A novel Protocol Ethics Tool Kit (‘Ethics Tool Kit’) has been developed by a multi-stakeholder group of the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Brigham and Women9s Hospital and Harvard. The purpose of the Ethics Tool Kit is to facilitate effective recognition, consideration and deliberation of critical ethical issues in clinical trial protocols. The Ethics Tool Kit may be used by investigators and sponsors to develop a dedicated Ethics Section within a protocol to improve the consistency and transparency between clinical trial (...) protocols and research ethics committee reviews. It may also streamline ethics review and may facilitate and expedite the review process by anticipating the concerns of ethics committee reviewers. Specific attention was given to issues arising in multinational settings. With the use of this Tool Kit, researchers have the opportunity to address critical research ethics issues proactively, potentially speeding the time and easing the process to final protocol approval. (shrink)

In Canada, as in many developed countries, healthcare conscientious objection is growing in visibility, if not in incidence. Yet the country's health professional policies on conscientious objection are in disarray. The article reports the results of a comprehensive review of policies relevant to conscientious objection for four Canadian health professions: medicine, nursing, pharmacy and dentistry. Where relevant policies exist in many Canadian provinces, there is much controversy and potential for confusion, due to policy inconsistencies and terminological vagueness. Meanwhile, in Canada's (...) three most northerly territories with significant Aboriginal populations, whose already precarious health is influenced by funding and practitioner shortages, there are major policy gaps applicable to conscientious objection. In many parts of the country, as a result of health professionals' conscientious refusals, access to some legal health services – including but not limited to reproductive health services such as abortion – has been seriously impeded. Although policy reform on conscientious conflicts may be difficult, and may generate strenuous opposition from some professional groups, for the sake of both patients and providers, such policy change must become an urgent priority. (shrink)

This collection of essays, which includes a revised version of a famous article on the "male lesbian," addresses such issues as race, gender, and sexuality, and explores the body as a physical, psychological, and cultural construct.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Josiah Royce on RaceIssues in ContextJacquelyn Ann K. KegleyAll philosophy, whether or not we want to admit it, is done in a context, filtered through lenses that are personal, intellectual, historical, cultural, social, and political. Thus to fairly treat and fully understand Royce's views on race, we must set a situational framework. First, Royce's 1906 article entitled "Race Questions and Prejudices" is the lead piece in a collection that (...) implements his philosophy of loyalty. It applies his principle of loyalty to what he considers one of the most significant social/political issues of his time—the race question. As we discuss Royce and race issues, the philosophy of loyalty must be in the background as a point of reference. Indeed, Royce tells us that he will address the various questions in his article "Race Questions and Prejudices" by calling attention to "a few principles which seem to me to be serviceable to any one who wants to look at race questions fairly and humanely" (6).Secondly, except for W. E. B. DuBois and Jane Addams, no other major figure associated with pragmatic philosophy substantially addressed issues of race and racism in their written work, nor did anyone so early in the twentieth century as did Royce. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk, which came out in 1903, immediately preceded Royce's article. Jane Addams briefly touched on race issues in her 1915 Democracy and Social Ethics. Alain Locke, who sought to study with Royce at Harvard but could not because of Royce's premature death, gave his "Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Race" in 1915, but they were published posthumously. John Dewey's "Race Prejudice and Friction" appeared in 1922. There is an absence of treatment of race issues in George Herbert Mead, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Alfred North Whitehead. Thus Shannon Sullivan and I agree that Royce stands out in the history of classical American philosophy in taking an antiracist focus on race questions when very few philosophers—especially white male philosophers—took scholarly time to think about these issues.1 [End Page 1]Another important context for Royce's article is the political climate of the time. Royce identifies the era as one in which there were "more ways and places in which men find themselves in the presence of alien races with whom they have to live in the same social order" (4). It was a time of "white anxiety." In 1905, Theodore Roosevelt gave his famous "On American Motherhood" speech in which he warned of white "race suicide" if white families continued to reproduce at a slower rate than other races. Thus, Royce was speaking and writing against racism in a time of anti-immigration and proimperialism sentiment due to white anxiety in the United States about the possible decline of global white supremacy. It is in this setting that Royce highlights the color line as a significant problem.Royce states the problem as follows:This is the problem of dealing with the men who seem to us somehow very widely different from ourselves in physical constitution, in temperament, in all their deeper nature, so that we are temped to think of them as natural strangers to our souls, while nevertheless we find that they are stubbornly there in our world and that they are men as much determined to live as we are, and are men who, in turn, find us as incomprehensible as we find them.(5)With increased contact among different populations, the age-old problem of how to deal with people who seem different from one's own group intensifies. There will be, says Royce, numerous questions including those of superiority-inferiority, power and sovereignty, and a new assessment of the ways in which these "different" people might be helpful or perilous to one's own group interests. Royce notes that one cannot assume an automatic answer. He asks, "Is it a ‘yellow peril,' or a ‘black peril,' or perhaps after all, is it not rather some form of ‘white peril' which threatens the future of humanity in this day of great struggles and of complex issues?" (6). With the question posed in this... (shrink)

