type. Even where the new analysis faces some challenges (for example, with every), the attempt still leads to fruitful results. It forces us to view familiar constructions in a new light, and to redefine, I believe correctly, which quantificational constructions are ‘basic’ and which stand in need of further explanation. (shrink)

At least below the level of species, biological populations are not mind‐independent objects that scientists discover. Rather, biological populations are pragmatically constructed as objects of investigation according to the aims, interests, and values that inform particular research contexts. The relations among organisms that are constitutive of population‐level phenomena (e.g., mating propensity, genealogy, and competition) occur as matters of degree and so give rise to statistically defined open‐ended biological systems. These systems are rendered discrete units to satisfy practical needs and theoretical (...) preferences associated with specific contexts of investigation. While it may be possible to defend a realist position regarding biological relations among organisms, biological populations are “made” when contextual features determine which kinds and degrees of relations to privilege over others, and so how to bound genes in space and time. Consequently, the objectivity of population‐based approaches to species genome diversity cannot rest in the mind‐independence of populations themselves. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the debate about ‘tenseless languages’ by defending a tensed analysis of a superficially tenseless language. The language investigated is St’át’imcets (Lillooet Salish). I argue that although St’át’imcets lacks overt tense morphology, every finite clause in the language possesses a phonologically covert tense morpheme; this tense morpheme restricts the reference time to being non-future. Future interpretations, as well as ‘past future’ would-readings, are obtained by the combination of covert tense with an operator analogous to Abusch’s (1985) WOLL. (...) I offer St’át’imcets-internal evidence (of a kind not previously adduced) that the WOLL-like operator is modal in nature. It follows from the analysis presented here that there are only two (probably related) differences between St’át’imcets and English in the area of tense. The first is that St’át’imcets lacks tense morphemes which are pronounced. The second is that the St’át’imcets tense morpheme is semantically underspecified compared to English ones. In each of these respects, the St’át’imcets tense morpheme displays similar properties to pronouns, which may be covert and which may fail to distinguish person, number or gender. Along the way, I point out several striking and subtle similarities in the interpretive possibilities of St’át’imcets and English. I suggest that these similarities may reveal non-accidental properties of tense systems in natural language. I conclude with discussion of the implications of the analysis for cross-linguistic variation, learnability and the possible existence of tenseless languages. (shrink)

Thinking about oneself as a subject leaves unanswered fundamental questions about one’s identity as an object: about which thing one is, about what kind of thing one is, and about whether one exists at all. I put forward a new way of thinking about these questions by outlining the subject-as-object problem, a problem for inquiry directed at oneself qua subject. I argue that the source of the problem lies in the relationship between a basic precondition for inquiry – that something (...) be present – and a framework that enables us to conceive of ourselves as inquirers in an objective world – the framework of objectivity. Once the problem is recognized, we can explain why there is always room for questions about one’s identity in response to any account of oneself and one’s relation to the world. (shrink)

Pain research is still dominated by biomedical perspectives and the need to articulate pain in ways other than those offered by evidence based medical models is pressing. Examining closely subjective experiences of pain, this book explores the way in which pain is situated, communicated and formed in a larger cultural and social context. Dimensions of Pain explores the lived experience of pain, and questions of identity and pain, from a range of different disciplinary perspectives within the humanities and social sciences. (...) Discussing the acuity and temporality of pain, its isolating impact, the embodied expression of pain, pain and sexuality, gender and ethnicity, it also includes a cluster of three chapters discusses the phenomenon and experience of labour pains. This volume revitalizes the study of pain, offering productive ways of carefully thinking through its different aspects and exploring the positive and enriching side of world-forming pain as well as its limiting aspects. It will be of interest to academics and students interested in pain from a range of backgrounds, including philosophy, sociology, nursing, midwifery, medicine and gender studies. (shrink)

