BackgroundSuicide research aims to contribute to a better understanding of suicidal behaviour and its prevention. However, there are many ethical challenges in this research field, for example, regarding consent and potential risks to participants. While studies to-date have focused on the perspective of the researchers, this study aimed to investigate the views and experiences of members of Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) in dealing with suicide-related study applications.MethodsThis qualitative study entailed a thematic analysis using an inductive approach. We conducted semi-structured (...) interviews with a purposive sample (N = 15) of HREC Chairs or their delegates from Australian research-intensive universities. The interview guide included questions regarding the ethical concerns and challenges in suicide-related research raised by HREC members, how they dealt with those challenges and what advice they could give to researchers.ResultsThe analysis identified four main themes: (1) HREC members’ experiences of reviewing suicide-related study applications, (2) HREC members’ perceptions of suicide, suicide research, and study participants, (3) Complexity in HREC members’ decision-making processes, and (4) HREC members’ relationships with researchers.ConclusionsReliance on ethical guidelines and dialogue with researchers are crucial in the assessment of suicide-related study applications. Both researchers and HREC members may benefit from guidance and resources on how to conduct ethically sound suicide-related studies. Developing working relationships will be likely to help HRECs to facilitate high quality, ethical suicide-related research and researchers to conduct such research. (shrink)

Overviews -- Hildegard of Bingen -- Anne Conway -- Mary Astell -- Mary Wollstonecraft -- Harriet Taylor Mill -- Edith Stein -- Simone Weil -- Simone de Beauvoir -- Conclusions.

Clicks, comments, transactions, and physical movements are being increasingly recorded and analyzed by Big Data processors who use this information to trace the sentiment and activities of markets and voters. While the benefits of Big Data have received considerable attention, it is the potential social costs of practices associated with Big Data that are of interest to us in this paper. Prior research has investigated the impact of Big Data on individual privacy rights, however, there is also growing recognition of (...) its capacity to be mobilized for surveillance purposes. Our paper delineates the underlying issues of privacy and surveillance and presents them as in tension with one another. We postulate that efforts at controlling Big Data may create a trade-off of risks rather than an overall improvement in data protection. We explore this idea in relation to the principles of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation as it arguably embodies the new ‘gold standard’ of cyber-laws. We posit that safeguards advocated by the law, anonymization and pseudonymization, while representing effective counter measures to privacy concerns, also incentivize the use, collection, and trade of behavioral and other forms of de-identified data. We consider the legal status of these ownerless forms of data, arguing that data protection techniques such as anonymization and pseudonymization raise significant concerns over the ownership of behavioral data and its potential use in the large-scale modification of activities and choices made both on and offline. (shrink)

This article examines the work of the seventeenth-century thinker Catharine Trotter Cockburn with an eye toward explication of her trenchant empiricism, and the foundations upon which it rested. It is argued that part of the originality of Cockburn's work has to do with her consistent line of thought with regard to evidence from the senses and the process of abstract conceptualization; in this she differed strongly from some of her contemporaries. The work of Martha Brandt Bolton and Fidelis Morgan is (...) cited, and there is an auxiliary argument to the effect that Cockburn is probably better known as a playwright than she is as a philosophical thinker. (shrink)

This book presents the current feminist critique of science and the philosophy of science in such a way that students of philosophy of science, philosophers, feminist theorists, and scientists will find the material accessible and intellectually rigorous.Contemporary feminist debate, as well as the debate brought on by the radical critics of science, assumes—incorrectly—that certain movements in philosophy of science and science-driven theory are understood in their dynamics as well as in their details. All too often, labels such as “Kuhnian” or (...) “positivistic” are taken for granted, and much of the contemporary postmodern or post-structuralist feminist theory that sets out to criticize science does little to alleviate the reader’s lack of knowledge with regard to such movements.Unlike other texts, Philosophies of Science: Feminist Theories provides a student-oriented framework so that, for example, positivism is given a thorough grounding before the feminist critique of such epistemological theory is given. Other movements discussed include the Kuhnian turn, sociology of science, and the radical critique of science. Feminist theory and critique are interwoven throughout, with one chapter devoted to feminist thought, which includes the work of such thinkers as Longino, Hararway, Hubbard, Nelson, Harding, and Keller. (shrink)

