What should authorities establish as the job of ethics committees and review boards? Two answers are: review of proposals for consistency with the duly established and applicable code and review of proposals for ethical acceptability. The present paper argues that these two jobs come apart in principle and in practice. On grounds of practicality, publicity and separation of powers, it argues that the relevant authorities do better to establish code-consistency review and not ethics-consistency review. It also rebuts bad code and (...) independence arguments for the opposite view. It then argues that authorities at present variously specify both code-consistency and ethics-consistency jobs, but most are also unclear on this issue. The paper then argues that they should reform the job of review boards and ethics committees, by clearly establishing code-consistency review and disestablishing ethics-consistency review, and through related reform of the basic orientation, focus, name, and expertise profile of these bodies and their actions. (shrink)

The 2021 Gifford Lectures by Oliver O'Donovan evaluate the state of ethics as a discipline and its relationship to theology.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.3 (2002) 244-265 [Access article in PDF] Community, Assimilation, and the Unfamiliar Tim Donovan Fellowship We are five friends, one day we came out of the house one after the other, first one came and placed himself beside the gate, then the second came, or rather he glided through the gate like a little ball of quicksilver, and placed himself near the first one, and (...) then came the third, then the fourth, then the fifth. Finally we all stood in a row. People began to notice us, they pointed at us and said: "Those five just came out of that house." Since then we have been living together; it would be a peaceful life if it weren't for the sixth one continually trying to interfere. He doesn't do us any harm, but he annoys us, and that is harm enough; why does he intrude where he is not wanted? We don't know him and don't want him to join us. There was a time, of course, when the five of us did not know one another, either; and it could be said that we still don't know one another, but what is possible and can be tolerated by the five of us is not possible and cannot be tolerated with the sixth one. In any case, we are five and don't want to be six. And what is the point of this continual being together anyhow? It is also pointless for the five of us, but here we are together; a new combination, however, we do not want, just because of our experiences. But how is one to make this clear to the sixth one? Long explanations would almost amount to accepting him in our circle, so we prefer not to explain and not to accept him. No matter how he pouts his lips, we push him away with our elbows, but however much we push him away, back he comes. — Franz Kafka 1. I want to introduce this essay on Edmund Spenser's early modern dialogue View of the Present State of Ireland with a contemporary question influenced by Franz Kafka's epigraph: What are the principles that presuppose an understanding of community? I have purposely stated the question of belonging as "an understanding" rather than "what are the principles that we presuppose as...." After all, who is this we that so easily gathers identity within the common usage? I begin with a question to maintain uncertainty, [End Page 244] which indicates a responsibility to greet the unfamiliar, all the while knowing very clearly that the concept of community naturally presumes some common measure of familiarity. Yet as Kafka's allegory implies: What presupposes the propriety of those familiar experiences we name our own?Spenser's dialogue is undoubtedly challenging, a challenge that has drawn an enormous amount of recent critical analysis from literary critics and historians. Still, a general difficulty persists. Michael Donnelly summarizes the difficulty quite well when he notes that the View is quite "anomalous in the Spenserian oeuvre," a rather strange dialogue that seems uncharacteristic of the poet's humanist image (1). The challenges certainly begin with the troubling difficulties of an argument that concludes with the stark political necessities of enforced famine, massive relocation, and ethnic cleansing. Furthermore, the anxious burden of justifying this dire program expresses itself in a tone that would be thought intemperate even by many of Spenser's contemporaries (McCabe, 116). More important than the dialogue's dire tone of determination, there is a continued resonance of enforced cultural assimilation and genocide that haunts our contemporary world forewarned by arguments of pathology and apartheid. However, a glance at recent political news would indicate that these forewarnings are repeatedly ignored. I believe the challenge that the View evokes dwells in the traditional lineage of the concept of community. Thus, we cannot so easily dismiss Spenser's dialogue as merely an early modern problem; nor can we dismiss it as another diatribe in the long-standing tradition of racial screeds. The political problems that the dialogue engages foreshadow current... (shrink)

