While all states in the United States require certain vaccinations for school attendance, all but three allow for religious exemptions to receiving such vaccinations, and 18 allow for exemptions on the basis of other deeply held personal beliefs. The rights of parents to raise children as they see fit may conflict with the duty of the government and society to protect the welfare of children. In the U.S., these conflicts have not been settled in a uniform and consistent manner. We (...) apply a test that provides a concrete and formal rubric to evaluate such conflicts. For some vaccinations, based on the individual medical characteristics of the disease and the risks of being unvaccinated, the test would suggest that permitting conscientious exemptions is ethical. However, for vaccinations protecting against other diseases that are more severe or easily transmitted, the test would suggest that the federal government may ethically impose laws that deny such exemptions. (shrink)

The artist's process -- Making -- Experiencing -- Practice -- The social value of art -- Democracy -- Participation -- Communication.

The author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, overextended government farm subsidies and zealous transit police, to show what happens when the moral systems of commerce collide with those of politics.

This paper describes the experience of an academic institution, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), developing training courses about research integrity practices in authorship, publication, and Journal Peer Review. The importance of providing research integrity training in these areas is now widely accepted; however, it remains an open question how best to conduct this training. For this reason, it is vital for institutions, journals, and peak bodies to share learnings.We describe how we have collaborated across our institution to develop training (...) that supports QUT’s principles and which is in line with insights from contemporary research on best practices in learning design, universal design, and faculty involvement. We also discuss how we have refined these courses iteratively over time, and consider potential mechanisms for evaluating the effectiveness of the courses more formally. (shrink)

For all of the emphasis on quality improvement—as well as the acknowledged overlap between assessment of the quality of healthcare services and clinical ethics—the quality of clinical ethics consultation has received scant attention, especially in terms of empirical measurement. Recognizing this need, the second edition of Core Competencies for Health Care Ethics Consultation identified four domains of ethics quality: (1) ethicality, (2) stakeholders’ satisfaction, (3) resolution of the presenting conflict/dilemma, and (4) education that translates into knowledge. This study is the (...) first, to our knowledge, to directly measure all of these domains. Here we describe the quality improvement process undertaken at a tertiary care academic medical center, as well as the tools developed to measure the quality of ethics consultation, which include post-consultation satisfaction surveys and weekly case conferences. The information gained through these tools helps to improve not only the process of ethics consultation, but also the measurement and assurance of quality. (shrink)

To enhance the treatment of relations in biomedical ontologies we advance a methodology for providing consistent and unambiguous formal definitions of the relational expressions used in such ontologies in a way designed to assist developers and users in avoiding errors in coding and annotation. The resulting Relation Ontology can promote interoperability of ontologies and support new types of automated reasoning about the spatial and temporal dimensions of biological and medical phenomena.

Jane Jacobs’s classic 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, famously indicted a vision of urban development based on large scale projects, low population densities, and automobile-centered transportation infrastructure by showing that small plans, mixed uses, architectural preservation, and district autonomy contributed better to urban vitality and thus the appeal of cities. Implicit in her thinking is something that could be called “the urban good,” and recognizable within her vision of the good is the principle of (...) subsidiarity—the idea that governance is best when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses—a principle found in Catholic papal encyclicals and related documents. Jacobs’s work illustrates and illuminates the principle of subsidiarity, not merely through her writings on cities, but also through her activism in New York City, which was influential in altering the direction of that city’s subsequent planning and development. (shrink)

This is a unique, groundbreaking study in the history of philosophy, combining leading men and women philosophers across 2600 years of Western philosophy, covering key foundational topics, including epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Introductory essays, primary source readings, and commentaries comprise each chapter to offer a rich and accessible introduction to and evaluation of these vital philosophical contributions. A helpful appendix canvasses an extraordinary number of women philosophers throughout history for further discovery and study.

Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities was published in 1961 and is now generally considered one of the most important books ever written on cities and city life. At a time when suburbia appeared to be human destiny, and architectural and urban theorists questioned whether the city should survive, Jacobs taught people to see, understand, and love cities again. The book continues to be widely studied and discussed but is seldom read and understood in its (...) entirety – this guidebook will help readers both pull the text apart and tie it up together. This guidebook includes: a chapter by chapter exploration of the key arguments and ideas in the text a brief biography of Jane Jacobs examining her influences and the context in which The Death and Life was produced an outline of the book’s critical reception over the past fifty years and its contemporary relevance a comprehensive bibliography of both Jacobs’ writing and works written about her. (shrink)

