In this thought-provoking book, Eli Foster Ritter explores the relationship between moral and civil law, arguing that they are different aspects of the same fundamental system of justice. With insightful analysis and persuasive argumentation, Ritter challenges readers to reconsider their assumptions about the nature of law and the role it plays in society. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This (...) work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Judaism, like Gilbert Meilaender, analogizes food and sex. Traditionally, Judaism saw the primary purpose of sex as procreation, the fulfillment of a biblical mandate. It did not, however, link sex to the Garden of Eden story, and it acknowledged that sex was also important for couples' bonding. While Meilaender sees bonding as a value co-equal with procreation, Judaism traditionally kept procreation as the primary goal. Couples were encouraged to have sex when infertile and were permitted contraception when pregnancy endangered life, (...) but whenever possible, they were directed to also have sex for procreation. Many modern rabbis, in agreement with Meilaender, permit contraception in order to foster bonding as a separate goal of sex. However, reproductive technology is seen, in Judaism, as partnership with God, allowing for a process of birth that is as natural as the process of producing food by farming. Last, when sex is permitted, Judaism celebrates the joy attendant to sex as a Divine gift. (shrink)

Justice is illustrated by how humans treat others. Human society can no longer be considered just if it continues to treat animals instrumentally, disregarding the moral worth of each individual creature. Emile Durkheim's division of labor theory offers a groundwork for providing animals limited rights within a human-dominated society. Solidarity can be fostered between animals and humans by internalizing the principle that all organisms are interdependent. This principle is the foundation for granting animals moral status. By recognizing the role animals (...) play in our society, we can acknowledge our obligations to them. Utilizing a mechaorganic solidarity, humans can establish justification for moral treatment of animals. (shrink)

Weapons of Words: Intertextual Competition in Babylonian Poetry. A Study of Anzû, Enūma Eliš, and Erra and Išum. By Selena Wisnom. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Pp. viii + 280. $185.

In times of ongoing resource shortages, appropriate evaluation criteria are crucial for the ethical prioritization of medical care. While the use of scoring models as tools for prioritization is widespread, they are barely discussed in the medical-ethical discourse in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, the challenge of providing care for patients in need has promoted consequentialist reasoning. In this light, we advocate for the integration of time- and context-sensitive scoring (TCsS) models in prioritization policies that (...) class='Hi'>foster treatment opportunities for patients with subacute and chronic conditions. We argue, first, that TCsSs enable a more efficient use of resources, reducing avoidable harm to patients by preventing arbitrary postponement of necessary but nonurgent interventions. Second, we contend that on an interrelational level, TCsSs render decision-making pathways more transparent, which promotes the information requirement of patient autonomy and raises confidence in the resulting prioritization decision. Third, we claim that TCsS contributes to distributive justice by reallocating available resources to the benefit of elective patients. We conclude that TCsSs promote anticipatory measures that extend the timeframe for responsible action into the future. This strengthens patients' ability to exercise their right to healthcare—primarily during times of crisis, but ultimately in the longer term too. (shrink)

Philodemus’s On Frank Criticism offers a unique conception of friendship that relies on frank speech, or truth-telling. The ability to have frank conversations with one another is the heart of a conception of friendship in which we are seen, heard, and acknowledged. This is the friendship through which we become better citizens and better selves. In particular, Philodemus is offering this truth-based friendship to students and their mentors. Yet, one would be hard put to find such trust and deep friendship (...) in the university philosophy classrooms of today. Our professionalized and content acquisition focused culture in the academy all too often inhibits fostering these kinds of relationships with our students. We begin the essay by tracing the roots of this kind of frank friendship in Plato’s Lysis, and then contextualize its emerging role in the ancient philosophical classroom by exploring its place in Philodemus’ Epicurean philosophical community at Herculaneum. We do so to see how such friendship moves beyond discourse and into practice. Next, we use Arendt and Foucault to unpack the public and private dimensions of frank friendship in the philosophical learning environment and its role in a good life and good politics. Finally, we show how the classroom practice of Modern Socratic Dialogue (MSD) can re-enliven frank friendship as a spiritual exercise in the contemporary university-philosophy classroom. Specifically, we argue that MSD is a particular method of dialogue suited for the public realm of friendship and that it contributes to the care of one’s soul, thus modeling in our classrooms a method of dialogue for both the public and private dimensions of life. (shrink)

