In Philosophy 51, October 1976, 471–472, Professor Tom Regan takes ud to task for our attack on Kant's theory concerning the moral status of animals. The ground of Regan's criticism is that ‘… it is clear that Kant does not suppose, as… Broadie and Pybus erroneously assume that he does, that the concept of maltreating an animal, on the one hand, and, on the other, the concept of using an animal as a means, are the same or logically equivalent concepts’ (...) . Regan argues that Kant does not say that we should avoid treating animals as a means. Rather, he claims, Kant's view is that we have an indirect duty not to maltreat animals, since in maltreating them we treat, or run the risk of treating, as a mere means rationality in ourselves or in others. (shrink)

This article reflects one scholar's attempt to locate herself within emerging ethical methodologies given a specific concern with cross-cultural women's moral praxis. The field of comparative ethics's debt to past debates over methodology is considered through a typology of three waves of methodological invention. The article goes on to describe a specific research focus on U.S. Catholic and Iranian Shii women that initiated a search for a distinct method. This method of comparative ethics, which focuses on the production of ethical (...) knowledge through the interaction of discursive logics of various moral agents, is described. The conclusion turns to how methodological invention can itself become a constructive project through the way it (1) locates the scholar in relation to her subject of study and (2) allows for isolation of tactics within specific moral discourses. (shrink)

This essay is a critical engagement with recent assessments of comparative religious ethics by John Kelsay and Jung Lee. Contra Kelsay's proposal to return to a neo-Weberian sociology of religious norm elaboration and justification, the authors argue that comparative religious ethics is and should be practiced as a field of study in active conversation with other fields that consider human flourishing, employing a variety of methods that have their roots in multiple disciplines. Cross-pollination from a variety of disciplines is a (...) strength of comparative ethics, which has enlivened recent and ongoing research on ethics, not a problem to be resolved by convergence on a single, distinctively comparative project. The authors also argue in response to Lee and Kelsay that while individual comparative studies of virtue and personal formation can be flawed in various ways, this line of research has been productive and at times very compelling. Moreover, attention to comparative virtue ethics shows how scholarship on some ethical topics necessitates drawing on a variety of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds, a conclusion relevant to all work in religious ethics today. (shrink)

IN THIS ESSAY, I PROPOSE A DISTINCT APPROACH TO ETHICS—COMPARAtive rhetoric—that attempts to analyze moral discourse at the intratradition and intertradition levels. Drawing on Aristotle's classification of modes of rhetoric, I demonstrate how the epideictic mode helps conceptualize moral discourse as attempting to convince and motivate through persuasion, even as it assumes as audience of adherence. I then elaborate a method of technical rhetorical analysis, drawing on the work of Stephen Toulmin and Chiam Perelman. This method is applied to two (...) short rhetorical performances of John Paul II and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, focusing on motherhood. I conclude by briefly considering women's responses to clerical rhetoric. (shrink)

Moral disengagement is a process whereby the self-regulatory mechanisms that would otherwise sanction unethical conduct can be selectively disabled. The present research proposed that moral disengagement might be adopted in the endorsement of asylum seeker policies in Australia, and in order to test this, a scale was developed and was validated in two studies. Factor analysis demonstrated that a 2-factor, 16-item structure had the best fit, and the construct validity of the scale was supported. Results provide evidence for the use (...) of moral disengagement in the context of asylum seekers as a means of rationalizing conduct that may otherwise be sanctioned. (shrink)

To be read in conjunction with Process and reality: the author has paralleled the structure, chapter by chapter, to facilitate concurrent study.

