Cervical insufficiency is present in up to 1 percent of pregnancies and is involved in a significant portion of pregnancy losses in the second trimester. The first line of treatment for most women with this condition is transvaginal cerclage. However, for some this is not sufficient, and a transabdominal cerclage must be performed. In a subset of women who receive transabdominal cerclage, there has been documented concern about subfertility. To the lay person, this may raise concerns that this approaches a (...) contraceptive effect which would have implications on the liceity of the treatment; however, consideration of the current research on the procedure indicates that the subfertility is not a result of cerclage on its own, and ethical analysis through the principle of double effect further affirms the morality of this treatment. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine how polycystic ovary syndrome is racialized in biomedical research. Drawing from Star’s seminal concept of triangulation, we analyze how the diagnostic criteria for PCOS combine two different biomarkers: body hair and testosterone. Hair and hormones are both haunted by their use in eugenic research, and as clinical measures, they can carry forward powerful narratives of biological difference. PCOS researchers circulate strong claims about racial difference in hirsutism as if they were established knowledge, sometimes calling for (...) race-specific diagnostic thresholds. Tracing the links between race and hirsutism, hirsutism and testosterone, and testosterone and race, we find that these connections are all conceptualized in ambiguous and inconsistent ways. Through triangulation, the uncertainty clouding each link is mitigated by the apparent strength of the chain as a whole. The logic linking race to disease is attenuated, allowing race to persist as a ghost variable. As PCOS is increasingly reframed as a risk factor for other conditions, racial stratification is submerged, implicit but actionable, at every stage of the life course cascade of risk. (shrink)

This paper examines how it is possible for firms in controversial sectors, which are often marked by social taboos and moral debates, to act in socially responsible ways, and whether a firm can be socially responsible if it produces products harmful to society or individuals. It contends that a utilitarian justification can be used to support the legal and regulated provision of goods and services in these areas, and the regulated and legal provision of these areas produces less harm than (...) the real alternative—illegal and unregulated supply. Utilitarianism is concerned as much with harm minimisation as good maximisation, and both are equally important when it comes to maximising welfare (Bentham 1789, 1970; Mill [1863] 1964). Any adequate theory of CSR must, therefore, have the capacity to handle a business that minimises harm as well as those that more straightforwardly maximise good. In this paper we therefore attempt two tasks. First, we argue that the legal but regulated provision of products and services may be better from an overall utilitarian perspective than a situation in which these harmful or immoral goods and services are illegal but procurable via a black market. Porter and Kramer’s (2006) strategic CSR framework is then presented to describe how firms in these controversial sectors can act in socially responsible ways. This model highlights the importance of firm strategy in selecting areas of socially responsible behaviours that can be acted upon by firms in each industry. (shrink)

Ethical business practices have been widely prescribed, but why? Consumers views on unethical business practices have been studied, but possibly more important to marketers and researchers are consumer actions and reactions to unethical business practices and the businesses themselves. Do consumers react negatively, or in such a way as to "punish" the unethical business? If so, what is the nature and extent of the punishment? This research seeks answers to these questions by examining consumer reactions, such as complaining and switching, (...) to instances of unethical business practices. Using equity theory, this research proposes that consumers should be willing to tolerate some unethical behavior as long as they feel their investments and outcomes remain proportionately equal. Consumers who perceive that their outcome/investment ratio is proportionately unequal to their comparison other will respond by switching or complaining. In this research consumers were exposed to two types of service failures with different levels of service recovery in vignettes. Costs incurred by the consumer during the service transaction were also manipulated in the vignettes. Significant differences were found for complaint behavior in the failure recovery vignettes tested. Specifically, voice complaint was higher in the high cost service encounters in both types of services tested. The recovery attempt used (ethical, unethical, or none) led to significance differences in the variables of complaint, voice complaint, satisfaction, and quality. Higher satisfaction and quality ratings were found for the ethical recovery attempt and higher intentions to use complaint and voice complaint in the unethical recovery attempts. One significant interaction between cost and recovery attempt was found. Intentions to use voice complaint were higher in the high cost situations of ethical and unethical recovery, while approaching equality at the no recovery attempt. (shrink)

