Stark disparities exist in the United States' health care system. Thirty-five million Americans are uninsured, severely impeding their access to necessary health care. Concurrently, others receive health care services that are of unproven necessity and benefit. We assert that this situation is unjust and morally indefensible.

Can human co-existence with wild animals can be mediated by an ethic of hospitality? Some Christian environmental and animal ethicists have outlined ways Christians can model a more expansive, imaginative, and informed hospitality toward non-human animals. This paper will explore philosophical and theological underpinnings for such a practice, to ask whether it can have any prescriptive “teeth” when the interests of humans and non-human, non-domestic animals collide in ways that humans perceive as costly. The paper will argue that a commitment (...) to interspecies hospitality can indeed function as a biocentric and biblical form of justice that adapts and extends community to our fellow creatures. (shrink)

The human brain does not use more energy than the smaller brains of animals of comparable corporal weight. Uniquely, human functions localized largely in parts of the human brain that show greatest size increase over other animals may be mediated primarily by nonsynaptic neurotransmission, with reduced energy cost per kilogram of brain. This may affect the energetic constraints on evolution.

Hundreds of thousands of students in introductory human sexuality classes read text-books whose covert ideology reinforces dominant heteronormative narratives of sexual dimorphism, male hegemony, and heteronormativity. As such, the process of scientific discovery that proposes to provide description of existing sexual practices, identities, and physiologies instead succeeds in cultural prescription. This essay provides a feminist, queer content analysis of such textbooks to illuminate their implicit narratives and provide suggestions for writing more feminist, queer-friendly texts.

Academic and public debates are increasingly concerned with the question whether and how algorithmic decision-making may reinforce social inequality. Most previous research on this topic originates from computer science. The social sciences, however, have huge potentials to contribute to research on social consequences of ADM. Based on a process model of ADM systems, we demonstrate how social sciences may advance the literature on the impacts of ADM on social inequality by uncovering and mitigating biases in training data, by understanding data (...) processing and analysis, as well as by studying social contexts of algorithms in practice. Furthermore, we show that fairness notions need to be evaluated with respect to specific outcomes of ADM systems and with respect to concrete social contexts. Social sciences may evaluate how individuals handle algorithmic decisions in practice and how single decisions aggregate to macro social outcomes. In this overview, we highlight how social sciences can apply their knowledge on social stratification and on substantive domains of ADM applications to advance the understanding of social impacts of ADM. (shrink)

Development of the knowledge base for a profession depends on research and scholarship that builds on the insights and work of scholars within the discipline and is disseminated through the literature. The purpose of this study was to examine a unique collection of 79 articles selected by editors as representative of their nursing journals. Articles were assessed for congruence with long‐standing values and conceptual definitions of nursing, and the extent to which they built on prior literature published in nursing. Articles (...) were scored based on whether they reflected four characteristics of nursing as a discipline (holism, social context, goal of health, and consistency with common definitions of nursing); an abstract score on the extent to which the title, abstract, or keywords indicated a general focus on nursing; and a distinction score based on whether the article distinguished nurses or nursing from other providers. Fifty of the articles received an article score of 4, indicating all four disciplinary characteristics were present in the article's content. While the majority of the articles were congruent with fundamental nursing values and perspectives, only 28% of the sources cited were from nursing sources. The lack of citations to nursing literature, coupled with an assessment that reveals gaps in substantive content that builds on nursing knowledge, raises questions about the future of nursing perspectives in the literature. (shrink)

