More than twenty-five years after the first signs of potential harm, the US remains locked in the grip of an opioid epidemic, with more Americans dying from overdoses than ever before.1 Diversion of prescription opioids plays an important role in opioid-related harms. Much of the scientific and public health focus on diversion has been on end-users, given how commonly non-medical prescription opioid use occurs, as well as the proportion of individuals who report that their source of non-medical opioids was friends (...) or family. However, diversion of opioids, as well as their rampant oversupply, can be discerned higher up the supply chain, including among wholesalers, pharmacies and rogue prescribers whose behavior may trigger well-described “flags” warranting further evaluation and action. (shrink)

One theme in complaints from those with marginalized social identities is that they are seen primarily in terms of that identity. Some Black artists, for instance, complain about being seen as Black first and artists second. These individuals can be understood as objecting to a particularly subtle form of morally problematic attention: “relative attentional surplus on the wrong property.” This attentional surplus can coexist with another type of common problematic attention affecting these groups, including attentional deficits; marginalized individuals and groups (...) themselves are routinely insufficiently attended to in virtue of the surplus attention given to their social identity properties. (shrink)

Sometimes, a form of discrimination is hard to register, understand, and articulate. A rich precedent demonstrates how victim testimonies have been key in uncovering such “hidden” forms of discrimination, from sexual harassment to microaggressions. I reflect on how this plausibly goes too for “attentional discrimination”, referring to cases where the more meaningful attributes of one social group are made salient in attention in contrast to the less meaningful attributes of another. Victim testimonies understandably dominate the “context-of-discovery” stage of research into (...) these initially opaque forms of discrimination; a victim’s encounter with the gap between their experience and dominant conceptual frameworks for understanding it is what provides an initial foothold for analysis to begin. Some object, however, to this methodology continuing to dominate the later “context-of-justification” stage, where the hypothesis is rigorously challenged. I argue that this objection underestimates not just how other methodologies are more likely to inherit the various mechanisms of invisibility hiding the discrimination in question, but also how victim testimonies are distinctively well-suited to recognize and challenge those mechanisms. Victim testimonies, then, ought to continue playing a dominant role into these later stages of research regarding hidden forms of discrimination. (shrink)

The rapid rise of generative AI, including LLMs, has prompted a great deal of concern, both within and beyond academia. One of these concerns is that generative models embed, reproduce, and therein potentially perpetuate all manner of bias. The present study offers an alternative perspective: exploring the potential of LLMs to detect bias in human generated text. Our target is genetic essentialism in obesity discourse in Australian print media. We develop and deploy an LLM-based classification model to evaluate a large (...) sample of relevant articles (n=26,163). We show that our model detects genetic essentialist biases as reliably as human experts; and find that, while genes figure less prominently in popular discussions of obesity than previous work might suggest, when genetic information is invoked, it is often presented in a biased way. Implications for future work are discussed. (shrink)

Over the past four decades, Buddhists in Burma, mainly monks, have been brought before Sangha courts charged with heresy, adhamma, and malpractice, avinaya, under the jurisdiction of the State Sanghamahanayaka Committee. This body, established under General Ne Win in 1980, oversees the regulation and conduct of the Sangha. The religious courts that try these cases have the backing of state law enforcement agencies: failure to comply with their judgements is punishable by imprisonment. A guilty verdict has been passed in all (...) seventeen cases to date. There is no opportunity of appeal. The system not only protects Burmese Buddhism against corruption, but also stifles innovation and dissent. These cases, not previously discussed in scholarship outside of Burma, are significant for understanding the power of the State over the Sangha as well as the conservatism and antisecularism of Burmese Buddhism, which have set it at odds with the relativist approaches of modern, global Buddhism. (shrink)

This paper investigates necessary conditions for developing a participatory, rightsholder-driven approach to remedy for business-related human rights abuses by analyzing findings from a case study with the Fair Food Program. With the inclusion of human rights into discussions of business ethics and CSR, scholars and practitioners have made calls for participatory approaches to remedy to address cases of human rights abuses. However, a gap remains in our understanding of how to operationalize participatory approaches in a manner that empowers rightsholders, particularly (...) within contexts of severe power imbalances. The paper puts forth a rightsholder-driven theoretical framework for remedy, grounded on critical dialogic accountability principles and integrated with empirical analysis from the Fair Food Program case study. This framework defines remedy as a system comprising reinforcing aspects rather than standalone mechanisms. The critical dialogic accounting and accountability framework provides a theoretical framing of engagement that enables the inclusion of multiple, divergent voices and aims toward meaningful engagement with marginalized groups. The analysis of findings from the case study identifies enforcement and education as necessary conditions for effective and empowering rightsholder-driven approaches to remedy. The paper deconstructs these conditions to develop an understanding of the program’s unique approach to enforcement and education. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of rightsholder-driven remedy for Business and Human Rights and business accountability. (shrink)

