ABSTRACTPeople can be moved and overwhelmed, a phenomenon typically accompanied by goose-bumps and tears. We argue that these feelings of being moved are not limited to situations that are appraise...

This article examines how the phenomenological concept of habit can be productively deployed in the analysis of racism, in order to propose a reframing of the problem. Racism does not unfold primarily in the register of conscious thought or action, I argue, but more intimately and insidiously in the register of bodily habit. This claim, however, relies on a reading of habit as bodily orientation – or habituation – as developed by Merleau-Ponty in the Phenomenology of Perception. Drawing on his (...) account, I turn to two salient dimensions of racist praxis which I argue are better understood through the frame of habit: bodily gesture or response, and racialized perception. Building on the analyses of contemporary critical race thinkers, I argue that racism is habitual insofar as it is embedded in bodily modes of responding to the presentation of racialized ‘others’ and in ‘sedimented’ modes of racialized seeing. However, this is not to suggest that the acquisition of racist habits is passive, or that such habits foreclose the possibility of change. In the final section, I revisit the concept of habit and its usual characterization as ‘sedimentation’ or ‘calcification’. I argue that while such a reading gives voice to the anchoring weight of the temporal past in habit, a more prospective rendering of the concept is available to us through a rereading of sedimentation as active passivity; habits are not only acquired, they are also held. This in turn will allow us to recast the question of responsibility in relation to one’s racist habits. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

It has been claimed that ‘virtuous structures’ can foster moral agency in organisations. We investigate this in the context of employee involvement in corporate philanthropy, an activity whose moral status has been disputed. Employing Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of moral agency, we analyse the results of eight focus groups with employees engaged in corporate philanthropy in an employee-owned retailer, the John Lewis Partnership. Within this organisational context, Employee–Partners’ moral agency was evidenced in narrative accounts of their engagement in philanthropic activities and (...) in their disputes about the moral status of corporate philanthropy. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between a person's claim right not to be harmed and the duties this claim confers on others. I argue that we should reject Jonathan Quong's evidence-based account of this relationship, which holds that an agent A's possession of a claim against B is partly determined by whether it would be reasonable for A to demand B's compliance with a correlative duty. When B's evidence is that demanding compliance would not be reasonable, A cannot have a (...) claim against B. I suggest that some of the putatively problematic cases that Quong identifies can be resolved by plausibly narrowing the scope of the right not to be harmed. I also argue that Quong's view leads to implausible conclusions, and that his account of what happens to A's claim in the face of lesser-evil justifications is inconsistent with his broader view. I then defend the view that agents are required, and not merely permitted, to act on lesser-evil justifications. I further argue that A may not defend herself against the infliction of harms that are justified on lesser-evil grounds. However, she may defend herself in cases where B is only evidentially, and not objectively, justified in harming her. (shrink)

This paper defends the Limited Use View of our duties to save. The Limited Use View holds that the duty to save is a duty to treat oneself, and perhaps one’s resources, as a means for preventing harm to others. But the duty to treat oneself as a means for the sake of others is limited. One need not treat oneself as a means when doing so is either very costly, or conflicts with one’s more stringent duties to others. This (...) provides an agent-neutral account of the duty to save. When the cost of saving passes a certain threshold, one is permitted to fail to save, and it is impermissible for others to force one to save, if doing so will force one to incur an equal or greater cost. I argue that the Limited Use View is to be preferred to agent-relative accounts of the duty to save, which hold that the limit on our duty to save is grounded in an agent-relative prerogative to weight our own interests (and those of special others) more heavily than other people’s interests. (shrink)

Sex determines much about one's life, but what determines one's sex? The answer is complicated and incomplete: on close examination, ordinary notions of female and male are vague. In 2012, the International Olympic Committee further specified what they mean by woman in response to questions about who, exactly, is eligible to compete in women's Olympic events. I argue, first, that their stipulation is evidence that the use of vague terms is better described by semantic approaches to vagueness than by epistemic (...) approaches. In addition, the IOC's 2012 stipulation was made with sensitivity to its practical consequences. Linguistic actions often have morally relevant consequences, and I contend that, other things equal, we should adopt theories about language that acknowledge the responsibility we bear for what we say. Taking vagueness to be an epistemic phenomenon precludes the sense of agency needed for moral responsibility; taking it to be semantic does not. Thus I advance two arguments for semantic approaches to vagueness, as against epistemic approaches: one descriptive and one normative. (shrink)