We provide a comprehensive analysis of differences between socially responsible investment and conventional funds in terms of manager characteristics, performance and fund styles. We use holdings-based analysis to evaluate fund performance and style, which allows us to perform a more in-depth analysis than the extant literature. We find that SRI managers have longer tenure and are more likely to be a female. However, these differences do not result in any significant difference in the performance of SRI and conventional funds. Further, (...) it is possible to find an SRI fund of any style, although these funds are under-represented in value styles. (shrink)

Prior literature on socially responsible investment has contended that excluding “sin stocks” from a portfolio will reduce performance and increase risk. Further, incorporating stocks of firms with positive social responsibility scores will improve performance and reduce risk. We simulate portfolios designed to mimic typical equity mutual funds’ holdings and investigate these propositions. We remove the potentially confounding influences of differences in manager skill, transaction costs and fees, and conduct a clean experiment on the effect of positive and negative portfolio screening. (...) We find no difference in the return or risk of screened and unscreened portfolios. We conclude that a typical socially responsible fund will neither gain nor lose from screening its portfolio. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the witch's dance through the lens of Jahra “Rager” Wasasala's bloo/d/runk (2016) and Liz Lerman's Wicked Bodies (2020) whose invocation of the witch through the moving body, I argue, goes beyond merely metaphorical or esthetic applications, but enacts a certain dramaturgical function as a hinging threshold, a dynamic site of negotiation between material and immaterial forces. In my analysis, I sketch the contours of a hinge‐analytic called “riding the hinge,” seeking suspension in the hinges of (...) performance in order to account for how invisible forces assume presence on stage through the figure of the witch as she dances. “Riding the hinge,” I argue, is a practice performed by choreographers who engage the transformational presencing power of the body of the witch in performance, as well as a critical methodology for analyzing such works. (shrink)

In asking to what extent the interaction between pragmatism and phenomenology offers a valuable resource for re-imaging the limits and potentialities of philosophical inquiry, one needs to acknowledge, first, that pragmatist philosophers, beginning with Josiah Royce, actively contributed to the re-elaboration of the issues and strategies of phenomenology in the American context. Secondly, it will be argued that the philosophies of the classical pragmatists, Peirce, Royce, James, and Dewey, contain important resources for creating a new understanding of the human self (...) and of the role of philosophy. We will discuss contributing elements from each of the Classical Pragmatists but focus on the neglected contributions of Josiah Royce. We argue that Royce posits important theses that are valuable to our inquiry: his view of self as “expressive,” i.e. through facial and bodily gestures, through cooperative activities such as art, language, custom, religion, understood via a study of the “expressive signs of mental life”; his idea of science as a thoroughly human enterprise; his belief that habits are common to both physical and mental phenomena; his views on knowledge of other minds and how two minds can know the same thing; and his belief in the social grounding of physical knowledge. (shrink)

In this centennial year of the death of Josiah Royce it is appropriate to explore the lines of influence between Royce as a teacher and one of his students, C.I. Lewis. First, Lewis himself acknowledged an affinity between his ‘conceptual pragmatism’ and Royce’s ‘absolute pragmatism’. Secondly, Lewis also acknowledged Royce’s influence in terms of his explorations of alternative logics. Thirdly, Lewis was called the “most influential American thinker of his generation” and a link between the philosophers of the classic period (...) of the Harvard philosophy department and those of the second half of the twentieth century. This suggests an exploration of Royce’s influence forward into... (shrink)

This essay explores the criteria for lesbian identity attribution through the case study of "male lesbians": biological males who claim to be lesbians. I analyze such sex/gender identity attribution through the lens of postmodernism, which provides a workable theoretical framework for "male lesbian" identities. My conclusions explore the historicity and cultural constructedness of the body's sex/gender identities, revealing the limitations of both "the postmodernized body" and "the essentialized modernist body.".