This article brings the theological political theory of Oliver O’Donovan to bear on the issue of multiculturalism. O’Donovan’s work provides resources for understanding the dynamics involved in debates over multiculturalism more deeply, and this discussion in turn highlights the central features of O’Donovan’s political theory. O’Donovan’s understanding of government as involving a necessary tension between the requirements of justice and the possibilities afforded by a community’s tradition allows us to properly appreciate the challenge raised by the (...) demand to recognise minority cultures, without abandoning the obligation to do so. This further highlights that the challenge of multiculturalism is first and foremost a social challenge, which can only meaningfully be met through communication. (shrink)

Running throughout the work of Oliver O’Donovan is a discussion of the nature of authority, and its relation to reality, and to freedom. While holding fast to the maxim that authority is the correlate of freedom, O’Donovan’s understanding of authority moves, as a result of his engagement with the nature of political authority, to emphasise the idea of social mediation. This leads, in the most recent works, to a description of authority as an event in which reality is (...) disclosed. Arguably, this formal account does not adequately distinguish the element of practical direction within authority, meaning that it may struggle to explain some ways in which we speak about authority’s presence, and its misuse. However, there may be resources for making this distinction within O’Donovan’s understanding of judgment as an act of moral discrimination with a twofold form. O’Donovan’s is an elegant and economical account of authority, promising to provide a simple analysis that encompasses the peculiarities of authority and illuminates a wide range of phenomena. (shrink)

David Errington brings the Book of Proverbs into discussion with two significant accounts of the nature and foundation of practical reason in Christian ethics: Thomas Aquinas and Oliver O'Donovan. Aiming to set out a coherent account of the structure of Christian moral reasoning, this book provides the first scholarly engagement with Oliver O'Donovan's moral theology. Errington argues that the way the Book of Proverbs conceives of wisdom presents an important challenge to the way practical reason has been understood (...) in the Western theological and philosophical tradition, and that instead a perfection of speculative knowledge, wisdom in the Book of Proverbs is a practical knowledge of how to act well, grounded in the reality of the world God has made. (shrink)

It is generally unquestioned that human subjects research review boards should assess the ethical acceptability of protocols. It says so right on the tin, after all: they are explicitly called research ethics committees in the UK. But it is precisely those sorts of unchallenged assumptions that should, from time to time, be assessed and critiqued, in case they are in fact unfounded. John Stuart Mill's objection to suppressers of dissent is instructive here: “If the opinion is right, they are deprived (...) of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error”.1 Andrew Moore and Andrew Donnelly's compelling article, “The job of ‘ethics committees’”, is just this sort of challenge to conventional wisdom, a rejection of the notion that review boards should be considering ethical matters at all.2 If true, we should be substantially reforming our research ethics policies. And if false, rebuttals would help strengthen and ground the otherwise unquestioned assumption of the role of ethics committees. As it happens, I will argue that their critiques fall into the second category. While mistaken, they present a valuable opportunity to clarify the role of ethics committees and their relationship to relevant codes. In particular, I will defend a hybrid account where codes have strict primacy, but leave significant room for review boards …. (shrink)

