The 2017 story of Charlie Gard is revisited. Upon the British High Court’s ruling in favor of the physicians that the infant should be allowed to die without the experimental treatment, the view of the public as well as the opinions of bioethicists and Catholic bishops are divided, interestingly along with a cultural line. American bioethicists and Catholic bishops tend to believe that the parents should have the final say while British/European bioethicists and Catholic bishops in general side (...) with the court’s decision. The paper explores the place of culture in bioethical reasoning between the UK/Europe and the US while claiming that cultural differences are more important than geopolitical or religious differences to understand the bioethical positions of a group. In addition, the authors introduce a decision-making program for handicapped neonates which is developed by the American Jesuit Bioethicist, Richard McCormick, and modified further by the contemporary American Jesuit Bioethicist, Peter A. Clark, in an attempt to see if the program’s normatizing categories can contribute to the culture-laden ethical discussions on Charlie’s case. However, it is admitted that the McCormick-Clark device is borne out of the American and Catholic theological context. (shrink)

Much of the commentary in the wake of the Charlie Gard litigation was aimed at apparent shortcomings of the law. These include concerns about the perceived inability of the law to consider resourcing issues, the vagueness of the best interests test and the delays and costs of having disputes about potentially life-sustaining medical treatment resolved by the courts. These concerns are perennial ones that arise in response to difficult cases. Despite their persistence, we argue that many of these (...) criticisms are unfounded. The first part of this paper sets out the basic legal framework that operates when parents seek potentially life-sustaining treatment that doctors believe is against a child’s best interests, and describes the criticisms of that framework. The second part of the paper suggests an alternative approach that would give decision-making power to parents, and remove doctors’ ability to unilaterally withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment that they regard is futile. This proposal is grounded in several values that we argue should guide these regulatory choices. We also contend that the best interests test is justifiable and since the courts show no sign of departing from it, the focus should be on how to better elucidate the underlying values driving decisions. We discuss the advantages of our proposed approach and how it would address some of the criticisms aimed at the law. Finally, we defend the current role that the judiciary plays, as an independent state-sanctioned process with a precedent-setting function. (shrink)

The case of Charlie Gard, an infant with a genetic illness whose parents sought experimental treatment in the USA, brought important debates about the moral status of parents and children to the public eye. After setting out the facts of the case, this article considers some of these debates through the lens of parental rights. Parental rights are most commonly based on the promotion of a child’s welfare; however, in Charlie’s case, promotion of Charlie’s welfare cannot (...) explain every fact of the case. Indeed, some seem most logically to extend from intrinsic parental rights, that is, parental rights that exist independent of welfare promotion. I observe that a strong claim for intrinsic parental rights can be built on arguments for genetic propriety and children’s limited personhood. Critique of these arguments suggests the scope of parental rights remains limited: property rights entail proper use; non-personhood includes only a small cohort of very young or seriously intellectually disabled children and the uniqueness of parental genetic connection is limited. Moreover, there are cogent arguments about parents’ competence to make judgements, and public interest arguments against allowing access to experimental treatment. Nevertheless, while arguments based on propriety may raise concerns about the attitude involved in envisioning children as property, I conclude that these arguments do appear to offer a prima facie case for a parental right to seek experimental treatment in certain limited circumstances. (shrink)

This was one of SCSS President Stephen M. Krason’s “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” columns that appear monthly in Crisis and The Wanderer. It discusses the tragic case of Charlie Gard, the baby who a U.K. hospital would not discharge so his parents could take him to the U.S. for experimental treatment for a rare, normally terminal DNA disorder that might have saved his life. Krason says that the case illustrated a number of dangerous current trends in (...) Western political societies: the advancement of the euthanasia/“quality of life” mindset, the suppression of parental rights by both child protective-type agencies and courts that are overly-deferential to them, runaway judicial power generally, the increasing authoritarianism of functional experts, and the unwillingness of elected political officials and leaders to come to the aid of the citizenry by standing up to them and the unelected bureaucrats and judges who protect them and more generally to uphold the traditional legal norms and principles that they are violating. (shrink)