This paper investigates what it may mean to re-imagine learning through aesthetic experience with reference to John Dewey’s Art as Experience. The discussion asks what learning might look like when aesthetic experience takes centre stage in the learning process. It investigates what Dewey meant by art as experience and aesthetic experience. Working with Dewey as a philosopher of reconstruction of experience, the discussion examines responses to poetic writings and communication in learning situations. In seeking to discover what poetic writing does (...) within the experience of a reader and writer it considers three specific learning situations. Firstly there is an examination of a five-year old child’s experience of shared communication through the story of Horton the Elephant. Secondly there is an account of the responses of an 11-year-old child to poetry in a 1950s classroom setting, and later reconstructions of those experiences by the child as adult. Thirdly, the paper extends to intensive writing with 12 to 13-year-old children. The focus is on the process of learning via acts of expression as aesthetic experiences. Through art as experience the child develops perceptions that recover a coherence and continuity of aesthetic experience in art as in everyday life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Scrutinizing Studio Art and Its StudyHistorical Relations and Contemporary ConditionsElizabeth M. Grierson (bio)Yet art is nevertheless an inquiry, precise and rigorous.—Maurice BlanchotIntroductionThe modern disciplines of art and art history have been going through significant revisions since the 1980s, when the objective domain of knowledge was placed in a contested position by the multiplicity of narratives characterizing postmodern social spaces. Whether there was or was not any disciplinary "crisis" at (...) that time is not at issue here.1 What is of concern is to identify the ways the academy—and specifically the art academy—sought to respond by rethinking disciplinary knowledge and thereby problematizing traditional methodologies of scholarly inquiry. Through the academic privileging of aesthetics and scientific discourses, modern knowledge brought with it a metanarrative appeal to the transcendence of the human spirit through art and religiosity, coupled with the identification of the rational human subject as agent of progress. This discussion is concerned with asking how these metanarratives were intervened or interrogated through art and its study and how those moments of displacement could be identified and analyzed. Ultimately, we may address the question of how discourses of power operate to normalize social practices and silence difference in institutional practices of art and art education. [End Page 111]Crisis in the DisciplinesIn 1982 an issue of Art Journal was dedicated to the theme of the crisis in the disciplines. However, as Donald Preziosi2 points out, if the disciplines of art and art history were deemed by Art Journal to be in crisis, there was only one article (by Oleg Grabar) in that journal issue that addressed this crisis and problematized "the history of the discipline and its methodological prospects for the future."3 In other words, if there was a crisis, and art educators or art historians were feeling it, what constituted the crisis was not yet being addressed. What is of interest is that this was a time when the object of study was under reconsideration and art and its history were part of a revisionist climate of scrutiny and reconsideration. This being so, there was significant expansion to the way fine arts and art history were being approached in the 1980s and 1990s in response to revisionist scholarship. This trend continued to be reinvigorated with the transformations of digital technologies in the 2000s.Art academies of the early 1990s in New Zealand and Australia were starting to grapple with methodological regimes of art history as a discipline in the context of intellectual challenges of postmodernity. Directing these issues to artists and their scholarly needs, educators were opening the discrete academic disciplines to wider intellectual, social, and cultural possibilities of inquiry. Standing before a "great" work of art and proclaiming its greatness had lost its meaning. Jean-François Lyotard had written it thus: "The time is past when we can plant ourselves in front of a Vernet and sigh along with Diderot, 'How beautiful, grand, varied, noble, wise, harmonious, rigorously coloured this is!'"4Threading throughout this discussion is the way one particular art academy was facing this challenge in those postmodernist years of the 1990s. The account tells of processes and principles of pedagogical change, but the implications of this case are not limited to one academy in one location. It was the early 1990s, and the writers of the first degree nominated as "visual arts" in New Zealand were addressing some of the issues of disciplinarity in fine arts and art history. This was the first degree situating what might be called a postmodernist pedagogical approach to fine arts studio and its study. This was at a time when changes in the New Zealand Education Act (1989, 1990) enabled degrees in art to be formally accredited and resourced in tertiary institutions beyond the long-established universities of Auckland (North Island) and Canterbury (South Island). This political move gave opportunity for educational innovation in the pedagogies of fine arts and art history. It was in this context that one independent art school in Auckland, ASA School of Art, seized the moment to work toward a more interdisciplinary notion of practice and theory. Given the opportunity to introduce a more... (shrink)

Aristotle'sPoeticsis a treatise notoriously difficult to understand, largely because of Aristotle's treatment of his theme, with its elliptical thought and loose terminology, but also because Aristotle's influence on subsequent drama and criticism makes it difficult to isolate the original thought from subsequent attempts at implementation or interpretation. However, as Aristotle devotes most of his treatise to tragedy—despite the wider subject he professes—and in discussing tragedy deals most extensively with plot, his views on the tragic plot should be reasonably clear. The (...) passages cited have some importance for the understanding of his views. (shrink)

Through in-depth interviews with 41 middle-class Puerto Rican transmigrants, this research examines how gender constrains global care work. Migration compromises embeddedness in care networks, concurrently heightening its meaning. Women felt these effects more acutely than men given their primary responsibility for reproductive work. Migrants engaged in emotion work to cope with constraints, strategically rearticulating care work; yet unsuccessful strategies resulted in further emotional dislocation, particularly for women. Migration led to a dichotomy in which professional success was pitted against emotional fulfillment (...) through care work. Gender, cultural, and geopolitical factors mediated this split, contributing to a permanently unsettled flow of migrants. (shrink)

Economics plays a key role in human rights issues as decision-makers weigh the incentives associated with choosing how to use scarce resources in the context of committing or escaping human rights violence. This textbook provides an introduction to the microeconomic analysis of human rights utilizing economics as a lens through which to examine social topics including capital punishment, violence against women, asylum seeking, terrorism, child abuse, genocide, and hate. Whether analyzing the decisions made in capital punishment cases, the causes and (...) consequences of genocide, or the impact of terrorist acts on domestic and international decision-making, the science of economics provides tools and a systematic method of analysis and policy recommendation. This key text presents a method for integrating the social sciences of economics and human rights to create new opportunities for the investigation of social issues. Within each chapter, readers gain a fundamental understanding of a specific human rights issue, the decision-makers and the decision-making process involved, and the benefits and costs leading to the decisions. Experts on each issue, drawn from a variety of fields, contribute to each chapter and present first-hand accounts and different perspectives on each issue. The detailed analyses and accounts provided also explore the potential incentives involved in the prevention and termination of human rights violations. Aiming to further economic inquiry and enhance interdisciplinary research, this textbook serves as a multi-purpose guide for a range of readers. Students, researchers, and educators, as well as those working in organizations supporting victims of human rights violations and policy-makers facing human rights challenges, will find this book informative and engaging. (shrink)

