What is the future of genetic testing during pregnancy likely to look like? Given that the patterns of use of genetic testing in neonatology tend to precede, and thus predict, patterns of prenatal...

This essay argues that Malebranche originated the model of sensitive taste in French thought, several decades before Du Bos. It examines the highly gendered, negative physiological model of taste and of the female mind which Malebranche developed within the Cartesian framework and as a witness to Parisian salon society in which women’s taste had great cultural influence, and strongly questions the common assumption that Cartesian substance dualism necessarily contained feminist potential. The essay argues for Malebranche’s great influence in this regard, (...) connecting him to later Enlightenment critics of women’s taste such as Rousseau, and to Vitalist physicians like Le Camus. -/- All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of scholarly citation, none of this work may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. For information address the University of Pennsylvania Press, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112. (shrink)

Normativism is the (controversial) view that epistemic reasons for belief are really, genuinely normative. Normativists might wonder – and anti-normativists might press the question – why, or in virtue of what, are epistemic reasons normative? Borrowing Korsgaard's metaphor, what's the “source” of their normativity? Here I argue that this question is both highly interesting and subtly distinct from other common questions in the literature. I also propose an initial taxonomy of stance-dependent and stance-independent answers, and I advocate a novel, (...) hybrid type of view as ultimately most promising for (mostly) vindicating normativism. (shrink)

The Wrong of Injustice, by MikkolaMari. Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 285.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:'kvieuJs SELECTED· LETTERS KATHARINE TAIT Carn Voel Porthcurno,- Cornwall TRI9 6LN, England Nicholas Griffin. The Selected Letters ofBertrand Russel~ Vol. I: The Private Years, I884-I9I4. London: Allen Lane the Penguin PreSs, 1992. Pp. xxi, 553.£25.00; C$47.99; US$35·00. Nicholas Griffin has done an admirable job of selecting and explaining the letters in this first volume. It is amazingly to his credit that he 'manages to be so well (...) acquainted with and to understand so well a world so remote from his own. In the whole volume, I found only two small points on which to augment his knowledge. If he had looked up Shakespeare's poem about greasy Joan, which we all know in part, he would have solved for himself the mystery of Marian's nose, referred to on page 93. It was red and raw from the cold, as Russell's always was from sunburn in the summer-and usually peeling besides. And on page 217, perhaps a more esoteric mystery: Milligan is a game of patience played with two packs of cards, which I have seen him playing with a special small set capable of being spread out on a small table. My only other quibble is that I think perhaps Griffin is a trifle too hard on Grandmother Russell, who may have been less calculating and more sentimental than he supposes. That she was not above emotional blackmail is clear from Russell's letter to Alys of 17 August 1894: I went to· my Grandmother, and found her on the sofa in her sitting-room. We embraced in silence for some time and then I looked at her sadly with tears in my eyes and she said "Well I'm worse than you thought I was": not with an air of triumph, but of mild reproof for my heartlessness in having felt so little anxiery. She besought me to consent to an absence; she says everybody who comes thinks it strange I should not be here when she is so ill, and that both thee and I are suffering in reputation in consequence. She gave repeated assurances (which I didn't need) of her absolute unselfishness in urging my home-duties; she really does care only about my moral welfare, which she feels to be imperilled by such neglect. (P. 98) Awful stuff, yet I think she may have rather been seizing any weapon that came to hand than laying deeply cunning schemes; but this is only opinion and I would bow to Griffin's greater knowledge of the facts. His analysis of Evelyn Whitehead's "attacks",their effect on Russell and his relations with russell: me Journal of me Bemand Russell Archives McMaster University Libraty Pr... n.s. I> (winter 1992-9~): 211-24 ISSN OO~6-O1631. 212 Reviews her, on the other hand, I found enlightening and quite the best thing I have read on the subject. Some other fine items must be singled out for special mention. First, the generous tribute to Russell's integrity over Frege on page 245. Russell had spent five years working in almost complete isolation on the Principles only to find, when it had gone to press, that much of what was best and most original in it had been anticipated by Frege. Yet, even in his private correspondence, he never gave so much as a hint of any concern about his loss of priority, but only his delight at having found a thinker with similar ideas. It required an integrity beyond the call of duty to add to the Principles an appendix drawing attention to Frege's work and generally to do what he could to make it better known. Griffin's editorial work is for the most part adlJIirably dispassionate, always informative, sometimes speculative, occasionally critical; but when the occasion warrants (usually over professional matters), he is unstinting in his praise. Russell's comments about The Principles ofMathematics in his letters seem absurdly modest. The book was undoubtedly a wotk of genius; in some ways, the greatest thing he ever wrote.... (I]r offered not merely a new philosophy ofmathematics bur a new way of doing philosophy. Yet Russell... (shrink)