The aim of this virtual special issue is to bring together philosophical and historical perspectives to address long-standing issues in the interpretation, utility, and impacts of quantitative genetics methods and findings. Methodological approaches and the underlying scientific understanding of genetics and heredity have transformed since the field's inception. These advances have brought with them new philosophical issues regarding the interpretation and understanding of quantitative genetic results. The contributions in this issue demonstrate that there is still work to be done integrating (...) old and new methodological and conceptual frameworks. In some cases, new results are interpreted using assumptions based on old concepts and methodologies that need to be explicitly recognised and updated. In other cases, new philosophical tools can be employed to synthesise historical quantitative genetics work with modern methodologies and findings. This introductory article surveys three general themes that have dominated philosophical discussion of quantitative genetics throughout history: (1) how methodologies have changed and transformed our knowledge and interpretations; (2) whether or not quantitative genetics can offer explanations relating to causation and prediction; and (3) the importance of defining the phenotypes under study. We situate the contributions in this virtual special issue within a historical framework addressing these three themes. (shrink)

The Ethical Matrix was developed to help decision-makers explore the ethical issues raised by agri-food biotechnologies. Over the decade since its inception the Ethical Matrix has been used by a number of organizations and the philosophical basis of the framework has been discussed and analyzed extensively. The role of tools such as the Ethical Matrix in public policy decision-making has received increasing attention. In order to further develop the methodological aspects of the Ethical Matrix method, work was carried out to (...) study the potential role of the Ethical Matrix as a decision support framework. When considering which frameworks to apply when analyzing the ethical dimensions of the application of agri-food biotechnologies, it is important to clarify the substantive nature of any prospective framework. In order to further investigate this issue, reflections on the neologism “ethical soundness” of an ethical framework are presented here. This concept is introduced in order to provide more structured evaluations of a range of ethical tools, including ethical frameworks such as the Ethical Matrix. As well as examining the philosophical dimensions of the method, theoretical analysis and literature studies were combined with stakeholder engagement exercises and consultations in order to review the Ethical Matrix from a user perspective. This work resulted in the development of an Ethical Matrix Manual, which is intended to act as a guide for potential user groups. (shrink)

Janet Malek (91–102, 2019) argues that a “clinical ethics consultant’s religious worldview has no place in developing ethical recommendations or communicating about them with patients, surrogates, and clinicians.” She offers five types of arguments in support of this thesis: arguments from consensus, clarity, availability, consistency, and autonomy. This essay shows that there are serious problems for each of Malek’s arguments. None of them is sufficient to motivate her thesis. Thus, if it is true that the religious worldview of clinical ethics (...) consultants should play no role whatsoever in their work as consultants, this claim will need to be defended on some other ground. (shrink)

Although primary source work is a major component of undergraduate history degrees in many countries, the topic of how best to support this work has been relatively unexplored. This article addresses the pedagogical support of primary source work by reviewing relevant literature to identify the challenges undergraduates face in interpreting sources, and examining how in two courses carefully articulated course design and supportive teaching activities assisted students to meet these challenges. This fine-grained examination of the courses is framed within a (...) socio-cultural account of learning. The findings show how a skilful drawing of students into the interpretive/discursive practices of source analysis was associated with an epistemological reframing of historical knowledge and dialogical forms of teaching that helped the students to take forward a dialectical engagement with sources. The benefits of an ‘integrated’ approach to source work that fosters students’ affective and intellectual engagement with historical interpretive practices are highlighted. (shrink)

This paper puts forth a critical perspective on remedy for business-related human rights abuses. It reflects on the purpose of remedy in Business and Human Rights and argues that effective remedy should address the multiple root causes of abuses to prevent reoccurrences rather than focus on surface issues and isolated cases. To develop a theoretical framework to conceptualize preventative remedy that addresses multiple root causes, this research draws on Fraser’s radical democratic conception of justice and participatory parity. According to the (...) principle, justice is achieved through social arrangements that enable all actors to engage with one another as peers. To conceptualize effective remedy as participatory parity, the paper examines three dimensions—cultural, economic, and political—where injustices or root causes of abuses must be addressed to realize participatory parity. The paper analyzes the illustrative case of the Fair Food Program through the lens of Fraser’s framework. Analysis reveals effective enforcement as necessary to realize participatory parity and address the three dimensions of justice in the context of severe power asymmetries. In the theorized framework, remedy aims to address the multiple root causes of business-related human rights abuses toward prevention and empower rightsholders to engage meaningfully in remedial processes. (shrink)

