There is an abundant and growing feminist literature examining the implications of reproductive technologies that separate genetic, physiological, and social motherhood. The literature explains the development of these technologies in terms of the motivations of men, stressing the victimization of women by the medical and legal institutions and the commodification of these technologies. This article examines these technologies from a Marxist-Feminist perspective, locating their sources in the overall development of the forces of production; that is, in structural changes irreducible to (...) their microfoundations. In the process of changing the biological conditions of intergenerational social reproduction, these technologies have established the material basis for the structural separation between the mode of procreation and the mode of social and physical reproduction. These structural changes are generating new identities and forms of consciousness that clash with taken-for-granted ideas about motherhood. These differences are captured in feminist debates about the significance of these technologies. (shrink)

A revolutionary new theory and call to action on animal rights, ethics, and law from the renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum.

In this critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect.

Virtue ethics is standardly taught and discussed as a distinctive approach to the major questions of ethics, a third major position alongside Utilitarian and Kantian ethics. I argue that this taxonomy is a confusion. Both Utilitarianism and Kantianism contain treatments of virtue, so virtue ethics cannot possibly be a separate approach contrasted with those approaches. There are, to be sure, quite a few contemporary philosophical writers about virtue who are neither Utilitarians nor Kantians; many of these find inspiration in ancient (...) Greek theories of virtue. But even here there is little unity. Although certain concerns do unite this disparate group (a concern for the role of motives and passions in good choice, a concern for character, and a concern for the whole course of an agent''s life), there are equally profound disagreements, especially concerning the role that reason should play in ethics. One group of modern virtue-theorists, I argue, are primarily anti-Utilitarians, concerned with the plurality of value and the susceptibility of passions to social cultivation. These theorists want to enlarge the place of reason in ethics. They hold that reason can deliberate about ends as well as means, and that reason can modify the passions themselves. Another group of virtue theorists are primarily anti-Kantians. They believe that reason plays too dominant a role in most philosophical accounts of ethics, and that a larger place should be given to sentiments and passions -- which they typically construe in a less reason-based way than does the first group. The paper investigates these differences, concluding that it is not helpful to speak of virtue ethics, and that we would be better off characterizing the substantive views of each thinker -- and then figuring out what we ourselves want to say. (shrink)

The ethics of Aristotle , and virtue ethics in general, have enjoyed a resurgence of interest over the past few decades. Aristotelian themes, with such issues as the importance of friendship and emotions in a good life, the role of moral perception in wise choice, the nature of happiness and its constitution, moral education and habituation, are finding an important place in contemporary moral debates. Taken together, the essays in this volume provide a close analysis of central arguments in Aristotle's (...) Nicomachean Ethics and show the enduring interest of the questions Aristotle raises. (shrink)

What drives us to do good things, and to avoid doing bad? This book offers an integrative examination of the role of motivation in shaping moral cognition, judgement, and behavior.

Children aged 7 and 11 years were interviewed about death in the context of two different narratives. Each narrative described the death of a grandparent but one narrative provided a secular context whereas the other provided a religious context. Following each narrative, children were asked to judge whether various bodily and mental processes continue to function after death, and to justify their judgment. Children displayed two different conceptions of death. They often acknowledged that functioning ceases at death and offered appropriate (...) biological justifications for that judgment. However, they also claimed that functioning continues after death and offered appropriate religious justifications. The tendency to claim that functioning continues after death was more frequent among older children than younger children, more frequent in the context of the religious narrative as opposed to the secular narrative and more frequent with respect to mental processes than bodily processes. Particularly among older children, two distinct conceptions of death appear to co-exist: a biological conception in which death implies the cessation of living processes and a metaphysical conception in which death marks the beginning of the afterlife. (shrink)

