This paper involves a case study of physicians working in an urban Midwestern region. It raises questions surrounding how physicians adapted to, encouraged and resisted the increasing presence of managed care in their work lives. The patterning of physician accommodation to managed care and the failure of physicians to mount any effective organized resistance in Metro has some important implications for theories about professional dominance and decline.

Breastfeeding remains an understudied topic in research and theorizing about reproductive experience and women's bodies. This article reports on women's experiences of breastfeeding in public as revealed through in-depth interviews with 51 women. The current construction of the good maternal body requires women to carefully manage the performance of breastfeeding in specific ways and with particular attention to the dominant notion of a sexualized rather than nurturing breast. Women accommodate to, and resist, the perceived boundaries of the good maternal body (...) through their breastfeeding behaviors. (shrink)

Carbon offsetting remains contentious within, at least, philosophy. By posing and then answering a general question about an aspect of the morality of carbon offsetting—Does carbon offsetting make luxury emissions morally permissible?—this essay helps to lessen some of the topic’s contentiousness. Its central question is answered by arguing and defending the view that carbon offsetting makes luxury emissions morally permissible by counteracting potential harm. This essay then shows how this argument links to and offers a common starting point for further (...) examination of offsetting across various disciplines and domains, such as policy and other branches of philosophy like the ethics of risk. (shrink)

This is an attempt to understand the ethics of leonard nelson as dealing with some of the same problems arising from kant's moral philosophy as have concerned the rule utilitarians in anglo-American philosophy. In particular, They share the attempt to provide a rationale for specific duties in terms of ends to be achieved, And they try to correct what they see as excessive rigidity and formalism in the kantian imperatives.

Vladimir Jankélévitch allows us to rethink the relation between negation and refusal as a rift where one is confronted by the repetition of _givenness_ and where refusal upends negation by turning the object being refused into an ineffable question. Here we turn to Freud as a reader of Jankélévitch’s refusal of German culture in order to consider his procedure of radical exclusion as a matter of idealistic temperament marking a transition from knowledge as “knowing how things are” to a different (...) proposition which cultivates knowing “how things should be.”. (shrink)

Before I can urge this position, however, I must first dispose of alternative views which might be brought against it from the very start. Let us ask if a theory of Newtonian time or a time ontologically complete in itself renders passage comprehensible. The answer must be that it does not. If there is to be passage, something must pass; that at least is certain, but this something cannot be the moments which comprise an absolute time, a time which does (...) not depend on anything outside itself for its reality. For the moments of an absolute time possess no quality which could differentiate one from another, and consequently it must be nonsense to say that one is before, another after, or even that one is earlier, another later. As moments of an everlasting time all must possess exactly the same status. They are limitations of one entity which contains within itself no reason why one part of it should differ from another. (shrink)

On the basis of a distinction between suffering and punishment, I maintain that divine punishment is suffering understood against the backdrop of an ultimate or divine morality. Suffering can in some cases be a retributively just desert even where there is an obvious absence of distributive justice. After reconciliation with God the suffering may continue unabated, but the suffering loses its status as punishment. An innocent or forgiven person cannot be punished no matter how much s/he is made to suffer. (...) Divine punishment is an ultimate moral concept, an interpretation placed on suffering by a person of morally good will. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 92-93. A collection of Images produced by intentionally corrupting the circuitry of a Kodak DC280 2 MP digitalcamera. By rewiring the electronics of a digital camera, glitched images are produced in a manner that parallels chemically processing unexposed film or photographic paper to produce photographic images without exposure to light. The DCP Series of Digital Images are direct visualizations of data generated by a digital camera as it takes a picture. Electronic processes associated with the normal operations (...) of the camera, which are usually taken for granted, are revealed through an act of intervention. The camera is turned inside­out through complexes of short­circuits, selected by the artist, transforming the camera from a picture taking device to a data capturing device that renders raw data (electronic signals) as images. In essence, these images are snap­shots of electronic signals dancing through the camera's circuits, manually rerouted, written directly to the on­board memory device. Rather than seeing images of the world through a lens, we catch a glimpse of what the camera sees when it is forced to peer inside its own mind. With the digital photo, this light, from out of the night, no longer comes entirely from the day, it doesn't come from a past day that would simply have become night (like the photons emenating from Baudelaire's face.) It comes from Hades, from the realm of the dead, from underground: it is an electric light, set free by materials from deep within the belly of the earth. And electronic, that is to say, a decomposed light. Digitization breaks the chain, it introduces manipulation even into the spectrum, and by the same token, it makes phantoms and phantasms indistinct. Photons become pixels that are in turn reduced zeroes and ones on which discrete calculations can be performed. Essentially indubitable when it was analog (whatever its accidental manipulability), the this was has become essentially doubtful when it is digital (it is nonmanipulation that becomes accidental). —Bernard Steigler, The Discrete Image There are so many ways to take something apart. Deconstruction, differentiation, dissection, dissolution. A whole slew of concepts and processes towards atomization which aim, eventually, to evoke or locate an essence of some kind, in material science as in philosophy. In picking things apart, what is it we attempt to do? To simplify? To comprehend? To confront? To disprove? With Stearns’ DCP Series we see that destructive scrutiny can sometimes bring about new forms. To create this series of images, Stearns applies circuit bending techniques to modern photography—his fingers and stray wires cutting across the camera’s circuitry at the moment of registration. As with Moholy­Nagy’s vinyl records and Nam June Paik’s cathode ray TVs, Stearns deconstructs the technological inscription of his era. In so doing, the function of the digital camera is revealed, but its transduction inverted: A recorder becomes a synthesizer, the scientist an artist. In a single, simple gesture, these works example a media archeology of the present. We resist the urge to call these photographs. —Jamie Allen. (shrink)