This article examines ethical themes in the works of the celebrated writer on urban affairs, Jane Jacobs. Jacobs' early works on cities develop an implicit, 'ecological' conception of the human good, one that connects it closely with economic and political goals while emphasizing the intrinsic good of the community formed in pursuit of those goals. Later works develop an explicit ethics, arguing that governing and trading require two different schemes of values and virtues. While Jacobs intended this ethics to (...) apply to all forms of productive activity, it is particularly illuminating when applied to her own urban ideas and activism. (shrink)

Mary Jane Jacob, the author of Dewey for Artists, is neither a philosopher nor an artist, but a renowned curator who came to the writings of Dewey in the course of her work. For many years, Jacob has organized exhibitions championing artists who make social practice art, including Rirkrit Tiravanija, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Theaster Gates, to name a few who appear in this book. Their art is not primarily about making objects but is instead about producing social (...) interactions between people. It is Jacob's conviction that Dewey's writings help explain the aesthetic and political value of this kind of art making.The title, Dewey for Artists, is a bit misleading as it suggests the book is for all artists, but the... (shrink)

The rapid industrialization of the nineteenth century transformed conditions of life in the Western world. It made possible an unprecedented scale of production that demanded new forms of labor and continuous innovation and populated the landscape with evidence of technological prowess. These dramatic changes affected how individuals conceived of themselves and their capabilities. On the one hand, they augmented the power of the individual in relation to the world: scientific discoveries and technological innovations brought natural forces under human control and (...) increased individual productivity. On the other hand, however, they diminished the significance of particular individuals within the world: with the use... (shrink)

Skirting the Ethical offers highly original readings of six works, each noted for its politico-ethical stance. The first four (Sophocles' Antigone , Plato's Symposium and Republic and Hamann's "Aesthetica in nuce") have a recognized and honored place in the canon. The last two, Sebald's The Emigrants and Jane Campion's film The Piano , are exemplary for our contemporary scene. Nevertheless, the straightforward assumptions about justice, divine and state power, the good, and identity politics that every reader or viewer inevitably (...) comes upon are disrupted when one takes into account the role of language: both the way in which language is talked about and the way in which it performs. What emerges is a non-prescriptive ethics of another order that offers a resistance to power and simplistic conceptualizations of truth, an emancipation from the "must-be" that implies an ever-to-be-renewed renegotiation—a responsability that has much to do with the act of critique or interpretation. (shrink)

Abstract:According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the conjoining of “teaching” and “about” suggests a modality of orientation never not regulated by an imposed telos. To teach about suggests a place of unknowability that can be resolved with the successful illustration of beginnings and possible ends, a way of getting from there to here.Beginnings and ends themselves are upset by accounts of racialized and sexualized subjection. As students consider Harriet Jacobs' nineteenth century slave narrative alongside contemporary accounts of anti-black violence, for (...) example, the silliness of a syllabus unravels in the violence of palimpsestic life, texts becoming other texts, scenes collapsing into each other. In that way, the temporality of a classroom must reorient itself in the face of the terrible reach and collapsings engendered by violence and to acknowledge the complex contingencies shaping our philosophical engagements. (shrink)

Since moving to Canada in 1969, Jane Jacobs, who recently passed away, has inspired and continues to inspire debate within Canada, as well as elsewhere, on the potential for and promise of the urban experience. Jacobs was not only a critic of unrestricted growth and the destruction of neighborhoods but, frequently, of the efforts of urban planners. The exchanges between Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), and the American planner and cultural critic Lewis (...) Mumford, author of The Culture of Cities (1938) and The City in History (1961), raised some important issues that are still debated. In spite of their differences, however, the two also shared many values, even if each had reservations about the likely efficacy of the other's policy prescriptions. This paper compares and contrasts the views of the two authors who shared a concern about the hazards of unfettered growth but who often differed not only on what the response to growth should be, but also on the proper approach to understanding how cities either work or do not work. (shrink)

In contrast to the constantly increasing surveillance of the streets of cities, Jane Jacobs’ theory of the ‘eyes on the street’ offers a theory of a positive form of surveillance and these eyes can thus perhaps take on the role of a counterforce to problematic forms of surveillance. To examine under what conditions Jacobs could help formulate such a counterforce is the main aim in this article. But for this purpose, certain obstacles need to be addressed, for instance, the (...) usage of Jacobs’ theory in the field of CPTED. What in Jacobs’ theory makes it vulnerable to this kind of usage? In order for Jacobs’ street-eyes to avoid becoming a prolonged arm for state surveillance, this article suggests a critical reading of Jacobs’ thinking in relation to Foucault’s surveillance-critique, ultimately with the aim to strengthen her eyes on the street. (shrink)

