Much of the history of Western ethical thought has revolved around debates about what constitutes a good life, and claims that a good life is achievable only by certain human beings. In Feminist Philosophies of Life, feminist, new materialist, posthumanist, and ecofeminist philosophers challenge this tendency, approaching the question of life from alternative perspectives. Signalling the importance of distinctively feminist reflections on matters of shared concern, Feminist Philosophies of Life not only exposes the propensity of discourses to normalize and exclude (...) differently abled, racialized, feminized, and gender nonconforming people, it also asks questions about how life is constituted and understood without limiting itself to the human. A collection of articles that focuses on life as an organizing principle for ontology, ethics, and politics, chapters of this study respond to feminist thinkers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Judith Butler, Adriana Cavarero, Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Søren Kierkegaard. Divided into three parts, the book debates the question of life in and against the emerging school of new feminist materialism, provides feminist phenomenological and existentialist accounts of life, and focuses on lives marked by a particular precarity such as disability or incarceration, as well as life in the face of a changing climate. Calling for a broader account of lived experience, Feminist Philosophies of Life contains persuasive, original, and diverse analyses that address some of the most crucial feminist issues. Contributors include Christine Daigle, Shannon Dea, Lindsay Eales, Elizabeth Grosz, Lisa Guenther, Lynne Huffer, Ada Jaarsma, Stephanie Jenkins, Ladelle McWhorter, Jane Barter Moulaison, Astrida Neimanis, Danielle Peers, Stephen Seely, Hasana Sharp, Chloë Taylor, Florentien Verhage, Rachel Loewen Walker, and Cynthia Willett. (shrink)

In _Vibrant Matter_ the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a “vital materiality” that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political analyses of public events might change were we (...) to acknowledge that agency always emerges as the_ _effect of ad hoc configurations of human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible, ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces affecting situations and events. Bennett examines the political and theoretical implications of vital materialism through extended discussions of commonplace things and physical phenomena including stem cells, fish oils, electricity, metal, and trash. She reflects on the vital power of material formations such as landfills, which generate lively streams of chemicals, and omega-3 fatty acids, which can transform brain chemistry and mood. Along the way, she engages with the concepts and claims of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Darwin, Adorno, and Deleuze, disclosing a long history of thinking about vibrant matter in Western philosophy, including attempts by Kant, Bergson, and the embryologist Hans Driesch to name the “vital force” inherent in material forms. Bennett concludes by sketching the contours of a “green materialist” ecophilosophy. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that the modern world cannot be experienced as enchanted--that the very concept of enchantment belongs to past ages of superstition. Jane Bennett challenges that view. She seeks to rehabilitate enchantment, showing not only how it is still possible to experience genuine wonder, but how such experience is crucial to motivating ethical behavior. A creative blend of political theory, philosophy, and literary studies, this book is a powerful and innovative contribution to an emerging interdisciplinary conversation about (...) the deep connections between ethics, aesthetics, and politics. As Bennett describes it, enchantment is a sense of openness to the unusual, the captivating, and the disturbing in everyday life. She guides us through a wide and often surprising range of sources of enchantment, showing that we can still find enchantment in nature, for example, but also in such unexpected places as modern technology, advertising, and even bureaucracy. She then explains how everyday moments of enchantment can be cultivated to build an ethics of generosity, stimulating the emotional energy and honing the perceptual refinement necessary to follow moral codes. Throughout, Bennett draws on thinkers and writers as diverse as Kant, Schiller, Thoreau, Kafka, Marx, Weber, Adorno, and Deleuze. With its range and daring, The Enchantment of Modern Life is a provocative challenge to the centuries-old ''narrative of disenchantment,'' one that presents a new ''alter-tale'' that discloses our profound attachment to the human and nonhuman world. (shrink)

How are we to explain the authority we have in pronouncing on our own thoughts? A 'constitutive' theory, on which a second-level belief may help to constitute the first -level state it is about, has considerable advantages, for example in relieving pressures towards dualism. The paper aims to exploit an analogy between authority in performative utterances and authority on the psychological to get a clearer view of how such a constitutive account might work and its metaphysical presuppositions.