The field of medical rehabilitation is relatively new.... Until recently, the ethical problems of this new field were neglected. There seemed to be more pressing concerns as rehabilitation medicine struggled to establish itself, sometimes in the face of considerable skepticism or hostility. There also seemed no pressing moral questions of the kind and intensity to be encountered, say, in high-technology acute care medicine or genetic engineering.... Those in biomedical ethics could and did easily overlook the quiet, less obtrusive issues of (...) rehabilitation.... The Hastings Center set out in 1985 to rectify that situation.... To explore the issues, the Center assembled a group of practitioners in the field, Hastings Center staff members, and individuals experienced in other areas of medical ethics.... The report that follows was written by Arthur Caplan and Daniel Callahan, assisted by Dr. Janet Haas of the Moss Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia... (shrink)

For more than eleven years, I worked with Dan Callahan as an editor, a liaison with journalists, and a sounding board for ideas. To Dan, every new writing project was a thrill, whether it was for the New Republic or a blog. He consumed a wide range of professional and scholarly literature, followed the news with the eye of a reporter, and called experts when he wanted to learn more about something he had read. The result was a volcanic (...) bubbling of story ideas. If he didn't turn them into articles or books, I sometimes had the feeling that he might burst. (shrink)

Let me begin with what I take to be the two most significant features of this collection. First, it addresses an area that is woefully under-discussed: the intersection of virtue epistemology and philosophy of religion. Each is a massively influential and important field in its own right, so bringing the two into dialogue makes tremendous sense. This collection accomplishes much in this regard but also underscores the amount of work that needs to be developed. Bringing together virtue epistemology, philosophy of (...) religion, testimony, analyses of trust/faith, disagreement, etc. makes the volume of interest to philosophers working in a wide variety of fields. Second, each contributor is an extremely capable philosopher on the cutting edge of his/her field. The list is a murderer’s row of epistemologists and philosophers of religion, and their contributions will accordingly provide fodder for continued work regarding all of the topics discussed.W. Jay Wood begins with the necessity of fait .. (shrink)

When my family and I were hiking in northern New York state we got lost. I waved down a passing car and inside I could just about, through the haze of purple cigarette smoke, make out a couple of very obese people in the car; they looked like mother and son. They very kindly agreed to take us to our car, several miles away, and during the journey I asked them what had brought them to this remote mountain road. “We (...) come here once a week to draw water from a mountain stream”, said the elderly woman. “Most people round here don't know how to keep healthy”, she and her son opined almost in unison. This experience, for me, captured many of the attitudes those of us in the West have towards health, health promotion, and disease prevention. This cameo shows how difficult …. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:In Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics by Daniel Callahan, and: Why the Church Needs Bioethics: A Guide to the Wise Engagement with Life’s Challenges ed. by John F. Kilner, and: Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics by Neil MesserAndrea Vicini SJIn Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics By Daniel Callahan (edited by Arthur Caplan) CAMBRIDGE, MA: MIT PRESS, 2012. XVII + (...) 206 PP. $29.00Why the Church Needs Bioethics: A Guide to the Wise Engagement with Life’s Challenges Edited by John F. Kilner GRAND RAPIDS: ZONDERVAN, 2011. 304 PP. $26.99Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics By Neil Messer LONDON: SCM PRESS, 2011. XI + 236 PP. $36.20With their specific styles, targeted readerships, and overall goals, these three volumes provide diverse but synergic ways to articulate and expand bioethical reflection in today’s society. Daniel Callahan is undoubtedly one of the founders of the field of bioethics. In Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics is a fascinating memoir where, in a very engaging and personal way, Callahan unveils his intellectual development, career, and major interests. At the same time, he provides a critical lens to examine the history of bioethics in the United States. It shows his “abiding fascination with the human nature, scope, and validity of ethics as part of human life, and a similar strong interest in the ways that the scientific knowledge of medicine influences how we think about our health and mortality and shapes the ways we live our lives” (xvi). In particular, he describes how his philosophical training, and philosophical mind, led him to address the burgeoning ethical questions in biology and medicine and, thereby, to contribute to the founding of today’s bioethics.By sharing his intellectual journey with great honesty and transparency, Callahan guides his readers from his initial philosophical questioning to the later critical developments that have shaped bioethics as a theoretical and practical discipline in the last forty years. The list of topics that he has studied is impressive—from birth control to heart transplants, from end-of-life issues to embryonic stem cell research, and from market-driven health care to medical rationing. Drawing on his time as editor of the famous liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal in the 1960s, Callahan narrates his 1969 founding of the Hastings Center in cooperation with the author and psychiatrist Willard Gaylin. He describes the [End Page 196] stages in the life of this first bioethics research institution in the world, focusing on the years of its success (1980–86) and then on the routinization of its charisma (1986–96). More recent years have seen Callahan questioning medical progress and stressing the urgency of critically examining the goals of today’s medicine, even including discussion topics that are often avoided.Bioethics scholars and students will enjoy In Search of the Good. They will be able to integrate their own historical study of this discipline with Callahan’s personal memoir, which gives a human face to issues and debates. Moreover, bioethicists will be stimulated to reassess their own intellectual engagement and reflect on the future developments of this interdisciplinary discipline whose “roots lie in the humanities” (167).John Kilner, director of bioethics programs and professor of bioethics and contemporary culture at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, takes a broader approach in Why the Church Needs Bioethics. The volume includes contributions from an interdisciplinary group of thirty-one Christian leaders with diverse expertise, ranging from medicine, business, and law to biblical studies, theology, counseling, and intercultural and pastoral ministry. Nineteen leaders contributed essays, and twelve offered their critiques to earlier drafts. This collaborative effort is praiseworthy, but at the same time it leaves readers desiring more cohesive reflections and a synthetic theological voice.The volume considers three cases emblematic of major human quests: reproductive technologies for a better birth; enhancing drugs for a better life; and end-of-life care for a better death. Each case is discussed by experts from three different disciplines—biblical theology, practical theology, and other secular professions (business, law, or health care)—followed by a specifically bioethical essay. The volume ends with two conclusive contributions discussing how preaching and wisdom... (shrink)