In two studies, we examined how expressions of guilt and shame affected person perception. In the first study, participants read an autobiographical vignette in which the writer did something wrong and reported feeling either guilt, shame, or no emotion. The participants then rated the writer's motivations, beliefs, and traits, as well as their own feelings toward the writer. The person expressing feelings of guilt or shame was perceived more positively on a number of attributes, including moral motivation and social attunement, (...) than the person who reported feeling no emotion. In the second study, the writer of the vignette reported experiencing (or not experiencing) cognitive and motivational aspects of guilt or shame. Expressing a desire to apologise (guilt) or feelings of worthlessness (private shame) resulted in more positive impressions than did reputational concerns (public shame) or a lack of any of these feelings. Our results indicate that verbal expressions of moral emotions such as guilt and shame influence perception of moral character as well as likeability. (shrink)

Over the past decade AIDS research has turned toward the use of pharmacology in HIV prevention, including pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP): the use of HIV medication as a means of preventing HIV acquisition in those who do not have it. This paper explores the contradictory reasons offered in support of PrEP—to empower women, to provide another risk-reduction option for gay men—as the context for understanding the social meaning of the experimental trials that appear to show that PrEP works in gay men (...) and heterosexual couples but not single women. The PrEP debates reveal the different ideas about “demedicalization” in the earlier gay health and women’s health movements and highlight the relationship between health activism and critique of research ethics in the context of a global pharmaceutical market. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Who Tells the StoryCindy BitterThirty years later, I do not remember her name, but I definitely remember her face, and this is how I remember her story.She came into the office for her flu shot. She was in her 70s and had a mild case of COPD attributed [End Page 87] to years of exposure to pesticides on the family farm. She said she was trying to stay healthy, (...) as the grandkids were due for a visit, and everyone had gotten a cold after Thanksgiving the year before. I was a sub-intern doing a required rural medicine rotation and diligently did an exam, finding asymptomatic new-onset atrial fibrillation of uncertain duration. We admitted her to the hospital and started anticoagulation. My attending also ordered a calcium channel blocker to slow her pulse, which was running 90–100 while she was at rest. The attending insisted that it would convert her back to sinus rhythm. The nurses were not experienced with the medication and were uncomfortable giving it. I was pretty sure the calcium channel blocker was not indicated, and a quick check of my pocket manual confirmed the drug would lower her heart rate and maybe her blood pressure but that it would not fix the abnormal rhythm. I refused to administer it. The attending came in, pushed the medication, and returned home. A few minutes later, the patient was struggling to speak. Her pulse fell to in the 30s, and her blood pressure had dropped dangerously low. I asked for the crash cart and calcium, and my attending, then started CPR when she lost her pulse. Half an hour later, my attending called her time of death.Hers was not the first death I'd witnessed, but it was the first time I felt like my patient would have been better off without our interventions. As a medical student hundreds of miles from the main hospital campus, I felt powerless to contradict the attending, and did not know where to turn for support in the moment. I rationalized it by saying that I had not actively contributed to her death by pushing the medication, but I held myself morally culpable for doing the exam and finding an asymptomatic abnormality that started her down that path. I felt I should have known the pathophysiology and medication side effects better, or been more assertive, or called for help.One could argue whether I was suffering from a grief reaction or falling into depression, but I questioned my calling to medicine and seriously considered leaving the field. But I was quite certain that I did not want another patient to be put at risk, or a student to feel cornered into taking actions against their better judgment. After returning to the main hospital, I met with the clerkship director and helped develop a pathway for students to raise safety concerns in real-time. Now I recognize the feeling I experienced as moral injury, but we weren't using that term at the time, or talking about Six Sigma safety, or stopping the line.Ultimately, I continued through medical school and trained as an emergency physician. My prior reverence for my attendings moderated to a healthier respect that had to be earned. I read voraciously, trying to prepare myself for unexpected situations. I became an advocate for patient safety and was an early adopter of shared decision-making. I strive to be a physician who welcomes questions and respects the concerns of all team members. Many of the principles that ground my career in medicine grew out of my exposure to this patient.It was always my least favorite of the tropes common to television medical dramas—the circumstances of the patient-of-the-week illuminated some aspect of our main characters' lives, providing a very important life lesson. I felt it positioned patients to be in service of the physician's aims, using patients as a means to our ends, when we should be using our knowledge and experience to further the patient's goals. Very un-Kantian, in addition to transgressing against multiple other philosophers and medical ethicists. As medicine learns more about the power of... (shrink)