This book is an uncompromising defense of legal positivism that insists on the separability of law and morality. After distinguishing among three facets of morality, Kramer explores a variety of ways in which law has been perceived as integrally connected to each of those facets. The book concludes with a detailed discussion of the obligation to obey the law--a discussion that highlights the strengths of legal positivism in the domain of political philosophy as much as in the domain of (...) jurisprudence. (shrink)

Research in face recognition has tended to focus on discriminating between individuals, or “telling people apart.” It has recently become clear that it is also necessary to understand how images of the same person can vary, or “telling people together.” Learning a new face, and tracking its representation as it changes from unfamiliar to familiar, involves an abstraction of the variability in different images of that person's face. Here, we present an application of principal components analysis computed across different photos (...) of the same person. We demonstrate that people vary in systematic ways, and that this variability is idiosyncratic—the dimensions of variability in one face do not generalize well to another. Learning a new face therefore entails learning how that face varies. We present evidence for this proposal and suggest that it provides an explanation for various effects in face recognition. We conclude by making a number of testable predictions derived from this framework. (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 585-586, July 2022. Ayelet Shachar's lead essay in The Shifting Border draws out dramatic transformations of bordering practices currently taking place worldwide. These have yielded spatial relocations for bordering, a privatization of enforcement, and legal innovations that tie the border to individual people as they move, among many other changes. Shachar argues in favor of a form of reciprocity, in which states that shape shift their borders are also compelled to (...) recognize rights for people who require humanitarian assistance. In response, Shachar's interlocutors offer an array of reflections and friendly amendments. (shrink)

The need for education in moral values is increasingly being recognised today, but how is it to be conducted in schools? In particular we consider the appropriateness or otherwise of a teacher assuming the role of a neutral chairperson in discussion.Advocacy of such a stance is especially associated with Lawrence Stenhouse who saw neutrality as a procedural device in order to empower students’ own involvement. We point out many of the insights of Stenhouse's approach, but also some of its disadvantages (...) which subtly encourage a popularist form of relativism.We suggest the substitution of procedural neutrality with a different approach, that of critical affirmation. Here the teacher advocates a stance alongside everyone else. This, however, is done in a way that affirms pupils, and their right to personal views, whilst subjecting all views, including the teacher's own, to a close scrutiny, especially regarding implications for the views of others. (shrink)

THIS ESSAY ARGUES THAT JUDGMENTS ABOUT THE NATURE AND function of human reason play analogous roles in Catholic and Muslim arguments for political liberalism. Focusing on the works of John Courtney Murray and three contemporary Muslim reformers, I note three similarities. First, thinkers in both traditions argue that it is humankind's unique ability to reason about the moral law that constitutes our dignity and provides the foundation for the right to religious liberty. Second, this ability to reason is what allows (...) us to provide the publicly accessible justifications that the liberal principle of reciprocity seems to require. Finally, all four authors argue that their attempts to reform or develop their traditions are dependent upon and required by the dictates of human reason. (shrink)

This essay will move toward a phenomenology of “more” in ten steps. 1st, situates the investigation within the tradition of Husserlian phenomenological practice, then 2nd draws upon Husserl’s own experience of doing phenomenology. 3rd considers some initial aspects of the structure of the lived experience of “more” and 4th is about the number series, while 5th addresses the primal experience of time, space, and movement. 6th focuses on the phenomenological notion of horizons, then 7th turns to the related question of (...) transcendence. 8th takes a critical look at a particular conceptual model sometime used in thinking about the experience of “more”; 9th briefly brings out one of the ethical implications of this critique; and finally, 10th highlights some of the ways in which the research documented here is itself still incomplete and demands “more”.Este ensayo se moverá hacia una fenomenología de "más" en diez pasos. El prime-ro, sitúa la investigación dentro de la tradición de la práctica fenomenológica husserliana; luego, el segundo se basa en la propia experiencia de Husserl de hacer fenomenología; el tercero considera algunos aspectos iniciales de la estructura de la experiencia vivida de "más" y el cuarto es sobre la serie numérica, mientras que el quinto aborda la experiencia primordial de tiempo, espacio y movimiento. El sexto se centra en la noción fenomenológica de horizontes; después el séptimo pasa a la cuestión relacionada con la trascendencia. El octavo echa una mirada crítica a un modelo conceptual particular usado en algún momento para pensar sobre la experiencia de "más"; el noveno destaca brevemente una de las implicaciones éticas de esta crítica;y, finalmente, el décimo resalta algunas de las formas en las que la investigación aquí documentada todavía está incompleta y exige "más". (shrink)