The role of the ‘ideal’ in political philosophy is currently much discussed. These debates cast useful light on Mill's self-designation as ‘under the general designation of Socialist’. Considering Mill's assessment of potential property-relations on the grounds of their desirability, feasibility and ‘accessibility’ (disambiguated as ‘immediate-availability’, ‘eventual-availability’ and ‘conceivable-availability’) shows us not only how desirable and feasible he thought ‘utopian’ socialist schemes were, but which options we should implement. This, coupled with Mill's belief that a socialist ideal should guide social reforms (...) (as the North Star guides mariners), reveals much more clearly the extent of his socialist commitments (even if he thought political economists would be concerned with forms of individual property for some time to come). Moreover, this framework for assessments of ‘ideal’ institutions makes a useful contribution to an ongoing contemporary debate. (shrink)

This 1999 book demonstrates a method for reading the texts of Aristotle by revealing a continuous line of argument running from the Physics to De Caelo. The author analyses a group of arguments that are almost always treated in isolation from one another, and reveals their elegance and coherence. She concludes by asking why these arguments remain interesting even though we now believe they are absolutely wrong and have been replaced by better ones. The book establishes the case that we (...) must rethink our approach to Aristotle's physical science and Aristotelian texts, and as such will provoke debate and stimulate new thinking amongst philosophers, classicists, and historians of science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Reciprocating Engine--Like ProustRoger ShattuckWould you buy a book called “How to Read a Book”? Only out of annoyance, I imagine. In the company of literary scholars, critics, and writers, we all think we know already how to read. Otherwise, we’d be professional charlatans. Still, in 1940 tens of thousands of people bought a book called How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler. It stayed on (...) the best seller lists for several weeks. Adler wrote in an easy conversational style and promoted good books—even old ones. But he had the essentials wrong. He believed we should read the way a tyro tours an art museum: the tyro looks at the label before looking at the painting. Of course our whole educational system—K plus 12 plus 4 plus even more—inevitably follows this label-first method. I shall come back to the basic question of order of events in reading literature.On the basis of my own experience and of my investigations in recent years, I distinguish three kinds or levels of reading. We read for basic comprehension of words and sentences. We read for literary response to the parts and the whole of a work. And we read for the relations of the work to other works and to life itself. These tentative categories of reading do not represent sequential stages. Our response to language may resort to one or all of these three activities at any stage of learning.Formal reading begins with the basic association of written word with sounded word—with a notion in the mind—with some phenomenon in the world. Since most of us have forgotten how we learned those initial associations, we understand them probably from having helped a child to read. And in that gradual process we do not usually encounter the excitement that can occur when an illiterate older child or an illiterate [End Page 104] adult suddenly grasps the miracle of language. The exemplary case of Helen Keller concentrates into one incident at the water pump the revelation that comes to the rest of us over a period of weeks or months at a much earlier age. We should never forget one fundamental: the comprehension stage of reading is not an empty skill that can be acquired apart from meaningful content. In order to make sense of written language, we cannot just learn a mental trick of association but must also acquire much information about the world we live in.This first category of reading for comprehension is endlessly debated by all parties, including literary scholars and critics. Almost no one speaks of the third category: how to keep track of and make use of what we read over the years, both as professionals in the field of literature and as individuals seeking to shape a life out of our experience. I lifted the title of this panel from a remarkable essay on how to keep notes on one’s reading and how to set up and constantly revise a system of files both in order to give direction to one’s professional career and in order to constitute one’s character as a person. The essay “On Intellectual Craftsmanship” was written by C. Wright Mills as an appendix for The Sociological Imagination (1959). We all pick up procedures for keeping notes and files as we go along. But despite the number of methodology courses in graduate programs in literature, such basics are rarely discussed. Mills deserves much credit for raising a neglected subject essential for all writers. Intellectual craftsmanship will become even more challenging in the era of electronics and computers.Another great scholar a century earlier saw fit to speak of these basics near the end of his autobiography.I may mention that I keep from thirty to forty large portfolios, in cabinets with labelled shelves, into which I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum. I have bought many books and at their ends I make an index of all the facts that concern my work; or, if the book is not my own, write out a separate abstract, and of such abstracts I have a huge drawer... (shrink)

