This concise monograph argues that experiments on patients who have had radical commissurotomies disconnecting their right and left cerebral hemispheres do not show that such patients, or nonpatients in general, are not unified persons. For Marks "the split-brain patient has one mind and is one person, although he has on occasion, a disunified consciousness. The experimental results pose no special threat to our concept of the unity of a person". Marks's position relies on three sources: the Wittgensteinian view that philosophical (...) problems are often created by philosophers' seduction by inept metaphors where careful attention to language is needed; the functionalist view that the mind just is that which the most satisfactory scientific explanation of human behavior postulates; and a burden-of-proof attack against his opponent. (shrink)

Modern warfare cannot be conducted without civilians being killed. In order to reconcile this fact with the principle of discrimination in just war theory, the principle is applied through the doctrine of double effect. But this doctrine is morally inadequate because it is too permissive regarding the risk to civilians. For this reason, Michael Walzer has suggested that the doctrine be supplemented with what he calls the idea of double intention: combatants are not only to refrain from intending (...) to harm civilians; they are also to take precautions to reduce risk to civilians, even at the expense of increasing risk to themselves. The article develops the idea of double intention by addressing two questions: What does it mean to intend to reduce civilian risk, and how much should civilian risk be reduced? The results of this discussion are then used to consider a moral issue that arises in technologically asymmetric warfare, namely, the extent to which the use of precision-guided munitions, which allow more accurate targeting, can by itself bear the moral burden imposed by the principle of discrimination. (shrink)

What role should legislation or policy play in avoiding the complications of in-vitro fertilization? In this article, we focus on single versus double embryo transfer, and assess three arguments in favour of mandatory single embryo transfer: risks to the mother, risks to resultant children, and costs to society. We highlight significant ethical concerns about each of these. Reproductive autonomy and non-paternalism are strong enough to outweigh the health concerns for the woman. Complications due to non-identity cast doubt on the (...) extent to which children are harmed. Twinning may offer an overall benefit rather than burden to society. Finally, including the future health costs for children in reproductive policy is inconsistent with other decisions. We conclude that mandatory single embryo transfer is not justified and that a number of countries should reconsider their current embryo transfer policy. (shrink)

The emphasis on the limitations of objectivity, in specific guises and networks, has been a continuing theme of contemporary analytic philosophy for the past few decades. The popular sport of baiting feminist philosophers — into pointing to what's left out of objective knowledge, or into describing what methods, exactly, they would offer to replace the powerful objective methods grounding scientific knowledge — embodies a blatant double standard which has the effect of constantly putting feminist epistemologists on the defensive, on (...) the fringes, on the run.This strategy can only work if objectivity is transparent, simple, stable, and clear in its meaning. It most certainly is not. In fact, taking objectivity as a sort of beautiful primitive, self-evident in its value, and all-powerful in its revelatory power, requires careless philosophy, and the best workers in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science have made reworked definitions of objectivity absolutely central to their own projects. In fact, classic feminist concerns with exploring the impact of sex and gender on knowledge, understanding, and other relations between human beings and the rest of the world fall squarely within the sort of human and social settings thatare already considered central in most current analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science. I argue that the burden of proof is clearly on those who wish toreject the centrality and relevance of sex and gender to our most fundamental philosophical work on knowledge and reality. (shrink)

This inseparableness of everything in the world from language has intrigued modern thinkers, most notably Wittgenstein. If its limits—that is, the precise point at which sense becomes nonsense—could somehow be defined, then speakers would not attempt to express the inexpressible. Therefore, said Wittgenstein, do not put too great a burden upon language.

Abstract:Translating and commenting on two poems by Han Bo, “Modern Organ” and “The Big Killer,” that both focus on techno-scientific modernity and anxiety in the contemporary time and its impact on female subjectivity, this essay reflects on such an asymmetrically gendered burden of modern material progress to show that the embedded and added patriarchal obstacles, undeniably there, should be taken seriously. How, then, to achieve a more balanced gender equality in the modern time is a question that remains challenging (...) for all. (shrink)

To effectively reduce the homework burden and off-campus training burden of students in the compulsory education stage in China, China adopts the double reduction policy to carry out corresponding governance in the field of education. This study aims to explore the public's psychological cognition of the current education system under the implementation of the double reduction policy. The public's opinion data on education concepts under the implementation of the double reduction policy are collected, then the (...) SPSS software and Amos software to quantitatively analyze the public's educational concept data are used, and a corresponding structural model equation to analyze the public's opinion on the implementation of the double reduction policy is established. The psychological concepts of all aspects of education are observed, the public's psychological views on education under the implementation of the double reduction policy are finally obtained, the ideological connotation of popularizing the double reduction policy for the general public is provided, and the balanced development of the domestic education system for the implementation of the double reduction policy is ensured. Two suggestions are made in order to provide a corresponding reference for the public's psychological cognition research on the current education system under the implementation of the double reduction policy. (shrink)

The editors welcome letters from readers, although we cannot guarantee that all will be published. To ensure timeliness, correspondents must respond to an article within seven weeks, and not exceed two double‐spaced pages. Letters become the property of the editors and may be edited and shortened at our discretion.

As of the time of writing of this paper (January 2023), Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused a European refugee crisis, death and displacement of countless Ukrainians, worldwide food shortage, fuel crisis and inflation. By comparing the Ukrainian example and the book of Ruth, this paper demonstrates that the effects of forced migration, food shortage and arrested economic productivity are tilted against women. This results in sudden stati of family headship and breadwinner, inability to provide meals for or stabilise the (...) family, and difficulty in attempting to re-establish a livelihood due to the double burden of care. The methodology of the paper is qualitative and gendered. In its interpretation of the biblical text, it is also allegorical and literary while for gathering the Ukrainian data, it is textual. One of the key findings of the study is that during displacement and crisis, women, unlike their male counterparts, tend to carry the family with them wherever they go, which means that women bear the greater burdens of these variables by far. The discussions in the sections of the paper merge the gendered situations, mindsets and events of the book of Ruth with those of the Ukrainian context.Contribution: Using the examples of the Russo Ukrainian war and the character of the biblical book of Ruth, this article examines the effects of displacement, food crisis and arrested economic production on women. This topic is aligned with the journal’s focus on religion, gender equality and environmental preservation, all of which fall within the journal’s scope. (shrink)

This inseparableness of everything in the world from language has intrigued modern thinkers, most notably Wittgenstein. If its limits—that is, the precise point at which sense becomes nonsense—could somehow be defined, then speakers would not attempt to express the inexpressible. Therefore, said Wittgenstein, do not put too great a burden upon language.

