The way in which medical professionals engage in bioethical issues ultimately reflects the type of care such patients are likely to receive. It is therefore critical for doctors and other health care professionals to have a broad understanding of disability. Our purpose in this paper is to explore ways of teaching bioethical issues to first year medical students by integrating alternative approaches. Such approaches include (a) the use of the narrative format, (b) the inclusion of a disability perspective, and (c) (...) the presentation and facilitation of classes by people with disabilities. We consider how these new kinds of presentations are evaluated by students, faculty, people with disabilities and professional ethicists. We hope new knowledge may provide health care professionals with a greater understanding of the perspectives of patients with disabilities, who are confronted by conflicting ethical values and frameworks for decision-making in their interaction with such professionals. (shrink)

Cahill addresses the ethics of sexuality, marriage, parenthood and family from a feminist Christian standpoint. She wants to reaffirm the traditional unity of sex, love and parenthood, not as an absolute norm, but a guiding framework. The book also develops the significance of New Testament models of community and of moral formation, to argue that the human values associated with sex and family should be embodied in a context of concern for society's poor and marginalized. Roman Catholicism receives special but (...) not exclusive attention. (shrink)

A Future of the History of Science Is in the Institution. In this article, I warn against a tendency seen in the history of science towards very particular and isolating microhistories. The call for contextualization should be more than mere lip service and taken seriously. I suggest that a stronger focus on the history of institutions could be one particularly productive way to contextualize knowledge. There are at least five benefits that an analysis of institutions might bring for the history (...) of science: The history of scientific institutions offers the potential for (1) entangled histories that (2) include longer time periods and pay not only attention to (3) the dissemination of knowledge but also to (4) the field of law and the mechanisms of vocational bureaucracy. In this way, (5) questions of power and politics come into view. (shrink)

: he commercialization of biotechnology, especially research and development by transnational pharmaceutical companies, is already excessive and is increasingly dangerous to distributive justice, human rights, and access of marginal populations to basic human goods. Focusing on gene patenting, this article employs the work of Margaret Jane Radin and others to argue that gene patenting ought to be more highly regulated and that it ought to be regulated with international participation and in view of concerns about solidarity and the common good. (...) The mode of argument called for on this issue is more pragmatic than logical, emphasizing persuasion based on evidence about the reality and effects of control of genetic research by profit-driven biotech companies. (shrink)

ArgumentThis essay considers the work of projection and the hand of the projectionist as important components of the social space of the cinema as it comes into being in the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. I bring the concept of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the place of the body as an entity that applies itself to the world “like a hand to an instrument” into a discussion of the pre-cinematic projector as an instrument that we can interpret (...) as evidence of the experience of the work of the projectionist in the spirit of film theory and media archaeology, moving work on instrumentation in a different direction from the analysis of the work of the black box in laboratory studies. Projection is described as a psychological as well as a mechanical process. It is suggested that we interpret the projector not simply in its activity as it projects films, but in its movement from site to site and in the workings of the hand of its operator behind the scenes. This account suggests a different perspective on the cinematic turn of the nineteenth century, a concept typically approached through the study of the image, the look, the camera, and the screen. (shrink)

Based upon flyers and advertisements for the contraceptive pill from 1961 until 2005, this paper discusses the ways in which the drug and its female users were represented in the marketing of two West European countries, France and the German Federal Republic. As my analysis suggests, national differences are only discernible in the marketing until the end of the 1970s. In West Germany, the pill was depicted from early on as a contraceptive, whereas, due to the restrictive legal situation, in (...) France the pill was marketed as a multi-purpose drug. Nevertheless, the sources in both countries emphasized the safety of the drug. Likewise the representations of women changed from the notion of the married mother to a more diverse image, including young, modern and active women. From the early 1980s on, French and German materials conformed to one another. Now more classification systems were developed, emphasizing the differences between types of pills and types of women. Lifestyle, leisure and fun became increasingly central topics. Correspondingly, the female user was often portrayed in a sexualized way and represented as an active consumer with individual needs and wishes. (shrink)