If one were to make, not altogether seriously, such a distinction between types of philosophers, there is no doubt that Professor Feibleman would in many ways fall into the first category. The present volume is impressive in its scope: at one time or another it touches on practically every known field of philosophy, the sciences, the arts, theology, etc. Unfortunately, the development of this vast material is not adequate to the greatness of the themes. Mr. Feibleman has at times interesting, (...) original and provocative ideas; but the reader must, as it were, mine through a mountain of lesser material in order to come upon these occasional nuggets of precious metal. Philosophical doctrines which are palpably inconsistent are eclectically thrown together; arbitrary statements are made; and at times there is an almost incredible over-simplification of problems and lack of subtlety in analysis. To point out the numerous inconsistencies would be a task almost too easy, and one can only regret that Mr. Feibleman did not for his own sake more carefully revise the book before publishing it, so as at least to remove the most glaring of these. (shrink)

If one investigates a process that has several causes but assumes that it has only one cause, one risks ruling out important causal factors. Three mechanisms account for this mistake: either the significance of the single cause under test is masked by noise contributed by the unsuspected and uncontrolled factors, or the process appears only when two or more causes interact, or the process appears when there are present any of a number of sufficient causes which are not mutally exclusive. (...) In ecology and evolutionary biology, experiments usually test single factor hypotheses, and many scientists apparently believe that hypotheses incorporating several factors are so much more difficult to test that to do so would not be practical. We discuss several areas in ecology and evolutionary biology in which the presupposition of simple causation has apparently impeded progress. We also examine a more mature field, the study of atherosclerosis, in which single factor studies did significantly delay progress towards understanding what now appears to be a multifactor process. The problem has three solutions: either factorial experiments, dynamic models that make quantitative predictions, response-surface methods, or all three. In choosing a definition for ‘cause’, we make a presupposition that profoundly influences subsequent observations and experimental designs. Alternative definitions of causation should be considered as contributing to potential cures for research problems. (shrink)

The child protection system in France has gradually changed along the lines of the laws enacted in 2002 and 2007 that reasserted the importance of the role played by the parents. Far from condemning the family, it henceforth seeks to provide it with accompaniment so as to ensure the child’s future reintegration. Grounded in psychoanalytical group and family theories, the article investigates the psychic function of the institution and (with case studies to support it) discusses what has to be done (...) to make arrangements within the therapeutic framework for families to make progress and maintain ties despite the absence of direct relations. For it is only after a real period of separation that work on the young person’s psychic group experience will enable the family to move forward. (shrink)

[P]layers line up in a long line and hold hands. The player at the front of the line is the ‘head’ and the player at the end of the line is the ‘tail’.… The game begins when the head begins to run wildly in any direction, making sharp turns and quick double-backs.… The force created by the twists and turns will often send the tail of the whip flying.… It may be best for the tail to hold on with both (...) hands to keep from flying off the end. Sometimes, however, the tail will go flying no matter how hard they hold on... Be prepared to get dirty if you play this game!--"Crack the Whip: Party Game CentralIf the evolution of American health policy is compared to the children’s game of Crack the Whip, then there is no question that the Medicaid program is the tail of the line. When those at the head of the line start to move. Medicaid receives whatever shocks and unintended consequences result, and when the line “begins to run wildly in any direction,” it receives them faster and harder than the players at the center.Shocks also come from other sources. When the economy slumps, an epidemic arises, or a path in another part of the system becomes a cul-de-sac, new twists and turns occur, with Medicaid absorbing much of the change. (shrink)

Throughout the 1980s, the American right wing attempted to control the field of social politics and social policy through a rhetoric of `family'. In response, the left, including much of the lesbian and gay movement, abandoned an early, theorized antipathy to family, attempting to recapture the political field with ideas like `alternative families' and `families we chose'. These moves do not sufficiently account for the hidden glue that binds bodies to politics, national or anti-national. The glue, or, as Benedict Anderson (...) calls it, `political love' is no longer an affect to be rejected but a `feeling' to be embraced. Examining the case of sexual abstinence in early right-wing AIDS discourse and in current websites, this article suggests that micro-politics of love are inextricable from macro-politics of nationalism. (shrink)

The present study shows that the Internet functions as a gratifying context for the exchange of knowledge and values related to religious matters among youngsters in the Netherlands; they are in the midst of constructing a religious identity. Systematic content analysis complemented by qualitative research was carried out on Maroc.nl, a discussion forum primarily aimed at Moroccan youth. Inspired by Kemper's definitions of experiencing Islam, the recurrence of six dimensions of religious experience was looked into in 1,354 online messages. The (...) purpose of this study is to gain insight into the nature and the relative visibility of each of these dimensions in the online discussions under study. In addition, a number of context-bound and issue-related characteristics of the message were assessed through qualitative analysis, in an effort to find out what key issues were mainly dealt with, what normative statements were made, and how the informants related to one another. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Character of Claus Christmas Crowd Civic Claus Symbol of Supremacy? Common Claus.

