This first-of-its-kind national survey of 485 psychiatrists in nine states and the District of Columbia finds substantial evidence of clinicians being uninformed, misinformed, and misinforming patients of their gun rights regarding involuntary commitments and voluntary inpatient admissions. A significant percentage of psychiatrists did not understand that an involuntary civil commitment triggered the loss of gun rights, and the majority of psychiatrists in states with prohibitors on voluntary admissions and emergency holds were unaware that patients would lose gun rights upon voluntary (...) admission or temporary commitment. Moreover, the survey found evidence that psychiatrists may use gun rights to negotiate “voluntary” commitments with patients: 15.9% of respondents reported telling patients they could preserve their gun rights by permitting themselves to be voluntarily admitted for treatment, in lieu of being involuntarily committed. The results raise questions of whether psychiatrists obtained full informed consent for voluntary patient admissions, and suggest that some medical providers in states with voluntary admission prohibitor laws may unwittingly deprive their patients of a constitutional right. The study calls into question the fairness of state prohibitor laws as policy, and — at minimum — indicates an urgent need for psychiatrist training on their state gun laws. (shrink)

In this paper, I take issue with the familiar view that the problem of the essential indexical is a merely technical problem, which can be solved through a straightforward revision of the familiar model of belief content. (The familiar model just says that the content of belief is a proposition.) I do not object to these technical fixes, but I think they leave some questions unanswered. Specifically, they deny us an attractive account of what it is for different people to (...) completely agree on their conception of what the world is like, according to which complete agreement consists in having beliefs with the same propositional content, but they do not give us anything to replace it with. Here, I consider whether we can say anything general about the relation between my beliefs and your beliefs (including, of course, our indexical beliefs), when you and I completely agree about what the world is like. (shrink)

Cooperation, meaning collaboration between people who assist each other to achieve common goals, is argued to be one of Jesus’ major normative themes. This proposal has not previously been made in Christian ethics. Jesus’ emphasis on cooperation occurs within His major undertaking, His practice of obedience to God. Outlined initially is the meaning of cooperation that aims for mutual help and partnership with others in a friendly, trusting and harmonious alliance. Following that, Jesus’ teachings relating to cooperation are assessed, as (...) interpreted by Biblical exegetes. These teachings include the Golden Rule, Jesus’ admonitions for forgiveness, the need for generosity, required relations between His disciples, and Jesus’ healings. In the penultimate section, objections to the extension of Jesus’ teachings on cooperation in the modern world are found to be unpersuasive. (shrink)

This work offers a groundbreaking exploration of the urgent need for creativity and innovation in contemporary military thought. In an era characterised by the ceaseless flux of global dynamics, traditional paradigms of warfare have become increasingly obsolete. The imperative has arisen to harness out-of-box thinking, underscoring creativity and innovation within the realm of military thought. The pursuit of victory no longer lies in the fixation upon past conflicts, but rather in the discerning assessment of and adaptation to the challenges that (...) will shape the conflicts of tomorrow. This innovative new work dissects the barriers that have thus far hindered the realisation of this potential. Furthermore, it challenges the status quo and advances a series of recommendations poised to steer international militaries towards success in the theatre of contemporary conflicts. Drawing from their extensive involvement with defence forces worldwide, the authors introduce concepts such as military design thinking as catalytic instruments of change. Through introspective reflections and real-world case studies, they present implications for mitigating cognitive biases, heralding a transformative epoch in military operations. It is this very transformation that furnishes militaries with the capacity to surge ahead of their adversaries, a capability proving to be indispensable in modern warfare. Offering a well-illuminated path for military entities to adapt and flourish within an ever-evolving global landscape, this book will be of much interest to students of military studies, security studies and International Relations, as well as military professionals. (shrink)

In Sharing Territories, Cara Nine defends a river model of territorial rights. On a river model, groups are assumed to be interdependent and overlapping. Drawing on natural law philosophy, Nine's theory argues for the establishment of foundational territories around geographical areas like rivers.

Historical injustice and global inequality are basic problems embedded in territorial rights. In Global Justice and Territory Cara Nine advances a general theory of territorial rights adapting a theoretical framework from natural law theory to ground all territorial claims.