Education-migration, or the multi-step recruitment and retention of international students as immigrants, is an increasingly important component of both higher education and so-called highly-skilled migration. This is particularly true in Canada, a country portrayed as a model for highly-skilled migration and supportive of international student mobility. However, education-migration remains under-analyzed from a social justice perspective. Using a mobility justice framework, this paper considers COVID-19’s impact on Canada’s education-migration system at four scales: individuals, education institutions, state immigration regimes, and planetary geoecologies. (...) It identifies ethical tensions inherent to Canada’s education-migration from a systems-level and suggests that a multi-scalar approach to social justice can both usefully complexify discussions and introduce unsettling paradoxes. It also stresses that the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to reimagine rather than return. (shrink)

This descriptive case study explores how on cohort of 17 White elementary preservice teachers examined counter-narratives of racism and Whiteness in selected documentary films using a historical inquiry approach. Findings indicate that by joining documentary film and historical inquiry in elementary social studies education, teacher educators can foster preservice teachers' engagement with perspective recognition while developing historical content knowledge. This study also documents White preservice teachers' acceptance of racism and resistance towards unpacking their White privilege and racism as status quo. (...) Implications for using this approach with preservice teachers and the dilemma of White avoidance in social studies education are discussed. (shrink)

In this essay, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s Institution Course Notes to clarify Patrick Wolfe’s claim that, for settler colonialism, “invasion is a structure, not an event.” I also engage critically with colonial assumptions in Merleau-Ponty’s own work, including his Eurocentric response to questions such as: “[I]s there a field of world history or universal history? Is there an intended accomplishment? A closure on itself? A true society?” In this essay, I ask different questions – with Merleau-Ponty, against him, and beyond (...) him. I neither defend Merleau-Ponty against his own worst self nor disown him as “bad” philosophical kin. Rather, I learn what I can from Merleau-Ponty for a critical phenomenology of settler colonialism and for amplifying movements to transform and abolish settler colonial structures at the level of thought, being, and politics. (shrink)

While Roman Catholic feminist ethicists typically endorse moral realism and crosscultural standards of justice, they also have been influenced by the postmodern interrogation of abstract reason and moral universalism. As theologians writing after the Second Vatican Council, they are increasingly sensitive to the communal and ecclesial dimensions of morality and of Christian ethics, and to the integral relation of Christian faith and ethics. This essay will consider two approaches to Catholic feminist ethics that differ in the relative weight they give (...) to constructive work for social justice, or to the grounding of ethics in prayer and mysticism. Using critical feminist reappropriations of the theology and ethics of Aquinas as examples, this essay will argue that the two approaches are overlapping and interdependent. (shrink)