This book proceeds from a single and very simple observation: throughout history, and up to the present, women have received a clear message that we are not supposed to prioritize ourselves. Indeed, the whole question of "self" is a problem for women - and a problem that issues from a wide range of locations, including, in some cases, feminism itself. When women espouse discourses of self-interest, self-regard, and selfishness, they become illegible. This is complicated by the commodification of the self (...) in the recent Western mode of economic and political organization known as "neoliberalism," which encourages a focus on self-fashioning that may not be identical with self-regard or self-interest. Drawing on figures from French, US, and UK contexts, including Rachilde, Ayn Rand, Margaret Thatcher, and Lionel Shriver, and examining discourses from psychiatry, media, and feminism with the aim of reading against the grain of multiple orthodoxies, this book asks how revisiting the words and works of selfish women of modernity can assist us in understanding our fraught individual and collective identities as women in contemporary culture. And can women with politics that are contrary to the interests of the collective teach us anything about the value of rethinking the role of the individual? This book is an essential read for those with interests in cultural theory, feminist theory, and gender politics. iple orthodoxies, this book asks how revisiting the words and works of selfish women of modernity can assist us in understanding our fraught individual and collective identities as women in contemporary culture. And can women with politics that are contrary to the interests of the collective teach us anything about the value of rethinking the role of the individual? This book is an essential read for those with interests in cultural theory, feminist theory, and gender politics. (shrink)

Sexual dimorphism, symmetry, and coloration in human faces putatively signal information relevant to mate selection and reproduction. Although the independent contributions of these characteristics to judgments of attractiveness are well established, relatively few studies have examined whether individuals prioritize certain features over others. Here, participants (N = 542, 315 female) ranked six sets of facial photographs (3 male, 3 female) by their preference for starting long- and short-term romantic relationships with each person depicted. Composite-based digital transformations were applied such that (...) each image set contained 11 different versions of the same identity. Each photograph in each image set had a unique combination of three traits: sexual dimorphism, symmetry, and color cues to health. Using conjoint analysis to evaluate participants’ ranking decisions, we found that participants prioritized cues to sexual dimorphism over symmetry and color cues to health. Sexual dimorphism was also found to be relatively more important for the evaluation of male faces than for female faces, whereas symmetry and color cues to health were relatively more important for the evaluation of female faces than for male faces. Symmetry and color cues to health were more important for long-term versus short-term evaluations for female faces, but not male faces. Analyses of utility estimates reveal that our data are consistent with research showing that preferences for facial masculinity and femininity in male and female faces vary according to relationship context. These findings are interpreted in the context of previous work examining the influence of these facial attributes on romantic partner perception. (shrink)

Reproductive genetic carrier screening (RCS), when offered to anyone regardless of their family history or ancestry, has been subject to the critique that it is a form of eugenics. Eugenics describes a range of practices that seek to use the science of heredity to improve the genetic composition of a population group. The term is associated with a range of unethical programmes that were taken up in various countries during the 20th century. Contemporary practice in medical genetics has, understandably, distanced (...) itself from such programmes. However, as RCS becomes more widespread, gains public funding and uses expanded gene panels, there are concerns that such programmes could be perceived as eugenic either in intent or outcome. The typical response to the eugenics critique of RCS is to emphasise the voluntary nature of both participating in screening and making subsequent reproductive choices. While safeguarding individuals’ freedom to choose in relation to screening is essential, we consider this response inadequate. By examining the specific ethical wrongs committed by eugenics in the past, we argue that to avoid the perception of RCS being a form of eugenics it is essential to attend to the broader normative context in which reproductive decisions occur. Furthermore, ethical RCS programmes must recognise and respond to their potential to shift societal norms that shape individual reproductive choices. (shrink)