The increasing use of algorithms in allocating resources and services in both private industry and public administration has sparked discussions about their consequences for inequality and fairness in contemporary societies. Previous research has shown that the use of automated decision-making (ADM) tools in high-stakes scenarios like the legal justice system might lead to adverse societal outcomes, such as systematic discrimination. Scholars have since proposed a variety of metrics to counteract and mitigate biases in ADM processes. While these metrics focus on (...) technical fairness notions, they do not consider how members of the public, as most affected subjects by algorithmic decisions, perceive fairness in ADM. To shed light on subjective fairness perceptions of individuals, this study analyzes individuals’ answers to open-ended fairness questions about hypothetical ADM scenarios that were embedded in the German Internet Panel (Wave 54, July 2021), a probability-based longitudinal online survey. Respondents evaluated the fairness of vignettes describing the use of ADM tools across different contexts. Subsequently, they explained their fairness evaluation providing a textual answer. Using qualitative content analysis, we inductively coded those answers (_N_ = 3697). Based on their individual understanding of fairness, respondents addressed a wide range of aspects related to fairness in ADM which is reflected in the 23 codes we identified. We subsumed those codes under four overarching themes: _Human elements in decision-making_, _Shortcomings of the data_, _Social impact of AI_, and _Properties of AI_. Our codes and themes provide a valuable resource for understanding which factors influence public fairness perceptions about ADM. (shrink)

Doing Ethics in a Pluralistic World is an apt title for this collection of essays in honour of Roger C. Hutchinson who, over many decades, has encouraged and participated in shaping a Canadian contextual social ethics. His abiding interest in social ethics and in religious engagement with public issues is reflected in his life’s work — seeking the consensus and self-knowledge required to achieve cooperation in the search for a just, participatory, and sustainable society. One of Roger Hutchinson’s many notable (...) accomplishments is his development of a method of dialogue for ethical clarification in situations of diversity. Some of the essays collected here apply this method to specific issues, while others discuss how religious persons and organizations can and do co-operate in a pluralistic world to achieve social and ecological well-being. All essays are of keen interest to those concerned with the role and function of ethics at the matrix of religious conviction and social transformation. For nearly three decades Roger Hutchinson has been based at Victoria University in Toronto, first in religious studies, then at Emmanuel College, where he completed his teaching career as professor of church and society while serving as principal from 1996 to 2001. (shrink)

Inequitable access to health care, social inequities, and racist and discriminatory care has resulted in the trend toward poorer health outcomes for Indigenous infants and their families when compared to non‐Indigenous families in Canada. How Indigenous mothers experience care during an admission of their infant to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit has implications for future health‐seeking behaviors which may influence infant health outcomes. Nurses are well positioned to promote positive health care interactions and improve health outcomes by effectively meeting the (...) needs of Indigenous families. This qualitative study was guided by interpretive description and the Two‐Eyed Seeing framework and aimed to understand how Indigenous mothers experience accessing and using the health care system for their infants. Data were collected by way of interviews and a discussion group with self‐identifying Indigenous mothers of infants less than two years of age living in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Data underwent thematic analysis, identifying nursing strategies to support positive health care interactions and promote the health and wellness of Indigenous infants and their families. Building relationships, providing holistic care, and taking a trauma‐informed approach to the involvement of child protection services are three key strategies that nurses can use to positively impact health care experiences for Indigenous families. (shrink)

Le général André Bach dans une réflexion sur l’« horizon de mort dans la violence de guerre » part d’une approche anthropologique du phénomène de violence et de la peur (quasiment biologique) qu’il engendre en soulignant les difficultés des sociétés occidentales à penser la mort. C’est l’État qui donne à la guerre un sens politique et sacré et qui crée les catégories fonctionnelles de la guerre (les concepts de paix et de guerre ne sont pas en eux-mêmes opérationnels). Dans (...) le cadre d’une réflexion clausewitzienne sur la montée aux extrêmes, l’« extrême » pour le soldat est toujours sa propre mort (plus que celle de l’ennemi). Les notions de barbarisation et humanisation ne peuvent en ce sens rendre compte de la violence et de la peur radicales présentes dans toute guerre où le rôle du commandement est toujours de mettre en œuvre un degré de violence supérieur à celui de l’adversaire, sans aucune considération de « proportionnalité » de cette violence. La mise à distance technique ne diminue pas la violence mais l’augmente à proportion de l’éloignement de la peur. Seul le politique peut et doit mettre des limites à cette violence militaire par nature illimitée. La modernisation des armes ne relève jamais d’une humanisation du combat mais d’une recherche d’une violence plus efficace. L’entraînement du soldat en temps de paix n’est jamais entraînement à la violence mais apprentissage de savoir-faire et effort de constitution d’un groupe soudé, doté d’un bon moral. L’ordre et la formation tentent de limiter la sauvagerie mais il existe une constitution endogène de comportements propres au soldat, que la hiérarchie tente de canaliser dans une symbolique guerrière fondée sur le sentiment de l’honneur (destiné à compenser la peur d’être une proie vouée à mourir et à faire préférer la lutte au coude à coude sur l’instinct de conservation). Le couple violence/honneur fait que l’armée dépourvue de contrat social n’est pas soluble dans le politique (aujourd’hui dans les écoles militaires on ne parle plus d’« honneur » mais d’« éthique »…, mais pour dire la même chose). La conscription fut une rupture de la logique endogène de l’armée et introduisit une brèche dans ce système archaïque. Mais religion (au Moyen Âge) ou logique démocratique (de nos jours) s’avèrent surtout des « béquilles idéologiques » qui, en définitive, sont souvent plus efficaces pour accroître la barbarisation que pour l’éviter (exemple de la colonisation algérienne où une armée de paix, fonctionnarisée et rigoureusement canalisée, appartenant à une génération n’ayant jamais connu de violence de guerre, développe des massacres de masse). (shrink)