A literate scrutiny of a popular science Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9584-7 Authors Aileen Fyfe, School of History, University of St Andrews, St Katharine’s Lodge, The Scores, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AR Scotland, UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE CURRICULAR ROLE OF RUSSELl?S SCEPTICISM MICHAEL J. ROCKLER Interdisciplinary Studies in Education / National-Louis Universiry Evanston, 1L 60201, USA I n The Prospects of IndustriaL CiviLization, written in collaboration with his wife Dora, Bertrand Russell wrote: The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve (...) this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.· This passage reflects Russell's views on scepticism and education; he sought an educational system that would avoid indoctrination and would produce sceptical students. Scepticism, a central aspect of much of Russell's philosophic work, was a primary organizing principle of his writings on education. Russell, a major contributor to educational theory, produced two volumes on education that continue to have considerable relevance for teaching and learning in contemporary society. The first, Education and the Good Life (1926),2 inspired by the births of John and Katharine, focused on the education of young children. In Education and the Good Life, Russell identified the aims of education. These included the development ofvitality, the promotion of courage (which entails the absence of fear), sensitiveness and intelligence. When schools accomplish these ends, they produce young men and women of character who are able to contribute to the well-being of society. 1 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1923), p. 252. 2 Published in Britain as On Education: Especially in Early Childhood. The CurricuLar Role ofRusselL's Scepticism 51 Russell, who once stood for Parliament as suffragist candidate, believed in equality of education for both men and women. This position was well advanced for its time; it still encounters resistance today. As the Russells' children approached school age, he and Dora confronted the problem of their education. Russell did not want John and Katharine to experience the loneliness of education by tutors that he had faced as a child. He and Dora also wished to avoid conventional public schools because they wanted their children to be educated in a manner consistent with their sense of scepticism about society and about religion. Russell felt that exposure to any kind of traditional learning would cause his children to be indoctrinated with patriotic and religious points of view. On the other hand, he felt that the progressive schools that were available-including A. S. Neill's Summerhill-lacked intellectual rigour. As a result of these feelings and because of Dora Russell's interest in education, the Russells leased the estate of Bertrand's brother at Telegraph House in Sussex and founded what came to be known as Beacon Hill School in September 1927. With his experience at Beacon Hill in mind, Russell published a second book on education in I932-Education and the Modern WorLd.3 It argued against the notion of progressive educators that schooling should simply allow for natural growth. Russell rejected Rousseau's approach to teaching and learning, and he distanced himself from some of Dewey's early work as well. In Education and the Good Life, and in other early essays on learning theory, Russell had seemed impressed by the growing role of behaviourism in education. However, his experience at Beacon Hill and his reading ofpsychoanalytic literature weakened his acceptance of behaviourism. In Education and the Modern World Russell called for more awareness of the role of emotion in learning as well as an examination of the way in which repressed feelings affect action. Russell argued that conditioning cannot effectively develop character. Education and the Modern World ends on a discouraging note. Russell concludes that schools can only provide for full individual development if the state identifies its own interest with that of the 3 Published in Britain as Education and the Social Order. russell: the Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives M.Masrer University Libraty Press n.s. 12 (summer 1992): 50-60 ISSN 0036-01631 52 MICHAEL J. ROCKLER child. Russell was pessimistic about this possibility. For this to take place, a number of things had to occur. First, farge scale wars had to be eliminated. Second... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Principles and Theory in BioethicsPat Milmoe McCarrick (bio)The following citations were selected from BIOETHICSLINE, the online database prepared at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics for the National Library of Medicine's MEDLARS system. Searching the keywords autonomy, beneficence, casuistry, justice, and virtues, as well as the text word principlism produced more than 400 citations. Only the citations concerned with theory and principle in the practice of bioethics are included here—e.g., (...) works about justice in resource allocation have been deleted.Arkes, Hadley V. When Bungling Practice Is Joined to Absurd Theory: Doctors, Philosophers, and the Right to Die. In Set No Limits: A Rebuttal to Daniel Callahan's Proposal to Limit Health Care for the Elderly, ed. Robert L. Barry and Gerard V. Bradley, pp. 31-44. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.Arnason, Vilhjalmur. Towards Authentic Conversations: Authenticity in the Patient-Professional Relationship. Theoretical Medicine 15 (3): 227-42, September 1994.Arras, John D. Getting Down to Cases: The Revival of Casuistry in Bioethics. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1): 29-51, February 1991.Arras, John D. Principles and Particularity: The Role of Cases in Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 983-1014, Fall 1994.Beauchamp, Tom L. Principles and Other Emerging Paradigms in Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 955-71, Fall 1994.Beauchamp, Tom L. The Principles Approach. Hastings Center Report 23 (6): S9, November-December 1993.Beauchamp, Tom L., and Childress, [End Page 279] James F. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 752 p.Beauchamp, Tom L., and Walters, LeRoy. Ethical Theory and Bioethics. In their Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. 4th ed., pp. 1-38. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994.Beldecos, Athena, and Arnold, Robert M. Gathering Information and Casuistic Analysis. [Commentary]. Journal of Clinical Ethics 4 (3): 241-45, Fall 1993.Bole, Thomas J. The Rhetoric of Rights and Justice in Health Care. In Rights to Health Care, ed. Thomas J. Bole and William B. Bondeson, pp. 1-19. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1991.Broome, John. Fairness Versus Doing the Most Good. [Commentary]. Hastings Center Report 24 (4): 36-39, July-August 1994.Campbell, Courtney S. Gifts and Caring Duties in Medicine. In Duties to Others, ed. Courtney S. Campbell and B. Andrew Lustig, pp. 181-97. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994.Carson, Ronald A.; Callahan, Sidney; Ross, Judith Wilson; and May, William F. Spirit, Emotion, and Meaning: The Many Voices of Bioethics. Hastings Center Report 24 (3): 26-27, May-June 1994.Charlesworth, Max. Bioethics in a Liberal Society. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 172 p.Cherbas, Peter. Paradigms and Our Shrinking Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 1105-13, Fall 1994.Childress, James F. Ethical Theories, Principles, and Casuistry in Bioethics: An Interpretation and Defense of Principlism. In Religious Methods and Resources in Bioethics, ed. Paul F. Camenisch, pp. 181-201. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994.Childress, James F., and Fletcher, John C. Individualism and Community: The Contested Terrain of Respect for Autonomy. Hastings Center Report 24 (3): 34-35, May-June 1994.Clouser, K. Danner, and Gert, Bernard. A Critique of Principlism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 15 (2): 219-36, April 1990.Devettere, Raymond J. Clinical Ethics and Happiness. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 18 (1): 71-89, February 1993.DeGrazia, David. Moving Forward in Bioethical Theory: Theories, Cases, and Specified Principlism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 17 (5): 511-39, October 1992.Donnelly, William J. From Principles to Principals: The New Direction in Medical Ethics. [Commentary]. Theoretical Medicine 15 (2): 141-48, June 1994.Downie, Robin. Health Care Ethics and Casuistry. [Editorial]. Journal of Medical Ethics 18 (2): 61-62, 66, June 1992. [End Page 280]DuBose, Edwin R.; Hamel, Ronald P.; and O'Connell, Laurence J., eds. A Matter of Principles? Ferment in U.S. Bioethics. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994. 381 p.Fox, Renée C. The Entry of U.S. Bioethics into the 1990s: A Sociological Analysis, pp. 21-71.Gudorf, Christine E. A Feminist Critique of Biomedical Principlism, pp.164-81.Campbell, Courtney S. Principlism and Religion: The Law and the Prophets, pp. 182-208.Charon, Rita. Narrative Contributions to Medical Ethics: Recognition, Formulation, Interpretation, and Validation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.4 (2000) 283-286 [Access article in PDF] Introduction This Issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal focuses on "Aristotelianism in Contemporary Bioethics." It is an unusual topic for this journal as it is seemingly very theoretical. But, I assure the reader that the theoretical topics explored are of the most practical and pressing kind. The questions addressed concern what kind of knowledge and (...) skill there can be in deliberating about particular cases and issues, whether this knowledge is culturally relative, and how bioethics can balance the rights of the individual in making health care decisions with responsibilities to the community.Authors in bioethics, especially those working in clinical ethics, have long sought to address particular problems with the fewest theoretical commitments possible so as to make broad consensus more plausible. Since theoretical foundations are often disputed, keeping the discussion pragmatic has seemed the more likely road to agreement. Similarly, our American heritage has lent the rhetoric of the rights of the individual to the scholarly dialogue in bioethics. Although no one wishes to do away with such language completely, it sometimes has seemed inadequate to the moral phenomena. To address these concerns, the philosophy of Aristotle has been recruited. Aristotelianism in contemporary bioethics has become identified with two claims: (1) there is such a thing as the ability to reason wisely about particular problems and cases, and (2) there is a need to supplement the American emphasis on the individual with a richer notion of the person or a concept of the common good. Both of these claims address concerns arising from the doctrine of informed consent, the fundamental framework of medical decision making.Contemporary American biomedical ethics is now more than 25 years old. It has been marked by some important successes. For instance, it has evolved an ethical and legal consensus that the doctrine of informed consent is the primary way to make operational the value of respect for the patient. And this doctrine extends to all areas of medical treatment and biomedical research. The doctrine is minimalist in that it relies simply on [End Page 283] the right of a competent patient to refuse unwanted interventions. This approach naturally raises questions concerning whether it can adequately settle the more difficult moral questions society faces without recourse to a grander philosophical theory. Similarly, the doctrine of informed consent places the rights of the individual front and center, and this causes us to ask whether bioethics is intrinsically individualistic. Although some might find individualism unobjectionable, many claim that such individualism does not capture the moral phenomenon of the family's role in ethical medical decision making (Nelson and Nelson 1995) or the need to see particular choices in light of the health care schema we wish for society (Callahan 1990).Aristotelianism has not presented itself as just another competing theory among other approaches to bioethics. Through the notions of practical wisdom and the common good, Aristotelianism can be seen as a metaethical way of tying together the methodological progress in bioethics that has resulted from a rich debate among various methods. For instance, bioethics has seen the flourishing of two important methods: the principles approach and casuistry. Virtue theory has also received much attention. The representatives of each have often argued that the philosophical concepts and principles behind ethical decision making in medicine are minimal.Whether one is talking about the four principles approach of Beauchamp and Childress (1994), the case-based approach (casuistry) of Jonsen and Toulmin (1988), or the virtue theory of Pellegrino and Thomasma (1993), one immediately notices that each method is fairly dependent on the judgment or practical wisdom of a competent practitioner of the method in order to be effective. The four principles approach depends upon someone being able to balance or to specify its mid-level principles in difficult cases; casuistry requires the discrimination of a person of practical wisdom to identify relevant features of cases and reason analogically between paradigm cases and their less clear particular instances, and virtue theory places the competent practitioner of the clinical art at the center of its method and makes... (shrink)

© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] intellectual virtue an obstacle to religious faith? The papers in this fine collection answer this question either directly or indirectly.1 The editors, Laura Callahan and Timothy O’Connor, are to be congratulated on requesting, and receiving, from the authors accessible papers that cover many of the relevant issues. In addition they have provided a clear introduction and (...) useful summaries....In this review, I first consider the way the editors explicate the question. Then I examine the authors' answers. Finally I draw some conclusions from the various papers.In their Introduction the editors remind us of the complexity of faith, which typically involves: various intellectual propensities, notably tenacity of belief; a world-view; a moral orientation and an ‘affective stance’. This last may well be the... (shrink)

The following article is a response to the position paper of the Hastings Center, "Ethical Challenges of Chronic Illness", a product of their three year project on Ethics and Chronic Care. The authors of this paper, three prominent bioethicists, Daniel Callahan, Arthur Caplan, and Bruce Jennings, argue that there should be a different ethic for acute and chronic care. In pressing this distinction they provide philosophical grounds for limiting medical care for the elderly and chronically ill. We give a (...) critical survey of their position and reject it as well as any attempt to characterize the physician-patient relationship as a commercial contract. We emphasize, as central features of good medical practice, a commitment to be the patient's agent and a determination to acquire and be guided by knowledge. These commitments may sometimes conflict with efforts to have the physician serve as an instrument of social and economic policies limiting medical care. Keywords: acute, agent, autonomy, chronic, knowledge, obligations, rights CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