Recent philosophy of mind has had a mistaken conception of the nature of psychological concepts. It has assumed too much similarity between psychological judgments and those of natural science and has thus overlooked the fact that other people are not just objects whose thoughts we may try to predict and control but fellow creatures with whom we talk and co-operate. In this collection of essays, Jane Heal argues that central to our ability to arrive at views about others' thoughts (...) is not knowledge of some theory of the mind but rather an ability to imagine alternative worlds and how things appear from another person's point of view. She then applies this view to questions of how we represent others' thoughts, the shape of psychological concepts, the nature of rationality and the possibility of first person authority. This book should appeal to students and professionals in philosophy of mind and language. (shrink)

A longstanding problem in the teacher workforce, internationally and in the UK, is the continuing and substantial numbers of qualified teachers who leave the profession within five years. This paper uses data collected from a survey to the last five years of teacher education graduates of UCL Institute of Education (IOE) in London, to explore what originally motivated them to teach, and the reasons why they have left or may consider leaving in the future. We discovered that despite claiming to (...) be aware of the challenges of workload before entering teaching, workload was the most frequently cited reason for having left, or for leaving in the future. The data spoke to the reality of teaching being worse than expected, and the nature (rather than the quantity) of the workload, linked to notions of performativity and accountability, being a crucial factor. This paper draws on a substantial new source of data and explores reasons for leaving in the context of reported initial motivation of individuals who have left teaching, individuals who are planning to leave and individuals who are planning to stay in teaching. (shrink)

This collection of essays by one of the country's leading property theorists revitalizes the liberal personality theory of property. Departing from traditional libertarian and economic theories of property, Margaret Jane Radin argues that the law should take into account nonmonetary personal value attached to property—and that some things, such as bodily integrity, are so personal they should not be considered property at all. Gathered here are pieces ranging from Radin's classic early essay on property and personhood to her recent (...) works on governmental "taking" of private property. Margaret Jane Radin is professor of law at Stanford University. She is the author of over twenty-five articles on legal and political theory. (shrink)

Using the insights of evolutionary epistemology, the author develops a new naturalist realist methodology of science, and applies it to the conceptual, practical, and ethical problems of the social sciences.

In _influx & efflux_ Jane Bennett pursues a question that was bracketed in her book _Vibrant Matter_: how to think about human agency in a world teeming with powerful nonhuman influences? “Influx _& _efflux”—a phrase borrowed from Whitman's "Song of Myself"—refers to everyday movements whereby outside influences enter bodies, infuse and confuse their organization, and then exit, themselves having been transformed into something new. How to describe the human efforts involved in that process? What kinds of “I” and “we” (...) can live well and act effectively in a world of so many other lively materialities? Drawing upon Whitman, Thoreau, Caillois, Whitehead, and other poetic writers, Bennett links a nonanthropocentric model of self to a radically egalitarian pluralism and also to a syntax and style of writing appropriate to the entangled world in which we live. The book tries to enact the uncanny process by which we “write up” influences that pervade, enable, and disrupt us. (shrink)

Calls for the “translation” of research from bench to bedside are increasingly demanding. What is translation, and why does it matter? We sketch the recent history of outcome-oriented translational research in the United States, with a particular focus on the Roadmap Initiative of the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD). Our main example of contemporary translational research is stem cell research, which has superseded genomics as the translational object of choice. We explore the nature of and obstacles to translational research (...) and assess the ethical and biomedical challenges of embracing a translational ethos. (shrink)

Abstract:The aim of this paper is to create a framework which can serve as a guide to the understanding of organizational ethicality. This is done by linking ethical and organizational theory. Organizational ethicality is about “being” as well as “doing”: relevant ethical theory is therefore both substantive (agent-centred, concerned with the “good”) as well as procedural (act-centred, concerned with the “right” in the sense of the moral or just thing to do). The ethical theories of Alasdair MacIntyre and Jurgen Habermas, (...) as representatives of these two traditions, are mapped onto a framework which characterises organizations as assemblages of practices supported by a climate embedded within an organizational culture. Organizational practice is articulated and given meaning within a discourse of “sensemaking” in which narrative creates space-time links between people and events. Within that same communicative climate practices are evaluated and decisions taken. This theoretical framework is specified in such a way as to highlight the parallels with the ethical theories of MacIntyre, who uses notions of practice, tradition and the narrative unity of moral experience to create an ethical theory of the “good,” and Habermas, who spells out the process of moral argumentation by which consensus on the “just” or “right” is reached. Some possibilities for further research are suggested at the end of the paper. (shrink)

The author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, overextended government farm subsidies and zealous transit police, to show what happens when the moral systems of commerce collide with those of politics.