This paper argues that Charlie Gard’s parents should have been the decision-makers about their son’s best interests and that determination of Charlie’s best interests depended on a moral decision about which horn of a profound moral dilemma to choose. Charlie’s parents chose one horn of that moral dilemma and the courts, like Charlie Gard’s doctors, chose the other horn. Contrary to the first UK court’s assertion, supported by all the higher courts that considered it, (...) that its judgement was ‘objective’, this paper argues that the judgement was not and could not be ‘objective’ in the sense of objectively correct but was instead a value judgement based on the judge’s choice of one horn of the moral dilemma. While that horn was morally justified so too was the horn chosen by the parents. The court could and should have avoided depriving the parents of their normal moral and legal right and responsibility to decide on their child’s best interests. Instead, this paper argues that the court should have acknowledged the lawfulness of both horns of the moral dilemma and added to its judgement that Charlie Gard’s doctors were not legally obliged to provide treatment that they believed to be against their patient’s best interests the additional judgement that Charlie’s parents could lawfully transfer his care to other doctors prepared to offer the infant a trial of the experimental treatment requested by his parents. (shrink)

The parents of Charlie Gard, who was born August 4, 2016, with an exceedingly rare and incurable disease called mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, fought a prolonged and heated legal battle to allow him access to experimental treatment that they hoped would prolong his life and to prevent his doctors from withdrawing life-sustaining care. Charlie's clinicians at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London believed that the brain damage Charlie had suffered as a result of frequent epileptic (...) seizures, along with many other severe disabilities, would render any innovative therapy futile, and they disagreed with his parents’ wishes to use an experimental therapy. They felt it in Charlie's best interest that he be allowed to die. A battle ensued among Charlie's parents, his doctors, and a guardian who had been appointed to represent him that drew the attention of politicians and prominent persons from all over the world. The case was much in the news over the past year, but it has also been frequently misunderstood. (shrink)

In 2017 and 2018, the English courts were asked to decide whether continued life‐sustaining treatment was in the best interests of three infants: Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans and Isaiah Haastrup. Each infant had sustained catastrophic, irrecoverable brain damage. Dignity played an important role in the best interests assessments reached by the Family division of the High Court in each case. Multiple conceptions of dignity circulate, with potentially conflicting implications for infants such as Charlie, Alfie and Isaiah. The (...) judgements do not explicate the conceptions of dignity upon which they rely. This article reconstructs the conceptions of dignity invoked in these judgements, finding that a broadly Kantian, agential conception dominates, under which human dignity requires the prospect of agency. This conception is situated within the broader body of thought on dignity, and the potentially adverse implications of applying the reconstructed conception in best interests assessments for infants with severely restricted consciousness are discussed. (shrink)

British courts have adjudicated dozens of medical futility disputes over the past 10 years. Many of these cases have involved pediatric patients. All these judgements are publicly available in searchable legal reporters. And most were covered by the print or broadcast media.1 Yet, as noted by Dressler, none of these earlier cases received even a fraction of the public or scholarly attention that Charlie Gard has received. One might assess the Gard case from two different perspectives. At (...) one level, the Gard case is not unique. It is merely the n+1 medical futility dispute decided by the British courts. Admittedly, the Gard case has a much higher profile than earlier cases. But it announced no new rules or principles. It merely focused a spotlight on an already well-established process for resolving medical futility disputes. However, from another perspective, the Gard case is distinctive in at least five ways from other medical futility cases decided by the British courts. Because these unique features illustrate the limits or weaknesses of current rules and principles, they allude to potential improvements in the dispute resolution process. The papers in this special issue offer many valuable suggestions. After identifying the five unique features of the Gard case, I focus on the most prevalent two questions. Are courts the best forum for resolving these disputes? Is the best interest standard the right test for determining the limits of surrogate decision-making authority? Because the British courts have so many publicly available judgements in medical futility cases, it is possible to identify five distinctive features in the Gard case. First, Charlie’s parents were not asking GOSH clinicians to continue treating Charlie against either their professional judgement or against their personal beliefs. Instead, Charlie’s parents wanted to transfer him to another hospital that was willing …. (shrink)