Competition is pervasive in modern society, affecting work, education, and recreation. The question arises whether competition is consistent with scriptural teaching. The context for this enquiry is that Christians today disagree among themselves about whether Scripture has any normative content relating to competition. Some view competition as incompatible with Scripture, while for others it is compatible. On the basis of a given definition of competition, Christian contributions to the debate in the last decade are reviewed. Only six inputs were discovered, (...) with five arguing that Scripture takes no normative position toward competition. Most of this article is taken up with evaluating their cases that are found to be unpersuasive. A sixth paper claims that Scripture is incompatible with competition, examined in the penultimate section. From reviewing the six contributions to the debate, the conclusion is that that Scripture does not have a favorable attitude toward competition. (shrink)

The semantics of belief reports has recently received a great deal of attention. Speech reports have largely been left behind in this discussion. Here I extend a familiar recent account of attitude reports, the Russellian theory, to the special case of speech reports. I then consider how it compares to Davidson’s paratactic theory with respect to a few examples that raise special problems about speech reports. Neither theory accounts for everything we want to say about these cases. I suggest that (...) the problem lies in an assumption common to both theories, that in reporting what others say, we aim to represent what was said exactly as the original speaker represented it, in so far as this is possible. (shrink)

Drinking water is an important health behavior to support overall child health. Research indicates that children are consuming too little water and too many sugary drinks. Overconsumption of sugary drinks increases child risk for the epidemics of obesity and diet-related chronic diseases like type-II diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. Increasing access to appealing, low-cost drinking water in schools and childcare where children spend much of their time supports efforts to reduce sugary drink consumption. Drinking water infrastructure is key to water (...) access in childcare and schools. In 2012-2013, almost one-third of permanent U.S. school buildings had plumbing systems in fair or poor condition, and almost 40 percent had major renovations or repairs planned.3 Basic plumbing standards for new construction and major renovations or repairs are contained in state and local plumbing codes, and many of these codes are derived from model codes established by private organizations. This article describes the model code process and intervention points where the public health community can work to improve plumbing standards in school buildings and childcare centers. (shrink)

Cryopreservation and vitrification are techniques employed in fertility clinics to preserve embryos not used in in vitro fertilization cycles. These frozen embryos carry the dignity of persons, and it has been suggested that they could be unfrozen and adopted. Experts have offered divergent opinions on the legitimacy of this practice. This essay reviews the debate and offers a phenomenological description of embryo adoption considered in itself, as well as reflections on current circumstances which the author proposes make embryo adoption not (...) only imprudent but illicit. (shrink)

This commentary highlights the observation that social motivation is usually an imprecisely specified construct. We suggest four social motivation conceptualizations across levels of analysis and explore where the target article situates among these. We then offer theoretical and practical guidance for operationalization and measurement of social motivation to support more comprehensive future research on this complex construct in the autism literature.

Territorial rights come with both costs (war, inequality and oppression) and benefits (political participation, coordinated use of resources). The immense importance of these normative aspects of territorial rights solidifies our need for a principled theory of territory. With globalisation and transnational interactions, a cosmopolitan account of territorial rights is required – it should justify territorial authority generally. This generalised justification must also provide an account of the special, normative relationship that certain groups have with certain lands and resources, providing groups (...) with special claims to particular lands. Since democratic theory values territoriality for its necessary relationship to equality and individual autonomy, a comprehensive democratic account of territorial rights presents a real possibility for explaining territorial claims from cosmopolitan ideals. Unfortunately, democratic accounts of territoriality suffer a serious drawback; they cannot give a comprehensive account of self-determination rights over particular land and resources. On the contrary, democratic theory addresses only persons – how they should be treated and how their associations should be organised. The first half of this article explains how democratic accounts of self-determination are wanting in specific ways. The second half presents an alternative account of the right of self-determination and territorial rights as a feature of compromise. Because compromise is an essential element of democracy and an important element of justice, it can be used to explain the unique connection that democracies have with a particular territory. Through this theory of compromise, we can explain the scope, longevity and breadth of a democracy's territorial rights from cosmopolitan ideals. However, this account has acute limitations. As merely an initial sketch of theoretical connections between democracy and territory, it does not yet offer an account of the complicated territorial issues of transnational democratic associations. In fact, the theory from compromise reveals a vital obstacle for the establishment of borders, especially in cases of possible secession. (shrink)