For years, mainstream feminist ethics focused criticism on male supremacy. Feminist philosophers in this volume adopt a less male-focused stance to look closely at oppression's impact on women's agency and on women's relations with women. Examining legal, social, and physical relationships, these philosophers confront moral ambiguity, moral compromise, and complicity in perpetuating oppression. Combining personal experience with philosophical inquiry, they vividly portray their daily engagement with oppression as both victims and perpetrators. They explore such issues as how pornography silences women (...) and radical feminist politics' complicity in racism. Among these insightful essays, Sandra Bartky argues that women share guilt for racism when they benefit from it without protest; Susan Brison reflects on uses of narrative in trauma recovery from such experiences as being targeted for rape or murder; Joan Callahan examines fallout of derogatory speech directed at lesbians; Virginia Held proposes carrying care into marketplaces and governments; and, in her introduction, Claudia Card draws on Primo Levi's conception of "gray zones" in exploring dangers of character damage to victims of misogyny. A fitting companion to Card's highly regarded Feminist Ethics, this volume interweaves observations on character, political ethics, violence, and love into an accessible sourcebook for students. It tackles some of feminism's most pressing issues and helps readers to identify and then overcome the real damage caused by oppression. (shrink)

The following article is a response to the position paper of the Hastings Center, “Ethical Challenges of Chronic Illness”, a product of their three year project on Ethics and Chronic Care. The authors of this paper, three prominent bioethicists, Daniel Callahan, Arthur Caplan, and Bruce Jennings, argue that there should be a different ethic for acute and chronic care. In pressing this distinction they provide philosophical grounds for limiting medical care for the elderly and chronically ill. We give a (...) critical survey of their position and reject it as well as any attempt to characterize the physician-patient relationship as a commercial contract. We emphasize, as central features of good medical practice, a commitment to be the patient's agent and a determination to acquire and be guided by knowledge. These commitments may sometimes conflict with efforts to have the physician serve as an instrument of social and economic policies limiting medical care. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Traité des premières véritésby Claude G. BuffierJeffrey D. BursonClaude G. Buffier. Traité des premières vérités. Édition, présentation et notes par Louis Rouquayrol. Textes cartésiens en langue française. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2020. Pp. 379. Paperback, €32.00.Born in Poland to French parents, Claude G. Buffier, SJ (1661–1737) emerged as one of the most influential of the Parisian scriptores librorumin the first decades of the eighteenth century. Buffier is (...) perhaps best known as one of the founding editors of, and contributors to, the influential French Jesuit periodical Mémoires de Trévoux, but his works on general grammar, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and logic earned him widespread renown. His Grammaire françaiseachieved translation into Spanish, German, Italian, and English, and his Cours de sciences sur des principes nouveaux et simples pour former le langage, l'esprit, et le cœur dans l'usage ordinaire de la vie(1715) was widely adopted in France and Spain throughout the eighteenth century. Buffier's eclectic approach to philosophy, science, moral philosophy, and practical theology developed across several significant works: Principes du raisonnement(1714), Traité des premières vérités(1724), Éléments de métaphysique(1725), and Exposition des preuves les plus sensibles de la véritable religion(1732). In these works, Buffier was prescient in selectively adopting perspectives from Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, evincing thereby his avid interest and participation in early Enlightenment discussions. Many of Buffier's texts proved to be influential on contributors to the Encyclopédie, on Voltaire, and perhaps later, as harbingers of Scottish Common Sense philosophy. Given the growing recognition of Buffier's importance thanks to the work of Kathleen Wilkins, Catherine Northeast, Jeffrey Burson, Katharine Hammerton, and others, Louis Rouquayrol's new critical edition of Buffier's most influential work, Traité des premières vérités( Treatise of First Truths) is most welcome. Rouquayrol's critical edition of the Traitéis replete with helpful [End Page 156]intertextual explanatory notes to the texts and debates that Buffier addressed, and it includes an insightful synthetic introduction, which summarizes the Traitéand addresses aspects of its philosophical and historical significance. The editor also helpfully includes a detailed chronology of Buffier's life and works, a note about the textual bases for the edition, several instructive appendices to later editions and related works by Buffier, and a profoundly helpful bibliography that includes existing editions, copies, and translations of the Traité, in addition to scholarly studies of Buffier's life and work. Rouquayrol's critical edition is, in short, the best one currently available, and it is likely to remain the standard published edition for some time.In the editor's view, Buffier's primary significance is as the inaugural eighteenth-century figure who attempted to redress the weaknesses at the heart of Cartesian "innate