This book contains the text of the Hulsean Lectures for 1929 on the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Scott was the first non-clergyman to hold this lectureship, and in these lectures he charts the development and gradual evolution of the teachings of Jesus though their interpretation by later teachers.

No one who attended the 2010 national public health law conference hosted by the Public Health Law Association and the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics could miss the sense of excitement and momentum. The revival of this annual public health law meeting, with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the energetic leadership of the PHLA president and board, ASLME’s expert guidance, and a rousing address by Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and (...) Prevention, symbolize the continued commitment of a wide range of important individuals and institutions to the proposition that law is of substantial importance to public health. But there is more than just symbolism to be excited about. CDC’s public health law program continues to champion efforts to promote the use and understanding of law as a public health tool. (shrink)

This essay differentiates two approaches to understanding the concept of coercion, and argues for the relative merits of the one currently out of fashion. The approach currently dominant in the philosophical literature treats threats as essential to coercion, and understands coercion in terms of the way threats alter the costs and benefits of an agent’s actions; I call this the “pressure” approach. It has largely superseded the “enforcement approach,” which focuses on the powers and actions of the coercer rather than (...) the perspective of the coercee. The enforcement approach identifies coercion with certain uses of the kinds of powers that agents need to accumulate and wield in order to be able to make significant, credible threats. Though there is considerable overlap extensionally in the instances of coercion recognized by the two approaches, the enforcement approach encompasses some uses of power to coerce that do not involve threats . It also circumscribes which threats should be counted as coercive, though notably it provides a picture of coercion that is non-moralized in its essentials. While there may be specific purposes for which a pressure account is to be preferred, I argue that the enforcement approach better describes how coercion works, and elucidates factors that are often tacitly assumed by pressure accounts. It also is more useful for explaining the social and political significance of coercion, and why coercion is thought to have the implications commonly associated with it. In particular, I argue that it helps us understand why uses of coercion are in general a matter of ethical significance, why state authority depends on commanding a monopoly on the right to use coercion, and why being coerced may reasonably provide one a defense against being held responsible for actions one is coerced into taking. (shrink)

Several prominent theorists have recently advocated reconceptualizing rape as “nonconsensual sex,” omitting the traditional “force” element of the crime. I argue that such a conceptualization fails to capture what is distinctively problematic about rape for women and why rape is pivotal in supporting women’s gender oppression. I argue that conceptualizing rape as coerced sex can replace both the force and nonconsent elements and thereby remedies some of the main difficulties with extant definitions, especially in recognizing “acquaintance” rape as such. I (...) argue that this approach helps explain its distinctive badness both for the individual victims and for women as a group. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 39-41.

Many recent theories of coercion broaden the scope of the concept coercion by encompassing interactions in which one agent pressures another to act, subject to some further qualifications. I have argued previously that this way of conceptualizing coercion undermines its suitability for theoretical use in politics and ethics. I have also explicated a narrower, more traditional approach—“the enforcement approach to coercion”—and argued for its superiority. In this essay, I consider the prospects for broadening this more traditional approach to cover some (...) cases that don’t seem to fit this approach, but nonetheless seem coercive, such as the demands routinely made on people by credit card companies, demands on students by higher educational institutions, and demands made by European financial institutions on the government of Greece. I analyze the similarities and differences of these compared to more central cases of coercion, discussing what lessons can be drawn from this analysis. (shrink)

A plausible explanation of the wrongfulness of threatening, advanced most explicitly by Mitchell Berman, is that the wrongfulness of threatening derives from the wrongfulness of the act threatened. This essay argues that this explanation is inadequate. We can learn something important about the wrongfulness of threatening (with implications for thinking about coercion) by comparing credible threats to some other claims of impending harm. A credible bluff threat to do harm is likely to be more and differently wrongful than making intentionally (...) false warnings about other sources of harm. This essay surveys some examples to secure this point, shows that Berman's moralized account of their wrongfulness is wanting, and offers the outline of an approach better suited to explain the wrongfulness of threatening.1. (shrink)