This paper is concerned with the formulation and analysis of an epidemic model of COVID-19 governed by an eight-dimensional system of ordinary differential equations, by taking into account the first dose and the second dose of vaccinated individuals in the population. The developed model is analyzed and the threshold quantity known as the control reproduction number R0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal {R}_{0}$$\end{document} is obtained. We investigate the equilibrium stability of the system, and the COVID-free equilibrium (...) is said to be locally asymptotically stable when the control reproduction number is less than unity, and unstable otherwise. Using the least-squares method, the model is calibrated based on the cumulative number of COVID-19 reported cases and available information about the mass vaccine administration in Malaysia between the 24th of February 2021 and February 2022. Following the model fitting and estimation of the parameter values, a global sensitivity analysis was performed by using the Partial Rank Correlation Coefficient (PRCC) to determine the most influential parameters on the threshold quantities. The result shows that the effective transmission rate (α)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(\alpha )$$\end{document}, the rate of first vaccine dose (ϕ)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(\phi )$$\end{document}, the second dose vaccination rate (σ)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(\sigma )$$\end{document} and the recovery rate due to the second dose of vaccination (η)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(\eta )$$\end{document} are the most influential of all the model parameters. We further investigate the impact of these parameters by performing a numerical simulation on the developed COVID-19 model. The result of the study shows that adhering to the preventive measures has a huge impact on reducing the spread of the disease in the population. Particularly, an increase in both the first and second dose vaccination rates reduces the number of infected individuals, thus reducing the disease burden in the population. (shrink)

Belying the rhetoric of “We’re all in this together,” and “COVID as the great equalizer,” the pandemic has brought into focus the “pre-existing conditions” of inequality—poverty, racism, lack of health care, lack of child care, women’s double burden, and the vulnerability of the elderly, among others. The coronavirus reveals gaping inequities in the length and quality of life caused by social and economic “pre-existing conditions.” It is the great unequalizer, the promise and ruse of “We’re all in this (...) together.” The new normal for some, is the old normal for many others. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that men should take primary responsibility for protecting against pregnancy. Male long-acting reversible contraceptives are currently in development, and, once approved, should be used as the standard method for avoiding pregnancy. Since women assume the risk of pregnancy when they engage in penis-in-vagina sex, men should do their utmost to ensure that their ejaculations are responsible, otherwise women shoulder a double burden of pregnancy risk plus contraceptive responsibility. Changing the expectations regarding responsibility for (...) contraception would render penis-in-vagina sex more equitable, and could lead to a shift in the discourse around abortion access. I describe the sex asymmetries of contraceptive responsibility and of pregnancy-related risk, and offer arguments in favour of men taking primary responsibility for contraception. My arguments centre on: analogies between contraception and vaccination, and unwanted pregnancy and disease; a veil-of-ignorance approach, in which I contend that if a person were not told their sex, they would find a society in which men were expected to acquire and use effective contraceptives the fairest arrangement for everyone. (shrink)

Concepts for sustainable bioeconomy systems are gradually replacing the ones on linear product chains. The reason is that continuously expanding linear chain activities are considered to contribute to climate change, reduced biodiversity, over-exploitation of resources, food insecurity, and the double burden of disease. Are sustainable bioeconomy systems a guarantee for a healthy planet? If yes, why, when, and how? In literature, different sustainability indicators have been presented to shed light on this complicated question. Due to high degrees of (...) complexity and interactions of actors in bioeconomy systems, trade-offs and non-linear outcomes became apparent. This fueled the debates about the normative dimensions of the bioeconomy. In particular, the behavior of actors and the utilization of products do not seem to be harmonized according to the environmental, social, and economic pillars of sustainability. Potential conflicts require a new conceptual framework that is here introduced. It consists of a ‘sustainability’ cylinder captured between an inner-cylinder, representing order, and an outer-cylinder for chaos, based on the laws of physics and complex adaptive systems. Such a framework permits (bioeconomy) systems to propagate in the sustainability zone only if they follow helical pathways serving as the new norms. Helices are a combination of two sinusoidal patterns. The first represents here the sustainable behavior of interacting actors and the second the balanced usage of resources and products. The latter counteracts current growth discourses. The applicability of the conceptual cylinder framework is positively verified via 9 cases in Europe, which encompass social-organizational and product-technological innovations. –. (shrink)

As a human rights activist and lawyer who believes in the mutuality of theology and legal philosophy, the author argues that Catholic philosophy can catalyse the process of global reconciliation. This is because the Church has the ability to recognise the double burden faced by Christians around the world (especially in Asia) who are struggling to disassociate themselves from an “alien” and “western” mantle, while still trying to live and preach the Christian doctrine and find common ground with (...) other religions and cultures. Catholic philosophy, therefore, must engage itself and others meaningfully at an inter-religious, interdisciplinary, and multi-cultural level. We now live at a time in Church history when the gap in education between the clergy and the laity has been dramaticallynarrowed; as a result, it is imperative—especially now—to allow competing voices within the Church to be heard so that a healthy tension might arise andthrive. This will help to increase the transparency of discourse within the Catholic community itself, while also providing adaptive tools for dialogue with other,non-Catholic communities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Clear Division of Labor Within Environmental Philosophy?William M. Throop (bio)In discussions about the future of environmental philosophy, I have found myself supporting two positions that are in tension with one another. The first, which has been well explored in the last decade, is that environmental philosophy should have a more dramatic impact outside of academic circles. It should affect policy and guide the behavior of non-philosophers, which usually (...) requires that it deeply engage the empirical details of problems it addresses. The second is that environmental philosophy needs to improve its status within the larger philosophical community, which requires its practitioners to use methods that dominate mainstream philosophy and to be conversant with contemporary work in ethical theory, epistemology, metaphysics, and continental philosophy. Some have argued that this tension places a double burden on those training to be environmental philosophers; they must demonstrate both theoretical and practical excellence. I fear that such a standard will limit [End Page 147] the growth of environmental philosophy. It will be daunting to new environmental philosophers and achieved by only a few.With respect to this tension, I suggest that environmental philosophy should support a robust division of labor. Many new environmental philosophers should be recruited from cohorts trained primarily in core areas of philosophy. Most of these thinkers will probably focus on highly theoretical issues—issues that anyone in the field would recognize as philosophical.Their knowledge of environmental problems may be superficial and their audience likely will consist primarily of other philosophers. Their impact beyond philosophy may be quite limited (except for their students). I come from this tradition, and I am still delighted by the purely intellectual puzzles that our field generates. Work of this sort should be honored, but our field will be sterile if it is dominated by this kind of thought.I hope that many other new environmental philosophers will be trained in interdisciplinary environmental graduate programs or "applied" philosophy Ph.D. programs where they will acquire the interdisciplinary expertise necessary to address practical problems and to effectively engage non-philosophical audiences. This group of "practical" environmental philosophers should also include a host of practitioners in other fields who contribute to philosophical dialogue. I suspect that much work in this area will be case-based, empirically sophisticated and, where it addresses non-philosophical audiences, more reliant on compelling metaphors than on tight arguments. I doubt that it is fruitful to view this group as applying the work of the former group. The aims, the sources of insight and the standards of quality for the two groups are categorically different. For practical philosophers, the political feasibility of a proposal matters, and the arguments must have the capacity to move relevant stakeholders. The results of this work may appear to be philosophy-lite to those in the first group, but only if judged by standards that are inappropriate if we accept a division of labor in the field.This division of labor cannot be an apartheid. Many promising innovations in environmental philosophy will come from the interface between these groups. And unfortunately, a good bit of questionable work done in each group may result from a failure to understand progress that has been made by the other group. For example, philosophers focused only on theory may draw implications for action that fail to accord with current empirical information. Practical philosophers may [End Page 148] critique simplified metaethical positions that have long been abandoned in favor of more sophisticated versions. A healthy dialogue and a mutual respect should diminish these dangers. Such a division of labor has significant implications for graduate education, hiring and evaluation of faculty, and allocation of prestige within the field. The health and growth of environmental philosophy will depend on part on how we address these implications.William M. Throop Bill Throop is provost and professor of philosophy at Green Mountain College, an environmental liberal arts college in Poultney, VT. His background is in epistemology and philosophy of science, but in the last decade his work has focused on conceptual and ethical issues in ecological restoration and wilderness preservation. E-mail: [email protected] © 2007 Indiana University Press... (shrink)