In their article, “The job of ‘ethics committees’”, Andrew Moore and Andrew Donnelly argue that current guidance documents provide that institutional research review committees ) perform two different and distinct functions, namely, a regulative review and an ethical review. They argue for separating those functions and for eliminating the ethics review role from IRBs. Instead, they want IRBs to focus exclusively on determining whether research proposals conform to governing regulations. In their argument, Moore and Donnelly correctly (...) note that regulatory requirements and ethical requirements can conflict. That point is correct, but hardly surprising. After all, regulations are general and the research proposals are specific, so an individual proposal may not conform to the general formulation of the rule and yet be consistent with ethics. Thus, a rule may generally be regarded as expressing a relevant moral consideration while providing a conclusion that does not appropriately reflect an ethical determination in the specific case. This inconsistency need not amount to what Moore and Donelly characterise as a ‘repellent’ or an ‘unconscionable’ review decision. Moore and Donnelly are also concerned that IRB decisions may differ from each other in their review of the same proposal. Again, they are correct in recognising that such inconsistent outcomes would be less likely if IRBs were to focus exclusively on whether proposals conformed to the regulations. That said, I reach the opposite conclusion. As I see it, IRBs present us with a good example of when the possibility of inconsistency is a relatively small consideration in comparison to the important values that are served by IRBs considering their protocol reviews in light of ethics and conforming to regulations. Allow me to explain. The authors and endorsers of research ethics …. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Principles and Theory in BioethicsPat Milmoe McCarrick (bio)The following citations were selected from BIOETHICSLINE, the online database prepared at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics for the National Library of Medicine's MEDLARS system. Searching the keywords autonomy, beneficence, casuistry, justice, and virtues, as well as the text word principlism produced more than 400 citations. Only the citations concerned with theory and principle in the practice of bioethics are included here—e.g., (...) works about justice in resource allocation have been deleted.Arkes, Hadley V. When Bungling Practice Is Joined to Absurd Theory: Doctors, Philosophers, and the Right to Die. In Set No Limits: A Rebuttal to Daniel Callahan's Proposal to Limit Health Care for the Elderly, ed. Robert L. Barry and Gerard V. Bradley, pp. 31-44. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.Arnason, Vilhjalmur. Towards Authentic Conversations: Authenticity in the Patient-Professional Relationship. Theoretical Medicine 15 (3): 227-42, September 1994.Arras, John D. Getting Down to Cases: The Revival of Casuistry in Bioethics. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1): 29-51, February 1991.Arras, John D. Principles and Particularity: The Role of Cases in Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 983-1014, Fall 1994.Beauchamp, Tom L. Principles and Other Emerging Paradigms in Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 955-71, Fall 1994.Beauchamp, Tom L. The Principles Approach. Hastings Center Report 23 (6): S9, November-December 1993.Beauchamp, Tom L., and Childress, [End Page 279] James F. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 752 p.Beauchamp, Tom L., and Walters, LeRoy. Ethical Theory and Bioethics. In their Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. 4th ed., pp. 1-38. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994.Beldecos, Athena, and Arnold, Robert M. Gathering Information and Casuistic Analysis. [Commentary]. Journal of Clinical Ethics 4 (3): 241-45, Fall 1993.Bole, Thomas J. The Rhetoric of Rights and Justice in Health Care. In Rights to Health Care, ed. Thomas J. Bole and William B. Bondeson, pp. 1-19. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1991.Broome, John. Fairness Versus Doing the Most Good. [Commentary]. Hastings Center Report 24 (4): 36-39, July-August 1994.Campbell, Courtney S. Gifts and Caring Duties in Medicine. In Duties to Others, ed. Courtney S. Campbell and B. Andrew Lustig, pp. 181-97. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994.Carson, Ronald A.; Callahan, Sidney; Ross, Judith Wilson; and May, William F. Spirit, Emotion, and Meaning: The Many Voices of Bioethics. Hastings Center Report 24 (3): 26-27, May-June 1994.Charlesworth, Max. Bioethics in a Liberal Society. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 172 p.Cherbas, Peter. Paradigms and Our Shrinking Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 1105-13, Fall 1994.Childress, James F. Ethical Theories, Principles, and Casuistry in Bioethics: An Interpretation and Defense of Principlism. In Religious Methods and Resources in Bioethics, ed. Paul F. Camenisch, pp. 181-201. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994.Childress, James F., and Fletcher, John C. Individualism and Community: The Contested Terrain of Respect for Autonomy. Hastings Center Report 24 (3): 34-35, May-June 1994.Clouser, K. Danner, and Gert, Bernard. A Critique of Principlism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 15 (2): 219-36, April 1990.Devettere, Raymond J. Clinical Ethics and Happiness. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 18 (1): 71-89, February 1993.DeGrazia, David. Moving Forward in Bioethical Theory: Theories, Cases, and Specified Principlism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 17 (5): 511-39, October 1992.Donnelly, William J. From Principles to Principals: The New Direction in Medical Ethics. [Commentary]. Theoretical Medicine 15 (2): 141-48, June 1994.Downie, Robin. Health Care Ethics and Casuistry. [Editorial]. Journal of Medical Ethics 18 (2): 61-62, 66, June 1992. [End Page 280]DuBose, Edwin R.; Hamel, Ronald P.; and O'Connell, Laurence J., eds. A Matter of Principles? Ferment in U.S. Bioethics. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994. 381 p.Fox, Renée C. The Entry of U.S. Bioethics into the 1990s: A Sociological Analysis, pp. 21-71.Gudorf, Christine E. A Feminist Critique of Biomedical Principlism, pp.164-81.Campbell, Courtney S. Principlism and Religion: The Law and the Prophets, pp. 182-208.Charon, Rita. Narrative Contributions to Medical Ethics: Recognition, Formulation, Interpretation, and Validation... (shrink)

