This chapter contains sections titled: Conception Gestation Labor and Delivery Home Note.

Formalizing shared ethical standards is an activity of scientific societies designed to achieve a collective goal of promoting ethical conduct. A scientist who is faced with the choice of becoming a “whistleblower” by exposing misconduct does so in the context of these ethical standards. Examination of ethics policies of scientific societies which are members of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) shows a breadth of purpose and scope in these policies. Among the CSSP member societies, some ethics policies (...) chiefly present the ethical culture of the community in an educational context and do not have enforcement procedures. Other policies are more comprehensive and include standards for certification, procedures for addressing ethical issues, and established sanctions. Of the 36 member societies of CSSP that have developed a code or adopted a code of another professional society, 18 specifically identified a responsibility to expose ethical misconduct, demonstrating an acknowledgment of the possible critical role of the whistleblower in addressing ethical issues. Scientific societies may revise their ethics codes based upon experience gained in addressing cases of ethical misconduct. In most cases, the action of a whistleblower is the initial step in addressing an ethics violation; the whistleblower may either be in the position of an observer or a victim, such as in the case of someone who discovers that his or her own work has been plagiarized. The ethics committee of a scientific society is one of several possible outlets through which the whistleblower can voice a complaint or concern. Ethical violations can include falsification, fabrication, plagiarism and other authorship disputes, conflict of interest and other serious violations. Commonly, some of these violations may involve publication in the scientific literature. Thus addressing ethical issues may be intertwined with a scientific society’s role in the dissemination of new scientific results. For a journal published by a scientific society, the editor can refer at some point to the ethics committee of the society. Whereas, in the case of a journal published by a commercial publisher, the editor may be without direct support of the associated scientific community in handling the case. The association of a journal with a scientific society may thus direct a whistleblower towards addressing the issue within the scientific community rather than involving the press or talking to colleagues who may gossip. A formal procedure for handling ethics cases may also discourage false accusers. Another advantage of handling complaints through ethics committees is that decisions to contact home institutions or funding agencies can be made by the ethics committee and are not the responsibility of the whistleblower or the editor of the journal. The general assessment is that the establishment of ethics policies, especially policies covering publication in society journals, will promote a culture supportive of whistleblowers and discouraging to false accusers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons ed. by Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru and Andrei TerianLaura Elena Savu WalkerMatei, Alexandru, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian, editors. Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons. Bloomsbury, 2021. 376pp.Far from “mourning” the demise of theory, this timely and thoughtfully curated essay collection testifies to its “renewed vitality,” its compelling presence “across (...) fields, domains of life, and geocultural boundaries,” and its power to build an ever-expanding world community of practioners who are forming what has come to be known as a “theory commons” (ix). As the collection’s editors point out, theory’s new lease on life hinges on ensuring both the democratic workings of this “world discourse formation” (1) and on the responsible theorizing of the very notion of community in “a world threatened by all kinds of anti-communal actions and reactions, from runaway globalization to exacerbated tribalism and tunnel-vision politics” (x). Working on the margins, specifically, out of a Romanian “lab” called The Critical Theory Institute (CTI), which opened its doors in early 2000, the contributors seek to revise the “standard history of theory,” one whose “Western origins, authority, and cultural compass ” strike them as “exceedingly reductive” (3). This project of geotheoretical repositioning and recalibration aims to recast theory as a “quintessentially cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, trans- and intercontinental undertaking” (4). As such, it carries on the project, launched in a previous volume, Romanian Literature as World Literature (2018), of fashioning an alternative to the nation-state paradigm that has long shaped literary and intellectual histories. In both of these works, Romanian critics and theorists have tuned into a wide range of voices, and tapped into a shared conceptual and methodological apparatus—itself the product of “an ethno-linguistic medley of traditions” (8). This approach informs what editors see as the “epoch-making” (17) discursive paradigm that has taken shape in globally networked post-Cold War societies (17), a viral model of cultural influence that fosters an ontology of “contact, contagion, of infection, dissemination, and horizontal accumulation” (15).To give us a sense of theory’s complex genealogy and evolution, the editors reference the Bulgarian critic Galin Tihanov, who has attributed [End Page 122] important developments in contemporary theory to the achievements of theorists (Nikolai Trubetskoi, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp, and Georg Lukács) and schools of thought (Russian Formalism and the Prague Linguistic Circle). In “Traveling Theory” (1983) and “Traveling Theory Reconsidered” (2000), Edward Said called attention to the migratory nature of contributions made, for instance, by Georg Lukács, whose theories moved across different European locales in this period. Since then, contemporary theory has branched out to integrate the travels and travails of scholars affiliated with theory labs located in Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and last, but not least, Romania (10).Theory in the “Post” Era highlights five characteristics that distinguish theory in the “post” era from earlier forms: 1) It has a “reluctantly epoch-alist” thrust (19; original italics), which assumes that the “post” lexicon entails “rupture, discontinuity, and opposition” (19), radical departures, tentative claims, provisional conclusions, and ex-centric perspectives; 2) it adopts a “self-reflexive and experimental” (20; original italics) stance in which theorists invoke inherited approaches or invent new ones; 3) it introduces a “transdisciplinary” (21; original italics) scope that allows authors to interrogate the foundations, aims, and methods of theoretical discourse and practice across several knowledge domains, from which they “borrow whole vocabularies and toolkits” (21); 4) it is “nationally, transnationally, and ecologically affiliative” (20) in ways that allow theorists to “think with others at a distance” (21) about global issues; and 5) it is programmatic, placing critical and theoretical concerns in the service of “the ethical, the political, and the communal” (22). Organized around three main themes (“Aesthetics,” “Temporalities,” and “Critical Modes”), the essays juxtapose discussions of pivotal historical events and cultural phenomena with literary analyses of Romantic era “classics,” modernist experiments, and postmodern works of the post-Communist era, a corpus that includes, but is not limited to, landmark works of national culture that are now part of a fast-expanding planetary... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ENVIRONMENTAL THEOLOGYA REVIEW DISCUSSION* KEVIN W. IRWIN The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. l UST OVER a decade ago the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess coined the term deep ecology to encapsulate his challenge that while others have dealt with short-term views of ure and ways of dealing with the ecological crisis,1 he urged a deeper probing of "why, how and where" educational systems, religious bodies, and (...) societies themselves can deal with environ- * The books under discussion are: Leonardo Boff, Ecologia, Mundializacao, Espiritualidade (Sao Paolo: Editora Atica, 1993), English translation by John Cuming, Ecology and Liberation: A New Paradigm (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995); Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom ofGod: An Ecological Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995); Catharina J. M. Halkes, New Creation: Christian Feminism and the Renewal ofthe Earth, trans. C. Romanik (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991); Michael J. Himes and Kenneth R. Himes, Fullness of Faith: The Public Significance of Theology (New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1993), especially chapter 5, "Creation and an Environmental Ethic"; Tony Kelly, An Expanding Theology: Faith in a World of Connections (Newtowne: E. J. Dwyer, 1993); Richard N. Fragomeni and John T. Pawlikowski, eds., The Ecological Challenge: Ethical, Liturgical and Spiritual Responses (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1994); Albert J. LaChance and John E. Carroll, eds., Embracing Earth: Catholi.c Approaches to Ecology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994); Sean McDonagh, The Greening ofthe Church (London: G. Chapman; Maryknoll: Orbis, 1990); and Passion for the Earth: The Christian Vocation to Promote Justice, Peace and the Integrity ofCreation (London: G. Chapman; Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994). 1 From the outset it is important to clarify terminology and to indicate the meaning of some terms used in this review. In accord with common usage we understand that the term "ecology" (from the Greek oikos, "home") refers to our being at home on the earth, and "ecological crisis" refers to the destruction that has been worked to make the earth/home less inhabitable for a variety of species. "Creation" refers to the whole created world and all living beings as gifts from God the creator. "Environment" refers to the life context in which we live, our habitat as given to us by God and for which we are responsible. 301 302 KEVIN W. IRWIN mental deterioration and devastation.2 That Roman Catholicism has an important contribution to make to this issue3 is clear from recent magisterial statements as well as from the theological literature under review here. For example, in 1990 John Paul II articulated a number of avenues from within the Catholic tradition that relate to the ecological crisis and the Church's corporate responsibility to face it theologically, spiritually, and practically.4 In 1991 the U.S. bishops issued a more focused document, Renewing the Earth, which was drawn largely from the Church's social teaching tradition.5 The purpose of this article is to review some recent Roman Catholic theological literature in English (originally or recently translated) on environmental theology and ethics that can be understood as deep ecology from within mainstream Catholic thought. The contention of these authors is that the ecological crisis is a matter of theology, ethics, and values. Not surprisingly, given the comparative infancy of Catholicism's theological contribution to this issue, these works include collections of essays with a variety of approaches of varying quality, monographs that deal with the issue with greater methodological pre2 "Intuition, Intrinsic Value, and Deep Ecology," The Ecologist 14 (Sept./Oct., 1984): 56 ; also see Devall Bill and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1985). 3 It is important to note that other Christian faith traditions have offered pertinent and challenging statements on this issue, especially the Orthodox. See, for example, the statement by Patriarch Dimitrios, Orthodoxy and the Ecological Crisis (Geneva: Ecumenical Patriarchate, 1990). 4 See "Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation," Origins 19 (Dec. 14, 1989): 465-68. This is but one example of John Paul's voice on this issue, which is not univocal. Among other statements, his 1993 Lenten Message is particularly interesting in the way it addresses the devastation caused by "uncontrolled industrial development and the use of technologies which disrupt the balance of nature [that] have caused... (shrink)

One of the major objectives in a democratic state is ensuring health security of the citizens including combating epidemic diseases. The subject matter of this article is the presentation and analysis of legal regulations regarding preventive vaccination in Poland, in particular the aspect of imposing a legal obligation and restricting parents’ right to express consent for medical intervention. The reflections made herein are aimed at finding an answer to the question whether the adopted legal solutions are admissible in a democratic (...) state with regard to ensuring health security. The purpose of the analysis is also to assess whether the abovementioned legal regulations have been formulated in a clear way and do not raise interpretation doubts and, consequently, whether they are comprehensible to the parents obliged to comply with them. As it follows from analysis of the legal provisions, parents must not refuse to subject a child to obligatory preventive vaccination and their consent is not required by law, both as regards the medical qualifying examination to exclude contraindications to performing vaccination and the vaccination itself. It is a legal obligation, from which exemption is only possible on grounds of certain medical conditions that would render vaccination inadvisable. The legal provisions that concern obligatory preventive vaccination in Poland, including in particular those referring to its enforceability, have not been formulated in a way that is sufficiently comprehensible to parents who are under the obligation of complying with them, irrespective of the fact that the language of the provisions of law should be clear and raise no interpretative doubts. In a democratic state the protection of public health against epidemic hazards justifies the implementation of legal solutions that restrict an individual’s freedom of self-determination, thus limiting the right of patients or their statutory representatives to grant or refuse consent for a medical intervention in the form of preventive vaccination – the purpose of this legal solution being to prioritize the safeguarding of state health security. It is vitally important to engage in a social dialogue with the purpose of convincing the public of the need for vaccination, its significance and its implementation for the better good. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Beyond Heaven and Earth: A Cognitive Theory of Religion by Gabriel LevyKevin SchilbrackBeyond Heaven and Earth: A Cognitive Theory of Religion. Gabriel Levy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2022. 249 pp. $45.00 paperback; open access.The interdisciplinary field of religious studies includes both the humanities and social sciences in a tricky detente. Some religion scholars focus on interpreting texts, teachings, and rituals in an effort to grasp what religious (...) practitioners understand themselves to be doing. Other scholars want to move beyond the the practitioners’ views to create explanatory accounts of religion in terms of social power, psychological benefits, and modules in the evolved brain—causal accounts of which the practitioners might not be aware or that they might deny. Gabriel Levy argues that to develop consilience between the divergent efforts of the humanities and the sciences, the academic study of religion would be well served by developing a more adequate metaphysics that can do justice simultaneously to human behavior as moved both by subjective reasons and by material forces. Specifically, he recommends the “anomalous monism” of Donald Davidson. [End Page 98]According to this view, there is only one kind of reality, and this is a monist metaphysics that includes no nonmaterial or supernatural entities. However, this one kind of reality is “anomalous” in that the world we experience together permits two irreducible vocabularies, one that is physical and deterministic and another that is mental and includes free will. Davidson considered this two-sided approach Spinozistic (169), and Levy notes its similarities to Thomas Nagel’s “neutral monism” (8, 35, 50–51). In short, then, Levy is proposing to scholars of religion a non-reductive but science-friendly “pragmatist monism” (8) that would be congenial to many readers of this journal. Such a metaphysics would also be in line with the methodological naturalism that, for many, defines the legitimate scope of the academy. We might therefore consider this book an example of a philosophy of religious studies, or even a metaphysics for religious studies.An important feature of Davidson’s approach is that, on his account, semantic content is necessarily intersubjective and therefore non-nomological and irreducible to the physical. Imagine a parent offering their prelinguistic child a doll while asking, “Do you want your doll?” or pulling the child away from a neighbor’s dog while telling them, “You have to be careful around dogs.” Davidson argues that human beings learn the meaning of words and sentences in social exchanges like these as the listener makes an educated guess about the entities to which the other person is referring, a process that Davidson calls “triangulation.” The generation of meaning on this model depends on the human capacity for shared intentionality about things in the world. Davidson argues that having meaningful thoughts, even when alone, then requires that one has had intersubjective, “triangulated” experiences like these. As Levy says, “semantic content arises in immanent, contextual, enacted dialogue and conversation with other agents” (182). It follows that this Davidsonian approach insists on irreducible, non-eliminable mental categories such as meaning, belief, and reasons, now recast in terms of practical engagement with things rather than inner representations of them. Many in religious studies are critical of the field’s focus on subjective categories like these, but, as Levy points out, the meaning-generating and reason-giving subject on a Davidsonian model is necessarily a socially embedded self and not the free-floating, disembodied, or ahistorical self that is critiqued by post-structuralists like Michel Foucault (169–70).Levy introduces this model (ch. 1) and then explores several topics in its light. He proposes that beliefs about religious entities are a subset of imagining fictional entities, so that Mickey Mouse, Santa Claus, and Zeus are in the same cognitive category (ch. 2). He argues that there is a continuum between the human ability to interpret language and the ability of human beings and [End Page 99] other animals to interpret information in their natural environments (ch. 3). In the last three chapters, he connects his discussion to the Sefer Yitzirah, a medieval Jewish mystical “book of creation” that describes the cosmos as structured by language (ch. 4), to... (shrink)

Models of moral responsibility rely on foundational views about moral agency. Many scholars believe that only humans can be moral agents, and therefore business needs to create models that foster greater receptivity to others through ethical dialog. This view leads to a difficulty if no specific person is the sole causal agent for an act, or if something comes about through aggregated action in a corporate setting. An alternate approach suggests that corporations are moral agents sufficiently like humans (...) to be treated as persons, which leads to questions of intentionality and the organizational structure required to support the claim. In this article, I make an intermediate claim combining Goodpaster and Matthews' (60:132–141, 1982 ) view that a corporation may have a moral culture which affects subjective choices, with those of Painter-Morland (17(3):515–534, 2007 ) who points out that we should move from a model that posits discrete persons acting on each other to one where morality comes about through shared experience between agents who participate in each other’s lives. I argue that the discussion has been trapped in traditional dichotomies, and is better served by language that more accurately represents the dynamic interplay between organization and individual. I underwrite this claim by looking at recent changes in British and American legal approaches to corporate responsibility. These provide greater incentives for owners and business leaders to encourage employees to discuss the reflexive nature of legal and moral responsibility in business, facilitate workers to voice their moral concerns, and create structures and processes that allow those concerns to be heard. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FOR A NON-VIOLENT ACCORD: EDUCATING THE PERSON Marie-Louise Martinez Education has been criticized, no doubt justly, for the symbolic violence of its prohibitions and exclusionary rituals that mirror the violence of society (Bourdieu, etc.). But this criticism is short-sighted. When restraints are removed in teaching and education (in the family and in the school), violence wells up anew and produces at least the following two results: access to meaning (...) and knowledge is restricted; access to the law and its structure-inducing prohibitions is restricted. The result is that we foster vulnerable personalities who confuse fiction and reality, and who do not hesitate to turn their violence into acts of hostility directed toward themselves, other people, and society. A further consequence has been a certain violent non-differentiation that has tended in turn to produce a violent re-differentiation ofsociety. There is a nostalgia everywhere today for a return to discipline, to the rule oflaw, etc. One hears talk of the "sanctuary of the classroom" or again of the necessity of preserving a "symbolic cloister." We are not able, purely and simply, to feel remorse for having maintained the rule ofa violent symbolic order. One might ask in what the symbolic consists. How is it connected to teaching and education? Is there not a fundamental violence in the symbolic? Does there exist a less violent symbolic, or even a non-violent one? How might one define it and put it to work in teaching and education? Girardian theory can help us to reinterpret various contributions from a number of authors in the human sciences (Benveniste, Lacan, etc.) and from the personalist philosophy of language. I would like to propose the hypothesis that there are two stages ofthe symbolic: first, a violent symbolic accord and, second, a non-violent threshold within the symbolic, which alone can serve as an appropriate model for teaching and education. 56Marie-Louise Martinez I. The symbolic and its powers. We are not using symbolic in its specific sense as metaphorical or figurative language as it occurs in myth and poetry but in a more general sense, i.e., to refer to the totality ofthe sign and code systems employed by human beings, as that which allows for the production and deployment of significations within society. Stemming from the Greek symbolein (to throw or put together, to assemble), the symbolic is that type or order of signs that assembles. Much more than the pure language of linguistics, the symbolic is the totality ofverbal, non-verbal, and para-verbal conventions, of systems ofexchange, and ofrites. It also comprises the regulated use ofbodies and ofnature. Our definition ofthe symbolic is not idealist: more than simply the expression of ideas, it is also interaction and action, on oneself, on others, and the world. It includes technical and bodily activities to the degree that these have been codified. In this sense, the symbolic (in agreement with philosophers as diverse as Cassirer or Clifford Geertz) can be said to embrace the totality of what is called culture. But ifthe symbol throws orputs together, it is necessary to discuss what and why and how it does so. The modern science ofsigns (semiology) has shown that the sign or symbol serves to place in relation. Relying on the contemporary semiology that stems from the American philosopher Pierce, and also on the work of Francis Jacques in France, we can say that this relation, far from being a simple binary one (sign/referent or sign/signifier) is a complex relation which aligns signs with the objects to which they refer, but also with the people deploying those signs. This latter signifying relation, which is intersubjective and social, was invisible in Saussurean semiology. In itself, the symbolic is the product of a complex relation which links people among themselves and the things referred to by the agency of signs. In other words, the basis of the signifying relationship is not the dyad subject/object (relation to objects) but a triadic relation, subject/ subject/object (intersubjective and objectai). This triangular relationship, which traverses the intersubjective and the objectai, is a relationship of convention, underlined in antiquity by Plato in the Cratylus (for Hermogenes, a word... (shrink)

In this article, the subject of Jesus and the Gospel is discussed according to the Qurʾān. This study focuses on the position of Jesus and the nature of the Gospel from the perspective of the Qurʾān about the perception of Jesus and the Gospel in the Christian belief. The issue of Jesus and the Gospel has been the subject of different understandings and discussions between Muslims and Christians from the first periods of Islamic history until today. There are serious confusions (...) around them both within the Christian world and Islamic world. Even if there are common points between the information contained in the New Testament and in the Qurʾān on these issues, this information does not agree with each other. While Jesus and the Gospel described in the Qurʾān are not independent and not detached from the historical process of divine revelation; Jesus, which was placed in a superior position in Christianity, and the Gospels written by different writers on different dates after Jesus, do not integrate with this historical process. As for the Islamic world, it can be said that the perception of Jesus and the Gospel is not directly shaped by the Qurʾān, but rather by narratives and common beliefs. In this article where concept analyses are intense, the Qurʾān, the Bible, TDV (Türkiye Religious Foundation) Encyclopaedia of Islam, dictionaries, commentary resources and studies on Jesus and the Bible were mainly referred to. According to the Qurʾān, all the messengers called rasūl and nabī are human prophets chosen by Allah and none of them are angel or superhuman. Allah is the only God and there is no god but Him. According to the Qurʾān, it is not possible for God to adopt a wife or son. Allah is not the third of the three that finds its expression in the Christian belief in the form of the trinity: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Rūḥ al-Quds). According to the Qurʾān, every understanding that deifies Jesus and carries him to a position above human is a deviation from the right path. The deification of Jesus, who was born of Mary without a father, has been a belief formed over time. It is stated in the Qurʾān that Jesus is a messenger of Allah and a word He informed Mary, like the other prophets. What is meant by the word of God is that Allah heralds Mary with a child whose name is Christ, Jesus and the son of Mary. While it is said in the Qurʾān that Jesus is the word of God, it is not meant that the word is embodied and transformed into Jesus; however, it is meant that Jesus was created and brought to life with a word that came from Allah. The fact that Jesus is the word of God can also mean that he will speak to people in the name of Allah when he is in the cradle and then with the words that were revealed to him, and he will notify the way of the Lord in his message. As his birth is a miracle, his talking to people while in the cradle is also a miracle. Allah put His words in the mouth of Jesus like as He put them in the mouth of Prophet Muḥammad, and He also revealed the Gospel to Jesus. Thus, the words of God and the messenger who speak in the name of Allah became synonymous. Because when he speaks in the name of Allah, the words coming out of his mouth are not the words of Jesus himself, but the words of God. All prophets, including Jesus, are a single ummah sent on Islam. The essence of the books they brought from Allah is one. Although there are some differences in details arising from history, culture and social conditions, there is no difference between them in terms of the basic principles, norms and decrees brought from Allah in matters of faith, worship, morality and law, and especially the principle of unification. According to the Qurʾān, the Bible is the name of the divine book that Allah sent down to Jesus who was held responsible for His message, and that confirms the previous books. Contrary to the common belief among Muslims, the Qurʾān does not abolish the Gospel sent down to Jesus, but endorses it. In fact, all the books that God sent through the prophets confirm each other in terms of their essence, as well as the basic principles and provisions they contain. Allah taught Jesus the book, the wisdom, the Torah and the Bible, and sent him to confirm the Torah. He also sent down the Qurʾān to Prophet Muḥammad as confirming the Torah and the Bible. The purpose of these books sent down by Allah is to provide guidance and light to humanity. It is emphasized in the Qurʾān that all the prophets are actually one ummah, and that God who sent them is the true Lord of the people and that worship should be done only to Him. The verse in the Qurʾān "The only religion in the sight of Allah is Islam" should be understood in this context. In this respect, the common understanding among the scholars who study in the Islamic tradition that Qurʾān abrogated the divine books sent to humanity before, which is incompatible with the Qurʾān and turned into a common belief, should be reviewed and evaluated. (shrink)