As a human rights activist and lawyer who believes in the mutuality of theology and legal philosophy, the author argues that Catholic philosophy can catalyse the process of global reconciliation. This is because the Church has the ability to recognise the double burden faced by Christians around the world (especially in Asia) who are struggling to disassociate themselves from an “alien” and “western” mantle, while still trying to live and preach the Christian doctrine and find common ground with (...) other religions and cultures. Catholic philosophy, therefore, must engage itself and others meaningfully at an inter-religious, interdisciplinary, and multi-cultural level. We now live at a time in Church history when the gap in education between the clergy and the laity has been dramaticallynarrowed; as a result, it is imperative—especially now—to allow competing voices within the Church to be heard so that a healthy tension might arise andthrive. This will help to increase the transparency of discourse within the Catholic community itself, while also providing adaptive tools for dialogue with other,non-Catholic communities. (shrink)

In this paper the author evaluates the situation of women in contemporary Polish society. Using statistical data and information from different disciplines, evidence is given that the situation of women today, in Poland, is worse than before 1989. Although, in general, women are better educated than men, adapt better to modern life, and have access to a growing variety of professional careers, the traditional image of women and of family life persists. Women still endure the double burden of (...) professional work and care for the household. They earn less and are more easily affected by unemployment and weak social assistance. They are also more affected by the dysfunctional aspects and low quality of public medical health care and face more risks due to weak access to medical services and high additional costs. This picture contrasts strongly with the situation of women in Western European countries, enjoying more personal autonomy, democratic freedom, social and economic security, financial independence, and access to the consumer market. (shrink)

A retrospective ELSPAC study (N = 2756) compared three groups of mothers of three-year-old children: 1) employed, 2) voluntarily unemployed, and 3) involuntarily unemployed, about the quality of their partnership and family relationships. The results show that the involuntarily unemployed mothers have the lowest quality of family life. In these families there is more conflict, disagreement and hostile communication towards the woman and child. Employed mothers also experience some family problems. Overall, those most satisfied with their family lives are the (...) voluntarily unemployed mothers. There is more positive communication between partners, including sharing and intimacy in this group. The results were interpreted as stemming from the distress caused by involuntary unemployment, the double burden of the female role and gender role models in the family. (shrink)

This paper examines and criticizes the defence of toleration due to John Rawls in Political Liberalism, and similar strategies mobilized in defence of toleration. It argues that the notion of the burdens of judgement, used by Rawls to defend his doctrine of reasonable pluralism, faces incoherence: schematically, either disagreement succumbs to reason, or vice versa. On similar grounds, reasonable disagreement defences of neutrality fail because of a double-mindedness about the relation between private judgements and public reason. This problem arises, (...) it is argued, from an attempt to make private judgements determinative in the formation of political and legal outcomes, even while subjecting the latter’s justification to norms of public reason. Deference to private judgements in political justification tends to countenance sedition, and this applies also to modern liberal attempts such as Rawls’s to ground toleration in private judgements. (shrink)

Preface -- Introduction -- The burden of English -- Who claims alterity? -- How to read a "culturally different" book -- The double bind starts to kick in -- Culture: situating feminism -- Teaching for the times -- Acting bits/identity talk -- Supplementing Marxism -- What's left of theory? -- Echo -- Translation as culture -- Translating into English -- Nationalism and the imagination -- Resident alien -- Ethics and politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and certain scenes of teaching (...) -- Imperative to re-imagine the planet -- Reading with Stuart Hall in "pure" literary terms -- Terror: a speech after 9/11 -- Harlem -- Scattered speculations on the subaltern and the popular -- World systems and the creole -- The stakes of world literature -- Rethinking comparativism -- Sign and trace -- Tracing the skin of day. (shrink)

Background Several ethical issues are associated with providing living organ transplantation services, and there is limited information on these issues faced by the teams providing service to refugees or asylum seekers. Aim To determine the challenges healthcare professionals face in organ transplant centers providing services to Syrians under temporary protection status and discern whether these difficulties align with ethical issues in living organ transplantation. Research design This study employed a qualitative design and conducted individual semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 18 transplant (...) team members in Istanbul between September and November 2022. Data analysis was based on Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis. Participants and research context The participants comprised 18 healthcare professionals, including 6 physicians and 12 nurses working in organ transplant teams in Istanbul. Ethical considerations The University’s Ethics Committee provided approval. Participants were informed regarding confidentiality and signed an informed consent form. Results Three themes emerged from the data on ethical issues faced by organ transplantation services to Syrians: (a) beneficence or double equipoise, (b) autonomy, and (c) justice. Transplant teams experience problems related to preserving double equipoise in the provision of living donor organ transplantation because of language barriers, poor socioeconomic conditions, and cultural factors, which increases transplant teams’ individual and indirect social burden. Although problems arise from the language barrier when obtaining informed consent in the autonomy theme, institutional and national policies in preventing donor abuse have a comforting effect. Health workers had the least problems with the justice theme, wherein national health policies are determined. Conclusion Fewer issues related to autonomy and justice were reported in providing organ transplantation services to Syrians, with the most intense reported issues being maintaining double equipoise. The results revealed the need to develop institutional, national, and international policies with individual solutions to prevent difficulties healthcare professionals face in this process. (shrink)

‘Epistemic exploitation occurs when privileged persons compel marginalised knowers to educate them [and others] about the nature of their oppression’ (Berenstain, 2016, p. 569). This paper scrutinizes some of the purported wrongs underpinning this practice, so that educators might be better equipped to understand and avoid or mitigate harms which may result from such interventions. First, building on the work of Berenstain and Davis (2016), we argue that when privileged persons (in this context, educators) repeatedly compel marginalised or oppressed knowers, (...) to not only to educate them, but indeed others, about the nature of their oppression, they risk subjecting them to further epistemic-moral harms. This is due to the likelihood that at least some of their audience will assign them less/more credibility than they deserve based on pre-existing identity-based prejudices. Second, though some of these requests to ‘educate’ or ‘learn more’ masquerade as seemingly virtuous or innocuous epistemic inquiries, privileged persons underestimate or remain ignorant of secondary harms which stem from internalized epistemic obligations, oppressive double-binds (Hirji, 2021), and attendant emotional burdens oppressed knowers carry in relation to the ever-present possibility of ameliorating oppressor mindsets. After surveying each context-specific harm briefly, we then turn to an applied reading of how these exploitative practices sometimes culminate in something we refer to as ‘ontic burnout’, a form of interminable explanatory fatigue brought on by repeated requests to educate the privileged about what it means to be oppressed. (shrink)

We argue that the interaction of biased media coverage and widespread employment of the recognition heuristic can produce epistemic injustices. First, we explain the recognition heuristic as studied by Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues, highlighting how some of its components are largely external to, and outside the control of, the cognitive agent. We then connect the recognition heuristic with recent work on the hypotheses of embedded, extended, and scaffolded cognition, arguing that the recognition heuristic is best understood as an instance of (...) scaffolded cognition. In section three, we consider the double-edged sword of cognitive scaffolding. On the one hand, scaffolds can reduce the internal processing demands on cognitive agents while increasing their access to information. On the other hand, the use of scaffolding leaves cognitive agents increasingly vulnerable to forming false beliefs or failing to form beliefs at all about particular topics. With respect to the recognition heuristic, agents rely on third parties (such as the media) to report not just what’s true but also what’s important or valuable. This makes cognitive agents relying on these third parties vulnerable to two erroneous influences: 1) because they don’t recognize something, it isn’t important or valuable, and 2) because they do recognize something, it is important or valuable. Call the latter the Kardashian Inference and the former the Darfur Inference. In section four, we use Fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice to characterize the nature and harm of these false inferences, with special emphasis on the Darfur Inference. In section five, we use data-mining and an empirical study to show how Gigerenzer’s population estimation task is liable to produce Darfur Inferences. We conclude with some speculative remarks on more important Darfur Inferences, and how to avoid them by scaffolding better. One primary way to accomplish this it to shift the burden of embodying the virtue of epistemic justice from the hearer or consumer of media to the media themselves. (shrink)