Contents: LEGAL THEORY 1. Reflections on law in context / William Twining -- 2. Are omissions less culpable? / Tony Honore -- 3. Scandinavian legal realism in the law of contract / Jan Hellner -- 4. Statutes and contracts as founts of formal reasoning / Robert S. Summers -- 5. Conceptions of public policy / John Bell LEGAL HISTORY 6. Aftermath / Paul D. Carrington -- 7. The role of the judiciary: lessons from the end of empire / Robert Stevens (...) -- 8. The Origins of futures trading in the Liverpool Cotton Market COMMON LAW 9.payment undertakings / Roy Goode -- 10. Pre-contractual duties of disclosure / S.M. Waddams -- 11. Three problems with the new product liability / Jane Stapleton -- 12. Evaluating the goals of personal injury law: some empirical evidence / Donald Harris -- 13. Negligence and economic loss / John Dwyer -- 14. Libel and constitutional free speech / John Fleming -- 15. The basis of tortious liability / Peter Cane. (shrink)

An emerging view of science rejects an infallible observational given and takes consensus as the starting point for confirmation. Theory and Observation are seen as mutually correcting. I argue that the same is true of ethics, such as Rawls' "reflective equilibrium." Though epistemologically similar, their truth conditions may differ. Ethics may be reducible to physics; but even if it is not, that does not imply that it has no truth conditions. The options for truth in ethics are the same as (...) those of other abstract fields such as mathematics. (shrink)

This article argues that Maria Stewart is an underappreciated abolitionist, and a worthy exponent of the Black views of the 1830s. Her work is compared with that of David Walker, Charlotte Forten, and Anna Julia Cooper. A focal point of much of her work is her exhortation to the high moral ground—she remains concerned, throughout her career, about the temptations faced by many during the nineteenth century that might lead them to a non-Christian path. As is the case with Charlotte (...) Forten, who frequently moved for more formal education, Stewart worked ceaselessly to impel Black Americans to a worthy and virtuous life. (shrink)

An analysis of the specific yogurt and phone microcredit schemes in Bangladesh is made along three lines of argument. It is important to note that these schemes are pulled together by NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) to assist women and children in developing areas to attain financial independence—the first line employs leftist criticism of the corporate constructs, and an additional line of inquiry compares some of the programs to those in other nations. A final line of argument analyzes the specific cultural views (...) of Bengali Islam and the long tradition of Bengali literacy. It is concluded that, despite areas of difficulty, the programs are in general beneficial. (shrink)

Susan Stebbing's Thinking to Some Purpose is analysed along the lines of contemporary efforts in critical thinking, and some of the problematized media material of her time. It is concluded that what Stebbing recommends is difficult to achieve, but worth the effort.Export citation.

The argument that a holistic analysis of Dewey's work, drawing not only on the major portions subject to extensive commentary (such as Experience and Nature) but also on his aesthetics, provides fuel for feminist theorizing is sustained by advertence to the standard commentary and also to new work in aesthetic feminism itself. Sleeper, Rorty, Hickman and Russell are cited, and the recent resurgence of interest in developing the intersection between analytic aesthetics and feminist aesthetics is alluded to. It is concluded (...) that the enterprising feminist theorist may suffer from an embarrassment of riches in attempting to approach Dewey but that such an approach is well worth the effort. (shrink)

lydia maria child was one of the best-known women intellectuals of the nineteenth century on the American scene, and yet her name is not often heard today.1 Although it might seem gratuitous to attempt to label a thinker—and, in some cases, not only unnecessary, but demeaning—there is ample reason to think that Child can be called a transcendentalist, as well as an early abolitionist and feminist. In any case, the independent and very forward-looking work of this woman thinker of her (...) time, it can be argued, deserves further consideration and is not without philosophical import.Child’s name comes up now because there is renewed interest in a number of circles in the efforts of abolitionists, both black.. (shrink)

The subject of this book is young children's emotional-social learning and development within early childhood care and education settings in Aotearoa-New Zealand. The focus on emotional complexity fills a gap in early childhood care and education research where young children are frequently framed narrowly as 'learners,' ignoring the importance of emotional functioning and the feelings with which children make sense of themselves and the world. This book draws on original data in the form of narrative-like framed events to creatively illustrate (...) the complexities in children's diverse ways of feeling, thinking, playing, being, and becoming. Events illuminate the feelings and meanings of observed experiences in holistic and contextualised gestalts. Awareness of unconscious processes, the feeling of feelings, and cultural dimensions of development and meaning-making are addressed. The book emphasises the emergent and psychodynamic nature of children's development and learning with strong links to the role of play and playfulness in the events, drawing on two ethnographically inspired research projects that present theory, experience and practice in real-life events. (shrink)

Several lines of argument are presented to support the notion that hooved animal rescue is justified, however expensive and controversial. The work of Singer and McNamee is discussed. The article concludes that various breeds have distinct arguments in their favour when it comes to rescue.

