Most research ethics literature on vulnerability focuses on the vulnerability of individuals and populations defined by the potential vulnerability of their members (such as adults with intellectual disabilities or prisoners). However, research involving human participants does not always take the individual as the unit of analysis: political experiments may apply an intervention to a community as a whole. This paper argues that community-level vulnerability is not reducible to the sum of the vulnerabilities of community members, and that there is thus (...) a need to consider vulnerability at the community level of analysis when analyzing the ethical implications of political field experiments. I first review ethical literature on community intervention research and the emerging scholarship on the ethics of political field experiments. I then highlight key accounts of the concept of vulnerability at an individual level. Drawing on Whitfield’s concept of “collective wrongs,” I argue that communities can be negatively affected in ways that are distinct from harms to individual community members, and that variation in susceptibility to such wrongs at the community level is largely consistent with existing conceptualizations of vulnerability. I suggest questions that researchers should consider when designing political field experiments to ensure that community-level vulnerabilities are taken into account. (shrink)

Broadening access to both computational and educational resources is crit- ical to diffusing machine learning (ML) innovation. However, today, most ML resources and experts are siloed in a few countries and organizations. In this article, we describe our pedagogical approach to increasing access to applied ML through a massive open online course (MOOC) on Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML). We suggest that TinyML, applied ML on resource-constrained embedded devices, is an attractive means to widen access because TinyML leverages low-cost and globally (...) accessible hardware and encourages the development of complete, self-contained applications, from data collection to deployment. To this end, a collaboration between academia and industry produced a four part MOOC that provides application-oriented instruction on how to develop solutions using TinyML. The series is openly available on the edX MOOC platform, has no prerequisites beyond basic programming, and is designed for global learners from a variety of backgrounds. It introduces real-world applications, ML algorithms, data-set engineering, and the ethi- cal considerations of these technologies through hands-on programming and deployment of TinyML applications in both the cloud and on their own microcontrollers. To facili- tate continued learning, community building, and collaboration beyond the courses, we launched a standalone website, a forum, a chat, and an optional course-project com- petition. We also open-sourced the course materials, hoping they will inspire the next generation of ML practitioners and educators and further broaden access to cutting-edge ML technologies. (shrink)

Two-dimensional semantics is a framework that helps us better understand some of the most fundamental issues in philosophy: those having to do with the relationship between the meaning of words, the way the world is, and our knowledge of the meaning of words. This selection of new essays by some of the world's leading authorities in this field sheds fresh light both on foundational issues regarding two-dimensional semantics and on its specific applications. Contributors: Richard Breheny, Alex Byrne, David Chalmers, Martin (...) Davies, Gareth Evans, Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, Josep Maci`, Martine Nida-Rumelin, Christopher Peacocke, James Pryor, Francois Recanati, Scott Soames, Cara Spencer, Robert Stalnaker, Kai-Yee Wong, Stephen Yablo. (shrink)

Historical injustice and global inequality are basic problems embedded in territorial rights. In Global Justice and Territory Cara Nine advances a general theory of territorial rights adapting a theoretical framework from natural law theory to ground all territorial claims.

In Sharing Territories, Cara Nine defends a river model of territorial rights. On a river model, groups are assumed to be interdependent and overlapping. Drawing on natural law philosophy, Nine's theory argues for the establishment of foundational territories around geographical areas like rivers.

Does reasoning occur on the Wason selection task, or are card selections determined purely on the basis of heuristic processes? To answer this question two relevance-based theories of reasoning are compared: (1) the theory of Evans (1984, 1989; Evans & Over, 1996), which takes the heuristic viewpoint, and (2) the theory of Sperber, Cara, and Girotto (1995), which takes the reasoning viewpoint. In three experiments, the effect of removing matching cards from the selection task array is examined. (...) It is argued that the Sperber et al. theory makes clearer predictions about the results of these manipulations, which are confirmed, and that the Evans theory can only accommodate them if it allows the operation of reasoning processes. The results are also discussed in relation to Roth's (1979) account of the selection task, mental models theory, and information gain theory. (shrink)

