In debates about the proper analysis of demonstrative expressions, ostensive gestures and speaker intentions are often seen as competing for primary importance in securing reference. Underlying some of these debates is the mistaken assumption that ostensive gestures always make the demonstrated object maximally salient to interlocutors. When we abandon this assumption and focus on an object’s mutually-recognized salience itself, rather than on how the object came to be salient, we can work towards a more promising analysis with a uniform treatment (...) of demonstrative reference whether or not there is an ostensive gesture, and whether reference is ordinary or deferred. (shrink)

The availability of willing providers of medical assistance in dying in Canada has been an issue since a Canadian Supreme Court decision and the subsequent passing of federal legislation, Bill C14, decriminalised MAiD in 2016. Following this legislation, Hamilton Health Sciences in Ontario, Canada, created a team to support access to MAiD for patients. This research used a qualitative, mixed methods approach to data collection, obtaining the narratives of providers and supporters of MAiD practice at HHS. This study occurred at (...) the outset of MAiD practice in 2016, and 1 year later, once MAiD practice was established. Our study reveals that professional identity and values, personal identity and values, experience with death and dying, and organisation context are the most significant contributors to conscientious participation for MAiD providers and supporters. The stories of study participants were used to create a model that provides a framework for values clarification around MAiD practice, and can be used to explore beliefs and reasoning around participation in MAiD across the moral spectrum. This research addresses a significant gap in the literature by advancing our understanding of factors that influence participation in taboo clinical practices. It may be applied practically to help promote reflective practice regarding complex and controversial areas of medicine, to improve interprofessional engagement in MAiD practice and promote the conditions necessary to support moral diversity in our institutions. (shrink)

Lisa Sowle Cahill; Catholic Consensus on Critical Care, Patient Welfare and the Common Good, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Vo.

Fashion design is a feminized occupation, but there is a widespread perception that gay male designers are advantaged in receiving awards, publicity, and praise. This article develops the notion of a “glass runway” to explain this inequality. First, using design canons and lists of award recipients, I show that men, especially gay men, receive more consecration than women. Second, I show how men and women are consecrated differently by analyzing the content of 157 entries in Voguepedia’s design canon and 96 (...) fashion media articles. Attributions of value and legitimacy construct a gendered image of the ideal fashion designer through discourses of art and culture that reinforce essentialist ideas about gender difference. Because cultural value is ambiguous, processes of valorization are shaped by gender essentialism, pushing male cultural producers down the glass runway and into the spotlight of fame, consecration, and legitimation. Finally, the case of fashion design offers insights into how intersecting inequalities can shape the glass runway. Gay designers experience both valorization and discrimination from intersections of gender and sexuality. (shrink)

Core indexicals like ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’ sometimes appear to refer to an object, place, or time other than the speaker, location, or time of utterance. This presents well-known problems for Kaplan's view, which treats reference shifting as a violation of the character rules that give the meaning of indexicals. I propose a view according to which indexical reference is essentially a matter of the mutually-accepted perspective of interlocutors. It follows that contexts need not be ‘proper’ in Kaplan's sense, and (...) a successful convergence of perspectives is needed for indexical reference to succeed. I provide reasons for embracing these conclusions. (shrink)

Within the class of indexicals, a distinction is often made between “pure” or “automatic” indexicals on one hand, and demonstratives or “discretionary” indexicals on the other. The idea is supposed to be that certain indexicals refer automatically and invariably to a particular feature of the utterance context: ‘I’ refers to the speaker, ‘now’ to the time of utterance, ‘here’ to the place of utterance, etc. Against this view, I present cases where reference shifts from the speaker, time, or place of (...) utterance to some other object, time, or place. I consider and reject the claim that these counterexamples to the automatic indexical theory all involve non-literal uses of indexicals and argue that they cannot be explained away on the grounds that they involve conversational implicature or pretense. (shrink)

