George Berkeley is known as “The Good Bishop,” a name celebrating his faith, pastoral ministry and earnest commitment to his philosophical views. To mathematicians, he is known for his agitated performance in his 1734 critique of fluxions, The Analyst. That work and its petulant tone were occasioned by (i) his “philo-mathematical” opponents’ alleged admonitions on religious mysteries’ lack of logical respectability and (ii) what Berkeley saw as a related public appetite for reformist and deist religious movements. This paper questions Berkeley’s (...) saintly reputation by outlining the hostility and flippancy in his handling of Jacob Walton’s contributions to the debate. Berkeley’s interactions with Walton bear many of the hallmarks of contemporary “trolling” culture and this paper emphasises and explains these parallels. Finally, given Berkeley’s theological and political agenda in his mathematical interactions, I argue that we should not read his mathematical rhetoric as straightforwardly representing his philosophical views. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper responds to two issues in interpreting George Berkeley’s Analyst. First, it explains why the text contains no discussion of religious mysteries or points of faith, despite the claims of the text's subtitle; I argue that the subtitle must be understood, and its success assessed, in conjunction with material external to the text. Second, it’s unclear how naturally the arguments of the Analyst sit with Berkeley’s broader views. He criticizes the methodology of calculus and conceptually problematic entities, and the (...) extent to which they require one to bend the rules of classical mathematics. Yet, elsewhere, Berkeley’s opinion of classical mathematics and its intelligibility is low, and he defends a pragmatic approach to word meaning that should not find fault with so functionally successful a theory. The ad hominem intention of the text makes it difficult to discern to what extent Berkeley is committed to the sincerity of these criticisms. This component of the text is rarely discussed, but I argue that when trying to decide what Berkeley’s true position is in the Analyst, we should treat its ad hominem component as its primary intention. (shrink)

Berkeley is best known for his immaterialism and the texts that extol it—the Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. He made his case by treatise, then by dialogue, and this tendency towards stylistic experimentation did not end there; this paper explores an early speculative fiction project that pursued his theological and philosophical agendas. Berkeley used satire to challenge his “freethinking” philosophical opponents in “The Pineal Gland” story published in The Guardian in 1713. Echoing the grand (...) tours Berkeley undertook in subsequent years, Part 1 offers a “gland tour” of some literary motivations, influences and legacies of these essays. Berkeley pursues heroic themes from Homer and Alexander Pope, while lampooning the philosophies of both Descartes and the freethinkers. Armed with the device of a magic snuff that transports him to the pineal glands of his adversaries, Berkeley's protagonist uses it “to distinguish the real from the professed sentiments of all persons of eminence in court, city, town, and country”. (Guardian, p. 187) Part 1 examines ‘The Pineal Gland’ in the context of Berkeley's broader philosophical legacy and the text's significant engagement with the literature of Homer and Pope, concluding that “The Pineal Gland” is an important but overlooked source in the history of early speculative fiction. Part 2 continues this analysis by exploring Berkeley's relationship with an expansive London literary circle, interrogating a line of influence beginning with the writing of Margaret Cavendish. In doing so, Part 2 also examines Berkeley's complex attitudes towards women. (shrink)

In Part 1, we explored how Berkeley drew from Homeric literature and used literary techniques such as satire to challenge his “freethinking” philosophical opponents in “The Pineal Gland” story published in The Guardian in 1713. Echoing the grand tours Berkeley undertook in subsequent years, Part 1 and 2 both present a “gland tour” of some motivations, influences and legacies of Berkeley's text. In particular, Part 2, explores a line of literary influence beginning with Margaret Cavendish and extending through Gabriel Daniel, (...) Berkeley and Alexander Pope. In doing so, we present anticipations of features of Berkeley's story in the writings of Margaret Cavendish amid a discussion of Berkeley's complex attitudes towards women. The paper also argues that Berkeley's story represents an underappreciated yet significant milestone in the history of speculative fiction. (shrink)

