A large proportion of the total global burden of disease is caused by emergency medical conditions. Emergency care research is essential to improving emergency medicine but this research can raise some distinctive ethical challenges, especially with regard to (1) standard of care and risk–benefit assessment; (2) blurring of the roles of clinician and researcher; (3) enrolment of populations with intersecting vulnerabilities; (4) fair participant selection; (5) quality of consent; and (6) community engagement. Despite the importance of research to improve emergency (...) care in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) and the widely acknowledged ethical challenges, very little has been written on the ethics of emergency care research in LMICs. This paper examines the ethical and regulatory challenges to conducting emergency care research with human participants in LMICs. We outline key challenges, present potential solutions or frameworks for addressing these challenges, and identify gaps. Despite the ethical and regulatory challenges, conducting high-quality, ethical emergency care research in LMICs is possible and it is essential for global health. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that the received view of autonomy is insufficient for both biomedical ethics and feminist theory. I begin with an examination of the received view of autonomy; I then indicate the way in which this view of autonomy has been applied to health care ethics. A feminist relational approach to autonomy is explored: I argue that such an approach has many strengths in that it gives us a more accurate picture of the self-in-relationships and that it (...) recognizes many social and structural conditions that may impede an individual's attempts to be autonomous. ;This feminist relational approach to autonomy, once defined, is applied to the medical/social practices of cosmetic surgery and contract motherhood. I do this to show the practical implications of this contextual approach to autonomy. (shrink)

This is a conversation held at the book launch for Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), hosted jointly, in November 2020, by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, and the Australian Catholic University. The conversation covers the claim made by Insole that Kant believes in God, but is not a Christian, the way in which reason itself is divine for Kant, and the suggestion that reading Kant can open (...) up new possibilities for dialogue between Christian thinkers and contemporary forms of secular religiosity. (shrink)

Some authors have advanced a contractual model to protect patient autonomy within the therapeutic relationship. Such a conception of the physician–patient relationship is intended to serve both parties by respecting patients' choices and preserving physician integrity. I critique this contractual view and offer an alternative, feminist contextualized approach to autonomy within the therapeutic relationship. This approach places the physician-patient relationship within a larger social context, and indicates the many social inequalities that render insupportable the notion of physicians and patients as (...) contracting equals. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that bioethics suffers from a masculinist approach-what I call “ethical androcentrism.” Despite the genesis of other legitimate approaches to ethics (such as feminist, narrative, and communicative ethics), this masculinist tradition persists. The first part of my paper concerns the problem of ethical androcentrism, and how it is manifest in our typical ways of “doing” bioethics (as teachers, ethicists, policymakers, and medical practitioners). After arguing that bioethics suffers from a masculinist ethic, I consider the case of (...) maternal substance addiction to show how this ethic negatively affects the treatment of pregnant addicts. I argue that by treating maternal substance addiction from an androcentric approach, we fail to serve both pregnant addicts and their fetuses; furthermore, we misrepresent the intentional state of pregnant substance addicts and label them “prenatal abusers.” If maternal substance addiction is to be ethically addressed -- and if pregnant substance addicts are to be effectively treated -- we cannot tacitly accept an androcentric ethic. (shrink)

This book analyzes practices in the home health care industry and concludes that they are highly exploitative of both workers and patients. Under the existing system, underpaid workers are expected to perform tasks for which they are inadequately trained, in unreasonably short periods of time. This situation harms workers and puts home health care patients at risk. To the extent that the majority of patients and workers in home health care are women, I turn to feminist ethics for an alternative (...) approach. Through an understanding of individuals as social beings with obligations to others, and of home health care as a public good, I explain how to develop the social benefits of good home health care and increase the role of government in providing financial support and regulatory oversight. (shrink)

