Most legal systems divide the world into persons and property, treating human beings as persons, and pretty much everything else, including non-human animals, as property. Persons are the subjects of both rights and obligations, including the right to own property, while objects of property, being by their very nature for the use of persons, have no rights at all. I will call this the “legal bifurcation.” We might look to Immanuel Kant’s moral and political philosophy to provide a philosophical vindication (...) of the legal bifurcation, for reasons I will lay out in a moment. But in one way, that would be backwards, because Kant, in constructing the metaphysical categories that he used to talk about rights, was following the tradition of Roman law. (shrink)

In this article I begin by discussing the persistent problem of relations between educational inequality and the attainment gap in schools. Because benefits accruing from an education are substantial, the ‘gap’ leads to large disparities in the quality of life many young people can expect to experience in the future. Curriculum knowledge has been a focus for debate in England in relation to educational equality for over 40 years. Given the contestation surrounding views about curriculum knowledge and equality I consider (...) the thinking of two philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, and their work on justice, to trouble the curriculum framework and discourse of knowledge promoted through the policy text of The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper (2010) and later associated policy reforms to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) curriculum in England. The Schools White Paper aims to make the curriculum more challenging to students by introducing tight controls in terms of the assessment framework and curriculum knowledge. I argue that, when considered through Derrida's perspective on language and meaning and Levinas' view on the ethical responsibility for the other, the reforms present obstacles to the search for a just curriculum. I look to the work of Sharon Todd and Paul Standish for a re-imagination of curriculum as or through relations in the light of Derrida's and Levinas' philosophies. (shrink)

ExtractThe idea that all the entities in the world may be, for legal and moral purposes, divided into the two categories of ‘persons’ and ‘things’ comes down to us from the tradition of Roman law. In the law, a ‘person’ is essentially the subject of rights and obligations, while a thing may be owned as property. In ethics, a person is an object of respect, to be valued for her own sake, and never to be used as a mere means (...) to an end, while a thing has only a derivative value, and may be used as a means to some person's ends. This bifurcation is unfortunate because it seems to leave us with no alternative but to categorize everything as either a person or a thing. Yet some of the entities that give rise to the most vexing ethical problems are exactly the ones that do not seem to fit comfortably into either category. For various, different, kinds of reasons, it seems inappropriate to categorize a fetus, a non-human animal, the environment, or an object of great beauty, as a person, but neither does it seem right to say of such things that they are to be valued only as means.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.PERSONHOOD, ANIMALS, AND THE LAWVolume 12, Issue 34Christine M. KorsgaardDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175613000018Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. PERSONHOOD, ANIMALS, AND THE LAWVolume 12, Issue 34Christine M. KorsgaardDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175613000018Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. PERSONHOOD, ANIMALS, AND THE LAWVolume 12, Issue 34Christine M. KorsgaardDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175613000018Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

Phenomenology provides a method for disability theorists to describe embodied subjectivity lacking within the social model of disability. Within the literature on body integrity identity disorder (BIID), dominant narratives of disability are influential, individual bodies are considered in isolation, and experiences of disabled people are omitted. Research on BIID tends to incorporate an individualist ontology. In this article, I argue that Merleau-Ponty's conceptualization of “being in the world,” which recognizes subjectivity as embodied and intersubjective, provides a better starting point for (...) research describing the experiences of those with BIID and amputees. (shrink)

Aristotle believes that an agent lacks virtue unless she enjoys the performance of virtuous actions, while Kant claims that the person who does her duty despite contrary inclinations exhibits a moral worth that the person who acts from inclination lacks. Despite these differences, this chapter argues that Aristotle and Kant share a distinctive view of the object of human choice and locus of moral value: that what we choose, and what has moral value, are not mere acts, but actions: acts (...) done for the sake of ends. Morally good actions embody a kind of intrinsic value that inspires us to do them from duty (in Kant) or for the sake of the noble (in Aristotle). The chapter traces the difference in their attitudes about doing one's duty with pleasure to a difference in their attitudes towards pleasure itself: Aristotle sees it as a perception of the good, while Kant thinks of it as mere feeling. (shrink)

