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This book brings together a team of leading theorists to address the question 'What is the right measure of justice?' Some contributors, following Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, argue that we should focus on capabilities, or what people are able to do and to be. Others, following John Rawls, argue for focussing on social primary goods, the goods which society produces and which people can use. Still others see both views as incomplete and complementary to one another. Their essays evaluate (...) the two approaches in the light of particular issues of social justice - education, health policy, disability, children, gender justice - and the volume concludes with an essay by Amartya Sen, who originated the capabilities approach. (shrink)

In this article we describe our approach to understanding wrongdoing in medical research and practice, which involves the statistical analysis of coded data from a large set of published cases. We focus on understanding the environmental factors that predict the kind and the severity of wrongdoing in medicine. Through review of empirical and theoretical literature, consultation with experts, the application of criminological theory, and ongoing analysis of our first 60 cases, we hypothesize that 10 contextual features of the medical environment (...) (including financial rewards, oversight failures, and patients belonging to vulnerable groups) may contribute to professional wrongdoing. We define each variable, examine data supporting our hypothesis, and present a brief case synopsis from our study that illustrates the potential influence of the variable. Finally, we discuss limitations of the resulting framework and directions for future research. (shrink)

Lack of guidance and regulation for authorizing medical cannabis for conditions involving the health and neurodevelopment of children is ethically problematic as it promulgates access inequities, risk-benefit inconsistencies, and inadequate consent mechanisms. In two virtual sessions using participatory action research and consensus-building methods, we obtained perspectives of stakeholders on ethics and medical cannabis for children and youth. The sessions focused on the scientific and regulatory landscape of medical cannabis, surrogate decision-making and assent, and the social and political culture of medical (...) cannabis. We found that evidence-gathering and data dissemination, pressures on clinical relationships, and the lack of integration of culturally diverse perspectives and Indigenous knowledges were key areas of concern. Participants emphasized the importance of utilizing adaptive study designs, highlighted the importance of trust-building between clinicians, patients and caregivers, and discussed barriers including historical and ongoing stigmatization of medical cannabis. We conclude that continued public consultation and strength-based research that integrate diverse perspectives are critical steps forward. (shrink)

Reading fiction for pleasurable is robustly correlated with improved cognitive attainment and other benefits. It is also in decline among young people in developed nations, in part because of competition from moving image fiction. We review existing research on the differences between reading/hearing verbal fiction and watching moving image fiction, as well as looking more broadly at research on image/text interactions and visual versus verbal processing. We conclude that verbal narrative generates more diverse responses than moving image narrative., We note (...) that reading and viewing narrative are different tasks, with different cognitive loads. Viewing moving image narrative mostly involves visual processing with some working memory engagement, whereas reading narrative involves verbal processing, visual imagery and personal memory (Xu et al 2005). but Attempts to compare the two by creating suggest that existing research is flawed by attempts to create equivalent stimuli and task demands face a number of challenges, and we discuss these difficulties in comparative approaches. We then investigate the possibility of identifying lower level processing mechanisms that might distinguish cognition of the two media, and propose a focus on internal scene construction and on working memory as foci for future research. Although many of the sources we draw on are focussed on English speaking participants in European or North American settings, we also cover material relating to speakers of Dutch, German, Hebrew and Japanese in their respective countries, and studies of a remote Turkish mountain community. (shrink)

Long-term ecological research (LTER), addressing problems that encompass decadal or longer time frames, began as a formal term and program in the United States in 1980. While long-term ecological studies and observation began as early as the 1400s and 1800s in Asia and Europe, respectively, the long-term approach was not formalized until the establishment of the U.S. long-term ecological research programs. These programs permitted ecosystem-level experiments and cross-site comparisons that led to insights into the biosphere’s structure and function. The holistic (...) ecosystem approach of this initiative also allowed the incorporation of the human-dimension of ecology and recently has given rise to a new concept of long-term socio-ecological research (LTSER). Today, long-term ecological research programs exist in at least thirty-two countries (i.e., members of the International Long-Term Ecological Research Network, ILTER). However, consolidation of the international network within the long-term socio-ecological research paradigm still requires: (1) inclusion of certain remote regions of the world, such as southwestern South America, that are still poorly represented; (2) modifications of the type of research conducted, such as integrating social and natural sciences with the humanities and ethics; and (3) the incorporation of findings and results into broader social and political processes. In this context, a nascent long-term socio-ecological research network in Chile, which extends over the longest latitudinal range of temperate forest in the Southern Hemisphere, adds a new remote region to international long-term ecological research previously overlooked. In addition, collaboration with the University of North Texas and other international partners helps to further develop an interdisciplinary approach for the integration of the ecological sciences and environmental philosophy together with traditional ecological knowledge, informal and formal education, policy, the humanities, socio-political processes, and biocultural conservation. (shrink)