Ethical conflicts (ECs), dilemmas auditors face when personal values or professional obligations clash with their actions, pose significant challenges to the auditing profession, potentially influencing turnover intention (TI). This study addresses a knowledge gap in the related research by focusing on two critical EC triggers: workload (WL) and perceived auditor ethical failure (PAEF: ethical sensitivity), which refers to auditors’ perceptions of ethical violations within their profession. Grounded in role theory and ethical climate theory, our study investigates the impact of WL (...) and PAEF on ECs and explores how these conflicts mediate the relationship between PAEF/WL and TI. Additionally, we examine the moderating role of organisational ethical climate (EtC) in these relationships. Using a survey of auditors and employing partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), our results reveal that both WL and PAEF increase ECs, thus escalating TI. The findings suggest that a firm’s perceived EtC can negatively moderate the relationship between PAEF and ECs. The study underlines the importance of fostering a strong EtC to manage ECs effectively and provides valuable implications for professionals, regulators, and academics seeking to improve ethical practices within auditing firms and to reduce auditor turnover. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity by Rob Arner, and: Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace ed. by Paul Alexander, and: Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic Social Teaching and US Policy by Eli Sarasan McCarthyBrian D. BerryReview of Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity ROB ARNER Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010. 136 pp. $15.56Review (...) of Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace EDITED BY PAUL ALEXANDER Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. 182 pp. $19.80Review of Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic Social Teaching and US Policy ELI SARASAN MCCARTHY Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. 259 pp. $27.00In Consistently Pro-Life, Rob Arner (who teaches at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia) makes the case that Christians should not kill other human beings—regardless of the circumstances. Taking as his point of departure the vigilante killing of abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, in 2009, he argues not only that abortion is always morally impermissible but so also is [End Page 217] the murder of abortion doctors and the use of the death penalty to punish those who murder them. In addition, he turns to the early church fathers to contend that, prior to Constantine, “without exception, the church strongly condemned the taking of human life in any form whatsoever”—thus rejecting abortion and infanticide, the blood sport of the Roman games, suicide, and killing in war (120). This was because the New Testament witness to Jesus and his death on the cross required early Christians to view “the means as just as important, if not more important, than the ends” (xiii).Arner supplements this deontological argument for Christian pacifism, which he learned from John Howard Yoder, with a brief consideration of the virtue of patience cultivated in the early churches, reflecting the influence of Stanley Hauerwas on his thought. This “cardinal virtue” connoting “longsuffering, forbearance, patient endurance”—as found in Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:38–48)—enabled early Christians to practice non-violent resistance “deferring personal revenge in favor of God’s vindicating justice” (98). If Christians were to adopt this same consistently pro-life ethic today, argues Arner, it would “lead to greater healing and peace in our blood-soaked world” (121). The book closes with three appendices—one of which is a chart of terminology that dehumanizes vulnerable victims, including unborn human beings. Unfortunately, the book does not have an index.Christ at the Checkpoint, edited by Paul Alexander (professor of Christian ethics and public policy at the Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University), includes thirteen plenary addresses delivered at a conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict organized by Palestinian Evangelical Christians at Bethlehem Bible College in March 2010. Almost all of the contributors to this volume—including biblical scholars, theologians, ethicists, pastors, activists, and others—criticize the ideology of Christian Zionism and its support of a theology of dispensationalism that, in their view, distorts the scriptures and fosters violence rather than reconciliation between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In his own presentation titled “What Can Pentecostals and Charismatics Do for Peace with Justice in Israel and Palestine?,” Alexander—who describes himself as a former “one-sided” Christian Zionist who later discovered the writings of Yoder and Hauerwas—appeals to Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and urges Pentecostals to create church communities “that cultivate persons of character and conviction, who through habits, practices, and action live out the core of our faith” (69). Along with being faithful to the “greater challenges” of love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, he argues that they should publicly declare that Jesus does not want Israel to continue the occupation of Palestine, and they should engage in the “easier tasks” of promoting human rights, lending support to United Nations Resolutions, and working toward a two-state solution (72). “The time has come in human history,” writes Alexander, “for Pentecostals to speak and act prophetically regarding this present injustice … [End Page 218] and to use every nonviolent weapon in our arsenal—stories, preaching... (shrink)

Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study of perception, taking as its starting point a puzzle in Empedocles' theory of vision: if perception is a mode of material assimilation, how can we perceive colors at a distance? Kalderon argues that the theory of perception offered by Aristotle in answer to the puzzle is both attractive and defensible.

