Increasingly, the role of health research in improving the discrepancies in health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations in developed countries is being recognised. Along with this comes the recognition that health research must be conducted in a manner that is culturally appropriate and ethically sound. Two key documents have been produced in Australia, known as The Road Map and The Guidelines, to provide theoretical and philosophical direction to the ethics of Indigenous health research. These documents identify research themes considered (...) critical to improving the health of the nation’s Indigenous peoples. They also provide values that, from an Indigenous perspective, are foundational to an ethical research process. This paper examines these research themes and values within the context of a current longitudinal birth cohort study of Indigenous infants and children in south-west Sydney: the Gudaga Study. Considerable time and effort have been invested in being true to the values stated in these documents: reciprocity; respect; equality; responsibility; survival and protection; and spirit and integrity. We have learnt that it is vital to be true to these values when conducting Indigenous health research—to quite literally “walk the talk”. (shrink)

Response to 'Knights, knaves and unknowable truths’, by Roy T. Cook.

Augustine famously claimed that the virtues of pagan Rome were nothing more than splendid vices. This critique reinvented itself as a suspicion of acquired virtue as such, and true Christian virtue has, ever since, been set against a false, hypocritical virtue alleged merely to conceal pride. _Putting On Virtue_ reveals how a distrust of learned and habituated virtue shaped both early modern Christian moral reflection and secular forms of ethical thought. Jennifer Herdt develops her claims through an argument of (...) broad historical sweep, which brings together the Aristotelian tradition as taken up by Thomas Aquinas with the early modern thinkers who shaped modern liberalism. In chapters on Luther, Bunyan, the Jansenists, Mandeville, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant, she argues that efforts to make a radical distinction between true Christian virtue and its tainted imitations actually created an autonomous natural ethics separate from Christianity. This secular value system valorized pride and authenticity, while rendering graced human agency less meaningful. Ultimately, _Putting On Virtue_ traces a path from suspicion of virtue to its secular inversion, from confession of dependence to assertion of independence. (shrink)

Neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders, also sometimes referred to as psychosurgery, is rapidly evolving, with new techniques and indications being investigated actively. Many within the field have suggested that some form of guidelines or regulations are needed to help ensure that a promising field develops safely. Multiple countries have enacted specific laws regulating NPD. This article reviews NPD-specific laws drawn from North and South America, Asia and Europe, in order to identify the typical form and contents of these laws and to (...) set the groundwork for the design of an optimal regulation for the field. Key challenges for this design that are revealed by the review are how to define the scope of the law, what types of regulations are required, and how to approach international harmonization given the potential migration of researchers and patients. (shrink)

Neoliberal cultural frames of individual choice inform mothers’ accounts of why they refuse state-mandated vaccines for their children. Using interviews with 25 mothers who reject recommended vaccines, this article examines the gendered discourse of vaccine refusal. First, I show how mothers, seeing themselves as experts on their children, weigh perceived risks of infection against those of vaccines and dismiss claims that vaccines are necessary. Second, I explicate how mothers see their own intensive mothering practices—particularly around feeding, nutrition, and natural living—as (...) an alternate and superior means of supporting their children’s immunity. Third, I show how they attempt to control risk through management of social exposure, as they envision disease risk to lie in “foreign” bodies outside their networks, and, therefore, individually manageable. Finally, I examine how these mothers focus solely on their own children by evaluating—and often rejecting—assertions that their choices undermine community health, while ignoring how their children benefit from the immunity of others. By analyzing the gendered discourse of vaccines, this article identifies how women’s insistence on individual maternal choice as evidence of commitment to their children draws on and replicates structural inequality in ways that remain invisible, but affect others. (shrink)