Background: Clinical genomic implementation studies pose challenges for informed consent. Consent forms often include complex language and concepts, which can be a barrier to diverse enrollment, and these studies often blur traditional research-clinical boundaries. There is a move toward self-directed, web-based research enrollment, but more evidence is needed about how these enrollment approaches work in practice. In this study, we developed and evaluated a literacy-focused, web-based consent approach to support enrollment of diverse participants in an ongoing clinical genomic implementation study. (...) Methods: As part of the Cancer Health Assessments Reaching Many (CHARM) study, we developed a web-based consent approach that featured plain language, multimedia, and separate descriptions of clinical care and research activities. CHARM offered clinical exome sequencing to individuals at high risk of hereditary cancer. We interviewed CHARM participants about their reactions to the consent approach. We audio recorded, transcribed, and coded interviews using a deductively and inductively derived codebook. We reviewed coded excerpts as a team to identify overarching themes. Results: We conducted 32 interviews, including 12 (38%) in Spanish. Most (69%) enrolled without assistance from study staff, usually on a mobile phone. Those who completed enrollment in one day spent an average of 12 minutes on the consent portion. Interviewees found the information simple to read but comprehensive, were neutral to positive about the multimedia support, and identified increased access to testing in the study as the key difference from clinical care. Conclusions: This study showed that interviewees found our literacy-focused, web-based consent approach acceptable; did not distinguish the consent materials from other online study processes; and valued getting access to testing in the study. Overall, conducting empirical bioethics research in an ongoing clinical trial was useful to demonstrate the acceptability of our novel consent approach but posed practical challenges. (shrink)

Priya’s situation highlights several important ethical issues in the field of global health work. These can be categorized as issues relevant to her predeparture motivations and preparation, her role as a Western professional working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo , and her responsibilities once she returns home, having engaged in a project “in the field.”To consider the ethical issues inherent in global health work, individuals must ask themselves several critical questions . These include questions of motivation: “Why am (...) I doing this work? What do I hope to gain? What are my personal objectives?” . Answering these questions may be an uncomfortable exercise as one realizes that his or her motivations are not as purely altruistic as originally imagined . In Priya’s case, her interests and training suggest a longstanding commitment, but she must be honest with herself in her use of this internship to “build he .. (shrink)

The conventional approach to international development by civil society—that is, the installation of “Western” programs and institutions by “Western” groups in “underdeveloped” regions—has remained largely unchanged since global poverty reduction, whether for political or social justice motivations, gained prominence in public discourse after World War II. Yet poverty rates, literacy, life expectancy, and unemployment in one of the poorest regions of the world, sub-Saharan Africa, has remained the same if not worsened since the 1970s . And, still, the great Development (...) Project continues: Problems in under-resourced areas are identified by well-meaning people from well-resourced areas, proposals to solve those problems are crafted by project managers and submitted to government and nongovernmental agencies, and successful projects are implemented by other well-meaning people who, for the most part, honestly want to make a difference. This is the system in which Priya seems to .. (shrink)

The notorious Treatise of the Three Impostors is so shrouded in mystery that those who study it invariably compare their endeavors to detective work. The mysteries investigated by these scholarly sleuths include the identity of the author of the Treatise, issues involving its dissemination, and even questions about the existence of some editions cited by contemporaries. This volume contains a new, accurate translation of one version of the Treatise along with related works which were published together in a 1777 edition. (...) It also contains three essays by Abraham Anderson discussing these works in relation to “the problem of enlightenment.”. (shrink)

Challenging the fundamental tenet of the multicultural movement -- that social struggles turning upon race, gender, and sexuality are struggles for recognition -- this work offers a powerful critique of current conceptions of identity and ...

"... both an excellent introduction and a thoroughgoing analysis of Kristeva’s writing." —Signs "The book is a brilliant combination of a recuperative and a critical reading of Kristeva’s work." —Changes: An International Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy "... a thorough, detailed, and critical analysis of the writings of Julia Kristeva." —Elizabeth Grosz "... the most involved and engaging study of Julia Kristeva’s work to date..." —The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory This first full-scale feminist interpretation of Kristeva’s work (...) situates her within the context of French feminism. Oliver guides her readers through Kristeva’s intellectual formation in linguistics, Freud, Lacan, and poetics. This comprehensive introduction to Kristeva makes accessible her important contributions to philosophy, linguistics, and psychoanalytic feminism. (shrink)

