From the author of "For Common Things" comes a provocative look at the meaning of American freedom. Purdy works from the stories of individuals: Frederick Douglass urging Americans to extend freedom to slaves, Ralph Waldo Emerson arguing for self-fulfillment, and others.

The aim of this essay is not to define empire for all purposes, but to examine the most plausible and, arguably, influential arguments for a new imperial policy, chiefly in the realms of political and military power.

In his latest book, Jedediah Purdy takes up a question of deep and lasting importance: why is property ownership a value to society? His answer returns us to the foundations of American society and enables us to interpret the writings of the patron saint of liberal economics, Adam Smith, in a wholly new light. Unlike Milton Friedman and other free-market scholars, who consider property a key to efficient markets, Purdy draws upon Smith’s theories to argue that the (...) virtues of wealth are social rather than economic. In Purdy’s view, ownership does much more than shield one from government interference. Property shapes social life in ways that bring us closer to, or take us farther from, the ideal of a community of free and equal members. This view of property is neither libertarian nor communitarian but treats the community as the precondition of individual freedom. This view informed U.S. law in the early days of the republic, Purdy writes, and it is one that we need to restore today. Touching upon some of the most charged issues in American politics and law, including slavery, inheritance, international development, and climate change, _The Meaning of Property_ offers a compelling new view of property and freedom and enriches our understanding of democratic society. (shrink)

In his latest book, Jedediah Purdy takes up a question of deep and lasting importance: why is property ownership a value to society? His answer returns us to the foundations of American society and enables us to interpret the writings of the patron saint of liberal economics, Adam Smith, in a wholly new light. Unlike Milton Friedman and other free-market scholars, who consider property a key to efficient markets, Purdy draws upon Smith’s theories to argue that the (...) virtues of wealth are social rather than economic. In Purdy’s view, ownership does much more than shield one from government interference. Property shapes social life in ways that bring us closer to, or take us farther from, the ideal of a community of free and equal members. This view of property is neither libertarian nor communitarian but treats the community as the precondition of individual freedom. This view informed U.S. law in the early days of the republic, Purdy writes, and it is one that we need to restore today. Touching upon some of the most charged issues in American politics and law, including slavery, inheritance, international development, and climate change, _The Meaning of Property_ offers a compelling new view of property and freedom and enriches our understanding of democratic society. (shrink)

Widespread recognition that economic inequality has been growing for forty years in most of the developed world, and in fact has tended to grow across most of the history of modern economies, shows that the period 1945-1973, when inequality of wealth and income shrank, was a marked anomaly in historical experience. At the time, however, the anomalous period of equality seemed to vindicate a long history of optimism about economic life:that growth would overcome meaningful scarcity and usher in an egalitarian (...) and humanistic period that could almost qualify as post-economic. This has not been the experience of the last four decades. In this intellectual history of the anomalous period, we trace the main lines of that optimism and its undoing. (shrink)

The thesis of our commentary is that the framework used to address what are taken by Carey to be the open issues is highly problematic. The presumed necessity of an innate stock of representational primitives fails to account for the emergence of representation out of a nonrepresentational base. This failure manifests itself in problematic ways throughout Carey's book.

Reproductive autonomy is central to women’s welfare both because childbearing takes place in women’s bodies and because they are generally expected to take primary responsibility for child rearing. In 2005, the factors that influence their autonomy most strongly are poverty and belief systems that devalue such autonomy. Unfortunately, such autonomy is a low priority for most societies, or is anathema to their belief systems altogether. This situation is doubly sad because women’s reproductive autonomy is intrinsically valuable for women and also (...) instrumentally valuable for the welfare of humankind. This paper takes for granted the moral and practical necessity of such autonomy and digs deeper into the question of what such a commitment might entail, focusing on the mid-level policy making that, at least in the US and Canada, plays a significant role in shaping women’s options. This paper examines a large teaching hospital’s policy on reduction of multifetal pregnancies. The policy permits reduction of triplets to twins, but not twins to a singleton. As there is no morally relevant difference between these two types of reduction, it is evident that inappropriate medicalisation can still limit women’s autonomy in undesirable ways. (shrink)

Science is revolutionizing human reproduction. New techniques are already with us, such as artificial insemination, the freezing of sperm, in vitro fertilization and the use of surrogate mothers. Artificial wombs are clearly on the horizon.

We advance research on how businesses engage with the complex social problems currently known as Grand Challenges. We study the concepts that preceded the term Grand Challenges, the connected ontologies that ground them, and the diversity of perspectives they offered. We construct a knowledge map that includes well-researched obstacles, such as governance obstacles hindering engagement and sensemaking obstacles limiting the ideation of novel and creative efforts. But we also build on prior research to identify curation obstacles, which precede engagement and (...) define which problems receive social attention, and adaptation obstacles, which create uncertainty over workable solutions and bias the momentum of social systems toward the status quo. Our broader view on the obstacles defining Grand Challenges opens new pathways and identifies underexplored levers by which to understand and influence business engagement with complex social problems. (shrink)