The use of ‘race’ as a proxy for population structure in the genetic mapping of complex traits has provoked controversy about its legitimacy as a category for biomedical research, given its social and political connotations. The controversy has reignited debates among scientists and philosophers of science about whether there is a legitimate biological concept of race. This paper examines the genetic race concept as it developed historically in the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky from the 1930s to 1950s. Dobzhansky’s definitions of (...) race changed over this time from races as ‘arrays of forms’ or ‘clusters’ in 1933–1939, to races as genetically distinct geographical populations in 1940–1946, to races as genetically distinct ‘Mendelian populations’ in 1947–1955. Dobzhansky responded to nominalist challenges by appealing to the biological reality of race as a process. This response came into tension with the object ontology of race that was implied by Dobzhansky’s increasingly holistic treatment of Mendelian populations, a tension, the paper argues, he failed to appreciate or resolve. (shrink)

While this paper does not explicitly define the concept of autonomy, the way Ubel et al describe clinicians’ failures to enhance their patients’ autonomy reflects a broader understanding of autonomy than the default account as free and informed choice. In this OPC I would demonstrate that the communication strategies the authors recommend reflects a more sophisticated conception of autonomy than the understanding that typically prevails in bioethics. I will also distinguish between weak and strong forms of paternalism, and argue that (...) a weak paternalistic approach is not only defensible but also aligns with the strategies the authors propose. Thus, by clarifying the concept of autonomy we can show how it can be enhanced in practice. (shrink)

Reproductive genetic carrier screening is increasingly being offered more widely, including to people with no family history or otherwise elevated chance of having a baby with a genetic condition. There are valid reasons to reject a prevention-focused public health ethics approach to such screening programs. Rejecting the prevention paradigm in this context has led to an emphasis on more individually-focused values of freedom of choice and fostering reproductive autonomy in RCS. We argue, however, that population-wide RCS has sufficient features in (...) common with other public health screening programs that it becomes important also to attend to its public health implications. Not doing so constitutes a failure to address the social conditions that significantly affect people’s capacity to exercise their reproductive autonomy. We discuss how a public health ethics approach to RCS is broader in focus than prevention. We also show that additional values inherent to ethical public health—such as equity and solidarity—are essential to underpin and inform the aims and implementation of reproductive carrier screening programs. (shrink)

Current controversy over whether the Office of Management and Budget system of racial and ethnic classification should be used in pharmacogenetics research as suggested by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration has been couched in terms of realist-social constructionist debates on race. The assumptions both parties to these debates share instead need to be relinquished—specifically, dichotomies between the social and scientific and what is descriptive and evaluative/normative. This paper defends a pragmatic approach to the question of the appropriateness of the OMB (...) group categories in pharmacogenetics research, an approach that is local and context-specific rather than global, incorporates practical and ethical as well as theoretical dimensions, and recognizes intersections of the social and the biological in the constitution of group categories. (shrink)

Motivated by a conviction that mass incarceration and state execution are among the most important ethical and political problems of our time, the contributors to this volume come together from a diverse range of backgrounds to analyze, critique, and envision alternatives to the injustices of the U.S. prison system, with recourse to deconstruction, phenomenology, critical race theory, feminism, queer theory, and disability studies. They engage with the hyper-incarceration of people of color, the incomplete abolition of slavery, the exploitation of prisoners (...) as workers and as “raw material” for the prison industrial complex, the intensive confinement of prisoners in supermax units, and the complexities of capital punishment in an age of abolition. (shrink)

In healthcare broadly, and especially in genetic medicine, there is an ongoing debate about whether patients have a right not to know information about their own health. The extensive literature on this topic is characterised by a range of different understandings of what it means to have a RNTK,1–9 and how this purported right relates to patient autonomy. Ben Davies considers whether obligations not to place avoidable burdens on a publicly funded healthcare system might form the basis for an obligation (...) to acquire relevant health information, and hence refute the RNTK. He also makes the interesting argument that an obligation to know does not necessarily limit the RNTK. Davies summarises the more prominent arguments against the RNTK, including harm-to-others arguments that focus on potential harms to individuals related to the patient. However he then considers the RNTK in the context of the obligations that people have to each other within a publicly funded healthcare system. So rather than focusing on harms to specific individuals, Davies’ argument is instead based on the wrong of needlessly consuming public healthcare resources. If a person avoids health-related information and thereby exacerbates their health problems, this makes them more complex and expensive to treat. Davies argues that this constitutes …. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge and Andrew Kuper suggest that we should promote an ‘institutional’ solution to global poverty. They advocate the institutional solution because they think that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can never be the primary agents of justice in the long run. They provide several standard criticisms of NGO aid in support of this claim. However, there is a more serious problem for institutional solutions: how to generate enough goodwill among rich nation-states that they would be willing to commit themselves to supranational (...) institutional reforms. In the current international political climate, the implementation of such institutional reforms introduces several intractable problems, including difficulties of global coordination and enforcement. I defend the solution of NGO aid from the criticisms presented by Pogge and Kuper, and propose how it might be reformed. My main suggestion is that all practising NGOs should be required to be ‘accountable for reasonableness’ in the sense that Norman Daniels and James Sabin have outlined. (shrink)