Sometimes beliefs that are shared are treated as if they are knowledge in spite of a lack of evidence or even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Beliefs informed by prejudices and ignorance about people with disabilities are often treated as certain and reinforced by social practices. In this paper, I distinguish between knowledge claims and beliefs that are treated as if they are true. I use Wittgenstein’s account of the connection between epistemic and other social practices in (...) On Certainty to consider how it is possible to change beliefs about disability. I draw on Naomi Scheman’s “Forms of life: Mapping the Rough Ground” to consider political applications of Wittgenstein’s thought. I use a Wittgensteinian framework to critique Peter Singer’s claims regarding the lives of disabilities in Practical Ethics. I draw attention to the ways in which unjustified beliefs about disability can inform and be reified through social practices. Likewise, changes in social practices can dislodge common ableist beliefs about disability. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The rearrangement or permutation of protein substructures is an important mode of divergence. Recent work1 explored one possible underlying mechanism called permutation‐by‐duplication, which produces special forms of motif rearrangements called circular permutations. Permutation‐by‐duplication, involving gene duplication, fusion and truncation, can produce fully functional intermediate proteins1 and thus represents a feasible mechanism of protein evolution. In spite of this, circular permutations are relatively rare and we discuss possible reasons for their existence. BioEssays 28: 973–978, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

L’étude menée sur les coupes de Droop attiques découvertes dans les fouilles de l’Artémision de Thasos a permis d’attirer notre attention sur un groupe de fragments décorés d’un thème peu fréquent sur cette forme : le retour d’Héphaïstos dans l’Olympe. Il n’est cependant pas rare sur d’autres classes de coupes contemporaines, en particulier sur les coupes à bande des Petits Maîtres dont la coupe de Droop est une variante. Mais si l’étude des fragments de l’Artémision permet de renforcer le lien (...) étroit existant dans la seconde moitié du vie s. av. J.‑C. entre la production des coupes à bande et celle des coupes de Droop, elle permet surtout de mettre en valeur une œuvre d’exception par la rareté de sa thématique, la qualité de son décor et ses dimensions généreuses. Son attribution au Peintre d’Oakeshott, proche compagnon du Peintre d’Amasis, lui confère une place privilégiée au sein des découvertes de céramiques attiques de l’île de Thasos. (shrink)

In contrast to the conventional fund management industry with a profit-oriented logic based on risk and return, ethical and faith-based funds should follow the religious principles of their investment-style philosophy. Islamic funds should obey the theological teachings of the primary sources of Islam, the Quran and Sunnah, as stakeholders expect these religious teachings to influence the investment decisions of fund managers. In practice, Islamic fund managers use Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions ’s screening criteria, based on secondary (...) sources of Islam, which allow investments that are only partially halal to be included in their portfolios. This study finds that a more religious logic in screening practices, although impairing diversification, does not necessarily harm performance. Thus, Islamic investment funds, and the wider ethical fund management industry, should, and could, adopt stricter screening criteria that match their investment mandates and bring more ethical business practices to the industry. (shrink)

A serious moral weakness of reproductive ‘surrogacy’ is that it can be harmful to the children who are created. This article presents a proposal for mitigating this weakness. Currently, the practice of commercial ‘surrogacy’ operates only in the interests of the adults involved , not in the interests of the child who is created. Whether ‘surrogacy’ is seen as the purchase of a baby, the purchase of parental rights, or the purchase of reproductive labor, all three views share the same (...) significant flaws. They endorse the transfer, for a fee, of the infant from the woman who gestated it to those who commissioned it, but without justifying such a transfer; they fail to demonstrate that the commissioners have any entitlement to the infant, or, for that matter, suitability to be the infant's parents; and they fail to take any notice of the infant's needs, interests, and wellbeing. A mere genetic connection is not enough to establish that the commissioners are entitled to receive the baby or that they are competent to raise it. Their good intentions, however caring, are not enough. Therefore, just as in the practice of adoption, there should be a formal institutionalized system for screening and licensing the prospective social parents, which would make the infant's needs, interests, and wellbeing paramount. I reply to several potential objections to this proposal, including the objection that genetic parents who raise their own child are not screened and licensed. (shrink)

Although many women experience harmful behaviors that fit the legal definition of sexual harassment, very few ever label their experiences as such. I explore how psychological ambivalence expressed as sadomasochism may account for some of this gap. Following Lynn Chancer, I argue that certain structural circumstances characteristic of highly stratified bureaucratic organizations may promote these psychological responses. After discussing two illustrations of this dynamic, I draw out the implications for sexual harassment theory and policy.