Tool use research has suffered from a lack of consistent theoretical frameworks. There is a plethora of tool use definitions and the most widespread ones are so inclusive that the behaviors that fall under them arguably do not have much in common. The situation is aggravated by the prevalence of anecdotes, which have played an undue role in the literature. In order to provide a more rigorous foundation for research and to advance our understanding of the interrelation between tool use (...) and cognition, we suggest the adoption of Fragaszy and Mangalam's (2018) tooling framework, which is characterized by the creation of a body-plus-object system that manages a mechanical interface between tool and surface. Tooling is limited to a narrower suite of behaviors than tool use, which might facilitate its neurocognitive investigation. Indeed, evidence in the literature indicates that tooling has distinct neurocognitive underpinnings not shared by other activities typically classified as tool use, at least in primates. In order to understand the extent of tooling incidences in previous research, we systematically surveyed the comprehensive tool use catalog by Shumaker et al. (2011). We identified 201 tool use submodes, of which only 81 could be classified as tooling, and the majority of the tool use examples across species were poorly supported by evidence. Furthermore, tooling appears to be phylogenetically less widespread than tool use, with the greatest variability found in the primate order. However, in order to confirm these findings and to understand the evolution and neurocognitive mechanisms of tooling, more systematic research will be required in the future, particularly with currently underrepresented taxa. (shrink)

One of the ethical issues that has been raised recently regarding emerging neurotherapies is that people will be coerced explicitly or implicitly in the workplace or in schools to take cognitive enhancing drugs. This article builds on this discussion by showing how the law may pressure people to adopt emerging neurotherapies. It focuses on a range of private law doctrines that, unlike the criminal law, do not come up very often in neuroethical discussions. Three doctrines—the doctrine of mitigation, the standard (...) of care in negligence, and child custody determinations in family law—are addressed to show how the law may pressure people to consent to treatment by offering a choice between accepting medical treatment and suffering a legal disadvantage. The doctrines considered in this article apply indirect pressure to submit to treatment, unlike court-ordered medical treatment, which applies direct pressure and is not addressed here. The outcome of this discussion is to show that there is a greater range of social pressures that may encourage the uptake of novel neurotherapies than one might initially think. Once treatments that were developed and offered with therapeutic benefits in mind become available, their existence gives rise to unintended legal consequences. This certainly does not mean we should cease developing new therapies that may be of tremendous benefit to patients, but it does raise some questions for physicians and for legal policy-makers. How should physicians, who are required by medical ethical principles to obtain valid consent to treatment, react to a patient’s reluctant consent that is driven by legal pressure? From the legal policy perspective, are our legal doctrines satisfactory or should they be changed because, for example, they unduly promote the collective interest over individual freedom to reject medical treatment or because they channel us toward economically efficient treatments to the detriment of more costly but potentially superior approaches of dealing with behavioural problems? (shrink)

Jennifer Johnston’s fiction presents the conditions of Irish culture and society by exploring the separations between interior and exterior realms and past and present temporalities persisting within the insulating privacy of the familial home space. In _The Christmas Tree_ (1981), the home is both haven and prison for Johnston’s heroine. In this paper, I argue that the home—which assumes the form of the individual body and the familial home—is paradoxical. The protagonist leaves 1950s Ireland because of the country’s rigid (...) gender roles in order to pursue an autonomous life as a writer in England, but she is unable to publish her writing within the confines of the patriarchal publishing world. The home of her body becomes paradoxical when she becomes a single mother as an avenue for creativity but is then diagnosed with terminal cancer. She returns to her father’s home to die, which she re-orders and reclaims through the disorder of the uncanny—represented by her non-conformity and illness brought into the patriarchal home. By writing her life story and creating a brief, alternative maternal relationship with her young caretaker, the protagonist confronts her own ambivalence toward her parents, who also represent aspects of oppressive heteronormative gender expectations. (shrink)