For at least the last twenty years, philosophers have attempted various strategies for reviving the Hegelian notion of recognition and redeploying it in discourses centered around social justice, including multiculturalism, feminism, race theory, and queer theory. Hegel’s master-slave dialectic may seem like an obvious place to start to analyze the oppression of one group by another. Given that Hegel is not literally talking about slaves, however, but a stage of consciousness, indeed the onset of self-consciousness, we might wonder why his (...) notion of recognition has become so important to these contemporary discourses on oppression. One reason is that the Hegelian model of recognition proposes that.. (shrink)

This important new book explores the contemporary refugee crisis and the untold realities and experiences of refugees themselves. A team of top scholars offer a critical and necessary diagnosis of the challenges, complexities, and contradictions impacting our philosophical approaches to the contemporary figure of the refugee.

Editor's introduction -- Author's introduction -- Interrelational subjects and social sublimation -- The gestation of the other in phenomenology -- The look of love and ecological subjectivity -- Social melancholy, shame and sublimation -- Responsible subjects and witnessing -- Witnessing subjectivity and testimony -- Witnessing, recognition, and response ethics -- Between ethics and politics -- Response ethics and the nonhumans -- Animal ethics: toward an ethics of responsiveness -- Service dogs: between animal studies and disability studies -- Earth ethics and (...) creaturely cohabitation -- Witnessing in the age of spectacle -- Death as a penalty and instant death -- Rape as spectator sport and creepshot entertainment -- The spectacle of war -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

Alternative food networks are emerging in opposition to industrial food systems, but are criticized as being exclusive, since customers’ ability to patronize these market spaces is premised upon their ability to pay higher prices for what are considered the healthiest, freshest foods. In response, there is growing interest in widening the demographic profile given access to these alternative foods. This research asks: what barriers do alternative food businesses face in providing access and inclusion for low income consumers? Surveys and interviews (...) with 45 alternative food businesses in British Columbia, Canada uncovered five key barriers. The findings indicate that the barriers are symptomatic of structural issues in the Canadian food and social welfare systems. Although opportunities exist for business operators to widen access for low income shoppers, these alone cannot meaningfully ameliorate food-access inequality. Rather, these barriers underscore issues of income-disparity, poverty, and food-access inequality more broadly, and require structural and societal change to rectify. (shrink)

This essay critically engages the work of John Harris and Jürgen Habermas on the issue of genetic engineering. It does so from the standpoint of women's embodied experience of pregnancy and parenting, challenging the choice–chance binary at work in these accounts.

I certainly find it easier to recognize the deep continuities within Wittgenstein's thought, than the real nature of the contrasts: one only comes to recognize these for what they are after prolonged engagement with the two works.Heather Gert has offered a reading of Investigations §§ 46-50. Her attention devolves primarily on the notorious standard meter paragraph of § 50. Important to her reading is her conviction about what it is from the Tractatus that is being criticized and about how it (...) is being criticized.I believe Gert's reading of the passage is mistaken. Gert fails to get fully into focus what is happening in the distance, in the Tractatus, and she fails to get into focus what is happening nearby, in .. (shrink)

The concepts of animal, human, and rights are all part of a philosophical tradition that trades on foreclosing the animal, animality, and animals. Rather than looking to qualities or capacities that make animals the same as or different from humans, I investigate the relationship between the human and the animal. To insist, as animal rights and welfare advocates do, that our ethical obligations to animals are based on their similarities to us reinforces the type of humanism that leads to treating (...) animals—and other people—as subordinates. But, if recent philosophies of difference are any indication, we can acknowledge difference without acknowledging our dependence on animals, or without including animals in ethical considerations. Animal ethics requires rethinking both identity and difference by focusing on relationships and responsivity. My aim is not only to suggest an animal ethics but also to show how ethics itself is transformed by considering animals. (shrink)

The distinguishing characteristic of complex co-evolving systems is their ability to create new order. In human systems this may take the form of new ways of working or relating, new ideas for products, procedures, artefacts, or even the creation of a different culture or a new organizational form. This article will explore the creation of new order using the principles of complexity and the concepts of creativity and innovation. It will argue that innovation can be facilitated by an enabling environment (...) based on the logic of complexity and describe how one organization (the Humberside Training and Enterprise Council) co-created an innovative environment and changed its culture, ways of working, thinking, and relating. (shrink)

Rips et al. raise important questions about the relation between infant quantification and achievement of natural number concepts. However, they may be oversimplifying the interactions that characterize actual development in real time. Though they propose a worthwhile agenda for future research, its explanatory power will be limited if it does not address developmental issues with greater sensitivity.