This essay provides a positive account of coercion that avoids significant difficulties that have confronted most other recent accounts. It enters this territory by noting a dispute over whether coercion has to manipulate the will of the coercee, or whether direct force inhibiting action (such as manhandling or imprisoning) is itself coercive. Though this dispute may at first seem a mere matter of taxonomic categorization, I argue that this dispute reflects an important divergence in thought about the nature of coercion. (...) Though it has rarely been noted, there are two significantly different ways of theorizing coercion found in recent writing on coercion. One focuses on the ability of the coercer to inhibit actions by the coercee through techniques such as force, violence, and like powers, or threats based in such powers. The other approach restricts coercion to cases where coercion manipulates the will of the coercee, though widens it to include any sort of threat that puts pressure on the coercee's will and alters the coercee's intentional choice of action. The former, enforcement approach used to be widely assumed by many political theorists who discussed the place of coercion in law and politics, though it has been largely supplanted by the latter, pressure approach. I show that these approaches are indeed quite distinct, and argue that the enforcement approach is in several ways superior to and more fundamental than the pressure approach for recognizing and understanding coercion in ethics and political and legal philosophy. I also consider and respond to a number of objections to the enforcement approach, showing that it can deal with some puzzle cases such as bluffs, blackmail, inefficacious threats, oblique threats, and economic coercion. (shrink)

There are few participants in academic or policy debates over prostitution who would disagree that steps should be taken to improve conditions for those working in prostitution; so Moen1 is in good and plentiful company with respect to his recommendations.I will focus here on the analysis leading up to his conclusions, and with whether it helps us understand why prostitution is so commonly harmful and what it would take to mitigate those harms.i On these matters I am dubious. The question (...) of whether or not prostitution is harmful would seem, manifestly, to be an empirical question, rather than a philosophical issue. I take it that Moen's aim is to clarify the evaluative task, and then to evaluate the arguments that can be made to show prostitution is harmful—tasks which philosophers can responsibly engage in. But I would suggest that Moen's approach to this particular subject oversimplifies it by abstracting away from key facts about the context in which prostitution takes place, and thus that it does not offer as strong a case for normalising prostitution as he hopes.The basic thesis of Moen's essay is that if casual sex is harmless , then the sale of casual sexual services for money is also harmless, or at …. (shrink)

The traditional understanding of coercion as exemplified by the use of force and violence to constrain the actions of agents has been challenged by theories that describe coercion instead in terms of the pressure it puts on some agents to act or refrain from acting. Building on earlier work defending the traditional understanding and rejecting the ‘pressure’ accounts of coercion, I argue in this paper that the traditional understanding of coercion, which I dub ‘coercion as enforcement’, provides a helpful analytic (...) tool for identifying coercion in peripheral cases, and thereby supporting the theoretical implications that are supposed to follow from the claim that someone has been coerced. In particular I analyze the coerciveness of the practices of credit-card issuers and institutions of higher education, and the demands by Greece’s creditors that the Greek government institute fiscal austerity, or else leave the European Monetary Union. (shrink)