In communities of inquiry, dialogue is central as both the means and the outcome of collective inquiry. Indeed, features of dialogue—including formulating and asking questions, developing hypotheses and explanations, and offering and requesting reasons—are often highlighted as playing a significant role in the quality of the dialogue that unfolds. We inquire further into the quality of dialogue by arguing that dialogue should enable the expansion of epistemic openness, rather than its contraction, and that this is especially important in multicultural communities (...) of inquiry to acknowledge the cultural, perspectival, and experiential differences that exist alongside of similarities as resources for dialogue. The purpose of this article is to highlight two discourse practices that exemplify the nature of discourse as social practice and can be used in communities of inquiry. Attending to these discourse practices may enable teachers and students to reflect upon dialogue as it unfolds. First, we situate ourselves in multicultural classrooms in British Columbia, Canada. Then we articulate three principles of communities of inquiry. Next we describe and exemplify two discourse practices: heteroglossic attunement and lexical awareness. When attended to by teachers and students, 1) heteroglossic attunement enables teachers and students to begin to identify, reflect upon, and discuss the voices and perspectives that are drawn upon as participants inquire together and 2) lexical awareness enables teachers and students to begin to identify their attributions of thinking and feeling to social actors and to recognize how naming social actors positions them in an evolving set of social relations. Rather than a neutral medium of communication, social speech and dialogue is inherently value laden. Attending closely to the discourse that constitutes dialogue in a community of inquiry is a significant pedagogical tool for both teachers and students to expand epistemic openness and make visible learning as it unfolds. (shrink)

Epistemological issues are usually taken to be David Hume's central preoccupation. Attending to the role of sympathy in Hume's thought reveals, however, that his primary aim is to secure the conditions for social peace and prosperity in 18th-century Scotland and beyond, a peace particularly threatened by religious conflict. This perspective not only discloses the unity of Hume's ethical, political, aesthetic, and historical writings, it also suggests that the driving forces in the development of modern ethical and religious thought are ethical (...) and social rather than epistemological. ;The first two chapters discuss the background to Hume's use of sympathy and explore its application in the Treatise. In Hume's secularized account of moral approbation, sympathy fills the place Hutcheson reserved for Providence; it assures an intelligible connection between moral judgments and human flourishing in society. Hume at first makes use of a passive notion of sympathy developed by Latitudinarian divines to counter Hobbesian accounts of self-interested human nature. But this passive form of sympathy is limited and variable, threatening to reinforce, rather than alleviate, religious zeal and sectarian conflict. Hume introduces a new form of corrected, 'extensive' sympathy which involves an active effort to overcome prior affinities and cross factional boundaries. ;Appreciating the role of sympathy in morals also illuminates malfunctions of judgment among religious believers. Chapter 3 interprets Hume's essay on the pleasures of tragedy as an unmasking of Scottish Evangelical condemnation of theater. Evangelical opposition reflects pathologies of belief which grow out of a rejection of worldly existence and eventually distort sympathetic capacities. In "Of the Standard of Taste," discussed in Chapter 4, Hume grapples with disagreement in taste and judgment and argues that sympathy cannot be extended to those who live "artificial" religious lives, deducing practical consequences from speculative theories. ;Where poetry fails, however, history may succeed, since history is for Hume the paradigm of sympathetic understanding. As the final chapter argues, it is in the History of England that sympathy reaches its mature expression and Hume's delineation of the links among religious irrationality, zeal, and faction, attains its most concrete and persuasive form. (shrink)

With reference to a qualitative study on everyday religiosity among Muslims in St. John's, Canada, this paper examines trends in academic sources and public policy on Islam that over-privilege the most committed practitioners, thereby narrowly depicting “Muslimness.” I situate this overemphasis by reflecting on what Mamdani calls “culture talk,” an essentializing discourse heightened in the post-9/11 west. Interview data, along with a trend in social scientific research on Muslims that emphasize the most pious and the outcomes following the Ontario “Boyd (...) Report” and the Quebecois “Bouchard–Taylor Report” show the pervasiveness of culture talk that erases Muslim multiplicity. (shrink)