There is an expectation that all researchers will act ethically and responsibly in the conduct of research involving humans and animals. While research ethics is mentioned in quality indicators and codes of responsible researcher conduct, it appears to have little profile in doctoral assessment. There seems to be an implicit assumption that ethical competence has been achieved by the end of doctoral candidacy and that there is no need for candidates to report on the ethical dimensions of their study nor (...) for examiners to assess this integral aspect of researcher development. In the context of ensuring that institutions are fulfilling their responsibility of producing ethically sensitive and competent researchers, it is salient to investigate whether doctoral thesis examiners make comment about ethical issues in their reports. This study analysed an archive of examiner reports to identify the frequency, magnitude and nature of examiner comment about ethics. Although comment was rare examiners provided: prescriptive instruction on ethical review processes; formative instruction on the design, conduct, and reporting of research projects; and positive or negative judgments about a candidate's ethical competence, the latter often aligned with meeting, or not meeting, 'doctoral standards'. The scarcity of ethics in examination criteria and examiner reports implies a silence that needs to be addressed to ensure graduating candidates are prepared to conduct ethical and responsible research. (shrink)

The number of admissions to hospitals of patients without a proxy decision maker is rising. Very often these patients need fairly immediate medical intervention for which informed consent—or informed refusal—is required. Many have recommended that there be a process in place to make these decisions, and that it include a variety of perspectives. People are particularly wary of relying solely on medical staff to make these decisions. The University Hospitals Case Medical Center recruits community members from its Ethics Committee to (...) serve on a subcommittee, the Patients Without Proxies (PWP) Committee, which works with medical staff during the decision-making process for these patients. Generally, the community members go to the bedside to observe patients. This article looks at how those unused to observing hospitalized patients who are sick and/or dying are affected, comparing them to mock jurors in a research study who are exposed to graphic photographs related to a fabricated crime scene. Judgments made by the mock jurors are affected by viewing such images. The personal experience of witnessing unfamiliar and shocking scenes affects their subsequent judgments. While it may be difficult to tease out whether observing patients causes PWP members to be benefited or harmed, they are affected by what they see. If a variety of perspectives is desirable to reduce possible bias or error, this article argues that at least one community member should refrain from seeing the patient in order to add a different and valuable voice to the decision-making process. Members of the subcommittee base their judgments on the various kinds of information available. Sometimes the things they see, hear, or feel may affect them particularly deeply, and affect their judgments as well. In this article I explore the idea that something like this may be happening in a particular kind of clinical ethics case consultation. (shrink)

The present work proposes a reading about the text “The Narrator ” written in 1936, by Walter Benjamin, a commissioned text where he deals with the Art of Narrating and how its conceptual bias innovates/clarifies the modern view on this form of knowledge. We will show the main ideas contained in the author's work, through his reading, and seek at the end a formulation of a critical hermeneutic thought constant in the work. It is not a matter of giving new (...) foundations, concepts or clarifications contained in the work, but purely analyzing what the author proposed. (shrink)

This essay examines the symbolic significance of blood in the twentieth century and its role in determining the composition of a national community along racial lines. By drawing parallels between Nazi notions of blood and racial purity and historically contemporaneous U.S. policies regarding blood and blood products, Polsky reveals a disturbing proximity in discourse and policy. While the Nazis attempted to locate Jewish racial essence and inferiority in blood and instituted eugenic measures and laws forbidding racial admixture, similar policies existed (...) in the U.S. based on the so-called one drop rule that systematically discriminated against African Americans. (shrink)