Many approaches to addressing labour injustices—shortfalls from minimally decent wages and working conditions— focus on how governments should orient themselves toward other states in which such phenomena take place, or to the firms that are involved with such practices. But of course the question of how to regard such labour practices must also be faced by individuals, and individual consumers of the goods that are produced through these practices in particular. Consumers have become increasingly aware of their connections to complex (...) global production processes that often involve such injustice. For example, activist campaigns have exposed wrongful harm in factories producing clothes, shoes and mobile phones and farms producing coffee, tea and cocoa. These campaigns have promoted the message to ordinary people that by becoming connected to unjust labour practices through their purchasing behaviour, they acquire special additional moral responsibilities to contribute to reforming such practices, or to address the hardships suffered by the victims of the wrongdoing that result from them. The moral significance of the responsibilities of individual consumers has not, however, received much analytical scrutiny. Why should we believe that there are such responsibilities? And if there are such responsibilities, what are their grounds? How stringent are the responsibilities triggered by such connections? Finally, what are the implications of such responsibilities—the courses of action that they prescribe or proscribe? The activists who assert special ethical responsibilities for consumers have promoted many particular courses of action, but have seldom articulated the grounds of these responsibilities or explained why they should be taken to be stringent. And moral and political theorists have not devoted much focussed attention to this issue. For the consumer who is concerned to act in a morally permissible way, this presents a troubling practical challenge regarding the goods they may (or may not) purchase, and the moral relevance of their consumption choices more generally. While we cannot address all of these pressing questions in this chapter, we try to make some headway with them by discussing two general approaches to the question of how individuals should conceive of their responsibilities with respect to such practices, taking as our starting point the recent work of the late Iris Marion Young—the most sustained treatment of this topic by a prominent political theorist. In a series of influential articles and a posthumously published book, Young articulated an approach to conceiving of individual responsibilities to address labour injustices—the social connection model—at home and abroad. She also argued that an alternative model—the liability model—which she claimed had dominated discourse on this topic, suffered from very serious flaws. In a critical vein, we will argue that Young’s arguments against the liability model are not convincing, and that the alternative she proposes is itself vulnerable to some damaging objections. We also find, however, that the liability model would need to be extended in various ways to provide an adequate account of individual responsibility to address shortfalls from minimally decent wages and working conditions, and we begin the task of sketching an extended framework. (shrink)

Heralded as revolutionary in their potential to improve efficiency, transparency, and sustainability, blockchain technologies promise new forms of large-scale coordination between actors that do not necessarily trust each other. This paper examines blockchain imaginaries and associated metaphors. Our analysis focuses on bitcoin and ethereum, today’s most prominent blockchains that use the proof-of-work consensus mechanism. We identify three principles that organise blockchain imaginaries: substantial, morphological, and structural. These principles position blockchain as an enabler of economic, political and epistemological practices, respectively. Blockchain (...) infrastructure and protocols rely on substantial metaphors (e.g. gold, gas) to govern resource allocation, morphological metaphors (e.g. work, trust) to generate consensus and structural metaphors (e.g. chain, transaction) to establish shared knowledge. Those imaginaries rely on metaphorical displacements of meaning that make blockchain technology relevant and intelligible while simultaneously shaping the direction of technological development and positing these technologies as new forms of economic, political and epistemological organisation. They are not merely descriptive but performative. We conclude by showing how these principles partially overlap with three symbolically generalized media: money, power and truth. Money organises scarcity within the economic system, power organises consensus within the political system, and truth organises knowledge within the science system. (shrink)

Ethics dumping is a global phenomenon involving the ‘off-shoring’of research. Research that would be prohibited, severely restrictedor regarded as highly patronizing in high-income regions is instead conducted inresource-poor settings. Twenty-eight case studies of ethics dumping were examined through inductive thematic analysis to reveal predisposing factors from the perspective of researchers from high-income regions. Six categories were agreed and further illuminated: Patronizing conduct, unfair distribution of benefits and/or burdens, culturally inappropriate conduct, double standards, lack of due diligence and lack of transparency. (...) The ultimate aim of the paper is to deepen understanding of thesehighly unethical practicesamongst academics who stand against poverty, leading to theirfurther reduction. (shrink)

Kolbe and de Melo-Martin (2023) raise important concerns about the limited usefulness of measures of moral distress. They propose that moral distress is best measured in terms of “illegitimate inst...