Classical education includes an apprenticeship in the art of rhetoric. It also gives a central place to the study of major works of literature, philosophy, and theology. There is often, however, an assumed disconnection between the art of rhetoric and the study of great texts. This disconnection undermines students’ ability to hear the voices of these texts as conversation partners in ongoing debates. This article illustrates how historically-based rhetorical-poetic reading enables us to hear the voices in a given text and (...) to consider how they work together. The argument first outlines some modern assumptions about the relation between poetry and rhetoric. The second part explains what rhetorical-poetic reading involves when approaching John Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost. The final section focuses on the second book of Milton’s poem, establishing how layered persuasive purposes constitute the fabric of the work and what the poem reveals through its curious dramatization of demonic deliberation. (shrink)

Canada has recently published a new Clinical Practice Guideline on the diagnosis and management of brain death. It states that consent is not necessary to carry out the interventions required to make the diagnosis. A supporting article not only sets out the arguments for this but also contends that ‘UK laws similarly carve out an exception, excusing clinicians from a prima facie duty to get consent’. This is supplemented by the claim that recent court decisions in the UK similarly confirm (...) that consent is not required, referencing two judgements in _Battersbee_. We disagree with the authors’ interpretation of the law on consent in the UK and argue that there is nothing in _Battersbee_ to support the conclusion that consent to testing is not necessary. Where there is a disagreement about testing for brain death in the UK, court authorisation is required. (shrink)

There has been a noticeable thanatological turn in philosophy since the mid-1970s, and this study in analytic metaphysics is a splendid tribute to death as the muse of philosophy.

The relationship between students and higher education is seen to have become increasingly transactional. We approach the study of the student–HE relationship in a novel way, by focusing on students’ behaviour post-university, rather than on student narratives. Conceptually, the article builds on multidimensional views of student engagement and the differentiation between psychological transactional contracts – where students who achieve better academic results are more likely to donate – and relational contracts – where students donate more following engagement in social experiences. (...) Making use of longitudinal data on donation behaviour from over 50,000 alumni from an English university over two decades, we find that while students who get better degree outcomes are more likely to donate, the association between participation in social experiences and donations is much stronger. This questions prevalent transactional models of HE and underlines the limitations of purely consumerist views of the relation between students and higher education institutions, even in the marketized UK context. (shrink)

Mereological principles are sometimes used to support general claims about the structure and arrangement of objects in the world. I focus initially on one such mereological principle, the weak supplementation principle (WSP). It is not obvious that (WSP) is prescribed by ordinary thinking about parthood. Further, (WSP) is not needed for a fairly strong formal characterization of the part–whole relation. For these reasons, some arguments relying on (WSP) might be countered by simply denying (WSP). I argue more generally that there (...) is no reason to assume that one core mereology functions as a common basis for all plausible metaphysical theories. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on three issues intertwined in current debates between endurantists and perdurantists—(i) the dimension of persisting objects, (ii) whether persisting objects have timeless, or only time-relative, parts, and (iii) whether persisting objects have proper temporal parts. I argue that one standard endurantist position on the first issue is compatible with standard perdurantist positions on parthood and temporal parts. I further argue that different accounts of persistence depend on the claims about objects' dimensions and not on the (...) auxiliary claims about parthood and temporal parts. (shrink)