This volume is fourth in the series of annuals created under the auspices of The Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST). The topics covered herein-from peacekeeping and terrorism, to sex trafficking and women's paid labor, to poverty and religious fundamentalism-are vital to women and to feminist movements throughout the world.

This volume is fourth in the series of annuals created under the auspices of The Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory . The topics covered herein_from peacekeeping and terrorism, to sex trafficking and women's paid labor, to poverty and religious fundamentalism_are vital to women and to feminist movements throughout the world.

Has the diversity of corporate boards of directors improved? Should it? What role does diversity play in reducing corporate wrongdoing? Will diversity result in a more focused board of directors or more board autonomy? Examining the state of Tennessee as a case study, the authors collected data on the board composition of publicly traded corporations and compared those data to an original study conducted in 1995. Data indicate only a modest improvement in board diversity. This article discusses reasons for the (...) scarcity of women on boards and concludes that, to enhance strategic decisions, board membership should reflect the corporation''s consumer population. Thus, women are a critical but overlooked resource. Areas for future research are also considered. (shrink)

Paradoxical though it may seem, there are certain things one can do just by saying what one is doing. This is possible if one uses a verb that names the very sort of act one is performing. Thus one can thank someone by saying 'Thank you', fire someone by saying 'You're fired', and apologize by saying 'I apologize'. These are examples of 'explicit performative utterances', statements in form but not in fact. Or so thought their discoverer, J. L. Austin, who (...) contrasted them with 'constatives'. Their distinctive self-referential character might suggest that their force requires special explanation, but it is arguable that performativity can be explained by the general theory of speech acts. (shrink)

Le livre de Rebecca Rogers From the Salon to the Schoolroom ouvre pour les lecteurs une voie d’entrée érudite à tout ce que les historiens nous ont appris sur la vie des femmes françaises depuis deux siècles. Alors que l’ouvrage en anglais de cette étude fouillée rappelle aux lecteurs anglophones l’influence importante de la pédagogie française dans les écoles britanniques et nord-américaines, la version française souligne le rôle joué par les pensionnats privés dans l’éducation des femmes en...

Ces trente dernières années, les women’s studies se sont développées aux États-Unis et sont devenues un nouveau domaine du savoir dans l’enseignement supérieur. Entre 1978 et 1995, plus de 10 000 étudiants ont obtenu un diplôme doctoral fondé sur un travail de recherche dans ce domaine. Les women’s studies ont amené de nouvelles questions, de nouveaux concepts, de nouvelles catégories d’analyse et des interprétations révisées de la sagesse conventionnelle à beaucoup – si ce n’est à la plupart – des disciplines (...) littéraires et dans les sciences sociales. Cependant, les women’s studies doivent faire face à de grands défis, tant conceptuels que d’organisation. Les critiques mettent en question la validité du concept « femme » comme concept fondateur, préférant soit subsumer les women’s studies dans le « gender », soit même placer l’étude des femmes et du « gender » dans les disciplines traditionnelles. (shrink)