While political and ethical philosophers today are familiar with critiques of confinement in both critical prison studies and critical animal studies, The Ethics of Captivity is unusual in that it brings these critiques of incarceration together, bridging human and nonhuman animal liberation movements. While Lisa Guenther’s recent book, Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives, also critiques the mass incarceration of both human and nonhuman animals, it is far more common to see human and animal liberation movements opposed on this (...) issue, as when the incarceration of humans is deplored for treating those individuals like animals. As Guenther argues, however, this humanistic language is... (shrink)

In the summer of 2012, “meat” themed posters were hung throughout the city of Edmonton, Alberta. A textual analysis of three of the posters from this collection revels that the concept of sacrifice is more appropriate to describe “meat”-eating in Alberta than the concept of the absent referent. These posters celebrate the consumption of “meat” and unabashedly make evident the living animal origins of “meat.” I argue that that the prominence of the cattle industry relative to Alberta’s economy, and its (...) ties to the production and reproduction of dominant Albertan identity negate the requirement of the absent referent. The consumption of “beef” is largely considered an expression of loyalty to the region, and as a means to preserve Alberta’s heritage. The noncriminal putting to death of nonhuman animals can instead be understood as symbolic and literal sacrifices in the constitution of dominant Albertan identity and economy. As such, this paper makes an intervention into ecofeminist literature as well as vegan literature written for mainstream populations that employ the absent referent in the aim of countering “meat”-eating practices. (shrink)

What follows is talky—I skitter across a number of difficult topics much too quickly and with little attempt to defend what I say. I may be able to add some defense later in discussion, but I don't promise anything much and certainly nothing fancy. I am still very much in the process of thinking about these topics, and I aim to do no more than to perhaps nudge you to think about them too.By "poetry" in what follows, I typically mean (...) "lyric poetry." There are poems and poems and poems, and the dactyls make a difference, as do many other features internal to poetry. I will also say upfront that I have no working definition of "lyric poetry." I also have no working definition of "philosophy," although I will be... (shrink)

Peter Kivy investigates the unity of form and content in the arts, particularly in poetry. While Kivy says much with which I happily agree, I sadly disagree with him about the impossibility of form–content identities. Kivy's arguments fail to compel: there are other ways of understanding form–content identities and the need for them that has been felt by artists and critics. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fatherhood and the Promise of EthicsKelly Oliver (bio)Both Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas reject the Freudian/Lacanian association of father with law and instead associate fatherhood with promise. For Ricoeur, fatherhood promises equality through contracts, while for Levinas, fatherhood promises singularity beyond the law. The tension between equality and singularity, between law and something beyond the law, is what is at stake in Derrida’s The Gift of Death. There, Derrida (...) describes ethics as a paradox between the universal and the individual, between equality and singularity. Kierkegaard’s reading of the story of Abraham and Isaac from Genesis is the centerpiece of Derrida’s analysis. If we read The Gift of Death, with its focus on this story of father and son, in relation to Ricoeur and Levinas on the question of fatherhood, it reads as the culmination of a dialectical tension between the two. And if we read the Abraham story as a legend about father-son relations rather than just a parable of faith, The Gift of Death appears to uncover not just the paradoxical logic of ethics but also the uncompromising logic of patriarchy and paternal authority.Paternity Begets FraternityIn “Fatherhood: from Phantasm to Symbol” Ricoeur describes fatherhood as a battle of wills struggling for recognition. He brings together what he calls the different perspectives of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and religion in order to rearticulate the oedipal situation as a process of recognition (rather than a structure) which moves from the father as phantasm to the father as symbol and replaces images of real murder with symbolic sacrifice. Through his dialectical analysis, Ricoeur himself attempts to articulate a recognition of fatherhood that moves us away from the phantasm of the father as castrator to the symbol of the father as compassionate. Relying on Hegelian dialectics, Ricoeur outlines a movement from psychoanalysis’s fantastic image of an omnipotent father who must be killed so that the son might live, through Phenomenology of Spirit’s master-slave dialectic, to the Christian religious representation of the loving father sacrificing Himself through His son for the sake of all His children. In this higher stage of the dialectic of paternity, the murder of the father is replaced by his sacrifice. Oddly, however, Ricoeur’s dialectic remains at the level of the master-slave fight to the death, where—without the Hegelian resolution—the only options available to insure the recognition of the father by the son (or the son by the father) are murder or suicide. For Ricoeur, recognition requires death, symbolic if not imaginary, whereas Hegel insists that recognition comes only when the master and slave are willing to risk death but also realize the necessity of avoiding it; mutual recognition cannot be maintained if one of the parties is dead.For Ricoeur, recognition does not necessitate avoiding death but rather moving away from the realm of the family and the body to the level of the social and the law. In order for the father-son relationship to be one of mutual recognition, the father must sacrifice his absolute authority so that the son might also participate in it. The goal of recognition is equality, which can be achieved only through social contracts that abstract from the particulars of embodied familial relations. One such social operation is designation, [End Page 45] which is removed from the realm of the bodily drives that motivate the oedipal scenario. Designation requires the sublimation of bodily drives into abstract laws that can equalize bodies by turning them into symbols.The move from psychoanalysis to Christianity is a move from a domestic family to a social family: through God the Father’s sacrifice of His son, we all become members of the Christian family; we all become children of God. For Ricoeur, it is not that God is the Father because He gives the Law. Rather, the law, the covenant or contract, enables Him to be recognized as father [490]. Ricoeur implicitly rejects the Lacanian association of the Father with the Law or the Name. He claims that there is no Name of the Father. “Father” is not a name but a designation [Ricoeur 485]. And the father’s proper name is... (shrink)

