Opposites in the drama.--Opposites in myself.

This collection brings together fourteen contributions by authors from around the globe. Each of the contributions engages with questions about how local and global bioethical issues are made to be comparable, in the hope of redressing basic needs and demands for justice. These works demonstrate the significant conceptual contributions that can be made through feminists' attention to debates in a range of interrelated fields, especially as they formulate appropriate responses to developments in medical technology, global economics, population shifts, and poverty.

Can animals be regarded as part of the moral community? To what extent, if at all, do they have moral rights? Are we wrong to eat them, hunt them, or use them for scientific research? Can animal liberation be squared with the environmental movement? Taylor traces the background of these debates from Aristotle to Darwin and sets out the views of numerous contemporary philosophers—including Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Mary Anne Warren, J. Baird Callicott, and Martha Nussbaum—with ethical theories (...) ranging from utilitarianism to eco-feminism. The new edition also includes provocative quotations from some of the major writers in the field. As the final chapter insists, animal ethics is more than just an “academic” question: it is intimately connected both to our understanding of what it means to be human and to pressing current issues such as food shortages, environmental degradation, and climate change. (shrink)

When cognitive neuropsychologists make inferences about the functional architecture of the normal mind from selective cognitive impairments they generally assume that the effects of brain damage are local, that is, that the nondamaged components of the architecture continue to function as they did before the damage. This assumption follows from the view that the components of the functional architecture are modular, in the sense of being informationally encapsulated. In this target article it is argued that this “locality” assumption is probably (...) not correct in general. Inferences about the functional architecture can nevertheless be made from neuropsychological data with an alternative set of assumptions, according to which human information processing is graded, distributed, and interactive. These claims are supported by three examples of neuropsychological dissociations and a comparison of the inferences obtained from these impairments with and without the locality assumption. The three dissociations are: selective impairments in knowledge of living things, disengagment of visual attention, and overt face recognition. In all three cases, the neuropsychological phenomena lead to more plausible inferences about the normal functional architecture when the locality assumption is abandoned. Also discussed are the relations between the locality assumption in neuropsychology and broader issues, including Fodor's modularity hypothesis and the choice between top-down and bottom-up research approaches. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the application of the capabilities approach to the question of animal rights. It explains that this approach provides better theoretical guidance on the issue of animal entitlements over contractarian and utilitarian approaches because it is capable of recognising a wide range of types of animal dignity and of corresponding needs for flourishing. The chapter criticises the view of philosopher Immanuel Kant and his followers that mistreatment of animals does not raise questions of justice and suggests that the (...) claims of animals should be rooted in an understanding of what sorts of capabilities animals have. (shrink)

We present a model for several early stages of the sensorimotor transformations involved in targeted arm movement. In psychophysical experiments, human subjects pointed to the remembered locations of randomly placed targets in three-dimensional space. They made consistent errors in distance, and from these errors stages in the sensorimotor transformation were deduced. When subjects attempted to move the right index finger to a virtual target they consistently undershot the distance of the more distal targets. Other experiments indicated that the error was (...) in the sensorimotor transformation rather than in the perception of distance. The error was most consistent when evaluated using a spherical coordinate system based at the right shoulder, indicating that the neural representation of target parameters is transformed from a retinocentric representation to a shoulder-centered representation. According to the model, the error in distance results from the neural implementation of a linear approximation in the algorithm to transform shoulder-centered target parameters into a set of arm orientations appropriate for placing the finger on the target. The transformation to final arm orientations places visually derived information into a frame of reference where it can readily be combined with kinesthetically derived information about initial arm orientations. The combination of these representations of initial and final arm orientations could give rise to the representation of movement direction recorded in the motor cortex by Georgopoulos and his colleagues. Later stages, such as the transformation from kinematic to dynamic parameters, or to levels of muscle activation, are beyond the scope of the present model. (shrink)

Seminal essays on environmental philosophy from Indian, Chinese, and Japanese traditions of thought. Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought provides a welcome sequel to the foundational volume in Asian environmental ethics Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought. That volume, edited by J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames and published in 1989, inaugurated comparative environmental ethics, adding Asian thought on the natural world to the developing field of environmental philosophy. This new book, edited by Callicott and James McRae, (...) includes some of the best articles in environmental philosophy from the perspective of Asian thought written more recently, some of which appear in print for the first time. Leading scholars draw from the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese traditions of thought to provide a normative ethical framework that can address the environmental challenges being faced in the twenty-first century. Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist approaches are considered along with those of Zen, Japanese Confucianism, and the contemporary philosophy of the Kyoto School. An investigation of environmental philosophy in these Asian traditions not only challenges Western assumptions, but also provides an understanding of Asian philosophy, religion, and culture that informs contemporary environmental law and policy. J. Baird Callicott is University Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Texas and author and editor of many books, including Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy, also published by SUNY Press. James McRae is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Westminster College in Missouri. He is the coeditor (with Robert Arp and Adam Barkman) of The Philosophy of Ang Lee. (shrink)

La literatura y la imaginación literaria pueden tener un efecto subversivo frente a la idea de racionalidad expresada habitualmente por la ciencia económica utilitarista. Por ello, la literatura debe formar parte de una educación en favor de una idea de racionalidad pública más amplia que la idea de individuo como maxímizador de utilidades. A través del análisis de la novela de Dickens Tiempos difíciles, se llega a la conclusión de que sólo la imaginación proporcionada por las novelas -y no por (...) los libros de. economía política- puede ser la base para gobernar adecuadamente un país de personas libres e iguales o para desarrollar nuestra vida cotidiana como ciudadanos. (shrink)

Martha Milagros Acosta Valle, Mounia Ait Kaboura et Rachel de Villeneuve.

Objective: To determine the views of people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and professionals in relation to confidentiality, consent and access to data within a proposed MS register in the UK. Design: Qualitative study using focus groups (10) and interviews (13). Setting: England and Northern Ireland. Participants: 68 people with MS, neurologists, MS nurses, health services management professionals, researchers, representatives from pharmaceutical companies and social care professionals. Results: People with MS expressed open and altruistic views towards the use of their personal (...) information to facilitate service provision and research, placing trust in responsible guardianship and legitimate use of their information. Participant’s proposed that people with MS should be able to select their individual level of involvement in a register using levels of consent. It was agreed that access to the register should be governed by a guardianship committee composed of a range of stakeholders. People with MS did not wish their details to be used by marketing agencies and did not consider this a legitimate use of their data. Whilst participants were positive of the role a register could play in promoting research, participants felt that access to data by pharmaceutical industries should be administered by the guardianship committee. People with MS are concerned should their employers be able to access their personal information. Professionals were more cautious than people with MS in their approach to the use of patient personal data within a register. Conclusions: Whilst all stakeholders were positive of the benefits of an MS register, development of such a resource must incorporate robust data security and guardianship measures in order to ensure that, whilst opportunities are maximised, risks to the privacy of individuals and legal challenges to professionals are avoided. (shrink)