Savulescu and colleagues have provided interesting insights into how the UK public view the ‘best interests’ of children like Charlie Gard. But is best interests the right standard for evaluating these types of cases? In the USA, both clinical decisions and legal judgments tend to follow the ‘harm principle’, which holds that parental choices for their children should prevail unless their decisions subject the child to avoidable harm. The case of Charlie Gard, and others like it, (...) show how the USA and the UK have strikingly different approaches for making decisions about the treatment of severely disabled children. (shrink)

On 24 July 2017, the long-running, deeply tragic and emotionally fraught case of Charlie Gard reached its sad conclusion. Following further medical assessment of the infant, Charlie’s parents and doctors finally reached agreement that continuing medical treatment was not in Charlie’s best interests. Life support was subsequently withdrawn and Charlie died on 28 July 2017.Box 1 ### Case summary and timeline21–23 Charlie Gard was born at full term, apparently healthy, in August 2016. At (...) a few weeks of age his parents noticed early signs of muscle weakness. At 2 months of age, he was admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital with poor feeding, failure to thrive and respiratory failure. He was admitted to intensive care, where investigations led to the diagnosis of a rare severe mitochondrial disorder – infantile onset encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. The specific genetic form of MDDS in Charlie Gard had previously been reported in approximately 15 infants, with typical clinical features including early onset, rapid progression and death in infancy.24 By that point, Charlie was paralysed and unable to breathe without respiratory support. He was found to have congenital deafness, and his heart, liver and kidneys were affected by the disorder. Doctors felt that Charlie’s prognosis was extremely poor. In early 2017, Charlie’s parents identified an experimental treatment, previously used in a different form of MDDS, which they hoped might benefit Charlie. In mouse models of a myopathic form of MDDS, early supplementation with deoxypryrimidine nucleosides apparently bypasses the genetic defect and leads to a reduction in the biochemical defect and in the severity of the clinical phenotype.25 26 Doctors at GOSH initially planned to use nucleoside treatment in Charlie, but in January he developed evidence of electrical seizures, and clinicians became convinced that treatment, both continued intensive care and the requested …. (shrink)

This discussion follows a series of high profile cases involving a terminally ill child, Charlie Gard. These cases are significant as they trace the complexities that arise when parents and medical teams do not agree as well as addressing the question of whether there is a right to access experimental treatment.

This book explores how the practice of art, in particular of avant-garde art, keeps our relation to time, history and even our own humanity open. Examining key moments in the history of both technology and art from the beginnings of industrialisation to today, Charlie Gere explores both the making and purpose of art and how much further it can travel from the human body.

Patients are increasingly turning to medical crowdfunding as a way to cover their healthcare costs. In the case of Charlie Gard, an infant born with encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, crowdfunding was used to finance experimental nucleoside therapy. Although this treatment was not provided in the end, we will argue that the success of the Gard family’s crowdfunding campaign reveals a number of potential ethical concerns. First, this case shows that crowdfunding can change the way in which (...) communal healthcare resources are allocated. Second, within the UK’s National Health Service, healthcare is ostensibly not a market resource; thus, permitting crowdfunding introduces market norms that could commodify healthcare. Third, pressures inherent to receiving funds from external parties may threaten the ability of patients-cum-recipients to voluntarily consent to treatment. We conclude that while crowdfunding itself is not unethical, its use can have unforeseen consequences that may influence conceptions of healthcare and how it is delivered. (shrink)