In ‘What’s Wrong with Colonialism,’ Lea Ypi argues that the wrong of colonialism can be expressed as procedural wrongs, not as wronging territorial rights. On her view, colonial practices went wrong in two ways: they forced residents into political associations, and the terms of the political association were not established through equal and reciprocal negotiations. I argue that because Ypi’s account successfully side-lines all but essential claims to territory, her theory ends up being vulnerable to an objection it means to (...) avoid. Historical residents may be subject to unequal treatment under newly formed political associations because their historical patterns of land use are not considered to have any independent moral weight. My analysis does not rely on any appeal to property or territorial rights. Instead, I appeal to pre-existing obligations holding between residents. (shrink)

Ecological refugees are expected to make up an increasing percentage of overall refugees in the coming decades as predicted climate change related disasters will displace millions of people. In this essay, I focus on those rights ecological refugees may claim on the basis of collective self-determination. To this end, I will focus on a few specific cases that I call cases of ‘ecological refugee states’. Tuvalu, the Maldives, and to a certain extent, Bangladesh are predicted to be ecological refugee states (...) in the near future. These are states whose entire (or close to it) geographical territory is predicted to be lost to rising sea levels; the collective body of the people will itself become an ecological refugee.The question is: what may the people of an ecological refugee state legitimately claim on the basis of their right to self-determination? Should we redraw state borders to accommodate a New Tuvalu? I argue that a plausible position regarding territorial rights is that when (1) a people clearly is (or recently was) self-determining and has a legitimate claim to continue to be self-determining, and (2) the self-determination of a people is existentially threatened because the people lacks territorial rights, that (3) the people becomes a candidate for sovereign over a new territory. The result is that existing state borders may need to change to accommodate something like a New Tuvalu. To generate these results on behalf of ecological refugee states, I examine the principles of the system of territorial states. Because the system of territorial states is a system of exclusive rights over goods, especially land, it is possible that it is subject to the conditions of a Lockean proviso mechanism. This paper is dedicated mainly to adapting a version of the Lockean proviso for use in territorial rights theory. (shrink)

Do territorial rights include the right to exclude? This claim is often assumed to be true in territorial rights theory. And if this claim is justified, a state may have a prima facie right to unil...

Inside and outside of a Christian worldview, bioethicists have discussed ectopic pregnancy at some length as a maternal-fetal vital conflict. Most bioethicists agree that methotrexate and salpingostomy are low-risk, successful interventions for this life-threatening pathology, and are thus beneficent, just, and wholly acceptable. A small cohort of Christian, largely Catholic, bioethicists have reservations about methotrexate and salpingostomy, but cannot resolve their internal disputes about these because of flawed casuistry. This paper aims to settle the issue about whether methotrexate and salpingostomy (...) are acceptable within a Catholic worldview: despite the best arguments in favor of methotrexate as a moral option, it is morally unacceptable, and despite hesitation about salpingostomy related to analogies with previable delivery, it is the optimal procedure for ectopic pregnancy. (shrink)

This essay defends a strong right against displacement as part of a basic individual right to secure access to one’s home. The analysis is purposefully situated within the difficult context of climate change adaptation policies. Under increasing environmental pressures, especially regarding water security, there are weighty reasons motivating the forced displacement of persons—to safeguard water resources or prevent water-related disasters. Even in these pressing circumstances, I argue, individuals have weighty rights to secure access to their homes. I explain how the (...) home provides a functional context for conditions of autonomous agency. Being coerced from the home disrupts and subverts the conditions necessary for autonomous processes. I conclude by suggesting that the right to the home could be a foundational element of territorial rights. (shrink)

Predictive genetic testing is now routinely offered to asymptomatic adults at risk for genetic disease. However, testing of minors at risk for adult-onset conditions, where no treatment or preventive intervention exists, has evoked greater controversy and inspired a debate spanning two decades. This review aims to provide a detailed longitudinal analysis and concludes by examining the debate's current status and prospects for the future. Fifty-three relevant theoretical papers published between 1990 and December 2010 were identified, and interpretative content analysis was (...) employed to catalogue discrete arguments within these papers. Novel conclusions were drawn from this review. While the debate's first voices were raised in opposition of testing and their arguments have retained currency over many years, arguments in favour of testing, which appeared sporadically at first, have gained momentum more recently. Most arguments on both sides are testable empirical claims, so far untested, rather than abstract ethical or philosophical positions. The dispute, therein, lies not so much in whether minors should be permitted to access predictive genetic testing but whether these empirical claims on the relative benefits or harms of testing should be assessed. (shrink)