Parenthood is a highly valued life goal, independent of one’s sexual orientation. However, the majority of studies exploring young adults’ parenthood plans have relied exclusively on samples of heterosexual individuals. This study aimed (i) to explore differences in parenthood intentions as a function of sexual orientation, (ii) to investigate to what extent sociodemographic and psychological characteristics predict parenthood intentions of lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) and heterosexual individuals, (iii) to test the mediating effect of stigma between sexual orientation and parenthood intentions, (...) and (iv) to identify and characterize profiles of prospective parenthood (through cluster analysis). Data were gathered using an online survey from 375 self-identified LGB and heterosexual young adults without children in Portugal, with a mean age of 25.83 years old (SD = 4.49). Findings indicated that LGB individuals were less likely to intend to have children than heterosexual individuals; furthermore, among LGB individuals, lesbian women expressed stronger intentions to have children than did gay men. Similarities between heterosexual and LGB young adults were observed concerning the psychological determinants of parenthood intentions. Four distinctive profiles of prospective parenthood were identified: aspiring parents not anticipating stigma, aspiring parents anticipating stigma, childfree intent, and childfree ambivalent. Lesbian and bisexual women mostly populated the childfree ambivalent cluster, in contrast the aspiring parents anticipating stigma cluster contained an overrepresentation of men, including sexual minority men. Professionals may want to attend to communalities and specificities of prospective parenthood as a function of sexual orientation, in order to provide unbiased and culturally competent support to sexual minority individuals. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultants (CECs) are not moral authorities. Standardization of CECs’ professional role does not confer upon them moral authority. Certification of particular CECs does not confer upon them moral authority (nor does it reflect such authority). Or, so we will argue. This article offers a distinctly Orthodox Christian response to those who claim that CECs—or any other academically trained bioethicist—retain moral authority (i.e., an authority to know and recommend the right course of action). This article proceeds in three parts. (...) First, we discuss recent movements toward the certification of CECs in the United States, focusing primarily on proposals and programs put forth by the American Society for Humanities and Bioethics (ASBH). Second, we outline two secular reasons to be concerned about the relevant trends toward certification. For one thing, certification is currently being advanced via political dominance, rather than gaining authority by reliance on rigorous philosophical argument or reason. For another, the trends operate on the assumption that there exists a secular, content-full, canonical, morality. There is no such morality. Next, we argue that Orthodox Christians should resist the current trends toward certification of CECs. Specifically, we unpack ways in which the ASBH’s certification program (and those like it) conflict with Orthodox claims about moral authority and the moral life more generally. We conclude that Orthodox Christians should resist the current certification trends. (shrink)

‘@AP: Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured’. So read a tweet sent from a hacked Associated Press Twitter account @AP, which affected financial markets, wiping out $136.5 billion of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s value. While the speed of the Associated Press hack crash event and the proprietary nature of the algorithms involved make it difficult to make causal claims about the relationship between social media and trading algorithms, we argue that it helps (...) us to critically examine the volatile connections between social media, financial markets, and third parties offering human and algorithmic analysis. By analyzing the commentaries of this event, we highlight two particular currents: one formed by computational processes that mine and analyze Twitter data, and the other being financial algorithms that make automated trades and steer the stock market. We build on sociology of finance together with media theory and focus on the work of Christian Marazzi, Gabriel Tarde and Tony Sampson to analyze the relationship between social media and financial markets. We argue that Twitter and social media are becoming more powerful forces, not just because they connect people or generate new modes of participation, but because they are connecting human communicative spaces to automated computational spaces in ways that are affectively contagious and highly volatile. (shrink)

This book provides the first comprehensive introduction to Simone de Beauvoir's philosophical thought. Beauvoir has long been recognized as the twentieth century's leading feminist writer, but the full extent of her significance as a philosopher is just coming into focus. This study examines the history of Beauvoir's development into one of the most original and influential thinkers of her era. The Fullbrooks begin with an account of Beauvoir's formation as a philosopher. They then explore her early writing on philosophical method (...) and the ways this shaped her fiction. The book traces the development of Beauvoir's central theories of embodied consciousness and intersubjectivity, and examines her concepts of the "individual" and the "social other". An analysis of Beauvoir's ethics of liberation leads to philosophical readings of her great works of applied ethics, The Second Sex and Old Age. Finally, Beauvoir's contribution to continuing debates about consciousness, the body, the self and the other is reassessed. The publication of this introduction to Beauvoir's philosophy is an important contribution to the current renaissance of Beauvoir studies. Clear, accessible and lively, this book is essential reading not only for students of Beauvoir but for anyone interested in the submerged record of women's impact on philosophy. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 17-19.