The opinion of Mr. Justice Francis of the English High Court which denied the parents of Charlie Gard, who had been born with an extremely rare mutation of a genetic disease, the right to take their child to the United States for a proposed experimental treatment occasioned world wide attention including that of the Pope, President Trump, and the US Congress. The case raise anew a debate as old as the foundation of Western medicine on who should decide (...) and on what standard when there is a conflict between a family and the treating physicians over a possible treatment. This paper will explore the different approaches of the British and American courts on the issue and the various proposals from that of John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice to a processed-based approach for resolving such disputes. As carefully crafted as the opinion of Mr Justice Nicholas Francis in the Gard case proved to be, it left commentators unsatisfied. A widespread criticism, captured in an article by Michael Dougherty in The National Review was for the state to ‘get out of the way of the parents trying to act in the best interests of the child’.1 Although he conceded the parents could be adding to the suffering of the child by taking Charlie to America for an experimental therapy and agreed that such a choice ‘may be the wrong decision,’ in Dougherty’s view, it should still be ‘their decision’. Dougherty’s stand was the popular response to the question of ‘Who should decide?’ It fails, however, to propose any rationale for the decision. It provided no norms, no standards and no guidelines for the parents. Their motive could equally well be indifference to the suffering of the child as concern for his well-being. Furthermore, even good, loving parents may make …. (shrink)

The case of Charlie Gard sparked an ongoing public and academic debate whether in court decisions about medical treatment for children in England & Wales the best interests test should be replaced by a harm threshold. However, the literature has scantly considered (1) what the impact of such a replacement would be on future litigation and (2) how a harm threshold should be introduced: for triage or as standard for decision-making. This article directly addresses these gaps, by first (...) analysing reported cases in England & Wales about medical treatment in the context of a S31 order, thus using a harm threshold for triage and second comparing court decisions about medical treatment for children in England & Wales based on the best interest test with Dutch and German case law using a harm threshold. The investigation found that whilst no substantial increase of parental discretion can be expected an introduction of a harm threshold for triage would change litigation. In particular, cases in which harm is limited, currently only heard when there are concerns about parental decision-making, may be denied a court hearing as might cases in which the child has lost their capacity to suffer. Applying a harm threshold for triage in decisions about withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment might lead to a continuation of medical treatment that could be considered futile. (shrink)

The English cases of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans involved a conflict between the desires of their parents to preserve their children’s lives and judgments of their medical teams in pursuit of clinically appropriate therapy. The treatment the children required was clearly extraordinary, including a wide array of advanced life-sustaining technological support. The cases exemplify a clash of worldviews rooted in different philosophies of life and medical care. The article highlights the differing perspectives on parental authority in medical (...) care in England, Canada, and the United States. Furthermore, it proposes a solution that accommodates for both reasonable parental desires and professional medical opinion. This is achieved by looking at concepts of extraordinary therapy, best interest, reasonable parenthood and medical objections. (shrink)

This article critically examines the legal arguments presented on behalf of Charlie Gard’s parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, based on a threshold test of significant harm for intervention into the decisions made jointly by holders of parental responsibility. It argues that the legal basis of the argument, from the case of Ashya King, was tenuous. It sought to introduce different categories of cases concerning children’s medical treatment when, despite the inevitable factual distinctions between individual cases, the (...) duty of the judge in all cases to determine the best interests of the child is firmly established by the case law. It argues that the focus should not have been on a threshold for intervention but on whether his parents had established that the therapy they wanted was a viable alternative therapeutic option. In the April hearing, Charlie’s parents relied on the offer of treatment from a US doctor; by July they had an independent panel of international experts supporting their case although by this time the medical evidence was that it was too late for Charlie. One of Charlie’s legacies for future disputes may be that his case highlighted the need for evidence as to whether the treatment parents want for their child is a viable alternative therapeutic option before a court can determine which therapeutic option is in the best interests of the child. (shrink)

Law’s processes are likely always to be needed when particularly intractable conflicts arise in relation to the care of a critically ill child like Charlie Gard. Recourse to law has its merits, but it also imposes costs, and the courts’ decisions about the best interests of such children appear to suffer from uncertainty, unpredictability and insufficiency. The insufficiency arises from the courts’ apparent reluctance to enter into the ethical dimensions of such cases. Presuming that such reflection is warranted, (...) this article explores alternatives to the courts, and in particular the merits of specialist ethics support services, which appear to be on the rise in the UK. Such specialist services show promise, as they are less formal and adversarial than the courts and they appear capable of offering expert ethical advice. However, further research is needed into such services – and into generalist ethics support services – in order to gauge whether this is indeed a promising development. (shrink)