In this article it is argued that a complex model that includes Toulmin's functional account of argument, the pragma-dialectical stage analysis of argumentation offered by the Amsterdam School, and criteria developed in critical thinking theory, can be used to account for the normativity and field-dependence of argumentation in science. A pragma-dialectical interpretation of the four main elements of Toulmin's model, and a revised account of the double role of warrants, illuminates the domain specificity of scientific argumentation and the restrictions (...) to which the confrontation and opening stages of scientific critical discussions are subjected. In regard to the argumentation stage, examples are given to show that a general account of argumentation, as advocated by informal logicians, is not applicable to arguments in science. Furthermore, although patterns of inference differ in various scientific practices, deductive validity is argued to be a crucial notion in the assessment of scientific arguments. Finally, some remarks are made concerning the burden of proof and the concluding stage of scientific argumentation. (shrink)

No laws or official guidelines govern medical assistance for dying in Japan. However, over the past several years, cases of assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia, rarely disclosed until recently, have occurred in close succession. Inspired by these events, ethical, legal, and social debates on a patient’s right to die have arisen in Japan, as it has in many other countries. Several surveys of Japanese people’s attitudes towards voluntary assisted dying suggest that a certain number of Japanese prefer active euthanasia. Against (...) this background, it is important to discuss voluntary assisted dying cases in Japan and the Japanese views on them and to consider their implications. We review three recent Japanese voluntary assisted dying cases and discuss the various objections to voluntary assisted dying that have been published in response to these in various media outlets. Our counterarguments include the double suffering of people who are unable to give up their desire to die, individuality of death, variability of culture, problem of being an annoyance to (burden on) others, a slippery slope argument supporting voluntary assisted dying, and unfair claims about responsibility and excessive burden on people who are unable to give up their desire to die. We also point out the psychocultural and social problems in Japanese society that these objections reflect, and argue that voluntary assisted dying can be ethically acceptable under certain conditions. We conclude that Japanese society must change in order to enable those who sincerely wish to die to do so in a better way. (shrink)

Ethics dumping is a global phenomenon involving the ‘off-shoring’of research. Research that would be prohibited, severely restrictedor regarded as highly patronizing in high-income regions is instead conducted inresource-poor settings. Twenty-eight case studies of ethics dumping were examined through inductive thematic analysis to reveal predisposing factors from the perspective of researchers from high-income regions. Six categories were agreed and further illuminated: Patronizing conduct, unfair distribution of benefits and/or burdens, culturally inappropriate conduct, double standards, lack of due diligence and lack of (...) transparency. The ultimate aim of the paper is to deepen understanding of thesehighly unethical practicesamongst academics who stand against poverty, leading to theirfurther reduction. (shrink)

How do social audiences negotiate and handle stigmatized organizations? What role do their heterogenous values, norms and power play in this process? Addressing these questions is important from a business ethics perspective to improve our understanding of the ethical standards against which organizations are judged as well as the involved prosecutorial incentives. Moreover, it illuminates ethical concerns about when and how power imbalances may induce inequity in the burdens imposed by such social evaluations. We address these questions building on two (...) event-based case studies involving Hells Angels Motorcycle Club Norway, and contribute to organizational stigma theory in three ways. First, social evaluations of a stigmatized organization by multiple audiences are found to interact, collide and combine in a labelling contest. Second, we show that labels employed in this contest are pushed to either negative extremes or positive extremes. Finally, we show when and how power represents a double-edged sword in social evaluation processes, which can be wielded either to the benefit or to the detriment of the actors under evaluation. (shrink)

It has recently been argued by Gabriel Herman that fourth-century Athenian citizens, or at least the majority of them, believed that even under the impact of serious private aggression a man should not pursue revenge. The general ideal, so it is maintained, was to avoid not only violent revenge but also revenge through prosecution. Herman recognizes that other Athenian texts of the same period take the propriety of exacting revenge for granted, and he explains this in part by reference to (...) a supposed ‘double standard’—a rather strange expression in this context, because it suggests that the propriety of revenge in classical Athens depended on the status of the victim of the revenge—which is not in fact the burden of Herman's doctrine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Again: Hume on Miracles Joseph Ellin At the risk of casting shadows where luminaries of scholarship have failed to throw enough light, I would like to add a note to the debate between Fogelin (1990) and Flew (1990) about what Hume was trying to show in the chapter on miracles (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sec. 10). Fogelin posits, and Flew with reservations acknowledges, a "traditional interpretation" consisting oftwo (...) theses: TI.1 Hume did not put forward ana priori argument intended to show that miracles are not possible. TI.2 Hume did put forward an a priori argument intended to show that testimony, however strong, could never make it reasonable to believe that a miracle had occurred. (Fogelin 1990, 81) The disagreement between Fogelin and Flew could not be more complete: FogeUn thinks TLl is false and TI.2 true; Flew thinks TI.l is true and TI.2 false. Nonetheless, I disagree with both of them: I defend both theses of TI, and shall give a different (better) reason for each. FogeUn argues against TI.l by citing "clear texts... that go dead against it" (1990, 81). These are three sentences from the last but one paragraph of part 1: Amiracle is a violation ofthe laws ofnature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature ofthe fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.... There must... be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there ishere a directand fullproof, from the nature ofthe fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proofbe destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, butbyan opposite proof, which is superior.1 From these passages Fogelin constructs an argument, which I shall reconstruct as follows: Volume XLX Number 1 203 JOSEPH ELLIN 1.The proof against any miracle is direct and full unless destroyed by an opposite, superior, proof. 2.Since the proof against any miracle is as entire as any argument from experience can be imagined, there can be no opposite superior proof. Therefore: 3.The proofagainst any miracle is direct and full. FogeUn comments: "the strong claim in the second premise that the proof against a miracle is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined cancels the possibility left open in the first premise that there might be an opposite proof, which is superior. The conclusion then follows at once" (1990, 83). This argument is certainly sound; is it Hume's? Is it a priori? Does it show that miracles are not possible? Flew argues that it is not Hume's: "Proofs against proofs are no proofs" (1990, 142). Because a "proof" is a conclusive argument, there cannotbe proofs which are opposite but superior to other proofs; hence Hume's term "proof" needs some qualification: Hume means "what would in ordinary circumstances be accounted a proof, yet in the present case may conceivably not be" (Flew 1990, 144). One support for Flew is that when Hume in the previous paragraph supposes "that the testimony [for the miracle] considered apart and in itself, amounts to an entire proof " (E 114), he invokes a double standard, distinguishing the kind of evidence which, in the ordinary case, would be taken as proof, from what shouldbe so regarded in the case ofan alleged miracle (if one hundred witnesses testify that Lazarus got up from his bed and danced, this would ordinarily be taken to be proof; but not if he had died first). But though Flew has the better ofit with regard to the word "proof," 2 he hasn't made out his case against Fogelin, for it is not the word "proof" but the terms "direct and full" and "entire" that seem to carry the burden of Fogelin's reconstructed argument. Hume's distinction is between proof tout court, which means roughly a good enough case, and proof "full" or "entire," which perhaps does mean conclusive demonstration. We could roughly put this reconstruction as follows: If you had a 'conclusive proof ofany miracle, well and good... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:David Michael Levin ROUSSEAU'S CURSE Pretext Rousseau is the author of a text he called his Confessions. ' But neither a text nor a confession can exist without a reader, or an other. Like it or not, we readers are participants in the rite of Rousseau's confessions. Do we have anything to confess? When the reading of a confession uncovers the spelling of a curse, so that the self-accused (...) author appears to accuse his readers, the discoverers of the curse can no longer pretend their neutrality and innocence. In fact, the detectives must assume the identity of the accused. In such a special case, then, the inevitable work of textual interpretation magically doubles as the story of a mysteriously elusive "crime" and its final, or anyway presumed detection. But, as in the very best of such stories, neither the skillfully executed crime nor its invisible author—if indeed these terms denote anything at all—need be what they seem. So perhaps the only thing we can say for sure here is that the spelling of the curse is the curse of spelling. And this puts us on the track of a mystery as ancient as the art of writing itself—a mystery whose story the scholars of hermeneutics have thus far preferred to ignore. The mystery I have in mind is the secret affinity between writing and death. A careful hermeneutic approach to Plato's critique of writing, however, may give us a crucial clue. For what binds written language to the power of death is its role in mourning, its incarnation in the form of shadows: black configurations of shadows placed for visibility against the white of the paper. In Plato's Myth of the Cave, the crime of writing is dimly adumbrated. Writing is idolatry, worship of false images, shadows. Rousseau's Confessions, written near the end of his life in the shadow of death, does not escape the shadows of doubt and suspicion which we, his readers, having discovered our own selves inscribed into the darkness of the text, cannot easily refrain from casting. But as soon as we recognize in the shapes of these shadows a suspicion for which 76 David Michael Levin77 we are responsible, we must confess our fatal complicity in the closing of the hermeneutical circle. Commentary on the Text If Rousseau's Confessions does not read like the typical memoir, neither does it read like the typical confession. A final twist awaits us. We read with a certain innocence, or faith, not prepared for the transitive conclusion: the text, as it happens, will bequeath a monstrous and impossible burden. What is the reader to do? How could it be that this man, who seemed to honor us, and won our trust with the candor of his revelations, should so boldly, by one cross conceit, vanish, only to leave us double-crossed and within a labyrinth which, as he would have us believe, we ourselves have wrought? What are we to make of his work? At first, the Confessions appears to be a work of light: with dazzling clarity of mind and courage no less prismatic, Rousseau proposes to take his readers into the gloomy chasms of his soul. "My purpose," he declares, "is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray is myself" (p. 17). That this, however, is not the whole of his intention, we learn through a neighboring sentence. For he says: "Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I shall come forward with this work in my hand, to present myself before my Sovereign Judge, and proclaim aloud: 'Here is what I have done'..." (p. 17). And yet, even this does not fully disclose his design, since he concedes, somewhat later, that "it is as if, feeling my life escaping from me, I were trying to recapture it at its beginnings" (p. 31). But in the end, as in the beginning, darkness and light are one. And indeed, deep into the Seventh Book, we see that the author's light does begin to dim, and that he no longer speaks with much assurance. Nor is... (shrink)