There is an apparent tension between the open-ended aspect of the ordinal sequence and the assumption that the set-theoretical universe is fully determinate. This tension is already present in Cantor, who stressed the incompletable character of the transfinite number sequence in Grundlagen and avowed the definiteness of the totality of sets and numbers in subsequent philosophical publications and in correspondence. The tension is particularly discernible in his late distinction between sets and inconsistent multiplicities. I discuss Cantor’s contrasting views, and I (...) conclude that his account of that distinction is only tenable if the definiteness of the set-theoretical universe is rejected. (shrink)

Diagrams make it possible to present scientific facts in more abstract and generalized form. While some detail is lost, simplified and accessible knowledge is gained. E. B. Wilson's work in cytology provides a case study of changing uses of diagrams and accompanying abstraction. In his early work, Wilson presented his data in photographs, which he saw as coming closest to “fact.” As he gained confidence in his interpretations, and as he sought to provide a generalized textbook account of cell development, (...) he relied on increasingly abstract diagrams. In addition, he came to see that highly abstract and even schematic drawings could provide more than pictures directly from life. (shrink)

Historians have emphasized the appearance of a productive research program in genetics after 1910, and philosophers and biologists have considered endorsement of genetics as a progressive move, indeed as a starting point for modern experimental biology. These efforts focus on what biology had changed to. This paper examines the condition from which biology moved, stressing the way in which Americans held heredity and development as a natural, intimately intertwined couple. Heredity accounts for likenesses, development for variation, and the two act (...) together throughout an individual's life. This discussion establishes the antecedent conditions necessary to explain the split of genetics and embryology and addresses the reasons for the split. (shrink)

After retirement, older people often find themselves far from their children and grandchildren, and many spend their last years isolated and alone. As traditional concepts of family and social institutions fragment, social networks weaken, leading to an epidemic of loneliness, and substance abuse and suicide in developed countries. In fact, life expectancy in the US has dropped for the past few years, in large part due to a dramatic increase in suicide and drug overdose. None of these social problems is (...) likely to be solved by metformin. They point to a crisis of identity and meaning, an existential crisis. In this context, one might wonder if we are already seeing the effects of tinkering with our lifespan. There are many more conclusions one could draw about the implications of longevity, many of which have been elegantly described in Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, published by the President’s Council on Bioethics, which I used as a reference for this talk. I hope I have been successful in providing a 10,000-foot view of the questions of efforts to extend human longevity and its implications that will provoke thought and discussion. I would like to end these reflections by turning back to my favorite transhumans. The reason we love superheroes is not for their superior strength or intelligence, but their characters. They use their powers to protect and serve humanity rather than dominate or annihilate it. It is not their gadgetry that makes them great, but how they use it to save the vulnerable. Even as a small child I knew that if everyone acted the way they did, the world would be a better place. The moral of every story was that the “enhancement” humanity needed would not come as the fruit of technology, but of virtue. (shrink)

BackgroundHIV cure research involving cell and gene therapy has intensified in recent years. There is a growing need to identify ethical standards and safeguards to ensure cell and gene therapy (CGT) HIV cure research remains valued and acceptable to as many stakeholders as possible as it advances on a global scale.MethodsTo elicit preliminary ethical and practical considerations to guide CGT HIV cure research, we implemented a qualitative, in-depth interview study with three key stakeholder groups in the United States: (1) biomedical (...) HIV cure researchers, (2) bioethicists, and (3) community stakeholders. Interviews permitted evaluation of informants’ perspectives on how CGT HIV cure research should ethically occur, and were transcribed verbatim. We applied conventional content analysis focused on inductive reasoning to analyze the rich qualitative data and derive key ethical and practical considerations related to CGT towards an HIV cure.ResultsWe interviewed 13 biomedical researchers, 5 community members, and 1 bioethicist. Informants generated considerations related to: perceived benefits of CGT towards an HIV cure, perceived risks, considerations necessary to ensure an acceptable benefit/risk balance, CGT strategies considered unacceptable, additional ethical considerations, and considerations for first-in-human CGT HIV cure trials. Informants also proposed important safeguards to developing CGT approaches towards an HIV cure, such as the importance of mitigating off-target effects, mitigating risks associated with long-term duration of CGT interventions, and mitigating risks of immune overreactions.ConclusionOur study identified preliminary considerations for CGT-based HIV cure across three key stakeholder groups. Respondents identified an ideal cure strategy as one which would durably control HIV infection, protect the individual from re-acquisition, and eliminate transmission to others. Known and unknown risks should be anticipated and perceived as learning opportunities to preserve and honor the altruism of participants. Preclinical studies should support these considerations and be transparently reviewed by regulatory experts and peers prior to first-in-human studies. To protect the public trust in CGT HIV cure research, ethical and practical considerations should be periodically revisited and updated as the science continues to evolve. Additional ethics studies are required to expand stakeholder participation to include traditionally marginalized groups and clinical care providers. (shrink)