In the summer of 2017, much of the world was riveted by the case of Charlie Gard, a baby in London whose parents wanted an experimental treatment and whose doctors thought that further treatment would be futile. The case worked its way through the British courts and, eventually, was even heard by the European Court of Human Rights. Pope Francis and President Trump weighed in. If nothing else, the case revealed how controversial the issues around medical futility and (...) shared decision-making still are. Many ethical issues resolve over time. Discussions about disagreements lead to discovery of common ground. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the issue of medical futility and, particularly, with... (shrink)

BackgroundDecisions about withdrawal of life support for infants have given rise to legal battles between physicians and parents creating intense media attention. It is unclear how we should evaluate when life is no longer worth living for an infant. Public attitudes towards treatment withdrawal and the role of parents in situations of disagreement have not previously been assessed.MethodsAn online survey was conducted with a sample of the UK public to assess public views about the benefit of life in hypothetical cases (...) similar to real cases heard by the UK courts (eg, Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans). We then evaluated these public views in comparison with existing ethical frameworks for decision-making.ResultsOne hundred and thirty participants completed the survey. The majority (94%) agreed that an infant’s life may have no benefit when well-being falls below a critical level. Decisions to withdraw treatment were positively associated with the importance of use of medical resources, the infant’s ability to have emotional relationships, and mental abilities. Up to 50% of participants in each case believed it was permissible to either continueorwithdraw treatment.ConclusionDespite the controversy, our findings indicate that in the most severe cases, most people agree that life is not worth living for a profoundly disabled infant. Our survey found wide acceptance of at least the permissibility of withdrawal of treatment across a range of cases, though also a reluctance to overrule parents’ decisions. These findings may be useful when constructing guidelines for clinical practice. (shrink)

The first editorial in the Journal of Medical Ethics described an ambition to be a ‘forum for the reasoned discussion of moral issues arising from the provision of medical care’.1 While that statement of intent might seem broad, it is one that has been reaffirmed by successive editors of the journal.2–4 It is an aim that aligns with the mission statement of JME and The Institute of Medical Ethics, to promote ‘ethical reflection and conduct in scientific research and medical conduct.’ (...) It is an end worthy of some reflection because it illuminates how the journal has developed and implies a conception of what good medical ethics is. During his time as editor, Raanan Gillon was a champion for philosophical medical ethics and he wrote an excellent and influential book on that topic.5 In the July issue of JME, Julian Savulescu, Tom Douglas and Dominic Wilkinson affirm the importance of philosophical medical ethics and ably demonstrate why it matters in the Charlie Gard case.6 Does that mean papers published in the JME must be philosophical? In one sense, clearly no and in another yes. Good medical ethics is not philosophy. The degree of scepticism, the narrow focus on a search for truth, the technical nature of some philosophy and it not needing to deliver normative or practical ethical conclusions mean that a narrowly philosophical approach is unlikely to be good medical ethics. JME has never been a narrowly philosophical journal and the perils of this were described well by its first editor: > We therefore intend to put editorial weight behind what we consider to be carefully argued and well informed judgments and not to allow every value …. (shrink)

This paper discusses the aesthetic and political motivations of the great importance that Walter Benjamin gives to Charlie Chaplin in Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. First, it proceeds to identify the main paragraphs that Benjamin devoted to Chaplin’s films in the different versions of his famous essay. Then it examines Chaplin’s reception in Weimar Germany both in the field of avant-garde art and that of press criticism, highlighting the philosophical, ethico-political and psychological arguments exchanged in a wide (...) and intensive debate on the human dimension of the Tramp character. By focusing on Sigried Kracauaer’s and Rudolf Arnheim’s chronicles, it seeks to illustrate two approaches that are contemporaries to Benjamin’s Rückblick auf Chaplin, a brief review based on an essay written by the French surrealist poet Philippe Soupault. Lastly, it analyzes some notes on Charlot’s gestuality discarded from this famous essay and a fragment in which, six years before The Great Dictator, Benjamin compares Chaplin to Hitler. (shrink)