From the perspectives of both an espoused core underlying value of nursing, and of public policy, the patient's voice should be central to our understanding of patient/client need, appropriate care and intervention. However, accessing and hearing the patient's voice is fraught with difficulty. Edwards reminds us that our raison d’être as nurses is human vulnerability; a vulnerability sometimes brought into sharp focus because of illness or disease. However, when people are at their most vulnerable, they are often least able to (...) identify, or indeed to express, their need – beyond the completely obvious. This paper provides a short descriptive record of one patient's experience of nursing care. This description is placed within the context of moral arguments about the nature of nursing and the impact this may have on decision‐making regarding the appropriate distribution of nursing time. One of our most acute deficits in knowledge, regarding nursing in the UK and Ireland, is a lack of knowledge of the day‐to‐day activities judgements, decisions and interventions of staff nurses at the sharp edge of patient care delivery. We also have little understanding of how, or indeed whether, staff nurses identify or articulate these activities, judgements, decisions and interventions as having a moral dimension that is rooted in respect for the needs and perceptions of the individual patient. Recent empirical work suggests that a substantial proportion of nursing time is spent in prioritizing and delegating care. We have little idea of the impact of prioritization and delegation on the quality of patient care, as perceived by the recipients of that care, our patients. It is urgent that these deficits in our knowledge and understanding are addressed. This is the case both from the perspective of providing high standards of patient care and from the point of view of linking perceptions of the moral dimension of nursing practice, organizational structure, manpower planning, nursing decisions and interventions, to patient outcomes. (shrink)

Recent accounts of coercion can be mapped onto two different axes: whether they focus on the situation of the coercee or the activities of the coercer; and whether or not they depend upon moral judgments in their analysis of coercion. Using this analysis, I suggest that almost no recent theories have seriously explored a non-moralized, coercer-focused approach to coercion. I offer some reasons to think that a theory in this underexplored quadrant offers some important advantages over theories confined to the (...) other quadrants. In particular I suggest that much of our interest in coercion depends on facts about the coercer, such as the sorts of powers coercers must possess to be able to coerce, and on the coercer's intention in using those powers to constrain or alter the coercee's activities. (shrink)