In “Modern Abstract Sacrifice in Robespierre’s Terror and Hitler’s Holocaust,” I use Hegel’s analysis of Robespierre’s Terror in the Phenomenology and Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of the Nazi Holocaust in the Dialectic of Enlightenment to identify what I term “modern abstract sacrifice” as the dominant kind of instrumental destruction that took place during these nation-building mass-sacrifices. As I show, these events relied upon a justificatory instrumental logic—a sacrificial story—even if that sacrificial story broke down or was abandoned in practice, in (...) which case the destruction became indiscriminate rather than targeted. First, I analyze Hegel’s critique of the Reign of Terror, which he sees as a product of the immediate identity of the general will and the individual will: the revolutionaries collapsed the will of all and the will of each, rendering individuality as such logically impossible. As a result, all individuals became objects of suspicion worthy of sacrifice by guillotine, for the sake of guaranteeing the triumph of the state based on reason. Next, I analyze Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of the fascist sacrifice of the Jewish people using their political-economic and pathological theories of antisemitism. Adorno and Horkheimer see fascist antisemitism as a manifestation of the logic of substitution, operative in both liberal capitalist ideology—in which the Jewish people represent the forces of capital, obsolete pre-modern tradition, and statelessness—as well as fascist ideology—in which the Jewish people represent the metaphysical forces of evil and “negativity as such.” Finally, I assert that the principal commonality between modern abstract sacrifice in the Terror and the Holocaust is the fact that the victims were all reduced to exchangeable representatives of an abstract category, in spite of the fact that their unique identities were indispensable for the ideological justification of these mass-sacrifices. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically examine an important premise in theories of global distributive justice that, despite its widespread influence, has remained largely unexamined. This is the claim that state borders are morally arbitrary with respect to a just distribution of goods. I examine two common arguments for this claim, the argument that state borders are historically unjust and therefore morally arbitrary; and the argument first made by Charles Beitz that the conditions of a fair, hypothetical social contract would not (...) include knowledge of one's location with respect to the distribution of natural resources between state borders. I argue that there are good reasons to reject both arguments. Beitz's immense contribution to international justice can be gauged by the fact that it is difficult to find a contemporary work on global justice that does not reference his arguments in Political Theory and International Relations . Although some authors find Beitz's cosmopolitan theory objectionable, no author has, to my knowledge, criticized Beitz's pivotal arguments that our placement in the distribution of natural resources is morally arbitrary. The aim of this paper is to do just that. (shrink)

This article examines theories of ocean rights based on the works of Hugo Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf. Grotius's object‐centred view uses features of the natural world to justify claims to external objects. I show that Grotius's view is inadequate, because it relies on an outdated claim that oceanic resources are sufficiently abundant for anybody to use. Further, adaptations of his view are wanting, because they either rely on arbitrary distinctions or disregard the values of cultural minorities. Pufendorf's relational view (...) constructs rights through the exercise of human will. While Pufendorf believes that agreements create rights, he also argues that property rights can be unilaterally acquired from the commons without express consent from others. The relational view is a viable alternative to the object‐centred view, because it both delimits territorial claims over the ocean to a ‘modest’ size and also respects cultural variability. A major aim of this article is to present Pufendorf's theory of territorial rights extended over oceans and to demonstrate how it is useful for assessing contemporary disputes. In the final sections, I apply the relational view to Canadian claims to the Northwest Passage, and I also sketch implications for assessing expanding claims to the seabed. (shrink)

Some time ago, John Perry argued that the content of an indexical belief, that is, a belief expressible with a sentence containing an indexical or demonstrative, cannot be a proposition. I consider several of his arguments for this view, and show that they can be extended to show that belief expressible with other non-indexical expressions such as natural kind terms and proper names presents the very same problem for the traditional picture. I then suggest that if indexical belief has any (...) special status, this is not because it has a special kind of content, but rather because action is impossible if agents do not have indexical belief. (shrink)

Emotions situate actors in relationships and shape their social interactions. Culture defines both the qualities of individual identity and the constitution of social groups with distinctive values and practices. Emotions, then, are necessarily experienced and acted upon in culturally inflected forms that define not only the conventions of their articulation through individual and collective action, but also the very words that name them. This article develops theoretical arguments to support these claims and illustrates their application in a description of differing (...) emotional repertoires, and their consequences, in Aotearoa New Zealand. The effects of resentment and shame in an ethnic politics of rights and antidiscrimination law demonstrate that context is central to a nuanced understanding of how law and emotions connect in the practicalities of enforcing the protections of anti-discrimination law. (shrink)

Cara Nine on how to decide where borders should be drawn.

