This paper describes findings of a research inquiry into the lived experience of homelessness in Peel, a suburban region located in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. It is based on the data from a collaborative project undertaken by members of the Faculties of Health and Education of York University with two local community organizations. The dominant theme of the narratives was that suburban homelessness is similar to being engulfed in a grotto of poverty , isolated from the rest (...) of the community and invisible to it. Once entrapped in the grotto, it is almost impossible to escape from it. There were four sub-themes: (a) falling into the grotto , (b) living/struggling in the grotto , (c) envisioning escape routes from the grotto, and (d) beauty, community and hope in the grotto . Following a discussion of the findings, researchers describe strategies to address homelessness through promotion of social justice for all. (shrink)

This articles gives an overview of the main themes and arguments of _Self-Expression_ (OUP,2007; paper, 2011), and responds to some recent publications in which that book is discussed. In the process of these responses, the article provides refinements and elaborations on some of the book's central claims.

A close study of Hesiod's understanding of the birth of Chaos as the beginning of the cosmos, in which I (1) show why this beginning is better interpreted as the differentiation of earth from Tartaros than as the splitting of earth from sky, (2) explicate the differentiation on three levels that structures the cosmos, and (3) reflect on the semantic and ethical implications that may have led Hesiod to this vision of the cosmos.

In philosophy textbooks for undergraduates the cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict is often cited as a proponent of moral relativism, and her writings are not infrequently excerpted to illustrate the view that the individual’s moral values are culturally determined. Because Benedict established that significant differences can exist in the underlying cultural patterns of different societies, her work is commonly construed as providing evidence for the arbitrary and non-rational basis of morals. The author of the present essay argues that this popular reading (...) of Benedict is mistaken. He draws a distinction between two different forms of moral relativism—the objective and the subjective—and then contends that Benedict is widely viewed as a subjective relativist when in fact her relativism was of the objective variety. He shows that her position actually has much in common with the pragmatic meliorism of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. (shrink)

Source [1] Andrew E. P. Mitchell, Federica Galli, Sondra Butterworth. (2023). Editorial: Equality, diversity and inclusive research for diverse rare disease communities. Front. Psychol., vol. 14. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1285774. "It is also important to recognize that certain mental health disorders are classified as rare conditions and have their own cultural concepts of distress, as defined in the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)" and require “equal attention and support for individuals and their families, both physically and emotionally”. [1].

General Electric has a rich history of being in the center of public discourse regarding the intersection of corporate strategy and environmental concerns. During Jeffrey Immelt’s tenure as Chief Executive Officer, G.E. has taken a proactive approach to coupling corporate social responsibility with organizational profitability in its Ecomagination initiatives. Critics abound with some investor groups questioning the utility of Immelt’s approach for shareholder returns while other stakeholder groups question G.E.’s motives and methods. This case study reviews G.E.’s past CSR efforts (...) and the more recent Ecomagination program and its efficacy and sustainability. The case was developed from public sources. (shrink)

Tracking theories see knowledge as a relation between a subject’s belief and the truth, where the former is responsive to the latter. This relationship involves causation in virtue of a sensitivity condition, which is constrained by an adherence condition. The result is what I call a stable causal relationship between a fact and a subject’s belief in that fact. I argue that when we apprehend the precise role of causation in the theory, previously obscured problems pour out. This paper presents (...) thirteen distinct and original counterexamples to Nozick’s tracking theory—many of which also constitute problems for more recent tracking theories. I begin by discussing how tracking relates to causation: Nozick invokes causation through conditions similar to those of Lewisian causal dependence. As a result, when causal dependence is not necessary for causation, Nozick fails to identify knowledge. I then address the inability of causation to capture epistemically important concepts, such as justification and truth. I conclude by discussing the underlying asymmetries between causation and knowledge that undermine any attempt to reduce knowledge to a purely metaphysical relation. (shrink)

How do people come to opposite causal judgments about societal problems, such as whether a public health policy reduced COVID‐19 cases? The current research tests an understudied cognitive mechanism in which people may agree about what actually happened (e.g., that a public health policy was implemented and COVID‐19 cases declined), but can be made to disagree about the counterfactual, or what would have happened otherwise (e.g., whether COVID‐19 cases would have declined naturally without intervention) via comparison cases. Across two preregistered (...) studies (total N = 480), participants reasoned about the implementation of a public policy that was followed by an immediate decline in novel virus cases. Study 1 shows that people's judgments about the causal impact of the policy could be pushed in opposite directions by emphasizing comparison cases that imply different counterfactual outcomes. Study 2 finds that people recognize they can use such information to influence others. Specifically, in service of persuading others to support or reject a public health policy, people systematically showed comparison cases implying the counterfactual outcome that aligned with their position. These findings were robust across samples of U.S. college students and politically and socioeconomically diverse U.S. adults. Together, these studies suggest that implied counterfactuals are a powerful tool that individuals can use to manufacture others’ causal judgments and warrant further investigation as a mechanism contributing to belief polarization. (shrink)