Introduction : what and why is world history? -- A world history skeleton -- Habits of mind in world history -- Managing time : choosing and evaluating world history periods -- Managing space : world history regions and civilizations -- Contacts and the structure of world history -- Topics in world history -- Disputes in world history -- World history in the contemporary era.

A popular strategy for answering the question of why and how laws bind is to use the concept of political justification: to argue that laws bind when they can be justified in the political domain. Being defensible in the political domain is supposed to make laws emotionally compelling in virtue of their being justified for each member of the community, and intellectually compelling in virtue of their having emerged from a process that is subject to constraints of rationality such as (...) consistency and coherence. However, being politically justifiable does not and cannot explain why it is reasonable to expect individuals to conform because it places too much emphasis on deference to the judgments of public actors. In this paper I use a distinction between general availability and general acceptability accounts of publicity to explain why the answer to what makes laws binding lies in developing an account of good reasons, not an account of why political reasons should take priority. (shrink)

In Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account Gillian Brock makes three important claims: that we have duties of justice to all human beings and not only those with whom we share a state; that our duties to those outside our states are of the same scope and normative weight as our duties to those with whom we share a state; and that the existing framework of international institutions affords us a number of straightforward and accessible means to act on our duties (...) to persons outside our states that we ought to pursue. These claims are important in themselves, but the real interest of Brock’s book lies with the argumentative strategy she uses in support of them. This strategy, which includes emphasizing the compellingness of specific institutional and policy prescriptions and distancing her arguments from debates about the structure and plausibility of Rawlsian internationalism, bears interesting fruit in a number of respects. However, it also raises difficult questions about the coherence of the distinction between cosmopolitanism and nationalism on which Brock relies, and about the value of institutionalist approaches to justice more generally. (shrink)

Zaller's model of public-opinion formation portrays the average citizen as an automaton who responds unthinkingly to elite cues. That is, once people have received information from political elites, they tend to abide by whatever their respective cue-givers dictate, since rejecting information is more cognitively costly than simply accepting it. Empirical research in psychology on priming supports this view of the citizen as a passive receiver of information. For example, people are likely to be unconsciously influenced by subtle cues and they (...) tend to base their opinions on the accessibility of information in memory. However, some citizens, under certain conditions, may be ?active processors? of information: actively interpreting it, elaborating on its implications, and negotiating its meaning. Whether or not Zaller's model is an accurate representation of the process of public-opinion formation depends substantially upon the inclusiveness of the researcher's views about what constitutes public opinion and how to study its determinants. (shrink)

Multicultural Odysseys by Will Kymlicka is a textbook example of how to effectively integrate empirical research and philosophical analysis. In it Kymlicka offers a measured and scrupulously honest assessment of what he takes to be both the potential and the limits of liberal multiculturalism as a model for democratization, seeking not to defend his views on multiculturalism in so much as try to understand them. In particular, he seeks to understand how his views on multiculturalism can be correct in the (...) context of Western democracies (as he does not doubt they are) and yet be limited in their potential for export. In approaching his project in this way, Kymlicka raises a number of questions about multiculturalism, about theorizing across borders, and about the nature of Western democracy that he does not directly address, but toward which the reader is inevitably spurred. In this commentary I focus on one especially important question: What does the analysis of this book imply about the future prospects for ideal theorizing? I argue that, without the author intending or necessarily foreseeing it, Multicultural Odysseys has made the world of political philosophy a much less hospitable place for ideal theorizing, at least as it has traditionally been understood. In the wake of Kymlicka’s treatment of the limits on liberal multiculturalism’s exportability it is difficult to imagine that ideal theorizing can occupy the same central place in normative analyses of multiculturalism, minority rights, liberalism, democracy, and global justice. (shrink)

Although some psychoanalysts in the clinical field have criticised Žižek for corrupting Lacan’s teachings, through playing down the importance of the clinical, there is no doubt that Žižek’s scholarship and contribution to psychoanalysis displays mastery of Lacanian theory. Moreover, Žižek has applied this mastery to push theoretical ideas about the subject and social worlds, into public and intellectual debate. For Žižek, Lacan is a master from whom social knowledge as well as knowledge of the social is developed and critiqued. In (...) keeping with Žižek’s ontology, an examination of the intersection of belief with desire reveals the importance of a critical return to ideology that cannot be overlooked, particularly when examining how present social conditions structure an intersection of desire and belief. For Žižek, the contemporary subject believes now more than ever. Žižek positions modern social conditions together with the practices and organisations which maintain ideologies, as structuring the contours of belief. Capitalism, the supposed master of the 20th century, has presented as not so reliable. Might belief be the 21st century master, stepping in to support those ideological forces which intensify the scaffolding of a failing capitalist system? (shrink)