: On the Aristotelian picture of virtue, moral virtue has at its core intellectual virtue. An interesting challenge for this orthodoxy is provided by the case of universal love and its associated virtues, such as the dispositions to exhibit grace, or to forgive, where appropriate. It is difficult to find a property in the object of such love, in virtue of which grace, for example, ought to be bestowed. Perhaps, then, love in general, including universal love, is not necessarily exhibited (...) for reasons. This is the view that, with the help of Heidegger's notion of a fundamental emotional attunement, I defend. The problem is to show how universal love, and its manifestation in the virtues of universal love, can then be seen as rational. Showing this is the task of the essay. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungSeit einigen Jahren erscheinen in deutschsprachigen Medien Beiträge, die einen neuen Trend in der Versorgung von langzeitpflegebedürftigen Menschen beschreiben: die Migration in ausländische Pflegeheime, insbesondere nach Thailand oder Ost-Europa. Diese Art der Migration wird kontrovers aufgenommen. Einige Medienbeiträge beschreiben diese Praxis u. a. als „Greisen-Export“, „gerontologischen Kolonialismus“ oder „inhumane Deportation“. Die Begriffe weisen darauf hin, dass diese Migration aus sogenannten High Income Countries in Low and Middle Income Countries aus ethischer Sicht problematisch sein könnte. Allerdings gibt es bislang keine wahrnehmbare (...) wissenschaftliche ethische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Phänomen. In diesem Beitrag diagnostizieren wir, dass es sich bei der Migration Langzeit-Pflegebedürftiger tatsächlich um ein ethisch relevantes Problem handelt, und wir ordnen die von uns identifizierten ethisch relevanten Bereiche unterschiedlichen Ebenen zu: einer individual-, einer gesellschafts-, und einer global-ethischen Ebene. Auf der individualethischen Ebene diskutieren wir Fragen der Autonomie, der Verwandtschaftsbeziehungen, der Rolle von Kultur und Traditionen und der „guten Pflege“. Auf der gesellschaftsethischen Ebene diskutieren wir strukturelle Herausforderungen der Langzeitpflege und Fragen der sozialen Gerechtigkeit. Auf der globalethischen Ebene verbinden wir unser Thema mit der ethischen Diskussion des Medizintourismus und des Brain Drains und mit Fragen globaler Gerechtigkeit. Um eine weiterführende normative Analyse vornehmen zu können, sind weitere empirische Daten zu dem Phänomen notwendig. (shrink)

This article explores the reasons some pregnant women enter maternity homes with the plan to place their babies for adoption. The authors discuss changes in maternity homes over the twentieth century and report on findings from a survey of currently licensed homes in Texas. Next, the authors discuss the findings from fieldwork and in-depth interviews with residents of two maternity homes. They identify three major reasons why birth mothers enter maternity homes: the desire to escape abusive or stressful family lives, (...) the desire to avoid the stigma of placing a child for adoption, and the desire to provide their children, and in some cases themselves, with a stable and loving family life. The authors contend that entering a maternity home with the intention of placing their babies for adoption represents an effort on the part of birth mothers to reconfigure their own, often impoverished family lives. (shrink)

Part-time work schedules are a popular option for many women struggling to reconcile the competing demands of employment and motherhood. They are controversial among feminists because they are associated with job penalties that promote gender inequality. Previous research on this topic has focused on issues confronting women workers in professional and managerial jobs. In this article, we compare and contrast the experiences of women in professional and secondary part-time jobs, drawing on 60 in-depth interviews with mothers working in such “good” (...) and “bad” jobs. We find that mothers at the top and at the bottom of the employment hierarchy face unique disadvantages from their part-time employment to which they respond in different ways. Yet in both instances, mothers assume responsibility for their “choices,” which absolves organizations of blame for exploitation and discrimination against part-time workers. We suggest alternative possibilities for the organization of work in the conclusion. (shrink)

"_Minding Women _embraces a generation of scholarship, culminating in major new work by leading scholars who are reconfiguring feminist research. This important collection will again change the way we think about race, history, education, and the lives of girls." —_Sally Schwager_, Director Women's History Institute, Harvard University Research on women and girls has exploded during the past twenty years. Since 1977, when the _Harvard Educational Review_ published Carol Gilligan's now-classic article "In a Different Voice," in which she argued so persuasively (...) that women and girls must be understood on their own terms, researchers have been discovering, uncovering, and recovering women's ways of knowing, being, thinking, teaching, and learning. _Minding Women_ charts the wealth of thought and writing related to women and girls and education that this process of discovery has produced. _Minding Women_ begins with a "Classics" section—articles that call attention to the lack of research on girls and women and describe the effect this has had on knowledge and society. The contributors then discuss feminist pedagogy, and how it has changed and been refined over time. Girls and young women are the focus of the next section. Too often their voices and viewpoints are excluded from these discussions, so some of their own writings are included here. The book then explores women's educational history, showcasing some of the rich work in this area over the past twenty years. Identity issues are addressed in the final section, acknowledging that substantial differences exist among groups of women and girls on how they experience the world and their roles, prospects, and lives. (shrink)