While Descartes’s Passions of the Soul has been taken to hold a place in the history to human physiology, until recently philosophers have neglected the work. In this research summary, I set Descartes’s last published work in context and then sketch out its philosophical significance. From it, we gain further insight into Descartes’s solution to the Mind--Body Problem -- that is, to the problem of the ontological status of the mind--body union in a human being, to the nature of body--mind (...) causation, and to the way body-caused thoughts represent the world. In addition, the work contains Descartes’s developed ethics, in his account of virtue and of the passion of générosité in particular. Through his taxonomy of the passions and the account of their regulation, we also learn more about his moral psychology. (shrink)

The notion of optimality is often invoked informally in the literature on metacognitive control. We provide a precise formulation of the optimization problem and show that optimal time allocation strategies depend critically on certain characteristics of the learning environment, such as the extent of time pressure, and the nature of the uptake function. When the learning curve is concave, optimality requires that items at lower levels of initial competence be allocated greater time. On the other hand, with logistic learning curves, (...) optimal allocations vary with time availability in complex and surprising ways. Hence there are conditions under which optimal strategies will be relatively easy to uncover, and others in which suboptimal time allocation might be expected. The model can therefore be used to address the question of whether and when learners should be able to exercise good metacognitive control in practice. (shrink)

Two experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that the nature of the remember–know instructions given to participants influences whether these responses reflect different memory states or different degrees of memory confidence. Participants studied words and nonwords, a variable that has been shown to dissociate confidence from remember–know judgments and were given a set of published remember–know instructions that either emphasized know judgments as highly confident or as less confident states of recognition. Experiment 1 replicated the standard finding showing that (...) remembering and knowing were differently influenced by the word–nonword variable, whereas confidence responses were not. By contrast, Experiment 2 showed a similar pattern of data for remember–know and sure–unsure responses, thus demonstrating the importance of the instructions for interpreting the relationship between remembering and knowing and confidence. (shrink)

This commentary responds to Moti Gorin's article “What Is the Aim of Pediatric ‘Gender‐Affirming’ Care?” We argue that Gorin's case against pediatric gender‐affirming care rests upon numerous false conceptual binaries: female/male, public/private, objective/subjective, and medically necessary/elective. Drawing on feminist bioethics, we show how such dichotomous thinking is both inaccurate and marginalizing of gender minorities.

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science provides a lively and accessible introduction to current key issues and debates in this area. The classic philosophical questions about methodology, progress, rationality and reality are addressed by reference to examples from the full range of natural and social sciences. Lisa Bortolotti uses a historically-informed perspective on the evolution of science and includes a thorough discussion of the ethical implications of scientific research. Special attention is paid to the complex relationship between the (...) advancement of science, policy making and public interest and to the continuity between scientific research and other human activities. The book is designed to help students think for themselves about the issues identified above, and includes information tables and questions for further reflection to support all stages of the teaching and learning experience, from the comprehension of primary and other secondary texts to debate and essay writing. It also includes a thematic bibliography and a glossary of technical terms. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science is an excellent introduction to philosophy for students and provides researchers of scientific disciplines with an opportunity to reflect upon the value and impact of their work. It is also a stimulating read for anybody who is interested in the philosophical issues raised by the status of scientific knowledge, the practice of science and the role of experts in contemporary society. (shrink)

: Humility is a virtue that is helpful in a persons relationship with nature. A humble person sees value in nature and acts accordingly with the proper respect. In this paper, humility is discussed in three aspects. First, humility entails an overcoming of self-absorption. Second, humility involves coming into contact with a larger, more complex reality. Third, humility allows a person to develop a sense of perspective on herself and the world.