The odds of encountering a senior citizen selling on the street have increased. The claim that they have no choice but to work and sell on the street, despite the dangers, illnesses, and psychological issues they may face, to provide for their family’s needs is very evident. Therefore, this study explores the quality of life, lived experiences, challenges, and coping mechanisms of senior citizen street vendors in Bulacan, Philippines. The study employed Heideggerian Phenomenology and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Moreover, the (...) following themes arise (1) Golden years, (2) Socially connected, and (3) Unknown journey. These themes highlighted the experiences and challenges faced by the participants. Moreover, it is highly suggested that local government agencies enhance and strictly monitor the existing program that alleviates mental and physical health concerns and senior citizens' safety and financial assistance. (shrink)

This paper explores the transformation of Twitter from the traditional developer based command and control into something strangely democratic: a social construction of utility, a twisting of this once unique service to serve the needs and desires, ever evolving, of its users. We explore changes in the social constructions of Twitter and use recent research in the Philosophy of Data to suggest potential explanations.

There is no cure or vaccine for HIV/AIDS. The only life-prolonging treatment available is antiretroviral (ARV) therapy. WHO estimates, however, that less than 5 percent of those who require treatment in developing countries currently enjoy access to these medicines. In Africa fewer than 50,000 people–less than 2 percent of the people in need–currently receive ARV therapy. These facts have elicited strongly divergent reactions, and views about the appropriate response to this crisis have varied widely.The intensity of the debate concerning access (...) to life-prolonging medicines for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, and the heated rhetoric with which they are often conducted, suggest that these disagreements may be rooted in deeper disagreements of value. It is not obvious, however, what disagreements of value are at stake in this debate. By analyzing the statements of scholars, public officials, activist organizations, and private sector representatives, each of whom may endorse very different policy recommendations on access to HIV/AIDS drugs, we have identified and created a typology of the different sources of disagreement in the debate. We conclude that the central disagreements concerning access to medicines arise from competing understandings of how responsibilities for bringing remedy to hardships should be allocated to different agents and institutions. A central lesson that emerges from our analysis is that thinking about “health equity” must extend beyond the explanation and justification of goals, values, and ideals, and engage more honestly with the difficult question of how responsibilities for bringing remedy to health crises should be allocated in complex social contexts. (shrink)

Causation has multiple distinct meanings in genetics. One reason for this is meaning slippage between two concepts of the gene: Mendelian and molecular. Another reason is that a variety of genetic methods address different kinds of causal relationships. Some genetic studies address causes of traits in individuals, which can only be assessed when single genes follow predictable inheritance patterns that reliably cause a trait. A second sense concerns the causes of trait differences within a population. Whereas some single genes can (...) be said to cause population-level differences, most often these claims concern the effects of many genes. Polygenic traits can be understood using heritability estimates, which estimate the relative influences of genetic and environmental differences to trait differences within a population. Attempts to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying polygenic traits have been developed, although causal inference based on these results remains controversial. Genetic variation has also recently been leveraged as a randomizing factor to identify environmental causes of trait differences. This technique—Mendelian randomization—offers some solutions to traditional epidemiological challenges, although it is limited to the study of environments with known genetic influences. (shrink)

Since 1970 the United Kingdom, like the United States, has developed a “winner-take-all” political economy characterized by widening inequality and spectacular income growth at the top of the distribution. However, Britain’s centralized executive branch and relatively insulated policymaking process are less amenable to the kind of “organized combat” that Hacker and Pierson describe for the United States. Britain’s winner-take-all politics is better explained by the rise of political ideas favoring unfettered markets that, over time, produce a self-perpetuating structural advantage for (...) the richest. That advantage is, in turn, justified and sustained by reference to the same ideas. Inequality growth in the United Kingdom has been primarily driven by the financialization of the economy that began under the Thatcher government and continued under New Labour. The survival of pro-finance policies through the financial crisis provides further evidence that lobbying by a weakened City of London was less decisive in shaping policy than the financial sector’s continuing structural advantage and the tenacity of its supporting political consensus. (shrink)