Pressuring someone into having sex would seem to differ in significant ways from pressuring someone into investing in one’s business or buying an expensive bauble. In affirming this claim, I take issue with a recent essay by Sarah Conly (‘Seduction, Rape, and Coercion’, Ethics, October 2004), who thinks that pressuring into sex can be helpfully evaluated by analogy to these other instances of using pressure. Drawing upon work by Alan Wertheimer, the leading theorist of coercion, she argues that so long (...) as pressuring does not amount to coercing someone into having sex, her consent to sex answers the important ethical questions about it. In this essay, I argue that to understand the real significance of pressuring into sex, we need to appeal to background considerations, especially the male-dominant gender hierarchy, which renders sexual pressuring different from its non-sexual analogues. Treating pressure to have sex like any other sort of interpersonal pressure obscures the role such sexual pressure might play in supporting gender hierarchy, and fails to explain why pressure by men against women is more problematic than pressure by women against men. I suggest that men pressuring women to have sex differs from the reverse case because of at least two factors: (1) gendered social institutions which add to the pressures against women, and (2) the greater likelihood that men, not women, will use violence if denied, and the lesser ability of women compared to men to resist such violence without harm. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to make sense of the possibility of several forms of voluntarily undertaken “sexual obligation.” The claim that there can be sexual obligations is liable to generate worries with respect to concerns for gender justice, sexual freedom, and autonomy, especially if such obligations arise in a context of unjust background conditions. This paper takes such concerns seriously but holds that, despite unjust background circumstances, some practices that give rise to ethical sexual obligations can actually ameliorate some (...) of the problems caused by such background conditions. Similarly, despite a surface appearance that sexual obligation and sexual autonomy are in tension, this need not be the case. By understanding how practices and conventions regulate the way such obligations can arise, this paper shows how supporting the possibility of sexual obligation can actually facilitate individual efforts to achieve sexual autonomy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Hume's Skepticism about Inductive Inference N. SCOTT ARNOLD IT HAS BEEN A COMMONPLACE among commentators on Hume's philosophy that he was a radical skeptic about inductive inference. In addition, he is alleged to have been the first philosopher to pose the so-called problem of induction. Until recently, however, Hume's argument in this connection has not been subject to very close scrutiny. As attention has become focused on (...) this argument, a debate has been shaping up concerning just what Hume intended to establish here. The principal purpose of this article is to settle this interpretive issue as decisively as the texts permit. I should also like to locate Hume's main argument about induction in the larger context of his discussion of skepti- cism in book 1 of the Treatise. I shall suggest that arguments for the radical skepticism commonly attributed to Hume can be found only very late in book 1 of the Treatise and that the most famous argument about inductive inference establishes and is intended to establish only a relatively modest form of skepticism. The argument under consideration can found in book l, part 3, section 6 of the Treatise. It can also be found in essays 4 and 5 of the Enquiries and in the abstract of the Treatise published anonymously by Hume. I shall concen- trate on the Treatise version since it is the first and perhaps most explicit formulation of the argument and because part of my purpose is to place this argument in the larger context of book 1 of the Treatise. The received opinion concerning Hume's argument has it that Hume was highly skeptical about the mind's claims to knowledge about the future (or, more generally, about the unobserved). All beliefs arrived at via inductive I should like to thank M. G. Anderson, John Bahde, Jon Nordy, and Robert Paul Wolff, as well as David Fate Norton and a referee for the Journal of the History of Philosophy, for helpful comments on earlier drafts on this article. 32 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY inferences are unreasonable or unjustified. The alternative interpretation, to be defended below, is that Hume held that no such belief is or can be rendered certain relative to past experience and that such beliefs are not, upon that account, unreasonable or unjustified. Something like this inter- pretation has been defended by Tom L. Beauchamp, Thomas Mappes, and Alexander Rosenberg. ~ My view differs from theirs in that I shall argue that Hume did offer arguments for the more radical skepticism commonly attri- buted to him (though it is unclear whether he regarded them as decisive). These arguments, however, come at the end of book ~ of the Treatise and are independent of the more famous argument to be discussed below. Defenders of the received view are both numerous and distinguished. Versions of this interpretation of the main argument can be found in the writings of Karl Popper, Wesley Salmon, F. L. Will, and Norman Kemp Smith; most recently a variation on the standard interpretation has been defended by Barry Stroud. The fullest and most elaborate defense of the standard interpretation can be found in a monograph by D. C. Stove. '~ Stove's discussion is perhaps the most impressive because of his painstaking efforts to lay bare the structure of Hume's reasoning and to give a line-by- line analysis of the argument. This has the effect of bringing more clearly into focus the main grounds for the standard view. If this standard interpre- tation is correct, then Hume's position is that scientific method is epistemically no better than "superstition" and "enthusiasm." And, Hume would be among those for whom this claim, if true, would be very bad news, because one of his primary purposes in the Treatise is to construct a science of man. Thus, this argument is of considerable internal significance because, if my opponents are correct, Hume appears to have cut the ground out from under what he took to be one of his most important projects -- the construc- tion of a science of man. The other feature of this argument that makes it worthy of serious con- sideration is that it is philosophically... (shrink)

Business ethics and leadership play an increasingly important role for contemporary organizations as employers and employees search for new ways to cope with ongoing changes in organizational environments. Research attention to date has focused upon how to improve process and structural configurations, while there has been scant attention devoted to an examination of the ethical and leadership perspective. This article breaks new ground by exploring the applicability of the Rule of St. Benedict (RSB) to modern employment relationships. A significant proportion (...) of the RSB is directly relevant for today's leaders, as it contains crucial lessons dealing with leadership issues such as ethics, cultivating a consultative climate, encouraging the virtues of humility, obedience ("servant" leadership), justice, discretion, prudence, discernment, and personnel-related issues such as discipline and termination. (shrink)