In a recent paper, Michael Levin argues that both statements reporting causal relations and causal explanatory statements are extensional. We show that his argument for the extensionality of causal explanatory statements fails to establish that conclusion. His claim that certain 'because' statements are elliptical for statements of what he terms the 'causal explanatory' form is unsubstantiated. The argument for the referential transparency of the allegedly explanatory form, regardless of whether it is a distinct explanatory form, fails because of scope problems. (...) Finally, we argue that the apparent referential opacity of explanations, the attribution of certain kinds of properties to explanations, and our satisfaction with explanations in what appear to be disparate forms are best accounted for, not by the assumption of ellipticality of statements in various forms for statements in some inherently explanatory form, but rather by an account of explanation as a speech act, the success or failure of which may be affected by which of several co-referring expressions is employed. (shrink)

Este estudio buscó describir e interpretar las teorías subjetivas sobre la identidad profesional docente que se construyen y difunden noticiosamente durante la educación de emergencia por la pandemia de COVID 19. Se utilizó un estudio de análisis documental, metodología cualitativa y un diseño de estudio de casos. El muestreo intencionado y por conveniencia corresponde a 40 noticias de prensa escrita en español, sobre el profesor(a) en pandemia y publicadas en diferentes medios que fueron recolectadas a través de Google Noticias desde (...) el 11 de marzo de 2020 y hasta el 01 de noviembre de 2020. A partir de una codificación temática, los resultados evidenciaron teorías subjetivas asociadas a las exigentes características, roles, funciones y valores con los que se identifica al profesorado durante la pandemia. El análisis mostró los distintos sentidos del ejercicio profesional y las competencias asociadas a su desempeño en la prensa. En la discusión, se utilizaron estudios relativos a la práctica docente para interpretar estos resultados. (shrink)

Robert Card argues that although Susan Okin’s analysis in Justice, Gender and the Family leads to the conclusion that justice within the family requires elimination of gendered roles within marriage, this conclusion is not compatible with a conception of justice in which neutrality between reasonable conceptions of the good, and protection of individuals’ contractual capabilities are taken to be fundamental values. Although Card is right that there is tension in Okin’s work between where the analysis of injustice within the gender-structured (...) family leads and where, as a reformer, Okin is willing to go, and he is right to locate the source of that tension in Okin’s attempt to remain within Rawlsian liberalism, Okin’s view has more resources to respond to this critique than Card acknowledges. In the end, these additional resources may not be sufficient to address the problems that Card notes, but they do suggest a more complex relationship between Okin’s view and the liberal tradition than Card allows.. (shrink)

The concern people are now expressing about the human environment, ecology, pollution, and overpopulation, though admittedly legitimate from a moral point of view, has not attracted much attention from philosophers. This is notable particularly inasmuch as the United States civil rights struggle, the Vietnam War, and various responses of civil disobedience and violence to social problems have all aroused philosophers to careful thought on rights and obligations. I do not want to suggest that a social problem is interesting only if (...) it is philosophically interesting; nor do I want to make light of the way in which the problems of waste, noise, and overcrowding have captured the popular imagination. Yes, we must protect and use wisely the human environment and natural resources. But still, saying it seems banal, and philosophers do not feed on banalities. Here we have a modern moral commandment which speaks to an urgent and serious matter but which, like “Do not steal,” seems so obvious as to be trite. Yes, we must plan the world’s population in a rational way. Even that commandment, though disputed by some, seems trite. (shrink)

Happiness in World History traces ideas and experiences of happiness from early stages in human history, to the maturation of agricultural societies and their religious and philosophical systems, to the changes and diversities in the approach to happiness in the modern societies that began to emerge in the 18th century. In this thorough overview, Peter N. Stearns explores the interaction between psychological and historical findings about happiness, the relationship between ideas and popular experience, and the opportunity to use historical (...) analysis to assess strengths and weaknesses of dominant contemporary notions of happiness. Starting with the advent of agriculture, the book assesses major transitions in history for patterns in happiness, including the impact of the great religions, the unprecedented Enlightenment interest in secular happiness and cheerfulness, and industrialization and imperialism. The final, contemporary section covers fascist and communist efforts to define alternatives to Western ideas of happiness, the increasing connections with consumerism, and growing global interests in defining and promoting well-being. Touching on the experiences in the major regions of Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America, the text offers an expansive introduction to a new field of study. This book will be of interest to students of world history and the history of emotions. (shrink)