Increasingly, scholarship on moral injury is expanding to include non‐military personnel, and considers a violation of bodily integrity—for example, of civilian women who are targeted for sexual violence in warfare—as a particularly egregious harm. Moral injury discourse also extends beyond the individual to the social context in which moral injury arises, its relational effects, and its utterly devastating impact on personhood, an impact frequently characterized as a “soul wound.” The intersection of genocidal rape—both as an individual and a group harm—with (...) religion, as facilitating moral injury and restorative “soul repair,” exemplifies these trends. Although moral injury research rarely addresses the detrimental influences of religion or references the “soul” with precision, the discourse of moral injury does provide an opportunity for exploring the relationship between personhood and agency from the perspectives of those who inflict and are subjected to harm. (shrink)

This article explores the idea that there is a spectrum of individuals who feel compelled to dwell in the past, either due to psychological or social conditions. I analyze both conditions respectively by critically examining two cases: post-traumatic stress disorder and racialized oppression. I propose that individuals with PTSD can feel psychologically compelled to dwell in the past in a dually negative sense: the individual lives in the past but also broods on it, causing them to feel “stuck” in the (...) past. This kind of “dwelling” can cause individuals to suffer disruptions to their sense of self and intersubjectivity. After exploring the psychological case of dwelling in the past, I explore the social sense in which individuals can dwell in the past due to oppressive social structures by examining the case of racialized oppression. The case of racialization is philosophically stimulating because of its intersubjective dimensions—it subverts the idea that dwelling in the past is simply a psychological phenomenon by capturing that others can help or hinder us with maintaining a sense of self and future-directed intentionality. By putting the phenomenological work of Al-Saji into conversation with recent phenomenological research on incarceration, I propose that racialization can be similarly disruptive to one’s sense of self and intersubjectivity. The proposed account is suggestive that traumatic and oppressive experiences may amplify and compound each other in ways not yet well elucidated in the literature. If this account is taken to be persuasive, it is indicative that both psychological and social conditions mediate one’s temporality and well-being. (shrink)

This study investigated the relative contribution of perception/cognition and language-specific semantics in nonverbal categorization of spatial relations. English and Korean speakers completed a video-based similarity judgment task involving containment, support, tight fit, and loose fit. Both perception/cognition and language served as resources for categorization, and allocation between the two depended on the target relation and the features contrasted in the choices. Whereas perceptual/cognitive salience for containment and tight-fit features guided categorization in many contexts, language-specific semantics influenced categorization where the two (...) features competed for similarity judgment and when the target relation was tight support, a domain where spatial relations are perceptually diverse. In the latter contexts, each group categorized more in line with semantics of their language, that is, containment/support for English and tight/loose fit for Korean. We conclude that language guides spatial categorization when perception/cognition alone is not sufficient. In this way, language is an integral part of our cognitive domain of space. (shrink)

Kate A. Manne is an associate professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University, where she has been teaching since 2013. Before that, she was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, did her graduate work at MIT, and was an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne, where she studied philosophy, logic, and computer science. Her current research is primarily in moral, feminist, and social philosophy. She is the author of two books, including her first (...) book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny and her latest book Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women. Manne has also published a number of scholarly papers about the foundations of morality, and she regularly writes opinion pieces, essays, and reviews in venues—including The New York Times, The Boston Review, the Huffington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. (shrink)

This commentary analyzes the extent to which the incommensurability problem can be resolved through the proposed alternative method of integrative experiment design. We suggest that, although one aspect of incommensurability is successfully addressed (dimensional incommensurability), the proposed design space method does not yet alleviate another major source of discontinuity, which we call conceptual incommensurability.