Information posted by youth in online social media contexts is regularly accessed, downloaded, integrated, and analyzed by academic researchers. The practice raises significant social justice considerations for researchers including issues of representation and equitable distribution of risks and benefits. Use of this type of data for research purposes helps to ensure representation in research of the voices of youth who participate in these online contexts, at times discussing issues that are also under-represented. At the same time, youth whose data are (...) harvested are subject to the risks associated with this research, while receiving little if any direct benefit from the work. These risks include the potential loss of online social community as well as threats to participant rights and wellbeing. This paper explores the tension between the social justice benefit of representation and considerations that would suggest caution, the latter including inequitable distribution of research-related costs and benefits, and the traditional ethics concerns of participant autonomy and privacy in the context of youth participation in online discussions. In the final section, we propose guidelines and considerations for the conduct of online social media research to assist researchers to balance and respect representational and participant rights or wellbeing considerations, especially with youth. (shrink)

I believe that the long-neglected ideas on science and scientific method of Charles Sanders Peirce and Josiah Royce can illuminate some of the current attacks on science that have surfaced: misconduct and fraud in science and anti-scientism or the "new cynicism." In addition, Royce and Peirce offer insights relevant to the ferment in contemporary philosophy of science around the various forms of pluralism advocated by a number of philosophers (see Kellert, Longino, and Waters). "Pluralism" is the view that "plurality in (...) science possibly represents an ineliminable character of scientific inquiry and knowledge (about at least some phenomena) . . . and that analysis of metascientific concepts (like theory .. (shrink)

i am proud to honor the legacy of Frank M. Oppenheim. This legacy is broad and deep. First, Oppenheim has played a major role in remedying the neglect of the life and work of Josiah Royce. He has done so with probing articles on central concepts in Royce’s philosophy and with a series of longer studies that delineated unexpected developments in Royce’s thought and life, demonstrating how Royce, throughout his career, refined and rethought his central philosophical ideas and created entirely (...) unique and new directions of philosophical reflection. With superb interpretive and mediating skills, Oppenheim has provided the scholarly world with a finely nuanced picture of the context of Royce’s thought in terms of his... (shrink)

In this commentary on Joyce Trebilcot's "Dyke Methods or Principles for the Discovery/Creation of the Withstanding," I discuss four areas of difficulty in Trebilcot's proposed methods: (1) an overly negative view of "the intention to persuade," (2) a tendency towards epistemological relativism and loss of cultural authorities, (3) a circularity in defining the proposed methods as dyke methods, and (4) a hint of repressive tolerance towards differences among lesbians by avoidance of painful confrontation involving those differences. Unlike Trebilcot, I make (...) a distinction between the abuse of persuasion and the art of persuasion, re-claiming the latter as a caring and challenging strategy, rather than an invasion of adversarial heteropatriarchal tactics. (shrink)

My thesis is that contemporary ethics needs to reconceptualize its notion of the "ethical subject/agent." In developing this argument, I draw on three sources: (1) the field of moral psychology, (2) philosophical explorations of the concepts of "moral responsibility" and "moral community, and (3) the work of American philosophers such as Josiah Royce and John Dewey. Primary attention will be given to the latter two sources, though, given the short span of this essay, only brief references to Royce and Dewey (...) are possible, even though these philosophers provide the foundational theoretical framework for any reconceptualization efforts. Indeed, these philosophers, as well as William James, engaged in and drew upon .. (shrink)

On behalf of the society for the Advancement of American Philosophy and with pride and pleasure, I offer to the readers of the journal a selection of papers presented at the 37th meeting of the society, sponsored by the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and Queens University of Charlotte and held in Charlotte, North Carolina, on March 11-13, 2010. This Proceedings Issue represents the first of such issues to be published in The Pluralist, which is now the official journal of (...) our society.The Pluralist and the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy share a similar mission, namely to focus on pluralism and inclusion in philosophical conversation of many different points of view. In carrying out. (shrink)

When an anxiety‐reducing drug with virtually no side effects is used to enhance performance, is that cheating? Is it drug abuse? Is it an admission of professional weakness?