– Web accessibility is the practice of making web sites accessible to people, such as the disabled, who are using more than just traditional web browsers to access the internet. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to overview web accessibility and to highlight the ethics of web accessibility from a managerial perspective., – To that end, this paper reviews related literature, highlights relevant public policy, discusses web accessibility from a systems development perspective, and concludes with a discussion of web (...) accessibility with respect to different ethical theories., – The findings take the form of a tutorial that highlights how to address web accessibility projects. The findings also examine web accessibility projects as they relate to well‐known ethical theories. Additionally, the findings also incorporate ethical opinions from web designers who have completed web accessibility projects in the past., – The paper makes several contributions to the existing literatures on web accessibility and ethics. An important contribution is that the paper is the first tutorial on web accessibility that also examines the topic through the lens of ethical theories. In addition to the tutorial, the paper reports on the opinions of web designers who have worked on web accessibility projects in the past. (shrink)

‘Live tissue training’, using an anaesthetised live animal substituted for a human patient for the practice of surgical skills, is a controversial topic. Although simulator technologies have developed significantly for inclusion in many areas of surgical education, it is contested that training to manage traumatic injuries requires a model that can bleed and has a dynamic circulation. This article uses the published literature to explore the values at stake regarding live tissue training in the context of trauma with the aim (...) of considering whether such training is ethically justifiable, to any degree. We present criteria for the ethical evaluation of live animal use in trauma simulation alongside descriptions of the pro- and contra-arguments present in the literature. Our conclusion is that justification is challenging and must be considered on a case-by-case basis—it is important that the difference gained from using a live animal compared with the best alternative simulator has to be greater than the clear ethical downside of using animals. (shrink)

International Law in Context is a pedagogy-forward textbook. It reflects the recent paradigm shift in legal education, which focuses more on what students actually learn rather than the material to which they are exposed. The text aims to prepare the next generation of U.S. lawyers to engage with our interconnected world and to critically evaluate the U.S.'s role within the international legal order. The work is divided into three parts that accomplish these goals. Part One lays a foundation. It covers (...) the various actors within the system, the theories that help explain their behavior, and the principles and sources of law they create. Part Two turns to the fora that define and support the international order, the historical and political contexts that impacted their design, and their efficacy. Part Three is a capstone section that asks students to weave together everything they have learned in Parts One and Two. Students will engage in normative development regarding climate change, including the existing international treaty regime and U.S. implementation options, and the law of war in the modern age. The cornerstone of this book is its organization. The text groups material into conceptual frameworks that promote understanding and retention. For example, rather than consider the various dispute resolution fora in isolation, Part Two asks students to consider them in the context of what types of disputes arise and what legal rules can be employed to resolve them in various international and domestic fora. The institutions also are presented in chronology. In this way, students are encouraged to chart the developmental progression and to make connections and comparisons between various institutions. The use of conceptual frameworks continues within each part. For example, Chapter Six covers the sovereign State as a conflict resolution forum. Under this umbrella, the author discusses (a) State Jurisdiction; (b) The Reception of International Law into the Domestic Sphere; (c) The Qualification as a State Forum or State Litigant (i.e., Recognition of States & Governments); and (d) Protections Afforded Within the Forum: Sovereign, Diplomatic, and Consular Immunity. A typical coursebook might locate this material in four different chapters. The conceptual framework approach, however, allows students to see the big picture and the relationship between concepts. In addition to the frameworks, there are several other innovative pedagogical devices that support student learning. There are Foundation Questions that initially direct readers through the material and cumulatively help students confirm whether they have grasped key takeaways from each section. There also are Assessment Sets in each section, which provide students with immediate opportunities to apply material and gauge their understanding, and "Why Is This Important (a/k/a WITI Moment)" prompts designed to delve deeper into the underpinnings and consequences of various rules. Finally, there are directed reading notes before some more complex readings and margin annotations to keep readers oriented. (shrink)