Infants’ ability to monitor “sensorimotor contingencies,” i.e., the sensory effects of their own actions, is an important mechanism underlying learning. One method that has been used to investigate this is the “mobile paradigm,” in which a mobile above an infant’s crib is activated by motion of one of the infant’s limbs. Although successfully used in numerous experiments performed in infants’ homes to investigate memory and other types of learning, the paradigm seems less robust for demonstrating sensitivity to sensorimotor contingencies (...) when used in the laboratory. One purpose of the present work was to show that certain changes to the mobile paradigm would make it easier for infants to show their sensitivity to the contingency in the lab. In particular, we used proximal stimulation on infants’ wrists instead of the usual mobile, and our stimulation was coincident with the limbs that caused it. Our stimulation was either on or off, i.e., not modulated by the amount the infant moved. Finally, we used a “shaping” procedure to help the infant discover the contingency. In addition to these changes in the paradigm, by analyzing infants’ limb activity at 10-s resolution instead of the usual 1-min resolution, we were able to show that infants’ sensitivity to the contingency became apparent already within the first minute of establishment of the contingency. Finally, we showed how two alternate measures of sensitivity to contingency based on probability of repeated movements and on “stop and go” motion strategies may be of interest for future work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PrefaceScott Paeth and Kevin CarnahanThis issue of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics is organized around the theme of structural evil. Each of the essays deals with some dimension of the problem of how we can conceive of evil beyond the question of simple human volition, and understand it as embedded in the institutions and cultural assumptions that we often take for granted as societal (...) givens.Cristina Traina's presidential address, "This Is the Year," takes as its starting point the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential election, arguing that it exposes the way in which liberal narratives of progress have failed to address the deeply embedded structural evil within American society. She argues that this political moment provides an opportunity for liberals to engage in a critical self-examination with respect to their complicity in these structures by embracing a form of "utopian praxis."Ryan Darr's essay considers the intersection of structural evil and individual responsibility, arguing, on the one hand, for a distinction between sin and moral wrongdoing and, on the other, for an approach to both concepts that is social in form. Esther Reed's essay, meanwhile, offers an analysis of responsibility in light of the question of structural evil, using the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to aid in understanding the connection between individual responsibility and distant harm.David Cloutier continues the examination of the tension between individual agency and structural evil in his critique of the "neo-Franciscan" and "Junian" approaches to issues of violence and racism, arguing that a "critical realist" approach to structural evil provides greater resources for Christian ethics.Elizabeth Sweeny Block offers a different approach to the question in her consideration of the role of conscience in grappling with crises on a global scale, such as climate change and the Zika virus. She contrasts the "reflexive conscience" predominant in Christian ethics with a model of "engaged conscience," which may provide a better approach to large-scale structural evil and its consequences.Stewart Clem uses Thomas Aquinas's conception of virtue to understand the problems inherent in striving for moral clarity in a "post-truth" context. In [End Page vii] light of Harry Frankfurt's philosophical analysis of the concept of "bullshit," he argues that Christian ethics needs to develop a way of speaking about truth as a virtue in order to respond to the structural problem of truth indifference in contemporary political discourse.Looking at the problem from a different perspective, Christopher Jones and Conor Kelly examine the sin of sloth from a structural point of view. Critiquing individualist conceptions of the idea, they make the case for retrieving the classical definition of sloth as a vice against charity and consider how sloth can be overcome through a reinvigoration of forms of civic virtue.Another dimension of structural evil is considered by Ryan Newson in his examination of the role that Confederate monuments play in the American South. For many, they stand as a symbol of the glorification of evil that should be removed, but Newson suggests that there may be reasons to keep at least some of these monuments as reminders of the failure of justice and the judgment of God.Wonchul Shin and Elizabeth Bounds consider these questions from the perspective of how "ordinary" experiences of moral harm need to be analyzed as dimensions of structural evil, and they call for an examination of structural responsibility and the ethics of repair as a means of addressing these questions.Finally, Willa Swenson-Lengyel looks at the connection between structural evil and environmental ethics, arguing that the "moral paralysis" often experienced in light of the ecological crisis exposes certain forms of privilege that need to be addressed from the perspective of Christian ethics. In many ways, she argues, privileged inaction can be a manifestation of "works righteousness" that can be addressed through a Lutheran conception of the doctrine of justification.________This year the JSCE is retiring the demographic survey that has been used since 2008 and adopting a new demographic survey. With the transition comes an apt time for reflection on what the data from the last nine years show.The first piece of data to... (shrink)

continent. 2.3 (2012): 218–223 Vijay Prashad. Arab Spring, Libyan Winter . Oakland: AK Press. 2012. 271pp, pbk. $14.95 ISBN-13: 978-1849351126. Nearly a decade ago, I sat in a class entitled, quite simply, “Corporations,” taught by Vijay Prashad at Trinity College. Over the course of the semester, I was amazed at the extent of Prashad’s knowledge, and the complexity and erudition of his style. He has since authored a number of classic books that have gained recognition throughout the world. The Darker (...) Nations , a peoples’ history of the Third World, sent defibrillating shockwaves through an academic world that had almost forgotten the epic scope and historic dignity of the non-aligned movement and post-colonial struggles. In his recent, award-winning work, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter , Prashad delves into his capacious knowledge of the Third World to excavate the discourses and narratives surrounding the upheavals of 2011. “Revolutions have no specific timetable,” states Prashad in the opening line of this exciting and provocative look at contemporary events. Instantly, an atmosphere of suspense emerges. The reader is alerted to the problem of history. Does the making of history then involve a suspension of historical time, or is it a continuous narrative structure into which events must eventually be integrated? Arab Spring, Libyan Winter shows that the answer to the question, “How is history made?” lies just as easily in the asking. The first half of the book works through the events that transpired to bring about the explosive popular uprisings of Arab Spring: Tunisia and Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. But the events are not put together in a cohesive, chronological fashion. Using an uncommonly gripping style more akin to the folk-story motif of the djeli than to traditionally Orientalist academia, Prashad suspends a given situation, points out its components, and traces back the characters and genealogies that define each link before resuming a narrative. Every moment is an end to itself, and an origin of something different. Thus, the making of history becomes the suspension of its own progress, it’s catastrophic 'stability,' in a process of differentiation through inclusion. Empirically, one might suggest that history is a condition of time, and by extension, of the subject, but history is also an eminent producer of the Subject and her concept of time through memory and narrative. Hence, history is often overdetermined by a dominant narrative of the sovereign. The apparently chaotic composition of Prashad’s historicity is, then, an interstitial morphology of resistance. It illustrates that the time to act for the revolutionary lies in the gaps within the dominant historical realities. It points out the sorties of signifiers constituting nothing in the obliterated ruins of history. Through such illuminations, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter breaks through “the surface of history” to elaborate revolution’s snapping synapses, exploding interruptions and breaches, connecting flows. Messianic Politics It is tempting to think, 'History is either singular, or it is diffuse. It is either one coherent factual narrative, or it is comprised of the aletheia of the multitude.' Yet the reader finds Prashad examining the structure of history on multiple levels. For Prashad, world history is shaped by geographically defined political movements, such as communism or national liberation, with historical agents like the working class for the former and the nationalist militant for the latter. Religion, however, is another matter: “Religion has an unshakable eschatology which a post-utopian secular politics lacks.” Within the telos of religion, there appears on the horizon the image of Benjamin’s thoughts on messianic time—time as “a small fissure in the continuous catastrophe,” a break with history, may contain an ultimate redemption of the human beyond the political power struggle. Succoring the split between geo-political and utopian-religious (messianic) time in the context of Arab Spring, Prashad indicates that the base of “the deep desire and commitment to some form of democracy” is forged by the affinity between eschatological Islamist politics with the People. To think about the Subject of messianic time in the context of the lack of a “coherent timetable” for emancipatory politics, it is perhaps best to return to the modern tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose prefigurative blending of liberation theology and emancipatory politics became most important during his works of 1963, the climactic year of “The Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the March on Washington, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. In “The Letter,” King states the point bluntly: Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant ‘Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” The timing of rebellious action must not be a part of history. It must change history. The kairos appears spontaneous and untimely in its convulsive, shocking presence, yet it is, deeper still, a path, a longue durée , forged through diligent and rigorous praxis. King put a finer point on the path of historic liberation in his declaration in his 1963 speech at Western Michigan University: “[T]ime is neutral.... Somewhere along the way we must see that time will never solve the problem alone but that we must help time. Somewhere we must see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels on inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. Without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social stagnation. We must always help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.” Time, then, exists in “the neutral,” while action must turn to the kairos , not only of taking time, but taking the right time. By turning our relation to time into kairos , we move time from its context within history to a duration between histories—the longue dure?e of Messianic time. The implementation of neutrality in this context suggests a broad space of time to extend through the valley of positive and negative. In Roland Barthes’s lectures from 1978, the neutral takes place in this minimal distance of non-conflict that exists outside of two extremes. It is, in the words of Maurice Blanchot, “the non-general, the non-generic, as well as the non-specific.” For Blanchot, the neutrality of time permeates life as death, impassive and beyond control; such is the neutrality of messianic time, which permeates the charge of history, changing the "I" into the "one." The neutrality of time therefore implicates history in a case against extremism, showing that the work of the radical is not to tend to any particular side, but to have the time to navigate through the terrible terrain of history by altering its course, its patterns and rhythms of movement, connection, sociality. Hence, one does not simply “make history,” one alters the course of history in accordance to “the right time.” The historical path toward emerging power is transmitted as a gesture to the outside of history, against history; a gesture as simple as reaching out. Thus a counterhistory, to use Foucault’s term, is brought forward as the guide of time past a point of no return, a Rubicon, the point where the normal path of history falls to the past. The subject, who must be the only true agent of history, facilitates time through helpfulness, and both the Subject and her history become decentered in relation to one another. Yet history negates the neutrality of time. As Barthes discloses, although the neutral is the “thought and practice of the nonconflictual, it is nevertheless bound to assertion, to conflict, in order to make itself heard.” Engaged with history, time is charged with a destiny, and becomes an opposition. As Prashad insists, “For Arab lands, the events of early 2011 were not the inauguration of a new history, but the continuation of an unfinished struggle that is a hundred years old.” The emergence of the Subject during Arab Spring did not conceive of a new history, but changed the path of history toward a different destiny. “Historical grievances combined with inflationary pressures now met with the subjective sense that victory might be at hand—this was not simply a protest to scream into the wind, but a protest to actually remove autocrats from their positions of authority. The facts of resistance had given way to the expectation of revolutionary change.” The negativity of this charge toward “revolutionary destiny” rendered control, as a positive force, seriously lacking. The lack of control lies in the problem that the Subject is not totally detemporalized or timeless, but untimely in her presence. The Subject is untimely, because her work is visionary, and it is only through such visionary work that the Rubicon can be crossed. Still, the crossing of this border is haunted by anxiety over an impending disaster that lays in wait. It is only through the form of what Benjamin calls divine violence, captivated not with the justice of the means, but the ends—the transformation of history—that a revelation of history’s traumatic foundations can be liberated, and patterns and rhythms of time developed throughout obscured traditions awakened. In this situation, the Subject appears to be outside of right, but setting the state to rights. Because her position is correct, in-so-far as the rebelling subject rebels due to a lack of recognition, her representation appears outside of the norm, which is mistaken as right. Therefore, such visionary work must be carried out through obscured traditions, underground, away from the surveillance of empire. Explaining his method from the start along the lines of Marx’s metaphor of the mole, Prashad insists, “It is the burrowing that is essential, not simply the emergence onto the surface of history.” Arab Spring, Libyan Winter is a book on uncharted networks of time, spread out over the 252 pages like an elaborate spider’s web of passages intertwining with and overwhelming the machinery of the state. Although untimely, Arab Spring was not a flash in the pan, or a Facebook or Twitter revolution. Prashad notes that the government’s suspension of these tools led to further radicalism by furthering communications through face-to-face encounters. In existential terms, Arab Spring might be thought of as a revolution of Being over techne , an uprising of the unchartable, infinite potential of the Other. The name of this Other is found in Chance. The faith of the revolution lies in the proper decentering of the subject, its giving to the Other of time, for only with respect to time does history actually appear on the horizon of the subject, rather than as an imposition. This time of historical agency appears as a moment when anything can happen—a revolutionary truth event where everything comes into question while being realized in its Otherness as a community of the people begins anew in the streets amidst discourse, friendship, reconfigurations of hegemony, and a becoming of a constituent power. Throwing a wrench into the gears of the “cobwebbed tradition” of Orientalism, the decentering of history in Arab Spring, Libyan Winter is a defining quality of its impassioned revolutionary cry. But perhaps the most paradigmatic points of the book emerge from the unexpected voices. To make the connection between the particular manifestations of revolutionary demands to the general historic terms of revolution, Prashad quotes an anonymous young Egyptian in Tahrir Square, who reminds us, “[T]he French Revolution took a very long time so the people could eventually get their rights.” Far from timelessness, the historicization of Arab Spring must exist precisely within the most uncanny appearance of time, as something that does not appear to come from the natural state of time as we know it, but in arriving has completely transformed the way that we understand time. Strange Monsters Revolution is never as simple as a revolt from below against a rusting structure of elites trying to remain in power. As with the French Revolution, Arab Spring consisted of complex familial ties, outside interests, and religious factions fighting alongside, often in awkward juxtaposition to, liberals, working class parties, farmers, and students. It is perhaps because of this historically difficult and incongruous composition that the Arabic word for revolution is thawra , referring to the image of the bull, or thawr , which has religious significance as a pagan deity for the Ancient Semitic tribes and Cartheginians. If Daniel Guérin was correct in saying, “Anarchism and Marxism drink from the same spring,” then it is quite a different oasis that drove the thirsty beast of revolution through what Prashad calls, “the Libyan labyrinth.” Recalling Bataille’s Acéphale, the intestinal labyrinth gains significance as the mode of metabolism and rumination in which, “(the Acephale) has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words, as a monster.” Unraveling the discourse of the revolution, the flows of power and hegemony—from Qaddafi’s nationalist coup in 1969 to the wars with Chad from 1978 to 1987, the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s to, finally, the War on Terror—we find that the metabolic process of Libyan Winter ends in the production of oil. In a process of what Prashad calls “involution,” Qaddafi’s bellicose policies, along with his attempts to nationalize Islam together with oil, mutated the source of his power, turning his house against itself. Already a divided nation, with its two major cities on opposite geographic sides of the country, Libya became split between two opposed political powers—liberal reformists and staunch nationalists—as Qaddafi’s political disengagement manifested through what can only be described in psychoanalytic terms as a recursive passage a l’act (mysteriously calling Wikipedia “Kleenex,” declaring that opponents drank hallucinogens with their instant coffee, and so on). Prashad declares, “The mercurial style that Qaddafi adopted was not about his personality alone, but also a leader’s natural response to a system that relied upon power brokers whose own loyalty… did not have any ideological commitment to the system.” As in the case of other nations during Arab Spring, the true expression of revolt was an outward exposition of what had inwardly been happening in microcosmic societies throughout the realm—from indigenous tribes to political parties, for a century, the people, partly motivated by (and in resistance to) economic impositions of development, had been changing the traditional social compositions and participating in what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls, “the relative autonomy of the movement from the leaders.” It was this empowerment of political reconfigurations taking place under the context of new democratic assemblages that shocked the elites and evoked such a powerful response. Unlike Qaddafi’s awkward policy choices and rants, real acts of power from the West were clear and decisive. Prashad sets the stages of war and diplomacy, far removed from the deserts, mountains, and cities that forged the backdrop of popular politics. Taking place under the now-classic architecture of the “four pillars” of US interests—oil, the War on Terror, Israel, and the circumvention of Iranian hegemony—we find elites rubbing elbows in “Heliopolist cocktail parties and hushed conferences in Kasr al-Ittihadiya” as well as the Concorde-Lafayette hotel in Paris, which provides the setting for a meeting of anti-Qaddafi figures consolidating their power. These scenes are buttressed with the careful portraiture of key historical actors. As Prashad brings the stage of history to life, we find the diplomats and liberals like Frank Wisner, whose career has brought him from Enron in the late 1990s to the Obama Administration, under the aegis of which he was meeting with Mubarak about military support during Arab Spring. We spy the provocateurs, for instance, gauche cavalier , Bernard Henri-Levy, who telephones Sarkozy from Benghazi about the need for more NATO air strikes. We follow the rebel military establishment as it suffers mysterious deaths and even more mysterious assents (like that of apparent CIA cohort, Khalifa Hifter). In each of these intriguing characters, we find different representations of the security state biopolitique: an oil-injected reification that drives Arab Spring from the resentment of rising food prices to the brink of implosion in Libyan Winter. Reminiscent of the scenes of Cold War soirées represented in old Bond films, the aristocratic fight for oil against democracy that was Libyan Winter presents a harsh truth that the new global crisis is simply the continuation of the old history: the global exploitation of capitalism waged against the imagination of the people. As Benjamin laments, “The labyrinth is the right path for the person who always arrives early enough at his destination. This destination is the marketplace.” Yet, “(t)he labyrinth is the habitat of… a humanity (a class) which does not want to know where its destiny is taking it.” Thus, the labyrinth leads, like the desert, only further into itself. As Blanchot explains, “The desert is even less certain than the world; it is never anything but the approach to the desert.” Only the visionary can take time out of the involution toward oblivion. It is here, in this approach to and escape from history, that we find ourselves within Benjamin’s Golgotha, Blanchot’s desert: A space of indeterminate uncertainty where we become familiar only with our own exile. Blanchot writes, “For the moderated and moderate man, the room, the desert, and the world are strictly determined places. For the man of the desert and the labyrinth, devoted to the error of a journey necessarily a little longer than his life, the same space will be truly infinite, even if he knows that it is not, all the more so since he knows it.” The desert, as allegory, provides an eschatology, a mortality in the destiny of Arab Spring. But any allegory of nature might lead to a labyrinthine eschatology (for example, in Bachelard, the forest presents "a limitless world"); the prescience of the untimely is always an uncanny acceptance of the infinite within the finite—the outside of what is understood. Transgenerational and occupied with the image of the future, the untimely makes otherness its home as it proceeds toward liberation. In the work of helping time navigate this dangerous passage of history, Prashad illustrates that the more violent break with history may have occurred in the peaceable struggles of Tahrir Square, and not in the military clashes of Qaddafi with his former Generals who defected to the CIA and NATO countries. It might be possible to suggest, then, that in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, the historical subject of the people was drawn together in a Dionysian dance of different rhythms in the marvelous realm of the ancients, while we fear that the case of Libya suggests an Apollonian future where time, itself, may lay dying under the machinic hand of history. The properly Nietzschean inversion would follow: time is dead, for history has killed it. Yet, if time is dead, struck down in Golgotha, exposed in the desert, mauled by the thawra , it is only in the present sense that it is rendered impossible outside of the context into which the untimely has thrown us. Thus, if history becomes an art of revolution, life as being-towards-death (death as the provocation of the neutrality of time) becomes what Benjamin calls “the allegory of resurrection” through the glorious ruins of history. Prashad ends his work with a rousing finale: “The time of the impossible has presented itself. In Egypt, where the appetite for the possibilities of the future are greatest, the people continue to assert themselves into Tahrir Square and other places, pushing to reinvigorate a Revolution that must not die… For them the slogan is simple: Down with the Present. Long live the Future. May it be so.&rdquo. (shrink)