The complex hexaploid wheat genome offers many challenges for genomics research. Expressed sequence tags facilitate the analysis of gene-coding regions and provide a rich source of molecular markers for mapping and comparison with model organisms. The objectives of this study were to construct a high-density EST chromosome bin map of wheat homoeologous group 2 chromosomes to determine the distribution of ESTs, construct a consensus map of group 2 ESTs, investigate synteny, examine patterns of duplication, and assess the colinearity with rice (...) of ESTs assigned to the group 2 consensus bin map. A total of 2600 loci generated from 1110 ESTs were mapped to group 2 chromosomes by Southern hybridization onto wheat aneuploid chromosome and deletion stocks. A consensus map was constructed of 552 ESTs mapping to more than one group 2 chromosome. Regions of high gene density in distal bins and low gene density in proximal bins were found. Two interstitial gene-rich islands flanked by relatively gene-poor regions on both the short and long arms and having good synteny with rice were discovered. The map locations of two ESTs indicated the possible presence of a small pericentric inversion on chromosome 2B. Wheat chromosome group 2 was shown to share syntenous blocks with rice chromosomes 4 and 7. (shrink)

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further (...) questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

In a well- known barb, CD Broad said: "Mr. Bertrand Russell produces a new system of philosophy each year or so, and Mr. GE Moore none ...

We assess Aristotle's doctrine of the four causes in relation to current research on the development of organisms. Our goals are four-fold: first, to present and critically challenge what has become an orthodox interpretation of Aristotle among biologists; second, to present and defend a more adequate account of organismal development; third, to elaborate and justify a novel account of Aristotle's natural teleology, one at odds with the orthodox interpretation; and fourth, to illustrate how our reading of Aristotle, if right, permits (...) a more fruitful encounter between Aristotle and modern biology than that imagined by Aristotle's latter-day biological interpreters. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

Edited by Adam C. Pelser and W. Scott Cleveland * Includes interdisciplinary essays on underexplored issues in virtue formation * Provides fresh perspectives on neglected virtues including honesty, graciousness, intellectual humility, and accountability * Features profound insights from first-rate Christian philosophers in aid of moral and spiritual formation * Advances philosophical, psychological, and theological understanding of virtue formation by drawing on ancient philosophical/theological wisdom and contemporary science -/- The Christian tradition offers a robust and compelling vision of what it (...) is for human life to be lived well. Faith and Virtue Formation articulates various aspects of that vision in ways that will deepen understanding of the virtues and virtue formation. The collection considers the value of studying the vices for moral formation; the importance of emotion and agency in virtue formation; the connections between certain disabilities and virtue; the roles of divine grace, liturgy, worship, and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in Christian virtue formation; the formation of infused virtues, including the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love; the roles of friendship and the communal life of the Church in cultivating virtue; and new philosophical and theological reflections on some largely neglected virtues. Offering an interdisciplinary approach, the contributors draw on philosophical, theological, and biblical wisdom, along with insights from contemporary psychology and rich narrative examples, in aid of becoming good. By providing deeply insightful and edifying reflections on the prospects, processes, and practices of moral and spiritual formation, this volume demonstrates that moral philosophy not only illuminates, but it can also guide and inspire the formation of virtue. (shrink)

Coral bleaching has impacted reefs worldwide and the predictions of near‐annual bleaching from over two decades ago have now been realized. While technology currently provides the means to predict large‐scale bleaching, predicting reef‐scale and within‐reef patterns in real‐time for all reef users is limited. In 2020, heat stress across the Great Barrier Reef underpinned the region's third bleaching event in 5 years. Here we review the heterogeneous emergence of bleaching across Heron Island reef habitats and discuss the oceanographic drivers that (...) underpinned variable bleaching emergence. We do so as a case study to highlight how reef end‐user groups who engage with coral reefs in different ways require targeted guidance for how, and when, to alter their use of coral reefs in response to bleaching events. Our case study of coral bleaching emergence demonstrates how within‐reef scale nowcasting of coral bleaching could aid the development of accessible and equitable bleaching response strategies on coral reefs. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/N9Tgb8N-vN0. (shrink)

The paper discusses Dr. Floris Tomasini's paper “What Is Bioethics: Notes toward a New Approach?”. Based on Tomasini's account of methodological and ethical pluralism, the paper explores the demarcation problem of bioethics and suggests a full methodological laissez-faire.

In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which is (...) sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 2, Page 32-40, March‐April 2022.