Gangestad & Simpson present an evolutionary functional analysis of mating strategies. This commentary interprets their argument using a central concept from life history theory, return from investment. Incorporating return from investment allows further specification of costs and benefits from short-term mating in women as well as men and in ecological settings of high environmental variation in mortality and resource availability.

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The basic tenets of “classical” naturalism (exemplified in the work of Mead, Buchler, and Randall, among others) are delineated and distinguished from other versions of naturalism. Classical naturalism is also distinguished from reductive materialism and idealism. Nature is asserted to be indefinitely plural and not amenable to monistic or dualistic categorial schemes; that is, the principle of “ontological parity” is maintained. The method of inquiry of naturalism is outlined, along with the notion of truth as perspectivally objective. The metaphysical hypotheses (...) are then used to examine culture. Culture is found to be the specific environment of human being, arising out of, but irreducible to, other natural processes. Culture is described as the cumulative gestures of the human social organism as it discovers and creates itself in mutual constitution with other natural processes and products. (shrink)

The paper begins by emphasizing the importance of so-called complete philosophical works on ontology to include ideas on mood and emotions, noting the lack of this inclusion in many texts. Next, it uses and dives into Heidegger’s Being & Time, as an example of an ontological work that aptly includes explanations of mood & emotions, or “attunement” in Heideggerian terms. It is also noted the critical difference between Heidegger’s approach to these topics and the approach taken by psychologists and those (...) in similar fields. Finally, the paper concludes by arguing for the importance of Being & Time, Heidegger, and ontological work on mood. (shrink)

This selection of new approaches to the comparative study of religious ethics provides an accessible introduction to the most current research in the field. The essays in this book show that a variety of approaches to religious ethics are worth pursuing in our contemporary, profusely interconnected world. They also demonstrate that many sorts of analysis are shaped by comparison and comparative interests, even when they focus on a single topic or question, as long as they are informed by analogous studies (...) of other traditions, cultures, or religions. The volume exemplifies a thought-provoking, multidisciplinary engagement with global ethics today. (shrink)

Women's small share of professional and managerial occupations compared with their share of the total labor force is examined for the 11 largest racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. Gender-related characteristics—women's labor force participation rates, marital status, and the sex ratio—influence women's share of the top jobs, as do class and ethnic variables such as place of birth, population size, and class of worker. Labor market gender inequality is greatest among the smaller, more affluent minorities, many of whom (...) are recent immigrants to this country. The larger, frequently indigenous, minority groups exhibit less of this kind of inequality. Minority and gender status intersect, so that men monopolize surplus resources among the more affluent minority groups and use these resources to secure a more advantaged labor market position. (shrink)

In his article ‘Saints and Heroes’, Urmson argues that traditional moral theories allow at most for a threefold classification of actions in terms of their worth, and that they are therefore unsatisfactory. Since the conclusion of his argument has led to the widespread use of the term ‘acts of supererogation’, and since I do not believe that such acts exist, I propose to argue that the actions with which he is concerned not only can, but should, be contained within the (...) traditional classification. (shrink)

As I have listened to incarcerated women over many years, I have learned about the ways they work to construct moral and meaningful lives against all odds. Trying to find forms of Christian ethical reflection to engage their (and my) experiences has helped me to explore ways of “doing” Christian ethics that attend carefully to “ordinary” life. I describe how women inside understand ethics as judgment and contrast this form of ethics to the moral work they do in relation to (...) themselves and each other. I conclude by suggesting some guideposts for a Christian ordinary ethics that attends critically to the particular practices of building meaningful lives in context, especially those locations requiring persons to “make a way out of no way.”. (shrink)

This essay explores the ways in which emerging religious understandings of sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) have potential for new work in comparative ethics. I focus on the startling diversity of teachings on transsexuality among the Vatican and leading Shia clerics in Iran. While the Vatican rejects SRS as a cure for transsexuality, Iranian clerics not only support decisions to transition to a new sex, they see it as necessary in some cases given the gendered nature of the moral life. In (...) this essay, after describing the practical justification for sexual reassignment surgeries in Iranian fatwas and the emerging official Vatican position on transsexuality, I explain how these divergent positions are based on different semiotics of sex and gender that reflect specific ontological views of the human body. (shrink)