Photo ID 279661800 © Sidewaypics|Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT Decolonization is complex, vast, and the subject of an ongoing academic debate. While the many efforts to decolonize or dismantle the vestiges of colonialism that remain are laudable, they can also reinforce what they seek to end. For decolonization to be impactful, it must be done with epistemic and cultural humility, requiring decolonial scholars, project leaders, and well-meaning people to be more sensitive to those impacted by colonization and not regularly included in the (...) discourse. INTRODUCTION Decolonization is complex. To successfully achieve decolonization, projects should incorporate the voices of those subjugated or silenced. Including such voices requires sincerely exploring who has been affected by colonialism or neocolonialism and how, as well as cultural sensitivity. In its basic use, decolonization refers to countries under colonial rule gaining independence or freedom from forms of subjugation. Additionally, scholars use the term to refer to efforts to dismantle neocolonialism and vestiges of colonialism. The process includes de-silencing subjugated voices.[1] I use decolonization in the latter way to refer to countries with technical independence. While arguably colonization ended formally with independence from colonizing powers, neocolonialism is the indirect, informal, and sometimes subtle control of the people, their economy, and political life despite formal independence from colonizing authorities. I conceptualize neocolonialism as a system that involves direct and involuntary control of another’s political, economic, or social life, impacting their worldview and ways of encountering the world. Decolonization may target actions, places, or systems like health care or AI to overcome the ills of colonialism and neocolonialism. It also may target knowledge and require rethinking how people develop their knowledge base. For example, if people grew up seeing an outside colonizer as superior, they would need to change their knowledge of superiority. Decolonization may target power, for example, changing who owns and distributes COVID-19 vaccines and who distributors exclude in the distribution of vaccines. Decolonization could require looking at those disempowered in the distribution process. Additionally, decolonization may target autonomy of persons by freeing people, ensuring human and individual rights, and respecting cultural traditions. Decolonization projects that try to de-silence by including the voices of those affected by colonialism and neocolonialism must examine inclusiveness in the context of the culture of the subrogated individuals. Examples of decolonization projects include making datasets inclusive of diverse peoples and places, returning to traditional food and eating practices, making sure hospitals in developing countries are led by locals and respectful of cultural traditions, returning unethically obtained artefacts or objects. Another project would be laying the groundwork for equality in formerly colonized countries to ensure that business ownership, education, and financial success will flow fairly to those previously victimized by colonization. Summarily, there are many strategies for decolonizing. However, it is worth asking whether the strategies have risks that undermine the goal of decolonization. I. Understanding Decolonization Discourses Many fields, from AI to politics, economics, health care, aviation, and academia, discuss decolonization. The content of the discourse on decolonization depends on the region and field discussing it. Rather than just reporting on decolonization, the discussions may be calls to action. For example, decolonization discourses reflect activism for cognitive justice, such as equal consideration of Indian or African knowledge systems in global health discourses.[2] In politics and political science, some scholars frame decolonization as an anti-western, anti-colonial movement by Africans to emancipate Africa/ns from subjugation or shift the continent to postcolonialism and post-neo-colonialism. This framing walls off non-African participants and may undermine their capacity to benefit the conversation.[3] There are other political scientists who actively support decolonization and see it as a field of activism in support of anyone and countries where colonization harmed people and development.[4] The point is that two ways of conceptualizing decolonization in politics and political science are discernible. One conceptualization is less inclusive since it alienates scholars and professionals from Western, high-income, or developed countries. The other is more inclusive. In humanitarian studies, including philosophy, some decolonization articles and conversations are efforts to end the destructive force of colonization. They focus on either the form, such as ecocide, genocide, and many others, or the geographic location, such as Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania.[5] Finally, the feelings one brings into this conversation can adversely impact how one engages in them and who they listen to or are willing to hear from. For example, anger, rage, bitterness, and hatred are emotions that are not uncommon in spaces of decolonization conversations. Decolonization conversations that originate from a place of negativity risk deepening the psychological state of victimhood and prevent people from disrupting constructively or critically engaging in the conversation.[6] II. Understanding Decolonization Strategies Decolonization strategies mainly aim to de-silence victims of domination or subjugation. People have proposed many strategies for decolonizing. These strategies may be informed by what the target is for decolonization. Decolonization can target power relations in global health. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health organizations noted the power imbalance in vaccine distribution. Decolonization could involve de-silencing those affected by neocolonialism to bring about a more balanced distribution of power and a more fair distribution of the vaccine. By analyzing who was adversely impacted by the distribution and who ought to wield power, those engaged in decolonizing advocated for positive change and equitable power relations. Equally, when being is the target of decolonization, the language of unlearning or relearning and mental decolonization take centre stage in the decolonization discourse. For example, the quest to decolonize colonized minds aims to demythologize African inferiority and Western superiority. Demythologizing African inferiority enables those engaged in the decolonization discourse to cultivate and foster African agency.[7] Finally, when knowledge production is the target of decolonization, scholars use inclusion and cognitive justice. For example, they try to alter the knowledge that underlies global health ethics.[8] “[D]decolonizing researchers aim to respectfully understand and integrate theory from Other(ed) perspectives, while also critically examining the underlying assumptions that inform their Western research framework.”[9] One common strategy that scholars use in decolonization is inclusion. It is worth asking, does including people who have been subrogated foster decolonization? Whether that is effective depends on whether included people are more heard or whether the strategies to include them create new forms of silencing. III. Inclusion and the Quest to Decolonize Evaluating how effective inclusion is in the quest to de-silence subjugated voices is important. First, inclusive strategies are not neutral. They are epistemically situated. This situatedness constrains meaning-making in different ways: how and what questions are asked, how social roles are constructed, organized or assigned, and who is admitted to the room where these conversations occur.[10] Inclusion strategies may reinforce (unchallenged) assumptions. For example, to address prejudices and stereotypes in global health images, Arsenii Alenichev and his colleagues[11] successfully inverted “one stereotypical global health image” by prompting a generative AI to produce “an image of a traditional Indian or African healer healing a White Child.” Although there were some problems with the image of the White child, this innovation is a significant, useful effort to de-embed or strip global health images of problematic pictures that mythologize White superiority and Black inferiority. Yet it is possible that using categories like traditional Indian or African reinforces unchallenged assumptions, raising key questions regarding how language and words create new stereotypes. It is common to define traditional as non-conventional, unorthodox, and informal. Yet studies continue to reveal that non-scientifically appraised healing approaches in India or Africa are not only effective but also real, meaningful, fundamental, and primary care-seeking behaviours in many communities in these regions.[12] Suppose inclusive strategies are not un-situated. These conversations may be had within the structures, language, and spaces built by or connected to colonialism. The spaces, language, places, and structures in which these conversations occur can limit who can participate and how they participate. Importantly, some conditions are not conducive to participation as equals. The allocated time for the discussion could also constrain how individuals express themselves. It is unclear who is ultimately heard. Furthermore, epistemic situatedness of inclusion can impact decolonization conversations when participants are beneficiaries of, products of, and trained by structures and systems they seek to dismantle. To enhance the decolonization project and its goals, a pressing task is to unveil and question how the circumstances may inhibit activism. If the vestiges of colonialism continue to structure the decolonization discourse invisibly, the vestiges may undermine decolonization. For example, a public health discussion that includes white Western doctors and Western pharmaceutical executives in Africa may have many local Africans at the table but could still effectively devalue their input based on built-in assumptions and biases that are vestiges of colonialism. Second, exclusion and inclusion are also not binary. Individuals may experience exclusion, even while included (the phenomenon called internal exclusion). In other words, inclusion can fail to be substantial or become a means of enhancing optics, “a way of (un)consciously weakening the radical claims being pursued.”[13] For example, in South Africa, many institutions have made significant efforts to diversify their faculties due to the promulgation of the Employment Equity Act 55.[14] The act requires South African institutions to implement employment equity that redresses the history of harmful discrimination in the country. The act further requires transforming departments and institutional administrations. Although many recognize and support the need to transform departments in South Africa, the rhetoric of transformation departs sharply from the lived experiences.[15] This misalignment between the plan and practice is evident in the underrepresentation of black people and females in senior management teams, professorships in many universities and health departments, and positions of power in some South African institutions. Those selected in the transformation of the departments have also complained of being overworked. The burden of extra work undermines their ability to develop agency and voice in the space they now occupy or fulfil key requirements that have implications for their career trajectory.[16] This is called the minority tax. Notably, "the minority tax… is the burden of extra responsibilities [placed] on faculty of colour to achieve diversity and inclusion and contributes to attrition and impedes academic promotion."[17] One challenge for decolonializing projects will be for decolonial scholars and those selected for decolonization objectives to have the humility to decline invitations, requests, roles, and platforms for which they are either unqualified or lack the capacity to fulfil. At its heart, decolonization strategies must empower those included rather than weaken them. Finally, inclusion can lead to a phenomenon known as elite capture.[18] Elite capture occurs when socially advantaged individuals in a group monopolize or exploit activism to their own benefit at the expense of the larger, struggling group. Elite capture weakens decolonization efforts from within, revealing that those likely to benefit from global inclusive efforts are those who fulfil globally constructed standards, those “already present in the room.” There is no better strategy to weaken decolonial movements than weakening the project from within by strategically positioning individuals who share physical properties with the victims of exclusion and silencing but intellectually, behaviourally, psychologically, and emotionally share more common ground with the colonizer. Such insiders may be unaware they are furthering neocolonial conditions rather than decolonizing. In relation to decolonization, particularly in global health, elite capture reveals that those whose voices are loudest in the room are not necessarily those more impacted by colonialism. They may benefit more from reinforcing colonialism. Opportunism weakens meaningful activism from within, preventing good initiatives and strategies from having their intended impact or taking substantive root.[19] This paper cannot do justice to elite capture, but it is worth noting its negative impacts. IV. Improving the Impact of Decolonization To end neo-colonialism, it is important to understand how it manifests and what to do at each level. Beyond the academic discourse, many tangible efforts exist to decolonize through de-silencing. Examples of these efforts include the ME2 movement that seeks to centre the concerns and experiences of sexually abused or harassed victims in the public discourse. At the funding level, many grant-awarding agencies like Wellcome Trust have dedicated huge budgets to studies that help them understand how they may have perpetrated colonialism or neocolonialism and what they can do differently going forward.[20] In South Africa, promulgating the Employment Equity Act 55 was a tangible attempt to entrench decolonization concerns in a country's regulatory framework. Yet, these decolonization efforts could fail to be substantive if they do not reflect cultural sensitivity. Two key components of cultural sensitivity are worth highlighting here: epistemic and cultural humility. Epistemic humility is an intellectual virtue described as knowing one’s limitations and the limitations of the learning methods employed. At its simplest, it is the ability to admit when one is wrong. Cultural humility includes genuine attempts to learn about and embrace other cultures. Epistemic and cultural humility are signs of academic excellence and strength. Epistemic and cultural humility seriously acknowledge how the state of our knowledge, cognitive limitations, experiences, and backgrounds, while constraining us, also invite us to listen, learn, grow, and change. The limitations-owing account of epistemic and cultural humility suggests that “a person who is aware of her cognitive limitations and owns them is much better positioned to achieve such epistemic goods as true beliefs and understanding than someone who… simply has insight into the epistemic status of her beliefs.”[21] Epistemic and cultural humility may help prevent decolonization projects that unintentionally reinforce what they seek to dismantle. Epistemic humility calls on decolonizers to defer tasks for which they are not qualified to suitably qualified persons. Beyond this, humility supports brave scholarship that imagines and reimagines how featuring the same voices, faces, and perspectives possibly introduces new forms of domination or silencing. Cultural knowledge can lead to a more intentional way of seeking out the right people or a more diverse group than those frequently featured in decolonization conversations. This would give others more opportunities to navigate these spaces and should do so in ways that are familiar to them. One ought to be more sensitive to those who would ordinarily not be included in these conversations. Unless we radically and boldly reimagine these discussions, we risk alienating those most negatively impacted by neocolonialism. CONCLUSION Decolonization conversations are complex and the subject of academic debate. The strategies employed to decolonize can harm or help the victims of neo-colonialism. Inclusion of previously silenced individuals may not be enough to overcome the vestiges of colonialism, leading to a false inclusion, where those included feel excluded or contribute in ways reflecting their own biases and circumstances. Inclusion of an elite or people who do not truly represent the subjugated can lead to elite capture. For decolonization strategies to be impactful, for example, in the context of global health, project leaders and participants must engage in conversations employing epistemic and cultural humility. In many ways, epistemic and cultural humility can help us demythologize our assumptions of any cultural superiority or cognitive authority, allowing for diverse voices, cultures, and perspectives to emerge without domination. - [1] Caesar Atuire & Olivia Rutazibwa. 2021. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization [Online]. Available from: https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/african-reading-covid-19-pandemic-and-stakes-decolonization [Accessed July 29, 2021 2021]. [2] Bridget Pratt & Jantina De Vries 2023. Where is knowledge from the Global South? An account of epistemic justice for a global bioethics. Journal of Medical Ethics, medethics-2022-108291. [3] Anye-Nkwenti Nyamnjoh 2023. Is decolonisation Africanisation? The politics of belonging in the truly African university. Social Dynamics, 1-20. [4] Rianna Oelofsen 2015. Decolonisation of the African mind and intellectual landscape. Phronimon, 16, 130-146. [5] Caesar Atuire & Olivia Rutazibwa. 2021. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization [Online]. Available from: https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/african-reading-covid-19-pandemic-and-stakes-decolonization [Accessed July 29, 2021 2021]. [6] Pedro Alexis Tabensky 2008. The Postcolonial Heart of African Philosophy. South African Journal of Philosophy, 27, 285-295. [7] Nicholas M. Creary 2012. African Intellectuals and Decolonization, Ohio, Ohio University Press. [8] Bridget Pratt & Jantina De Vries 2023. Where is knowledge from the Global South? An account of epistemic justice for a global bioethics. Journal of Medical Ethics, medethics-2022-108291. [9] Vivetha Thambinathan & Elizabeth Anne Kinsella 2021. Decolonizing Methodologies in Qualitative Research: Creating Spaces for Transformative Praxis. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20, 16094069211014766. [10] Abimbola Seye 2023. Knowledge from the global South is in the global South. Journal of Medical Ethics, 49, 337. [11] A. Alenichev, P. Kingori & K. P. Grietens 2023. Reflections before the storm: the AI reproduction of biased imagery in global health visuals. Lancet Glob Health. [12] Jonathan K. Burns & Andrew Tomita 2015. Traditional and religious healers in the pathway to care for people with mental disorders in Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 50, 867-877. [13] Anye-Nkwenti Nyamnjoh & Cornelius Ewuoso 2023. What type of inclusion does epistemic injustice require? Journal of Medical Ethics, jme-2023-109091. [14] 1998. Employment Equity Act. In: GOVERNMENT, S. A. (ed.) 19370. [15] Dina Zoe Belluigi & Gladman Thondhlana 2019. ‘Why mouth all the pieties?’ Black and women academics’ revelations about discourses of ‘transformation’ at an historically white South African university. Higher Education, 78, 947-963. [16] Juliet Ramohai & Khomotso Marumo 2016. Women in Senior Positions in South African Higher Education: A Reflection on Voice and Agency. 231, 135-157. [17] J. Trejo 2020. The burden of service for faculty of color to achieve diversity and inclusion: the minority tax. Mol Biol Cell, 31, 2752-2754. [18] Olufemi Taiwo 2020. Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference. The Philosopher, 108, 7. [19] Margarita Kurbatova & Elena Kagan 2016. Opportunism of University Lecturers As a Way to Adaptate the External Control Activities Strengthening. Journal of Institutional Studies, 8, 116-136. [20] Jeremy Farrar. 2022. An update on Wellcome's anti-racist programme. An update on Wellcome's anti-racist programme [Online]. Available from: https://wellcome.org/news/update-wellcomes-anti-racism-programme [Accessed August 10, 2022 2022]. [21] Katherine Dormandy 2018. Does Epistemic Humility Threaten Religious Beliefs? Journal of Psychology and Theology, 46, 292-304. (shrink)

No one questions the importance of protecting human subjects of research, but over the past few years dissatisfaction has surfaced with the manner in which the protection is conferred by the federal regulatory system referred to as “The Common Rule. ” Some of the criticism surfaces in print. Some bubbles out anecdotally in conversations among researchers, with complaints about the review process being virtually inevitable whenever the topic arises. Like those in other disciplines that differ more (...) or less dramatically from the world of clinical medical research around which the Common Rule was conceptualized, public health researchers, particularly those working in official public health agencies, have experienced some tension and difficulty in adapting to the rules. The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention has adopted guidelines that require Common Rule review for “research” but not “practice” activities. (shrink)