Originally published in 1982, the aim of this book is a controversial one - to refute, by the most rigorous philosophical methods, physical realism and to develop and defend in its place a version of phenomenalism. Physical realism here refers to the thesis that the physical world is an ingredient of ultimate reality, where ultimate reality is the totality of those entities and facts which are not logically sustained by anything else. Thus, in arguing against physical realism, the author sets (...) out to establish that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical. The crucial elements in this argument are the topic-neutrality of physical description and the relationship between physical geometry and natural law. The version of phenomenalism advanced by John Foster develops out of this refutation of physical realism. Its central claim is that the physical world is the logical creation of the natural constraints on human sense-experience. This phenomenalist perspective assumes that there is some form of time in which human experience occurs but which is logically prior to the physical world, and Foster explores in detail the nature of this pre-physical time and its relation to time as a framework for physical events. This book was a major contribution to contemporary philosophical thinking at the time. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I present the measurement-theoretic fallacy of 'over-assignment of structure': the unwarranted assumption that every numeric relation holding among two (or more) numbers represents some empirical, physical relation among the objects to which these numbers are assigned as measures (e.g., of temperature). In the second section I argue that a generalized form of this fallacy arises in various philosophical contexts, in the form of a misguided, over-extended application of one conceptual domain to another. Three (...) examples are given: (i) the reduction of arithmetic into set theory, (ii) the ascription of full-blown intentional states to (at least some) non-overtly intentional creatures, such as Wittgenstein's builders, and (iii) the analysis of some modal notions as involving quantification over possible worlds (or their substitutes). The discussion of the third example gives rise to a novel account of possible-worlds talk. (shrink)

The content of our propositional attitudes is often characterized by assigning them abstract entities, namely propositions. In decision theory the attitudes are also assigned numerical measures. It may thus be asked how assignments of these two types are related to each other — both metaphysically and structurally. In the first section of this paper I argue for the importance of this question and I review Davidson’s unified account of decision theory and radical interpretation as a failed attempt to answer it. (...) Then, in the main part of the paper, I present a unified measurement-theoretic account of linguistic meaning, propositional mental content, and action, an account that avoids the difficulties of Davidson’s picture. Thus in the second section I outline two theoretical preliminaries (the representational theory of measurement and Savage’s decision theory), in the third section I present the proposed novel account, and in the fourth section I defend it against various objections. (shrink)

Mark Eli Kalderon argues that morality is a fiction by means of which our emotional attitudes are conveyed. This is an improvement on the standard noncognitivist view, which denies that moral judgement is belief but claims instead that it is the expression of an emotional attitude. Noncognitivists tend to deny that moral sentences even purport to represent moral reality, and so they have developed non-standard semantics for moral discourse. Kalderon's fictionalism shows that noncognitivism can manage without such controversial semantics. His (...) book will be essential reading for anyone working in moral philosophy, and for many others working on meaning and knowledge. (shrink)

In the first section of the paper I present Alan Turing’s notion of effective memory, as it appears in his 1936 paper ‘On Computable Numbers, With an Application to The Entscheidungsproblem’. This notion stands in surprising contrast with the way memory is usually thought of in the context of contemporary computer science. Turing’s view (in 1936) is that for a computing machine to remember a previously scanned string of symbols is not to store an internal symbolic image of this string. (...) Rather, memory consists in the fact that the past scanning of the string affects the behavior of the computer in the face of potential future inputs. In the second, central section of the paper I begin exploring how this view of Turing’s bears upon contemporary discussions in the philosophy of mind. In particular, I argue that Turing’s approach can be used to lend support to dispositional conceptions of the propositional attitudes, like the one recently presented by Matthews (2007), and that his effective memory manifests some of the characteristics of Millikan’s (1996) pushmepullyou mental states. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I present a view of linguistic meaning that I label 'Sentence Priority’: the position that semantically primitive language‐world contact is made at the level of complete sentences . Then, in the main part of the paper, I consider and reject an objection against Sentence Priority raised by John Perry, an objection that appeals to Wittgenstein's builders parable. Perry argues that the builder's utterances are utterances of self‐standing nouns, and that therefore they constitute a (...) counter‐example to SP. A sound assessment of Perry's argument, however, depends on a clear distinction between two cases: one in which the four expressions mentioned in Wittgenstein's example exhaust the builders’expressive powers, and one in which they do not. Once these cases are distinguished it can be seen that in neither does Perry's argument go through. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I review Measurement Theoretic Semantics – an approach to formal semantics modeled after the application of numbers in measurement, e.g., of length. In the second section it is argued that the measurement theoretic approach to semantics yields a novel, useful conception of propositions. In the third section the measurement theoretic view of propositions is compared with major other accounts of propositional content.