Denunciations of child sexual abuse in the sport context have been increasing in the last decades. Studies estimate that between 14 and 29% of athletes have been victim of at least one form of sexual violence in sport before the age of 18. However, studies suggest that many do not disclose their experience of CSA during childhood. This finding is alarming since studies have shown that the healing process usually starts with disclosure. Moreover, little is known about the healing process (...) of CSA experienced in the sport context. The aim of the study is to present a single case study of a CSA in sport to better understand the global experience over time from the perspective of the athlete. A narrative inquiry approach was adopted. Three non-structured interviews were conducted with the participant. Three pathways in the survivor journey have been identified through inductive thematic analysis: pathway to understanding, pathway to disclosure, and pathway to healing. These pathways represent distinct processes but are intertwined as they are dynamic and iterative. Indeed, the survivor explained how she had been, and is still, going back and forth between them. Results are consistent with those found in the literature on CSA in the general population. It suggests that theoretical models of CSA in the general population could be applied to CSA in sport. Practical implications include a need for education and clearer boundaries in the coach-athlete relationship. Sport stakeholders also need to be better equipped to recognize the signs of sexual violence in sport. Our results indicate that qualitative research could be a potential avenue to help victims heal from CSA. It gives them the chance to talk about and make sense of their abuse in a safe space. Finally, our results demonstrate the importance of reviewing the current justice system for victims. It should be based on a trauma-informed approach that places the victim at the center of the judicial process. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced significant disruptions and challenges to the learning environment for many post-secondary students with many shifting entirely to remote online learning. Barriers to academic success already experienced in traditional face-to-face classes may be compounded in the online environment and exacerbated by stressors related to the pandemic. In 2020–2021, post-secondary institutions were faced with the reality of rolling out fully online instruction with limited access to resources for assisting students in this transition. Instructional interventions that target students’ ability (...) to self-regulate their learning have been shown to improve academic performance and self-regulated learning competencies have also been found to mediate the effect of SRL interventions on higher education. However, few studies have examined the efficacy of fully online SRL intervention on mitigating the impact of psychological distress and academic challenges on academic success. This study examined the moderating roles of self-regulatory practices and SRL intervention in buffering the influence of COVID-related psychological distress and academic challenges on academic outcomes and academic challenges) in a Canadian sample of undergraduate students. We found levels of metacognitive and motivational challenges fully mediated the impact of COVID distress on GPA, SRL adapting practices moderated the impact of metacognitive challenges on GPA, and semester-long SRL intervention buffered the impact of COVID distress on academic challenges and resulted in lower levels of social-emotional, cognitive, and metacognitive challenges for first year undergraduate students. (shrink)

Criminalizing arson is both easy and hard. On the substantive merits, the conduct of damaging property by fire uncontroversially warrants criminal sanction. Indeed, punishment for such conduct is overdetermined, as the conduct threatens multiple harms of concern to the criminal law: both damage to property and injury to people. Yet the same multiplicity of harms or threats that makes it easy to criminalize arson (in the sense of deciding to proscribe the underlying behavior) also makes it hard to criminalize arson (...) (in the sense of formulating the offense(s) that will address that behavior). This article asks whether adopting one or more arson offenses is the best way for criminal law to address the conduct in question, or whether that conduct is more properly conceptualized, criminalized, and punished as multiple distinct offenses. (shrink)

Empathy is widely touted as a springboard for social change. Within the academy, ‘identification’ is often used to promote the social value of literary and cultural studies. But to what degree have scholars, in seeking to defend the value of literary and cultural studies, conceived the act of reading in problematic ways? ‘An Ethics of Reading’ argues that adopting a Lacanian paradigm of self (reader) and text (other) to discuss the act of textual interpretation reduces a complex event involving multiple (...) actors to a simple dualism, while ineluctably consigning any act of interpretation to simple projection. Turning instead to psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche’s concept of the enigmatic signifier, this article rethinks the relation between reader and cultural text – reconceiving the act of interpretation by situating it within a dynamic of transference, as opposed to projection. When conceived via this Laplanchian framework, reading becomes not only an effective path to cognition and knowledge, but a radical means of subjective transformation. (shrink)