In this study of Baraka's transformation of white avant-grade poetics into a unique black poetics, Harris argues that Baraka's work can be best understood in the context of a jazz aesthetic. Baraka, he says, has taken white avant-garde and postmodernist poetic modes and political ideas, and through a formal and social process of transformation typical of jazz revision, transformed them into a black poetics and metaphysics. Harris describes the failure of the postmodernists to provide suitable aesthetic and social solutions for (...) ethnic and political problems. Baraka set as his models jazzmen like John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, who attempted to destroy white music so that a new black music could be born. To "jazzify" his poetry, he adapted a "fast rap" of scatting, "songification" and other oral and performance techniques. Harris concludes a discussion of Baraka's influence on black literature. ISBN 0-8262-0483-X: $20.00. (shrink)

Comment définir l'essai au cinéma? Reprenant l'héritage des avant-gardes des années 1920, à travers notamment les œuvres de Dziga Vertov, Jean Epstein ou Jean Vigo, l'essai filmique s'inscrit dans le cinéma moderne qui se définit au moment de la deuxième guerre mondiale avec Le Dictateur (1940) de Charlie Chaplin. Cette évolution se caractérise par un retour au documentaire et de nouvelles relations entre l'image et le son. On assiste alors dans le cinéma hollywoodien, avec Citizen Kane (1941) d'Orson Welles (...) et, dans le cinéma européen, avec Rome, ville ouverte (1945) de Roberto Rossellini, au développement de deux modernités cinématographiques qui annoncent les deux catégories de l'essai au cinéma : l'essai documentaire et l'essai de fiction. Ces deux tendances se traduisent dès les années 1960 avec Le Joli Mai (1963) de Chris Marker (coréalisé avec Pierre Lhomme) et 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (1967) de Jean-Luc Godard. En suivant les films qui ont marqué l'histoire de la modernité cinématographique et celle de l'essai au cinéma comme Voyage en Italie (1953), Nuit et Brouillard (1956), La Jetée (1963), Le Mépris (1963), Pierrot le fou (1965)... mais aussi avec les œuvres d'Agnès Varda, Jean Rouch, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Federico Fellini, Jean-Daniel Pollet, Harun Farocki ou Manoel de Oliveira, ce livre montre comment s'est développée une nouvelle approche du cinéma comme 'pensée qui forme' et 'forme qui pense'."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Despite the now considerable literature on intellectual virtue, there remains relatively little philosophical discussion of intellectual vice. What discussion there is has been shaped by a powerful assumption—that, just as intellectual virtue requires that we are motivated by epistemic goods, intellectual vice requires that we aren't. In this paper, I demonstrate that this assumption is false: motivational approaches cannot explain a range of intuitive cases of intellectual vice. The popularity of the assumption is accounted for by its being a manifestation (...) of a more general understanding of vice as an inversion or mirror image of virtue. I call this the inversion thesis, and argue that the failure of the motivational approach to vice exposes its limitations. I conclude by suggesting that recognizing these limitations can help to encourage philosophical interest in intellectual vice. (shrink)

Safety is a notion familiar to epistemologists principally because of the way in which it has been used in the attempt to cast light on the nature of knowledge. In particular, some have argued that an important constraint on knowledge is that one knows p only if one believes p safely. In this paper, I use safety for a different purpose: to cast light on the nature of assertion. I introduce what I call the safety account of assertion, according to (...) which one asserts p properly only if one asserts p safely. The central idea is that an assertion’s propriety depends on whether one could easily have asserted falsely in a similar case. I argue that the safety account is well motivated, since it neatly explains our intuitions about a wide range of assertions of different kinds. Of particular interest is the fact that the account explains our intuitions about several kinds of assertions which appear to raise problems for well-known rival accounts. (shrink)