In what follows we present group rights as portrayed in contemporary theoretical debates; compare this portrayal with some of the claims actually advanced by various indigenous groups throughout the world; and give reasons for preferring the practical to the theoretical treatments. Our findings suggest that liberal-individualist and corporatist accounts of group rights actually agree on the kind of importance that group interests have for persons and on what it is that groups who claim rights are concerned about. Both liberal-individualists and (...) corporatists locate the importance of group interests in the personal psychology of individual group members. As a result, both treat group interests (such as cultural integrity) as not only different in kind from individualized interests such as freedom of expression but as potentially in competition with them. In contrast, the real-world demands of indigenous groups place emphasis on concrete ways in which the preserving of communal life can be important to individuals’ well-being, in addition to the various spiritual and symbolic resources which such life may provide. These practical aspects of communal life make individuals’ group interests a lot like their individualized ones, and so suggest that group rights do not introduce new or distinctive theoretical questions. Instead, group rights are raise familiar questions about how individuals’ interests ought to be balanced against one another when they are in competition; what counts as an adequate institutional structure for the instantiation of a right; and who ought to be recognized as an authoritative judge of whether a right has been respected. (shrink)

A dominant belief in political philosophy is that states must be entitled to authorize the use of coercion in order to justifiably coerce its subjects. Call this view the entitlement view. On this view, for a state to justifiably coerce its subjects, a necessary condition is that it is entitled to authorize the use of coercion. Sceptics hold the entitlement view. However, they deny that states are entitled to authorize the use of coercion. This denial informs their views regarding the (...) permissible use of political power. Skeptics believe that nearly all uses of political power is impermissible. In this paper, I present a challenge to the skeptical view that nearly all uses of political power is impermissible. I also present a view on the justification of certain uses of political power that is an alternate to the entitlement view. My alternate view allows me to demonstrate that a state can engage in permissible uses of political power over a broad range of domains without possessing any entitlements. (shrink)

The moral argument for the existence of God is really a family of arguments. What they have in common is Kant’s insistence that philosophical theology proceed by drawing out the presuppositions of moral reasoning. Kant’s own favorite version of the argument is widely rejected today. Kant maintained that the summum bonum, the perfect unison of virtue and happiness, is the aim of rational action. Because it ought to be achieved it is possible, as the ought implies the ability to bring (...) it about. The moral faith is that God’s existence and human immortality enable continued moral progress after death and the enjoying of happiness appropriate to it, thus making the arrival at the summum bonum possible. Kant also urged that the categorical commands of the moral conscience suggested the existence of a cosmic lawgiver and commander, and there are a number of nineteenth-century arguments which proceed along those lines. (shrink)

At the turn of the nineteenth century when anatomy and hands-on dissection became the prerequisite for a medical career, the medical community in England and France increasingly relied upon visual representations as part of a complex system of reinforcement of their professional goals. The production of novel illustrated textbooks that disseminated arguments through systematizing illustrations were thus integral to their professional status. Through an examination of a series of realistic diagrams that outlined the new methods of surgical and preservation techniques, (...) this paper argues that visual diagrams were instrumental in supporting the systematic codification and prestige on which nineteenth-century medical knowledge was to depend. It analyses the visual rhetoric and the complex representational languages of these intricate and equally precise illustrations by asking how these illustrations embraced new representational strategies as well as embodied idealizing aesthetic techniques. (shrink)

The inevitable global marketplace creates a need for freer movement of labor. The question is not whether this movement will occur but how it will be implemented. This paper discusses the idea of selling citizenship rights as an alternative approach for allocating immigration and permanent residency. First presented is the rationale for using the market approach to selling citizenship. Next the political, country image, economic, and ethical implementation issues of the proposal are discussed. And last, selling citizenship is discussed in (...) terms of ethical theory and frameworks. (shrink)

We live in a world of states: a world in which the dominant form of “persisting structure” for the wielding of political power is characterized by territorially concentrated power exercised through political institutions that exert sovereign control in the sense of being able to exclusively command compliance. Within such a world, calls for reorganization of the way these institutions are organized so as to devolve power to groups oppressed or marginalized within existing structures are inevitable. However, for proponents of liberal (...) states, such calls for devolving power pose a problem. When substate groups call for a reorganization in which power is devolved rather than reformed, they imply that within some portions of the state’s territory, or for certain of the state’s inhabitants, state-level political institutions cannot rightfully command compliance, or at least, cannot do so exclusively. Proponents of liberal states might respond to this problem by letting go of the need for exclusive command. However, for many proponents of liberal states, the prospect of a competing source of rightful command that may assert priority over decision making that applies to the entire territory is impractical, and conceptually difficult to sustain. An alternative response, one that preserves the pre-eminent position of institutions that encompass the state’s entire territory and population, is to insist that such institutions have a vital role in ensuring that the decision making of sub-state groups meets minimal conditions of moral equality and respect for human rights. Emphasizing the role of institutions that encompass the entire territory in guaranteeing minimal conditions of moral equality and respect for human rights seems promising, but it cannot provide a satisfactory account of the desirability of empowering state officials to exercise powers of oversight, and so it cannot justify reserving such powers in the face of calls for power to be devolved. This is most obvious in relation to oppressed an marginalized groups, as state officials recognize cannot reasonably expect members of such groups to accept officials as credible guarantors of moral equality or human rights. This problem aside, there is a basic problem with the way decision making is conceived of in arguments for the importance of reserving powers of oversight as groups calling for devolution of power are not susceptible to the kind of characterization that state officials would have to engage in to effectively gauge whether to intervene to secure moral equality and human rights. (shrink)