I argue that Classical American Pragmatists—Royce, James, Dewey, Perice, Addams, Du Bois, and Locke subscribed to this view and practiced philosophy by focusing on experience and directing a critical eye to major problems in living. Thus Royce and Dewey explored the nature of genuine community and its role in developing a flourishing individual life but also a public, democratic life. Royce and James engaged in a phenomenological analysis of human experience including religious experience developing a rich understanding of human psychological, (...) social, and religious development. Dewey, Royce and Perice applied the lessons of the scientific communal experience to problem solving in everyday life. Dewey explored life’s aesthetic dimensions. Addams, Du Bois and Locke applied philosophy to problems of living with discrimination as an immigrant or an African American. (shrink)

The ability to extrapolate essential gist through the analysis and synthesis of information, prediction of potential outcomes, abstraction of ideas, and integration of relationships with world knowledge is critical for higher-order learning. The present study investigated the efficacy of cognitive training to elicit improvements in gist-reasoning and fact recall ability in 556 public middle-school students (grades seven and eight), versus a sample of 357 middle school students who served as a comparison group, to determine if changes in gist-reasoning and fact (...) recall were demonstrated without cognitive training. The results showed that, in general, cognitive training increased gist-reasoning and fact recall abilities in students from families in poverty as well as students from families living above poverty. However, the magnitude of gains in gist-reasoning varied as a function of gender and grade-level. Our primary findings were that seventh and eighth grade girls and eighth grade boys showed significant increases in gist-reasoning after training regardless of socioeconomic status. There were no significant increases in gist-reasoning or fact recall ability for the 357 middle school students who served in the comparison group. We postulate that cognitive training in middle school is efficacious for improving gist-reasoning ability and fact recall in students from all socioeconomic levels. (shrink)

The year 2012, in one sense, marks the 40th Anniversary of our Society, for it was in 1972 that John Lachs suggested to some of his colleagues interested in American Philosophy that they consider starting a new organization. The following year, this "American Philosophy" group held a symposium on "Possibilities for American Philosophy" at the Western Philosophy Association meeting. At that time the group's name was changed to "Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy," and in 1974 the first independent (...) annual meeting of the Society was held at Vanderbilt University.1The Society's name has stimulated contention for various reasons, but reflecting on forty years of this group, I want to say "we have come a .. (shrink)

The book presents a variety of philosophical and socio-political perspectives related to the relationship between persuasion and compulsion in democracy. It meets the need of the present time, in America and in Europe, to re-read and discuss the basic assumptions of democracy and the role of individual within it in the context of institutional persuasions that can become factual compulsions for other institution and, first of all, individuals.

In what follows I will briefly address (1) Mahowald's work on Josiah Royce, (2) her advocacy for "cultural feminism" and its implications for American philosophy and work still to be done, (3) her promotion of a critical pragmatism and the need to provide a pragmatist critique not only of gender injustice but all forms of injustice, and (4) Mahowald's argument for the strategy of "standpoint theory," a strategy that offers great promise for future work in American philosophy.

Carlin Romano’s book, America the Philosophical,1 challenges philosophy and America, while also celebrating evidence of philosophical energy in American culture in general. Romano claims that in America we find a true agora, a unique marketplace of truth and argument. Yet, in his view, academic philosophy fails miserably in its focus on issues of knowledge and its lack of public relevance. He then draws on a wide spectrum of persons outside of academic philosophy as models for how philosophy should be done. (...) In the philosophy camp, he sees value in classic pragmatism and the contemporary work of Richard Rorty. Rorty, an insider in the tradition of professional analytic philosophy, came to reject its... (shrink)

Technology brings both positive and negative benefits for humankind. It is not surprising, then, that the new technologies of the Internet, social media, and the ever-present cell phone incite some serious philosophical questions. These questions center on concepts of self and relationships with self and others. First, how is Internet and phone technology impacting our concept of the self? Second, how has this technology changed the way we relate to each other? What kind of sense of community and understanding of (...) social relations is being fostered by the Internet and by our cell phone use? What is our new understanding of "friendship"? Does this new technology foster relationships and genuine friendships, or are we... (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between mothers and medical discourse, drawing from oral narratives of 20 Jewish women who gave birth to their first children between 1928 and 1940. The author shows that women encounter medical discourse not only as a system of technical knowledge but also as a package of cultural and social enterprises. Jewish mothers during this period mobilized medicalized mothering practices to signify their advancement from immigrant culture into the American middle class. Mothers portray themselves as benefiting (...) from the new opportunities of American freedoms, as actively seeking self-improvements, and as engaging medicine in the context of their changing group membership. In more general terms, the author shows that medicalization's effect on social difference extends beyond men's control of women's subjectivity or social position; it also involves women in the creation and maintenance of status hierarchies between women. (shrink)

This article presents qualitative interview data to explore the health-related carework of low-income women caregivers with special-needs children and the implications of carework for women’s financial security. The author documents “direct” and “advocacy” carework as two types of caregiving that low-income women carry out in the context of declining government resources for poor disabled children. The author shows that the unique demands of carework responsibilities and the conditions of low-wage work combine to limit caregivers’ employment and education options as well (...) as their long-term prospects for financial stability. (shrink)