ideas" in ways that might have avoided Berkeley's or Malebranche's immaterialism or Hume's skepticism: "pour lutter contre les 'conséquences idéalistes du cartésianisme,'" Buffier "avait eu plutôt recours au sens commun comme à un 'complément nécessaire du sense intime, qui garantit l'existence du monde extérieur'" (13n2, quoting Étienne Gilson). This "solution mitigée" allowed for a certain reconciliation between Descartes and the "empirisme tempéré" of Locke, and more broadly, a way of moderating "les principes des Modernes" with "les poncifs des Anciens" (13). This conciliation of Lockean empiricism and certain strands of Cartesianism found in Buffier was in fact a central point made by my earlier work on Buffier's contribution to eighteenth-century Enlightenment Catholicism (see Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment[South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010]; also "Claude G. Buffier and the Maturation of the Jesuit Synthesis in the Age of Enlightenment," Intellectual History Review21 [2011]: 449–72). Rouquayrol's effort to revisit the complexities of this conciliation in his introduction is a welcome development. He explicitly reminds us that while Jesuits such as Buffier were prohibited from teaching particular theses associated with Descartes after 1706, they were nevertheless increasingly influenced by aspects of Cartesianism (15–17). In many... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Wandering at Ease in the ZhuangziJames MillerWandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. Edited by Roger T. Ames. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Pp. viii + 239."Good grief!" exclaimed the reviewer as he greedily tore open the package from Philosophy East and West. "Not another book on Zhuangzi!"As it turns out, Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, edited by Roger T. Ames, was found to (...) be not just "another book on Zhuangzi" but, instead, a wonderful collection of creative essays that genuinely wanders on Zhuangzi's vast spirit and that should appeal to a broad academic audience. Do not be deceived by the publisher's blurb on the back cover: "an excellent balance of philological and philosophical analysis." This summary of the book's contents proves to be fortunately misleading.The common thread running through this book is that it is dedicated to Yang Yu-wei, who taught many of the contributors while they were graduate students at Taiwan Normal University. Randall P. Peerenboom hilariously describes his first encounter with Professor Yang in a coda to his essay "Living Beyond the Bounds:Henry Miller and the Quest for Daoist Realization":He darted across the busy main street, dodging traffic, all the while calling out my name in a booming voice sure to attract the attention of the wandering undead and waving his arms in whirlwind fashion, managing somehow to evoke simultaneously images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the Bodhidharma. Welcome, I thought, to the wonderful world of Oz.(p. 139) [End Page 125]This description sets the tone for the essays here, which concentrate on the Zhuangzi's humor, character, and personality, unafraid to stride out across the busy, one-way streets of traditional academic disciplines. While remaining rigorously within the bounds of academic probity, this volume steadfastly resists the dangerous encroachment of desiccating intellectualism upon the wit, intelligence, and charm of one of the world's greatest works of literature.All of the essays "live beyond the bounds" in some fashion or other. Chris Jochim's "Just Say No to 'No Self' in Zhuangzi" reviews recent writing on self and personhood in the Zhuangzi, and includes the treatment of Zhuangzi in the theories of flow and happiness by the noted psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. Daniel Coyle's study of the zhenren (authentic person), lurks tentatively in the shadows of comparative mysticism. A comparison such as "Theocentrism aside, Zhuangzi's language is Eckhart-like in that it cancels itself out, short-circuiting the intellect so as to open one up to spontaneity and the omnipresence of Heaven" deserves greater exploration than a short essay can afford. James D. Sellmann's essay on the transformative effects of humor is briefly illuminated by a reference to Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1986),1 but this worthy literary intersection is only pursued in a footnote. The question of philosophy and literature is also raised in William Callahan's study of action and decision making in the story of Cook Ding. Callahan, again in footnotes, acknowledges the influence of Kundera, Barthes, and Derrida in his quest to understand what it means to "read" literary philosophy or philosophical literature. His essay, however, owes its chief debt to the linguistic analysis of Chad Hansen and A. C. Graham, and we can only hope that he will soon furnish us with the full fruits of his literary education.One group of essays deals with particular characters in the Zhuangzi. Kirill Ole Thompson's inventive study of fishermen in the Zhuangzi wades into the waters of Tang poetry, incorporating translations of Zhang Zhihe, Liu Zongyuan, Wang Wei, and Sikong Shu. The literary connection is only in a coda, but it is there nonetheless. A future study would perhaps do well to broaden this research to include works of art. One thinks of Wang Meng's masterpiece of around 1360, Fisherman of Huaxi or the Yuan literatus Wu Zhen's Fisherman Recluse on Lake Dongting, both in the collection of the National Palace Museum, T'aipei.2Zhuangzi's close companion, Hui Shi, is the subject of... (shrink)