“The most significant outcome of effective business ethics research would be an improvement of ethical standards and ethical behaviour in organizations”. So how can such research be made effective? The author is Lecturer in Management Studies, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College.

References to strength of mind, a character trait implying “the prevalence of the calm passions above the violent”, occur in a number of important discussions of motivation in the Treatise and the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. Nevertheless, Hume says surprisingly little about what strength of mind is, or how it is achieved. This paper argues that Hume’s theory of the passions can provide an interesting and defensible account of strength of mind. The paper concludes with a brief comparison (...) of Humean strength of mind with autonomy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Missing Women A Case Study of Cultural Loss Cultural Wealth Regained Making the Cultural Wealth Work Agenda for the Future.

In this book, Lucy Jane Ward argues that although contemporary scholarship tends to divide Agnes Heller's work chronologically in terms of her “Marxist” and subsequent “post-Marxist” periods, a closer reading reveals her work as a continuing engagement both with and against Marx's idea of the human being rich in need.

In Section 3 of the original version, the Weak Evidentialist Norm is given as follows: ‘For every S, p and t, S’s coming to know p at t is permissible’.

In this paper Jane Mansbridge reflects upon the role of resistance in democracy. Resistance “can cause inaction by focusing on stopping, rather than using, coercion.”’ Instead we should increase the legitimacy of democratic action and in that manner further the possibility of sanction through coercion. An improvement of democratic institutions and of the procedures of deliberation, which makes room for citizen input, would also make for a more efficacious and organized resistance, when necessary.

The purpose of this paper is to examine some contentions advanced by B. A. O. Williams in his books Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry and Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy . In particular I shall be concerned with the claims he makes about the nature of ethics—namely that it cannot be ‘objective’ or ‘realistic’ and that we may not hope for rational convergence in ethical judgments. My claims will be that Williams's case on these matters is importantly unclear (...) and incomplete and that we lack cogent reasons to accept the conclusions he offers us. But a good deal of scene-setting is necessary before we can pose the questions I wish to address. (shrink)

In 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Human Cloning Prohibition Act" and President Bush announced his decision to allow only limited research on existing stem cell lines but not on "embryos." In contrast, the U.K. has explicitly authorized "therapeutic cloning." Much more will be said about bioethical, legal, and social implications, but subtleties of the science and careful definitions of terms have received much less consideration. Legislators and reporters struggle to discuss "cloning," "pluripotency," "stem cells," and "embryos," and (...) whether "adult" are preferable to "embryonic" stem cells as research subjects. They profess to abhor "copying humans" or "killing embryos." Do they know what they are talking about? Do we? This paper explores the historical, philosophical, and scientific contexts that inform this heated discussion. (shrink)

This paper explores the historic philosophical contributions ofMill and Marx toward a comprehensive conception of intellectual freedomas a basic educational entitlement. In a perhaps surprising confluence,Marx's theory of a material base for freedom of thought is then extendedin a discussion of contemporary freedoms including, importantly,academic freedom and its implication for teaching, the profession andits training.