This paper treats the political and ethical issues associated with the new caretaking technologies. Given the number of feminists who have raised serious concerns about the future of care work in the United States, and who have been critical of the degree to which society “free rides” on women's caretaking labor, I consider whether technology may provide a solution to this problem. Certainly, if we can create machines and robots to take on particular tasks, we may lighten the care burden (...) that women currently face, much of which is heavy and repetitious, and which results in injury and care “burnout” for many female caretakers. Yet, in some contexts, I argue that high-tech robotic care may undermine social relationships, cutting individuals off from the possibility of social connectedness with others. (shrink)

Abstract:This short article proposes a conceptual structure for “neurolaw,” modeled loosely on the bipartite division of the sister field of neuroethics by Adina Roskies into the “ethics of neuroscience” and the “neuroscience of ethics.” As normative fields addressing the implications of scientific discoveries and expanding technological capacities affecting the brain, “neurolaw” and neuroethics have followed parallel paths. Similar foundational questions arise for both about the validity and utility of recognizing them as distinct subfields of law and ethics, respectively. In both, (...) a useful distinction can be drawn between a self-reflexive inquiry (the neuroscience of ethics and law) and an inquiry into the development and use of brain science and technologies (the ethics and law of neuroscience). In both fields, these two forms of inquiry interact in interesting ways. In addition to a proposed conceptual structure for neurolaw, the article also addresses the neurolegal versions of the critiques made against neuroethics, including charges of reductionism, fact/value confusion, and biological essentialism. (shrink)

Research has shown that both physical exercise and cognitive training help to maintain cognition in older adults. The question is whether combined training might produce additive effects when the group comparisons are equated in terms of exercise intensity and modality. We conducted a systematic electronic search in MEDLINE, PsycInfo, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials databases to identify relevant studies published up to February 2021. Seven hundred and eighty-three effect sizes were obtained from 50 published intervention studies, involving 6,164 (...) healthy older adults, and submitted to a three-level meta-analysis. Results showed that combined training produced a small advantage in comparison to single cognitive training on executive functions, whereas both types of training achieved similar effects on attention, memory, language, processing speed, and global cognition. Combined training achieved higher training gains in balance than single physical training, indicating a transfer from cognitive training to balance. Performing cognitive and physical exercise simultaneously, and interactive training produced the largest gains in executive functions, speed, and global cognition, as well as the largest improvements in physical functions. Aerobic training was associated with higher effects in attention and fitness, whereas non-aerobic training produced larger effects in global cognition and balance. For all cognitive and physical outcomes, training resulted more advantageous when performed in a social context, even though individual training obtained similar results in balance as group training.Systematic Review Registration:www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, identifier: CRD42020175632. (shrink)

This essay will focus on the moral issues relating to surrogacy in the global context, and will critique the liberal arguments that have been offered in support of it. Liberal arguments hold sway concerning reproductive arrangements made between commissioning couples from wealthy nations and the surrogates from socioeconomically weak backgrounds that they hire to do their reproductive labor. My argument in this paper is motivated by a concern for controlling harms by putting the practice of globalized commercial surrogacy into the (...) context of care ethics. As I will argue, the unstable situations into which children of global surrogacy arrangements are born is symbolic of the crisis of care that the practice raises. Using the Baby Manji case as my touch point, I will suggest that liberalism cannot address the harms experienced by Manji and children like her who are created through the global practice of assisted reproductive technology. I will argue that, if commissioning couples consider their proposed surrogacy contracts from a care ethics point of view, they will begin to think relationally about their actions, considering the practice from an ethical lens, not just an economic or contractual one. (shrink)

In this book, McMahon argues that a reading of Kant’s body of work in the light of a pragmatist theory of meaning and language leads one to put community reception ahead of individual reception in the order of aesthetic relations. A core premise of the book is that neo-pragmatism draws attention to an otherwise overlooked aspect of Kant’s "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," and this is the conception of community which it sets forth. While offering an interpretation of Kant’s aesthetic theory, (...) the book focuses on the implications of Kant’s third critique for contemporary art. McMahon draws upon Kant and his legacy in pragmatist theories of meaning and language to argue that aesthetic judgment is a version of moral judgment: a way to cultivate attitudes conducive to community, which plays a pivotal role in the evolution of language, meaning, and knowledge. (shrink)