The great urbanist Jane Jacobs details how urban planning impacts the social interactions and social networks responsible for the economic death or life of a city. How might urban planning impinge on the moral values that underlie that development? I draw on Jacobs’s work on the moral foundations of commercial society to identify two “urban values” (tolerance and innovation). I then examine how these values support the social networks and processes that facilitate urban-based innovation and how urban planning can (...) strengthen or undermine those values. I use the examples of urban planning in the 15th Ward of Syracuse, New York and of city building in the private development of Cayalá in Guatemala City to illustrate these points. (shrink)

Why are cities looking more and more alike? Why do hipster coffee shops and clothing boutiques all share that same vibe? One answer is that gentrification represents an invasive force that forcibly re-models cities, from the top-down, to meet the monotone eye of the gentrifier. Gentrification brings in external developers and designers, who create new businesses which all meet that one monotonous aesthetic mold. But I suggest, using work from Quill Kukla and Jane Jacobs, that this top-down model of (...) gentrification is incomplete. Gentrification also incentivizes local residents to remake their own businesses and properties to meet that monotone eye. Gentrification is a pressure which pushes cities to meet a universalized and therefore homogenized taste, rather than letting diverse tastes flourish. (This piece originally published as part of a symposium on Quill Kukla's City Living.). (shrink)

This book provides an overview of some of the most important critics of “Enlightenment rationalism.” The subjects of the volume—including, among others, Burke, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, T.S. Eliot, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, C.S. Lewis, Gabriel Marcel, Russell Kirk, and Jane Jacobs—do not share a philosophical tradition as much as a skeptical disposition toward the notion, common among modern thinkers, that there is only one standard of rationality or reasonableness, and that that one standard is or ought to be taken from the presuppositions, (...) methods, and logic of the natural sciences. The essays on each thinker are intended not merely to offer a commentary on that thinker, but also to place that thinker in the context of this larger stream of anti-rationalist thought. Thus, while this volume is not a history of anti-rationalist thought, it may contain the intimations of such a history. (shrink)

The social time and space constructs of Manual Castells (network society), Fernand Brau­del (capitalism versus markets) Immanuel Wallerstein (TimeSpace) and Jane Jacobs (moral syndromes) are brought together to provide a set of conceptual tools for understanding con­temporary globalization. Three successive globalizations are identified and named for their constellations of power: imperial globalization, American globalization, and corporate glo­balization. These are treated as unique historical products of modern, rampant urbaniza­tions; each globalization is described as an era of great cities with distinctive (...) worldwide networks. Focusing on urban demand, it is suggested that current corporate globalization might elide into a planetary globalization covering both social and environment relations. (shrink)

Research into the sociology of intellectual life reveals numerous appeals to the public conscience of intellectuals. The way in which concepts such as ‘the public intellectual’ or ‘intellectual life’ are discussed, however, conceals a long history of biased thinking about thinking as an elite endeavour with prohibitive requirements for entry. This article argues that this tendency prioritizes the intellectual realm over the public sphere, and betrays any claims to public relevance unless a broader definition of what counts as intellectual life (...) is introduced. By calling for a shift from the notion of public intellectuals to Jane Jacobs’ (1961) idea of the ‘public character’, a publicly situated and affect-laden conception of intellectual life is articulated with the aim of redefining intellectual life as an ordinary, collective pursuit, rather than the prerogative of a few extraordinary individuals, as well as restoring the role of the senses in theoretical discussions on the life of the mind. The theoretical scope of this article therefore is to cast the net wider in the search for meanings of what public intellectual life is, can or may be in a larger context than ‘intellectualist’ discussions currently allow. (shrink)

Standards of excellence in the sphere of work are often taken to be at odds with our ethical obligations in general. In an age of commerce little attention is paid to how the manner in which things are done impacts on the agent's character. Jane Jacobs' phenomenology of our moral intuitions about the public world of work reveal two frameworks, the 'commercial moral syndrome' stressing fairness, and the 'guardian moral syndrome' emphasizing loyalty. In the latter set of values we (...) have a way of countering the bias of contemporary culture. This is best understood as a modified Aristotelian approach. The example of adversarial advocacy in the legal profession is taken as an illustration. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article brings together Toni Morrison, Jane Jacobs, and Howard Hodgkin to consider the stress they each place on “contact,” albeit through their distinctive media of literature, urban planning, and oil paint, respectively. The article begins with Morrison's account of the stranger as not foreign or unusual but “random.” Morrison views literature as a means of bringing readers into controlled contact with others and especially with those others one might fear, avoid, or overlook. Morrison sets the stage for (...) thinking about contact in relation to the concept of randomness. Part 2 turns to Jacobs, who investigates city sidewalks as sites of interpersonal contact that affect the safety, health, solidarity, responsibility, and freedoms of those living in urban environments. Part 3 turns to Hodgkin and his obsession with the frame as an invitation to touch. The figures brought together in this article serve as touchstones for how to create, foster, or enlarge sites for contact. Together they might help us to expand the parameters of what contact might mean, how it might occur, and where it can happen. (shrink)