This essay is an examination of stupid knowing, an attempt to catalog a particular species of knowing, and to understand when, how, and why the label "stupid" gets applied to marginalized groups of knowers. Heldke examines the ways the defining processes work and the conditions that make them possible, by considering one group of people who get defined as stupid: rural people. In part, the author intends her identification and categorization of stupid knowing to support the work of theorists of (...) resistance who have identified ways that those marginalized as stupid knowers use the cloak of their purported stupidity in the aid of their resistance. Heldke also hopes to add to the existing critique of the hierarchies of knowing an understanding of one particular way one form of knowledge is devalued: stupidification. Why are some forms of knowledge actually regarded as leaving one incapable of other forms of rational thought? (shrink)

Many people in the developing world access essential health services either partially or primarily through programs run by international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). Given that such programs are typically designed and run by Westerners, and funded by Western countries and their citizens, it is not surprising that such programs are regarded by many as vehicles for Western cultural imperialism. In this chapter, I consider this phenomenon as it emerges in the context of development and humanitarian aid programs, particularly those delivering medical (...) treatment, nutrition and access to clean water. I argue that in order to avoid contributing to cultural imperialism, INGOs have a duty to ensure that they do not offer services in a way that requires their beneficiaries to choose between accessing essential health services and violating or otherwise undermining traditional norms and practices which have significance for their beneficiaries. Following Onora O'Neill, I argue that offers requiring such a choice are effectively “unrefuseable” and so coercive. INGOs therefore, must avoid making such offers, and can accomplish this by means of an iterated process of reciprocal negotiation under conditions of equality, in which both the INGOs’ and the beneficiaries’ deep values and concerns play a role. In essence, I claim that employing such a process is a requirement of procedural justice, given the non-ideal conditions in which INGOs must operate. (shrink)

In this article we propose a philosophical critique of two general, but not exhaustive, approaches to gender studies in sport, namely gynocentric feminism and humanist feminism. We argue that both approaches are problematic because they fail clearly to distinguish or articulate their epistemological and ideological commitments. In particular, humanist feminists articulate the human condition using the sex/gender dichotomy, which fails to account adequately for gendered subjectivity. For them gender difference is a contingent feature of humanity developed through socialisation. As a (...) result, it seems that what humanist feminists regard as women in their natural ?state? is in itself ideological. The generic ?human? condition is by no means a neutral condition but rather an idea tarnished by gender history characterised by the masculine. Consequently, humanist feminists uncritically argue for inclusion in sport, with access to an equal share of the human goods available, without carefully problematising the ideological nature of the practice. Gynocentric feminists also subscribe to the sex/gender dichotomy, suggesting however, that gender subjectivity is the result of a biological imperative. For gynocentric feminists, sexual difference provides authority for adjudicating between a separate and different male and female epistemology. Accordingly, gynocentric feminists commit the genetic fallacy by condemning sport to a masculine activity and therefore incompatible with feminine value in light of its male ancestry. ?Soft? gynocentrism does not fully sanction a conception of sport which allows only traditionally female values to flourish, or at least the reason for celebrating such sports would focus upon the goods and values therein. In other words, the value of the practice for either men or women is to be found, following MacIntyre (1985), in the internal goods that characterise the particular practice. Such internal goods are, as MacIntyre argues, goods of the practice and do not belong to any particular gender or group. (shrink)