This paper investigates how principals can be supported in their work as teacher leaders. My focus is on how principals can help teachers respond ethically to classroom challenges. I argue that in aiding teachers, school leaders themselves need support and ongoing development. I turn to the care of the self to conceptually explore ethical self-cultivation. I then argue that a practice, Descriptive Inquiry, serves as a way for principals to care for themselves. To make this argument, I draw on a (...) qualitative study of four long-term elementary school principals. (shrink)

Objective Standards of care regarding obstetric management of life-threatening anomalies are not defined. It is hypothesised that physicians' management of these pregnancies is variable and influenced by demographic factors. Design A questionnaire was mailed to members of the Society of Maternal–Fetal Medicine with valid US addresses assessing obstetric management of both ‘uniformly lethal’ (eg, anencephaly, renal agenesis) and ‘uniformly severe, commonly lethal’ (eg, trisomy 13 and 18) anomalies. Respondents were asked to answer as if not limited by state/institutional restrictions. Fisher's (...) exact or χ2 tests were used as appropriate and correction made for multiple comparisons in analyses that were not prespecified. Results The response rate was 36% (732/2038). Nearly 100% of respondents discuss termination for both uniformly and commonly lethal anomalies. In continuing pregnancies, with patient request for obstetric non-intervention 99% of providers would comply for either uniformly or commonly lethal anomalies. The majority ‘encourage’ such management, but some were non-directive or discouraged this management. In continuing pregnancies, with patient request for full obstetric intervention the majority of respondents was willing to comply for both uniformly (71%) and commonly (82%) lethal anomalies. While most practitioners ‘discouraged’ full intervention, some were non-directive or encouraged this management. Demographics and severity of anomaly influenced counselling. Conclusion Discrepancies exist regarding the management of life-threatening fetal anomalies. Patients may be offered different options based on practitioner demographics. The majority of physicians comply with patient wishes. Differences were noted when comparing the management of lethal with that of severe commonly lethal anomalies, suggesting that practitioners make a distinction when counselling patients. (shrink)

Educational Theory, Volume 71, Issue 3, Page 311-330, June 2021.

In response to the abundance of parenting literature and a contemporary emphasis on expertise, recent scholars have suggested that how we parent should be determined by values and a family’s particular needs, a combination often referred to as practical wisdom. In this article, I build on previous calls for an ethical approach to being a parent. I argue that being able to share and cultivate one’s unique personality and have one’s aptitudes and interests recognized is a key condition of living (...) well and that parents play an important role in helping their children know and realize their gifts. I put forth an exercise for attending to children, the descriptive review of the child. In doing so, I first describe this practice, illustrate it, and then explain how it can help one live well as a parent. (shrink)

A methodology for using philosophy to guide teaching preparation and practice. In Teaching from an Ethical Center, Cara E. Furman proposes a process for bringing philosophical inquiry into teacher education and adopting it as a centering tool to enrich teaching practice and help teachers act justly. Under Furman's thoughtful guidance, both experienced and preservice teachers will find that engagement with philosophy can be a useful means of clarifying for themselves the educational ethics, values, and pedagogy that guide their work. (...) Using firsthand accounts, recommended resources, and thought exercises, Furman prompts readers to explore the many benefits for both educators and their students of the act of reading and making sense of philosophical texts and thinking philosophically through daily dilemmas. Furman encourages teachers to engage in philosophical reflection as part of their professional preparation as well as their in-classroom practice. She illustrates how the focus on core values that emerges from this practice can be applied to everyday teaching dilemmas such as student behavior concerns and conflict management. Offering tips for adapting activities to different audiences, she shows how student participation in such inquiry supports hermeneutics, cultivates student voice, and helps build a culture of trust and interdependence through classroom collaboration. Filled with practical wisdom, this insightful work advances philosophical inquiry as a foundation for an inclusive education. Furman's tools and methods offer continuous opportunities for reflection and affirmation, enhancing educators' ability to adapt to new challenges and, when necessary, to resist. (shrink)