Analysing ten interviews with women diagnosed with and treated for congenital absence of the vagina, this article theorises the notion of ideal (hetero)relational normality. It explores how women in my case study negotiate, relate to and challenge this notion and examines the normative and bodily work for which it calls. The article specifically underscores the corporeal dimension of (hetero)relational normality. I argue that this notion of normality shapes the bodies of the women through medical interventions, while concurrently being reinforced through (...) the corporeal shapings that the women undergo. These corporeal shapings consolidate enacted norms concerning heterosexuality and form understandings of female and male bodies. The analysis also reveals how these women nevertheless find ways to re-negotiate and question the notion of ideal (hetero)relational normality and its intertwinement with medical practice. The article contributes both to the critical examination of genital surgery and to feminist discussions of how to critically examine heterosexuality without rejecting it. Furthermore, it provides a deeper understanding of how medical interventions designed to create a vagina, or dilate a vagina considered ‘too small’, are made meaningful by the women affected. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001) 281-299 [Access article in PDF] Eighteenth-Century Anticipations of the Sociology of Conflict: The Case of Adam Ferguson Lisa Hill Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, is a most interesting figure in the history of sociological thought. Though sometimes perceived as a secondary figure, there have been some attempts to recover him as one of, if not (...) the first "sociologist." 1 Much has been written about Ferguson's contribution to modern social science; 2 this article focuses upon his highly prescient work in the area of conflict theory. It is important to note at the outset, however, that Ferguson's inspiration for these apparently novel insights is classical. His early social theory is curious because it "straddles traditions"; 3 on the one hand he owes a profound debt to classical civic humanism, [End Page 281] but on the other his work quite authentically signposts the emergence of social science proper. This bridging of traditions in Ferguson is a key theme of this paper.Ferguson relies heavily upon conflict in his explanation of historical processes and in the securing of social order. Conflict generates many positive unintended consequences; it leads to the formation of the state, formal defense institutions, and large scale communities; and it plays a pivotal role in the development of the moral personality and contributes to the maintenance of stability and social cohesion. Conflict preserves the balance of powers in government and prevents the encroachment of despotism. In this regard, then, conflict cannot be regarded as wholly unnecessary, destructive, or undesirable but as integral to progress and the march towards civilization. 4Gladys Bryson has noted that Ferguson's exposition of conflict was original with him and "set him off from the conventional position of his century." 5 Even so the benefits of conflict and dissension had been canvassed long before by Tacitus and Machiavelli, both of whom influenced Ferguson's analysis. 6 In it he challenges the false dichotomy promulgated by contractarians of tranquil society on the one hand and violent, isolated chaos on the other; rather, he argues, we are social beings with belligerent tendencies. He also confronts the Aristotelian (and later Hobbesian) premise that the key purpose of society is stability and social harmony. Instead, Ferguson lays great stress on the positive benefits of competition and conflict in our social development and in the maintenance of community. Conflict is just as natural as repose and may even be equally desirable. In this Ferguson indicates his debt to Socrates' suggestion that "some circumstances in the lot of mankind" prompt us to be social, while others prompt us "to war and dissension." 7 As a highlander, Ferguson was well acquainted with the realities of conflict. He also had a brief but lively career as chaplain to the Black Watch Regiment, 8 and it seems likely that his unique views on the positive aspects of "opposition" were reinforced by this experience.Because of this emphasis Ludwig Gumplowicz identified Ferguson as the first significant exponent of the "group struggle" theory of social development. 9 [End Page 282] Ferguson's discussion of conflict and its unintended effects is also partly responsible for his modern reputation as "father of sociology"; 10 and although it is doubtful that he deserves the title, Ferguson was probably the first thinker to place so great an emphasis upon the positive aspects of conflict. 11 The discussion also anticipates nineteenth- and twentieth-century conflict theory in positing conflict as an authentic medium, even form, of solidary association, there is an early dialectical historiography in which class conflict is shown to give rise to constitutional government. A particularly interesting aspect of the discussion is Ferguson's anticipation of Norbert Elias's work on the social function of competitive sport, particularly its role in the process of achieving "civilization."Because of Ferguson's providentialism and in particular his emphasis on the virtue of beneficence, 12 John Bernstein has suggested that "Ferguson's admiration for the qualities revealed in conflict constitute... (shrink)

The core concept of ‘the human’ that anchors so many humanities disciplines – history, literature, art history, philosophy, religion, anthropology, political theory, and others – issues from a very particular modern European definition of Man ‘over-represented’ as the human. The history of modernity and of modern disciplinary knowledge formations are, in this sense, a history of modern European forms monopolizing the definition of the human and placing other variations at a distance from the human. This article is an interdisciplinary research (...) that decenters Man-as-human as the subject/object of inquiry, and proposes a relational analytic that reframes established orthodoxies of area, geography, history and temporality. It also involves new readings of traditional archives, finding alternative repositories and practices of knowledge and collection to radically redistribute our ways of understanding the meaning of the human. (shrink)