Very little research into women farmers in developed countries has been produced by economists, but much of what has been studied by scholars in other disciplines has economic implications. This article reviews such research produced by scholars in all disciplines to explore to what extent women farmers are becoming more equal to men farmers and to suggest further contributions to the literature. As examples, topics that has been widely researched in developing countries but have received almost no attention in developed (...) countries include comparisons of men and women farmers’ productivity and their access to and use of resources. Discoveries in these and other areas will be important not only for their insights into the agricultural industry in developed countries, but also because they will inform, and be informed by, research on women farmers in developing countries. (shrink)

Augustine famously claimed that the virtues of pagan Rome were nothing more than splendid vices. This critique reinvented itself as a suspicion of acquired virtue as such, and true Christian virtue has, ever since, been set against a false, hypocritical virtue alleged merely to conceal pride. _Putting On Virtue_ reveals how a distrust of learned and habituated virtue shaped both early modern Christian moral reflection and secular forms of ethical thought. Jennifer Herdt develops her claims through an argument of (...) broad historical sweep, which brings together the Aristotelian tradition as taken up by Thomas Aquinas with the early modern thinkers who shaped modern liberalism. In chapters on Luther, Bunyan, the Jansenists, Mandeville, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant, she argues that efforts to make a radical distinction between true Christian virtue and its tainted imitations actually created an autonomous natural ethics separate from Christianity. This secular value system valorized pride and authenticity, while rendering graced human agency less meaningful. Ultimately, _Putting On Virtue_ traces a path from suspicion of virtue to its secular inversion, from confession of dependence to assertion of independence. (shrink)

In this book, McMahon argues that a reading of Kant’s body of work in the light of a pragmatist theory of meaning and language leads one to put community reception ahead of individual reception in the order of aesthetic relations. A core premise of the book is that neo-pragmatism draws attention to an otherwise overlooked aspect of Kant’s "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," and this is the conception of community which it sets forth. While offering an interpretation of Kant’s aesthetic theory, (...) the book focuses on the implications of Kant’s third critique for contemporary art. McMahon draws upon Kant and his legacy in pragmatist theories of meaning and language to argue that aesthetic judgment is a version of moral judgment: a way to cultivate attitudes conducive to community, which plays a pivotal role in the evolution of language, meaning, and knowledge. (shrink)

In this introduction to a cluster of three articles on eighteenth-century ethics written by Mark Larrimore, John Bowlin, and Mark Cladis, the author maintains that although the broad narrative tracing the emergence of a religiously neutral or naturalistic moral language in the eighteenth century is a familiar one, many central questions concerning this development remain unanswered and require further historical study. Against those who contend that historical study is antecedent to, but not part of, the proper substance of religious ethics, (...) the author argues that historical and normative studies are interdependent, each helping to define the questions central to the other. The introduction concludes with an overview of the three articles and suggests ways in which religious ethicists can, in the future, make a distinctive contribution to the history of ethics. (shrink)

As scholars integrate empirical approaches to ethical questions in healthcare, relational autonomy theory must inform research design and change practice. Qualitative approaches are well suited to issues where patient values play a central role, and they can be combined with relational autonomy theory to investigate the factors influencing autonomy-rich experiences. This paper draws upon my experience conducting bioethics research related to clinical trial decision-making to develop a systematic method for applying relational autonomy as a theoretical lens to qualitative health research. (...) The resultant practical guide utilizes Susan Sherwin’s theory of relational autonomy and presents an empirical method responsive to autonomy-relevant questions. (shrink)

This article examines the case of institutional inertia in Japanese financial regulation, focusing on the reasons why institutions centered on informal modes of organization and interaction proved particularly The Japanese case serves as a particularly tough test for theories of institutional adaptation and change because even crisis failed to produce timely institutional change. The paper argues that informal, exclusionary and opaque relational ties served as a functional substitute for formal regulation and promoted cooperative government-bank relationships in an earlier period. Yet, (...) when the informal attributes of the system began to impede the sound functioning of the financial system, the very opacity of these ties and the informational dynamics underlying them meant that the Diet and the general public were less than fully aware of the extent of dysfunction present as time went on. (shrink)