One of the defining features of the capability approach to health, as developed in Venkatapuram's book Health Justice, is its aim to enable individual health agency. Furthermore, the CA to health hopes to provide a strong guideline for assessing the health-enabling content of social and political conditions. In this article, I employ the recent literature on the liberal concept of vulnerability to assess the CA. I distinguish two kinds of vulnerability. Considering circumstantial vulnerability, I argue that liberal accounts of vulnerability (...) concerned with individual autonomy, align with the CA to health. Individuals should, as far as possible, be able to make health-enabling decisions about their lives, and their capability to do so should certainly not be hindered by public policy. The CA to health and a vulnerability-based analysis then work alongside to define moral responsibilities and designate those who hold them. Both approaches demand social policy to address circumstances that hinder individuals from taking health-enabling decisions. A background condition of vulnerability, on the other hand, even though it hampers the capability for health, does not warrant the strong moral claim proposed by the CA to health to define health as a meta-capability that should guide social policy. Nothing in our designing social policy could change the challenge to health agency when we deal with background conditions of vulnerability. (shrink)

The article attempts to determine whether aristotle's conception of epideictic rhetoric included not only display of the orator's powers but also the functions of judgment and comprehension. It is argued that the term "theoria" or "observation" implies judgment and comprehension as well as perception as the function of epideictic, Therefore paralleling the faculty of practical understanding as described in the "nicomachean ethics". The result is a view of epideictic as an intellectual process through which the audience assesses the speaker's ability (...) to make judgments and, In turn, Receives critical insight into the praiseworthy or blamable object. (shrink)

Disturbances of perception of subjective time have been described in schizophrenia but have not been experimentally studied until now. We investigated how patients with schizophrenia estimate the subjective temporal distance of past personal events, i.e. how these events are perceived as subjectively close or distant in time. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and 25 control participants recalled 24 autobiographical memories from four different life periods. They estimated the subjective TD and rated the amount of detail of each memory. Results showed that (...) patients with schizophrenia had a distorted perception of subjective TD. Their memories were significantly less detailed than those of controls and, unlike control participants, the amount of memory detail was not significantly correlated with subjective TD. Poor access to memory detail may account for distortions of perception of subjective time in patients with schizophrenia. (shrink)

(1997). Semantic fields and meaning: A bridge between mind and matter. World Futures: Vol. 48, The Concept of Collective Consiousness: Research Perspectives, pp. 161-170.

The “demand” for selective termination of pregnancy is a socially constructed response to prior medical interventions in women's reproductive processes, themselves dependent on cultural views of infertility.

Ce compte rendu a déjà paru le 1er novembre 2015 dans la Nouvelle revue du travail, n° 7 S. Montchatre et B. Woehl, Temps de travail et travail du temps, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2014, 250 p. « Comment le temps nous travaille-t-il, nous et nos sociétés, à partir du temps demandé par le travail? » Le titre retenu Temps de travail et travail du temps n'est pas un simple jeu de mots. Issu d'une série de séminaires organisés à (...) Strasbourg en 2010-2011, l'ouvrage collectif - Recensions. (shrink)

Recent studies indicate that many people demonstrate resilience to the loss of a spouse, and are able to return fairly quickly to their normal levels of subjective well-being. The question I address here is whether these empirical findings support scepticism about the importance of our loved ones. I argue that we have reason to doubt the correlation posited by the sceptic between the importance of a person’s spouse and his or her reaction to spousal loss. Extreme devastation may not be (...) a sign of love, but may only indicate a person’s dependence on his or her spouse. I also argue that one cannot draw any meaningful conclusions about the value of a loved one on the basis of their reaction to loss, for those reactions will be influenced by factors such as replaceability, which need not correlate with love. I conclude that resilience offers no reason for scepticism about the depth of spousal love. (shrink)

Wittgensteins Aufzeichnungen zur Mathematik erscheinen fragmentarisch, sind jedoch erstaunlich tiefgründig, präzise und kohärent. Sie erlauben daher weitreichende Einblicke in seine grundlegende philosophische Denkweise. Ausgehend von Wittgensteins Kritik an Cantors Diagonalbeweis und seiner Einschätzung reeller Zahlen wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit Wittgensteins Philosophie der Mathematik einer Neubewertung zugeführt. Es wird dargelegt, dass seine Einwände gegen den Diagonalbeweis weder so unbegründet sind, wie ihm seine Gegner vorwerfen, noch so diplomatisch, wie seinen Verteidigern lieb wäre. Vielmehr illustrieren sie die konstruktivistischen, konventionalistischen und revisionistischen (...) Züge seiner Philosophie der Mathematik. (shrink)