The study reported in this paper explored the ethical requirements of social research participants, an area where there is still little empirical research, by interviewing people who had participated in one of five recent social research studies. The findings endorse the conceptualization of informed consent as a process rather than a one-off event. Four different dynamics of decision-making were followed by participants in terms of the timing of decisions to participate and the information on which they were based. Multiple information (...) events were important, as was verbal as well as written information. Study participants reacted unfavourably to the idea of written consent. Although prior information was relevant to participant experience of the interview, what emerged more strongly as relevant was the behaviour of interviewers and the interviewing strategy used. The authors suggest that naturalistic, authentic approaches to information-giving are necessary, and that in scrutinizing them research ethics committees need to look not only at written information but also at verbal information giving, and how interviewer information-giving is supported by training and supervision. They suggest that committees also need to concern themselves more broadly with who will carry out interviews and the training, mentoring and monitoring in place to shape their conduct of interviews. In considering research instruments, research ethics committees need to consider not only whether interviewers will capture accurate and appropriate data but also whether they are likely to lead to a satisfactory interaction for participants. Given the impossibility of anticipating each individual participants information needs and their reaction to the interviewing strategy, the authors suggest that interviewers and participants need to be encouraged to negotiate the conduct of interviews jointly, and discuss how such negotiating roles might be supported. (shrink)

Several lines of argument are presented to support the notion that hooved animal rescue is justified, however expensive and controversial. The work of Singer and McNamee is discussed. The article concludes that various breeds have distinct arguments in their favour when it comes to rescue.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

In a.d. 25, Aulus Cremutius Cordus, a Senator and a historian, was charged with ‘maiestas’. He committed suicide, and immediately his books, the ostensible source of the charge against him, were officially burnt. Some years later, Seneca referred in detail to these events in a philosophical study he had composed for Marcia, the daughter of Cremutius Cordus. Seneca wrote the work to console Marcia on the death of her son Metilius. In the Ad Marciam, Seneca notes in passing that the (...) worksof Cremutius Cordus have been re-published. (shrink)

The author argues that the concept of justification is viewed best through elucidation of the processes of ethical and epistemic justification, with specific attention paid to what has been dubbed the "internalist/externalist" distinction in such justification. The first part of the argument clarifies the nature of the distinction as it occurs in ethics and then epistemic justification, noting that there is a parallel between the uses of the distinction, but that it is the way in which the uses are not (...) parallel that is most salient for conceptual purposes. The author then claims that there is an analogous distinction, frequently made in ethical justification, and that is the alleged normative/descriptive distinction. A look at the intersection of that distinction with the internalist/externalist juncture yields the notion that epistemic justification, in particular, could benefit from an externalist/ descriptive approach. Finally, the author argues that we would do well to apply some of the work of the social sciences to epistemic justification theory. The author concludes that the concept of justification includes all four components (internalist, externalist, nor mative, and descriptive) and that clarification of justification simpliciter involves an examination of justification in its various modes. (shrink)

Several lines of argument support the notion that the legacy of positivism (if cast in terms of the realist/instrumentalist debate) is more realist than not. Work by Joia Lewis and Alberto Coffa on both Schlick and Carnap is cited, and contemporary work from Van Fraassen and Boyd briefly alluded to. Note is made of the differences within contemporary realist theory, and it is included that Carnap's essay "Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology" is crucial for resolution of the debate. In closing it (...) is noted that the spirit of much of the original positivist work reinforced the contention than those who work within the framework of science do in fact accept the reality of key scientific entities. (shrink)

I argue that the importance of reference for scientific explanation has been overlooked, and that actual referential stability itself is more important in the success of scientific theories than many apparently believe. Citing the work of Van Fraassen and Lipton, I delineate cases of referential failure, both intratheoretically and intertheoretically, and remind us of the role played by reference in theories both realist and non‐realist. I conclude that work on such areas as contrastive explanation cannot move forward without a better (...) account of reference, and cite previously published material on the relationship between reference and epistemic access. (shrink)

The continued predominance of SL‐logic and deductive paradigms in the research on conditional‐based reasoning by experimental psychologists is examined and criticized. After recounting the history and influence of the model, I note the emergence of trends in epistemology and other areas of theory that might provide a springboard for the critique of the model, and I argue that a new approach to examining reasoning with conditionals ought to be developed. I conclude that a superior approach would model such reasoning with (...) sociolinguistic, inductive, and neurophysiological parameters, and that it would not involve any comparison of subjects’ reasoning with the standard deductive rules of logic. (shrink)