There is increasing global pressure to ensure that pregnant women are responsibly and safely included in clinical research in order to improve the evidence base that underpins healthcare delivery during pregnancy. One supposed barrier to inclusion is the assumption that pregnant women will be reluctant to participate in research. There is however very little empirical research investigating the views of pregnant women. Their perspective on the benefits, burdens and risks of research is a crucial component to ensuring effective recruitment. The (...) Research In Pregnancy Ethics study set out to ascertain the views of pregnant women about research participation using an inductive thematic analysis. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 women who had participated in a double-blind randomised placebo controlled trial in Wellington while pregnant. Our results show that at least some pregnant women recognise the value and importance of research during pregnancy. The women we interviewed were deeply invested in the research process and outcomes. Key motivations for participating were altruism, playing a valuable civic role and the importance of research. The main perceived burdens related to inconvenience and time commitment. For some women, possible randomization to the placebo arm was regarded as a burden or disadvantage. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Camus’s Meursault and Sartrian IrresponsibilityDavid ShermanIn the wake of poststructuralism, with its glorification of the libidinal play of unaccountable, fragmented subjectivities, the concept of personal responsibility has been rehabilitated. From the French fascination with various forms of neo-Kantianism to the American interest in homey (albeit demagogic) books on the virtues, personal responsibility is regaining currency. But what, exactly, does it mean to be personally responsible? When Albert Camus suggested (...) in “Neither Victims Nor Executioners” that non-violence was the “responsible” position for intellectuals to take on the Algerian crisis, he was reproached for legalistically evading responsibility by his erstwhile friend Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre, who offered up the concept of “absolute responsibility,” and viewed any attempt to obscure the nature of this ontological burden for oneself as “bad faith,” regarded Camus’s position as just such an attempt: “If you’re not victims when the government which you voted for, when the army in which your younger brothers are serving... have undertaken race murder, you are, without a shadow of a doubt, executioners.” 1 For Sartre, who tentatively advocated revolutionary violence, taking responsibility meant acknowledging that “bloodying one’s hands” is unavoidable.The concept of personal responsibility is well considered within the context of French existentialism, which made it one of its hallmarks. In this essay, however, I shall approach personal responsibility from the vantage point of its opposite, personal irresponsibility. Towards this end, I shall consider Meursault, the protagonist in Camus’s The Stranger, whom I take to be one of the most irresponsible characters in literature. The depths of Meursault’s irresponsibility can best be appreciated, fittingly enough, within Sartre’s psychoanalytic framework. [End Page 60]IIn Being and Nothingness, Sartre offers up the ontologically rooted phenomenon of bad faith, which, for present purposes, can be explicated as follows: consciousness, which is intentional (nothing more than that which it is conscious of), reflectively reconstitutes the Self, which does not exist in consciousness but as an object in the external world. There is no intrinsic Self, and the Self that does exist is perpetually being transcended. Despite this state of unremitting transcendence, however, at any point in time there are the undeniable facts of our particular existences, which (however we choose to interpret them) define the range of our possible projects. These brute facts, which are inexorable, constitute our facticity. Thus, Sartre tells us, there is a “double property of the human being, who is at once a facticity and a transcendence” (B&N, p. 98). 2 It is in a person’s approach to the relationship between these two properties, which is marked by an irresolvable tension, that bad faith arises: “Bad faith does not wish either to coordinate them or to surmount them in a synthesis. Bad faith seeks to affirm their identity while preserving their differences. It must affirm facticity as being transcendence and transcendence as being facticity, in such a way that at the instant when a person apprehends the one, he can find himself abruptly faced with the other” (B&N, p. 98).Sartre provides numerous illustrations of individuals who flee from either their facticity or transcendence. For example, there is the homosexual and his interlocutor, the “champion of sincerity.” The former, despite repeated homosexual encounters, refuses to draw the conclusion that he is a homosexual; instead, he sees both his past behavior and his present inclinations as part of a “restless search.” Conversely, the latter demands that the homosexual sincerely avow what he is, “a homosexual.” Both are in bad faith. The homosexual denies responsibility for all that he has done by perpetually pushing his conception of Self into the future, and thus perpetually beyond the reach of his ability to make judgments about himself—he makes a mockery of his past and present choices. The champion of sincerity, on the other hand, pushes the homosexual’s conception of Self into the past in order to make it a thing—he denies the homosexual’s (and perhaps his own) freedom to make future choices, which is what enables us to transcend what we presently are. The former flees facticity; the latter, transcendence.All persons in bad faith fall... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 234-235 [Access article in PDF] Leonard Lawlor. Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xii + 286. Paper, $19.95. Ever since Derrida began producing his interpretive critical studies on the giant figures of Husserl and Heidegger, a book of the kind Lawlor offers has been needed. Framing his study by drawing directly from Derrida's (...) texts themselves, Lawlor takes up in detail Derrida's interpretation and critique of Husserl's phenomenology to show how he moves beyond the framework he identifies as Husserl's in developing his "deconstruction."In the course of a study thus primarily internal to Derrida's texts, Lawlor provides one of the greatest strengths of the book, his fine treatment of the way the work of French thinkers subsequent to Husserl helped Derrida develop the distinctive enterprise of "deconstruction": specifically, Jean Cavaillès, Tran-Duc-Thao (ch. 4, parts 1-2), Jean Hyppolyte (ch. 5, part 1), and Emmanuel Levinas (chs. 6-8). Determinative prior to that, however, is the influence Lawlor shows stemming from Eugen Fink's published writings (chapter 1). Impressive as well throughout (though his "internalist" restriction also shows serious faults—mentioned later) is the exegetical subtlety Lawlor exercises upon Derrida's writings, those concentrating on Husserl from 1953 to 1967, together with one on Lévinas ("Violence et métaphysique," 1964/1967) and three later ones no longer dealing with Husserl (principally "Les fins de l'homme," 1972, De l'esprit, 1987, on Heidegger, and "Spectres de Marx," 1993). It is a choice of texts that is eminently justifiable, even if the necessary inclusion of the latter introduces a dimension that needs to be contrasted more incisively with the way the Husserl-centered material is focused.Lawlor is excellent in showing a shift in interpretive focus and character taking place as Derrida moves from his treatment of Husserl in Le problème de la genèse dans la philosophie de Husserl (1953-54) through his "Introduction" to Husserl's Origine de la géométrie (1962) to La voix et le phénomène (1967) (chs. 4-6). Derrida's interpretive critique of Husserl thus begins with the primacy of the problem of "genesis," of "origin," then moves in transition through the second book (via the notable interlude on Lévinas, ch. 6) to the decisive break from Husserl in the third (ch. 7). With this last, La voix et le phénomène, Lawlor writes, "[t]he problem of the sign has come to replace, for Derrida, the problem of genesis" (166). Here instead of the transcendental power of origination being the intuition-effecting subjectivity of Husserl's Ideas I, a double replacement occurs by which a) "the voice" becomes for Derrida the "ultra-transcendental," and b) its constitutive dynamic, "temporality," is cast as a movement of pure "auto-affection" in a process called "archi-writing," unceasingly generating a supply of element upon element in a "supplement"-driven articulation of meaning (192-97)—in sum, différance as co-incident "differentiation" and "deferral" (196-205). This is the burden of the section (chs. 6 and 7) entitled "The End of Phenomenology and Ontology," closing a debate between Husserl—"phenomenology"—and Heidegger—"ontology." With this the new, post-phenomenological, post-ontological effort begins, the era in which Derrida's philosophic work, now after the definitive "deconstruction of metaphysics," gradually moves ethico-political issues into the foreground, though "[d]ifférance and supplementarity" continue as basic concepts (211-12). Here no foundational grounding underlies clarifications in the region of meaning and value, or rather a "non-foundation" subtends any gaining of insight, radically qualifying its claims. One's efforts deploy in ever-renewed consideration of issues guided by something "deeper than being," by a "non-foundational," "non-ontological" "aporia" "experienced" in deconstructive ultimacy as "the unheard-of question" (234).About all this, some reservations have to be raised. First of all, it is quite clear that in fact the question of "genesis" remains; the whole... (shrink)