Predictive genetic testing is now routinely offered to asymptomatic adults at risk for genetic disease. However, testing of minors at risk for adult-onset conditions, where no treatment or preventive intervention exists, has evoked greater controversy and inspired a debate spanning two decades. This review aims to provide a detailed longitudinal analysis and concludes by examining the debate's current status and prospects for the future. Fifty-three relevant theoretical papers published between 1990 and December 2010 were identified, and interpretative content analysis was (...) employed to catalogue discrete arguments within these papers. Novel conclusions were drawn from this review. While the debate's first voices were raised in opposition of testing and their arguments have retained currency over many years, arguments in favour of testing, which appeared sporadically at first, have gained momentum more recently. Most arguments on both sides are testable empirical claims, so far untested, rather than abstract ethical or philosophical positions. The dispute, therein, lies not so much in whether minors should be permitted to access predictive genetic testing but whether these empirical claims on the relative benefits or harms of testing should be assessed. (shrink)

In ‘What’s Wrong with Colonialism,’ Lea Ypi argues that the wrong of colonialism can be expressed as procedural wrongs, not as wronging territorial rights. On her view, colonial practices went wrong in two ways: they forced residents into political associations, and the terms of the political association were not established through equal and reciprocal negotiations. I argue that because Ypi’s account successfully side-lines all but essential claims to territory, her theory ends up being vulnerable to an objection it means to (...) avoid. Historical residents may be subject to unequal treatment under newly formed political associations because their historical patterns of land use are not considered to have any independent moral weight. My analysis does not rely on any appeal to property or territorial rights. Instead, I appeal to pre-existing obligations holding between residents. (shrink)

When people seek to overcome discrimination in employment they often appeal to the principle that ‘one should be hired on the basis of qualifications alone’. But do we know what the principle means? And would applying it solve the problems of discrimination in employment? We may take the claim to mean that certain aspects of a person such as her race, religion and attractiveness that are thought to be irrelevant to almost all jobs should not be considered in employment decisions. (...) But in this we would be mistaken. This paper argues that the concept of ‘qualification’, far from being purely descriptive, is morally loaded and a function of an employer’s choices and purposes. As a result, appealing to the principle alone cannot prevent discrimination for issues of discrimination in employment are embedded in the ethical issues of ownership, management and the social responsibilities of a business. (shrink)

Russell’s enthusiasm for the romantic poet Shelley contradicts the common notion that the philosophical outlook dulls our emotions. Russell loved Shelley even though he was careful to examine the shortcomings of the young poet and of the romantic genre. Furthermore, Russell acknowledged his own weaknesses inherent to his interest in the romantics. Love through a philosophical lens is arguably superior to love through a romantic filter because the former allows for a clear perception of the object. Russell’s passion for Shelley (...) is a case in point. (shrink)

A familiar story about phenomenal knowledge likens it to indexical knowledge, i.e. knowledge about oneself typically expressed with sentences containing indexicals or demonstratives. The popularity of this sort of story owes in part to its promise of resolving some longstanding puzzles about phenomenal knowledge. One such puzzle arises from the compelling arguments that we can have full objective knowledge of the world while lacking some phenomenal knowledge. I argue that the widespread optimism about the indexical account on this score is (...) unwarranted. (shrink)