Although dualism has the advantage of being intuitively plausible, it is not compatible with a 21st-century (scientific) world view. Jaak Panksepp and Antonio Damasio are contemporary writers who reject dualism, and whose views take the form of “biological naturalism”. I first discuss how their views compare in five specific respects; and then I look more closely at how the different emphases of the views affect their ability to account for the evolutionary advantages of consciousness, specifically. Both authors agree that “consciousness” (...) provides creatures with a survival advantage in terms of their ability to produce novel and/or flexible responses, their ability to plan ahead, and their motivation to promote their own survival – but the exact means by which they think these advantages are conferred, in each of these respects, differ. One might say that, whereas Damasio thinks the main evolutionary advantages of “consciousness” (the “higher reaches” of which are unique to humans) have to do with enabling creatures to work out what to do to promote their well-being, Panksepp thinks the main advantage of “consciousness” is that being “conscious” of affective feelings urgently motivates creatures to take action when their well-being is threatened. Considering that “working out what do” is only possible for a small selection of cognitively sophisticated organisms, I argue that Panksepp’s account is more plausible than Damasio’s account. (shrink)

This article analyzes Elizabeth Anscombe's short piece “Hume and Julius Caesar” from the standpoint of traditional foundationalist epistemic criteria, and concludes that while Anscombe may be right about finding a mistake in Hume, she has also failed to fill in her own arguments in the way that her overall aim requires. Special allusion is made to the work of J. L. Austin, especially insofar as that work has to do with reformulating sentences so that they appear to meet foundationalist criteria.

A contrast is developed between the educational views of van Schurman and Astell, revolving around their sense of Christian piety and their stance on women’s place in the social and political sphere. The work of Irwin, Hill, and others is cited, and it is concluded that important differences between the views of the two thinkers can be delineated, and that doing so helps us to understand the intellectual and philosophical milieu of the seventeenth century. In addition, the debate sheds light (...) on today’s gender-essentialism controversies in education, and the extent to which intellectual rationality is a general human virtue. (shrink)

BackgroundImplementation of recommendations from clinical practice guidelines is essential for evidence based clinical practice. However, the most effective methods of implementation are unclear. We conducted a national, cluster-randomised, blinded implementation trial to determine if midwife or doctor local implementation leaders are more effective in implementing a guideline for use of oral dextrose gel to treat hypoglycaemic babies on postnatal wards. To prevent any conscious or unconscious performance bias both the doctor and midwife local implementation leaders were kept unaware of the (...) trial. This paper reports the ethical dilemmas and practical challenges of ensuring clinicians remained unaware of their involvement in an implementation trial.MethodsWe sought approval from the National Health and Disability Ethics committee to keep clinicians unaware of the trial by waiving the standard requirement for locality approval usually required for each district health board. The ethics committee did not approve a waiver of consent but advised that we approach the chief executive of each district health board to ask for provisional locality approval. Ultimately it was necessary to seek ethics approval for three separate study designs to keep clinicians unaware of the trial.ResultsThe median time for chief executive approval was 16 days and for locality approval was 57 days. We completed 21 different locality approval forms for 27 hospitals.ConclusionsKeeping clinicians unaware of their involvement in a national implementation cluster-randomised trial is feasible. However, despite a national ethics committee, significant logistical challenges were time consuming and delayed trial completion. Co-ordination of the locality approval process would help facilitate multi-centre trials. (shrink)

At Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, in the UK, in 1979, four women joined the newly formed community of Theravada monks. They lived initially as novices, and their wish to engage more fully with the life of renunciation, combined with the support and commitment of the community leader Ajahn Sumedho and other monks, led to the formation of a unique order of Theravada Buddhist nuns, who became known as siladhara. This paper will appear in two parts. This first part begins with a (...) brief contextual overview of Theravada nuns, from the founding and decline of the order of bhikkhunis to the various forms of ordination available for women in the Theravada world today. It then gives a history of the order of siladhaa? from its inception until approximately 2000, focusing on the development of their rule and ordination procedures, the way the order has changed over the years and issues and conflicts it has had to deal with, as well as a period when some nuns lived in a women-only community. My research was undertaken by personal interview with founding members of the order as well as by e-mail, telephone and written communications with nuns past and present and with a senior monk involved in the order’s early days. The history until the present day and consideration of future developments will form the second part of the paper. (shrink)

Three of Patricia Williams’s essays in The Rooster’s Egg are examined for their relevance to contemporary issues, and for the style in which they are written. It is concluded that Williams does an admirable job, despite writing in a vein that might be thought to be somewhat less than jurisprudential.