We have never been so aware of masks. They were in short supply in the early days of COVID-19, resulting in significant risk to health care workers. Now they are highly politicized with battles about mask-wearing protocols breaking out in public. Although masks have obtained a new urgency and ubiquity in the context of COVID-19, people have thought about both the literal and metaphorical role of masks in medicine for generations. In this paper, we discuss three such metaphors—the masks of (...) objectivity, of infallibility, and of benevolence—and their powerful role in medicine. These masks can be viewed as inflexible barriers to communication, contributing to the traditional authoritarian relationship between doctor and patient and concealing the authenticity and vulnerability of physicians. COVID masks, by contrast, offer a more nuanced and morally complex metaphor for thinking about protecting people from harm, authentic and trustworthy communication, and attention to potential inequities both in and beyond medical settings. We highlight the morally relevant challenges and opportunities that masks evoke and suggest that there is much to be gained from rethinking the mask metaphor in medicine. (shrink)

In this paper, we attempt to refine the concept of corporate citizenship. Traditionally, research on corporate citizenship has paid greater attention to corporateduties, leaving corporate rights relatively unattended in the corporate citizenship literature. However, some scholars have recently explored corporate citizenship as the corporation’s implementation of both of its respected rights and duties. Others have conceptualized the corporate citizenship concept with a specific focus on the corporation’s expansion of its new duties and rights. Integrating existing conceptualizations of corporate citizenship, we (...) propose a refined definition of corporate citizenship as a dynamic process by which corporations implement and expand their respective corporate rights and duties. (shrink)

At the moment in Britain and elsewhere the debate inside and outside of Parliament on various medical issues which are essentially moral never ends. Everybody has his own point of view--or principles. But what emerges for society to adopt can often be called in lay terminology 'compromise'. Professor Mitchell argues in this paper that a moral consensus is possible and indeed ought to be achieved, as today the medical practitioner can no longer make his decision only in accordance with (...) the strict code of ethics of the medical profession. The task of the philosopher, says Professor Mitchell, is to interpret the actions and attitudes demanded by modern medical practice. (shrink)

_Becoming Human_ argues that human identity was articulated and extended across a wide range of textual, visual, and artifactual assemblages from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. J. Allan Mitchell shows how the formation of the child expresses a manifold and mutable style of being. To be human is to learn to dwell among a welter of things. A searching and provocative historical inquiry into human becoming, the book presents a set of idiosyncratic essays on embryology and infancy, play (...) and games, and manners, meals, and other messes. While it makes significant contributions to medieval scholarship on the body, family, and material culture, _Becoming Human_ theorizes anew what might be called a medieval ecological imaginary. Mitchell examines a broad array of phenomenal objects—including medical diagrams, toy knights, tableware, conduct texts, dream visions, and scientific instruments—and in the process reanimates distinctly medieval ontologies. In addressing the emergence of the human in the later Middle Ages, Mitchell identifies areas where humanity remains at risk. In illuminating the past, he shines fresh light on our present. (shrink)

The original version of this article unfortunately contained mistakes.

Taylor's project is vastly ambitious. He has touched impressively, though not decisively, on how widely or how narrowly contexts of texts should be defined. It is clear that his construal is very wide indeed, for he has extended the philosopher's canon by including �poietics� as an essential part of understanding the present state of moral thought, but not as holding any special call on us as a morally-driven aesthetic. He also has expanded the historical context by drawing imaginatively from the (...) languages of specific discourses to suggest that these have been languages of moral inquiry reaching their way to the present. Lastly, he has claimed that there need be no necessary conflict between a historical account of the present state of moral philosophy and a strongly held moral position. (shrink)

This innovative book proposes that what we think of as “moral conscience” is essentially the exercise of reflective judgment on the goods and ends arising in interpersonal relations, and that such judgment constitutes a form of taste. Through an historical survey Mitchell shows that the constant pendant to taste was an educational and cultural ideal, namely, that of the gentleman, whether he was an ancient Greek citizen-soldier, Roman magistrate, Confucian scholar-bureaucrat, Renaissance courtier, or Victorian grandee. Mitchell argues that (...) it was neither an ethical doctrine nor methodology that provided the high cultures with moral and political leadership, but rather an elite social order. While the gentry in the traditional sense no longer exists, it nevertheless made significant historical contributions, and insofar as we are concerned to understand the present state of human affairs, we need to grasp the nature and import of said contributions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 2 Seiten: 29-48.

ABSTRACT Do physicians and nurses have an obligation to treat patients who are HIV‐positive? Although an initial review of the possible sources of such an obligation yields equivocal results, a closer examination reveals a clear obligation to treat. The current risk of job‐caused HIV‐infection is not sufficient to warrant a refusal to treat. This is so because there exist rationally justified, general social, as well as specific peer expectations, that health care professionals treat HIV‐positive patients. These expectations impose moral obligations (...) on doctors and nurses. Moreover there is no sound libertarian argument entitling doctors and nurses to refuse to treat HIV‐positive patients. A morally appropriate identification with his or her role would disincline a health care professional to refuse treatment to an HIV‐positive patient. The likely source of such refusal is occupational alienation and an irrational reaction to AIDS symbolism. (shrink)