In his recent book The Measure of Mind Robert Matthews presents the most elaborate and convincing attempt to date to account for the propositional attitudes in measurement theoretic terms. In the first section of this paper I review earlier applications of measurement-theoretic conceptualization to the discussion of the mind, I outline Matthews' own account, and I raise two questions concerning it. Then, in the second section of the paper, I present a unified measurement-theoretic account of both linguistic meaning and the (...) propositional attitudes, in which a variant of Matthews' position is embedded. Such a unified account, I argue, yields satisfactory answers to the questions raised with respect to Matthews' original view, and demonstrates other advantages. (shrink)

This dissertation consists of four essays, all having in common the theme of nondelimited unity. The first essay, "Mystical Unity," characterizes the introvertive and extrovertive mystical unitive experiences and gives a phenomenological description of how extrovertive unity can develop from introvertive unity. The second essay, "Mystical Nonduality," defends the non-dualist interpretation of the mystical experience of introvertive unity against the criticisms of L. Stafford Betty . The third essay, "Unity as a Metaphysical Paradigm," offers an extensive characterization of nondelimited unity (...) as a metaphysical paradigm and then gives a series of arguments for the paradigm. The final essay, "The Metaphysics of Corporate Social Responsibility," takes the paradigm developed in the third essay and applies it to the problem of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

The edited collection Rorty and Beyond assesses and moves beyond Rorty’s legacy, bringing together leading international philosophers. The collection covers diverse territory, from his views about what we may hope for to his personal character, and everything in between.

A World for Us aims to refute physical realism and establish in its place a form of idealism. Physical realism, in the sense in which John Foster understands it, takes the physical world to be something whose existence is both logically independent of the human mind and metaphysically fundamental. Foster identifies a number of problems for this realist view, but his main objection is that it does not accord the world the requisite empirical immanence. The form of idealism (...) that he tries to establish in its place rejects the realist view in both its aspects. It takes the world to be something whose existence is ultimately constituted by facts about human sensory experience, or by some richer complex of non-physical facts in which such experiential facts centrally feature. Foster calls this phenomenalistic idealism. He tries to establish a specific version of such phenomenalistic idealism, in which the experiential facts that centrally feature in the constitutive creation of the world are ones that concern the organization of human sensory experience. The basic idea of this version is that, in the context of certain other constitutively relevant factors, this sensory organization creates the physical world by disposing things to appear systematically world-wise at the human empirical viewpoint. Chief among these other relevant factors is the role of God as the one who is responsible for the sensory organization and ordains the system of appearance it yields. It is this that gives the idealistically created world its objectivity and allows it to qualify as a real world. (shrink)

Generic language (e.g., “tigers have stripes”) leads children to assume that the referenced category (e.g., tigers) is inductively informative and provides a causal explanation for the behavior of individual members. In two preregistered studies with 4- to 7-year-old children (N = 497), we considered the mechanisms underlying these effects by testing how correcting generics might affect the development of these beliefs about novel social and animal kinds (Study 1) and about gender (Study 2). Correcting generics by narrowing their scope to (...) a single individual limited beliefs that the referenced categories could explain what their members would be like while broadening the scope to a superordinate category (Study 2) uniquely limited endorsement of gender norms. Across both studies, correcting generics did not alter beliefs about feature heritability and had mixed effects on inductive inferences, suggesting that additional mechanisms (e.g., causal reasoning about shared features) contribute to the development of full-blown essentialist beliefs. These results help illuminate the mechanisms by which generics lead children to view categories as having rich inductive and causal potential; in particular, they suggest that children interpret generics as signals that speakers in their community view the referenced categories as meaningful kinds that support generalization. The findings also point the way to concrete suggestions for how adults can effectively correct problematic generics (e.g., gender stereotypes) that children may hear in daily life. (shrink)