There are two major reasons for holding that coastal conservation is of paramount impor­tance. The first is that our intuitive emotional response to coastal views harkens back to our sense of ancient times. It is a line of analysis that has been expanded upon by Henry David Thoreau and others. In addition to our emotional pull toward the coastlines, we are also faced with the facts that wetlands and their flora and fauna—particularly bird nests and similar constructions—are crucial to containing (...) the now ubiquitous damage caused by climate change. Keryn B. Gedan and various associates, along with Peter Hay, provide useful tools to analyze the importance of coastal wetlands and the rapidity with which they may be damaged. The factors that make coastal conservation important to us work on more than one level. (shrink)

Sheldrake’s work on canine cognition is examined from more than one standpoint. His use of the terms “social field” and “morphic field” is delineated, and in addition recent work on ethology and cognition, done by Allen and Bekoff, is set out and contrasted with Sheldrake’s theorizing. The importance of the allusion to a number of comparatively unexamined concepts, including some borrowed from research on extrasensory perception, is analyzed and it is concluded that Sheldrake has yet to establish his case in (...) acceptable terms. (shrink)

An analysis of the Christian writings of Edith Stein helps to show how her philosophical training enabled her to develop a Christian epistemology and concomitant metaphysics. Special emphasis is placed on some of her shorter works in their translation by Hilda Graef.

Lines of argument taken from Cavendish’s Observations and Letters are used to support the notion that her innovative metaphysics was designed to counter the thinking of the new science and Descartes’s own arguments. The work of Broad, Atherton and Lichtenstein is cited, and it is concluded that Cavendish deserves close reading. In addition, although Cavendish does not address notions having to do with Christianity as directly as we might wish, it is clear that these concepts are crucially related to her (...) work. (shrink)

Recent work in the ethics of care is used as a point of departure for thought about the kinds of social conditions that lead to terrorism. Allusion is made to the work of Bayoumi, Held and others, and it is concluded that political acts of terror are often a response to a climate of hostility, including microaggression.

A study of a watershed planning process in the Cache River Watershed in southern Illinois revealed that class divisions, based on property ownership, underlay key conflicts over land use and decision-making relevant to resource use. A class analysis of the region indicates that the planning process served to endorse and solidify the locally-dominant theory that landownership confers the right to govern. This obscured the class differences between large full-time farmers and small-holders whose livelihood depends on non-farm labor. These two groups (...) generally opposed one another regarding wetland drainage. Their common identity as “property owner” consolidated the power wielded locally by large farmers. It also provided an instrument – the planning document – for state and federal government agencies to enhance their power and to bring resources to the region. The planning process simultaneously ameliorated conflicts between government agencies and the large farmers, while enhancing the agencies’ capacity to reclaim wetlands. In this contradictory manner, the plan promoted the environmental aims of many small-holders, and simultaneously disempowered them as actors in the region’s political economy. (shrink)