Aphids display an abundance of adaptations that are not easily studied in existing model systems. Here we review the biology of a new genomic model system, the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum. We then discuss several phenomena that are particularly accessible to study in the pea aphid: the developmental genetic basis of polyphenisms, aphid–bacterial symbioses, the genetics of adaptation and mechanisms of virus transmission. The pea aphid can be maintained in the laboratory and natural populations can be studied in the field. (...) These properties allow controlled experiments to be performed on problems of direct relevance to natural aphid populations. Combined with new genomic approaches, the pea aphid is poised to become an important model system for understanding the molecular and developmental basis of many ecologically and evolutionarily relevant problems. BioEssays 28: 747–755, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

“You are interested in ethics,” the clinician said, “there are problems with medical ethics in Taiwan.” It was 2005, shortly after I had moved to Taiwan. A little later, a professor told me of a university hospital that served as a site for a transnational clinical trial run by a pharmaceutical company. He said that since no informed consent procedure was in place at that time, the hospital had simply obtained employer consent. “That’s why companies want to come to Taiwan (...) to do clinical testing, because you can do anything here—things that can’t be done in the US. That’s why everyone wants to come to Taiwan.” These statements may seem, at first, to indicate a lack of concern in Taiwan for medical and scientific... (shrink)

Introduction -- From paideia to humanism -- Pietism and the problem of human craft (Menschen-Kunst) -- The harmonious harp-playing of humanity: J. G. Herder -- Ethical formation and the invention of the religion of art -- The rise of the Bildungsroman and the commodification of literature -- Authorship and its resignation in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister -- "The Bildung of self-consciousness itself towards science": Hegel.

As the size of the published scientific literature has increased exponentially over the past 30 years, review articles play an increasingly important role in helping researchers to make sense of original research results. Literature reviews can be broadly classified as either “systematic” or “narrative”. Narrative reviews may be broader in scope than systematic reviews, but have been criticised for lacking synthesis and rigour. The submission of more scientific manuscripts requires more researchers acting as peer reviewers, which requires adding greater numbers (...) of new reviewers to the reviewing population over time. However, whereas there are many easily accessible guides for reviewers of primary research manuscripts, there are few similar resources to assist reviewers of narrative reviews. Here, I summarise why literature reviews are valued by their diverse readership and how peer reviewers with different levels of content expertise can improve the reliability and accessibility of narrative review articles. I then provide a number of recommendations for peer reviewers of narrative literature reviews, to improve the integrity of the scientific literature, while also ensuring that narrative review articles meet the needs of both expert and non-expert readers. (shrink)

Drawing upon the concept of thirdspace (Soja 1996), this article extends sociocultural theorizations of space in relation to alternative educational programs: programs designed to re-engage youth who have been pushed out of mainstream schools. Snapshots of educational programs, provided by ethnographic research gathered in the United States, Australia, and Canada, foreground the contradictions inherent in these alternative spaces: on one hand, the possibilities obtained for youth through participation, and on the other, the production of these programs through displacement. Alternative educational (...) programs expose the tensions between a democratic ideal of engaging all young people in excellent and equitable public schools and a neo-liberal economic rationality that currently fuels the ?sorting machine? function of compulsory schooling. (shrink)

This paper considers the issues surrounding women’s bare-breastedness and breastfeeding in public. I argue that women should have equal freedoms with men to bare their breasts in public, but not for the reasons commonly cited Proponents of “the public breast” tend to focus on the similarities between women’s and men’s breasts; I argue that the sameness versus difference debate is unhelpful in resolving this question. As I argue, women’s breasts differ from men’s in significant ways, and by dismissing these differences (...) we dismiss the possibility of women’s authentic breasted experience. Instead, I suggest that women share an equal interest with men in defining their sexuality: When women are denied the right to go topless or breastfeed in public, they are denied their own understandings of their breasts. (shrink)

Hearers of the Sermon on the Mount are called to become children of their heavenly father by loving as God loves. Surprisingly, though, God's love is depicted here as impersonal and indiscriminate, as similar to or even simply as a force of nature, even if a life-giving force: God `makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust' (Matthew 5:45). Anders Nygren used this verse as core support for his (...) dubious characterization of agape as `indifferent to value'. How should we hear it today? (shrink)