Russell McCutcheon is one of the foremost proponents of what he calls “the critical study of religion,” that is, the shift to reflect critically on the concepts used in the academic study of religion, who invented them, and why. The critical study of religion leads to the realization that the concepts with which we think were invented by particular people, at a particular historical location, for a particular purpose. What are the philosophical implications of this? McCutcheon defends a debunking (...) or non-realist answer and contrasts this with my realist approach, and he is right to do so. This paper argues that those involved in the critical study of religion therefore face a choice between a non-realist and a realist metaphysics, that McCutcheon’s arguments against realism fail, and that those who wish to offer any kind of materialist account in which religious social structures shape human agency and subjectivity should adopt a critical study of religion that is also realist. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Roger Mantie, Book Review, Thomas A. Regelski, A Brief Introduction to a Philosophy of Music and Music Education as Social Praxis in Philosophy of Music Education Review 24, no. 2 (Fall, 2016): 213–219.Thomas A. RegelskiWhile I am appreciative of Roger Mantie’s generous compliments about my past scholarship, his review is often misleading and philosophically misinformed. In particular, what he refers to as my “editorialized, overview of (...) the history of aesthetics,”1 I clearly describe as a critical philosophy2 of the aesthetic theory of art according to recent philosophy of art.3Kantian aesthetic theory was not a theory of art.... It is primarily a theory of free beauty and of the sublime, of our responses to flowers and cascades and the starry sky at night.... [I]t is hotly disputed and probably false.... [T]he theory hardly suffices to characterize art in general, for the obvious reason that art as we know it is not divorced from the rest of society.4Therefore distinguishing between an aesthetic rationale for justifying school music and a philosophy of music education is vitally important. [End Page 99]The legitimation crisis facing music education in today’s schools (viz., declining schedules and resources) is one result of taken-for-granted belief by many teachers of music’s automatic aesthetic benefits as their supposition for advocating its inclusion in schooling. Such a tacit belief assumes, with Kant, that “being in an aesthetic state is as easy as rolling off a log, and, furthermore, it is available to everyone.”5 It supposedly occurs spontaneously in the presence of so-called “aesthetic properties.” According to analytic aesthetics, these properties qualify the “autonomania”6 (spelled incorrectly in the review) of music’s “for its own sake” value, and its “sacralization” (also misspelled) as a spiritual source of veneration. Unfortunately, the autonomy of school music from music’s social roots and role, under the aegis of an aesthetic paradigm, drastically limits its contribution to the general education of all students.Moreover, my position on what music “is” and “is good for” does not represent the “is/ought fallacy,” as Mantie mistakenly asserts.7 That fallacy in ethics depends on an unwarranted deduction from “is” (fact, description) to “ought” (value, norm)8 which is not at stake in my discussion. A Finnish child came home upset that he had left his “notes” on the tram. In English, he probably would have bemoaned leaving his “music” behind. Teachers who are content to stress mainly notation can miss “the music” (for example, what is meant when judging a performance to be unmusical). The “ersatz Kantian theory of art”9 postulates that art and music are created to evoke the aesthetic responses the theory hypothesizes (according to an aesthetic attitude, disinterestedness, free beauty, and many other putative criteria). When, instead, viewing music’s origins and purposes (for example, as in anthropology and ethnomusicology) as always social in meaning, consequences, and worth, then teaching that stresses music’s sociality (not its autonomy) is promoted and becomes a warranted curricular goal.Moreover, the aesthetic experiences postulated by aesthetic theory are covert, thus lacking empirical evidence of teaching or learning effectiveness, or for curricular planning! Their effects are just presumed. In praxis-based teaching, instead, results are amply observable to learners (thus motivating), to administrators (thus promoting curricular support), and to parents (thus for taxpayers). This is all the more the case when musicing is chosen as “worthwhile” (that is, literally, “good time”) after school and graduation: the ongoing disposition to engage in musicing is thus my praxial definition of music appreciation. All this is argued in my book, but is neglected in the review, except where, in minimizing the effects of the resulting legitimation crisis facing music educators, Mantie concedes that school music has “almost always been contested and fragile”10—as though it has not progressively suffered from recent trends (No Child Left Behind Act in the US, common core, testing mania, and so on). [End Page 100]Mantie proposes that because musical praxes exist in society does not justify their inclusion as part of school music.11 That leaves out a lot of commonplace... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Driven from Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants Edited by David Hollenbach, SJ, and: Kinship across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration by Kristen HeyerRené M. Micallef SJDriven from Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants EDITED BY DAVID HOLLENBACH, SJ Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010. 296 pp. $20.46Kinship across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration KRISTEN HEYER Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012. (...) 210 pp. $29.23Although based on a conference held at Boston College in November 2008, Driven from Home is no less timely today, given the context of current debates on immigration in the United States, the European Union, Australia, and the Middle East. David Hollenbach’s introduction explains how the book brings together Christian (mostly Catholic) theologians, human rights activists, humanitarian practitioners, and legal scholars to help us focus on a class of persons referred to as “forced migrants” or “persons needing protection.” These individuals are neither classical “convention refugees” (according to international law definitions) nor are they simply “migrant workers” (in the classical sense) since their basic human rights to security and subsistence cannot [End Page 230] be adequately guaranteed in their home country or region. They do not emigrate merely in search of a higher standard of living; rather, forced migrants enter and settle in foreign lands seeking some sort of “protection” similar to that afforded to “conventional” refugees. More concretely, the book focuses on persons on the move—individuals fleeing violence and the extreme poverty rampant in regions devastated by ecological degradation and natural disasters.Extending the logic of the 1952 Refugee Convention and adapting it to the realities of today, one can argue convincingly that the international community has a duty to protect such persons when their states of origin are structurally unable or unwilling to afford protection (as argued in Susan Martin’s essay). However, paternalistic approaches that diminish rather than augment the agency of local governments and migrants are to be avoided (as maintained in M. Brinton Lykes’ essay). The book helps us reflect on what can be done to guarantee the basic rights of forced migrants not only at the level of international law and institutions but also through domestic and regional policymaking spurred and inspired by both Christian and secular global-humanitarian values. Such values are eminently compatible when applied to this particular issue (see Silvano Tomasi’s contribution). Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator’s essay—which offers insightful reflections (albeit rather general ones) from Christian ethics, ecclesiology, and biblical theology—likewise points to the need for a truly interdisciplinary approach to the issue. The other authors help the book achieve precisely this. Theological ethics finds its own distinctive place and voice in dialogue with a range of perspectives: legal and political sciences and case studies (Frank Brennan, Daniel Kanstroom); philosophical approaches (Arash Abizadeh); and sociological research on particular migrant populations (M. Brinton Lykes, Maryanne Loughry). The book includes essays that integrate case studies, technical reflections, useful summaries of theological principles and doctrines (J. Bryan Hehir, Mary M. DeLorey, and Tomasi), and philosophical stances (Abizadeh, Thomas G. Weiss), and present practical and legal proposals (see Martin’s essay). A stimulating read for scholars and for the general public, the volume provides good training material for faith-based activists and practitioners.The argumentation strategy in many of the essays in Driven from Home is to appeal to the reader’s sense of solidarity with the needy or suffering neighbor. It promotes the virtues of hospitable citizenship and hospitable disciple-ship while carefully trying to convince national and international policymakers to reinforce and expand the international protection regime. Emboldened by the 2005 “Responsibility to Protect” breakthrough at the United Nations, the authors seek to remain acceptable to a wide audience in an atmosphere of resurgent nationalism, nativism, and protectionism. The authors generally avoid harsh critiques of Westphalian models of sovereignty and do not dwell [End Page 231] on the Catholic doctrines of the universal destination of created goods and the (circumscribed) right to immigrate (and not only to emigrate). Rather, they seek to introduce a new protection niche without fundamentally challenging the prevailing ideology of sovereignty, gently proposing new legal instruments as though they... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Children’s Home Musical Experiences Across the World ed. by Beatriz Ilari, Susan YoungAmy Christine BeegleBeatriz Ilari and Susan Young, eds., Children’s Home Musical Experiences Across the World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016)Historically, most studies of children’s musical learning have been informed by stage theories of developmental psychology and focused on school music or private instrumental lesson contexts. Over the past few decades, scholars have conducted (...) research that increasingly explores children’s involvement with music in contexts outside of formal learning settings, utilizing methods and models from ethnomusicology, sociology, social psychology, and/or cultural psychology. Nine individually authored chapters in the volume, Children’s Home Musical Experiences Across the World, edited by Beatriz Ilari and Susan Young, convey results, applications, and extensions of one such project that reaches beyond the conventional ethnographic music education study.The bulk of this collection contains findings and interpretations from a collaborative project called MyPlace, MyMusic, followed by several additional chapters that provide descriptions and narratives from subsequent related projects. The original project included fourteen scholars from the International Society of Music Education-Early Childhood Commission, who conducted in-home observations and interviews with parents and children in order to examine the nature of, influences on, and meaning of musical activities that took place in the homes of middle-class seven-year-olds in diverse locations, including Brazil, Denmark, [End Page 105] Greece, Israel, Kenya, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, Taiwan, the U.K., and the United States.Importantly, the project’s designers attempted to avoid complications of transcultural developments by asking each researcher to select children whose families had not recently migrated to their country/locality. The seventeen participating children from twelve countries were also of the same ethnicity and lived in the same “locality” as each researcher in order to ease communication during in-home observations and interviews. Results shed light on issues of children’s family life, schooling, identity, gender, and social class.This project presents a unique contribution to the field of music education in a number of ways. First, most previous studies of music in the homes of children have centered around preschoolers, toddlers, and infants, whereas the present project focuses on seven-year-old children, whose age places them on the cusp of crossing from early to middle childhood. Second, most previous music education researchers have considered issues of social class, ethnicity, and race as independent variables, but the methodology for this project calls for observation and description of each child in his or her home first, followed by comparison of the “cases” to each other. Third, the researchers utilize a Wiki platform to share and collaboratively interpret data collected from home lives of children (photographs, video and audio recordings, texts, and pdf files) among researchers from different countries.The volume is organized into three major sections. Susan Young and Jèssica Pérez-Moreno set the scene in the first two chapters by describing the theoretical underpinnings and methodology for the MyPlace, MyMusic project. The second section of the book includes four chapters in which several individual researchers interpret the project’s data based upon the themes of children’s private musical worlds; belonging/identity/gendered meanings of children’s music making; perspectives and influences of parents; and the role of social class on children’s musical lives. The last three chapters of the book provide detailed descriptions of projects and extensions that developed after the MyPlace, MyMusic project.Following the introductory chapter, in which Ilari and Young explain the background, rationale, goals, and methods of the MyPlace, MyMusic project and provide a reader-friendly table that presents the cultural background and “sources of musical stimulation in the home” for each participating child,1 Susan Young outlines the theoretical and analytical frameworks for the project in the first chapter. Rather than viewing children’s learning as developing and socializing into adulthood, the project researchers were encouraged to look at children as being instead of becoming, as subjects, rather than objects of research, and as having opportunities for agency that are contextual. This theoretical framework stems from the field of Childhood Studies (as cultivated in Scandinavia [End Page 106] and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:716 BOOK REVIEWS phies for each section (20 in all); (2) the summaries of major conclusions at the end of many chapters; (2) the explanations of how one body of texts (or its traditions) has been re-read (i.e., re-worked) by later texts; and (4) how one body of texts (e.g., the Psalms), provides for understanding a certain perspective other parts of the Old Testament (e.g., the Pentateuch). Some (...) shortcomings are evident. He relies heavily on the prophets for guiding insights, while law, priesthood, temple, and blessing play minor roles. Is this really faithful to the canonical shape of the Old Testament in its pre-Christian witness~ I find particularly inadequate the treatment of purity laws (p. 86) and priestly roles (pp. 150-53), and suspect the author needs to apply a hermeneutics of suspicion to his own Protestant presuppositions! In a similar way, the decalogue gets extended attention because Childs sees its theology as relevant to modern questions of violence, war, etc.; but he never seriously wrestles with those counter-passages whose theology encourages a divine warrior or a conquest motif. A similar problem arises when he ends the book with the theme of "Life under Promise." This is a judicious choice for the summarizing theme of the Old Testament and includes treatment of judgment versus salvation,.eschatology, messianic hope, the promise of the land, and eternal life. But it lacks any reference to liturgy and temple as symbols of hope, the book of the law, or the commandments of Torah, and no mention at all of the " blessing " theology of P that informs the whole Old Testament from Genesis 1 onwards. Clearly Childs has begun an important project, but much more clarity and balance is still needed in his continuing work during the years ahead. Washington Theological Union Silver Spring, Maryland LAWRENCE BOADT, C.S.P. Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspectives. Edited by TAMAR RUDAVSKY. Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1985. Pp. ix + 299. $54 (cloth). Since this book originated from revised papers and commentaries presented at a conference (held at the Ohio State University on March 3 and 4, 1982.), it is not surprising to find that the completed edition displays wide variety both in its subject matter and in the quality of the chapters. The chapters reflect the quality of papers very often presented at conferences -some are excellent, others are not. In addition, some chapters deal BOOK REVIEWS 717 with problems and solutions which help significantly to advance medieval scholarship, while the problems and solutions raised in other chapters do. not add much to medieval research; indeed, some chapters seem to present arguments lacking both in plausibility and in an understanding of the dominant spirit of medieval thought. The book is divided into three specific parts which deal with Islamic, Jewish, and Christian authors respectively, and the chapters in each part are arranged in historical order. There is also an introduction and an extensive bibliography. In chapter 1, Calvin Normore gives a helpful, but tediously written, introduction and overview of the logical and epistemological problems which were involved in medieval discussions of divine omniscience and omnipotence. Chapter 2 focuses upon Boethius's account of the nature of contingency, and adopts a view which i;e:fl.ects a misunderstanding both of Boethius and of the theological spirit of medieval thought in general. Ignoring sage comments from Richard Sorabji (see p. 49, footnote 68), Norman Kretzmann argues that for Boethius free human choice is the source of all contingency. How the Christian, Boethius, could so badly confuse human choice with divine choice, Kretzmann fails to explain. Chapters 3-6 constitute Part Two of the text and contain some of the most scholarly research in the book. In chapters 3 and 4, Josef Van Ess, rightly noting the juridical foundations of Mu'tazilite thought, examines wrongdoing and divine omnipotence in the fragmentary work of Abu Ishaq An-Nazzam. His discussion is particularly helpful in its treatment of the Islamic understanding of God as not physei agathos, but good merely by doing what is good. This understanding is a necessary element for any sound grasp... (shrink)

This paper explores the impacts of neurological intervention on selfhood with reference to recipients’ claims about changes to their self-understanding following Deep Brain Stimulation for treatment of Parkinson’s Disease. In the neuroethics literature, patients’ claims such as: “I don’t feel like myself anymore” and “I feel like a machine”, are often understood as expressing threats to identity. In this paper I argue that framing debates in terms of a possible threat to identity—whether for or against the proposition, is mistaken (...) and occludes what is ethically salient in changes from DBS. Rather, by adopting a relational narrative approach to identity and autonomy, I show that the ethically salient issue from DBS is impacts on autonomous agency—whether one’s actions and beliefs are one’s own, and how DBS may hinder, or foster, embodied, relational autonomy competences. This approach recognizes that if sufficiently significant, impacts on autonomy competences may pose a threat to one’s ability to contribute to the process of authoring one’s own life and so pose a threat to identity formation. I argue this approach resolves the confusion in the literature about whether and how DBS threatens identity and provides a complex picture of how DBS may affect selfhood by disrupting narrative identity formation and revision, distorting agency and/or undermining autonomy. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 253—278. A Sense of French Politics Politics itself is not the exercise of power or struggle for power. Politics is first of all the configuration of a space as political, the framing of a specific sphere of experience, the setting of objects posed as "common" and of subjects to whom the capacity is recognized to designate these objects and discuss about them.(1) On April 14, 2011, France implemented its controversial ban of the niqab and burqa , commonly (...) referred to as the Islamic veil, in public places. On the coattails of the 2004 prohibition of religious artifacts, including the less concealing hijab or Islamic headscarves, in schools, the veil ban sparked equal outrage across both political and theological spectra, and many on both sides of the debate were quick to inquire about enforcement. As Steven Erlanger reports, “The police do not have the authority under the law to remove full veils, only to fine or require citizenship lessons for those who violate the new law.”(2) While the legal and social implications of this interdiction are ripe for study, the reprisals for breaking the law, notably compulsory citizenship classes, illuminate the strategic governmentality underlying the French government's targeting of the Muslim community, particularly those elements it considers affiliated with fundamentalist factions and/or terrorist organizations, if only through fashion—an integral component of French citizenship. Indeed, in allowing the (fashion) police to mandate instructional courses in citizenship for offenders, France implies that any Muslim choosing to wear the niqab or burqa , perhaps even for those who are already citizens, must not be aware of the subtle nuances of dress indicative of the French citizenry within public space. Furthermore, the degree of instruction requisite to citizenship, which clearly can and must be updated as the state sees fit, cements the imagined relation between citizens and states within the discourses on the veil ban. As Sharma contends, “Concepts of citizenship are the ideological glue that bonds the nation to the state. Citizenship provides the legal framework through which the state performs its role as ruler for the nation.”(3) Speaking for/as the state, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared in a 2009 presentation before members of the government and other citizens that the burqa “is not welcome on the territory of France.”(4) Although there is nothing unique, especially recently, about a nation-state taking extreme measures to guard itself against what it deems to be threats to its sovereignty, the way in which the ongoing discourses on hijab have (d)evolved, which coincide with recent pronouncements by governmental leaders in Germany, Britain, and France that policies of multiculturalism have “failed,”(5) points toward nationalist reterritorializations, which is also to say physical and ideological re-appropriations, of public space within democratic milieux, which remain predicated upon the mediation of spaces. As Panagia deduces from Rancière, “Democracy […] is not an institutional form of government […], but an appearance whose visibilities and audibilites arise out of the dissonant blur of the everyday.”(6) Ultimately, the veil ban represents a calculated move to regulate the every day, which is to say the micropolitics of, that which is visible and invisible within French society, which makes it nothing short of a struggle to manage (the sensation of) bodies. Re-situating the political within the context of sense, Rancière argues that the fundamental essence of politics lies within the distinction between consensus and dissensus , and whereas most consider politics proper as fundamentally concerned with the fluid operations of the state— consensus , Rancière actually locates the political within events that disrupt the normative sensory order of things— dissensus . He explains, “Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.”(7) This reformulation of politics centers on agency and, albeit perhaps unintended, representationality and offers a useful formulation for spatializing the discourses surrounding the Islamic veil, which are mired within seemingly senseless policies and practices of objectification. Instituting a normative “regime of visibility,” the French veil ban encapsulates the political economy of agency, now both mediated and representational, under the rule of nationalist governmentalities in increasingly transnational contexts.(8) Adjudicating presence within public space signals a concern with the sensory aspects of agency itself—what Rancière terms the “distribution of the sensible,” which is “a matrix that defines a set of relations between sense and sense: that is, between a form of sensory experience and an interpretation which makes sense of it.”(9) To be concerned with sense is to focus upon the body, and this somatic repositioning of the (fashionable) citizen within the territory of the state augurs the resurgence of nationalist bio-politics within Europe, since, as Hage explicates, “Nationalism, before being an explicit practice or a mode of classification, is a state of the body. It is a way of imagining one's position within the nation and what one can aspire to as a national.”(10) The French government's attempt to make (bodily) sense of public space for its citizens by and through policies aimed against a burqa-clad Muslim minority, which might only apply to “less then 400 to fewer than 2,000” women(11), reveals the necessary, yet mercurial, transmutation of public space into national space through bio-political strategies of sense-making, which, as Hage observes, denotes that “nationalists perceive themselves as spatial managers.”(12) At the center of this concern over public space is the equally contentious dimension of governing female Islamic identity, which has become one of the main critiques levied against Islam from outsiders who view the veil in its various forms as a clear sign of the religion's actual and symbolic violence against women, even if such critiques remain ensconced within nationalist discourses. As Halim and Meyers argue, “Although Western news media may focus their coverage of Muslim women on the debate over whether and the extent to which the veil may by oppressive to the women who wear it, they have exhibited little interest in the physical oppression of violence against women in Islamic countries.”(13) While it falls outside of the scope of this analysis to arbitrate all of the dimensions of this debate, understanding some of the issues related to female identity and hijab within public space are crucial to this study. As these topics are extraordinarily complex, even and perhaps especially within the Muslim community, it is necessary to provide some context concerning the value, purpose, and meaning of the Islamic veil, which has a rich and arduous history. The Art of the Veil At present, there are only two countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, that require women to wear hijab , which is a decidedly problematic term and concept whose locus is itself caught within a struggle of sensation. Noting the strategic reterritorialization of the term, Berger explains: The choice of the name, hijab , now widely adopted to designate the “Islamic veil,” it itself interesting, although the semantic shift it operates is not directly commented upon by its users. Although the design (both the cut and the symbolic function) of the hijab and the Iranian chador are indeed the same, as opposed, for instance, to the traditional Algerian haik , the word hijab has come to replace the term chador popularized by the Iranian revolution, as a properly Arabic (hence Koranic) designation. This discursive shift points to the successful reclaiming of the national revolution in Iran by a transnational pan-Islamic movement, whose language of reference can only be Koranic Arabic.(14) While the hijab is certainly a point of contention within various countries dealing with immigrant Islamic populations (of which France has the largest in Europe as part of its colonial legacy in Algeria), it is clear that the veil is a historically contextualized artifact of Muslim identity with a variety of manifestations, even as forces outside of and within Islam seek to codify its actual and symbolic value. Ultimately, the varieties of hijab , including the full-faced burqa and niqab , are complex assemblages of meaning that speak to the multitudinous flows of Islamic identities over time and space. As Gökariksel and McLarney observe, “Wearing a certain style of veil may simultaneously be a disciplinary practice crucial to the cultivation of piety (Mahmood 2005; Gokariksel 2009) and a gendered performance of social distinction in terms of class, taste, and urbanity (White 1999; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Gokariksel and Secor 2009) or of ethnicity and race (Dwyer 1999).”(15) The ideological marketplace from which the varieties of hijab ebb and flow serves both as a reflection of the ever-present materiality and dynamic functionality of spiritual economies, which are derivative of the equally ubiquitous flows of transnational capital driving agency and representationality within our historical moment. Keeping these dual, yet deeply interconnected, capital ecologies as the site of exploration for how the veil is represented within public space, one might begin to sense what lurks behind such veiled agendas. Examining the symbolic and representational nature of the Islamic “veil” in its various forms, this project situates the decidedly political contestations of public space at stake in the French ban alongside recent condemnations of multiculturalism as calculated efforts to re-distribute the sensible so as to valorize national identity within increasingly transnational and globalized socio-economic spaces, which collapse exchange values between distinct, yet interwoven, economies of (cultural/material/spiritual) capital. As the discourses on the veil rely upon representational imag(in)ings, it seems fitting to explore the political economy and art of the veil through the phenomenon of street art, which, much like hijab , is a complex assemblage of meaning of sensation mired in representationality and capital exchange. As street artists have taken up hijab in various forms, the movement offers a lens with which to situate critical responses to the veil debate across both spiritual and material economies. Situating this street art both aesthetically and historically, Lewisohn explains, “'Street art' is a sub-genre of graffiti writing and owes much to its predecessor. Though there is a good deal of crossover between the genres, they are distinct and separate in their own right.”(16) Evolving out of the graffiti explosion of the late 1970's and 1980's, street art broke the unspoken rules of the artistic underground by challenging and re-examining one's sensory experience of art in public space by experimenting with both content and form in ways that harken back to the Situationist International, which as a collective challenged one's experience of urban space through various media and experiential phenomena. Again, Lewisohn observes, “It's important to note street art's break with the tradition of the tag, and its focus on visual symbols that embrace a much wider range of media than graffiti writers would use.”(17) From stencils to prints and murals to one-liners, street artists developed a reputation for critical social and political commentary, and while it is certainly the case that not all street art is intentionally political, in challenging the normative “regime of visibility,” as Rancière puts it, of public space, street artists—even if unconsciously—call into question the common sensory experience of the politics underlying the formation of (nationalist) space.(18) Indeed, Rancière refers to the partisan sensory managers as “police,” who ultimately forge “the rules governing the circulation of appearances, of their visibility and audibility, and the proper distribution of bodies therein.”(19) As such, one can sense that street art's relationship with the police is tenous for a variety of reasons. Writing about his own experience as a street artist, Shepard Fairey observes, “With street art, there's no committee deciding whether I can put my work up on the street, there's no censorship, and I have total freedom of expression, and that concept of freedom is expressed just by using the street as a medium.”(20) As Fairey and other street artists demonstrate, the medium, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, is the most glaring aspect of street art's message, and even as it now finds itself in galleries and usurped by private collectors, the ethos of the movement remains relavent to politics as it is, first and foremost, concerned with the configuration and experience of space. Just as examining the punishments for breaking the veil ban can map the terrain of French politics, a representational genealogy of street artist's deployment of hijab and female Muslim identity can assist in mining the depths of public space as a site of bio-political control and contestation in light of recent events in France and the rising tide of anti-multiculturalist rhetoric across Europe, even though the Islamic presence there is radically heterogenous. Using the work of Shepard Fairey, Princess Hijab, br1, and Banksy, this paper sets out to answer a number of key questions concerning the deployment of hijab, and female Islamic identity in particular, within street art as a movement now integral to and critical of the economies of exchange underlying global capitalism, which as a force of influence cannot be underestimated as a driver in the resurgence of nationalist biopolitical governmentalities. Although there exists a litany of artists to choose from, the aforementioned quartet of designers integrate hijab into their work in a seminal and critical fashion, and all have been working with the veil in some way prior to the French ban, which grants some additional context to their usage of it as a symbol in regards to the breakdown of multiculturalism across Europe, even if unconsciously. Although each artist depicts various amalgamations of hijab in their respective corpus, they share common tropes that raise significant questions concerning the veil debate, namely: what are the conditions of possibility for hijab to become a marker of Islamic identity within public space? How can we make sense of the representational topologies within street art's utilization of the hijab and female Islamic identity in light of the French ban? How might these aesthetic imag(in)ings simultaneously inhabit and combat normative discourses concerning hijab , multiculturalism, female Islamic identity, and public space? With these considerations as a backdrop, it is first necessary to outline more fully the hijab as a representative marker of female Islamic identity. The (Veiled) Writing on the Wall