Walker Percy was both a medical doctor and a serious Catholic—a scientist and a religious believer. He thought, however, that science had become hegemonic in the twentieth century and that it was incapable of answering the most fundamental needs of human beings. He thus leveled a critique of the scientific method and its shortcomings in failing to address the individual person over against the group. In response to these shortcomings Percy postulates a religious understanding of human life, one in which (...) man's life is understood as a pilgrimage or a search. The person who searches may not find the “object” of his search during his earthly life, but it is likely that he will come to a better understanding of himself by means of it. (shrink)

THE TITLE OF THIS ESSAY, "READING MORE THAN LOLITA IN TEHRAN," IS meant to invoke Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, a memoir documenting how Western literary classics have the ability to change and improve the lives of people living under theocratic rule. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran, Nafisi invited seven of her best women students to attend a weekly study of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and other (...) authors she believed would provide the women with examples of how to successfully assert their autonomy despite great odds. (shrink)

Normals display selective deficits in morphology and syntax under adverse processing conditions. Digit loads do not impair processing of passives and object relatives but do impair processing of grammatical morphemes. Perceptual degradation and temporal compression selectively impair several aspects of grammar, including passives and object relatives. Hence we replicate Caplan & Waters's specific findings but reach opposite conclusions, based on wider evidence.

(1999). The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist: Gladstone and Magnus on the Evolution of Human Colour Vision, One Small Episode of the Nineteenth-century Darwinian Debate. Annals of Science: Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 25-45.

Gangestad & Simpson present an evolutionary functional analysis of mating strategies. This commentary interprets their argument using a central concept from life history theory, return from investment. Incorporating return from investment allows further specification of costs and benefits from short-term mating in women as well as men and in ecological settings of high environmental variation in mortality and resource availability.

Intergenerational justice and democratic theory -- A narrative turn -- Archê, finitude, and community in Aristophanes -- Mothers, powerlessness, and intergenerational agency in Euripides -- Freedom, responsibility, and transgenerational orientation in Aeschylus -- Art, space, and possibilities for intergenerational justice in our time.

We present evidence from neuroimaging and brain lesion studies that emotional contagion may not be a mechanism underlying musical emotions. Our brains distinguish voice from non-voice sounds early in processing, and dedicate more resources to such processing. We argue that super-expressive voice theory currently cannot account for evidence of the dissociation in processing musical emotion and voice prosody.

De Smet et al. (2018) propose that when functionally similar constructions come to overlap, analogical attraction may occur. So may differentiation, but this process involves attraction to other subnetworks and is both “accidental” and “exceptional”. I argue that differentiation plays a considerably more significant role than De Smet et al. allow. My case study is the development of the dative and benefactive alternations. The rise of the dative alternation (e.g., “gave the Saxons land” ∼ “gave land to the Saxons”) has (...) been shown to occur in later Middle English between 1400 and 1500 (Zehentner 2018). Building on Zehentner and Traugott (2020), the rise of the benefactive alternation (e.g., “build her a house” ∼ “build a house for her”) in Early Modern English c1650 is analyzed from a historical constructionalist perspective and compared with the rise of the dative alternation. The histories of the alternations exemplify the rise of functionally similar constructions that overlap, and show that differentiation from each other plays as large a role as attraction. Both attraction and differentiation occur at several levels of abstraction: verb-specific constructions, schemas and larger systemic changes. (shrink)