Health institutions recommend that young infants be exclusively breastfed on demand, and it is widely held that parents who can breastfeed have an obligation to do so. This has been challenged in recent philosophical work, especially by Fiona Woollard. Woollard’s work critically engages with two distinct views of parental obligation that might ground such an obligation—based on maximal benefit and avoidance of significant harm—to reject an obligation to breastfeed. While agreeing with Woollard’s substantive conclusion, this paper (drawing on philosophical discussion (...) of the ‘right to rear’) argues that there are several more moderate views of parental obligation which might also be thought to ground parental obligation. We first show that an obligation to breastfeed might result not from a general obligation to maximally benefit one’s child, but from what we call ‘choice-specific’ obligations to maximise benefit within particular activities. We then develop this idea through two views of parental obligation—the Dual Interest view, and the Best Custodian view—to ground an obligation to exclusively breastfeed on demand, before showing how both these more moderate views fail. Finally, we argue that not only is there no general obligation to breastfeed children, but that it is often morally right not to do so. Since much advice from health institutions on this issue implies that exclusive breastfeeding on demand is the best option for all families, our argument drives the feeding debate forward by showing that this advice often misrepresents parents’ moral obligations in potentially harmful ways. (shrink)

Emerging parallel to long-standing, academic and policy inquiries on personal responsibility for health is the empirical assessment of lay persons’ views. Yet, previous studies rarely explored personal responsibility for health among lay persons as dynamic societal values. We sought to explore lay persons’ views on personal responsibility for health using the Fairness Dialogues, a method for lay persons to deliberate equity issues in health and health care through a small group dialogue using a hypothetical scenario. We conducted two 2-h Fairness (...) Dialogues sessions (n = 15 in total) in Nova Scotia, Canada. We analyzed data using thematic analysis. Our analysis showed that personal choice played an important role in participants’ thinking about health. Underlying the concept of personal choice was considerations of freedom and societal debt. In participants’ minds, personal and social responsibilities co-existed and they were unwilling to determine health care priority based on personal responsibility. The Fairness Dialogues is a promising deliberative method to explore lay persons’ views as dynamic values to be developed through group dialogues as opposed to static, already-formed values waiting to be elicited. (shrink)

At no point in recorded history has there been an absence of intense, and heated, discussion about the subject of how to conduct relations between women and men. This Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to these omnipresent issues and debates, mapping the present and future of thinking about feminist theory. The chapters gathered here present the state of the art in scholarship in the field, covering: epistemology and marginality; literary, visual and cultural representations; sexuality; macro and microeconomics of gender; conflict (...) and peace. The most important consensus in this volume is that a central organizing tenet of feminism is its willingness to examine the ways in which gender and relations between women and men have been (and are) organized. The authors bring a shared commitment to the critical appraisal of gender relations, as well as a recognition that to think 'theoretically' is not to detach concerns from lived experience but to extend the possibilities of understanding. With this focus on theory and theorizing about the world in which we live, this Handbook asks us, across all disciplines and situations, to abandon our taken-for-granted assumptions about the world and interrogate both the origin and the implications of our ideas about gender relations and feminism."--Publisher description. (shrink)

A novel Protocol Ethics Tool Kit (‘Ethics Tool Kit’) has been developed by a multi-stakeholder group of the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Brigham and Women9s Hospital and Harvard. The purpose of the Ethics Tool Kit is to facilitate effective recognition, consideration and deliberation of critical ethical issues in clinical trial protocols. The Ethics Tool Kit may be used by investigators and sponsors to develop a dedicated Ethics Section within a protocol to improve the consistency and transparency between clinical trial (...) protocols and research ethics committee reviews. It may also streamline ethics review and may facilitate and expedite the review process by anticipating the concerns of ethics committee reviewers. Specific attention was given to issues arising in multinational settings. With the use of this Tool Kit, researchers have the opportunity to address critical research ethics issues proactively, potentially speeding the time and easing the process to final protocol approval. (shrink)

“This book isn’t a blueprint for a new conversation. It’s an explanation of why we need one, and an invitation to participate in moving that forward”, says Katie Watson in the introduction to her book Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law and Politics of Ordinary Abortion. She does herself a disservice with this; in many respects her text provides us with just that—a model for what a more productive discussion of how society responds to and organizes around the issue of unwanted (...) pregnancy might look like; a question that has remained contentious across the centuries and for which we may never have an ‘answer.’ It is precisely because perceptions of abortion are so hard to prise apart from our attitudes towards women... (shrink)