A cell contains many copies of mitochondrial DNA. The distribution of a mitochondrial gene mutation in a cell culture is governed by the way in which the mtDNA molecules of a cell are replicated and partitioned between the two daughter cells during mitosis. Assuming that this partition process is random, we describe the evolution of the mitochondrial genetic state of a cell culture. The mutated mtDNA is ultimately segregated and the rate of the trend to segregation is relatively slow. It (...) is nevertheless greatly accelerated if the model takes into account the spatial mtDNA partition by the mitochondrial compartments. (shrink)

Since the 1990s there have been a number of government and market led initiatives to improve the welfare of layer hens in the United Kingdom, Australia and the USA. The focus of these regulatory and market initiatives has been a shift away from the dominant battery-cage system to enriched cages, barn/aviary and free-range production systems. Government regulations have played an important role in setting some minimum welfare standards and the banning of battery cages in the UK and in some US (...) states. However the commodification and market segmentation of higher welfare standards has also seen the growth in production and demand of cage-free and free-range eggs in all three countries. This paper maps and compares the developments in government regulation and market segmentation of layer-hen welfare in the UK, Australia and the USA. The role of labelling and certification in facilitating commodification and market segmentation will be examined, including the public controversies and legal conflicts over egg labelling. The key state, market and civil society actors in each country will also be identified, and their role in driving or resisting higher standards examined, including the increasingly influential role of animal welfare organizations and food corporations. (shrink)

This book seeks to remedy the contempt for law prominent in socialist writings. While political thinkers on the left are indisputably concerned with justice, they dismiss those legal institutions which, in liberal capitalist societies, have ensured some minimum measure of justice in citizens' lives. Marxists in particular have tended to reduce law to a capitalist apparatus necessary to mediate conflict between egoistic wills or social classes. The book argues against this doctrine by showing that however ideal a society socialists envisage, (...) legal institutions would be necessary to fairly adjudicate conflict between private and public interests. Each chapter takes up an issue in liberal jurisprudence to see how it would fare in a socialist theory which takes a constructive approach to law. The rule of law, natural and legal rights, obligations, and the sources of law are among the subjects covered. The book concludes that a socialist concept of law would enrich, not only debates about the nature of socialism, but also debates about community and justice which preoccupy `mainstream' political theory and jurisprudence. (shrink)

In this paper, I am concerned to show that a wide and interesting range of phenomena commonly described as ‘weakness of will’ should be understood as manifesting a defect of what I shall call ‘executive cowardice’ rather than a strong kind of irrationality. More specifically, I claim that such cases should not be understood as an irrational bypassing of an all-things-considered judgment about the thing to do—a view succinctly described by Peacocke thus: The akrates is irrational because although he intentionally (...) does something for which he has some reason, there is a wider set of reasons he has relative to which he does not judge what he does to be rational. (shrink)

Plusieurs sagesses démotiques de l’Égypte ancienne rédigées entre le ve et le ier siècle avant notre ère déconseillent à leur lecteur d’entretenir des relations sexuelles avec des femmes mariées. Si la perception négative de l’adultère est évidente dans les extraits étudiés, qu’en est-il du consentement des femmes? Est-il possible d’établir si ces relations étaient consenties ou non? L’analyse de la terminologie et du contexte des occurrences ainsi que la comparaison avec d’autres textes issus de la littérature démotique permettent à l’auteure (...) de souligner qu’en réalité, ce n’est pas le consentement des partenaires qui doit être interrogé mais la prise en compte de ce consentement par les auteurs des textes. Ces documents nous renseignent ainsi sur la perception de la sexualité féminine dans la société égyptienne aux époques tardives. (shrink)

Faire de la biologie et penser la biologie constituent deux activités indispensables l'une à l'autre. L'exemple de la " métaphore du programme génétique " nous montre, qu'entre l'explication atomique des physiciens et l'explication vitaliste, il peut y avoir un niveau moléculaire spécifique d'analyse des propriétés du vivant. Cet ouvrage a pour double ambition de montrer comment cette métaphore s'est constituée et quels en sont les éléments discutables. Il se propose d'analyser le processus à travers lequel elle est passée historiquement de (...) l'état de concept dynamique et opératoire à celui d'une image figée de plus en plus décalée de la réalité de la connaissance biologique. (shrink)