A new, provocative study of the ethical, political, and social meanings of the everyday voice. Utilising the framework of feminist philosophy, authors Ann J. Cahill and Christine Hamel approach the phenomenon of voice as a lived, sonorous and embodied experience marked by the social structures that surround it, including systemic forms of injustice such as ableism, sexism, racism, and classism. By developing novel theoretical constructs such as "intervocality" and "respiratory responsibility," Cahill and Hamel cut through the static between (...) theory and praxis and put forward exciting theories on how human vocal sound can perpetuate -- and challenge -- persistent inequalities. Sounding Bodies presents a powerful model of how the seemingly disparate disciplines of philosophy and voice/speech training can, in conversation with each other, generate illuminating insights about our vocal lives and identities. (shrink)

This article returns to a philosophical conundrum that has troubled feminist theory since the topic of sexual violence has been taken seriously, what I call the problem of the “heteronormative sexual continuum”: how sexual assault and hegemonic heterosex are conceptually and politically related. I continue my response to the work of Nicola Gavey, who has argued for the existence of a “gray area” of sexual interactions that are ethically questionable without rising to the category of sexual assault, but whose analysis (...) did not explicitly articulate what these two categories share or what distinguishes them from each other. After summarizing Gavey's position, I summarize my previous articulation of the common ground between instances of sexual assault and examples of sexual interactions in the “gray area.” I then develop a theoretical account of how the two categories differ, arguing that the victim's agency plays different roles in the two types of interactions. Both the fact of that distinction—that we are capable of providing a philosophical account of the difference between sexual interactions that fall into the gray area and those that constitute sexual assault—and its particular content are crucial for the development of a tenable feminist sexual ethics. (shrink)

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

In response to Gilbert Meilaender 's innovative interpretation of Augustine and of Roman Catholic teaching, the author suggests that Meilaender attributes to Augustine a more positive view of sexual pleasure than the texts will support, that modern Roman Catholic teaching suggests that love should have priority over procreation as a meaning of sex; and that the moral logic of Meilaender's argument does not require a rejection of all reproductive technologies. Nonetheless, the author agrees that a more critical attitude should be (...) adopted toward the reasons for which technologically assisted reproduction is promoted and undertaken, as well as toward its social impact. (shrink)

In the clinical setting, not enough attention is paid to the role that emotion plays. It is at worst ignored or avoided, isolating those who are suffering, at best treated as something to help another to endure. This is the result, in part, of an impoverished idea that views emotion as mere feelings. However, emotions are not just feelings, they are cognitive. If we look beneath the surface, emotions can provide information about values and beliefs, some of which may be (...) false or unreasonable. When they are motivating decisions that seriously affect the lives of others, there is a moral obligation to ferret them out and correct or deal with them. Attention needs to be paid to the emotions of healthcare providers as well as to the emotions of patients and their loved ones, and more done to train healthcare providers to deal effectively and productively with emotion – their own and others’. A son tearfully requests everything be done for his dying father. He fears limiting treatment means his father will be ignored. A physician orders another course of chemotherapy because she cannot bear for this patient to die. The patient, fearing he will painfully suffocate to death, agrees. Paying attention to emotions and bringing to light the beliefs and values behind them can only enhance the care and consideration of all involved. (shrink)

Several discourses about theology, church, and politics are occurring among Christian theologians in the United States. One influential strand centers on the communitarian theology of Stanley Hauerwas, who calls on Christians to witness faithfully against liberalism in general and war in particular. Jeffrey Stout, in his widely discussed "Democracy and Tradition" (2004), responds that religious people ought precisely to endorse those democratic and liberal American traditions that join religious and secular counterparts to battle injustice. Hauerwas, Stout, and many of their (...) interlocutors envision liberal U.S. culture as the context of Christian social ethics. The ensuing debate rarely incorporates Catholic scholars, feminist scholars, scholars of color, or international and liberationist voices. Their inclusion could enhance an understanding of the role of the church in society, and support a common morality in the face of global pluralism. More importantly, it could broaden the scope of discourse on religion and politics to envision global Christian social ethics. (shrink)