Effective robots and autonomous systems must be trustworthy. This chapter examines models of trustworthiness from a philosophical and empirical perspective to inform the design and adoption of autonomous systems. Trustworthiness is a property of trusted agents or organisations that engenders trust in other agent or organisations. Trust is a complex phenomena defined differently depending on the discipline. This chapter aims to bring different approaches under a single framework for investigation with three sorts of questions: Who or what is trustworthy?–metaphysics. How (...) do we know who or what is trustworthy?–epistemology. What factors influence what or who should we trust?–normativity. A two-component model of trust is used that incorporates competence (skills, reliability and experience) and integrity (motives, honesty and character). It is supposed that human levels of competence yield the highest trust whereas trust is reduced at sub-human and super-human levels. The threshold for trustworthiness of an agent or organisation in a particular context is a function of their relationship with the truster and potential impacts of decisions. Building trustworthy autonomous systems requires obeying the norms of logic, rationality and ethics under pragmatic constraints–even though there is disagreement on these principles by experts. Autonomous systems may need sophisticated social identities including empathy and reputational concerns to build human-like trust relationships. Ultimately transdisciplinary research drawing on metaphysical, epistemological and normative human and machine theories of trust are needed to design trustworthy autonomous systems for adoption. (shrink)

A geographically stratified cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2002 to investigate household-level factors associated with use of mosquito control measures and self-reported malaria in Malindi, Kenya. A total of 629 households were surveyed. Logistic regressions were used to analyse the data. Half of all households (51%) reported all occupants using an insecticide-treated bed net and at least one additional mosquito control measure such as insecticides or removal of standing water. Forty-nine per cent reported a history of malaria in the household. (...) Of the thirteen household factors analysed, low (OR=0·23, CI 0·11, 0·48) and medium (OR=0·50, CI 0·29, 0·86) education, mudcoral (OR=0·0·39, CI 0·24, 0·66) and mud block–plaster (OR=0·47, CI 0·25, 0·87) wall types, farming (OR=1·38, CI 1·01, 1·90) and travel to rural areas (OR=0·48, CI 0·26, 0·91) were significantly associated with the use of mosquito control, while controlling for other covariates in the model. History of reported malaria was not associated with the use of mosquito control (OR=1·22, CI 0·79, 1·88). Of the thirteen covariates analysed in the second model, only two household factors were associated with history of malaria: being located in the well-drained stratum (OR=0·49, CI 0·26, 0·96) and being bitten while in the house (OR=1·22, CI 0·19, 0·49). These results suggest that high socioeconomic status is associated with increased household-level mosquito control use, although household-level control may not be enough, as many people are exposed to biting mosquitoes while away from the house and in areas that are more likely to harbour mosquitoes. (shrink)

This paper highlights the importance of considering both researcher and participant contexts when exploring everyday educational lives. It emerges during a period of increasing and sustained social inequality in England, and against a backdrop of increasingly tight research timeframes and resources in higher education. Drawing on a project engaging low-income families in Greater London, the paper takes the everyday as its conceptual focus and questions how we can be critically attentive to everyday educational lives if we struggle to access and (...) develop research relationships with particular social groups. We offer empirical insight into the hesitancies towards, and avoidances of, research participation that centre around knowledge, fear, and trust, and which are heightened concerns where aspects of family life, parenting, and children come to the fore. The paper considers how these can be mitigated in an academic environment where limited time and resourcing shape possibilities of research engagements and offers practical moves linked to research relationships, relevance and presence for how researchers can address these challenges to enable research to be more inclusive. (shrink)

This article seeks to document the latest danger in the opioid crisis: fentanyl and related synthetic opioids. Fifty times more potent than pure heroin, cheaper to manufacture in laboratories worldwide, and easily distributed by mail and couriers, fentanyl is flooding the illicit opioid markets throughout the country.

Changes in government policy over the last two decades have seen the traditional goals of criminal justice, namely prosecution and punishment, being replaced by an emphasis on prevention, fear reduction, security and harm reduction. During this time domestic abuse has gained a place on the political agenda, which has resulted in legislative initiatives in the form of civil protection orders across the U.K. which primarily focus on prevention but have also more recently begun to rely on the traditional criminal justice (...) responses should they fail to prevent further abuse. Drawing on international evaluations and a recent study conducted in Scotland (the Scottish study), the article examines whether legislation in the form of civil protection orders has the effect of curtailing the actions of abusers and if not, what occurs when the traditional criminal justice response comes into play. The strengths of civil protection orders and some explanations for the weaknesses of these orders are considered alongside the question of whether there is any value in women continuing to engage with the law in response to domestic abuse. (shrink)