Listening and responding to patients’ stories for over 20 years as an emergency physician has strengthened my appreciation for the many ways that the skills and principles drawn from writing fiction double as necessary clinical skills. The best medicine doesn’t work on the wrong story, and the stories patients tell sometimes feel like first drafts—vital and fragile works-in-progress. Increasingly complex health challenges compounded by social, financial, and psychological burdens make for stories that are difficult to articulate and comprehend. In (...) this essay, I argue that healthcare providers need to think like creative writers and the skills and sensitivities necessary to story construction deserve a vital space in medical education. A thorough understanding of story anatomy and the imaginative flexibility to work stories into open spaces serve as antidotes to the reductive nature of clinical decision making and have implications as patient safety and risk management strategies. The examples that I have selected demonstrate how thinking like a creative writer functions at the bedside, providing tools for clinical excellence and empathy. This approach asks that we re-imagine the importance of story in clinical care: from a vehicle to a diagnosis to its place as a critical destination. (shrink)

Climate justice demands polluters to take responsibility for both present and future harm caused by past GHG emissions and for future harm caused by future GHG emissions. One problem with this is double climate taxation: people living in historical polluting countries must both shoulder the burden of an effective and inclusive climate transition and repay the climate debt incurred by their predecessors. Although double climate taxation might be defensible on normative grounds, it risks making climate justice politically (...) infeasible. I therefore maintain that global climate justice should focus on future, rather than past, climate harms. The forward-looking polluter pays principle (FL-PPP) can ensure both a cost-effective climate transition and a fair distribution of the climate burden, provided it is applied as follows: i) each country must introduce a carbon price calibrated to the global social cost of carbon; ii) each country must transfer part of carbon revenues collected at the country level to an international fund; iii) global carbon revenues must be redistributed on the basis of the country-level social cost of carbon. The FL-PPP burden can be made more progressive, moreover, if the formula for allocating global carbon revenues is adjusted through two coefficients, one consumption-based and one priority-sensitive. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 364-367 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Hamlet in Purgatory Hamlet in Purgatory, by Stephen Greenblatt; xii & 322 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, $29.95. Hamlet in Purgatory is both more and less than literary criticism of Shakespeare's most haunting and most critically belabored play. Greenblatt has captured an evolving culture of belief which informs the play and goes far beyond source studies (...) or the history of ideas. He assays to show how the Medieval doctrine of Purgatory and the rejection of it by Protestant Reformers shaped the structure of Hamlet and the world of Hamlet's spiritual agony.Central to the argument is the notion that the rejection of Purgatory, and ritual practices associated with the doctrine, threatened to disrupt community and sever the relations between the living and the dead. Thus, the senior Hamlet's plea to "Remember me" takes precedence over his injunction to revenge; traditional preoccupations of Hamlet criticism become secondary to the concern for spiritual community which Reformation doctrine threatened. The exegesis is scholarly and the prose is engaging, yet the book suffers from the new historicist tendency to become absorbed more with context than with criticism and to assume too readily the relevance of the context to the criticism. Put another way, Greenblatt, like other new historicists, is not always rigorous in his inferences.Greenblatt warns that his book "requires a certain hermeneutical patience, a willingness to suspend direct literary analysis, in order to examine more thoroughly what has been treated as mere background for the canonical work of art" (p. 5). Although the book culminates in a description of the migration of discarded religious ritual into the theater, and a thoughtful commentary on Hamlet, Greenblatt cautions that "... for the book to work properly, the reader should understand literary analysis, and specifically the analysis of Hamlet, to be suspended in another sense as well, that is, distributed in tiny, almost invisible particles throughout my account" (p. 5). Amen. The caveats are essential for anyone who might expect an "interpretation" of Hamlet. Rather, Greenblatt has evoked the conflict of enduring beliefs and Reformist critiques which animated Shakespeare's imagination and Hamlet's suffering.Hermeneutical patience certainly is demanded of the reader, because more than half of the book presents commentaries on the doctrine of Purgatory from the late Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. Greenblatt begins with Simon Fish's 1529 "Supplication for the Beggars," (p. 15) an anti-purgatorial (and anti-clerical) tract addressed to Henry VIII. Fish argued that the doctrine of Purgatory is at the heart of ecclesiastical corruption and is a danger to the state, because the fear that the doctrine can generate enables the clergy to extort enormous wealth in the form of "suffrages," donations for trentals, anniversary Masses, and other perpetual penitential memorials on behalf of the dead. Fish's argument is double: its theological burden is that Purgatory is a non-scriptural superstition; its rhetoric is that it is an abuse of the [End Page 364] poor and a danger to the economic solvency of the kingdom. Fish invokes both doctrinal error and political danger; this is thus an excellent tract to begin the elucidation of the complexity of Reformist objections to Purgatory in sixteenth-century England. Greenblatt adds that other Reformers saw Purgatory as a poetic creation, a fable, and therefore a vain imagining. John Donne's "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" is cited to show that post-Catholic divines believed that purgation must be completed in this life.According to Greenblatt, an unintended consequence for the laity of the rejection of Purgatory is the creation of a radical divide between the living and the dead. If we pray for the dead, they are not as absent from us as if they had passed on to the timeless worlds of Heaven or Hell. Even if Purgatory is expensive or fabulous, its loss destroys a community with the dead that involved a reciprocal and continuing relationship, whereby the living can aid the dead towards Heaven and saved souls can eventually become intercessors in Heaven for the living... (shrink)