Social interactions and personal relationships are essential for a minimally good life, and rights to such things – social rights – have been increasingly acknowledged in the literature. The question as to what extent social rights are feasible – and properly qualify as rights – however, remains. Can individuals reliably provide each other with love and friendship after trying, for instance? At first glance, this claim seems counterintuitive. This paper argues, contrary to our pre-theoretic intuitions, that individuals can reliably provide (...) each other with such relationships, rendering even “thick” social rights feasible. This conclusion challenges the assumption that such things cannot be reliably provided after trying, and suggests that a surprisingly wide class of social rights are feasible. Claiming relationships characterised by love or friendship as a matter of justice, therefore, is possible, and our theories of justice should appropriately widen to accommodate this fact where appropriate. (shrink)

In this paper I draw attention to a shortcoming in Miranda Fricker's 2007 account of hermeneutical injustice: that the only hermeneutical resource she acknowledges is a shared conceptual framework. Consequently, Fricker creates the impression that hermeneutical injustice manifests itself almost exclusively in the form of a conceptual lacuna. Considering the negative hermeneutical impact of certain societal taboos, however, suggests that there can be cases of hermeneutical injustice even when an agent's conceptual repertoire is perfectly adequate. I argue that this observation (...) highlights the need to expand Fricker's account to accommodate a wider range of hermeneutical resources and, in turn, a broader taxonomy of hermeneutical injustice. Specifically, my central case of a societal taboo presses the need to recognize as a valuable hermeneutical resource an expressively free environment, in which individuals can put their conceptual-interpretative resources to good hermeneutical effect. (shrink)

Drawing together researchers from diverse theoretical positions, the aim of this book is to work towards a coherent and unified account of how we develop an understanding of one's and others' mental states.

In this paper, I argue that those who accept the conceptualist view in the philosophy of perception should reject the traditional view that colour indiscriminability is non-transitive. I start by outlining the general strategy that conceptualists have adopted in response to the familiar ‘fineness of grain’ objection, and I show why a commitment to what I call the indiscriminability claim seems to form a natural part of this strategy. I then show how together, the indiscriminability claim and the non-transitivity claim (...) –the claim that colour indiscriminability is non-transitive –entail a further, suspicious-looking claim that I call the problematic claim. My argument then splits into two parts. In the first part, I show why the conceptualist does indeed need to reject the problematic claim. Given that this claim is jointly entailed by the indiscriminability claim and the non-transitivity claim, the conceptualist is then left with a straight choice: reject the indiscriminability claim, or reject the non-transitivity claim. In the second part, I then explain why the conceptualist should choose the latter option. (shrink)

There has been much recent interest in questions about epistemic norms of assertion. Is there a norm specific to assertion? Is it constitutive of the speech act? Is there a unique norm of this sort? What is its content? These are important questions, so it's understandable that they have received the attention which they have. By contrast, little attention—little separate attention, at least—has been given to parallel questions about telling: Which norm or norms govern telling, etc.? A natural explanation for (...) this disparity in interest is that it's felt generally to be obvious that there can be no significant distinction between the two types of norms, and hence no need to consider them separately. This paper challenges that general feeling. The first part argues that it's not obvious that the same norms govern assertion and telling. The second part argues that far from being obvious, this idea is mistaken: there are significant differences between the two types of norms. (shrink)

A growing body of work argues that we should reform problematic emotions like anxiety, anger, and shame: doing this will allow us to better harness the contributions that these emotions can make to our agency and wellbeing. But feminist philosophers worry that prescriptions to correct these inappropriate emotions will only further marginalize women, minorities, and other members of subordinated groups. While much in these debates turns on empirical questions about how we can change problematic emotion norms for the better, to (...) date, little has been done by either side to assess how we might do this, much less in ways that are responsive to the feminists’ worries. Drawing on research in cognitive science, this paper argues that though the feminists’ worries are real, the leading proposals for remedying them are inadequate. It then develops an alternative strategy for reshaping problematic emotion norms—one that’s sensitive to the feminists’ concerns. (shrink)

In earlier work, I have argued that self-referential assertions of the form ‘this assertion is improper’ are paradoxical for the truth account of assertion. In this paper, I argue that such assertions are also paradoxical, though in a different way, for the knowledge account of assertion.