Biological research on aggression is increasingly consulted for possible answers to the social problems of crime and violence. This paper reviews some contrasting approaches to the biological understanding of behavior—behavioral genetic, social-environmental, physiological, developmental—as a prelude to arguing that approaches to aggression are beset by vagueness and imprecision in their definitions and disunity in their measurement strategies. This vagueness and disunity undermines attempts to compare and evaluate the different approaches empirically. Nevertheless, the definitions reveal commitments to particular metaphysical views concerning (...) behavior. Alternative understandings of aggression suggest even different research approaches than those most commonly found in the literature. (shrink)

Ali (Ethics and Information Technology 17:267–274, 2015) and McCormick (Ethics and Information Technology 3:277–287, 2001) claim that virtual murders are objectionable when they show inappropriate engagement with the game or bad sportsmanship. McCormick argues that such virtual murders cannot be wrong on Kantian grounds because virtual murders only violate indirect moral duties, and bad sportsmanship is shown across competitive sports in the same way. To condemn virtual murder on grounds of bad sportsmanship, we would need to also condemn other competitive (...) games. I argue, contra McCormick, that virtual murders performed within massively multiplayer online roleplaying games can be wrong on Kantian grounds when they are exploitative. Exploitation occurs when virtual murder treats the player controlling the victim in a way that they have no opportunity to consent to (i.e. as a mere means in Kantian terminology). I argue that some virtual murders involving inappropriate engagement (Ali, Ethics and Information Technology 17:267–274, 2015) and bad sportsmanship (McCormick, Ethics and Information Technology 3:277–287, 2001) are exploitative in this way and therefore also wrong on Kantian grounds. (shrink)

The paper argues that the reconciliation of the Causal Theory of Perception with Disjunctivism requires the rejection of causal particularism – the idea that the ontology of causation is always and everywhere an ontology of particulars (e.g., events). The so-called ‘Humean Principle’ that causes must be distinct from their effects is argued to be a genuine barrier to any purported reconciliation, provided causal particularism is retained; but extensive arguments are provided for the rejection of causal particularism. It is then explained (...) how the reconciliation of the causal theory with disjunctivism can proceed on the basis of an ontology of facts. (shrink)

In this article, Hannah Arendt's concept of action will be used to problematize current transformations of the health care sector and examine some responses by ethicists in light of those transformations. The sphere of human interaction that should typify health care work is identified as an action of unpredictable praxis in contrast to controllable procedures and techniques which increasingly take place in the health care sector.

In the late 1930s networks of amateur observers across Britain were collecting data on birds , aircraft and society itself . This paper concentrates on birdwatching practice in the period 1930–1955. Through an examination of the construction of birdwatching's subjects, the Observers, and their objects, birds, it is argued that amateur strategies of scientific observation and record reflected, and were part-constitutive of, particular versions of ecological, national and social identity in this period. The paper examines how conflicts between a rural, (...) organicist Britishness and a modern, planner-preservationist Britishness were elaborated and contained within the figure of the birdwatcher and within the institutional epistemologies of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the British Trust for Ornithology. Such conflicts are shown to be embedded in the structuring of visual perception in different strategies of bird and aircraft identification, particularly between analytic and gestalt methods; the paper examines, using the related ‘field-science’ of aircraft recognition, the importance of identificatory processes in the construction of the Observer, and concludes by examining whether tensions between organicist and scientific discourses were in any sense resolved by the end of this period. (shrink)