Originally published in 1982, this was an extensive and up-to-date review of research into the psychology of deductive reasoning, Jonathan Evans presents an alternative theoretical framework to the rationalist approach which had dominated much of the published work in this field at the time. The review falls into three sections. The first is concerned with elementary reasoning tasks, in which response latency is the prime measure of interest. The second and third sections are concerned with syllogistic and propositional reasoning (...) respectively, in which interest has focused on the explanation of frequently observed logical errors. In an extended discussion it is argued that reasoning processes are content specific, and give little indication of the operation of any underlying system of logical competence. Finally, a dual process theory of reasoning, with broad implications and connections with other fields of psychology, is elaborated and assessed in the light of recent evidence. (shrink)

This essay examines the most recent justifications for a people's exclusive right to resources as part of a territorial right. Divided into eight parts, the discussion covers contemporary philosophical discussion regarding: the conception of natural resources, the conception of resource rights, the general form of arguments supporting resource rights, arguments from self-determination, objections to arguments from self-determination, arguments from residence, arguments from improvement, and new directions for research in the future.

The Russellian approach to the semantics of attitude ascriptions faces a problem in explaining the robust speaker intuitions that it does not predict. A familiar response to the problem is to claim that utterances of attitude ascriptions may differ in their Gricean conversational implicatures. I argue that the appeal to Grice is ad hoc. First, we find that speakers do not typically judge an utterance false merely because it implicates something false. The apparent cancellability of the putative implicatures is irrelevant, (...) since cancellability does not indicate conversational implicature. Finally, the appeal assumes, implausibly, that ordinary speakers generally subscribe to a particular philosophical theory about belief. (shrink)

This is the story of a class of painters, puppeteers, puppy trainers, poets, and so much more. It is the story of how a community of first- and second-grade students, wonderful parents and colleagues, and a very wise principal helped me to teach so that each child could pursue a broad range of passions. It is a story about how my students, in recognizing one another’s passions, created a community where everyone, including the teacher, was celebrated.It is a story that (...) I tell with a joy tinged with sadness. The joy comes from my fondness for the memory as well as a conviction that my teaching that year created an experience that honored my students. The sadness comes from the fact that I tell this story from the.. (shrink)

This first-of-its-kind national survey of 485 psychiatrists in nine states and the District of Columbia finds substantial evidence of clinicians being uninformed, misinformed, and misinforming patients of their gun rights regarding involuntary commitments and voluntary inpatient admissions. A significant percentage of psychiatrists did not understand that an involuntary civil commitment triggered the loss of gun rights, and the majority of psychiatrists in states with prohibitors on voluntary admissions and emergency holds were unaware that patients would lose gun rights upon voluntary (...) admission or temporary commitment. Moreover, the survey found evidence that psychiatrists may use gun rights to negotiate “voluntary” commitments with patients: 15.9% of respondents reported telling patients they could preserve their gun rights by permitting themselves to be voluntarily admitted for treatment, in lieu of being involuntarily committed. The results raise questions of whether psychiatrists obtained full informed consent for voluntary patient admissions, and suggest that some medical providers in states with voluntary admission prohibitor laws may unwittingly deprive their patients of a constitutional right. The study calls into question the fairness of state prohibitor laws as policy, and — at minimum — indicates an urgent need for psychiatrist training on their state gun laws. (shrink)

Since we explain behavior by ascribing intentional states to the agent, many philosophers have assumed that some guiding principle of folk psychology like [Intentional States and Actions] must be true. [Intentional States and Actions]: If A and B are different actions, then the agents performing them must differ in their intentional states at the time they are performed. Recent results in the physiology of vision present a prima facie problem for this principle. These results show that some visual information that (...) guides spatial manipulation and fine motor control is unavailable for verbal report. Plausibly, this information is not consciously available to the agent, and as such, not available to inform the content of intentional states. Thus, it is hard to see how every difference in action is subject to intentional explanation, as [Intentional States and Actions] requires. I articulate the prima facie problem and argue that the most plausible solution requires us to reject [Intentional States and Actions]. (shrink)

As ethical agents, teachers regularly must decide whether compliance to rules and norms is in the best interest of their students. Yet, teachers in the United States are educated to be passively obedient. In this paper, I argue that part of pre-service teacher education ought to learn ways of resisting. I describe one approach to verbal resistance, what Michel Foucault calls Truth-Telling. Building on a qualitative self-study with pre-service teachers, I explain how a form of team-teaching called Interruptions can promote (...) Truth-Telling. (shrink)

How do we teach for human dignity in a context where life is, generally speaking, not treated as precious? How do we carve spaces for humanity amidst inhumane contexts? In this paper, five experienced teachers share how they work from the cracks to expand spaces for human dignity in their schools. They write and act as teacher-philosophers, dually considering it means to teach for human dignity and practically speaking how it can be done.