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The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity (...) to existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:358 BOOK REVIEWS ing and his arguments seem more tentative and relativistic than those offered in his previously published works (Truth and Other Enigmas, 1978; The Interpretation of Frege's Phuosophy, 1981, etc.). Yet he uses his mastery of powerful logical techniques in order to support the chosen positions. This fact might give great satisfaction to a logician, hut the metaphysician may he somewhat disappointed by the meager results (...) attained, though Dummett himself modestly restricts his goals to those of forming only " a base camp for an assault on the metaphysical peaks...". One may also wonder whether Dummett remained faithful to his methodological requirement of the priority of meaningtheory with regard to logic and metaphysics. Doesn't Dummett's acceptance of intuitionistic logic (with its rejection of the principle of bivalence) dictate his preference for a certain meaning-theory, and not the other way around? To distill and extract metaphysical beliefs and insights which are contained (perhaps tacitly) in the working of our language is undoubtedly a legitimate goal of any philosophical enterprise. But our ambitions go beyond this goal: we are reaching after reality itself, not just after our opinions about reality and their semantical elucidation. In this respect Dummett's programmatic conception of metaphysics may face serious difficulties in attempts to climb the ahovementioned metaphysical peaks. On the other hand, is any metaphysical program exempt from such difficulties? The hook is beautifully printed; Harvard University Press has done an excellent job! The Index, which combines names and subjects, is a hit too economical, omitting certain references (for example, important remarks on God's omniscience on pp. 75-76). AUGUSTIN RISKA Saint John's University New York, New York Ethical Practice in Clinical Medicine. By WILLIAM J. ELLOS. New York: Routledge, 1990. Pp. 190. Medical ethics is an integral part of the science and art of medicine. Rather than being a set of norms or regulations added from external sources, such as the legal norms regulating the medicare program, the norms and maxims of medical ethics are integral elements of medicine arising from the relationship between physician and patient. In one way or another, most philosophers of ethics and medicine would agree with the foregoing statements. But once the role of ethics in medicine has BOOK REVIEWS 359 been established, a serious difficulty arises: What method should he used to define and delineate ethical norms for particular cases? More to the point, how should one go about solving problems in medical ethics? Father William Ellos, S.J., is concerned with resolving the difficulty of method in medical ethics. He seeks to develop and explain a method in medical ethics that will be both clinical and pragmatic. Joining with other specialists in the field, he opts for a virtue-centered approach to solving issues in medical ethics, as opposed to a rulecentered duty-based approach. While not rejecting the ethical method featuring the principles of autonomy, beneficence, and justice derived from W. D. Ross (an approach favored by so many contemporary scholars in the field of medical ethics), he does maintain that these principles are greatly overworked as well as simplistic. He proposes virtue-centered reasoning as a better method of ethical endeavor, especially attuned to the complexity and problematics of clinical ethics. In developing the notion of virtue·centered ethics, Ellos considers the contributions of the past and present thinkers to this method of ethical decision making. Hence, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas, the Scottish Enlightenment Philosophers, and American Pragmatists are the main sources of his reflections upon virtue ethics. Ellos finds a culmination of virtue ethics in the present-day tendency of many consultants in medical ethics to classify themselves as casuists, indicating that they are eclectic and pragmatic in their efforts to solve clinical cases. In the course of the historical and analytical sections of this work, Ellos demonstrates not only a wide acquaintance with classical and contemporary authors but also an ability to discern continuity of thought among these well.known philosophers and theologians. Especially significant is his recognition of the too often neglected contemporary authors Collen Clements and Roger Sider, whose accurate indictment of the principle of autonomy as interpreted by present-day medical ethicists restores the... (shrink)

Shaun Nichols has recently argued that while the folk notion of free will is associated with error, a question still remains whether the concept of free will should be eliminated or preserved. He maintains that like other eliminativist arguments in philosophy, arguments that free will is an illusion seem to depend on substantive assumptions about reference. According to free will eliminativists, people have deeply mistaken beliefs about free will and this entails that free will does not exist. However, (...) an alternative reaction is that free will does exist, we just have some deeply mistaken beliefs about it. According to Nichols, all such debates boil down to whether or not the erroneous folk term in question successfully refers or not. Since Nichols adopts the view that reference is systematically ambiguous, he maintains that in some contexts it’s appropriate to take a restrictivist view about whether a term embedded in a false theory refers, while in other contexts it’s appropriate to take a liberal view about whether a token of the very same term refers. This, according to Nichols, affords the possibility of saying that the sentence “free will exists” is false in some contexts and true in others. In this paper I argue that even if we grant Nichols his pluralistic approach to reference, there is still good reason to prefer eliminativism to preservationism with regard to free will. My argument focuses on one important difference between the concept of “free will” and other theoretical terms embedded in false theories—i.e., the role that the phenomenology of free agency plays in reference fixing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Home Is Somewhere Else: Autobiography in Two VoicesPatrick HenryHome Is Somewhere Else: Autobiography in Two Voices, by Desider Furst and Lilian R. Furst; xv & 235 pp. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994, $14.95 paper.Published in the “Margins of Literature” series, Home Is Somewhere Else follows a family of three who, on the margins of the Holocaust, live for nine months in Nazi occupied Vienna before escaping illegally (...) in early 1939 into Brussels and then legally to England. The narration goes on to relate both the life of that family in England until the mother’s death in 1969 ended “the symbiotic threesome” (p. 203) and the subsequent emigration of the father and daughter to the United States where, with her retired father, the daughter pursues her career as professor of comparative literature. The final chapter, “As My Father Used to Say,” records the wisdom and witticisms of her father who died in 1985 leaving her alone, in mourning and still deracinated, having become “more [herself] and thereby more other” (p. 217). “My geographical roots are shallow; only those created by the brand mark of the red ‘J’ [meaning “Jew” and stamped on the family passport in Vienna in 1938] run deep into my being” (p. 217).The technical interest of the book resides in its dual autobiographies. Desider, the father, wrote his (entitled A Superfluous Man) in the early 1970s after his retirement and emigration to the United States. Lilian, the daughter, read it in 1983 and found it organized into chapters around places where they had lived. Without rereading it, she began her autobiography in 1991, deciding to write alternative chapters that would be centered on the same places her father had written about: Vienna, Cologne, Brussels, London, Bedford, and Manchester. In addition, he writes a chapter on the Isle of Man where he was interned for four months in 1941 and she on Chertsey where she spent a year alone. She also writes a chapter about her mother’s life and one on her life with her father in America. [End Page 156]Although both autobiographies are completely retrospective accounts composed, without diaries or notes of any kind, decades after the initial events they narrate, each reflects the preoccupations of the narrator at the time of the events being narrated. Thus Lilian’s, composed as “a tribute of [her parents] for bringing [her] through to safety” (p. xiv), contains the child’s impressions of family, friends, home, relatives, and nanny as well as her fear and terror as she experiences the Nazi entry into Vienna in 1938, Crystal Night, the train ride to Cologne, and the flight to Brussels. From Desider’s, on the other hand, emanates the broader vision of the responsible adult, parent and husband, conscious of the historical scope within which his particular drama unravels. He paints in vivid colors the happy decade in Vienna (1928–38), the descent into the hell of Nazism, the struggle to escape “this gigantic prison” (p. 47), and his appreciation and admiration for the British. He underscores the complexity of the situation by populating his account with scores of individuals—unfortunate Jews, sadistic Nazis, good Austrians, profiteers of all kinds—and by frequent conflicting references to Providence, destiny, luck, and the totally gratuitous nature of survival. Written as a memorial to his wife by a man who claims never to have wanted anything more than a normal life for himself and his family, his narration fittingly ends with her death in Manchester in 1969.The power of the book, however, springs as much from what unites the narratives, as from what divides them. I am not speaking of the similarity of events but rather of the deeply held human values (responsibility, courage, sacrifice, family union, interdependence, and love) that resonate powerfully throughout both accounts. Indeed, the intertwining of the two voices is poetically and umbilically linked to the hands of father and daughter that grip each other throughout the narrative. We find a father who risks everything to keep his family together, a mother who gives up her medical career for the same reason, and a daughter, full of gratitude, love, and an intense sense... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Adam Smith and the History of the Invisible HandPeter HarrisonFew phrases in the history of ideas have attracted as much attention as Smith’s “invisible hand,” and there is a large body of secondary literature devoted to it. In spite of this there is no consensus on what Smith might have intended when he used this expression, or on what role it played in Smith’s thought. Estimates of its significance (...) range from the laudatory—“one of the great ideas of history,” to the dismissive—“an ironic joke.”1 Commentators are also divided on whether Smith’s “invisible hand” has teleological or providential connotations, or whether it is simply a rhetorical device. John Kenneth Galbraith declared that we do a grave disservice to Smith if we insist on understanding his invisible hand as a kind of “spiritual force.”2 Spenser J. Pack maintained that the invisible hand was “a rhetorical device which Smith made up, and knew he made up” and certainly “not [End Page 29] a theological underpinning for Smith’s social and/or economic theory.”3 Others have adopted the opposite view. Jacob Viner contended that Smith’s economic theory becomes unintelligible if “the invisible hand” is evacuated of its theological significance.4 For David A. Martin, Smith’s use of the phrase pointed to the foundational role played by divine wisdom in Smith’s thought, while for Andy Denis, “the invisible hand concept in Smith was entirely and unambiguously theological.”5Surprisingly, given this situation, a systematic study of the uses of the expression before Smith has yet to be made.6 Indeed, it is not unusual to find claims that Smith invented the expression himself, or that it was primarily owing to his influence that the phrase first became widespread.7 Those who have made perfunctory efforts at a history of the phrase generally point to a few scattered literary references with a view either to judging them irrelevant to Smith’s oeuvre, or to suggesting that Smith’s (admittedly meagre) uses of the phrase are empty metaphors. This paper seeks to remedy this deficiency, offering a history of “the invisible hand” with a particular focus on the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. What clearly emerges from this survey is that the concept was relatively common by the time Smith came to use it. Moreover, while “invisible hand” was used in a variety of contexts, by far the most common involved reference to God’s [End Page 30] oversight of human history and to his control of the operations of nature. Almost certainly, then, when readers encountered the phrase in Smith, they would have understood it as referring to God’s unseen agency in political economy. Whether Smith was himself committed to such a view is more difficult to determine, but the history of the expression and the contexts in which it appears in Smith’s writings offer some support for providentialist readings.Hidden and Invisible HandsThe expression “invisible hand” was not commonly used before the seventeenth century. It does not occur in classical literature (although some have suggested that the phrase may be found in Ovid).8 Neither does it appear in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.9 The earliest reference that I have found occurs in a Greek liturgy which invokes God’s “invisible right hand which is full of blessing.”10 The liturgy was used by the Alexandrian Church and its origins date back (probably) to the second century. However, [End Page 31] the expression is relatively rare in subsequent patristic and medieval writings. In one of his Old Testament commentaries, Alexandrian Church father Origen (185–254 ce) attributed the Israelites’ defeat of the Amalekites, recorded in Exodus 17, to the agency of God’s hidden hand.11 Some later sources made reference to the work of a “hidden” or “invisible” hand of God in restoring individuals to health. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 ce) thus spoke of the hidden hand of God which heals and makes whole.12 A medieval source refers similarly to a wound being healed by the touch of an invisible hand.13 French Benedictine Petrus Cellensis (1115–83 ce) alluded to the action... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory (...) listings to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system ([email protected]).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.1 (2002) 83-104 [Access article in PDF] Reluctant Modernism: Moses Mendelssohn's Philosophy of History Matt Erlin In a well-known passage from the second section of Jerusalem (1784) Moses Mendelssohn takes his old friend Lessing to task for his recent treatise on The Education of the Human Race (1780). His respect for the author notwithstanding, Mendelssohn has little sympathy for Lessing's view of human (...) progress. Opposing the attempt to force the entire species into a single framework of linear development, Mendelssohn claims that, as a species, humankind has always oscillated between cultivation and barbarism. Borrowing the "ages of man" metaphor that Lessing employed in his own discussion, he writes that at almost any point in human history, man is "child, adult, and old man at the same time, though in different places and regions of the world." 1 Against Lessing's concept of global progress Mendelssohn proposes a model in which each individual follows his own trajectory of self-cultivation, a trajectory that begins before birth, intersects more or less briefly with the plane of historical time, and then continues after death into eternity.Mendelssohn's resistance to the Geschichtsphilosophie articulated here by Lessing and later appropriated by Kant, Schiller, and Hegel has been subject to a variety of interpretations. Not surprisingly, more recent commentators have stressed the philosopher's defense of particularity, his opposition to a totalizing theory of history that threatens to grant the individual nothing more than a bit part in the realization of some future state of human perfection. Norbert Hinske, for example, has argued that Mendelssohn's late writings engage in a conscious confrontation with Kant's understanding of historical progress. 2 [End Page 83]According to Hinske, especially Mendelssohn's short text On the Ideal Constitution indicates that the author "must have recognized spontaneously that Kant's proposed solution, whether intentionally or unintentionally, degraded the individual to a mere means of social progress...." 3Mendelssohn's concern for the individual is certainly central to his rejection of a species-based historical teleology, but one should also keep in mind the ethnic and cultural implications of such a model. As both Kant's and Hegel's later writings reveal, any attempt to understand human history in terms of a coherent, linear narrative, especially one that culminates in the rise of Christian Europe, is necessarily troubled by the continued existence of Judaism. In other words it is not just the individual who suffers an implicit reduction in status in late eighteenth-century theories of progress; entire cultures become vestigial once their historical function has been fulfilled. 4 Although the texts containing the most striking hostility toward Judaism were published after the appearance of Jerusalem, a somewhat surprising anti-Jewish bias is already evident in Lessing's explorations of the topic. Lessing does after all refer to the Jews in the period of Egyptian exile as "the most rude and the most ferocious" people imaginable. 5 Moreover, although he grants them a crucial role as educators of humanity, this role lasts only until the appearance of Jesus Christ, an event that simultaneously marks the end of the childhood of humankind. As Hans Liebeschütz has remarked, Lessing's adoption of this position must have been quite a blow to Mendelssohn. 6Each of these reasons for Mendelssohn's skepticism is significant in its own right; taken together, they also raise fundamental questions regarding his relationship to modernity and modern historical consciousness more generally. In one respect, of course, the topic of Mendelssohn's modernity has been much debated. Ever since Alexander Altmann's 1973 biography addressed the philosopher's complex relation to the "two disparate worlds of Judaism and modern Enlightenment," scholars have sought to untangle the strands of tradition and innovation in his work. 7 Most recently, Allan Arkush has depicted Mendelssohn as a radical deist whose observance of Jewish law was largely [End Page 84] strategic, while David Sorkin has emphasized the more conservative aims of his long neglected Hebrew works. 8In light of this interest... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 135-149 [Access article in PDF] Ghostly Comparisons: Anderson's Telescope H. D. Harootunian While the formation of area studies in the universities and colleges of the United States was initially inaugurated as a response to the Cold War "necessity" to win the hearts and minds of the unaligned, many of whom were new refugees of decolonization, one of its unintended consequences was to foster the development (...) of comparative perspectives of study across disciplines and different cultural regions. But this secondary goal was often diverted by the principal purpose of area studies programs to supply authoritative information on regions outside of Euro-America (the second and third worlds) considered crucial to the national security and to private businesses thrown increasingly into an expanding global market seeking new regions capable of providing buyers, workers, and materials. In time, the vocation of comparison became part of the unconscious of area studies, as the unit of the nation-state took precedence over all other considerations. Instead of envisaging genuinely interdisciplinary agendas that were able to integrate different disciplines, area studies have too often settled for simple multidisciplinarism, substituting coverage for comparison, language acquisition for method, the nation-state for the totality of the cultural region. Benedict Anderson's recent Spectre of Comparisons reminds us of the role played by area studies programs in the American academic profession during the nervous days of the Cold War and the wartime exigencies that led to their postwar organization and installation in a number of universities. But it also recalls for us the comparative promise associated with area studies and how it was either redirected to a multidisciplinary approach poorly disguised as interdisciplinarism or simply incorporated into large developmental narratives like modernization theory. It is instructive to see how Anderson's own work, rather than Southeast Asian area studies, has been able to achieve the remote goal of integration and comparison in a number of stunning examples that have eluded the collective efforts of many institutional programs. This singular success magisterially discloses how he was trained to envisage the region as a "unified" area studies program, even though little more than a geographical term named this unity, and what he needed to do to actually realize the dim prospect of achieving some sort of larger, integrated understanding, which was eventually inscribed in his seminal book, Imagined Communities. At the most basic level, Anderson was able to secure this effect first by roaming around the area (turning his banishment from Indonesia in 1972 to good use by shifting his attention to Thailand and then the Philippines). Yet, as his essays show, there were other, more intellectually and epistemologically compelling reasons which, if amplified, might provide such diversity with a sense of commonality that only geography and the putatively integrative approach of an area studies program seemed willing to promise even as they failed to deliver.Anderson situates his own intellectual trajectory within the institutional circumstances of the region as an area studies which he and his contemporary fellow students "helped give a certain reality" [Spectre 19]. In fact, "Southeast Asia" has always been [End Page 135] the common frame that structured the particular relationship between Europe of the colonizers and its Asian colonized and thus became the location that best exemplified for him the peculiar nature of the "haunting," as he puts it, as both the place of comparison and the necessity of comparability. In other words, Southeast Asia was the locus that best afforded a sighting of the spectacle of specters that recalled authorizing sister images in Europe and provided a perspective that was necessarily comparative. In Anderson's reckoning, comparison first referred to the circulation of images between metropole and colony and secondly between the various colonial sites that constituted Southeast Asia. As a result, Southeast Asia, and by extension all colonies, became the overdetermined place of haunting.Beyond the agency of the war, of course, was the experience of colonialism and those first modern interpreters of Asia who, as administrators, spent long years in the field serving imperial bureaucracies and who were in the incomparable position of examining such sites... (shrink)

The paradoxical nature of intentional self-deception has led many philosophers to view self-deception as predominantly non-intentional. I propose that approaching self-deception from an agency-theoretic perspective allows us to rescue the idea that self-deception can at least be driven by intention. By modeling the ‘acting as if’ method of self-deception with agential layering, developed by Nguyen [2020. Games: Agency as Art. New York: Oxford University Press], I argue that intention-driven self-deception is no more mysterious than other activities (...) that involve self-effacing ends: ends we must pursue indirectly. That is, self-deception can occur when agents pursue the self-effacing end of forming what they take to be an epistemically unjustified belief by submerging themselves in a layer of agency in which they can act as if they already hold that belief. By intentionally adopting this pretense and shaping their agency around it, they forget that their agency is layered at all, and may thereby form a full-fledged belief. This model avoids objections to views that treat self-deception itself as intentional and does so while appealing only to resources already used to explain our everyday activities. I then apply my model to a core case of bad faith from Sartre to show that intention-driven self-deception can clarify how we are responsible for inauthenticity. (shrink)

