the issue of liberal neutrality, a topic suggested by the work of Catharine MacKinnon. I discuss two kinds of neutrality: neutrality at the level of justifying liberalism itself, and state neutrality in political decision-making. Both kinds are contentious within liberal theory. Rawls’s argument for justice as fairness has been criticized for non-neutrality at the justificatory level, a problem noted by Rawls himself in Political Liberalism . I will defend a qualified account of neutrality at the justificatory level, taking an epistemic (...) approach to argue for the exclusion of certain doctrines from the justificatory process. I then argue that the justification process I describe offers a justificatory stance supportive of the feminist rejection of state-sponsored gender hierarchy. Further, I argue that liberal neutrality at the level of political decision-making will have surprising implications for gender equality. Once the extent of the state’s involvement in the apparently private spheres of family and civil society is recognized, and the disproportionate influence of a sexist conception of the good on those structures—and concomitant promotion of that ideal—is seen, state neutrality implies substantive change. While—as Susan Moller Okin avowed—Rawls himself may have remained ambiguous on how to address gender inequality, his theory implies that the state must seek to create substantive, not merely formal, equality. I suggest that those substantive changes will not conflict with liberal neutrality but instead be required by it. (shrink)

The rapid progress and expanding development of machine learning-driven clinical decision support systems (ML_CDSS) have led to calls for involving “humans in the loop” in the design, development,...

Confessional modes of self-representation have become crucial in feminist epistemologies that broaden and contextualize the location and production of knowledge. In some versions of confessional feminism, the insertion of “I” is reflective, the product of an uncomplicated notion of experience that shuttles into academic discourse apersonal truth. In contrast to reflective intrusions of the first person, reflexive confessing is primarily a questioning mode that imposes self-vigilance on the process of self positioning.

In challenging current conceptions of the role of working memory in sentence processing, Caplan & Waters consider studies comparing young and older adults on sentence processing. This commentary raises two challenges to Caplan & Waters's conclusions: first, working memory tasks appear to be age invariant. Second, the production of complex syntactic constructions appears not to be age invariant.

Whether argumentation competencies are associated with the kind of influence opportunities children have in their lives is the focus of this study. The hypothesis is that when children have the opportunity to initiate and evaluate arguments, hear others make and examine arguments, and participate equally in resolving disputes, children are able to develop their argument skills. Four argumentation competencies associated with critical discussions of proposals are identified: creating consensus about problematic situations, advocating proposals, facilitating behavioral commitment, and integrating identities. Second, (...) fourth, and sixth grade children completed tasks that assessed their influence opportunities and argument competencies. Children who perceived themselves to have many collaborative influence opportunities, that is, opportunities in which they could engage in mutual influence, had more highly developed argument competencies than children who did not have such opportunities. As predicted, this relationship occurred with the argument competencies of problem conception, proposal advocacy and facilitating commitment. Measures of non-collaborative influence opportunities were not associated with argument competencies. Together, the results suggest that discussions in which children are given the opportunity to influence and be influenced with arguments may provide the best context for children to develop their argument skills. (shrink)

Franz Brentano's remarks on theodicy presuppose both his ethical and his metaphysical views. But he does not tell us precisely how his ethics and his metaphysics are supposed to relate to one another. Indeed, the two appear to be irreconcilable. So I try to show how Brentano's solution to the problem of evil can disclose to us the relation between his ethics and his metaphysics. First I discuss those of his ethical principles which I take to be relevant to theodicy, (...) namely, that mental activity is indefeasibly good in itself, and that in practical decisions only one choice is good. Then I explain the relevant metaphysical doctrines, concerning the substance-accident relation and the principle of sufficient reason. I then raise the general problem of evil, as well as the specific problem for Brentano. And finally I explicate and defend his theodicy, both in terms of what he clearly states and in terms of what we can infer from his writings on what is good and evil, on what exists, and on the nature of God. (shrink)

Emotion and feeling have only in the last decade become analytic concepts in the humanities, reflected in what some have called an “affective turn” in the academy at large. The study of emotion has also found a place in science studies and the history and philosophy of science, accompanied by the recognition that even the history of objectivity depends in a dialectical fashion on a history of subjectivity. This topical issue is a contribution to this larger trend across the humanities (...) and the history of science, and yet is circumscribed by attention to a particular kind of emotion or condition for feeling: one centered not in an individual body, but in the interstices between bodies and things, between selves and others – what we call empathy. (shrink)

Fifty years ago, Henry Knowles Beecher published his essay on clinical research ethics in the New England Journal of Medicine. The culmination of more than a decade and a half’s rumination and reflection on the use of patients and “captive populations” in research, Beecher’s 1966 article understandably casts a large shadow in American bioethics. In 1976, the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences established the Henry Knowles Beecher Award for Contributions to Ethics and the Life Sciences and named (...) the Harvard professor as the first recipient of the Award. “It is unusual for a researcher,” Daniel Callahan explained, on behalf of the Board of Directors of the... (shrink)

Adrienne Asch pioneered a way of doing bioethics that few are brave enough to attempt. In addition to summoning logic, arguing values, and applying reasoning to cases, Adrienne lived bioethics. Without compromising the strength of her analysis, she grounded that analysis explicitly in her own lived experience of disability. Hers was the view from somewhere—a deep invitation to others to rethink everything from embryo selection to end‐of‐life decisions through the lens of lived disability.

The only study of de Lubac that interprets his theology through the categories of medieval exegesis, this volume shows that the principles of spiritual exegesis provided de Lubac with the intellectual tools for thinking about a theology of history, a theology of symbol and sacrament, and a theology of the church's relationship to Christ and the Eucharist.

Susan Sontag’s talk at the UNESCO meeting on which the French edition of Diogëne 201 was based has been replaced in this English edition of Diogenes 201 by extracts from her published work: her article ‘Looking At War’ in The New Yorker (December 2002).

The central thrust of this article is to prompt new consideration of how faith and reason are understood to be at work in the discipline of theological ethics. To bring into question contemporary assumptions, a close reading of Aristotle is undertaken to illuminate his understanding of phronesis as a uniquely self-involving way of thinking that is transformative of the thinker. Phronesis, which may be translated as mindfulness, is shown to distinguish what is essential to ethical thinking. This philosophical preparation may (...) clear a way for theology likewise to be understood anew. Kierkegaard’s reflection on Abraham’s experience of faith in Fear and Trembling discloses how theology is the working out by means of phronesis of the salvation disclosed to faith in the believer’s soul. In these two phenomena—mindfulness and faith—lies what is essential to the practice of Christian ethics. (shrink)