As there is a growing trend for people to work from home, precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, this research examines the impact of blurred work-life boundaries on lifestyle and subjective well-being. Our cross-sectional study in the Netherlands demonstrates that heightened levels of blurred work-life boundaries predict negative changes in happiness through enhanced emotional exhaustion. In addition, the findings point to a dual role of lifestyle in this process. On the one hand, we observed that healthy overall lifestyle patterns buffered employees (...) against the detrimental effects of blurred work-life boundaries and emotional exhaustion on happiness. On the other hand, employees who experienced increases in blurring of work-life boundaries reported a deterioration in healthy lifestyle behaviors, which in turn was related to reduced happiness. Paradoxically, it seems that those who would benefit the most from a healthy lifestyle are less able to sustain health-promoting behaviors. A case for shared responsibility between employers and employees is built as we discuss the practical implications of the current research. (shrink)

Because mourning and memorializing a miscarriage seems to imply acceptance of foetal personhood, feminists have been reluctant to address the often traumatic but common experience of pregnancy loss. Feminist anthropologists of reproduction have argued that adopting a view of personhood as constructed and negotiated, rather than inherent, solves this dilemma and enables the development of a feminist discourse of pregnancy loss. This article aims to make a critical contribution to such a discourse by analysing representations of lost babies and children (...) in online pregnancy loss memorials. It focuses on two genres of representation, idealized angels and medical ultrasound images. It argues that the dominance of a biological model of personhood limits the ability of both forms of representation to secure the status of memorialized children as real. However, pregnancy loss memorials do communicate the anguish of grieving parents, in part through the very unrepresentability of their loss. They also provoke a questioning of the taken for granted subject of `the child', whether imagined or real, absent or present. (shrink)

In this article we examine the nature of intimacy and knowing in the nurse-patient relationship in the context of advanced nursing roles in fertility care. We suggest that psychoanalytical approaches to emotions may contribute to an increased understanding of how emotions are managed in advanced nursing roles. These roles include nurses undertaking tasks that were formerly performed by doctors. Rather than limiting the potential for intimacy between nurses and fertility patients, we argue that such roles allow nurses to provide increased (...) continuity of care. This facilitates the management of emotions where a feeling of closeness is created while at the same time maintaining a distance or safe boundary with which both nurses and patients are comfortable. We argue that this distanced or ‘bounded’ relationship can be understood as a defence against the anxiety of emotions raised in the nurse-fertility patient relationship. (shrink)

Predictions about the health risks of low level radiation combine two sorts of measures. One estimates the amount and kinds of radiation released into the environment, and the other estimates the adverse health effects. A new field called health physics integrates and applies nuclear physics to cytology to supply both these estimates. It does so by first determining the kinds of effects different types of radiation produce in biological organisms, and second, by monitoring the extent of these effects produced by (...) given levels of exposure. This essay examines the interplay between evidential constraints and external, contextual interests and values in studying the biological hazards of radiation. By analyzing the debate over linear vs. quadratic dose response models, the essay focuses on problems of developing quantitative, rather than qualitative, estimates of the risks of increased cancer incidence in an exposed population. (shrink)

Miriam Solomon's social empiricism is marked by emphasis on community level rationality in science and the refusal to impose a distinction between the epistemic and the non-epistemic character of factors ("decision vectors") that incline scientists for or against a theory. While she attempts to derive some norms from the analysis of cases, her insistent naturalism undermines her effort to articulate norms for the (appropriate) distribution of decision vectors.

Problems with clinical research that create conflicts between doctors' therapeutic and research obligations may be fueled by a rigid view of science as determiner of truth, a heavy reliance on statistics, and certain features of randomized clinical trials. I suggest some creative, feminist approaches to such research and explore ways to provide choice for patients and to use values in directing both therapy and science - to enhance the effectiveness of each.