Abstract: In this article I contest a reading of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations —a reading of it as debunking philosophy. I concede that such a reading is not groundless, but I show why it is nonetheless mistaken. To do so, I distinguish two different ways of viewing Philosophical Investigations and its concern with philosophical problems, an External View and an Internal View. On the External View, readers of the book are taken to know ahead of time what philosophical problems are. On (...) the Internal View, readers are not taken to know this ahead of time: the task of the book is to disclose what philosophical problems are, to show them coming into being. One thing disclosed is our participatory role in philosophical problems coming to be. Learning about the nature of philosophical problems is thus learning about our own nature; metaphilosophical knowledge is in part self-knowledge. If the Internal View is correct (as I believe it is), then Philosophical Investigations does not debunk philosophy but provides a different conception of philosophy and the philosopher's task. (shrink)

In this essay, I respond to A. W. Moore’s instructive chapter on Frege. I respond by asking various questions, and I question particularly Moore’s claim that Frege, in reacting to Benno Kerry, falls into Hegelian excess. I toy with responding to my question by regarding Frege as anticipating a Wittgensteinian-Heideggerian exaction. It remains unclear whether this constitutes (much) progress.

Lack of consent is valorized within popular culture to the point that sexual assault has become a spectator sport and creepshot entertainment on social media. Indeed, the valorization of nonconsensual sex has reached the extreme where sex with unconscious girls, especially accompanied by photographs as trophies, has become a goal of some boys and men.

What is it to read Wittgenstein resolutely? In this essay, I make a suggestion about how to answer that question. I backtrack in time to a debate about Philosophical Investigations between O. K. Bouwsma and Gilbert Ryle. I selectively reconstruct that debate, highlighting features of it that I take to be interesting in their own right and in relation to debates about PI, but also interesting in analogy with debates about resolute and standard readings of Tractatus logico-philosophicus. As will be (...) clear, my sympathies are with Bouwsma against Ryle, and with resolute readers against standard readers. But I do not vindicate Bouwsma; I will, in fact, be critical, carefully or guardedly critical of him.Nor do I vindicate resolute reading of TLP. I suggest a way of seeing resolute reading that makes clearer what it is and how it contrasts with standard reading, and, in so doing, that makes clearer what some of the difficulties of the debate between the readings really are, whether about TLP or about PI. (shrink)

In this essay I investigate the unity of Emerson's sentences. I begin by describing the phenomenology of reading Emerson and use that phenomenology to orient the investigation. I propose to understand the unity of Emerson's sentences by using a variation of Frege's strategy for understanding the unity of sentences generally. I then address how the unity of the Emerson sentence serves to create the unity of the Emerson paragraph and even of the Emerson essay. Along the way I compare Emerson's (...) essays to Lancelot Andrewes’ sermons. I finish by using the results of the investigation and comparisons to provide a partial reading of “Experience” in which I shed light on the nature of Emerson's encounter with the problematic of skepticism. (shrink)

In this essay, we focus primarily on Moore’s “Proof of an External World” and Kant’s “Refutation of Idealism.” We are not exactly commenting on Clarke’s “The Legacy of Skepticism,” interpreting it, although what we do involves us in (some of) that. Instead of directly commenting on it, we do things with Legacy; we read Moore’s Proof and Kant’s Refutation with Clarke in mind. And by way of doing this, we bring onto the stage a post-Legacy Moore, and a post-Legacy Kant. (...) We do not claim to present Moore and Kant per se (to use Clarke’s term); we do not portray Moore and Kant as they are independently of “The Legacy of Skepticism.” We propose instead Moore and Kant as we read them after Legacy, i.e., in light of the pure/plain distinction. (shrink)