Anthony Grafton, like Jacob Burckhardt before him, begins his appreciation of Leon Battista Alberti by reviewing how the fifteenth‐century Italian author created a many‐faceted identity through willful self‐fashioning. Grafton, however, offers the reader a much richer Bildungsroman than the older portrait and exposes many forces undercutting the monolithic character of Burckhardt's Renaissance, the same forces that may provide a key to the contrary and doubt‐ridden persona frequenting Alberti's writings. Alberti's ambitions and the leitmotifs of his life from his youthful aspirations (...) to their later glorious fulfillment are laid out in stunning detail.Moving well beyond the unrelenting brightness of Burckhardt's presentation, Grafton also attempts to fuse what have become for scholars the dramatic polarities of Alberti's enigmatic personality. An ambitious scholar and writer on academic subjects, on the visual and practical arts, Alberti was a lover of nature and a sensitive commentator on aesthetic, familial, and cultural ideals. He was also given to irony, despair, and bitter isolation. Grafton makes a strong case for Alberti's dependence on an unwavering determination that compelled him to assume many guises and foster numerous strategies to achieve his literary, social, and economic goals. As his friend Cristoforo Landino once noted, Alberti was like a chameleon. In Grafton's hands, however, Alberti remains dazzlingly inventive and radically humanist, and he endures as appropriately leonine and the hero of his own tale.With a predictable outpouring of references, Grafton evokes Alberti's social, political, and intellectual world and, reprising his earlier writings, develops several themes. These include Alberti's literary erudition and the high price he paid to achieve it; how Alberti applied the lessons of ancient sources to the problems of his own world, and in so doing subverted those lessons to create something new; how the humanist author developed special vocabularies for writing about such novel subjects as the visual arts, instruments of measure, and other current technologies; and, perhaps most surprisingly for a man given to bitterly mocking his contemporaries, how Alberti became involved in the creative energy of early modern life with apparent enthusiasm and accomplished the astonishing feat for a humanist of becoming a practicing architect.Grafton finds Alberti's confidence in a material culture driven by technology, theoretical knowledge, and careful observation expressed forcefully in the dedicatory letter of his essay On Painting addressed to the builder Filippo Brunelleschi. Brunelleschi deserved to be praised not for slavishly drinking from the fountain of the ancients, but for the brilliance of his intelligence and the successful application of his knowledge. Further, by requesting that the architect emend his essay, Alberti, the scholar, is shown to have treated Brunelleschi, the builder, as an equal and thereby to have elevated all technical knowledge. Alberti cleverly places himself within the circle of the ingenious engineers who were masters of practical knowledge based on underlying principles and therefore at the forefront of an intellectual parade led by its most renowned practitioner. One wonders, perhaps, what Brunelleschi at the height of his fame might have desired to learn from the audacious savant.As Alberti masters how to make his way in Florence and among the elegant courts of his day, he is seen to revisit the themes of his youthful writings with ever‐deepening insight. Grafton's reflections on Alberti and Florence, though generally convincing, have been greatly enriched by Luca Boschetto's recent book devoted to that subject . In addition, some of Grafton's notions about the influence of On Painting as centered in courtly art seem to reach beyond the evidence and the explicit directives found in Alberti's writings.The reader interested in Alberti's involvement in science and technology will still want to consult Joan Gadol's Leon Battista Alberti: Universal Man of the Early Renaissance , and the lack of a general bibliography will be an irritation to those who like to follow an author's research trail, the trekker in this case having to stumble through a thicket of footnotes. Nonetheless, Grafton has created a richly drawn portrait of Alberti. Scholar and student alike will garner much that is important about this immensely gifted and mercurial man whose writings continue to influence our understanding of the beginnings of early modernity. (shrink)

[Michael Tye] Externalism about thought contents has received enormous attention in the philosophical literature over the past fifteen years or so, and it is now the established view. There has been very little discussion, however, of whether memory contents are themselves susceptible to an externalist treatment. In this paper, I argue that anyone who is sympathetic to Twin Earth thought experiments for externalism with respect to certain thoughts should endorse externalism with respect to certain memories. /// [Jane Heal] Tye (...) claims that an externalist should say that memory content invoking natural kind concepts floats free of the setting where the memory is laid down and is at later times determined by the context in which the memory is revived. His argument assumes the existence of 'slow switching' of the meaning of natural kind terms when a person is transported from Earth to Twin Earth. But proper understanding of natural kind terms suggests that slow switching (contrary to what is often presupposed) is likely never to be completed. Hence the situation of a person unknowingly transported to Twin Earth is not that his memories switch content but rather that he gets two natural kinds confused. (shrink)

It is argued that the thought of Lady Jane Grey has received too little attention, and that her name and beliefs need to be resuscitated. The work of Levin, DeLisle and others is alluded to, and it is concluded that Grey was a devoted Dissenter of her time with explicit beliefs.

"First edition 1954. Reprinted 1958, with revisions 1963, 1965, with further revisions by B.C. Southam 1969...".

Moran rightly links performance of speech acts to instituting second‐personal normative relations. He also maintains that an audience's recognition of the speaker's intention in speaking is sufficient for the speaker's success in doing the speech act intended. The claim is true on some ways of understanding speech act verbs, but false on others. This complexity of speech act verbs can be explained by seeing how speech acts need to be understood in the context of shared life and cooperative action.

This is part of a complete set of Jane Austen's novels collating the editions published during the author's lifetime and previously unpublished manuscripts. The books are illustrated with 19th century plates and incorporate revisions by experts in the light of subsequent research.