By examining an exemplar sample of mental health nursing educational policies and related legislation, in this article, we trace the discursive production of madness as an “othered” identity category. We engage in a critical discourse analysis of mental health nursing education in Canada, drawing on provincial and federal policies and legislation as the main sources of data. Theoretically framed by critical posthumanism and mad studies, this article outlines how the mad subjectivity becomes decontextualized out of its identity‐based understanding and recontextualized (...) as an inferior category of “the human,” circulating within discourses of pedagogy, economics, law, and psychiatry. The article maps the intertextual nexus of the discourse of mental health nursing education, making visible the complex, the arbitrary, and the sometimes‐contradictory nature of the discipline's grappling with identity‐based mental health concepts. We close with several implications for nursing policy, education, and practice. (shrink)

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir revealed that it is just this freedom of withdrawal from self that woman cannot gain because of the constant effort of establishing and guarding her identity against an enforced background of passivity, ornamentality and self-enclosure. Even as a small child, woman is taught how to.

The book is intended as a critical history of the growth of the ideal of knowledge in science, philosophy and history since Hegel. In order to give some conception of its encyclopædic scope, one need only mention an incomplete list of the topics which are considered in it: the development of non-Euclidean geometries, the logical foundation of the concept of number, the effect of the quantum theory on the concept of physical knowledge, the development of classification and systematization of natural (...) forms in biology, the effects of Darwinism and of the mechanism-vitalism controversy on biological thought, the development of such modes of historiography as the romantic, positivistic and political, as well as of the history of civilization and the history of religion. (shrink)

It is the praxis of being a subject in the world which enables psychoanalysis to theorise subjectivity. Freud theorised subjectivity from the perspective of desires, those repressed unconscious forces which conflict with the subjects’ need to live in the world. The upshot of this conflict for the subject is trauma and for psychoanalysis such trauma provides a way into a remedy, a cure, the presumption of psychoanalysis being that through its method of transference, it does indeed possess the knowledge to (...) pursue a remedy. Lacan offers a new interpretation of Freud by considering the subject as an ongoing ontological enigma in so far as subjective unconscious desire is not only (potentially) traumatic but necessarily (always) linguistic. How is this an ontological enigma? For Lacan the subject is first and foremost a speaking being engaged in an ongoing struggle to articulate unconscious desire. This is because, claims Lacan, we are born into language which not only pre-exists us but continues after death. In this way subjectivity is inescapably oriented to language as simultaneously intrinsic external to it. The unconscious is therefore a mixture of inside and outside, an enigmatic (pre)ontological space which Lacan calls extimacy. This essay seeks to explore Lacan’s orientation of the subject towards extimacy as the site of subjective conflict where, in its quest for the subject’s desire to know and handle the symptom, transference engages a new ontological dimension in which we can say that the extimate is structured like a sensation. (shrink)

Theories that recognize group rights face an important challenge from both friends of rights and friends of groups: that rights discourse cannot accord priority to the needs of group life over those of any individual person because the theory of moral value which underwrites rights language cannot recognize groups as having oveniding interests or importance. The full import of this objection has often been missed by those against whom it is levelled because they focus on claims by groups against non-group (...) members. However the full weight of the problem is most apparent in claims groups make against their own members (what Kymlicka calls "internal restrictions"). In this paper I look more closely at the objection from internal restrictions to clarify what is -- and what is not -- at stake. I clarify: (i) why the moral theory that underpins rights language poses a problem that must be addressed; and (ii) why the strategies most commonly pursued by advocates of group rights do not make this problem go away. However, although it is true that some forms of collectivism are ruled out by rights discourse, distinguishing between the ethical and methodological commitments of a theory makes apparent that adopting some form of methodological collectivism need not imply a collectivist theory of moral value. Neither the (ethical) individualism of rights theory nor the (methodological) collectivism of most theories that value group membership are grounds for rejecting the coherence of group rights. (shrink)

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. A burgeoning human rights movement followed, yielding many treaties and new international institutions and shaping the constitutions and laws of many states. Yet human rights continue to be contested politically and legally and there is substantial philosophical and theoretical debate over their foundations and implications. In this volume, distinguished philosophers, political scientists, international lawyers, environmentalists and anthropologists discuss some of the most difficult questions of human rights (...) theory and practice: what do human rights require of the global economy? Does it make sense to secure them by force? What do they require in jus post bello contexts of transitional justice? Is global climate change a human rights issue? Is there a human right to democracy? Does the human rights movement constitute moral progress? For students of political philosophy, human rights, peace studies and international relations. (shrink)