In this chapter, John Locke's anti‐Cartesian stances on the difference between body and space, on whether the soul always thinks, on the possibility of thinking matter, all connect back to the basic opposition to Cartesian overreaching in regard to essences. The chapter presents a summary of Locke's anti‐Cartesianism, which seems to fit with his own representation of his Cartesian inheritance, which, notoriously, is that it is minimal, consisting only in anti‐scholasticism. The only acknowledgment that Locke wishes to give Descartes is (...) that reading his work helped him to shake off the influence of Aristotelianism. Descartes was not the only target of Locke's anti‐innatism, but he was surely a central one. Locke attacks the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas because it poses a threat to his central empiricist commitments. Interestingly, he also sees the central tenets of Cartesian ontology as a threat. (shrink)

Traditional disciplinary guidelines are inadequate to address some of the ethical dilemmas that emerge when conducting research on violence against women and girls. This article is organized according to the ethical principles of respect for persons, privacy and confidentiality, justice, beneficence, and nonmaleficence. In the article, I describe dilemmas involved in cross-cultural research, research on children, informed consent, voluntariness, coercion, deception, safety, mandated reporting, and dissemination. In the article, I include examples from qualitative and quantitative studies in many nations. I (...) also offer suggestions for researchers and institutional review boards. (shrink)

The “right not to know” has generated significant discussion, especially regarding genetic information. In this paper, I argue that this purported right is better understood as a preference and that treating it as a substantive right has led to confusion. To support this claim, I present three critiques of the way the right not to know has been characterized. First, I demonstrate that the many conceptualizations of this right have hampered debate. Second, I show that the way autonomy is conceptualized (...) in this literature is also problematic. Third, I examine the notion of a right in more detail, to support my third critique: that the right to know and the right not to know genetic information are often erroneously treated as having equivalent status. On my understanding, the claim being made is better thought of as a preference, not a right, and a preference not to know certain information becomes only one of several considerations relevant to medical decision making. (shrink)

Lisa Tessman’s Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality raises important questions about ideal theory, oppression, and the role of action guidance in normative philosophy. After a brief overview of feminist and anti-racist philosophers’ critiques of ideal theory, I examine Tessman’s claim that nonideal oppression theorists focus too narrowly on action guidance and thereby obscure other important normative issues, such as the problem of moral failure. Although I agree with Tessman’s advocacy of a wider focus—and with her suggestion (...) that situations of inevitable moral failure are particularly important to examine in contexts of oppression—I question whether nonideal oppression theorists actually emphasize action guidance to the exclusion of other concerns. I conclude with a brief examination of the way that ideal and nonideal theory have been defined and understood in debates about normative methodology, and I suggest that a move away from Rawls’s account of the ideal/nonideal distinction would benefit feminists and other oppression theorists. (shrink)

Traditional disciplinary guidelines are inadequate to address some of the ethical dilemmas that emerge when conducting research on violence against women and girls. This article is organized according to the ethical principles of respect for persons, privacy and confidentiality, justice, beneficence, and nonmaleficence. In the article, I describe dilemmas involved in cross-cultural research, research on children, informed consent, voluntariness, coercion, deception, safety, mandated reporting, and dissemination. In the article, I include examples from qualitative and quantitative studies in many nations. I (...) also offer suggestions for researchers and institutional review boards. (shrink)

This paper is an exploration of the vice of misanthropy particularly as it manifests itself in people who love nature. Misanthropy is a hatred and disgust of humans, particularly of a group of humans. I look to wilderness to illustrate the vice of misanthropy. With regard to wilderness, misanthropy functions in three distinct spheres. First, there is misanthropy in the use of wilderness to flee other people. Second, there is misanthropy in the assumption that humans taint the wilderness. Finally, there (...) is misanthropy in the assumption that humans can only relate to nature in a way that is harmful. In the end, we need to avoid misanthropy and its attendant despair. It is important that we see ourselves, not as a determined mass of people, but rather as individual people who are able to create positive change. (shrink)

Lisa Bortolotti introduces the arguments about whether dogs can have beliefs.