Poetic Heroes: Literary Commemorations of Warriors and Warrior Culture in the Early Biblical World. By Mark S. Smith. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013. Pp. xiv + 636. $55.

Artist Rod Dickinson’s work engages in a highly intelligent and provocative manner with the conditions of mediation and delusion that appear in the brain in a vat scenario. Over the last decade he has put together an impressive body of work about the apparatuses of social and informational control with which we are surrounded, involving an eclectic range of subject matter, including crop circles, Jim Jones and the suicides at the People’s Temple in Guyana, Stanley Milgram’s ‘Obedience to authority’ experiments, (...) and James Tilly Matthews’ imaginary ‘Air loom’, an eighteenth-century mind-influencing device. He is now involved in a number of projects, including a recreation of the Waco siege and a piece based on Joseph Conrad’s The secret agent. In this conversation with Charlie Gere he discusses questions of social control, brainwashing, truth, and knowledge in relation to his work. (shrink)

Can one gain testimonial knowledge from unsafe testimony? It might seem not, on the grounds that if a piece of testimony is unsafe, then any belief based on it in such a way as to make the belief genuinely testimonial is bound itself to be unsafe: the lack of safety must transmit from the testimony to the testimonial belief. If in addition we accept that knowledge requires safety, the result seems to be that one cannot gain testimonial knowledge from unsafe (...) testimony. In a pair of recent papers, however, Sanford Goldberg has challenged this apparently plausible line of thought. Goldberg presents two examples intended to show that a testimonial belief can be safe, even if the testimony on which it is based is unsafe: the lack of safety need not transmit from the testimony to the testimonial belief. In this paper, I question whether Goldberg’s examples really do show that one can gain safe testimonial belief from unsafe testimony. The problem, I explain, is that both examples appear (for different reasons) to be open to objection. Nevertheless, I argue that although Goldberg’s examples do not establish his conclusion, the conclusion itself is true: one can gain safe testimonial belief from unsafe testimony. I base my argument on an example which differs in structure from Goldberg’s examples, and I argue that due to this difference, my example avoids the problems which Goldberg’s examples face. (shrink)

Although there is an increasing body of opinion that awards of damages for breach of contract should take account of the claimant’s performance interest, there has been little in the way of analysis of what the performance interest is. Commonly the concept is put forward as simply a reformulation or reconceptualization of the expectation interest, itself hitherto regarded as the one true contractual interest. Such thinking is flawed. A closer analysis of contract doctrine shows there to be two distinct contractual (...) interests; in receiving performance, and in being compensated for losses caused by non-performance. Receiving compensatory damages for non-performance is not the same as receiving performance. At present, this important difference is not fully appreciated, resulting in a failure to develop a principled approach to the claims that can be made following a breach of contract. Recognition of this distinction forces us to confront the fundamental question of how committed we are to the notion that contracts entail a right to performance. This article examines the distinction between these two interests, how the performance interest may be given effect by a damages award, and what the consequences of this analysis are for our understanding of the nature of contractual obligation. (shrink)

Epistemic relationism in the theory of assertion is the view that an assertion's epistemic propriety depends purely on the relation between the asserter and the proposition asserted. Many accounts of assertion are relationist in this sense, including the familiar knowledge, belief, and justification accounts. A notable feature of such accounts is that they give no direct importance to the role of hearer: as far as such accounts are concerned, we need make no mention of hearers in characterising an assertion's propriety (...) conditions. This paper develops an account which rejects relationism, by giving central importance to the role of hearer. The paper introduces the knowledge provision account, according to which an assertion that p is proper only if it is fit to give a hearer knowledge that p. The paper aims to show: (i) that we can understand this account in a way which does not leave it open to obvious counterexamples, (ii) that it does not reduce to any familiar relationist account, and (iii) that it carries certain advantages over familiar relationist accounts. (shrink)