Gendered socialization has prompted numerous attempts to redefine what counts as an autonomous choice. However, there is strong disagreement among feminist theorists over the criteria to identify cases of autonomy impairment _vis-à-vis_ the embeddedness of individuals in patriarchal cultures. I argue that this focus on choice and autonomy has often neglected the costs of non-compliance to social norms and the trade-offs that women make to flourish within their community. Even if we were to find an effective way to determine whether (...) a self-regarding choice calls for state interference because of its socialized nature, we would still lack a sufficient justification for interfering with women’s choices. To justify political action, my claim is that we should also look at the effects that preference interference would have on women within their societal context. Consequently, I develop a non-ideal feminist account aimed chiefly at analysing the costs of proposed feminist change. I shall focus in particular on women’s engagement with practices of body modification for the sake of conforming to gendered standards of appearance, such as cosmetic surgery and hymen restoration. In both cases, I argue that blanket bans risk backfiring into a form of double-jeopardy for those who are already the most vulnerable to gendered oppression, hence they are not justified. However, this does not imply passively accepting the status quo but urges us to reconsider new ways to offset transition costs, making resistance to social norms a collectively shared endeavour rather than a burden that exclusively befalls the most vulnerable. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel use of tax policy to address one of the most pressing issues arising from economic globalization and international migration, that of “brain drain” – in particular, the migration of certain skilled and highly trained or educated professionals from less and least developed countries to wealthy “western” countries. This problem is perhaps most pressing in relation to doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals, but exists also for teachers, lawyers, economists, engineers, and other highly skilled or trained (...) professionals. While there have been other proposals in the past to use tax policy to address brain drain (most famously versions of the so-called “Bhagwati Tax”, a form of exit tax), in this paper I provide an account of and justification for using tax credits, modeled loosely on the foreign tax credits U.S. citizens receive in certain situations for taxes paid in other countries. My proposal avoids several of the pitfalls of other methods of using tax policy to ameliorate the harms of brain drain, as it does not subject people from the developing world to potentially onerous double taxation, and does not depend on sophisticated tax collection capabilities within developing countries, capabilities which are often lacking. Additionally, my proposal also leads to fewer morally problematic restrictions on the liberty of citizens of less and least developed countries than do non-taxed based alternative proposals, such as temporary bans on migration. While the proposal cannot hope to completely solve the problems that arise in relation to brain drain – no approach can do this – it does provide a straightforward way to ameliorate the problems that arise from it without placing significant financial or liberty burdens on already less advantaged people from the developing world. -/- (This paper may be downloaded for free from the link to my SSRN page below). (shrink)

Gendered socialization has prompted numerous attempts to redefine what counts as an autonomous choice. However, there is strong disagreement among feminist theorists over the criteria to identify cases of autonomy impairment _vis-à-vis_ the embeddedness of individuals in patriarchal cultures. I argue that this focus on choice and autonomy has often neglected the costs of non-compliance to social norms and the trade-offs that women make to flourish within their community. Even if we were to find an effective way to determine whether (...) a self-regarding choice calls for state interference because of its socialized nature, we would still lack a sufficient justification for interfering with women’s choices. To justify political action, my claim is that we should also look at the effects that preference interference would have on women within their societal context. Consequently, I develop a non-ideal feminist account aimed chiefly at analysing the costs of proposed feminist change. I shall focus in particular on women’s engagement with practices of body modification for the sake of conforming to gendered standards of appearance, such as cosmetic surgery and hymen restoration. In both cases, I argue that blanket bans risk backfiring into a form of double-jeopardy for those who are already the most vulnerable to gendered oppression, hence they are not justified. However, this does not imply passively accepting the status quo but urges us to reconsider new ways to offset transition costs, making resistance to social norms a collectively shared endeavour rather than a burden that exclusively befalls the most vulnerable. (shrink)

The value of up-hill skiing is double, it is first a sport and artistic expression, second it incorporates functional dependencies related to the natural obstacles which the individual aims to overcome. On the artistic side, M. Dufrenne shows the importance of living movement in dance, and we can compare puppets with dancers in order to grasp the lack of intentional spiritual qualities in the former. The expressivity of dance, as for, Chi Gong, ice skating or ski mountaineering is a (...) particular innocence and lightness which is called grace. It is life without the burden of worries. Grace, in slow progression uphill on snow, is as dance for Dufrenne, it has the most central and specific aesthetical quality of life. Others compared dance to a landscape, a landscape is for the sight, what dance is for life, a symbolical space, different from a usual space, where utility and dependency are present. A mountain can be a space of experience of natural beauty. Aesthetical qualities can be closely related to function related qualities as when a climber needs to adjust his movements to the natural convex inclination of the rocks, and avoid slippery forms of inclination, present on the other side of the mountain. The natural object, the quality of the snow or the rock differ from the aesthetical quality of the style of ascent by the absence of neutralization of the object, in case of a purely instrumental approach. On the contrary, grace in the rhythm of the progression of ski climbers needs a difference of attitude, which is not only proper to the playing, and delimited by the conditions of that play, but as a contingency driven attitude, without signification as radical alterity, without any finality. First ascent of the Matterhorn succeeded from the Swiss side, and not from the Italian side because of the different inclination of the rock on both sides. Grace in dance as in martial art or mountaineering is allowing to perceive an autonomy of the expression, as the truth of the perceived object, it puts away a cognitive and practical orientation and replaces it by a new meaning as movement in the whole set of movements done by the climber. This replacement of the functional expression resembles that operated by the painter who chooses a color in the whole set of colors in a painting, or a shape in the whole set of possible existing shapes. -/- Ref. Dufrenne, Mikel, (1989): The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience. Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, trans. by Edward S. Casey, 1st publ. in 1953, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (shrink)

While our common sense seems to tell us that intention matters to ethical evaluation, there is considerable disagreement among ethicists regarding why and how it matters. In this article I argue that intention matters to act evaluation in much the way that the principle of double effect implies. First, I identify five propositions—one epistemological and four ethical—that the proponent of PDE holds regarding the ethical relevance of intention. Second, I give two general arguments for the ethical relevance of intention. (...) Third, I offer preliminary arguments for each of the five propositions outlined in the first section. Together, these general and more specific arguments are meant to place the burden of proof on one denying intention’s relevance to act evaluation. Fourth and finally, then, I show that recent critiques of PDE and of the ethical relevance of intention fail to carry that burden of proof. (shrink)