Photo ID 222412412 © US Navy Medicine | Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT In a non-military setting, the answer is clear: it would be unethical to treat someone based on non-medical considerations such as nationality. We argue that Battlefield Triage is a moral tragedy, meaning that it is a situation in which there is no morally blameless decision and that the demands of justice cannot be satisfied. INTRODUCTION Medical resources in an austere environment without quick recourse for resupply or casualty evacuation are often (...) limited. The shortage extends not only to supplies like blood products and drugs, but physicians and other medical personnel. In the midst of a mass casualty scenario, such as a battle that includes intense ground fighting, the medical staff will stretch scarce resources and triage casualties according to specific criteria. Typically, they proceed by providing care for the most severely wounded first, referred to here as conventional triage. At times, though, the staff may reverse the triage so that soldiers with minor wounds can return to the fight. In a mass casualty situation, when medical personnel apply conventional triage and treat casualties from opposing forces, a dilemma may arise. We argue that it can be permissible for military physicians to prioritize their own soldiers over enemy combatants in a mass casualty triage, where reverse triage does not apply. The case we will focus on is as follows: Battlefield Triage: During combat operations on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean, a compatriot soldier and an enemy combatant arrive at the compatriot soldier country’s medical treatment facility. Both have similar gunshot wounds to the abdomen, and they arrive with similar conditions. Both have low oxygen saturation and excessive blood loss. The sole physician only has enough time to stabilize one person. The scenario is brief, and we are aware that medical rules of eligibility will most often dictate how the physician proceeds,[1] but this scenario is useful in setting up the question we focus on in this paper: would it be wrong to favor the stabilization of a soldier just because the soldier is the physician’s compatriot? In other words, can nationality serve as an ethically justified tiebreaker in a situation such as Battlefield Triage?[2] In a non-military setting, the answer is clear: it would be unethical to treat someone based on non-medical considerations such as nationality. The AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics asserts that physicians have “ethical obligations to place patients’ welfare above their self-interest and above obligations to other groups.”[3] The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Tokyo affirms that “no motive, whether personal, collective or political, shall prevail against this higher purpose” of alleviating distress.[4] Physicians are taught early on that triage decisions must be medically indicated and made without consideration of factors such as race, ethnicity, religion, social status, and nationality. They are taught that public trust and obligations of justice grounded in equality demand that only medical indications be considered. But military physicians in a military setting are beholden to obligations, duties, and responsibilities as members of the military, and when these obligations, duties, and responsibilities conflict, as they do in Battlefield Triage, which loyalties win out and why?[5] Critics of partiality on national grounds argue that partiality undermines public trust in medicine and justice because everyone should be treated equally regardless of nationality.[6] Proponents of partiality argue that military obligations supersede equality and that justice requires partiality in such cases.[7] Despite the critics’ disagreement, both agree that there is a morally right, perhaps even blameless, course of action. Drawing on insights from virtue ethics, we argue that Battlefield Triage is a moral tragedy in which justice is unattainable and there is no action without moral cost. The assumption that there is a morally right choice is flawed. We argue that while no decision in this scenario is free from moral blame, there are reasons to favor treating one’s soldiers over enemy combatants. I. The Case Against Partiality There is a common assumption that there is a morally right or just decision in Battlefield Triage. A number of organizations and scholars claim that it is wrong for military physicians to favor their own soldiers on the grounds of nationality or some form of ‘group membership.’ (In a conflict involving service members from multiple nations working as a coalition, a soldier from an allied country may receive the same priority as the US service member due to ‘group membership.’) The World Medical Association’s WMA Declaration of Lisbon on the Rights of the Patient, which was reaffirmed in 2015, posits that, “[i]n circumstances where a choice must be made between potential patients for a particular treatment that is in limited supply, all such patients are entitled to a fair selection procedure for that treatment. That choice must be based on medical criteria and made without discrimination.”[8] This echoes what was set forth in Article 12 of the Geneva Conventions, which states that “[o]nly urgent medical reasons will authorize priority in the order of treatment to be administered.”[9] The argument for impartiality in Battlefield Triage is that every person is morally equal, and equality entails that medical distribution is, “based on a combination of medical need and urgency.”[10] This is in keeping with the bioethical principles that are generally applied.[11] II. The Case for Partiality On the other side, there are arguments that favoritism is the ethically right decision in Battlefield Triage.[12] The argument asserts that members of the military form a morally significant community of friends and participation in these relationships demands partiality. Just as parents have strong ethical duties to their children and not just any children, military personnel have ethical duties to their group, a group that involves an affirmation of mutual aid and support. Some have termed these ‘associative duties. According to Michael Gross, obligations of friendship, care, and solidarity “leave very little room for generally applicable principles of justice that would obligate a medic to treat enemy or non-compatriot wounded ahead of their compatriots.”[13] This is true in Battlefield Triage, but it may also be true even if the enemy’s soldier were more seriously wounded: “the ethics of small group cohesion, largely an ethics of care, mostly replaces the demands of impartial justice.”[14] In a more recent article, Gross explains that preferential treatment is ethically justified based on fighting capability and “the special obligations people owe friends, family, and, no less, comrades-in-arms.”[15] To not show partiality to the US soldier would be morally wrong on the grounds of friendship and mutual care.[16] III. The Moral Tragedy of Battlefield Triage Defenders and critics of Battlefield Triage favoritism based on nationality both frame their position as just or fair. For example, Justin List argues that physicians are “bound to practice medical neutrality,”[17] Marcus Adams denies that physicians “possess special ethical obligations” to enemy combatants because of their profession.[18] These perspectives assume that there is a morally right decision and that justice is attainable. The assumption that there is or can be a morally right Battlefield Triage decision, and we need to put our heads together to figure it out, remains strongly entrenched. However, the facts of the situation should give us pause; there are too many people and too few resources, and this demands a decision-making process that determines who will receive scarce resources. By its very nature, a battlefield triage decision has to be made based on some characteristic or value, a characteristic or value that will inevitably favor some at the expense of others. This is precisely why competing analyses “in the military context struggle to resolve these conflicts satisfactorily.”[19] Drawing on the insights of virtue ethics, we suggest that Battlefield Triage is a moral tragedy. Virtue ethics suggests that morality is about acting virtuously, which is to say that we should do what a virtuous person would do in the situation. Ethics is about figuring out how a just, wise, compassionate, loving, and fair person would act, and then doing that, as one grows in virtue. But life is not always clear cut, and it is possible that virtuous people may find themselves in a moral tragedy, a situation in which, through no fault of one’s own, a person must make a morally objectionable decision. After the action the virtuous person “emerges having done a terrible thing, the very sort of thing that the callous, dishonest, unjust, or in general vicious agent would characteristically do.”[20] Stated differently, a moral tragedy presents a virtuous person with two or more courses of action, all of which have a moral cost.[21] In Battlefield Triage, no matter how the physician goes about deciding, there is going to be defensible concern from those not saved. The fact that there are more people than can be helped fosters competing values in battlefield triage: maximize lives saved, treat people equally, treat the worse off, and support the war effort. Treating people equally may create tension between treating the worse off, maximizing lives saved, and supporting the war effort. Reverse triage is a case in point, as supporting the war effort conflicts with treating the worse off first, as is a fair lottery system since deploying a lottery may not maximize lives saved or support the war effort. There can be reasons why one person is selected over another, to be sure. Yet, there are reasons for making a decision, and that the decision is subject to legitimate moral concern is another. To recognize the moral tragedy of Battlefield Triage is to recognize the impossibility of acting blamelessly in the situation. In this situation, the virtuous military physician is going to have to sacrifice important values such as justice, compassion, and respect for others, even with a defensible criterion in hand. The physician will grieve this sacrifice accordingly. The physician may find her decision difficult or stressful, and rightly so, because of what her circumstances require of her. This kind of moral tragedy results “in actions which betray and violate the rights of persons to whom there may be a strong duty of care. When this happens, it properly triggers an appropriate moral emotion since our moral integrity has been violated and this affects how we think of ourselves and what we have become.”[22] Rather than view her triage decision as the morally superior choice, the virtuous military physician will view her decisions in these circumstances in a different light: it is the least bad option in a terrible situation, and she did something ethically problematic, something that is contrary to her moral character. She deeply regrets the circumstances in which she had to act. IV. Virtue Ethics A virtue ethicist has insight into how one should go about deciding what to do in a moral tragedy, although virtue ethics may not be as helpful as one may hope. The goal of the virtuous military physician in Battlefield Triage is to adopt the best course of action or the action that she feels she ought to do, all things considered. This does not make her choice devoid of serious wrongdoing—a decision must be made, but that does not make it just. The virtuous military physician will approach the situation with courage, responsibility, and insight. She will think about the decision carefully, wisely, and conscientiously; she will weigh the goods and harms of the choices before her, in conjunction with a proper conception of the good life, human worth, and understanding of her obligations to others—including chain of command, fellow soldiers, and the medical community. She is attuned to the value of human life and has a reasonable idea of the various ways her decisions will affect others. She recognizes that she is in this non-ideal situation through no fault of her own: she is not the one fighting in battles; she is serving her country as a physician, whose job it is to save lives, treat everyone justly, and promote military objectives. She regrets the decision she is forced to make in battlefield triage, acting “with immense regret and pain,” Hursthouse explains, “instead of indifferently or gladly.”[23] This is because, no matter what decision is made, the virtuous military physician “does something terrible or horrible,” something she otherwise would not do and is contrary to her values.[24] V. A Resolvable Moral Tragedy Instead of asking whether there is a morally right decision, in which a decision is morally blameless and above reproach, the virtue ethicist asks whether there is a decision with a convincing rationale, knowing that a decision can have a clear rationale but still be morally tragic. It is perfectly reasonable to think that different virtuous persons will arrive at different courses of action: “two virtuous agents, in the same situation,” Hursthouse writes, “may act differently” in irresolvable moral tragedies, in cases in which there is no clear course of action.[25] Because a person must act in a moral tragedy, one goal is to identify reasons for choosing the chosen action. Some decisions are clearly indefensible—treating neither the compatriot soldier nor the enemy combatant in Battlefield Triage would be wrong—and some decisions are more problematic than others. If the military physician selects to treat the soldier because she does not like the enemy combatant’s skin color, such a reason would be deeply problematic. But much of the debate over how to act in a moral tragedy is not over clearly indefensible or problematic criteria. Instead, the literature is largely about different standards or implementations of justice. Some scholars defend nation-impartial triage as right, while others defend nation-aware triage as right, and each argues that the other side is promoting an unjust or otherwise wrong solution to Battlefield Triage. We suggest that Battlefield Triage is a resolvable moral tragedy and that virtue ethics offers convincing reasons to prefer the treatment of the compatriot soldier rather than the enemy combatant on the grounds of national identity. Virtues are integral to living a good life, a flourishing life, but as Aristotle observed long ago, human beings are inherently social, interdependent and interconnected in profound ways.[26] This goes beyond the obvious fact that we need each other to survive day to day (one person makes clothes, another farms, and another makes tools); the claim is that a good or flourishing life depends in large part on one’s social network or community. This is why many of Aristotle’s moral virtues are other facing: justice, friendship, generosity, and magnanimity, to name a few. Courage, a typically self-facing virtue, is understood by Aristotle to be the virtue that regards one’s fear of death in battle, a battle fought on behalf of one’s city.[27] All of this remains true today. Namely, there is an important sense in which our community matters to our lives: it is easier to live a good, flourishing life if one is part of a good, flourishing community. Our community is made up of smaller groups, and it is more accurate to say that we are simultaneous members of different groups within a broader community. A person may be part of a family, friend group, research team, large state university, city, state, and nation. Groups can function well or not, as we all have experienced, and this suggests that there are virtues or excellences that groups can instantiate. Good groups are unified in purpose, with each member doing their duty alongside others for the attainment of that purpose. Good groups manifest solidarity among their members. Although Aristotle does not list solidarity as a virtue, a number of modern-day virtue ethicists have begun examining how group solidarity can be a virtue that contributes to a good or flourishing life.[28] Solidarity is not conceptualized as an individual virtue, a virtue possessed by a person in isolation of others; instead, it is a collective virtue, a virtue that is shared among members of a defined group with particular ends.[29] “A group has solidarity to the extent that its members are disposed to: (1) share values, aims, or goals; (2) care about those values, aims, or goals; (3) act in accordance with those values, aims, or goals; (4) trust the testimony of other group members with respect to those values, aims, and goals; and (5) feel a sense of belonging to the group.”[30] The virtue of collective or group solidarity involves individuals having special concern for each other, shared aims and values, trust, loyalty, and a sense of belonging with these specific others. There is a oneness to the group in the pursuit of a definite goal or purpose, involving mutual support and affirmation of each member. As such, the group has ends and goods above and beyond the good of each individual person. Sometimes solidarity requires personal sacrifice for the collective (for example, a father sacrificing food so his child can eat). The virtue of collective or group solidarity is important to the military and medical community at every level, and for clear reasons. In the military, there is a clear hierarchy of command, unity of purpose and end, mutual trust and support in complex settings, and so on. Soldiers need to know they can count on one another, and solidarity grounds a soldier’s ability to trust others and be assured of mutual aid. In medicine, solidarity maintains self-regulation of the profession, shared values and goals, as well as public support, not to mention that day-to-day operations require physician trust, engagement, and effort toward the ends of clinical care. Physicians need to work together, along with others, in pursuit of health, and disunity is sowed when there is mistrust, selfishness, or disengagement among the healthcare team and organization. Importantly, just as we are all members of various groups and hence may manifest group solidarity in different settings, the virtuous military physician instantiates collective solidarity with both the medical profession and the military. Her dual loyalty contributes to the moral difficulty of acting in Battlefield Triage. The military physician has competing obligations to distinct groups and cannot satisfy all obligations in Battlefield Triage. Solidarity with the military supports the consideration of favoring the soldier for reasons of national identity, whereas solidarity with the medical community does not. Something has to give, which is why it is a moral tragedy. The virtuous military physician, therefore, must weigh the costs of each course of action. To fulfill her obligations to the medical community would require that she does not use nationality and other non-medical considerations in Battlefield Triage. Since the soldier and enemy combatant are equally injured, justice would demand a random process, perhaps a flip of the coin. Although this may satisfy obligations the military physician has to the medical community, this would be costly to the physician’s military group. If word gets out that the physician decides who to treat based on a coin toss, soldiers, families, and citizens may become frustrated and angry. Soldier morale may go down if it becomes known that a coin flip led to the preventable death of a soldier and the saving of an enemy combatant who had killed (or attempted to kill) other soldiers. As Gross highlights, military solidarity involves a mutual aid promise that military personnel promise to help one another.[31] A military physician is part of the military and, as such, is part of the mutual aid promise, which would appear to be violated if the physician flips a coin. Treating a member of one’s own team may be psychologically more beneficial than treating an enemy combatant and may lead to less moral distress.[32] Finally, treating soldiers rather than enemy combatants promotes broader military and social aims, including returning soldiers to health, maintaining unity of purpose, and minimizing community suffering from a soldier’s death. Favoring members of one’s group, that is, triage based on nationality in Battlefield Triage, would fulfill obligations of military group loyalty, which is contrary to the values and duties of medicine. It does not seem as though showing favoritism in this particular situation is very costly to the medical community or general public, but this is because there is recognition that the physician is in the military. Medicine is impartial to non-medical indications partly because of fairness and to promote public trust in medicine. However, Battlefield Triage is unique, as medicine is being practiced in a non-public, wartime setting. In ordinary circumstances, a patient’s identity is irrelevant, and physicians ought not play favorites. Since Battlefield Triage is not an ordinary circumstance, decisions based on patient identity may not undermine public trust in medicine. In addition, it is contestable that fairness in Battlefield Triage requires that no consideration be paid to one’s nationality. Fairness is about giving each person their due, what is owed to them, and the case can be made that soldiers who place themselves in danger for the sake of the common good or a just cause are owed special attention when they suffer harm in the line of duty. In other words, soldiers voluntarily undergo risk to themselves for the greater good, and society owes them for this sacrifice. This plausibly includes preferential treatment in a situation such as Battlefield Triage. So, while the medical community affirms justice demands non-preferential treatment, the military community can affirm the opposite. The demands of fairness are unclear at best or in conflict in this situation: demands of physician justice decry favoritism, while demands of military justice support favoritism. Triage not based on nationality is arguably unfair and triage based on nationality may not undermine public trust, after all. All things considered, there is a clear rationale for favoring nationality-based preferential treatment in Battlefield Triage. Adopting a nationality-based preference in this situation is more defensible than not. This does not make such a decision ethically right or just. Preference based on nationality is the least bad decision, but it is not morally blameless. It involves one in a serious moral wrong, a wrong otherwise avoided and contrary to one’s character. The virtuous military physician is in a situation in which obligations conflict, and we disagree with Gross, who posits that care of fellow soldiers “is important to the near exclusion of all else.”[33] Gross fails to appreciate the collective virtue of solidarity as applied to those in medicine. The military physician has duties to fellow soldiers but also to fellow physicians, to the medical community, and humanity. To favor a soldier on grounds of nationality violates her duties and responsibilities to this latter group. She is involved in a moral tragedy and can only seek the most just action given the circumstances, yet, at least in virtue ethics, the action remains far from blameless. CONCLUSION We argue that Battlefield Triage is a moral tragedy, meaning that it is a situation in which there is no morally blameless decision and that the demands of justice cannot be satisfied. As such, the virtuous military physician incurs a moral cost to acting as she does—there is a moral residue. However, despite being a moral tragedy, there are clear reasons to act in favor of treating one’s own, considering group solidarity. As such, these kinds of tragedies are resolvable: virtuous military physicians should favor treatment of their own, although they would do so with sorrow. - [1] Militaries set forth medical rules of eligibility or guidelines used to determine whether a person qualifies for specific medical interventions or treatments in certain circumstances, and these guidelines are binding for a military physician. For example, despite opposition from medical organizations, militaries have adopted reverse triage guidelines for military physicians to follow. For ethical discussion, see Falzone, Elisabeth, P. Pasquier, C. Hoffmann, O. Barbier, M. Boutonnet, A. Salvadori, A. Jarrassier, J. Renner, B. Malgras, and S. Mérat. "Triage in military settings." Anaesthesia Critical Care & Pain Medicine 36, no. 1 (2017): 43-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accpm.2016.05.004 [2] There are issues that are related to this, including the triage of civilians and allied soldiers. We set related issues aside for purposes of this paper [3] American Medical Association, Code of Medical Ethics: Current Opinions with Annotations, 2004–2005 ed. (Chicago, IL: AMA, 2004), 300. [4] American Medical Association, Code of Medical Ethics: Current Opinions with Annotations, 2004–2005 ed. (Chicago, IL: AMA, 2004), 300. [5] This is termed the “dual loyalty” dilemma in military medicine and has been described at length elsewhere: Institute of Medicine (US) Board on Health Sciences Policy. Military Medical Ethics: Issues regarding Dual Loyalties: Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2008. Toward a Framework for Resolving Dual Loyalties. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK214853/ [6] See Kenneth G. Swan and K.G. Swan, Jr., “Triage: The Past Revisited,” Military Medicine 161:8 (1996): 448–452. https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/161.8.448; Jerome A. Singh, “American Physicians and dual loyalty obligations in the ‘war on terror,’” BMC Medical Ethics 4.4 (2003): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6939-4-4; Beam, Thomas E. "Medical Ethics on the Battlefield." Military Medical Ethics: Sect. IV. Medical ethics in the military. Medical ethics on the battlefield: the crucible of military medical ethics 2 (2003): 369-402; Hereth, Blake. "Health justice for unjust combatants." Journal of Military Ethics 20, no. 1 (2021): 67-81. https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2021.1949782. [7] See Adams, Marcus P. "Triage priorities and military physicians." In Physicians at war: The dual-loyalties challenge, pp. 215-236. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2008. Gross, Michael L. "Comradery, community, and care in military medical ethics." Theoretical medicine and bioethics 32 (2011): 337-350. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-011-9189-6. Gross, Michael L. "The limits of impartial medical treatment during armed conflict." In Military medical ethics for the 21st century, pp. 71-84. Routledge, 2016. [8] World Medical Association, WMA Declaration of Lisbon on the Rights of the Patient. 5 December 2022, https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-lisbon-on-the-rights-of-the-patient/ [9] Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick in Armed Forces in the Field. 12 August 1949. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.30_GC-I-EN.pdf. [10] List, Justin M. "Medical neutrality and political activism: physicians' roles in conflict situations." In Physicians at war: The dual-loyalties challenge, pp. 237-253. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2008. 240 [11] Beauchamp, T., and J. Childress. 2013. Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 7th ed. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. [12] Adams, Marcus P. "Triage priorities and military physicians." In Physicians at war: The dual-loyalties challenge, pp. 215-236. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2008. [13] Gross, "Comradery, community, and care in military medical ethics," 347. [14] Gross, “Comradery, community, and care in military medical ethics,” 349. [15] Gross, Michael L. "When medical ethics and military ethics collide." Narrative inquiry in bioethics 13, no. 3 (2023): 199-204. 202 https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/nib.2023.a924191 [16] Our argument draws on virtue ethics, from which care ethics derives, and it is worth clarifying how our argument relates to Gross’s. We do not think that the virtue of friendship grounds triage decisions, for we think it is unlikely that the physician and wounded soldier are friends. Instead, as explained below, we think the collective virtue of group solidarity better captures the moral significance of group loyalty and that Gross would agree with us. But since military physicians are part of distinct groups, with competing obligations, the military physician will be forced to sacrifice a value in battlefield triage cases. In other words, we think Gross downplays the dual group membership of a military physician. [17] List,”Medical neutrality and political activism,” 250. [18] Adams,”Triage priorities and military physicians,” 235. [19] London, Leslie, Leonard S. Rubenstein, Laurel Baldwin-Ragaven, and Adriaan Van Es. "Dual loyalty among military health professionals: human rights and ethics in times of armed conflict." Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 15, no. 4 (2006): 381-391. 383. [20] Hursthouse, R. On Virtue Ethics. OUP 1999. 74 [21] Nussbaum, Martha C. "The costs of tragedy: Some moral limits of cost-benefit analysis." The Journal of Legal Studies 29, no. S2 (2000): 1005-1036, 1007. [22] De Wijze, S. (2005). Tragic-remorse–the anguish of dirty hands. Ethical theory and moral practice, 7(5), 453-471, 457. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-005-6836-x [23] Hursthouse, 73 [24] Hursthouse, 81 [25] Hursthouse, 72 [26] Aristotle, Politics 1253a8. Reeve, C. D. C., Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2017 [27] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. III.6.114a, 34-35. 2002, Nicomachean Ethics, Christopher Rowe (trans.), Oxford: Oxford University Press [28] Byerly, T. Ryan, and Meghan Byerly. "Collective virtue." The Journal of Value Inquiry 50, no. 1 (2016): 33-50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9484-y; Federico, Veronica. "Conclusion: solidarity as a public virtue." Solidarity as a Public Virtue (2018): 495-542. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845290058. Rehg, William. "Solidarity and the common good: An analytic framework." Journal of Social Philosophy 38, no. 1 (2007): 7-21. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2007.00363.x [29] Byerly and Byerly. "Collective virtue." 43 [30] Battaly, Heather. "Solidarity: Virtue or vice?." In Social virtue epistemology, pp. 303-324. Routledge, 2022. 304 [31] Ibid., 2011: 341 [32] It might be thought that displaying altruism by helping an enemy combatant at the expense of one’s fellow soldier may be psychologically satisfiying. For evidence that military physicians find it difficult to treat enemy combatants, see Lundberg, Kristina, Sofia Kjellström, Anders Jonsson, and Lars Sandman. "Experiences of Swedish military medical personnel in combat zones: adapting to competing loyalties." Military medicine 179, no. 8 (2014): 821-826. https://doi.org/10.7205/MILMED-D-14-00038. Lamblin, Antoine, Clément Derkenne, Marion Trousselard, and Marie-Ange Einaudi. "Ethical challenges faced by French military doctors deployed in the Sahel (Operation Barkhane): a qualitative study." BMC Medical Ethics 22 (2021): 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-021-00723-2 [33] Ibid., 2011: 344. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Contradiction and Legislation Regarding the Right to LifeKevin L. Flannery, S.J.Unborn Human Life and Fundamental Rights: Leading Constitutional Cases under Scrutiny. Edited by Pilar Zambrano and William Saunders, with concluding reflections by John Finnis. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019.The most fundamental principle of law is the principle of non-contradiction. This is Thomas Aquinas's position in the seminal article on the natural law, Summa theologiae I-II, question 94, article 2, (...) where, citing Aristotle, he formulates the principle as, "One should not simultaneously affirm and negate." Lafter in the same article, Thomas offers a practical formulation of the same principle, "Good is to be done and pursued and evil avoided"; but in law, since it is contained in propositions (airmations and negations) as distinct from ideas regarding the pursuit of goods, the prior formulation is the more immediately relevant of the two.The book under review is important in that, by going through the legal history regarding abortion and related issues in a number of different countries—the United States, Canada, Italy, Spain, Poland, Ireland (Eire), Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Peru—it causes to emerge any number of times the realization that legislation and judicial decisions in favor of abortion "rights" invariably infect a legal system with contradictions and inconsistencies of various sorts. The present essay is, therefore, not your typical book review. Its objective is simply to list some of the legal contradictions and inconsistencies identified by the book's various authors as they describe the legal status of the unborn in their respective nations. [End Page 1323]William Saunders's very clear and comprehensive first chapter is entitled, "Judicial Interference in the Protection of Human Life in the United States: Actions and Consequences." In it, he describes, among other things, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2003, which prohibited "any person or entity, public or private" from performing human cloning (23). He speaks also of a bill proposed in the U.S. Senate once the Human Cloning Prohibition Act had passed in the House of Representatives. This Senate bill (which was entitle, "The Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Research Protection Act") would have prohibited "any person or other legal entity" from conducting human cloning, even while allowing nuclear transplantation, which it defines as "transferring the nucleus of a human somatic cell into an oocyte from which the nucleus... ha[s] been... removed or rendered inert." The problem here, as Saunders explains, is that this latter definition "is the very definition of cloning" (25). In other words, in the same year, two pieces of legislation were considered in the Congress of the United States, both purporting to ban human cloning, one of which would have permitted what the other described (correctly) as human cloning and so prohibited.In the second chapter, "Whither United States Abortion Law?" by Gerard V. Bradley, discussed, among other things, is the inconsistency between the United States Supreme Court's pro-abortion decision Roe v. Wade and various laws, both state and federal, prohibiting feticide. Bradley says of the 2004 federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act that, "in pertinent part it says that 'whoever' 'causes the death of or bodily injury to,' a 'child who is in utero' is guilty of an offense apart from any accompanying offense against the woman carrying the child." The penalty for such an act is the same as would be imposed if the act were inflicted upon the unborn child's mother: if, for instance, the mother was killed. "A child in utero," reports Bradley, "is defined as a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb'" (37).The problem here is that prosecutable under this law are acts identical with those performed legally by abortionists. Bradley mentions two cases in which a woman's male partner—in one case the woman's husband—effected by stealth the abortion of her child. In one case, the male purchased abortion pills and affixed to their container a pharmacy label indicating that it contained a common antibiotic; in the other, the husband obtained the same type of... (shrink)