This research study used descriptive phenomenological methods to investigate and document the lived experience of altruism as described by moral exemplars. Six moral exemplars wrote descriptions of situations in which they engaged in spontaneous altruism. Altruism was defined for the purpose of this study as a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another's welfare . These descriptions were then expanded and clarified through follow up interviews. The results of this descriptive phenomenological analysis produced two structures: the structure of (...) the lived experience of altruism as described by moral exemplars, and the structure of the lived experience of helping as described by moral exemplars. The differences between these two structures suggest that altruistically motivated pro-social behavior is more committed, extensive and effective than egoistically motivated helping, and results in a higher level of concern for the long-term well-being of the individuals helped. Although differentiated by primary motivations, altruistic or egoistic, both structures identify the motivating factors of empathy, personal historical life experiences, moral values, and personal identity as essential to the experience of assisting another individual in need. (shrink)

In 2014, the first child in the world was born after live uterus transplantation and IVF (UTx-IVF). Before and after this event, ethical aspects of UTx-IVF have been discussed in the medical and bioethical debate as well as, with varying intensity, in Swedish media and political fora. This article examines what comes to be identified as important ethical problems and solutions in the media debate of UTx-IVF in Sweden, showing specifically how problems, target groups, goals, benefits, risks and stakes are (...) delineated and positioned. It also demonstrates how specific assumptions, norms and values are expressed and used to underpin specific positions within this debate, and how certain subjects, desires and risks become shrouded or simply omitted from it. This approach—which we label the Ethics of the Societal Entrenchment-approach, inspired by Koch and Stemerding (1994)—allows us to discuss how the identification of something as the problem helps to shape what gets to be described as a solution, and how specific solutions provide frameworks within which problems can be stated and emphasised. We also offer a critical discussion of whether some of these articulations and formations should be seen as ethically troubling, and if so, why. (shrink)

Much modern scholarship on Delphic oracles has revolved around the question of authenticity, where authenticity implies it is a fact that there was a consultation of the Delphic oracle, that a response was given and that the account of these events reports the occasion of the consultation and the response verbatim. This article challenges the usefulness and validity of this definition on two grounds. First, there is ample evidence that most Delphic oracles circulated orally for at least a generation before (...) being recorded in writing. Therefore, Delphic oracles should be examined through what we know about orality from Homeric studies. Second, all six hundred or so oracles attributed to Delphi are fulfilled. This observation suggests that Delphic tales are religious testimonia and should be read for what they tell us about the beliefs, though not necessarily the facts and details, of the communities who circulated them. This article, then, both provides an alternate definition of authenticity that takes into account the oral transmission of these tales by communities of believers and comments on the nature of the historical evidence these tales provide. (shrink)

Individuals often describe objects in their world in terms of perceptual dimensions that span a variety of modalities; the visual (e.g., brightness: dark–bright), the auditory (e.g., loudness: quiet–loud), the gustatory (e.g., taste: sour–sweet), the tactile (e.g., hardness: soft vs. hard) and the kinaesthetic (e.g., speed: slow–fast). We ask whether individuals use perceptual dimensions to differentiate emotions from one another. Participants in two studies (one where respondents reported on abstract emotion concepts and a second where they reported on specific emotion episodes) (...) rated the extent to which features anchoring 29 perceptual dimensions (e.g., temperature, texture and taste) are associated with 8 emotions (anger, fear, sadness, guilt, contentment, gratitude, pride and excitement). Results revealed that in both studies perceptual dimensions differentiate positive from negative emotions and high arousal from low arousal emotions. They also differentiate among emotions that are similar in arousal and valence (e.g., high arousal negative emotions such as anger and fear). Specific features that anchor particular perceptual dimensions (e.g., hot vs. cold) are also differentially associated with emotions. (shrink)