Judging by their contribution to the global burden of death and disability, chronic, non-communicable diseases are the most serious health challenge facing the world today. The statistics tell a frightening story. Over 35 million people died from chronic diseases in 2005 — principally cardiovascular disease, cancer, and chronic respiratory disease. Driven by population growth and population ageing, deaths from non-communicable diseases are expected to increase by 17% over the period 2005-2015, accounting for 69% of global deaths by 2030.Cardiovascular disease, (...) the leading cause of death in all regions except sub-Saharan Africa, is estimated to rise from 17.1 million deaths to 23.4 million deaths. Cancer deaths will increase from 7.4 million to 11.8 million over the same period. Due to population growth, mergers and acquisitions, and the marketing of global cigarette brands in developing countries, deaths from tobacco will rise from 5.4 million per year, through 6.4 million, to 8.3 million by 2030. These figures include a doubling in tobacco deaths in low- and middle-income countries from 3.4 million to 6.8 million lives annually. By 2015, smoking will cause 50% more deaths than HIV/AIDS. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant burden across different industrial sectors. Generally, an increase in psychological stress experiences has been reported, while the stress and coping responses of specific, potentially burdened populations have received less attention thus far. Thus, the present study investigated relations between individual and organizational factors, indicators of psychological health, and possible mediating effects of four broad coping dimensions in a specific sample of soldier students who engage in a double-role being military affiliates and students (...) of non-military subjects. To this end, we assessed data of soldier students at two measurement points shortly after the second national lockdown in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic. Personality traits showed expected associations with indicators of psychological health, i.e., positive relations between neuroticism and social loneliness, between extraversion and COVID-19 stress, and negative relations between neuroticism and life satisfaction. Remarkably, organizational variables showed effects above and beyond personality traits on loneliness and life satisfaction. Neither individual, nor organizational factors could predict change in psychological health over time. We found evidence for mediation effects through active coping, avoidant coping, and the use of social support, but not through positive cognitive restructuring. Findings highlight the relative importance of organizational factors besides personality traits for psychological health in a military student sample, holding important implications for designing efficient support systems in the military. (shrink)

French abstract: L’article étudie la relation de Peirce à Comte, en partant des critiques formulées dans ses écrits de jeunesse. Son enjeu est double : il relève d’abord d’une question d’histoire de la philosophie étonnamment peu traitée, alors même que Peirce lit, commente et critique Comte. Le second enjeu est épistémologique et métaphysique : Peirce voit dans la théorie comtienne des hypothèses une position proche du pragmatisme qu’il développe, mais grevée de présupposés nominalistes qui la rendent finalement intenable, à (...) moins que l’on n’en adopte une lecture « charitable ». La confrontation avec Comte semble alors être l’occasion privilégiée d’une explicitation de son propre pragmatisme. -/- English version (see link below on Cairn international) This article discusses Peirce’s relationship to Comte, based on criticisms made by Peirce in his early writings. It has a twofold purpose : firstly, addressing an important question in the history of philosophy that is surprisingly overlooked, even if Peirce reads, comments and criticizes Comte. The second issue is epistemological and metaphysical : Peirce sees in Comte’s theory of hypotheses a position close to the pragmatism he develops, but burdened with nominalist presuppositions that ultimately make it untenable, unless one adopts a “charitable” reading of it. The confrontation with Comte then seems to be a privileged opportunity, for Peirce, to clarify his own pragmatism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Morality in Flux: Medical Ethics Dilemmas in the People's Republic of ChinaRen-Zong Qiu (bio)IntroductionModern China is undergoing a fundamental change from a monolithic society to a rather pluralistic one. It is a long and winding road. Marxism is facing various challenges as the influence of Western culture increases. Confucianism is still deeply entrenched in the Chinese mind but various religions, including Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity are experiencing a revival. (...) Almost fifty minorities coexist in the country in addition to the majority Han people. Tension and conflict are inevitable as diverse—and sometimes incompatible—values come to the fore at this historic juncture. Many fields, including medicine, face new challenges, and in this environment the field of bioethics is flourishing.Like many countries, China is groping with the effects of new medical technology and skyrocketing health care costs. But in the context of the Chinese sociocultural environment, some unique—as well as more familiar—issues arise. None of the classic texts provide ready-made answers to these dilemmas; we must find the answers ourselves. The only reasonable way to resolve the conflicts between opposing values is through dialogue, consultation, and negotiation among the various social and cultural groups.The bioethical dilemmas receiving the most attention in China now relate to the two ends of life: birth and death. On one end are issues relating to reproductive technology, especially birth control and family planning; at the other end is euthanasia.Dilemmas Surrounding Reproductive TechnologyAccording to traditional Chinese belief, not having a child results from not having virtue. In fact, the most serious violation of the Confucian [End Page 16]principle of filial piety is to be without offspring. A Chinese man without a child experiences heavy psychological pressure, and the burden is especially onerous for women because infertility is always blamed on the wife. Wives who do not bear a child are stigmatized and mistreated—even abused—in families that stick to traditional values.In China today, this widely held belief is colliding with another reality: an apparent increase in infertility among newly-married couples. The rate may be about 5 percent. These couples turn to doctors for help.Artificial insemination by donor (AID) and by husband is now widely practiced. Eleven provinces have established sperm banks, and private doctors are performing AID for considerable fees. But procedures to address legal and ethical problems associated with the procedure have lagged behind. With the exception of a few centers in large cities, AID is undertaken without established procedures or policies relating to the selection of donors and recipients, records about those involved, or clarification of the status of the child. The legal status of the child remains unresolved.The status of the child within the community is also unresolved as traditional values clash with the application of modern technology to childbearing. The case of "The Child Who Did Not Belong" (see box), illustrates how an AID child is not accepted by the family that embraces traditional values because he is not the husband's biological child.In vitro fertilization (IVF) is another alternative. Two IVF centers are in operation, one in Beijing and the other in Changsha, and both have succeeded in producing live births. This technology has received considerable media attention and is generally accepted even among those with traditional views.But much of this medical technology is not widely accessible—especially in rural areas—and so some infertile couples resort to surrogate motherhood to ensure an heir. An infertile couple enters into a contract with a woman who has intercourse with the husband in order to bear a child for the couple. This practice is called "borrowing a wife." In some villages, the "borrowed wife" receives as much as 10,000 yuan (five times a professor's monthly salary or about $250) for a girl and double that for a boy.But the more common and thorny problems involved with the beginning of life relate to birth control, family planning, and the "one couple, one child" policy that the Chinese government instituted to curb overpopulation. The goal of that policy is to prevent China's population from exceeding 1.2 billion in the year 2000... (shrink)

It has recently been argued by Gabriel Herman that fourth-century Athenian citizens, or at least the majority of them, believed that even under the impact of serious private aggression a man should not pursue revenge. The general ideal, so it is maintained, was to avoid not only violent revenge but also revenge through prosecution. Herman recognizes that other Athenian texts of the same period take the propriety of exacting revenge for granted, and he explains this in part by reference to (...) a supposed ‘double standard’—a rather strange expression in this context, because it suggests that the propriety of revenge in classical Athens depended on the status of the victim of the revenge—which is not in fact the burden of Herman's doctrine. (shrink)

New Natural Law Theory and the Catholic medico-moral tradition often lead to similar conclusions in hard cases regarding end-of-life care. Considering the provision of artificial nutrition and hydration to patients suffering from post-coma unresponsive wakefulness, however, brings to light subtle ways in which NNL differs from the centuries-old natural law tradition. In this essay, I formalize the methodology embedded within the casuistry of the medico-moral tradition and show how it differs from NNL with respect to the role played by (...) class='Hi'>double-effect reasoning and the perspective for analyzing cases regarding care for those who cannot speak for themselves. Importantly, the ordinary/extraordinary means distinction has never historically been understood as an application of double effect and logically cannot be so understood. Given the outsized role that double effect plays in NNL, the theory leads to conclusions that deviate from the Catholic medico-moral tradition and creates additional burdens and duties for the sick. (shrink)