School teachers routinely work with minors who are vulnerable, though research on teacher professional misconduct is limited. Using a 5-year cohort of cases (N = 325) from New Zealand’s Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal (2018–2022), this study describes tribunal processes and outcomes including types, setting (private/professional) and sector (Early childhood education/primary and secondary education) of the misconduct, pleas, and penalties ordered. Physical violence constituted the most frequent (51.5%) type of misconduct, with early childhood education and female teachers being independently associated with this (...) type of misconduct. Primary/secondary and male teachers were overrepresented in boundary violation misconduct. Misconduct related to criminal convictions was significantly more likely to arise from private life contexts. While professional misconduct is rare, findings from the study point to risk factors in certain settings, and the need for more research to build understanding of risk and remediation approaches after such conduct. (shrink)

Through careful interpretative essays on Greek poets, Shakespeare, and the Hebrew Bible, Athens, Arden, Jerusalem explores fundamental questions about God, human nature, and the political order. The collection of essays addresses topics ranging from friendship and marriage to sovereignty and tyranny, from piety and sin to comedy and contemplation.

The article presents new research about spiritual experiences during COVID-19. It starts with a wider discussion about the relationship between spirituality and wellbeing, based on research carried out in Brazil and the United Kingdom before the pandemic. The research showed a strict division between personal faith and medical treatment, reflecting a professional distance when treating patients that results in patients’ unwillingness to speak about their experience to anyone in the medical profession, even when these experiences impact their mental health. The (...) article then explores findings of a new research project about spiritual experience during COVID-19 and reflects on three themes that emerged from the data: 1) changes in patients’ relationships with their religious communities, 2) seeing spiritual figures and near death experiences, and 3) interpretations of COVID-19 as a spiritual contagion. These themes contribute to a nuanced understanding of how spiritual experiences that arise in moments of crisis are interpreted by the people who have them, potentially contributing to resiliance and coping. The last section discusses the reluctance to speak about non-ordinary experiences and reflects on the importance of integrating non-ordinary experiences for mental health. (shrink)

This article examines the definitions of literacy in operation in secondary schools, and the relationship between official literacy policy and the practices of the agents responsible for implementing this policy. We trace the history of national 'policy' back to the Language Across the Curriculum movement of the 1970s as it provides an illustrative point of comparison with the first five years of the National Literacy Strategy. Drawing on empirical data which illuminate the views, perceptions and practices of key agents on (...) a number of levels, we critically review the concept of 'school literacy' promoted in government policy, defining it as 'school-centric literacy' and question its ability to facilitate participation in the practices associated with the media and technological literacies which are increasingly a feature of school life. There is evidence of some unplanned effects of the current national policy but also that levels of agency, for literacy teachers in particular, may be rapidly diminishing. (shrink)

Despite recommendations from the Cartwright Report ethical review by health ethics committees has continued in New Zealand without health practitioners ever having to acknowledge their dual roles as health practitioners researching their own patients. On the other hand, universities explicitly identify doctor/research-patient relations as potentially raising conflict of role issues. This stems from the acknowledgement within the university sector itself that lecturer/research-student relations are fraught with such conflicts. Although similar unequal relationships are seen to exist between health researchers and their (...) patients, the patient/subjects are not afforded the levels of protection that are afforded student/subjects. In this paper we argue that the difference between universities and health research is a result of the failure of the Operational Standard Code for Ethics Committees to explicitly acknowledge the vulnerability of the patient and conflict of interests in the dual roles of health practitioner/researcher. We end the paper recommending the Ministry of Health consider the rewriting of the Operational Standard Code for Ethics Committees, in particular in the rewriting of section 26 of the Operational Standard Code for Ethics Committees. We also identify the value of comparative ethical review and suggest the New Zealand's Health Research Council's trilateral relationship with Australia's NHMRC (National Health and Medical Research Council) and Canada's CIHR (Canadian Institute of Health Research) as a useful starting point for such a process. (shrink)

In the Australian context, all teachers are obliged, in accordance with the national curriculum, to engage students in critical and creative thinking in the classroom. Yet teachers often wonder ‘How do we facilitate the development of (critical and creative) thinking skills in our students?’ In our specific local context, a large-scale community consultation highlighted a need for a thorough, concerted strategic approach in relation to this obligation. In this paper we spell out our response to this need: the establishment of (...) a Centre for Critical Thinking and Ethics to implement a two-pronged strategic approach. It is our contention that the best way to cater for students’ growth in critical and creative thinking is to combine deliberative use of explicit critical thinking materials with the norms/tools/activities and strategies of the Philosophy in Schools pedagogy. Our innovation consists primarily in our 'detached' and 'embedded' approaches to critical thinking at Newington College. We aim to contribute to the ongoing discussion of best practice in critical and creative thinking, to improve capacity both in and beyond our own school. (shrink)