This article reflects on the problem of false belief produced by the integrated psychological and algorithmic landscape humans now inhabit. Following the work of scholars such as Lee McIntyre (Post-Truth, MIT Press, 2018) or Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall (The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread, Yale University Press, 2019) it combines recent discussions of fake news, post-truth, and science denialism across the disciplines of political science, computer science, sociology, psychology, and the history and philosophy of science that variously address (...) the ineffectiveness, in a digital era, of countering individual falsehoods with facts. Truth and falsehood, it argues, rather than being seen as properties or conditions attached to individual instances of content, should now be seen as collective, performative, and above all persuasive phenomena. They should be practically evaluated as networked systems and mechanisms of sharing in which individually targeted actions are combining with structural tendencies (both human and mechanical) in unprecedented ways. For example, the persuasive agency of apparent consensus (clicks, likes, bots, trolls) is newly important in a fractured environment that only appears to be, but is no longer ‘public’; the control of narratives, labels, and associations is a live, time-sensitive issue, a continuous contest, or ongoing cusp. Taking a social approach to truth yields observations of new relevance; from how current strategies of negative cohesion, blame, and enemy-creation depend crucially on binary ways of constructing the world, to how the offer of identity/community powerfully cooperates with the structural tendencies of algorithm-driven advertiser platforms towards polarisation. Remedies for these machine-learned and psychological tendencies lie in end-user education. So the Arts and Humanities, whether via comparisons with previous historical periods, or via principles of critical thinking and active reading, offer crucial resources to help counter what since 1997 silicon valley executives and scholars have called ‘persuasive technology’ (Fogg in Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What we Think and Do, Morgan Kaufmann, 2003; Hamari et al. (eds) in Persuasive Technology, Springer International Publishing, 2014; Harris in How a Handful of Tech Companies Control Billions of Minds Every Day, 2017; Lanier in Who Owns the Future? Simon & Schuster, 2014 and Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Picador, 2019). The article proposes a paradigm shift in public understandings of this new social environment: from a culture of discovery, where what matters is what exists or is in fact the case, to a culture of iteration, where what matters is what gets repeated. (shrink)

For the past thirty years, Hal Foster has pushed the boundaries of cultural criticism, establishing a vantage point from which the seemingly disparate agendas of artists, patrons, and critics have a telling coherence. In The Anti-Aesthetic, preeminent critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Rosalind Krauss, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said consider the full range of postmodern cultural production, from the writing of John Cage, to Cindy Sherman's film stills, to Barbara Kruger's collages. With a redesigned cover and a new afterword (...) that situates the book in relation to contemporary criticism, The Anti-Aesthetic provides a strong introduction for newcomers and a point of reference for those already engaged in discussions of postmodern art, culture, and criticism. Includes a new afterword by Hal Foster and 12 black and white photographs. (shrink)

Echoing other articles in this special issue, this article re-evaluates a collection of feminist works that fell out of fashion as a consequence of academic feminism embracing poststructuralist and postmodernist trends. In line with fellow contributors, the article critically reflects upon the unsympathetic reading of feminisms considered to be essentialising and universalistic, in order to re-evaluate, in my case, ecofeminism. As an introduction, I reflect on my own perhaps unfair rejection of ecofeminism as a doctoral researcher and early career academic (...) who, in critiquing 1990s international environmental governance, sought to problematise the essentialist premise on which it appeared to be based. The article thereafter challenges this well-rehearsed critique by carefully revisiting a sample of ecofeminist work produced between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. In an effort to avoid wholesale abandonment of the wealth of feminist theory often labelled as second wave, or the rendering of feminisms of the past as redundant as feminist theory changes over time, this article re-reads the work of ecofeminists, such as Starhawk, Susan Griffin and Vandana Shiva, to demonstrate their contemporary relevance. In so doing, the article argues that a contemporary re-reading of ecofeminism offers insights allowing for a radical rethinking of contemporary environmental governance. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I consider the practice of volume-measurement in baking, and I distinguish between two measurement schemes that can be extracted from this practice. In the second section I argue that the ascription of propositional content to utterances bears intuitive affinity to one of these schemes, that extant accounts of propositions are in the mold of the other scheme, and that therefore an alternative conception of propositions is called for.