Martha Albertson Fineman's earlier work developed a theory of inevitable and derivative dependencies as a way of problematizing the core assumptions underlying the 'autonomous' subject of liberal law and politics in the context of US equality discourse. Her 'vulnerability thesis' represents the evolution of that earlier work and situates human vulnerability as a critical heuristic for exploring alternative legal and political foundations. This book draws together major British and American scholars who present different perspectives on the concept of vulnerability (...) and Fineman's 'vulnerability thesis'. The contributors include scholars who have thought about vulnerability in different ways and contexts prior to encountering Fineman's work, as well as those for whom Fineman's work provided an introduction to thinking through a vulnerability lens. This collection demonstrates the broad and intellectually exciting potential of vulnerability as a theoretical foundation for legal and political engagements with a range of urgent contemporary challenges. Exploring ways in which vulnerability might provide a new ethical foundation for law and politics, the book will be of interest to the general reader, as well as academics and students in fields such as jurisprudence, philosophy, legal theory, political theory, feminist theory, and ethics. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: A Home for Love and Violence Capabilities: Each Family Member as End The Family: Not “by Nature” Political Liberalism and the Family: Rawls's Dilemma Love, Dignity, and Community.

In the contemporary world, voices are caught up in fundamentally different realms of discourse, practice, and culture: between sounding and nonsounding, material and nonmaterial, literal and metaphorical. In The Voice as Something More, Martha Feldman and Judith T. Zeitlin tackle these paradoxes with a bold and rigorous collection of essays that look at voice as both object of desire and material object. Using Mladen Dolar’s influential A Voice and Nothing More as a reference point, The Voice as Something More (...) reorients Dolar’s psychoanalytic analysis around the material dimensions of voices—their physicality and timbre, the fleshiness of their mechanisms, the veils that hide them, and the devices that enhance and distort them. Throughout, the essays put the body back in voice. Ending with a new essay by Dolar that offers reflections on these vocal aesthetics and paradoxes, this authoritative, multidisciplinary collection, ranging from Europe and the Americas to East Asia, from classics and music to film and literature, will serve as an essential entry point for scholars and students who are thinking toward materiality. (shrink)

El propósito de nuestro estudio tiene dos objetivos, el primero es identificar la lógica de la propuesta misionera del Papa Francisco, derivada del sujeto que debe llevarla a cabo: el discípulo misionero; y en segundo lugar mostrar los elementos ontológicos que estructuran la persona llamada a evangelizar. Descubrimos en el Papa Francisco la influencia de la lógica del humanismo de Nicolás de Cusa, así como la categoría principal de la ontología antropológica que lo sostiene: la paradoja.

This book is a study of ancient views about "moral luck." It examines the fundamental ethical problem that many of the valued constituents of a well-lived life are vulnerable to factors outside a person's control, and asks how this affects our appraisal of persons and their lives. The Greeks made a profound contribution to these questions, yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve. This updated edition contains a new preface.

What is a philosophy of education ? -- Using a worldview approach to develop one's philosophy of education -- Defining education -- Determining the aim or "end" of education -- Nature of the pupil and learning -- Commonalities : special creation and moral nature -- Commonalities : actional and developmental nature -- Implications : the actional nature -- Human differences -- The role of the teacher -- The nature of the curriculum -- The purpose of the curriculum -- Worldview integration (...) in the design of the curreculum -- Conclusion -- Appendices : Summary of some of the philosophies of education held in the 21st century ; Developing the integrating core model. (shrink)

Many biblical scholars have underlined the importance of Numbers 13-14, especially because these chapters are a reflection on Israel's greatest sin and rebellion against God in the desert. God's reaction to that sin is clear: of all the men who have put me to the test ten times already and have failed to heed my voice, not one shall see the land which I promised on oath to their fathers. It seems that the verbs 'see' and 'hear', both sentient verbs, (...) are important in both the statement of God and that of the Spies. This article focuses on this particular point and in the conclusions which can be drawn from it. It also considers the frustrating intercession of Moses before God on behalf of his people, on account of the threat to Israel about the promised land. (shrink)