The rule of rescue describes the moral impulse to save identifiable lives in immediate danger at any expense. Think of the extremes taken to rescue a small child who has fallen down a well, a woman pinned beneath the rubble of an earthquake, or a submarine crew trapped on the ocean floor. No effort is deemed too great. Yet should this same moral instinct to rescue, regardless of cost, be applied in the emergency room, the hospital, or the community clinic? (...) -/- In health care, the desire to save lives at any cost must be reconciled with the reality of resource scarcity. As one example, the estimated cost for prophylactic Factor VIII to treat one patient with hemophilia for one year is $300,000. Costs of this magnitude have been accepted by public and private insurers in the developed world, even though, in principle, these sums could provide greater overall health benefit if allocated to pay for the unmet health care needs of many other patients. Looking forward, however, broad application of the rule of rescue will be increasingly untenable. But the moral instinct will remain: the desire to help those weakest among us, especially when their small numbers allow us to see them as unique individuals. What, then, is the ethical framework that can guide coverage and reimbursement decisions for orphan drugs into the future? (shrink)

The regularities in nature, simply by being regularities, call for explanation. There are only two ways in which we could, with any plausibility, try to explain them. One way would be to suppose that they are imposed on the world by God. The other would be to suppose that they reflect the presence of laws of nature, conceived of as forms of natural necessity. But the only way of making sense of the notion of a law of nature, (...) thus conceived, is by construing a law as the causing of the associated regularity, and the only remotely plausible account of such causing would be in terms of the agency of God. So, by whichever route, we are led to the conclusion that the regularities are brought about by God. So the presence of the regularities in nature provides us with a strong case for accepting the existence of God. (shrink)

Mental causation comes in different shapes, but certainly one of the most conspicuous instances of mental causation is intentional action – when we do something because we want to do it. At least, most action theorists and philosophers of mind take it for granted that intentional action is an instance of mental causation, since they assume first that desires are mental and second that doing something because one wants to do it is to be accounted for causally. Yet, these philosophers (...) face a well-known problem: it may happen that our desires cause what is wanted without that being an instance of our intentionally doing what is wanted. Prima facie, what is wrong in these cases is that the causal path leading from desires to actions goes ‘wayward’ instead of taking the right track, apt for intentional action. Hence, action theorists have tried to specify the right tracks of action causation. But since this turned out to be an awfully tricky task, the idea came up that the whole enterprise may have been ill-advised from the beginning. As I shall argue, this suspicion is correct. Although the two assumptions leading to the problem of waywardness are true (if understood in the right way), the idea of causal paths connecting desires with actions is wrong and should be replaced by a quite different picture of the causal role of desires in agency: desires and other intentional attitudes are causal powers which are actualized in intentional agency. This alternative picture not only has the advantage of accounting for the notorious cases of waywardness, it also relieves some doubts concerning the conceivability of a causal influence of desires in a world of material causes. However, I shall confine myself to the problem of waywardness. My contribution has twelve sections. In section 1, I sketch a standard story about the way we influence the world, and I mention two well known problems discussed in the theory of action. Sections 2 and 3 present three cases of wayward causal chains that pose a third problem for the standard picture. I shall go on to discuss mainly two of them, cases of so-called basic versus non-basic waywardness (section 4) . To understand what is wayward in these cases one needs to understand the special function of ‘by’-sentences (section 5) and the causal role of intentional attitudes (sections 6-8). Sections 9-11 explain the idea that intentional attitudes are causal powers of agents. As it turns out, this accounts smoothly for the two prime examples, but leaves unaddressed a third kind of wayward causal chains. Section 12 closes with an attempt to extend the account to those cases, too, thereby connecting human agency with freedom. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Lermontov And The Omniscience Of NarratorsDavid A. GoldfarbGod and fictional narrators are the only beings who are sometimes considered omniscient. God, who is sometimes regarded as not fictional, is frequently also regarded as omnipotent. Narrators, who normally seem to have no sphere of action save for conveying information to readers, particularly when they speak omnisciently in the third person, are not considered to have “power” in any way, because (...) they are supposed to function outside the story. God always speaks in the first person, and is regarded as an all-powerful agent.But what happens when the narrator gets in on the action? First-person narrators can enter the plot, speaking in the voice of personal narrative, and sometimes “know” as much or more than some third-person narrators who are supposedly “omniscient.” The positivistic “third-person omniscient” narrator of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, for instance, knows only what he sees, and though his omnipresence allows him to see quite a bit, he has virtually no access to the minds of the characters, as do the psychologically omniscient third-person narrators of Tolstoy or Henry James. If knowledge were thus limited in the context of a novel to observables, a first-person narrator who gets around enough could appear much like an omniscient narrator, while also appearing to present a particular point of view. Conversely, the third-person narrator’s seeming objectivity is similarly illusory. Any narrator “chooses” what information to relay, and when and how to relay it. In a sense, third-person omniscient narrators fictionally determine what counts as “the story,” creating the fictional world with their godlike voice. Some overbearing narrators, like Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s anonymous first-person narrator in What Is To Be Done, adopt not only an omniscient and objective standpoint with regard to the actions and [End Page 61] thoughts of the characters, but even presume to tell readers how to interpret the events in the novel. Therefore, all narrators have varying amounts of both knowledge and power, and in some cases they may approach, within variously circumscribed spheres of knowledge and agency, omniscience and omnipotence.In this essay, I would like to explore the range of constraints and effects of the narrator’s fictional power and knowledge. As a test case, I have chosen Mikhail Lermontov’s novel, A Hero of Our Time (Geroi nashego vremeni). Writing between 1837 and 1840, Lermontov was one of the first Russian writers to experiment with the form of the novel, influenced primarily by contemporary English, French, and German examples, as well as the classical epic, making this work, like many of the early Russian novels of the 1820s and 1830s, a jumble of narrative styles interestingly layered on each other. It is a particularly fecund work for studies of narrative subjectivity, because characters shift from narrator to narratee across a variety of genres, all in one text.A Hero of Our Time is composed of five major chapters: “Bela,” “Maksim Maksimich,” “Taman,” “Princess Mary,” and “The Fatalist,” the last three of which comprise the journal of the main character, the officer Grigory Pechorin. The “journal” chapters are preceded by a brief section, set in 1838 or 1839, sometime after Pechorin’s death, called the “Introduction to Pechorin’s Journal.” In “Bela” an unnamed traveler gathering stories in the Caucasus during the year 1837 meets an older officer, Maksim Maksimich, who tells a yarn about the Byronic adventures of Pechorin in the spring of 1833 involving his abduction of a Circassian woman after whom the chapter is named. The second chapter is an interlude, which takes place in 1837, where Maksim and the first narrator actually meet Pechorin, whom Maksim has not seen for about five years, and Pechorin gives his diaries to the first narrator. “Taman” recounts, in the form of a diary, a strange incident in which Pechorin, around 1830, meets smugglers while stranded in the Crimea and is nearly drowned by a young girl. “Princess Mary,” the longest tale, takes place in May 1832—a love story modeled after Aleksander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, culminating in a duel in which Pechorin prevails over a certain Grushnitskij, his friend earlier in the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Parenting Adults with ASD: Lessons for Researchers and CliniciansCassandra R. Newsom, Amy S. Weitlauf, Cora M. Taylor, and Zachary E. WarrenRecent reviews of treatments for individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) reveal how little we still know about how to help adolescents with ASD and their families successfully transition into adulthood (Shattuck et al., 2012b; Taylor et al., 2012a). Shattuck and colleagues found that services in (...) the United States for adults with ASD were marked by high unemployment rates, a reliance on families to provide care across the lifespan, high turnover rates in front-line service providers, insufficient transition planning for high school students, and generally insufficient services to meet current needs. In a recent Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Comparative Effectiveness Review, the authors similarly found that there is very little evidence available to pinpoint specific intervention approaches for adolescents and young adults with ASD due to a lack of good quality studies. This was especially true for evidence-based approaches to support the transition of youth with ASD to adulthood (Taylor et al., 2012a).For the last decade, with dramatic increases in both ASD awareness and estimates of ASD prevalence, our field has understandably focused intensely on improving early detection and treatment of ASD. Our diagnostic tools and understanding of ASD presentation in very young children has improved tremendously. Different from many of the young adults in these stories, who were often diagnosed in their early teens, we now aim to identify children well before their third birthdays. Research has consistently shown that early and intense ASD-specific intervention can dramatically enhance outcomes for children with ASD. As such, there has been heavy investment in attempting to take full advantage of this early window of neuro-plasticity. However, as these stories illustrate, these children grow up. Their needs change, and our systems are often poorly equipped to help them live fulfilling lives, capitalize on their talents, and obtain independence and equal access, while still providing a safe, supportive environment. Without readily accessible and understandable coordinated systems of care, parents are forced to adopt the multiple roles of case manager, teacher, therapist, community educator, advocate, job coach, housing specialist, financial planner, and often, lifelong caregiver. These stories eloquently illustrate those struggles and successes.Grief and Joy: Opposite Sides of the Same Parenting CoinThe idea of grieving a diagnosis is controversial. Many of the writers seemed to feel conflicted about their grief responses and the validity of their feelings. Research shows that many families view the diagnostic process as extremely stressful (Siklos & [End Page 199] Kerns, 2005; Heiman, 2002). Feelings of sadness, anxiety, and depression are common at the point of diagnosis and may reemerge as milestones pass unmet. Families must modify the futures they imagined for their children and begin to envision new goals and dreams. Anonymous Three described this process when she wrote:Most children grow up, go to school, get jobs, move out of their parents’ home, etc. My husband and I have had to seriously consider how much of these are even possible for a young man with autism, even one who has a good number of functional life skills.Tasks of adolescence and adulthood such as starting high school, driving a car, and moving out of the house may be delayed and hard won if met. Raising a child with ASD appears to have particular challenges. Throughout this process, families begin to redefine what “success” means. Rather than ascribing to societal standards, they find joy in personal milestones. McDonald described the triumph of teaching his nephew to shake women’s hands instead of touching their hair, an important safety goal that took three months to accomplish. Each family thereby creates its own path.People outside of the family often do not understand the complicated interplay of love and obligation as well as the frustration and fulfillment that families experience. Just like any family, the parents of children with ASD describe many joys in addition to their struggles. They see their children’s strengths in a world that too often focuses on their weaknesses. Gifted with the everyday experience of their child’s development, they see past the necessity of a... (shrink)

A deeper understanding of the role embodied intelligence can play in social change is vitally important if we are to be successful in creating and maintaining a more just and sustainable world. A key component of any change process, peacebuilding being one example of such a process, is developing inwardly focused bodily intelligence. A phenomenologically oriented understanding of social change, and by extension peacebuilding, is one in which bodily felt recognition must take a special place. Change that is bodily recognized (...) has a different character and functions distinctly from the change that is experienced during a change of mind. A change of mind may stem solely from assimilating new information, (e.g. reading the latest book or professional journal), while bodily experienced change registers along broader lines than cognition alone. Although both processes are kinds of change, the embodied change, which is felt from the inside, is far more generative than change that involves merely altering or shuffling around existing schema or concepts. To assist in further exploration of peacebuilding as inherently both a personal and social event, I have developed an approach based in part on Gendlin’s philosophical works, in particular his Process Model (Gendlin, 1997). I refer to this approach as a process model for peacebuilding because this articulates how intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social agency can be framed as one movement, a single ongoing process of human life. However, it must be admitted that this approach with its emphasis on developing embodied knowledge and practices is not as yet readily associated with such externally focused work as that which is found in peace-building as an academic field or social action activity. Embodied interior intelligence as a theoretically rich concept, although known in phenomenology and recognized in emerging theories of cognition, is not as yet sensible to many of those working in the peace-building arena. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

Background: Troubled conscience among nurses and other healthcare workers represents a significant contributor to healthcare worker moral distress, burnout and attrition. While research in this area has examined critical care in hospitals, less knowledge has been obtained from long-term care contexts such as nursing homes, despite widely recognised challenges with regard to vulnerable patients, increasing workload and maintaining workforce sustainability among nurses. Objective: The aim of this study was to illuminate and interpret the meaning of the lived experience (...) of troubled conscience among registered nurses (RNs) working in nursing homes. Research design: This qualitative research employed narrative interviews with eight nurses to obtain essential meanings of their lived experiences of troubled conscience. The interview texts were analysed using a phenomenological hermeneutic approach. Ethical considerations: Participation was voluntary, informed and was conducted with written consent. The Norwegian Centre for Research Data approved the data processing of personal data. Findings: The analysis uncovered two themes: (1) troubled conscience means abandoning ideals, with the subthemes: failing dependent patients; being disloyal to colleagues; being inadequate in the performance of work tasks and (2) troubled conscience means facing realities, with the subthemes: accepting being part of the system; responding to barriers. Discussion: Troubled conscience meant experiencing continuous and simmering tension between one’s ideals and realities and feeling a drive to preserve accountability and one’s moral integrity. Endangered ideals were often under cross-pressure and included humanistic values, professional values, working life values and the values of the organisation. Conclusion: Nurses’ troubled conscience refers to a struggle, but also a force that plays out at various levels and arenas in long-term care. Openness and dialogue about how professional values and the welfare state’s intentions can be realised within the given framework are important for individual nurses’ occupational health as well as the quality of care provided to patients. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.4 (2001) 335-342 [Access article in PDF] "Dispersing the Cogito: A Response to Vivian's Rhetorical Self" Philip Lewin Bradford Vivian ("The Threshold of the Self," Philosophy and Rhetoric 33. 4: 303-18), in seeking to disrupt the cogito, claims that acts of creative self-constitution by a "rhetorical self" become possible as subjectivity is dispersed across subject positions. However, the apparent ability of the rhetorical self to freely (...) choose which positions it will inhabit, as well as its apparent capacity to undergo subjectification without being marked by its habitation of those positions, seem to reintroduce several of the cogito's essential features.Vivian argues that "there is a historicity to our being and its expression, to our subjectivity and its elaboration" (303). His essay provides a clear and cogent account of how subjectivity might arise as the result of a series of rhetorical acts whose audience is the self. One's self, then, is a local and ongoing aesthetic formation, continually becoming and coming into being; to the extent that the aesthetic nature of this process is produced by persuading one's self to adopt some styles of life over others, then this process is a thoroughly persuasive phenomenon. The aesthetic composition molded by this continually renewed persuasion might best be described as the rhetorical self. (312; emphasis in original) Vivian clears away a good deal of the underbrush that often prevents us from getting a hold on the problematics of selfhood and subjectivity. I find much that is praiseworthy in the essay, particulary its explication of the contingent and shifting nature of the processes through which the self is formed and reformed. But there is a key theoretical elision in Vivian's argument that does much to restore the legitimacy of the Cartesian cogito that he is at pains to disrupt. The result is a model of self that revises Cartesianism by dispersing subjectivity among various subject positions, [End Page 335] but that, in a number of other important ways, preserves essential features of the cogito, as though each fragment of the dispersed cogito were itself a complete mini-cogito.Vivian's account elides the rhetorical process of self-formation. In a typical passage at the end of the essay, he comments, "In order to compose and cultivate one's being in the world, one must persuade one's self to choose and orchestrate certain styles of life from among those available into an entire aesthetics of being" (316-17). The questions this claim provokes are: How does this process of self-persuasion actually take place? What aspect or agency of psyche is doing the persuading? To conceive of the self as Vivian does--a self "conceived as a form--a rhetorical form--that exists only in its continual aesthetic creation, in its indefinite becoming" (304)--suggests a kind of autonomy and self-transparency in self-formation that has discouragingly Cartesian overtones.The terms with which Vivian has chosen to work, namely, subjectivity and the rhetorical self, do not address these issues of self-persuasion. Instead, they serve to mask them. Subjectivity, for Vivian, refers to the positions the self finds itself assuming within discursive regimes, positions whose formation entails moments both of self-persuasion and of subjection to existing social exigency. Subjectivity (so conceived) has the property of being an effect of multiple acts of subjectification, of voluntary acquiescence to preexisting subject positions. "Discourse creates subjects by first creating subject positions from which to speak" (313). The subject is not original, but rather follows from "an entire 'assemblage' of subject positions that are the willful creation of no one, but are instead formed by the complex operations of discourse" (313). The theoretical difficulty with this way of accounting for subjectivity lies in its elision of agency; how shall we make sense of the rhetorical self? More specifically, how does a necessary immersion into discursive practices couple with rhetorical acts of self-persuasion? What motivates self-persuasion? Are all the factors involved in self-persuasion fully conscious and under voluntary control? If not, how are we... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The concept of ‘intimate citizenship’ stresses the right of people to choose how they organize their personal lives and claim identities. Support and interest groups are seen as playing an important role in the pursuit of recognition for these intimate choices, by elaborating visible and positive cultures that invade broader public spheres. Most studies on intimate citizenship take into consideration the exclusions these groups encounter when negotiating their differences with society at large. However, much less attention is paid (...) to the ways in which these groups internalize the surrounding ideologies, identity categories and hierarchies that pervade society and constrain their recognition as full citizens. In contrast, this paper aims to emphasize the reproduction of otherness within alternative spheres of life, and to reveal the ambiguities and complexities involved in their dialectic relationship with society at large. To address this issue, the paper focuses on the role that ‘adoption cultures’ of Flemish adoptive parents with children from Ethiopia play in the pursuit of being recognized as ‘proper’ families and full citizens. The ethnographic research among adoptive parents and adoption professionals shows a defensive discourse and action that aims at empowering against potential problems, as well as a tendency to other the adoptive child by pathologizing its non‐normativity. By showing the strong embeddedness of adoptive families' practices of familial and cultural construction in larger cultural frames of selfing and othering, characterized by biologism and nativism, one begins to understand the limits of their capacity to realize full citizenship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethics and the Elderly: The Challenge of Long-Term Care by Sarah M. Moses, and: Loving Later Life: An Ethics of Aging by Frits de LangeDolores L. ChristieEthics and the Elderly: The Challenge of Long-Term Care Sarah M. Moses maryknoll, ny: orbis, 2015. 206 pp. $38.00Loving Later Life: An Ethics of Aging Frits de Lange grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2015. 169 pp. $19.00Today many women and men live beyond (...) the so-called third age of life and enter their eighties, the "fourth age," during which the toll of time and the growing incidence of life-limiting conditions wear down even the best-preserved of the human species. Debilitating disease and normal ebbing of human function become more concentrated in this demographic bubble. As people enter their eighties, their world tends to narrow both physically and mentally, creating a need for increasing care. Often the elderly are rendered passive and dependent, forced to cede both autonomy and dignity. They become objects with little voice, requiring greater care and increasing cash. Likewise, as the baby boom generation enters this group, those living in the fourth age make up an increasing percentage of the population. Additionally, modern models of care for the elderly, often based on efficiency and cost-effectiveness, tend to erode their human dignity. Together these factors demonstrate a growing moral problem.What to do? These two books provide valuable road maps for how to proceed. They detail the reality and moral urgency of the situation. Both offer principles from philosophical and religious traditions that outline a good moral model: one of care, compassion, dignity, and community. They draw insights from Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, among [End Page 214] others. Both reference the Western biblical tradition, which honors the elderly even in the face of their limitations.Although the authors offer wise and thoughtful suggestions to address this growing moral crisis, they approach the serious moral issue very differently. Sarah Moses outlines a compelling case for a new interventional model for elderly living. While her book plays some muted chords that hint at "dissertation," the melody it conveys is strikingly forte and well worth the read.She presents two concrete examples of what good interaction with the elderly might look like. One draws from the international intentional outreach and residential community (the Community of Sant'Egidio), the other is a brick-and-mortar model (the Green House Project). Using both biblical paradigms and church teaching over the centuries, Moses makes the case for treating all persons with dignity and promoting their involvement in decision making as much as possible. The scriptural message she highlights—both our duty to the elderly and the "disappointment and depression" (105) of growing old—is particularly compelling.In her examples of good long-term care, community development is important. In the Sant'Egidio model, volunteers share a common life "through gathering for prayer and various outreach services to the poor" (39). There is motivation to support elderly in their own homes, but the project promotes small, family-like resident facilities when this is not possible. The physical place is less emphasized than the relationship among various age and economic groups.The Green House Project is based in a new vision of homes for the challenged elderly. Results of the project show that not only did staff remain in their jobs longer (nursing home employment turnover is extensive) but visitation by family members increased. Even such a simple thing as a different physical model for the actual building—replacing long halls and routinization with a more home-like environment—has positive results.Moses calls on leadership in church and community to educate, to designate funds for elder care, and to look beyond the caring and the construction of good facilities. She notes how important it is to work politically to change attitudes and actions.She sees care for all dependent people as a responsibility of both the church community and society in general. This includes fostering awareness, encouraging ongoing participation of the elderly in life—including church life—and allocating public resources. Bottom line: she calls for smaller institutions, meaningful opportunities for the... (shrink)

