Our attitudes toward aging change in that “old” depends on where you are. When I was 16, and my sister Nancy was 29, I suddenly realized, to my horror, that one of us was about to be 30. I went around saying to everyone, “Poor Nancy, she's almost 40,” because to me at that time, 30 and 40 were about the same. Later, when Nancy was 40, she said she didn't mind because, according to me, she had (...) been 40 for a decade. (shrink)

The facts are dismal. One out of five inhabitants of the earth lives in absolute poverty, while one out of seven is afflicted by hunger. Extreme poverty exists alongside extreme abundance. Empirical evidence points not to scarcity but to poor politics as the primary cause. The urgency of the situation as well as the intertwined nature of human misery and politics would lead one to expect global justice to be a major component of any respectable study of world affairs. Quite (...) to the contrary, theories of world politics are generally silent on these issues. The poor and the oppressed remain invisible, even in accounts of our brand new 'global village'. ;This dissertation aims to rectify the normative deficit of international theory by analyzing closely John Rawls's latest book: The Law of Peoples . Rawls takes on the challenge raised by global inequality and develops a theory of global justice that places moral judgment and action at the heart of world politics. The substance of this theory is filled out by using the famous original position, with its veil of ignorance, this time to generate global principles that regulate relations among peoples. The result is reassuring: human misery requires a response wherever it is experienced. In nonideal theory, the Law of Peoples necessitates global engagement for the eradication of the great evils that have historically followed from political injustice. ;In stark contrast to this global activism, Rawls defends nonintervention and rejects redistribution in ideal theory. This has provoked a heated debate in political philosophy, leading to cosmopolitan criticism of the Rawlsian enterprise. In light of such cosmopolitan objections, I assess the contributions and limitations of the Rawlsian project for global justice. I argue that the fundamental ideas of Rawls's broader thought necessitate the endorsement of Rawls's procedure, while at the same time requiring the revision of the substantive principles of the Law of Peoples. Thus reaching cosmopolitan conclusions without cosmopolitan premises, I claim that my reformulated Law of Peoples is more Rawlsian in spirit than the versions offered by either Rawls himself or his cosmopolitan critics. (shrink)

Our aims are to set forth a multiprinciple system for selecting among clinical trials competing for limited space in an immunotherapy production facility that supplies products under investigation by scientific investigators; defend this system by appealing to justice principles; and illustrate our proposal by showing how it might be implemented. Our overarching aim is to assist manufacturers of immunotherapeutic products and other potentially breakthrough experimental therapies with the ethical task of prioritizing requests from scientific investigators when production capacity is limited.

In this presidential address, the author argues that being disabled is being a “misfit,” and that being a philosopher is often considered to be something like a disability, rendering philosophy, and philosophers, misfits as well. But not all disabilities are negative, and there are even cases in which disability can be something for which the disabled person and others can be grateful. Comparing her own physical disability that renders her a “misfit” to philosophy as a misfit discipline, the author argues (...) that there is a connection between gratitude as a virtue, disability, and philosophy as an academic discipline and as a way of life. (shrink)

Scientific data supporting rational arguments for human-made causes of climate and environmental changes might be persuasive in some contexts. Law, policy, activism and The Earth Charter similarly appear insufficient to change attitudes and behaviours. Even biblical and theological arguments fail to move some Christians beyond apathy and climate denial. Decades of ecological theology and calls for ecological conversion suggest that appeals to reason and facts are limited without an affective epistemology that join knowledge and experience to produce worldview transformation through (...) emotions, such as awe.Contribution: Departing from appeal to scientific data and arguments alone, the primary claim is that ecological conversion is not singularly a rational act. For broader engagement and action to mitigate climate and environmental degradation, experiential and affective encounter with nature promise wider participation and transformation. (shrink)

Individualism: The Cultural Logic of Modernity is an edited collection of sixteen essays on the idea of the modern sovereign individual in the western cultural tradition. Reconsidering the eighteenth-century realist novel, twentieth-century modernism, and underappreciated topics on individualism and literature, this volume provocatively revises and enriches our understanding of individualism as the generative premise of modernity itself.