Findings suggest a positive impact of bilingualism on cognition, including the later onset of dementia. However, it is not clear to what extent these effects are influenced by variations in attentional control demands in response to specific task requirements. In this study, 20 bilingual and 20 monolingual older adults performed a task-switching task under explicit task-cuing vs. memory-based switching conditions. In the cued condition, task switches occurred in random order and a visual cue signaled the next task to be performed. (...) In the memory-based condition, the task alternated after every second trial in a predictable sequence without presenting a cue. The performance of bilinguals did not vary across experimental conditions, whereas monolinguals experienced a pronounced increase in response latencies and error rates in the cued condition. Both groups produced similar switch costs and mixing costs, but bilinguals produced them with lower response latencies. The cognitive benefits of bilingualism seem not to apply to executive functions per se but to affect specific cognitive processes that involve task-relevant context processing. The present results suggest that lifelong bilingualism could promote in older adults a flexible adjustment to environmental cues, but only with increased task demands. However, due to the small sample size, the results should be interpreted with caution. (shrink)

Henry et al. (2007) claim they are concerned with the overmedicalization of bad memories and its subsequent exploitation by the pharmaceutical industry. However, they downplay the contributing role...

Are women's requests for aid in dying honored more often than men's, or less? Feminist arguments can support conclusions either that gendered perceptions of women as self‐sacrificing predispose physicians to accede to women's requests to die — or that cultural understandings of women as not fully rational agents lead physicians to reject their requests as irrational.

In 2000, researchers from the Human Genome Project proclaimed that the initial sequencing of the human genome definitively proved, among other things, that there was no genetic basis for race. The genetic fact that most humans were 99.9% the same at the level of their DNA was widely heralded and circulated in the English-speaking press, especially in the United States. This pronouncement seemed proof that long-term antiracist efforts to de-biologize race were legitimized by scientific findings. Yet, despite the seemingly widespread (...) acceptance of the social construction of race, post-HGP genetic science has seen a substantial shift toward the use of race variables in genetic research and, according to a number of prominent scholars, is re-invoking the specter of earlier forms of racial science in some rather discomfiting ways. During the past seven years, the main thrust of human genetic research, especially in the realm of biomedicine, has shifted from a concern with the 99.9% of the shared genome — what is thought to make humans alike — towards an explicit focus on the 0.1% that constitutes human genetic variation. Here I briefly explore some of the potential implications of the conceptualization and practice of early 21st century genetic variation research, especially as it relates to questions of race. (shrink)

Very little research into women farmers in developed countries has been produced by economists, but much of what has been studied by scholars in other disciplines has economic implications. This article reviews such research produced by scholars in all disciplines to explore to what extent women farmers are becoming more equal to men farmers and to suggest further contributions to the literature. As examples, topics that has been widely researched in developing countries but have received almost no attention in developed (...) countries include comparisons of men and women farmers’ productivity and their access to and use of resources. Discoveries in these and other areas will be important not only for their insights into the agricultural industry in developed countries, but also because they will inform, and be informed by, research on women farmers in developing countries. (shrink)

A presence for decades in individuals’ everyday life practices and identity formation, the Walt Disney Company has more recently also become an influential element within the "big" curriculum of public and private spaces outside of yet in proximity to formal educational institutions. _Disney, Culture, and Curriculum_ explores the myriad ways that Disney’s curricula and pedagogies manifest in public consciousness, cultural discourses, and the education system. Examining Disney’s historical development and contemporary manifestations, this book critiques and deconstructs its products and perspectives (...) while providing insight into Disney’s operations within popular culture and everyday life in the United States and beyond. The contributors engage with Disney’s curricula and pedagogies in a variety of ways, through critical analysis of Disney films, theme parks, and planned communities, how Disney has been taught and resisted both in and beyond schools, ways in which fans and consumers develop and negotiate their identities with their engagement with Disney, and how race, class, gender, sexuality, and consumerism are constructed through Disney content. Incisive, comprehensive, and highly interdisciplinary, _Disney, Culture, and Curriculum_ extends the discussion of popular culture as curriculum and pedagogy into new avenues by focusing on the affective and ontological aspects of identity development as well as the commodification of social and cultural identities, experiences, and subjectivities. (shrink)