In this article, I identify a distinctive form of injustice—ontic injustice—in which an individual is wronged by the very fact of being socially constructed as a member of a certain social kind. To be a member of a certain social kind is, at least in part, to be subject to certain social constraints and enablements, and these constraints and enablements can be wrongful to the individual who is subjected to them, in the sense that they inflict a moral injury. The (...) concept of ontic injustice is valuable in three main ways: it draws our attention to the role played by social kinds in enacting wrongful constraints and enablements; it clarifies our options for developing accounts of the ontology of particular social kinds, such as gender kinds; and, along with the related concept of ‘ontic oppression’, it helps us to understand and respond to oppression. (shrink)

Ethical review systems need to build on their experiences of COVID-19 research to enhance their preparedness for future pandemics. Recommendations from representatives from over twenty countries include: improving relationships across the research ecosystem; demonstrating willingness to reform and adapt systems and processes; and making the case robustly for better resourcing.

The decline in the interest in ethical theory is first outlined, as a background to the author’s discussion of principlism. The author’s own stance, that of a communitarian philosopher, is then described, before the subject of principlism itself is addressed. Two problems stand in the way of the author’s embracing principlism: its individualistic bias and its capacity to block substantive ethical inquiry. The more serious problem the author finds to be its blocking function. Discussing the four scenarios the author finds (...) that the utility of principlism is shown in the two scenarios about Jehovah’s Witnesses but that when it comes to selling kidneys for transplantation and germline enhancement, principlism is of little help. (shrink)

This paper is a cross-cultural examination of the development of hunting skills and the implications for the debate on the role of learning in the evolution of human life history patterns. While life history theory has proven to be a powerful tool for understanding the evolution of the human life course, other schools, such as cultural transmission and social learning theory, also provide theoretical insights. These disparate theories are reviewed, and alternative and exclusive predictions are identified. This study of cross-cultural (...) regularities in how children learn hunting skills, based on the ethnographic literature on traditional hunters, complements existing empirical work and highlights future areas for investigation. (shrink)

This essay demonstrates how the early Enlightenment salonnière madame de Lambert advanced a novel feminist intellectual synthesis favoring women's taste and cognition, which hybridized Cartesian and honnête thought. Disputing recent interpretations of Enlightenment salonnières that emphasize the constraints of honnêteté on their thought, and those that see Lambert's feminism as misguided in emphasizing gendered sensibility, I analyze Lambert's approach as best serving her needs as an aristocratic woman within elite salon society, and show through contextualized analysis how she deployed honnêteté (...) towards feminist ends. Additionally, the analysis of Malebranche's, Poulain de la Barre's, and Lambert's arguments about the female mind's gendered embodiment illustrates that misrepresenting Cartesianism as necessarily liberatory for women, by reducing it to a rigid substance dualism, erases from view its more complex implications for gender politics in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, especially in the honnête environment of the salons. (shrink)