Disability scholars have critiqued medical models that pathologize disability as an individual flaw that needs treatment, rehabilitation, and cure, favoring instead a social-constructionist approach that likens disability to other identity categories such as gender, race, class, and sexuality. However, the emphasis on social constructionism has left chronic illness and pain largely untheorized. This article argues that feminist disability studies must attend to the common, chronic gynecological condition endometriosis when theorizing pain. Endo is particularly important for FDS analysis because the highly (...) feminized and sexualized nature of endo pain is a major source of disability. Because medical treatments of endo enhance fertility rather than provide pain relief, those with endo must not only have access to medical services to manage their pain, but also demand better medical management of their pain as well as disability accommodations for their pain. Thus, I propose a pain-centric model of disability that politicizes pain through social-constructionist and medical models of disability by attending to the lived experiences of pain. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith:A Call to Action from a Physician and EthicistCara BuskmillerIntroductionDefinitionsBefore proceeding to a discussion of extramarital contraception, it is relevant to lay a foundation of definitions and limitations of this essay. Here, "sex" and "sexual act" will refer to acts of penile–vaginal intercourse and acts meant to lead to such intercourse, respectively. Other acts which are rightly called "sexual" are not relevant to this (...) essay, as the focus here is on encounters that could result in fertilization.The traditional natural law theory with its analysis of object, intention, and circumstances is at play in this essay, with a hylomorphic understanding of nature and ethics. In this understanding of ethics, the names of many acts include not only an object but an intention and circumstances (e.g., murder specifies an illegal type of killing with premeditation). Likewise, "contraception" here refers to the use of any drug or device which temporarily lowers fertility (object), to prevent fertilization (intention) due to presumed-fertile sex (circumstance). Such drugs or devices are called "contraceptives" in this essay. In this essay, "contraception" is not committed solely by intending to avoid fertilization, so acts such as trying to avoid fertilization by timing sex during infertile parts of a menstrual cycle are not contraception, and the pastoral term "contraceptive mindset" does not apply. "Contraception" is also not solely defined by the use of particular medical products, since the intention to avoid fertilization is part of the definition in this essay. Thus, [End Page 1245] prescribing or taking a birth control pill for polycystic ovarian syndrome, in the words of Pope St. Paul VI in his 1968 landmark encyclical Humanae Vitae (HV), is not at all illicit, here because such treatment is not contraception, and the problems of contraception do not apply (§15)."Marriage" in this essay refers principally to sacramental matrimony, made by the consent of a baptized man and a baptized woman.1 Civil marriage, cohabitation, long-term affairs, sex in dating, short-term hookups, prostitution, and sexual assault represent a spectrum of falling away from matrimony. This essay assumes that matrimony is God's one true plan for sex, fertilization, and childrearing. This essay also makes heavy use of the Scholastic-personalist perspective of HV on the unitive and procreative dimensions of sex. As sexual relationships "fall away" from matrimony, they lose resemblance to these dimensions."Consent" is here defined as a free act in which a person agrees to do, accept, or reject something.2 Consent is an act of the will, and it may be partial or total. Only when consent is total is a person held fully responsible for his or her actions; for example, only when consent is total can a person commit a mortal sin. Consent is different from assent, which is not of the will, but of the mind.3 In this paper, sex without consent is termed "sexual assault"—the status of the act as an assault is solely determined by consent. These definitions allow for a sexual assault in which a victim withholds consent and yet does not resist an attack,4 which is different from past legal and colloquial definitions.5 This definition also allows for assault victims that have positive emotional responses to or physical arousal from an attack. These responses from a victim do not make the assault consensual or desired, [End Page 1246] and in fact make post-traumatic recovery more difficult.6 Simply put, consent is of the will, and this is not diminished by whether the body follows suit; this differs from some legal definitions of consent in canon law, where the will of the person agreeing to a contract is signified by externals, even if there was no intention to fulfill the duties of the contract.7 Consent will be central to this essay, since it helps make the spectrum of relationships that "fall away" from marriage intelligible in two sets: one with consent, and one without."Intellectual disability" in medical and ethical literature refers to a large spectrum of differences in mental and behavioral performance, but this essay is only considering intellectually disabled persons who would be unable to... (shrink)