As scholars integrate empirical approaches to ethical questions in healthcare, relational autonomy theory must inform research design and change practice. Qualitative approaches are well suited to issues where patient values play a central role, and they can be combined with relational autonomy theory to investigate the factors influencing autonomy-rich experiences. This paper draws upon my experience conducting bioethics research related to clinical trial decision-making to develop a systematic method for applying relational autonomy as a theoretical lens to qualitative health research. (...) The resultant practical guide utilizes Susan Sherwin’s theory of relational autonomy and presents an empirical method responsive to autonomy-relevant questions. (shrink)

This essay revisits Elizabeth Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy' with two goals in mind. The first is to recover and reclaim its radical vision, by setting forth a unified account of its three guiding theses. On the interpretation advanced here, Anscombe's three theses are not independently intelligible; their underlying unity is the perceived necessity of absolute prohibitions for any sound account of practical reason. The second goal is to show that Anscombe allows for a thoroughly unmodern sense of ‘moral' that applies (...) to human actions; the paper concludes with some reasons to think that this unmodern sense of ‘moral' is worthy of further philosophical attention and defense. (shrink)

Abstract:This article posits Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) as a vital tool for bridging postcolonial and decolonial thought. First, FSTS forms a bridge by providing tools for reading epistemic imperialism and scientific racism as shared conditions of possibility for disparate colonizations. Second, by foregrounding the necessary links between epistemic and material violence, FSTS helps undo the theory/praxis binary that sometimes undergirds their analytic opposition. The authors argue that the careful study of science as a set of ideas, practices, and (...) attendant institutions is vital in order to better recognize and intervene in shifting modes of colonial conquest and governance. (shrink)

As the size of the published scientific literature has increased exponentially over the past 30 years, review articles play an increasingly important role in helping researchers to make sense of original research results. Literature reviews can be broadly classified as either “systematic” or “narrative”. Narrative reviews may be broader in scope than systematic reviews, but have been criticised for lacking synthesis and rigour. The submission of more scientific manuscripts requires more researchers acting as peer reviewers, which requires adding greater numbers (...) of new reviewers to the reviewing population over time. However, whereas there are many easily accessible guides for reviewers of primary research manuscripts, there are few similar resources to assist reviewers of narrative reviews. Here, I summarise why literature reviews are valued by their diverse readership and how peer reviewers with different levels of content expertise can improve the reliability and accessibility of narrative review articles. I then provide a number of recommendations for peer reviewers of narrative literature reviews, to improve the integrity of the scientific literature, while also ensuring that narrative review articles meet the needs of both expert and non-expert readers. (shrink)

If we are searching, over the past half-century or so, for the finest articulation of the Augustinian vision of God as the One who satisfies the deepest desire of our heart by way of uprooting desires that more often than not feel like our deepest desires, we would do well to sit at the feet of Gilbert Meilaender. Meilaender rightly suggests that it is only when we see as God does that we can fully recognize what in our created and/or (...) fallen nature is in need of transformation. That said, even where God is not known as the deepest desire of the heart, happiness can be grasped as coming by way of the painful upending of desires. This is what eudaemonist virtue ethics should lead us to expect, even if it is not Christian—as this article seeks to illustrate by way of reflection on ancient Stoic oikeiosis on the one hand, and modern ecological consciousness on the other. (shrink)