Standards of excellence in the sphere of work are often taken to be at odds with our ethical obligations in general. In an age of commerce little attention is paid to how the manner in which things are done impacts on the agent's character. Jane Jacobs' phenomenology of our moral intuitions about the public world of work reveal two frameworks, the 'commercial moral syndrome' stressing fairness, and the 'guardian moral syndrome' emphasizing loyalty. In the latter set of values we (...) have a way of countering the bias of contemporary culture. This is best understood as a modified Aristotelian approach. The example of adversarial advocacy in the legal profession is taken as an illustration. (shrink)

Michel de Certeau has described our movement about the city as improvisational—as an interaction with a spatial order that not only activates that order’s ensemble of possibilities but transforms and introduces new possibilities for elements comprising that order. However, architecture’s relation to improvisation is not limited to this provision of a fixed context, an offering of material that is the basis of our daily play. A number of writings about architecture and urbanism by Jane Jacobs, Roger Sherman, and Stan (...) Allen identify improvisation in aspects of the design of the city itself. Along with the Available City, a design proposition that explicitly seeks to organize an improvisational production of a new spatial system within the city of Chicago, those writings reveal possibilities for structure that organize improvisational processes as a way of working on the city. (shrink)

This sharp, witty study of a book never written, a sequel to Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, is dedicated to New York City, capital of the twentieth century. A sui generis work of experimental scholarship or fictional philosophy, it analyzes an imaginary manuscript composed by a ghost. Part sprawling literary montage, part fragmentary theory of modernity, part implosive manifesto on the urban revolution, The Manhattan Project offers readers New York as a landscape built of sheer life. It initiates them into a (...) world of secret affinities between photography and graffiti, pragmatism and minimalism, Andy Warhol and Robert Moses, Hannah Arendt and Jane Jacobs, the flâneur and the homeless person, the collector and the hoarder, the glass-covered arcade and the bare, concrete street. These and many other threads can all be spooled back into one realization: for far too long, we have busied ourselves with thinking about ways to change the city; it is about time we let the city change the way we think. (shrink)

The Ethics of Architecture offers a short and approachable scholarly introduction to a timely question: in a world of increasing population density, how does one construct habitable spaces that promote social goals like health, happiness, environmental friendliness, and justice? What are the special ethical obligations assumed by architects? Because their work creates the basic material conditions that make all other human activity possible, architects and their associates in building enjoy vast influence on how all we live, work, play, worship, and (...) think. With this influence comes tremendous, and not always examined, responsibility. This book addresses the range of ethical issues that architects face, with a broad understanding of ethics. Beyond strictly professional duties - transparency, technical competence, fair trading - lie more profound issues that move into aesthetic, political, and existential realms. Does an architect have a duty to create art, if not always beautiful art? Should an architect feel obliged to serve a community and not simply the client? Is social justice a possible orientation for architectural practice? Is there such a thing as feeling compelled to "shelter being" in architectural work? By taking these usually abstract questions into the region of physical creation, the book attempts a concrete reformulation of "architectural ethics" as a matter of deep reflection on the architect's role as both citizen and caretaker. Thinkers and makers discussed include Le Corbusier, Martin Heidegger, Lewis Mumford, Rem Koolhaas, Jane Jacobs, Arthur Danto, and John Rawls. An added preface addresses architectural issues arising during and after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore connections between two disciplines not typically linked: argumentation theory and urban design. I first trace historical ties between the art of reasoned discourse and the idea of civic virtue. I next analyze discourse norms implicit in three theories of urban design: Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977), and Peter Katz's The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community (1994). I then (...) propose a set of ‘settlement’ issues of potential interest to both urban designers and argumentation theorists: size, density, heterogeneity, publicity, security, and identity. I conclude by suggesting that the ‘good city’ be seen as both a spatial and a discursive entity. From such a perspective, good public discourse is dependent, at least in part, on good public space; and good public space is defined, at least in part, as a context conducive to good public discourse. (shrink)