In ‘L'Animal que donc je suis’, Derrida analyzes the paradoxical use of discourses on shame and original sin to justify the human domination of other animals. In the absence of any absolute criterion for distinguishing between humans and other animals, human faultiness becomes a sign of our exclusive capacity for self-consciousness, freedom and awareness of mortality. While Derrida's argument is compelling, he neglects to explore the connection between the human domination of animals and the male domination of women. Throughout ‘L'Animal’, (...) Derrida equivocates between ‘man’ and ‘humanity,’ and between the biblical figures of Ish and Adam. In so doing, he repeats a gesture that he himself has insightfully criticized in other philosophers, such as Levinas. By articulating the distinctions that Derrida elides, I suggest a way of reading Genesis which avoids this difficulty, but also continues Derrida's project. (shrink)

While the Internet has emerged as a significant resource for women negotiating the questions and circumstances that arise during conception, pregnancy and childbirth, it remains unclear what role the Internet plays in challenging the current biomedical paradigm and empowering women to make meaningful choices. This article explores how women use the Internet to manage their pregnancies and mediate their doctor–patient relationships, particularly examining the role of social class and personal health history in shaping such Internet use. Drawing from in-depth interviews (...) with white middle-class mothers, the findings show that rather than using technology to resist the dominant biomedical paradigm, most women turned to online resources that affirmed mainstream medical authority and continued to rely on their doctors. By providing the means to confirm normalcy and take control in their reproductive experiences, the Internet enables socially privileged women to more fully perform the informed patient role in order to demonstrate their competence as mothers. (shrink)

While Merleau-Ponty does not theorize sexual difference at any great length, his concepts of the flesh and the institution of a sense suggest hitherto undeveloped possibilities for articulating sexual difference beyond the male–female binary. For Merleau-Ponty, flesh is a “pregnancy of possibilities” which gives rise to masculine and feminine forms through a process of mutual divergence and encroachment. Both sexes bear “the possible of the other,” and neither represents the first or generic form of the human; each sex bears the (...) possibility of the other. By approaching sexual difference in terms of intersubjectively distributed possibilities rather than interlocking forms or types, we may grasp sexual difference in terms of both a developmental process in which bodies become sexed (and sometimes re-sexed) over time, and in terms of a social-historical process in which patterns of relation and exchange between sexed bodies shift over time, altering the very sense of sexual difference. (shrink)

This paper looks at two figures in the modern, European, eighteenth-century debate on luxury. It claims to better understand the differences between Francis Hutcheson and Bernard Mandeville by exploring how Hutcheson treated the topic of luxury as a distinction between two desires, thus differing from Mandeville's concept of luxury, and a concept of temperance based on moral sense. It explores why Hutcheson believed that luxury was a moral, social and political issue and particularly why he considered Mandeville the embodiment of (...) a threat that went beyond simple considerations of the content of The Fable of the Bees to touch on reflections on the equilibrium of a social and political system. It aims to show how the psychological and the moral dimension were connected to Hutcheson's political theory and how luxury was one of the key points of this connection. (shrink)

The substantive center of Christian ethics is Jesus’s ministry of the kingdom or reign of God, and its preferential inclusion of the poor, the outcast, and the sinner. What defines a gospel-based bioethics is a hopeful, practical commitment to improve the health of those who are most vulnerable to illness and early death because they lack basic needs. This commitment is distinctive of Christian bioethics, if not “unique” in the sense that no other bioethical approaches or traditions share it. To (...) succeed in reducing disparities in access to health care requires cooperative social action with members of multiple moral and political communities, meaning that there is no strict boundary between secular and Christian bioethics at the practical, political level, the level of applied Christian social ethics. (shrink)

It was an afternoon in the early stages of the pandemic when Lisa Richardson and I ran into each other at the hospital coffee line. Standing six feet apart and decked out in masks, scrub caps, and face shields, we were almost unrecognizable to one another and to ourselves. The pandemic was of course top of mind, but our conversation quickly turned to what was being articulated about the pandemic and why it was being heralded as a "disaster for (...) feminism". As Audre Lorde reminds us, "There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single issue lives," and we were beginning to see how many issues intersected in the pandemic moment. The United Nations was calling... (shrink)