International human rights law and international humanitarian law (IHL) contain few obligations for rebel groups, yet those groups are nonetheless under pressure to comply with their foundational international norms. This case study of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) analyzes the evolution of its discourse and behavior related to human rights and IHL. It then compares changes in the group’s discourse to evidence of changes in behavior. The study finds that the KLA does significantly change its language, gradually incorporating such language (...) over time, but it also demonstrates that this change is not accompanied by improvements in human rights and IHL adherence in its behavior. The study considers whether greater adoption of these norms is better explained by a constructivist or a rationalist approach and, in particular, looks at the role of legitimacy. In addition, it offers insight into how groups may respond to future pressure to follow these norms. (shrink)

This book explores Hume's concern with the destructiveness of religious factions and his efforts to develop, in his moral philosophy, a solution to factional conflict. Sympathy and the related capacity to enter into foreign points of view are crucial to the neutralization of religious zeal and the naturalization of ethics. Jennifer Herdt suggests that Hume's preoccupation with religious faction is the key which reveals the unity of his varied philosophical, aesthetic, political and historical works.

Eudaimonism is often regarded as egoistic. If it recommends that agents pursue their own good because it is their own good, it is guilty as charged. But excellence‐prior eudaimonism offers a non‐egoistic alternative to this welfare‐prior eudaimonism. Excellence‐prior eudaimonism recommends that an agent live in a way that is in fact good for the agent, but it does not regard the agent’s own good as necessarily that for the sake of which the agent acts, nor does it regard living well (...) as justified by the fact that it is good for the agent, but simply because it is good. The Christian eudaimonisms of Augustine and Aquinas are best understood as deepened forms of excellence‐prior eudaimonism. (shrink)

Mammals have an XX:XY system of chromosomal sex determination in which a small heterochromatic Y controls male development. The Y contains the testis determining factor SRY, as well as several genes important in spermatogenesis. Comparative studies show that the Y was once homologous with the X, but has been progressively degraded, and now consists largely of repeated sequences as well as degraded copies of X linked genes. The small original X and Y have been enlarged by cycles of autosomal addition (...) to one partner, recombination onto the other and continuing attrition of the compound Y. This addition–attrition hypothesis predicts that the pseudoautosomal region of the human X is merely the last relic of the latest addition. Genes (including SRY) on the conserved or added region of the Y evolved functions in male sex determination and differentiation distinct from the general functions of their X‐linked partners. Although the gonadogenesis pathway is highly conserved in vertebrates, its control has probably changed radically and rapidly in vertebrate – even mammalian – evolution. (shrink)

Aesthetic autonomy is sometimes equated with an art for art’s sake approach to art. On the contrary, the philosophers whose work is often cited as backup to this concept of aesthetic autonomy held a very different conception of it. I will trace an alternative notion of aesthetic autonomy in the work of Adorno and Habermas, the origins of which can be found in Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic theory, the popular notion of his formalism, notwithstanding. I draw upon the art practice of (...) the contemporary Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson in order to demonstrate this alternative notion of aesthetic autonomy. (shrink)

This thesis constructs an Interactive Theory of Beauty to change the way we think about beauty and aesthetic form, in order to resolve the conceptual discrepancies between the features that characterize the traditional concept of beauty and the features of the phenomenology of beauty. The assumptions that underlie these discrepancies are identified. I hypothesize an alternative assumption that would need to be the case to resolve the tensions between the traditional concept and the phenomenology. This involves rejecting the idea that (...) beauty is an objective property of the object, and instead considering the possibility that beauty is an awareness of a certain aspect of the perceptual processing of the object. As such, beauty would be neither purely subjective nor purely objective; but a relational property. This hypothesis is mapped out in terms of a computational model of perception. The argument relies on the explanatory power of this conception of beauty. I employ my central hypothesis to explain how beauty can be both universal and subjective; an experience of the aesthetic form of the object which can, in some cases, supervene on representational content; and a property which is experienced as inferred from more basic properties, yet ineffable. While I focus mainly on visual beauty, I suggest applications for musical beauty and haptic beauty, particularly in non-sighted persons. This Interactive Theory of Beauty also accounts for the instrumentality of beauty, which is a feature of scientific and mathematical beauty. If my central hypothesis is correct, then the experience of beauty may offer insights into the nature of creativity in all fields of enquiry. (shrink)