The problem of evil is one of the most discussed topics in the philosophy of religion. For some time, however, there has been a need for a collection of readings that adequately represents recent and ongoing writing on the topic. This volume fills that need, offering the most up-to-date collection of recent scholarship on the problem of evil. The distinguished contributors include J.L. Mackie, Nelson Pike, Roderick M. Chisholm, Terence Penelhum, Alvin Plantinga, William L. Rowe, Stephen J. Wykstra, John Hick, (...) and Diogenes Allen. Including an introductory essay and a selected bibliography, this comprehensive and completely up-to-date collection is an invaluable guide to current scholarship in this highly debated area of the philosophy of religion. Oxford Readings in Philosophy aims to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available. (shrink)

L'A. propone una lettura critica della questione De grammatico di Anselmo in contrasto con l'interpretazione già proposta da D.P. Henry, per il quale l'opera intende sviluppare una teoria del significato dei paronimi. Dopo un esame del testo e della teoria di Henry, l'A. propone la tesi che lo scritto sia un'introduzione alla lettura delle Categorie di Aristotele ad uso del lettore/studente. Una sezione dello studio verte sulla distinzione fra quaestio, lectio e disputatio nella seconda metà del sec. XII, che giustifica (...) la collocazione dell'opera esaminata. (shrink)

Si l’on devait choisir un seul ouvrage pour mettre en valeur des sources, des méthodes de recherche et l’apport historiographique d’historiennes, ce serait ce travail sur Rosa Manus, juive néerlandaise féministe et pacifiste. Comme directrices du volume, Myriam Eberhard et Francisca de Haan ont produit un travail exemplaire. Les trois parties rassemblent huit contributions d’auteures de diverses nationalités, vingt-et-une photographies resituées dans leur contexte et treize documents historiq...

Nella prima parte del saggio l'A. esamina gli argomenti del Monologion sulla verità e il modo in cui si collegano allo studio ontologico della summa natura. Nella seconda parte passa all'analisi della teoria anselmiana della verità esposta nel De veritate, dove si definisce il significato della verità nel linguaggio , nelle azioni e nell'essenza delle cose. Nell'ultima parte si approfondisce il senso della convergenza dei tre approcci alla verità, si valuta la definizione di verità come giustizia percepibile dalla mente e (...) il rapporto fra suprema verità eterna e la verità degli esseri creati. (shrink)

If you think that semantic minimalism is the only alternative to contextualism but you’d rather do without Cappelen and Lepore’s mysteriously minimal “propositions,” you can. You just have to recognize that being semantically incomplete does not make a sentence context-sensitive. You don’t have to go through the ritual of repeatedly incanting things like this: “John is ready” expresses the proposition that John is ready. Instead, you can opt for Radical Minimalism and suppose that “John is ready” and its ilk fall (...) short of semantically expressing propositions – their semantic contents are propositional “radicals.” Now C&L think they’ve addressed Radical Minimalism and offered objections to it. So they find it strange and bizarre that I think they haven’t. In fact, they persist in confusing semantic incompleteness with context sensitivity. If they appreciated the difference, they might even welcome the opportunity to adopt a form of semantic minimalism that does without the minimal propositions that everyone but them find incredible (pun intended). (shrink)

In my commentary on Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore’s aptly titled book, Insensitive Semantics, I stake out a middle ground between their version of Semantic Minimalism and Contextualism. My kind of Semantic Minimalism does without the “minimal propositions” posited by C&L. It allows that some sentences do not express propositions, even relative to contexts. Instead, they are semantically incomplete. It is not a form of contextualism, since being semantically incomplete is not a way of being context-sensitive. In their reply to (...) my commentary, C&L seem to miss this point. Exaggerating the force of their slippery slope argument, they continue to suppose that contextualism is the only alternative to their version of minimalism. They contend that I haven’t replied to their central criticism, but in fact they haven’t replied to mine. (shrink)