There is a traditional picture of belief, according to which someone's having a belief is that person's standing in a certain relation to an abstract object, a proposition. My dissertation examines the metaphysical demands that two problems for this picture of belief make on these abstract objects. The first problem comes to us from Frege's "On Sense and Reference," and the second concerns a certain sort of one's beliefs about oneself, which I call "indexical beliefs." ;Frege notes that someone can (...) believe that Hesperus is Hesperus without believing that Hesperus is Phosphorus. It is but a short step from Frege's observation to the claim that the sentence "A believes that Hesperus is Hesperus" could be true while "A believes that Hesperus is Phosphorus" is false. Quine has insisted that we cannot address this problem by taking either of these sentences to express a predication of the referent of both names, the planet Venus, as then both sentences would express the same predication of the same object, and this stands in evident tension with the fact that they can differ in truth value. In a recent response to Frege's problem, Mark Richard has taken exactly the route Quine has warned against. In my first chapter, I show that Richard's response is unsuccessful. I then consider the implications of the failure of his response on his proposed semantics for belief and the philosophical motivation he provides for it. I argue that his semantics for belief ascriptions stands in serious tension with its purported philosophical motivation. ;In the second and third chapters, I turn to the problem about indexical belief. The task of the second chapter is to identify this problem. To this end, I consider three of John Perry's arguments that the traditional picture of belief cannot accommodate indexical belief. I show that even if these arguments are sound, they give us no reason to think that the problem about indexical belief is in any way unique. I then suggest that there is a special problem about indexical belief, despite the failure of these three arguments to isolate it. Special difficulties attend an account of what it is to retain a tensed belief over time, and I suggest that the special problem about indexical belief is, in brief, a generalization of this problem about retention of tensed belief. ;In the third chapter, I raise the problem about indexical belief in a new way, as arising from a tension between several intuitively plausible claims about the relationship between beliefs and desires, on the one hand, and actions, on the other. This presentation of the problem brings out how the problem is special. I survey several solutions to this problem, including one due to Perry. I then argue that Perry's solution cannot characterize the specific kind of similarity between the beliefs of two different people who share an indexical belief. It allows too much to count as shared indexical belief. Thus Perry's solution inadequately addresses what I have suggested is the unique problem about indexical belief. Finally, I suggest that Frege's response to the problem I raise points the way towards an emendation of Perry's account that will enable it to suitably characterize the special way in which different people can share an indexical belief. (shrink)

Cara Nine on how to decide where borders should be drawn.

Inside and outside of a Christian worldview, bioethicists have discussed ectopic pregnancy at some length as a maternal-fetal vital conflict. Most bioethicists agree that methotrexate and salpingostomy are low-risk, successful interventions for this life-threatening pathology, and are thus beneficent, just, and wholly acceptable. A small cohort of Christian, largely Catholic, bioethicists have reservations about methotrexate and salpingostomy, but cannot resolve their internal disputes about these because of flawed casuistry. This paper aims to settle the issue about whether methotrexate and salpingostomy (...) are acceptable within a Catholic worldview: despite the best arguments in favor of methotrexate as a moral option, it is morally unacceptable, and despite hesitation about salpingostomy related to analogies with previable delivery, it is the optimal procedure for ectopic pregnancy. (shrink)

Ecological refugees are expected to make up an increasing percentage of overall refugees in the coming decades as predicted climate change related disasters will displace millions of people. In this essay, I focus on those rights ecological refugees may claim on the basis of collective self-determination. To this end, I will focus on a few specific cases that I call cases of ‘ecological refugee states’. Tuvalu, the Maldives, and to a certain extent, Bangladesh are predicted to be ecological refugee states (...) in the near future. These are states whose entire (or close to it) geographical territory is predicted to be lost to rising sea levels; the collective body of the people will itself become an ecological refugee.The question is: what may the people of an ecological refugee state legitimately claim on the basis of their right to self-determination? Should we redraw state borders to accommodate a New Tuvalu? I argue that a plausible position regarding territorial rights is that when (1) a people clearly is (or recently was) self-determining and has a legitimate claim to continue to be self-determining, and (2) the self-determination of a people is existentially threatened because the people lacks territorial rights, that (3) the people becomes a candidate for sovereign over a new territory. The result is that existing state borders may need to change to accommodate something like a New Tuvalu. To generate these results on behalf of ecological refugee states, I examine the principles of the system of territorial states. Because the system of territorial states is a system of exclusive rights over goods, especially land, it is possible that it is subject to the conditions of a Lockean proviso mechanism. This paper is dedicated mainly to adapting a version of the Lockean proviso for use in territorial rights theory. (shrink)