In the first section of this paper I define a set of measures for proof complexity, which combine measures in terms of length and space. In the second section these measures are generalized to the broader category of formal texts. In the third section of the paper I outline several applications of the proposed theory.

ZusammenfassungEine wichtige Aufgabe empirischer Sozialforschung in der Medizinethik besteht darin, bisher unbekannte ethische Probleme zu identifizieren und zu beschreiben. Die Frage, welche Sachverhalte in den Gegenstandsbereich der Medizinethik fallen, ist jedoch sowohl aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht voraussetzungsreich als auch in der Praxis umstritten. Im Beitrag werden theoretische, methodologische und forschungspraktische Aspekte der Identifikation und Auswahl ethischer Probleme diskutiert und das Vorgehen am Beispiel einer konkreten empirisch-ethischen Studie illustriert. Der Schwerpunkt des Artikels liegt hierbei auf den Vorbedingungen sowie dem konkreten Vorgehen bei (...) der Integration von Laien- und Expertenperspektive. Im ersten Teil wird zunächst vorbereitend die Frage nach der Abgrenzung zwischen ethischen Problemen und anderen praktischen Herausforderungen adressiert. Dies geschieht unter Rückgriff auf die philosophisch-ethische Systematik sowie unter Berücksichtigung des stark praxisorientierten Charakters von Medizinethik. Anschließend wird ein Vorschlag zur Unterscheidung zweier Typen ethischer Probleme gemacht und die Frage nach der Definitionsmacht zur Auszeichnung ethischer Probleme auf den spezifischen Kontext empirisch-ethischer Forschung übertragen. Aufbauend auf diesen theoretischen Überlegungen wird im dritten Abschnitt des Beitrags schließlich ein Vorgehen zur Identifikation ethischer Probleme am Beispiel des ETHICO-Projektes als einer empirisch-ethischen Interventionsstudie im Bereich der Onkologie vorgestellt. Zusammenfassend vertritt der Beitrag die These, dass die Identifikation ethischer Probleme in der Medizin ein theoretisch komplexes und methodisch anspruchsvolles Unterfangen ist, bei dem nicht allein die Perspektive philosophischer Theorie eingenommen werden sollte, sondern vielmehr Formen der Integration von Laien- und Expertenperspektive entwickelt werden müssen. (shrink)

Scientific advances in health care have been disproportionately distributed across social strata. Disease burden is also disproportionately distributed, with marginalized groups having the highest risk of poor health outcomes. Social determinants are thought to influence health care delivery and the management of chronic diseases among marginalized groups, but the current conceptualization of social determinants lacks a critical focus on the experiences of people within their environment. The purpose of this article was to integrate the literature on marginalization and situate the (...) concept in the framework of social determinants of health. We demonstrate that social position links marginalization and social determinants of health. This perspective provides a critical lens to assess the societal power dynamics that influence the construction of the socio‐environmental factors affecting health. Linking marginalization with social determinants of health can improve our understanding of the inequities in health care delivery and the disparities in chronic disease burden among vulnerable groups. (shrink)

Slurs have been standardly assumed to bear a very direct, very distinctive semantic relationship to what philosophers have called “neutral counterpart” terms. I argue that this is mistaken: the general relationship between paradigmatic slurs and their “neutral counterparts” should be assumed to be the same one that obtains between ‘chick flick’ and ‘romantic comedy’, as well a huge number of other more prosaic pairs of derogatory and “less derogatory” expressions. The most plausible general relationship between these latter expressions — and (...) thus, I argue, between paradigmatic slurs and “neutral counterpart” terms — is one of overlap in presumed extension, grounded in overlap in associated stereotypes. The resulting framework has the advantages of being simple, unified, and, unlike its orthodox rivals, neatly accommodating of a much wider range of data than has previously been considered. More importantly, it positions us to better understand, identify, and confront the insidious mechanisms of ordinary bigotry. (shrink)