Medical issues affecting health care have become everyday media events. In response to mounting public concern, growing numbers of bioethicists are being appointed to medical school faculties and public policy panels. However the ideas voiced in these forums are seldom informed by feminist perspectives. In this important book, a distinguished group of feminist scholars and activists discuss crucial bioethics topics in a feminist light. Among the subjects explored are the care/justice debates, transforming bioethics, practice, and reproduction. The book also covers (...) less commonly discussed issues, such as culturally appropriate responses to reproductive health problems in developing countries. (shrink)

There is a large body of empirical work that has investigated the relationship between parents’ child-directed speech and their children’s Theory of Mind development. That such a relationship should exist is well motivated from both Theory Theory and Socio-Cultural perspectives. Despite this general convergence, we argue that theoretical differences between the two perspectives suggests nuanced differences in the expected outcomes of the empirical work. Further, the different ontological commitments of the two approaches have guided the design, coding, and analysis of (...) existing research and imply different future directions. We discuss five areas of extant research that can be extended and diversified most coherently by adopting a SC framework. (shrink)

Notes on the life of Adolf Lindenbaum, a complete bibliography of his published works, and selected references to his unpublished results.

The fields of medical ethics, bioethics, and women's studies have experienced unprecedented growth in the last forty years. Along with the rapid pace of development in medicine and biology, and changes in social expectations, moral quandaries about the body and social practices involving it have multiplied. Philosophers are uniquely situated to attempt to clarify and resolves these questions. Yet the subdiscipline of bioethics still in large part reflects mainstream scholars' lack of interest in gender as a category of analysis. This (...) volume aims to show how a feminist perspective advances bioethics. The author uncover inconsistencies in traditional arguments and argue for the importance of hitherto ignored factors in decision-making. The essays include theory and very specific examples that demonstrate the glaring inadequacy of mainstream bioethics, where gender bias is still often to be found, along with general lack of attention to women's concerns. (shrink)

Fluted logic is the restriction of pure predicate logic to formulas in which variables play no essential role. Although fluted logic is significantly weaker than pure predicate logic, it is of interest because it seems closely to parallel natural logic, the logic that is conducted in natural language. It has been known since 1969 that if conjunction in fluted formulas is restricted to subformulas of equal arity, satisfiability is decidable. However, the decidability of sublogics lying between this restricted (homogeneous) fluted (...) logic and full predicate logic remained unknown. In 1994 it was shown that the satisfiability of fluted formulas without restriction is decidable, thus reducing the unknown region significantly. This paper further reduces the unknown region. It shows that fluted logic with the logical identity is decidable. Since the reflection functor can be defined in fluted logic with identity, it follows that fluted logic with the reflection functor also lies within the region of decidability. Relevance to natural logic is increased since the identity permits definition of singular predicates, which can represent anaphoric pronouns. (shrink)

As researchers interested in social aspects of sport, we enmesh ourselves in the work of memory, membering and forms of ‘capturing’ sport and sport experiences. While nostalgia is at play in these social constructions of sport, for researchers we contend that the concept of nostalgia can prove devious. In this paper, we illustrate the social significance afforded to nostalgic experiences or events, and consider their representation in social sciences sport research. We develop and apply arguments concerning the senses, nostalgia, and (...) language in line with the ‘abilities’ view of concepts. The consequences of nostalgia can, we contend, be underplayed, taken for granted and/or ignored by sport researchers in ways that curtail more critical readings of sport phenomena. Our purpose is to interrogate the construction and a/effects of nostalgia as hidden/implicit/latent and heuristic. We advocate methodological critique that addresses the elusive, apparent, ‘capturable’ and confusing nature of nostalgia within sport research. (shrink)

Medical issues affecting health care have become everyday media events. In response to mounting public concern, growing numbers of bioethicists are being appointed to medical school faculties and public policy panels. However the ideas voiced in these forums are seldom informed by feminist perspectives. In this important book, a distinguished group of feminist scholars and activists discuss crucial bioethics topics in a feminist light. Among the subjects explored are the care/justice debates, transforming bioethics, practice, and reproduction. The book also covers (...) less commonly discussed issues, such as culturally appropriate responses to reproductive health problems in developing countries. (shrink)

This essay deals with the morality of abortion. We argue that abortion is morally unobjectionable and that society benefits if abortion is available on demand. We begin by setting out a preliminary case in support of the practice of abortion. We then examine moral objections to abortion and show why those objections are unsound. We conclude by considering what properties something needs in order to have a serious right to life, and we show that a human fetus does not possess (...) those properties. Thus, since there is no moral objection to abortion, the practice must be viewed as both permissible and desirable, in the light of the advantages outlined in the first section of our paper. (shrink)

This new text offers the perspectives necessary for a comprehensive and objective critique of the health care establishment. By including diverse perspectives, students obtain a more accurate sense of the issues and the ethical considerations in a pluralistic society that values justice in its health systems.

Moral Status asks what creates moral obligations toward entities. Warren’s thesis is that attempts to ground moral status on a single criterion have been unsuccessful, as they inevitably lead to Procrustean measures to fit diverse values into a single mold. She proposes instead a “multi-criterial’ approach that promises to accommodate these values. In so doing, she expands and generalizes on a strategy she uses quite successfully in her 1990 article “The Moral Significance of Birth” to show why a personhood approach (...) to abortion need not imply the moral permissibility of infanticide. (shrink)