This book is an accessible, research-based introduction to behavioral ethics. Often ethics education is incomplete because it ignores how and why people make moral decisions. But using exciting new research from fields such as behavioral psychology, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology, the study of behavioral ethics uncovers the common reasons why good people often screw up. Chapters coordinate with free online teaching resources from The University of Texas at Austin. Scientists have long studied the ways human beings make decisions, but (...) only recently have researchers begun to focus specifically on ethical decision making. Unlike philosophy and religion, which aim to tell people how to think and act about various moral issues, behavioral ethics research reveals the factors that influence how people really make moral decisions. Most people get into ethical trouble for doing obviously wrong things. Aristotle cannot help, but learning about behavioral ethics can. By supplementing traditional approaches to teaching ethics with a clear, accessible, detailed, and research-based introduction to behavioral ethics, beginners can quickly become familiar with the important elements of this new field. This book includes the bonus of being coordinated with Ethics Unwrapped-a free, online, educational resource featuring award-winning videos and teaching materials on a variety of behavioral ethics (and general ethics) topics. This book is a useful supplement for virtually every ethics course, and important in any course where incorporating practical ethics in an engaging manner is paramount. The content applies to every discipline-journalism, business ethics, medicine, legal ethics, and others-because its chief subject is the nature of moral decision making. Because the book is research-based yet accessibly written with interesting studies, it could be used in high schools, colleges, graduate schools, and industry. (shrink)

Section I explores and articulates Beccaria's theory of luxury. Social classes tend to emulate the classes immediately above and below them. When a class increases the luxury that it consumes, this causes a chain reaction of increased demand for luxury by other classes. Satisfying the resulting new demand for luxury and non-luxury goods maximizes the happiness of a greater number of citizens. Following the consequentialist principle of utility theory, Beccaria concludes that luxury is beneficial. His writings are compared to those (...) of Hume, Bentham and others. In section II Beccaria's demonstration that freedom of choice is a universally desired luxury indispensable for well-being in all human societies is contrasted to Rousseau's belief that luxury diminishes liberty and happiness. Beccaria values the distributive more than the aggregative maximization of utility in his analysis of luxury; the article explains why this carries wider implications for utilitarian theory. (shrink)

Communicable diseases, especially those that are readily contagious, are on the rise as evidenced by the emergence of viruses like severe acute respiratory syndrome, the global resurgence of resistant forms of ancient mycobacteria such as extensively drug resistant tuberculosis, and the 2009 swine flu outbreak in Mexico. Moreover, each of us, no matter who we are or where we live, is just as likely to transmit contagious diseases to others as we are to contract such diseases from others. As cogently (...) described in the title of a recent book by Margaret Battin et al., we are all potential “victims and vectors.”Just as contagious diseases are readily passed person to person, so too can they readily be passed across local and national boundaries. We therefore all have a stake in the development of effective infectious disease control policies on a national scale, with “effective” being the operative term: regulations and statutes that are neither enforceable nor likely to be complied with may do more harm than good. (shrink)

Do territorial rights include the right to exclude? This claim is often assumed to be true in territorial rights theory. And if this claim is justified, a state may have a prima facie right to unil...

Disability scholars have critiqued medical models that pathologize disability as an individual flaw that needs treatment, rehabilitation, and cure, favoring instead a social-constructionist approach that likens disability to other identity categories such as gender, race, class, and sexuality. However, the emphasis on social constructionism has left chronic illness and pain largely untheorized. This article argues that feminist disability studies must attend to the common, chronic gynecological condition endometriosis when theorizing pain. Endo is particularly important for FDS analysis because the highly (...) feminized and sexualized nature of endo pain is a major source of disability. Because medical treatments of endo enhance fertility rather than provide pain relief, those with endo must not only have access to medical services to manage their pain, but also demand better medical management of their pain as well as disability accommodations for their pain. Thus, I propose a pain-centric model of disability that politicizes pain through social-constructionist and medical models of disability by attending to the lived experiences of pain. (shrink)

En este artículo analizamos algunos aspectos de la Teoría de Control que incluyen consideraciones sobre sus orígenes, sus motivaciones y su evolución. Describimos algunos elementos matemáticos fundamentales y diversos avances que se caracterizan a la vez por su interés científico y su transcendencia desde un punto de vista social, tecnológico e industrial. También, mencionamos algunos de los retos que se plantean en esta disciplina para un futuro inmediato.