What does it mean to teach for human dignity? Pivoting around the recently published, Descriptive Inquiry in Teacher Practice: Cultivating Practical Wisdom to Create Democratic Schools, book authors and critics with disparate backgrounds will respond to this question. In the process, they will invite readers to also respond, working together to construct further understanding. In bringing together scholars around a shared question, the review borrows from Descriptive Inquiry – the method for studying teaching described in the book. Critics: Ashley Taylor, (...) Colgate University & Vikramadity Joshi, Teachers College, Columbia, Doris Santoro, Bowdoin College, Sam Rocha, University of British Columbia, Rachel Wahl, University of Virginia. (shrink)

I love that you have rediscovered your love for toddlers! They are in my opinion the best age to work with! That’s really cool that you work part time up at [local ski resort]. I love to ski and us...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Every Patient is a Teacher—Especially the "Difficult" Ones:Caring for Patients with Borderline Personality DisorderCara ConnaughtonNo one can teach you how to work with a patient living with borderline personality disorder quite like a patient living with borderline personality disorder (BPD). The lesson [End Page E9] isn't on how to be the perfect caregiver or how to meet all the patient's needs. The lesson is to notice that the quality (...) of care and the patient's response are not always mutually dependent and that holding ourselves to impossible standards will only lead to resentment, job dissatisfaction, and potentially burnout.I had a very good teacher on this subject and her name was Sandra.1 Sandra was admitted to our hospital unit with end stage cervical cancer. She had attempted to treat her illness by using only homeopathic remedies, which hadn't abated the disease. While at the hospital, Sandra was intensely controlling over her medications as well as when and how she took them. Sandra had also been diagnosed with BPD. One symptom of her disorder manifested in staff splitting: she saw staff members as either good or bad and treated them as such—her thinking was very black and white. She would talk very badly about other nurses to the current nurse working or talk very well about her favorite nurse in a way that made me and other nurses feel that we weren't measuring up. Sandra also exhibited intense anger toward most staff and had unexpected mood swings—I didn't know what I was going to get when I walked into her room but was fairly certain it would include berating and belittling comments. This same treatment was given to most staff nurses except for one. Sandra's favorite nurse was Bonnie; Bonnie couldn't understand why the rest of the nursing staff found Sandra difficult since she was always treated very well by this patient.I dreaded coming to work to find Sandra as part of my patient assignment for the day. I knew that day would be full of cutting remarks and disappointment from Sandra, no matter how hard I tried to provide compassionate and quality care. Further, trying to meet her seemingly endless needs took away from the care that I could provide for the other patients on my assignment. I could easily spend an hour in Sandra's room doing various tasks while she expressed frustration and anger toward me—I couldn't seem to do anything right.I have cared for many "difficult" patients throughout my years as a bedside nurse—including those who were physically and verbally aggressive—but Sandra always stands out as the most "difficult" because her words and behavior cut right through me. Even the briefest interactions with Sandra left me questioning my competence as a nurse, something I hadn't experienced when caring for other "difficult" patients.A turning point in how I related to Sandra's behavior occurred one day shift when she was part of my patient assignment. Sandra had been off the unit for a treatment from before I'd even started my shift at 7 am. At 11 am, Sandra arrived back on the unit. A few minutes later, I brought her 9 am medications to her room. The medications were technically late, but of course, it would have been impossible for me to bring them to her on time as she wasn't even present on the unit. She said angrily, "These are late! Bonnie never brings my medications late!" At that moment, something switched in my mind—it wasn't me! What a relief. I had to let go of the idea that I needed to make this patient happy in order to be a good nurse. Prior to this incident, I determined how good of a job I was doing based on how happy my patient appeared with their care. I realized that a patient's satisfaction wasn't always dependent on the quality of the care I provided.All of us provided the best care that we could for Sandra. To help us do this while maintaining our own mental wellness, we rotated... (shrink)