Everyone agrees that the international community must develop better mechanisms for responding to humanitarian crises. The best mechanism for responding is simply to intervene to prevent a crisis from developing in the first place. However, because the principle of sovereignty imposes strict constraints on action across state borders, international actors are often unwilling or unable to interpose themselves until after conditions have escalated into a full-blown crisis, by which time it has usually become a matter of managing human misery rather (...) than ending or averting it. Respect for sovereignty is an organizing principle of the existing international legal system, and so abandoning it would fundamentally change how the units of international politics are constituted and relate to one another. The strongest argument against abandoning sovereignty is the potential for unintended consequences with respect to peace, political stability, and the effective protection and promotion of human rights. One way to defuse this worry is to frame interventions across borders as principle-based exceptions to a general rule of state sovereignty. If we assume that protecting and promoting individual human rights is the primary goal of the international system, and that both state sovereignty and peace and security are important to us primarily as vehicles for achieving this, then (it is argued) we may use the standards of international human rights to identify, and limit, cases in which the presumption of sovereignty may legitimately be set aside. However, the relationship between sovereignty and humanitarian crises is more complex than this picture allows. Theorizing about humanitarian crises inevitably includes recommendations about states and this makes it a species of non-ideal theory. All actual states are rife with injustice, both in their internal structures and in the relationships these structures establish with those outside a state’s borders. This fact must be reflected in our reasoning about humanitarian responses. (shrink)

Several commentators have expressed concern that the Durban Platform does not include more specific language about the need for equitable mitigation efforts. Meanwhile, other commentators have argued that the differentiated approach adopted by the Kyoto Protocol set up an opposition between the developed and developing nations; resulting in an impasse which has prevented the achievement of adequately ambitious, agreeable and binding mitigation commitments. In this commentary I propose that the political impasse is not due to the equity track per se, (...) but rather to the territorial and production-based accounting system upon which it was built. Under the UNFCCC, parties are required to provide inventories of GHG emissions within their national borders. There are several problems with this method, but most important given the argument here, is that the production-approach has resulted in a significant misrepresentation of the total climate impact of developed nations. Because GHG emissions are not confined by geopolitical borders, it is important to understand the climate impact of contemporary consumption and trade, regardless of where emissions are produced. I argue that supplementing production-based accounting with a consideration of the emissions embedded in trade has the potential to provide a more agreeable and politically viable path for closing the ambition gap and ensuring equity. (shrink)

Historically, culture has been treated as an object in international documents. One consequence of this is that cultural rights in international law have been understood as rights of access and consumption. Recently, an alternative conception of culture, and of what cultural rights protect, has emerged from international documents treating indigenous peoples. Within these documents culture is treated as an activity rather than a good. This activity is ascribed to peoples as well as persons, and protecting the capacity of both peoples (...) and persons to engage in culture is taken to be as basic a component of human dignity as are freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and freedom from torture. It is not an accident that this treatment of culture has emerged from international documents treating indigenous peoples. However, the value of this treatment of culture extends beyond the human rights of indigenous peoples. Treating culture as an activity establishes an understanding of what cultural rights protect that clarifies the relationship between cultural rights and other mechanisms for protecting minorities and frames the role of cultural communities in the realization of human dignity as an important physical and political issue, not just a psychological one. For these reasons, the norms regarding cultural rights that are emerging from international documents treating indigenous peoples are a much-needed step forward for peoples' rights more generally. (shrink)

Who constitutes the public on whose behalf such an official speaks and in whose name the apology is offered? In this paper I argue that in most cases, the “public” that the official offering an apology represents and on whose behalf the apology is offered is not the general public but the public sector: those who direct, control and populate the apparatus of the state. I argue that in most cases there is not a plausible model according to which public (...) sector actors can be treated as vehicles for actions, decisions, projects and values of the general public: a public sector actor is not an avatar of the general public. This makes for a gap between public officials and the general public that must be explicitly bridged with respect to actions, decisions and attitudes named in a public apology in order for members of the general public to perceive themselves as part of either the wrongs for which apology is offered or the apology itself. Recognizing this gap does not imply that members of the general public are not or cannot be responsible for wrongs perpetrated by public sector actors. However, it does imply that the source of the responsibility will not usually be found in public officials having acted at the behest of or for the sake of the general public. (shrink)

Chronic poverty comes in a variety of forms. It is multi-dimensional in its causes and multi-dimensional in its impacts . Although poverty "has an irreducible economic connotation," this connotation "does not necessarily imply the primacy of economic factors" . For example, violent conflict, access to land, and social relations of power are among the most important factors in food security . Integration into global economic markets is as likely to be a source of immiseration and impoverishment as it is a (...) solution . Access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation are significantly impacted by displacement and violent conflict and its aftermath; displacement and violent conflict often have an ethnic dimension. (shrink)