In _Aesthetics and Material Beauty_, Jennifer A. McMahon develops a new aesthetic theory she terms Critical Aesthetic Realism - taking Kantian aesthetics as a starting point and drawing upon contemporary theories of mind from philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. The creative process does not proceed by a set of rules. Yet the fact that its objects can be understood or appreciated by others suggests that the creative process is constrained by principles to which others have access. According to her (...) update of Kantian aesthetics, beauty is grounded in indeterminate yet systematic principles of perception and cognition. However, Kant’s aesthetic theory rested on a notion of indeterminacy whose consequences for understanding the nature of art were implausible. McMahon conceptualizes "indeterminacy" in terms of contemporary philosophical, psychological, and computational theories of mind. In doing so, she develops an aesthetic theory that reconciles the apparent dichotomies which stem from the tension between the determinacy of communication and the indeterminacy of creativity. Dichotomies such as universality and subjectivity, objectivity and autonomy, cognitivism and non-cognitivism, and truth and beauty are revealed as complementary features of an aesthetic judgment. (shrink)

Substituted judgement is often used in the absence of advanced directives to guide decision-making when patients lack decisional capacity. We present a remarkable case of family members exercising substituted misjudgement for a 42-year-old man hospitalized with multiorgan failure on life support. Feeling that their loved one would rather die than face severe disability, they elected to withdraw life support. Although this was done, the patient remained alive and recovered enough to clearly indicate his preference for life, even with severe disability. (...) This case suggests that in instances of unusual quality-of-life judgements where the patient's wishes cannot be known with reasonable certainty, families and physicians should be very wary using substituted judgement to refuse life support. Unless there are strong considerations based on the patient's prior statements, actions and values to decline life support, it would seem ethically appropriate to continue treatment, even with substantial disability the likely outcome. (shrink)

Erickson's conclusion that if basic tastes are not appropriate at one level, reference to labeled lines is inappropriate at any level, depends on matters of definition and scope. His population model mirrors Young's theory of color perception. However, there is evidence for distinct pathways to the cortex for two cone-opponent and one achromatic channel. Depending on the use made of key terms, sensory systems may display both across-fiber and labeled-line features.

Recent attempts by Christian ethicists to mine the tradition of Christian Platonism have overlooked seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth. Cudworth's significance lies in his creative extension of Christian Platonism in response to the early modern situation of religious conflict. He develops an account of autonomy as the self-rule of the "redoubled soul," while retaining a teleological account of the soul's final end as participation in God. Cudworth can help contemporary Christian ethicists imagine a way beyond pro-Enlightenment secular accounts of autonomy (...) and anti-Enlightenment rejections of autonomy in the name of tradition. (shrink)

William Placher and others have charged seventeenth-century theologians with "domesticating" divine transcendence, with fostering an understanding of God that was clear and comprehensible, but unattractive, unpersuasive, and easily undermined by secular thought. This essay tests that claim by analyzing the discourse of divine compassion which became prominent among post-Restoration Anglican divines. While the second generation of latitudinarians do exemplify the trends Placher traces, the first generation of latitudinarians, notably Cambridge Platonist Benjamin Whichcote, succeeds in finding a way to affirm divine (...) compassion without undermining divine transcendence. Moreover, Whichcote argues that an insistence on divine incomprehensibility fosters a voluntaristic conception of divine power and—contrary to Placher—undermines efforts to promote transformative justice in human society. The present case study suggests that we must reconsider our modes of articulating divine transcendence. (shrink)

Theological reckoning with our contemporary post-truth context must be cognizant of the ways in which adherence to biblical inerrancy fostered the rise of partisan epistemology. It is essential as well to grapple with the question of whether postliberal theologies, by way of a very different theory of truth, also promote the epistemic insulation of Christian faith communities. We need to understand how groups threatened with the erosion of social influence are tempted to indulge in partisan epistemology. It is equally critical (...) to grasp how unjust power exploits such tendencies in girding its loins with epistemological supremacy. Jesus, facing in Pilate a post-truth dominator, models an alternative, namely, disruptive engagement that resists epistemic injustice and opens new space for the construction of unbounded communities of trust and shared understanding. (shrink)