This chapter describes how the core principles of generative linguistics, which were outlined by Chomsky in the 1950s and 1960s, yielded a research methodology whose core features guarantee quick and fruitful syntactic research. Although generative linguistics is predominantly a syntax‐focused program, the methodology is intended for use in all linguistic subfields. The discovery that the establishment of a nonlocal dependency rests on hierarchical relations between words and phrases rather than on linear relations represents a watershed moment for generative syntax. The (...) ubiquity of gaps in natural language has prompted extensive research into the precise status of gaps and whether all gaps have the same status. The chapter also discusses the enduring discoveries made about the hierarchical syntactic structures on which nonlocal dependencies are instantiated. It focuses on so‐called gaps or empty categories, which frequently feature as members in nonlocal dependencies. (shrink)

O que é “a outra perspectiva nas obras da natureza”, de que fala Hutcheson? De que forma a beleza provê acesso a ela? O presente artigo discute o lugar dessa “outra perspectiva” na teoria estética de Francis Hutcheson. Trata-se de compreender por que o desígnio (design) surge do belo através de uma reflexão sobre a beleza em sua Investigação sobre a origem de nossas ideias da beleza e da virtude, de 1725. Buscaremos determinar se essa teoria estética estaria subordinada aos (...) argumentos do desígnio ou se, em Hutcheson, esse campo de pesquisa filosófica já goza de alguma autonomia. (shrink)

The just peacemaking project is a commendable effort to derive proactive initiatives from the teachings of Jesus and a strong sense of Christian discipleship, and to make these effective in volatile political situations. The project could be strengthened by a more explicit doctrine of sin, and an ethical justification of coercion. Recent debates among political scientists about effective social action in the era of globalization can also offer insights to enhance the political plausibility of the just peacemaking theory.

The Bible guides Christian ethics by showing how Jesus and early Christianity transformed the moral conventions of first-century Greco-Roman society by making them more inclusive and compassionate. This is the one side of the coin. The other side, however, is that the Bible also attests to the problem of the existence of evil and suffering in human life. In Paul's theology of cross and resurrection, Christian ethicists confront the ineradicable nature of this problem and the need to identify with those (...) who must suffer. (shrink)

NHS Blood and Transplant is responsible for the procurement and allocation of human organs in the United Kingdom. Its main role is to “ensure that organs donated for transplant are matched and allocated to patients in a fair and unbiased way.” NHSBT’s liver allocation policies are underpinned by the National Liver Transplant Standards, a document published by the Department of Health in 2005 to oversee patient care, patient assessment, liver allocation and transplantation, education and training, and research and development. NHSBT (...) has developed its own liver allocation protocols under the powers assigned to it by the Department of Health, which include a “super-urgent” liver allocation policy, a Liver Allocation Sequence, and pediatric candidate liver allocation protocols. (shrink)

Authorship of a scientific paper is important in recognition of one’s work, and in the academic setting, helps in professional promotion. Conflicting views of authorship have led to disputes and debates in many scientific communities. Addressing ethical issues in medical research and publishing, and conforming to the requirements of international organizations and local research ethics boards, has become an essential part of the research endeavor. Ethical issues of biomedical authorship have been a matter of debate for years. Authorship problems may (...) involve problems with integrity, including ghost authorship and guest authorship. Some scientific disciplines, such as engineering or social sciences, may not have a firm guideline for authorship criteria; however this article reviews the criteria of authorship recommended by related international organizations of biomedical field and discusses common scenarios that may lead to authorship disputes and misconducts as well as issues related to authorship in multicenter studies. The paper also discusses possible scenarios that might be legitimate to make changes in authorship lists. (shrink)