Harriet Taylor Mill and Anna Wheeler are two nineteenth-century British feminists generally over-shadowed by the fame of the men with whom they co-authored. Yet both made important and interesting contributions to political thought, particularly regarding deconstruction of (i) the patriarchal institution of marriage; and (ii) the current property regime which, in dominating workers, unfairly distributing the product of labour, and encouraging ‘individualism’, they believed did little to maximize the general happiness. Both were feminists, utilitarians, and socialists. How they link these (...) elements is both interestingly similar, and interestingly different. This article has four aims. Firstly, to make a strong claim concerning their authorial hand in works often considered to be solely the work of their male co-author. Secondly, to sketch those co-authoring relationships, and consider whether Taylor and Mill may even have consciously constructed their early letters ‘On Marriage' based upon what they knew of Thompson and Wheeler’s relationship. Thirdly, to map out their shared (though not identical) claim that marriage was a form of slavery, and the proposals they offered to free women from the domination of patriarchal relationships. Fourthly, to explore the way in which both thought female emancipation would be most truly realized via cooperative socialism. (shrink)

Originally published in 1910, this book attempts to describe knowledge from the point of view of a philosophical psychology. Wodehouse treats the text as a 'psychological preface to metaphysics', and splits her examination into three sections: knowledge as resulting from judgements in the actual world; the philosophical problem of fallible knowledge; and the question of imagination and 'the variousness of reality'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Wodehouse's work or in the overlap of psychology (...) and philosophy. (shrink)

IT WAS an outlandish, ethically questionable experiment, but this was the 1960s after all. Psychiatrist Robert Heath of Tulane University in New Orleans hoped to cure his patients' depression, intractable pain, schizophrenia, suicidal feelings, addiction, and even homosexuality - which in those days was considered a psychiatric disorder - by drowning them out with pleasure, induced by an electrode implanted deep in their brains.

A ‘good enough’ nurse: supporting patients in a fertility unitIn this paper, I discuss the findings of an ethnographic study of a fertility unit. I suggest that caring as ‘emotional awareness’ and ‘non‐caring’ as ‘emotional distance’ may be forms of nursing akin to Fabricius’s (1991) arguments around the ‘good enough’ nurse. This paper critiques caring theories and contributes to the debates over the nature of caring in nursing. I discuss the implications raised for nurses if patients want a practical approach (...) to caring and do not expect an emotionally intimate relationship from nurses. (shrink)

It is largely undisputed that nurses should obtain consent prior to nursing care procedures. This article reports on a qualitative study examining the way in which nurses obtain such informed consent. Data were collected through focus group discussion and by using a critical incident technique in order to explore the way in which nurses approach consent prior to nursing care procedures. Qualified nurses in two teaching hospitals in England participated in the study. An analysis of the data provides evidence that (...) consent was often not obtained by those who participated in the study and that refusals of care were often ignored. In addition, participants were often uncertain how to proceed with care when the patient was unable to consent. Consent prior to nursing care procedures is an essential but undeveloped concept, for which a new ethos is required. (shrink)

The development of bioethics primarily at the cognitive level further perpetuates the tendency to construe all aspects of our lives, including our bodies, as technical systems. For example, if we consider the moral issue of organ sales without taking our embodiment into account, there appear to be no sound arguments for opposing such sales. However, it is important to consider the aspects of the phenomenal body that challenge rational deliberation by exploring an embodied approach to the ethical dilemma produced by (...) a proposed kidney exchange as presented in one of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Dekalog films. What is sought is a description of a body-measure that would serve as a critique of strictly cognitive bioethical deliberations. (shrink)

Collectivist accounts of the ethics of war have traditionally dominated just war theory (Kutz 2005; Walzer 1977; Zohar 1993). These state-based accounts have also heavily influenced the parts of international law pertaining to armed conflict. But over the past ten years, reductive individualism has emerged as a powerful rival to this dominant account of the ethics of war. Reductivists believe that the morality of war is reducible to the morality of ordinary life. War is not a special moral sphere with (...) its own special moral rules. Reductivists typically reject a collectivist approach to the morality of war in favor of an individualist view, according to which individuals (rather than states or other collectives) are the proper focus of moral guidance and evaluation. This view holds that the rules governing killing in war are simply the rules governing killing between individuals, most obviously the rules of self-defense and other-defense (Fabre 2009; Frowe 2014; McMahan 2009; Tadros 2014). -/- This chapter defends reductive individualism against the claim that it is unable to sanction wars of national defense that seek to protect non-vital interests. These non-vital interests include political goods such as the defense of sovereignty—that is, of political and territorial integrity. (shrink)