Visual Agnosia is a comprehensive and up-to-date review of disorders of higher vision that relates these disorders to current conceptions of higher vision from cognitive science, illuminating both the neuropsychological disorders and the nature of normal visual object recognition.Brain damage can lead to selective problems with visual perception, including visual agnosia the inability to recognize objects even though elementary visual functions remain unimpaired. Such disorders are relatively rare, yet they provide a window onto how the normal brain might accomplish the (...) complex task of vision. Visual Agnosia reviews a century of case studies of higher-level visual deficits following brain damage, places them in the general context of current neuroscience, and draws relevant conclusions about the organization of normal visual processing. It is unique in drawing on research in cognitive psychology, computational vision, visual neurophysiology, and neuropsychology to interpret the agnosias and draw inferences from them about visual object recognition.Following a historical account of agnosia research, Visual Agnosia offers a taxonomy of a wide range of agnosia syndromes, describing and interpreting the syndromes in terms of the latest theoretical models of visual processing and ultimately bringing them to bear as evidence on a variety of questions in the study of higher vision.Martha J. Farah is Associate Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Visual Agnosia is included in the Issues in Biology of Language and Cognition series, edited by John Marshall. (shrink)

The biology of early life adversity explores how social experiences early in life affect physical and psychological health and well-being throughout the life course. In our previous work, we argued that narratives emerging from and about this research field tend to focus on harm and lasting damage with little discussion of reversibility and resilience. However, as the Science and Technology Studies literature has demonstrated, scientific research can be actively taken up and transformed as it moves through social worlds. Drawing on (...) fieldwork with actors in education and juvenile corrections in the US Pacific Northwest, we found that they employed the biology of early life adversity not only to promote prevention but also to argue for changes within their own institutions that would allow them to better serve children and youth who have experienced adversity and trauma. Our study shows that biosocial narratives are neither inherently liberatory nor inherently oppressive but that the situated narrative choreographies in which they are enrolled are essential for their political effects. In our case, we show how these biosocial narratives have been articulated with knowledge and practices from restorative justice and trauma-informed care to reimagine the social meaning of the biology of early life adversity. (shrink)

Despite recent critiques of agrofuels, the industry is booming, signaling transformations in the world's food and fuels systems. International financial institutions, biotechnology firms, governments, and agribusiness are restructuring control over land, genetic resources, economic space, and market power. These moves prefer transnational capital at the expense of farmers in the North and extensive areas vital to the livelihoods of small producers in the Global South. This article suggests that the agrofuels boom may be a new—and particularly destructive—stage in industry's extractive (...) transformations of agriculture. The movement-based logic of food sovereignty—people's right to define their own food and agriculture systems—suggests a rollback of the “agrofuels transition” is possible. (shrink)

Applying the insights of Donna Haraway (1989, 1991) and Helen Longino (1989, 1990), this paper reviews Sandra Harding's (1986a) tripartite model of feminist critiques of science-empiricist, standpoint, and postmodern-and argues that it is based on misunderstandings of the relationship between scientific inquiry, objectivity, and values. An alternative view of scientific inquiry makes it possible to see feminist scientists as postmodern and postmodern feminists as having standpoints.

Clinical practices are considered one of the cornerstones in nurses' education. This study provides a framework to determine how factors in the academic environment, influence nursing student's satisfaction with their practices. A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted in a convenience sample of 574 nursing students at a private university in Valencia, during the 2016/2017 academic year, 79% were women. Two statistical methodologies were used for data analysis: hierarchical regression models and fuzzy sets qualitative comparative analysis. The HRM indicate that the (...) students' mean score influences all dimensions of satisfaction. Furthermore, in the fsQCA, the type of service and center, as well as the type of management, the preference in the choice of the practice center and the number of students per period per clinical educator influence satisfaction with clinical practices. These results could be used to understand how academic factors influence nursing students' satisfaction with their clinical practices and to create intervention programmes that improve it. This will help prepare students to be the future nursing workforce. (shrink)

Available for the first time in paperback, this volume contains text with translation of De Motu Animalium, Aristotle's attempt to lay the groundwork for a general theory of the explanation of animal activity, along with commentary and interpretive essays on the work.

Shepherd propounds a theory of mind with a fair claim to be better than Hume’s at explaining the sources of commonly held human beliefs about causal necessity due largely to her relational theory of sense perception. In comparison with Hume’s account, it incorporates a more sophisticated treatment of mental representation, especially the role of relational structure and logical form. Most important, perhaps, Shepherd’s theory enforces the division, obscured by Hume, between the evidence of necessity and the metaphysical foundation of necessity.