Paid care services such as child care, elder care, teaching, and nursing are vulnerable to competitive pressures that often generate low-pay/low-quality outcomes. Both workers and consumers suffer as a result. This article develops an economic analysis of the “care sector” that emphasizes the potential to build political coalitions that could push for a high-pay/high-quality alternative.

In accordance with Progressivism, Matthew Lipman, introduced an educational model for renewal and change by means of the child. With his Philosophy for Children programme he wished to offer an alternative for the intellectualistic oriented education which silenced children. The answer to the search for freedom and change, Lipman finds in the symbioses between ‘Philosophy’ and ‘Children’. Philosophy expressed in critical thinking and communication, was the basis to emancipate the child from the oppression of the adult and to cause change. (...) According to Lipman the main purpose of philosophy is to free every individual from determination. This plea is being elaborated by dialogue. The main issue of our paper concerns the question whether Lipman’s alternative ‘Philosophy for Children’ can fulfil the promise of change and freedom. To answer this question we will investigate thoroughly where dialogue and change in Philosophy for Children stand for. Finally we will propose another perspective of dialogue. A dialogue stressed on listening. Listening to how the world appears to us and how we appear to ourselves. (shrink)

This DOI is not currently attached to any metadata records. DOIs can’t actually ever be deleted (they’re persistent), but sometimes our members create DOIs in error. We do have a process to approximate deletion which we follow only in rare cases where the DOI has been genuinely created in error, and most crucially, if the DOI has never been published anywhere online or in print and never otherwise distributed to or communicated with anyone (authors, readers, reviewers, etc.

London/New York, Continuum, 2007. Pp. 196. Hbk. £70.00.

Against the background of historical antipartyism in practice and in democratic theory, and with a focus on American political thought, this paper takes issue with contemporary arguments that value the political identity ‘Independent’ and disparage partisanship. A typology of ‘Independent’ is offered and both empirical and moral claims about the superiority of Independent voters are rebutted, with particular focus on the ‘weightlessness’ of Independents. The reasons to appreciate the moral distinctiveness of partisanship for democracy are set out: commitment to political (...) pluralism, to regulated political rivalry, and to shifting responsibility for governing. Inclusiveness, comprehensiveness, and compromisingness set the contours for an ethic of partisanship. (shrink)

Empiricism has traditionally been concerned with two questions: What is the source of our concepts and ideas? and How should claims to empirical knowledge be judged? The empiricist answer to the first question is ‘From observation or experience.’ The concern in the second question is not to ground science in pure observation or in direct experience, but rather to ensure that claims to scientific knowledge are judged against the natural phenomena themselves. Questions about nature must be settled by nature — (...) not by faith, nor metaphysics, nor mathematics, and not by convention or convenience either. From Francis Bacon to Karl Popper empiricists have wanted to police the methods of scientific enquiry. (shrink)

The article begins with an overview of the innovation process and the entrepreneurial process, each treated as separate but interrelated phenomena. The innovation process tracks the evolution of a new idea through time, whereas the entrepreneurial process tracks the activities that entrepreneurs develop to promote and defend the idea against its detractors. The model of innovation and entrepreneurship introduced distinguishes between individual and collective entrepreneurship and identifies two types of collective entrepreneurship: team entrepreneurship and functional entrepreneurship. A Minnesota case study (...) demonstrates the power of both team and functional entrepreneurship. It also illustrates how important the linkages are between the entrepreneurs and their larger community. An innovative idea's development and survival depends on an "ecology of organizations" that provide "venture" capital for analysis and experimentation. The vast networks of contacts and associations represent a form of social capital just as important as the community's economic capital. In this case, both aspects of social creativity - the community resources and the network of social relations - were found to be instrumental in passing and implementing the first public school choice program in the country. (shrink)