A key aspect of the educator's responsibility as understood by Hannah Arendt is its dual character. Educators are responsible for both the life and development of the child and the continuance of the world, as Arendt puts it in “The Crisis in Education.” Moreover, these aspects of responsibility are in tension with each other. Arendt's own accounts of responsibility in her political writings are, in a similar way, riddled with tension. What should we conclude from this about (...) the nature of educational responsibility? To address this question, Julien Kloeg and Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens first reconstruct the meaning of responsibility in Arendt's political writings. They find a broad distinction between political responsibility and personal responsibility: the former consists in contributing to a community (by extension, the world), and the latter in the “two-in-one” of silent self-dialogue. While political responsibility is close to Arendt's description of the responsibility of the educator (for the continuance of the world), personal responsibility does not find an obvious home in her educational thought. From this ambiguous situation of education and Arendt's own theme of the “in-between” arises the possibility of introducing a concept of educational responsibility that further develops Arendt's position. Kloeg and Noordegraaf-Eelens's concept of educational responsibility suggests a theory and practice of navigating tensions between conflicting commitments. In their view, this is both an appropriate extension and reform of Arendt's educational work and an insight that does justice to the practical situation of educators in the modern world. (shrink)

The sources show that two different groups of sheikhs were followed in the Hanafi usūl al-fiqh: ‘Iraqi and Samarqandi sheikhs. However, the perception of followers of ‘Iraqi sheikhs formed the dominant Hanafī tradition. This situation has caused different approaches of the theologian methodologists who followed the Samarqandi sheikhs to become in shadow. Considering this separation within this denomination, when the sunnah sections of usūl al-fiqh literature are compared it is possible to see the different points raised within the Hanafi usūl (...) al-fiqh. In this study, “the definition of sunnah”, “the acts of the Prophet”, “the imitating companions”, “the criteria of ard (submission) to the Qur’an” and “the problem of faqīh (jurist) narrator” are determined as differentiated notions. Considering these issues, since the concepts which differentiate theologian methodologists, whose perception have been taken into account in this paper, from the dominant Hanafi usūl tradition have been generally related to theological concerns, it is possible to argue that this distinction can be explained by their approach of usūl in which theological premises considered as important as other concerns. Eventually, this paper aims to show that like any denomination Hanafi sect also does not have a uniform approach about sunnah.Summary: In this study, the marks of differentiations in sunnah topics were followed based on the works of Ḥanafī usūl al-fiqh written in the Transoxanian region between 5th-8th centuries A.H. The reason for the limitation of this issue is that there have been some changes and developments in the sect in this region and period. It is because Ḥanafī usūl al-fiqh, which is in two different lines, namely ʿIrāqī sheikhs and Samarqandī sheikhs, has improved in favor of one side in this period. It is thought that this dual disintegration occurs due to the effect of different theological tendencies. This situation has caused the different approaches of the theologian methodologists who mostly followed the Samarqandī sheikhs to be overshadowed. Because Ḥanafī tradition, which became a permanent establishment, mostly followed the line of ʿIrāqī sheikhs in terms of both the topics that are discussed and the approaches in these issues. The aim of this study is to determine the different approaches of the line of Samarqandī sheikhs to sunnah. In the study which is based on comparative method, sunnah topics of Dabūsī, Pazdawī, Sarakhsī and those who followed them and the theologian methodologists Abū l-Yusr, Samarqandī, Lamishī and Usmendī’s sunnah topics were compared and the differentiation points of the second group were determined.In this context, it is seen that there are two different approaches in the Ḥanafī usūl al-fiqh regarding the definition and scope of sunnah. Because the Ḥanafī principals who followed the ʿIrāqī sheikhs, while describing the sunnah, they included the companions in the scope of sunnah. However, Abū l-Yusr, Samarqandī and Lamishī did not mention the companions in the sunnah description and stated that the only person to be subjected was the Prophet. In addition, the Ḥanafīs in the second group, unlike others, do not accept the opinion that the meaning of absolute sunnah word is only sunnah of the Prophet. At this point they have shared the same conviction with the ahl al-ḥadīth (the traditionists) and cumhūr al-ulemā (majority of ulema).There are two different approaches, which are based on ʿIrāqī and Samarqandī sheikhs in the show of the judgments of the acts of the Prophet. According to the ʿIrāqī Ḥanafīs, the Prophet's act is attributed to mubāh (permissible) when there is no evidence about its feature. According to the Samarqandī sheiks, such an act is attributed to vucūb (obligation) in terms of practice and stopped in terms of faith. Most of the later Ḥanafī scholars have adopted the idea of ​​ibāha (permissibility) of the ʿIrāqī Ḥanafīs. On the other hand, Samarqandī, Lamishī and Itkanī have tended to the opinion of the Samarqandī sheikhs.It is seen that two different approaches were adopted by Ḥanafī scholars in the field of imitation of companions. Most of the Ḥanafīs adopted the view of Bardaī. According to this view, it is necessary to imitate companions and their expression takes precedence over the qiyās (legal analogy). On the other hand Samarqandī and Lamishī adopted the opinion of Māturīdī. According to this opinion, a companion who has reached the rank of fatwā (legal opinion), it is necessary to imitate that person if one of his peers did not oppose his opinion on a subject that is not likely to be hidden because the general public needs it.There is also a dispute between the Ḥanafī scholars on the type of information expressed by the famous report. Dabūsī, Pazdawī and Sarakhsī and later Ḥanafīs believe that the famous report does not refer to certain knowledge but to assured knowledge. However, it is understood that, Abū l-Yusr, Samarqandī and Lamishī believe that the famous report refers to certain knowledge. But this conflict between the Ḥanafīs only affects the issue of the takfīr who denies the famous report. It does not cause any dispute on judgments.There are two different approaches in the sect about the issue of opposition to the Qur'an covered by internal interruption. In this matter, the issue of opposition to the Qur'an, especially through ziyāda alā al-nās, has been evaluated in different ways. According to the ʿIrāqī sheikhs and majority of the Ḥanafīs, which followed them, ziyada ala al-nas is naskh (abrogation). But according to Māturīdī and Ḥanafīs which followed him, it is also possible that ziyāda alā al-nās is naskh and statement. One of them cannot be preferred without any evidence. In addition, according to the ʿIrāqī sheikhs general and apparent words of the Qur'an express certain knowledge. However, according to the Samarqandī sheikhs the general words of the Qur'an don not express certain knowledge. So, these words can be specialized by isolated tradition. But it was observed that this conflict between the Ḥanafīs was related to the fact that the first opinion caused some problems related to the faith.In the issue of the faqīh narrator, it was determined that three different approaches were exhibited by Ḥanafī scholars. Firstly, the attitude towards not accepting the report of the non-faqih narrator, expressed by the ‘Īsā b. Abān in Abū Hurayra, is gradually being softened along with Dabūsī and adopted by the later Ḥanafī principals. However, despite the same scientific environment and period, Abū l-Yusr does not follow this approach. At the same time, it is possible to say that Samarqandī, Lamishī and Usmendī don not adopt the faqīh narrator criterion. While ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Bukhārī and Kakī did not adopt this approach but criticized it openly. As a result, it is seen that Ḥanafī sect which contains different orientations in itself does not have a uniform approach about sunnah. The points which differentiate theologian methodologists, whose perception have been taken into account in this paper, from the dominant Ḥanafī usūl tradition have been generally related to theological concerns. So, it is possible to say that this distinction can be explained by their approach of usūl in which theological premises considered as important as other concerns. In addition, it is seen that some of the opinions theologian methodologists present as an alternative to dominant Ḥanafī usūl al-fiqh tradition are close to the ahl al-ḥadīth and cumhūr al-ulemā. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Future of the Book: Images of Reading in the American Utopian Novel by Kevin J. HayesMatthew LeggattKevin J. Hayes. The Future of the Book: Images of Reading in the American Utopian Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. E-book, 192 pp. ISBN 9780192670960.Kevin J. Hayes is a writer of high regard, having published many books over his distinguished career, including biographical studies such as Herman Melville, (...) Mark Twain, George Washington: A Life in Books, and several on Edgar Allen Poe. Works like the 2020 monograph Shakespeare and the Making of America showcase his intersecting interests in biography, literature, and American political history. It is these interests that are very much on display in his 2022 monograph The Future of the Book: Images of Reading in the American Utopian Novel, and we should be thankful that Hayes has turned his attention to the subject of utopian fiction as he certainly has much to add to the discussion. The book is clearly a labor of love and Hayes writes with a great degree of detail and authority suggesting he has always held a deep interest in the utopian novel. In fact, from the preface, it is clear the research supporting this book has spanned many years.The preface sets it all up very neatly. Immediately, the reader is invited into the research story of the book. Hayes has an evocative and methodical style that carries that research throughout. The author is also careful in this preface to assert his expertise in the field. Having read “virtually every utopian novel in American literature published before 1910” on microfilm gives Hayes the opportunity to explore many of the obscure and lesser-known works of the period (ix), which he notes in his introduction is primarily between 1880 and 1915. Since many of these novels are yet to be digitized, his insight is notably rare.Aside from an introduction and conclusion, the book is divided into five chapters. The first is titled “The Residential Library” and is centrally about [End Page 601] books in home-spaces, from personal libraries to books on shelves in someone’s living room. Chapter 2, “The Public Library,” explores depictions of public libraries and ways that collected knowledge might be organized and made accessible in utopian visions. “The Idea of Authorship,” chapter 3, is about the professional/amateur status of authors in utopian societies. In this section, Hayes also explores ideas about literary quality and attempts to answer concerns that a utopian age would necessarily be incapable of producing great literature. Chapter 4, titled “The Newspaper,” details the struggles utopian authors have had with the newspaper format. Finally, “The Printed Page and the Written Word” examines ways in which utopian authors sought to refine the printed and written word and their innovative suggestions in this area. Each of these chapters opens by considering Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward in relation to the subject at hand and Bellamy’s 1888 novel is referred to extensively throughout The Future of the Book, offering a frame for Hayes’s exploration of utopian literature’s inner dialogue with the printed word.In his introduction, Hayes highlights that much of the scholarly work in this area has focused on dystopias. Indeed, when I think about the representation of literature in speculative fiction I tend, first, to think of the great dystopias like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which history is erased and rewritten by The Party, or Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, in which books are considered dangerous and thus are rigorously hunted and burned by the ironically named Firemen of the future. Alternatively, postapocalyptic movies spring to mind. Taking shelter in the New York Public Library, Sam Hall (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) frantically burns books for warmth despite the protests of several other characters in Roland Emmerich’s 2004 blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow. Likewise, in “Marooned” (1989), an episode of the British SF sitcom Red Dwarf (1988–), of which I was particularly fond during my formative years, a copy of the collected works of Shakespeare is burned to keep the last remaining human, David Lister (played by Craig Charles), alive. In the opposite direction, some postapocalyptic... (shrink)

The abilities to attribute an action to its proper agent and to understand its meaning when it is produced by someone else are basic aspects of human social communication. Several psychiatric syndromes, such as schizophrenia, seem to lead to a dysfunction of the awareness of one’s own action as well as of recognition of actions performed by other. Such syndromes offer a framework for studying the determinants of agency, the ability to correctly attribute actions to their veridical source. (...) Thirty normal subjects and 30 schizophrenic patients with and without hallucinations and/or delusional experiences were required to execute simple finger and wrist movements, without direct visual control of their hand. The image of either their own hand or an alien hand executing the same or a different movement was presented on a TV-screen in real time. The task for the subjects was to discriminate whether the hand presented on the screen was their own or not. Hallucinating and deluded schizophrenic patients were more impaired in discriminating their own hand from the alien one than the non-hallucinating ones, and tended to misattribute the alien hand to themselves. Results are discussed according to a model of action control. A tentative description of the mechanisms leading to action consciousness is proposed. (shrink)

The paper maps out an alternative to a behavioural (economic) approach to business ethics. Special attention is paid to the fundamental philosophical principle that any moral ‘ought’ implies a practical ‘can’, which the paper interprets with regard to the economic viability of moral agency of the firm under the conditions of the market economy, in particular competition. The paper details an economic understanding of business ethics with regard to classical and neo-classical views, on the one hand, and (...) institutional, libertarian thought, on the other hand. Implications are derived regarding unintentional and passive intentional moral agency of the firm. The paper moves on to suggest that moral agency can be economically viable in competitive ‘market’ interactions, which is conventionally disputed by classical/neo-classical and institutional, libertarian economics. The paper here conceptualises active moral agency of the firm as the utilisation of ethical capital in firm--stakeholder interactions. This yields a reinterpretation of instrumental stakeholder theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Their Father’s Library: Books Furnish Not Only a Room, But Also a Tradition ELIZABETH POWERS Although they shared close life dates and became famous in the same years for their epistolary novels, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Fanny Burney (1752–1840) would seem to have been worlds apart literarily. (Goethe had in his Weimar library a copy of Evelina, while Burney was probably not ignorant of the Europe-wide (...) sensation The Sorrows ofYoung Werther.) What might be called their literary apprenticeship, however, was remarkably similar, consisting not of schooling in a traditional institution in which students (and, importantly, most eighteenth-century writers) were drilled in the classical curriculum, but, instead, from wide reading within the confines of their fathers’ libraries. It is true that Goethe and his younger sister Cornelia were supplied at home with a number of tutors and that their progress was monitored by their father, but their acquaintance with literature was fostered within the confines of the family home. Burney had no formal education at all. Indeed, on the appearance of Evelina, her father (according to her diary) remarked : “[S]he has had very little Education but what she has given herself,—less than any of the others!” Burney, however, had the advantage of growing up in a milieu in which books mattered. While the Goethes were eminently respectable, on the mother’s side part of what was the patriciate of the city of Frankfurt, the Burney household in London was bursting with wits and with what can only be called celebrities. The Burneys knew God and the world: David Garrick, Dr. Johnarion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 116 in their father’s library son, Hester Thrale. As Virginia Woolf noted of the famous father, Dr. Charles Burney, he was a musician “who could talk of intellectual things and ask clever people to his house.” Goethe has given plenty of evidence of roaming freely among his father’s books, a collection of 1,700 calfskin-bound volumes. When Burney went to serve at the court of King George III, Queen Charlotte was disappointed at how few books the author of Evelina possessed. (Similarities accumulate: Goethe also served at court, as minister in the duchy of Weimar.) But why cart around a load of books? As Burney wrote in her diary: “[M]y Father’s most delightful Library, as I then told her [the Queen], with my free access to it, had made [owning my own books] a thing unnecessary... ” Libraries in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, whether private or public affairs, were not like contemporary public libraries, catering to a wide array of tastes, but were repositories of what Matthew Arnold termed “the best that is known and thought in the world.” Let’s call it the Western intellectual and cultural heritage. Most respectable homes would possess at a minimum a Bible, while the holdings in private homes, as evident in the library of Goethe’s father, could reach astounding proportions. According to Burney biographer Claire Harman, Fanny’s brother left at his death one of the finest private libraries of the age. Moreover, the antiquity of the works in the venerable libraries scattered across Europe from Dublin to Saint Petersburg, and especially their survival despite centuries of vicissitudes, was testimony to the authoritative nature of the transmission. Anyone who took the Bible in hand, who took lessons from it, adhering, for instance, to the injunctions of the Ten Commandments, was conscious of subscribing to values shared by preceding generations. Literary practitioners, also showing obeisance to authoritative predecessors, followed earlier models, in the process contributing to an evolving literary heritage. There was no purity in this transmission. It was truly promiscuous, but its quasi-biological character, like a mother’s left-handedness in a child, can be seen in the family Elizabeth Powers 117 resemblances among writers of different eras. Just as individuals perpetuate traits of their parents, so literature and the other arts recycled features of artistic predecessors. Writers as diverse in background and language and religion as Ariosto and Milton transmitted the dna, so to speak, of such epical forebears as Homer and Virgil. This sort of family legitimacy was... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guest Editors' NoteKevin Taylor (bio) and Johnathan Flowers (bio)Welcome to this special fall 2021 issue of Education & Culture. we are pleased to bring you the second installment of this special three-part issue on Deweyan approaches to contemporary issues at the intersection of data and technology.In his extensive writings on philosophy and technology, Luciano Floridi has argued that "the time has come to translate environmental ethics into terms of (...) infosphere and informational entities, for the land we now inhabit is not just the earth."1 This may be appropriate from a Deweyan perspective as Dewey's approach to aesthetic experience focuses on the living organism within its environment and we have become digital humans in digital environments. Our digital world feels unstable because it is in constant change, but Dewey reminds us that "all interactions that effect stability and order in the whirling flux of change are rhythms. There is ebb and flow, systole and diastole: ordered change."2 The rhythms of our digital world pervade all experience in what he termed "doing and undergoing." We are swimming in a sea of data and leaving behind what investigative reporter Julia Angwin terms data pollution.3 But in the data-driven world, that data pollution is collected, analyzed, and monetized by big data tech firms in a kind of societal harm that threatens digital democracy.Whereas part one saw contributions from five scholars throwing curriculum and technology into sharp relief, this issue asks questions such as "Where ought we to begin?", "What does feminist pragmatism have to tell us about the pandemic and online teaching and learning?", and "Do the aims and means of data and technology align with human experience?"John Machielsen's "Responsible Imagineering: John Dewey's Pluralistic Ethics and Technological Innovation" seems like a good place to begin. Machielsen argues for placing Dewey's ethics at the starting point from which technological innovation can flourish. Driven by Deweyan concepts of intelligence, education, and imagination, Machielsen explores, among other themes, socially disruptive technology from the perspective of pragmatists who constantly reconstruct concepts and values through the process of Deweyan inquiry. Human beings are imaginative and plastic with regard to problem solving, and what is needed here is to keep the barriers between technology and everyday life porous so that we do not risk compartmentalizing them as distinctly different realms.In the next two essays, we turn our attention to the growing concerns surrounding intelligent technology in online educational environments. Great strides have been made in the field of artificial intelligence, and intelligent technology has inserted itself into various aspects of data and technology, such as machine learning that creates personalized learning paths for students. Whether these technologies fall under the [End Page 1] category of algorithms, machine learning, or artificial intelligence, they raise questions about their potential impact on teaching and learning.Olivier Del Fabbro is also suspicious of the current state of intelligent technology in his article, "How to Teach Machines in Artificial Intelligence: Technical Education in John Dewey, Gilbert Simondon, and Machine Learning." Citing the Google machine learning model that classified African Americans as gorillas, Del Fabbro utilizes Dewey and Gilbert Simondon to argue that the human–machine relationship is still immature and at risk of creating an alienated situation out of undesirable bad habits. Intelligent technology requires constant care by engineers and programmers to form good habits and adapt to social life if their aims are to align with Deweyan pedagogy.As Del Fabbro focuses on intelligent technology, the human dimension of online learning comes under scrutiny in two articles that adopt feminist pragmatist methods. Krissah Marga B. Taganas's article, "Feminist-Pragmatist Perspectives on Online Education: Challenging and Changing Online Educational Conversation," rightfully acknowledges how the pandemic has magnified existing inequalities in society. The rapid migration to online learning was necessarily expedited in the face of uncertainties surrounding public health, but how do educators migrate classes that were not designed with online learning in mind to begin with? Dewey emphasized schools as sites and tools for change, but how does online education provide an optimal social environment for learning? Taganas utilizes feminist pragmatism as an important philosophical resource to... (shrink)

Paul Hirst’s reconceptualization of his epistemology provides a basis for this exploration of the various aspects of the rationale for teaching literature. The article reflects the close analysis of knowledge and the curriculum in his early work and develops insights in his later work. This leads to the identification of five strands that form the rationale for the role of literature within the curriculum. The first strand refers to the knowledge of context, cultural background, or information necessary to engage (...) class='Hi'>with many works of literature. The second strand concerns the role of literature in providing pleasure. The third strand considers the role of literature in offering multiple forms of understanding and insight. Strands four and five address the place of literature in the educational context. The fourth strand refers to the possibilities offered for education in language by the close study of literary texts. The fifth strand concerns the honing of the ability to propose and defend arguments in the interpretation of texts as a conduit to the development of one aspect of practical reason. (shrink)