The Pythagorean tradition dominates the understanding of beauty up until the end of the 18th Century. According to this tradition, the experience of beauty is stimulated by certain relations perceived to be between an object/construct's elements. As such, the object of the experience of beauty is indeterminate: it has neither a determinate perceptual analogue (one cannot simply identify beauty as you can a straight line or a particular shape) nor a determinate concept (there are no necessary and sufficient conditions for (...) beauty at the semantic level). By the 13th Century in the West, the pleasure experienced in beauty is characterized as disinterested. Yet, on the basis that all cultural manifestations of the pythagorean theory of beauty recognize that judgments of beauty are genuine judgments, we would want to say that judgments of beauty are lawful. In addition, from ancient times, up until after Kant, philosophers of beauty within this tradition recognize two kinds of beauty: a universal, unchanging beauty coexisting with a relative, dynamic beauty. These two kinds of beauty and the tensions discussed above, are reconciled and dissolved respectively, according to the metaphysical/religious commitments of the particular author. As yet, however, these features of beauty have not been reconciled within a physicalist worldview. This is what I set out to do. (shrink)

This book explores Hume's concern with the destructiveness of religious factions and his efforts to develop, in his moral philosophy, a solution to factional conflict. Sympathy and the related capacity to enter into foreign points of view are crucial to the neutralization of religious zeal and the naturalization of ethics. Jennifer Herdt suggests that Hume's preoccupation with religious faction is the key which reveals the unity of his varied philosophical, aesthetic, political and historical works.

This essay will focus on the moral issues relating to surrogacy in the global context, and will critique the liberal arguments that have been offered in support of it. Liberal arguments hold sway concerning reproductive arrangements made between commissioning couples from wealthy nations and the surrogates from socioeconomically weak backgrounds that they hire to do their reproductive labor. My argument in this paper is motivated by a concern for controlling harms by putting the practice of globalized commercial surrogacy into the (...) context of care ethics. As I will argue, the unstable situations into which children of global surrogacy arrangements are born is symbolic of the crisis of care that the practice raises. Using the Baby Manji case as my touch point, I will suggest that liberalism cannot address the harms experienced by Manji and children like her who are created through the global practice of assisted reproductive technology. I will argue that, if commissioning couples consider their proposed surrogacy contracts from a care ethics point of view, they will begin to think relationally about their actions, considering the practice from an ethical lens, not just an economic or contractual one. (shrink)

Mammals have an XX:XY system of chromosomal sex determination in which a small heterochromatic Y controls male development. The Y contains the testis determining factor SRY, as well as several genes important in spermatogenesis. Comparative studies show that the Y was once homologous with the X, but has been progressively degraded, and now consists largely of repeated sequences as well as degraded copies of X linked genes. The small original X and Y have been enlarged by cycles of autosomal addition (...) to one partner, recombination onto the other and continuing attrition of the compound Y. This addition–attrition hypothesis predicts that the pseudoautosomal region of the human X is merely the last relic of the latest addition. Genes (including SRY) on the conserved or added region of the Y evolved functions in male sex determination and differentiation distinct from the general functions of their X‐linked partners. Although the gonadogenesis pathway is highly conserved in vertebrates, its control has probably changed radically and rapidly in vertebrate – even mammalian – evolution. (shrink)

Seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, writing just at the time when the concept of sympathy was moving from the realm of magic to that of ethics, argued that God must be understood as having a vital sympathy with suffering human beings. Yet while Cudworth invoked sympathy in an attempt to capture God's intimate relation with creation, in fact, it served as a principle of mediation that tended either to collapse God into the world or to distance God from the world. (...) The broader implications of this problematic conception of divine transcendence can be seen in the secularizing tendencies within sentimentalist ethics and in the work of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Anglican theologians, who were the first to affirm divine passibility. (shrink)