Non-symmetric relations like loves or between can apply to the same relata in non-equivalent ways. For example, loves may apply to Abelard and Eloise either by Abelard’s loving Eloise or by Eloise’s loving Abelard. On the standard account of relations, different applications of a relation to fixed relata are distinguished by the direction in which the relation applies to the relata. But neither Directionalism nor its most popular rival, Positionalism, offer accounts of differential application that generalize to relations of arbitrary (...) symmetry structure. Here, I develop an alternative account, Relative Positionalism, which distinguishes different applications of a relation to fixed relata in terms of the ways in which the relata are characterized relative to one another. In presenting and defending Relative Positionalism, this paper covers some of the same ground as my [2016], but avoids the latter’s algebraic approach and focuses on interpretative issues—in particular, how to make sense of relative property instantiation—that were not addressed in the earlier paper. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Alexander and Persian WomenElizabeth Donnelly CarneyPerhaps the most dominant symbol of conquest in Greek literature is that of the captive woman, the wife, the mother, the daughter of some once great warrior now slave and perhaps concubine to the man who killed him. It is the image of Andromache led away to do demeaning work for some Greek that most haunts Hector when he foresees defeat; he hopes (...) he is dead before it happens (Il. 6.450–65). As the quarrel over Chryseis and Briseis demonstrates (Il. 1.26–31, 110–85), possession of the women of your enemy both symbolizes victory and is victory. 1 The family of Alexander’s mother, the Aeacids, asserted their essential Hellenism via connection to the great saga of Troy, not only by claiming descent from Achilles, through his son Neoptolemus, but also from Andromache, the captive of Neoptolemus. 2The strong influence of the story of Troy in Greek literature has created the image of a male Greek conquering and taking captive an Asian woman. 3 By the fifth century Greeks had defined themselves as superior because they had defeated Asians, Trojans and Persians had been conflated, and by then both were characterized as mere barbarians. 4 Thus the capture of Asian women by Greeks could be understood as part of the victory of civilization over barbarism.It is not incidental that the image is primarily one of a captive woman rather than a captive child; from the point of view of the ancient [End Page 563] world, the woman is the more compelling figure. 5 More important, women, perhaps because they themselves could not generate status easily, were perceived to have axi ma (‘reputation’), 6 to carry the status of their fathers and/or husbands or sons with them, status which could then be transmitted to the male who possessed them—thus the importance of Andromache, widow of the greatest Trojan warrior.Sexual possession of these bearers of status, whether legitimated by marriage or not, was a particularly powerful symbol of victory—a kind of second victory, both sexual and military, over the males to whom the women had belonged. Victory as rape and conquest as sexual union were commonplaces of Greek literature, metaphors but more than metaphors. 7Thus, that Alexander came into control of the women of the Persian royal family and other women of the Persian elite after the battle of Issus in 333 meant both that he had achieved a real victory and that he had acquired a potent set of symbols of that victory which he could manipulate to his own ends in the varying contexts of Macedonian, Greek, and Persian audiences. However, these Persian women were or could be, thanks to another old Greek literary tradition, dangerously ambiguous symbols to the Greeks and Macedonians. This tradition insisted that Persian monarchy had lost its original toughness by the fourth century and had become overly steeped in luxury. Much of this decadence was understood as effeminacy, often blamed on the role of royal women, especially in the education of princes (e.g., Plato Laws 3.694a–696a). If anything, [End Page 564] Greek tradition exaggerated the power and influence of royal Persian women, particularly the mothers of kings. Stories of scheming and seductive queens playing succession politics abounded. 8As is now generally recognized, most of this tradition is false, 9 a product of the Hellenic inclination to conceptualize in terms of polarities and to associate two different sorts of “others,” the foreigner and the female, 10 coupled with Hellenic suspicion of the role of women in monarchy, 11 and envy of the comparatively rich Persian culture. Greeks claimed to pride themselves on their austerity and to disdain the material wealth of the Persians, but in practice proved vulnerable to it. 12 In fact, a considerable part of the appeal and motivation for warfare in general and the Graeco-Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire in particular was the acquisition of that wealth and luxury supposedly so disdained and so often associated with women. 13Whatever one believes about the ethnicity of ancient Macedonians, one cannot assume that Macedonian views were identical to those [End Page... (shrink)