Summary: This essay rejects the widespread thesis that conceptually creative metaphors are unpara‐phrasable on grounds that it misconceives the nature and function of paraphrase. Encouraged by a deceptively parallel rejection of the positivist reducibility thesis by philosophers of science, defenders of the unparaphrasability thesis mistakenly equated paraphrase with literal translation and in so doing failed to appreciate paraphrase's critical role in the systematic exploitation of metaphor's creative potential. This essay attempts to recast the terms of the paraphrasability debate by separating (...) paraphrase from literal translation and defending paraphrase's essential epistemic role in theory development. Three arguments for the paraphrasability of creative metaphor are presented followed by a critique of the major arguments for their unparaphrasability as formulated by Black, Cohen and Ricoeur. Résumé: Cet essai rejette, parce qu'elle repose sur une incomprehension de la nature et de la fonction de la paraphrase, la thése répandue selon laquelle des métaphores conceptuellement créatives ne peuvent pas être paraphraseées. Encouragés par un rejet faussement paralléle, par les philosophes des sciences, de la réductibilité positiviste, les défenseurs de la non‐paraphrasabilité ont confondu paraphrase et traduction littérale et, ce faisant, n'ont pas tenu compte du rôle critique de la paraphrase dans l'exploitation systématique du potentiel créatif de la métaphore. Cet essai tente de reformuler les termes du débat sur la paraphrasabilité en distinguant la paraphrase de la traduction littérale et en défendant le rôle épistémologique essentiel de la paraphrase dans le développe‐ment des théories. Trois arguments sont présentés pour la paraphrasabilité de la métaphore créative; suit une critique des principaux arguments contre la paraphrasabilité tels qu'ils ont été formulés par Black, Cohen et Ricoeur. Zusammenfassung: Es wird die weitverbreitete Auffassung widerlegt, wonach begrifflich kreative Metaphern nicht paraphrasierbar sind, weil sie Natur und Funktion der Paraphrase missversteht. Durch den scheinbar parallelen Fall der Verwerfung der Reduktionsthese durch Wissenschaftstheoretiker getäuscht setzten die Vertreter der These der Unparaphrasierbarkeit die Paraphrase mit der wört‐lichen Übersetzung gleich und sind deshalb nicht in der Lage, die kritische Funktion der Paraphrase bei der systematischen Verwertung des schöpferischen Potentials der Metapher zu erfas‐sen. Es wird versucht, das Problem der Paraphrasierbarkeit neu zu formulieren, indem die Paraphrase von der wörtlichen Übersetzung unterschieden wird und indem die erkenntnistheorelisch wesentliche Rolle der Paraphrase bei der Entwicklung von Theorien hervorgehoben wird. Es wer‐den drei Argumente zugunsten der Paraphrasierbarkeit von schopferischen Metaphern vorgelegt und die wichtigsten Argumente von Black, Cohen und Ricoeur gegen die Paraphrasierbarkeit kri‐tisiert. (shrink)

This open-ended anthology is a journey into the very canon that Mary Daly has argued to be patriarchal and demeaning to women. This volume deauthorizes the official canon of Western philosophy and disrupts a related story told by some feminists who claim that Daly’s work is unworthy of re-reading because it contains fatal errors. The editors and contributors attempt to prove that Mary Daly is located in the Western intellectual tradition. Daly may be highly critical of conventional Western epistemological and (...) theological traditions, but she nevertheless appropriates themes “out-of-context” for the building of her own systematic philosophy. The following are just a few of the many themes explored in this volume: • the question of subjectivity understood as an ongoing process of be-coming • the ambiguity of the need for feminists of colonial nations to speak out about violence against women in other parts of the world while that speaking carries with it the stamp of a colonial location • the territoriality of lesbian and women’s space • the theological dimensions of twentieth-century Western philosophy. Contributors are Wanda Warren Berry, Purushottama Bilimoria, Debra Campbell, Molly Dragiewicz, Frances Gray, Amber L. Katherine, AnaLouise Keating, Anne-Marie Korte, María Lugones, Geraldine Moane, Sheilagh A. Mogford, Laurel C. Schneider, Renuka Sharma, and Marja Suhonen. (shrink)