Panpsychism is a solution to the mind-body problem that presumes that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality instead of a product or consequence of physical processes (i.e., brain activity). Panpsychism is an elegant solution to the mind-body problem: it effectively rids itself of the explanatory gap materialist theories of consciousness suffer from. However, many theorists and experimentalists doubt panpsychism can ever be successful as a scientific theory, as it cannot be empirically verified or falsified. In this paper, I present (...) a panpsychist model based on the controversial idea that consciousness may be a so called higher physical dimension. Although this notion seems outrageous, I show that the idea has surprising explanatory power, even though the model (as most models) is most likely wrong. Most importantly, though, it results in a panpsychist model that yields predictions that can be empirically verified or falsified. As such, the model's main purpose is to serve as an example how a metaphysical model of consciousness can be specified in such a way that they can be tested in a scientifically rigorous way. (shrink)

Environmental health remains a niche topic in bioethics, despite being a prominent social determinant of health. In this paper we argue that if bioethicists are to take the project of health justice as a serious one, then we have to address environmental injustices and the threats they pose to our bioethics principles, health equity, and clinical care. To do this, we lay out three arguments supporting prioritizing environmental health in bioethics based on bioethics principles including a commitment to vulnerable populations (...) and justice. We also highlight and advocate for environmental law efforts that align with these priorities, focusing specifically on the need for a right to a healthy environment. Our intention is to draw attention to the legal and ethical concepts that underlie the importance of a healthy environment, and urge bioethicists to prioritize both legal and ethical advocacy against environmental injustices in their practice. (shrink)

This article examines how deduction preserves certainty and how much certainty it can preserve according to Descartes’s Rules for the Direction of the Mind. I argue that the certainty of a deduction is a matter of four conditions for Descartes. First, certainty depends on whether the conjunction of simple propositions is composed with necessity or contingency. Second, a deduction approaches the certainty of an intuition depending on how many “acts of conceiving” it requires and—third—the complexity or difficulty of the acts (...) of thinking, which is determined by the content of the thoughts and on external factors. Fourth, certainty depends on the intellectual aptitude of the person using the deduction. A deduction lacks certainty when it relies on memory such that it is not apprehended with immediacy. However, the mental capacity and speed of a mind can be increased by training the special mental faculties of perspicacity and discernment. Increasing one’s intellectual aptitude allows for more steps of a deduction to be inferred in fewer acts of conceiving, thereby helping preserve the certainty of a deduction. (shrink)

The photographer and reformer Jacob Riis once wrote, “I have seen an armful of daisies keep the peace of a block better than a policeman and his club.” Riis was not alone in his belief that beauty could tame urban chaos, but are aesthetic experiences always a social good? Could aesthetics also inspire violent crime, working-class unrest, and racial murder? To answer these questions, Russ Castronovo turns to those who debated claims that art could democratize culture—civic reformers, anarchists, novelists, (...) civil rights activists, and college professors—to reveal that beauty provides unexpected occasions for radical, even revolutionary, political thinking. B eautiful Democracy explores the intersection of beauty and violence by examining university lectures and course materials on aesthetics from a century ago along with riots, acts of domestic terrorism, magic lantern exhibitions, and other public spectacles. Philosophical aesthetics, realist novels, urban photography, and black periodicals, Castronovo argues, inspired and instigated all sorts of collective social endeavors, from the progressive nature of tenement reform to the horrors of lynching. Discussing Jane Addams, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charlie Chaplin, William Dean Howells, and Riis as aesthetic theorists in the company of Kant and Schiller, Beautiful Democracy ultimately suggests that the distance separating academic thinking and popular wisdom about social transformation is narrower than we generally suppose. (shrink)

I defend a radical interpretation of biological populations—what I call population pluralism—which holds that there are many ways that a particular grouping of individuals can be related such that the grouping satisfies the conditions necessary for those individuals to evolve together. More constraining accounts of biological populations face empirical counter-examples and conceptual difficulties. One of the most intuitive and frequently employed conditions, causal connectivity—itself beset with numerous difficulties—is best construed by considering the relevant causal relations as ‘thick’ causal concepts. I (...) argue that the fine-grained causal relations that could constitute membership in a biological population are huge in number and many are manifested by degree, and thus we can construe population membership as being defined by massively multidimensional constructs, the differences between which are largely arbitrary. I end by showing that positions in two recent debates in theoretical biology depend on a view of biological populations at odds with the pluralism defended here. (shrink)