The probing readings of Putting On Virtue offered by Sheryl Overmyer, Darlene Weaver, and James Foster provide a welcome opportunity for further reflection on key questions: Was Aquinas really concerned with the status of pagan virtues? Can we properly understand a thinker whose driving questions are not the same as our own without taking up a stance of pure deference? Can an inquiry into hyper-Augustinian anxiety over acquired virtue assist us in arriving at an account of positive self-regard? Can an (...) account that stresses the graced character of all virtue formation be coherent? And can it do justice to the ways in which Christians reached for accounts of infused virtue precisely in order to affirm how grace overcomes the ways in which fortune hounds acquired virtue? I respond affirmatively to all of the above. (shrink)

This is a conversation held at the book launch for Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), hosted jointly, in November 2020, by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, and the Australian Catholic University. The conversation covers the claim made by Insole that Kant believes in God, but is not a Christian, the way in which reason itself is divine for Kant, and the suggestion that reading Kant can open (...) up new possibilities for dialogue between Christian thinkers and contemporary forms of secular religiosity. (shrink)

Epistemological issues are usually taken to be David Hume's central preoccupation. Attending to the role of sympathy in Hume's thought reveals, however, that his primary aim is to secure the conditions for social peace and prosperity in 18th-century Scotland and beyond, a peace particularly threatened by religious conflict. This perspective not only discloses the unity of Hume's ethical, political, aesthetic, and historical writings, it also suggests that the driving forces in the development of modern ethical and religious thought are ethical (...) and social rather than epistemological. ;The first two chapters discuss the background to Hume's use of sympathy and explore its application in the Treatise. In Hume's secularized account of moral approbation, sympathy fills the place Hutcheson reserved for Providence; it assures an intelligible connection between moral judgments and human flourishing in society. Hume at first makes use of a passive notion of sympathy developed by Latitudinarian divines to counter Hobbesian accounts of self-interested human nature. But this passive form of sympathy is limited and variable, threatening to reinforce, rather than alleviate, religious zeal and sectarian conflict. Hume introduces a new form of corrected, 'extensive' sympathy which involves an active effort to overcome prior affinities and cross factional boundaries. ;Appreciating the role of sympathy in morals also illuminates malfunctions of judgment among religious believers. Chapter 3 interprets Hume's essay on the pleasures of tragedy as an unmasking of Scottish Evangelical condemnation of theater. Evangelical opposition reflects pathologies of belief which grow out of a rejection of worldly existence and eventually distort sympathetic capacities. In "Of the Standard of Taste," discussed in Chapter 4, Hume grapples with disagreement in taste and judgment and argues that sympathy cannot be extended to those who live "artificial" religious lives, deducing practical consequences from speculative theories. ;Where poetry fails, however, history may succeed, since history is for Hume the paradigm of sympathetic understanding. As the final chapter argues, it is in the History of England that sympathy reaches its mature expression and Hume's delineation of the links among religious irrationality, zeal, and faction, attains its most concrete and persuasive form. (shrink)

In this paper we analyse the ideas implicit in the style of exhibition favoured by contemporary galleries and museums, and argue that unless the audience is empowered to ascribe meaning and significance to artwork through critical dialogue, the power not only of the audience is undermined but also of art. We argue that galleries and museums preside over an experience economy devoid of art, unless (i) indeterminacy is understood, (ii) the critical rather than coercive nature of art is facilitated, and (...) (iii) the conditions for inter-subjectivity are met. (shrink)