In English law there is a strong (though rebuttable) presumption that life should be maintained. This article contends that this presumption means that it is always unlawful to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from patients in permanent vegetative state (PVS) and minimally conscious state (MCS), and that the reasons for this being the correct legal analysis mean also that such withdrawal will always be ethically unacceptable. There are two reasons for this conclusion. First, the medical uncertainties inherent in the definition and diagnosis (...) of PVS/MCS are such that, as a matter of medical fact, it can never be established, with the degree of certainty necessary to rebut the presumption, that it is not in the patient’s best interest to remain alive. And second (and more controversially and repercussively), that even if permanent unconsciousness can be unequivocally demonstrated, the presumption is not rebutted. This is because there is plainly more to human existence than consciousness (or consciousness the markers of which can ever be demonstrated by medical investigations). It can never be said that the identity of the patient whose best interests are at stake evaporates (so eliminating the legal or ethical subject) when that person ceases to be conscious. Nor can it be said that the best interests of an unconscious person do not mandate continued biological existence. We simply cannot know. That uncertainty is legally conclusive, and (subject to resource allocation questions and views about the relevance of family wishes and the previously expressed wishes of the patient) should be ethically conclusive. (shrink)

[1] Elul. Yamim Noraʼim. Sukot -- [2] Pesaḥ. Shevuʻot. Galut u-geʼulot. Ḥanukah. Purim.

This study argues that a much richer and more coherent account of Michael Oakeshott's political philosophy is gained by examining it in light of three customary sources for ordering human experience: human nature, religion and history. While the historical character of Oakeshott's thought has been readily recognized, too often the roles of human nature and religion have been neglected by commentators, leading to an impoverished account of his work. And even regarding history, there has been confusion concerning Oakeshott's notion of (...) the practical past. Towards this end, the study establishes that Oakeshott does have a significant concept of human nature and religion, clarifies his concept of the practical past, and argues that viewing his political thought through the prism of these three concepts significantly illuminates his understanding of, among other matters, political authority, politics, non-instrumental law, and the problem of innate human freedom versus the historical freedoms associated with Western individualism. ;Regarding human nature, Oakeshott's conception is seen to include the notions of reflective consciousness, free agency, intelligent learning, and a social character. These notions indicate a more substantial and consistent 'agent' across history than Oakeshott himself typically suggests. Regarding religion, the study argues there is a persistent if idiosyncratic religious sensibility in Oakeshott's writings, including an almost sacred understanding of human freedom tempered by an Augustinian awareness of human imperfection, that underlines the depth of conviction behind Oakeshott's philosophical and moral conclusions concerning human affairs. Regarding history, the concept of intimations operating in the practical past is explored as the primary vehicle by which moral and political practices are grounded in Oakeshott's thought. The limitations of this approach are examined as well. ;The study concludes that the substantive implications of Oakeshott's conceptions of human nature and religion are a significant aid to grasping the full significance of his political philosophy. In particular they render more coherent the force of his normative conclusions, especially his championing of individual freedom and his disdain of collectivism, clarify continued inconsistencies, such as his ambiguous gulf between reflection and practice, and suggest possible bridges between Oakeshott's thought and more foundational approaches to political philosophy. (shrink)

The primary focus of this work is Isocrates as a teacher, his works, and his pedagogy including both his educational practice and the philosophy that underlies it. In addition I examine the epistemological basis of Isocrates's teaching and the connection between the Isocratean conception of the nature of knowledge and the development of character. Many modern scholars consider Isocrates's educational philosophy to be relativistic and his moral position identical to contemporary sophists. This work suggests that both of these positions are (...) incorrect. Isocrates establishes Logos as a transcendental locus and discourse, either between people or within one's own mind, as the means for the discovery of knowledge and the development of arete. Isocrates is called by some the "father of humanistic culture," and his paideia represents an expression of historical Greek cultural practice. Isocrates was an important and influential figure in the development of Greek and by extension Western education. Today, however, his reputation is as an orator whose highly refined style is his major achievement. Isocrates's work has not received the attention that his influence merits, and his educational philosophy should help inform modern practice. (shrink)