A definitive theory for ethical decision making in nursing is still only conjecture. The literature confirms that there have been numerous examinations of ethical decision making in nursing, with most proposing either the justice or the care orientation, or a combination of both. In the absence of a definitive theory, this exploratory work sets out, via grounded theory, to shed some light on the methods used every day by nurses to make ethical decisions in the clinical area. The data show (...) that some factors, such as doctors, colleagues and the organization, profoundly influence ethical decision making. The informants used both care and justice to formulate decisions, which is known as the combined approach. As a result of these findings, this article concludes with tentative suggestions and recommendations for practice. (shrink)

This book explores the question of what it means to be a human being through sustained and original analyses of three important philosophical topics: relativism, skepticism, and naturalism in the social sciences. Kevin Cahill's approach involves an original employment of historical and ethnographic material that is both conceptual and empirical in order to address relevant philosophical issues. Specifically, while Cahill avoids interpretative debates, he develops an approach to philosophical critique based on Cora Diamond's and James Conant's work on (...) the early Wittgenstein. This makes possible the use of a concept of culture that avoids the dogmatism that not only typifies traditional metaphysics but also frequently mars arguments from ordinary language or phenomenology. This is especially crucial for the third part of the book, which involves a cultural-historical critique of the ontology of the self in Stanley Cavell's work on skepticism. In pursuing this strategy, the book also mounts a novel and timely defense of the interpretivist tradition in the philosophy of the social sciences. Towards a Philosophical Anthropology of Culture will be of interest to researchers working on the philosophy of the social sciences, Wittgenstein, and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

This paper explores the conditions under which feminine beautification constitutes a feminist practice. Distinguishing between the process and product of beautification allows us to isolate those aesthetic, interapos;Subjective, and embodied elements that empower rather than disempower women. The empowering characteristics of beautification, however, are difficult and perhaps impossible to represent in a sexist context; therefore, while beautifying may be a positive experience for women, being viewed as a beautified object in current Western society is almost always opposed to women's equality (...) and autonomy. (shrink)

Kevin M. Cahill reclaims one of Ludwig Wittgenstein's most passionately pursued endeavors: to reawaken a sense of wonder around human life and language and its mysterious place in the world. Following the philosopher's spiritual and cultural criticism and tying it more tightly to the overall evolution of his thought, Cahill frames an original interpretation of Wittgenstein's engagement with Western metaphysics and modernity, better contextualizing the force of his work. Cahill synthesizes several approaches to Wittgenstein's life and thought. (...) He stresses the nontheoretical aspirations of the philosopher's early and later writings, combining key elements from the so-called resolute readings of the _Tractatus_ with the "therapeutic" readings of _Philosophical Investigations_. Cahill shows how continuity in Wittgenstein's cultural and spiritual concerns informed if not guided his work between these texts, and in his reading of the _Tractatus_, Cahill identifies surprising affinities with Martin Heidegger's _Being and Time_--a text rarely associated with Wittgenstein's early formulations. In his effort to recapture wonder, Wittgenstein both avoided and undermined traditional philosophy's reliance on theory. As Cahill relates the steps of this bold endeavor, he forms his own innovative, analytical methods, joining historicist and contextualist approaches to text-based, immanent readings. The result is an original, sustained examination of Wittgenstein's thought. (shrink)

Some feminist theorists have argued that emphasizing women's self-defense mistakenly emphasizes women's behavior and choices rather than male aggression as a cause of sexual violence. I argue here that such critiques of self-defense are misguided, and do not sufficiently take into account the ways in which feminist self-defense courses can constitute embodied transformations of the meanings of femininity and rape. While certainly not sufficient to counter a rape culture by themselves, self-defense courses should remain a crucial element in feminist anti-rape (...) activism. (shrink)