This festschrift collects a number of insightful essays by a group of accomplished Christian scholars, all of who have either worked with or studied under Hendrik Hart during his 35-year tenure as Senior Member in Systematic Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Canada.

Say theism is the view that an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly loving, and perfectly good being exists. And say pointless atheism occurs just in case there’s an atheist who isn’t resistant to belief in God, and no greater good comes about on account of this atheist’s non-belief. In this article, I show that if two prominent views about evil and divine hiddenness are accepted, theism is compatible with pointless atheism—a result hitherto unnoticed. Furthermore, not only is theism compatible with pointless atheism, (...) it entails pointless atheism. This is significant because many objections to the argument from divine hiddenness have tried to show that all instances of non-resistant atheism are required for a greater good. But if I’m right, given theism, there need not be a point to non-resistant atheism. Indeed, we should expect there to be pointless atheism. (shrink)

In this essay I examine how we use indexicals. The key function of indexicals, I claim, is to help the audience --- that is the hearers or readers of the utterance with whom the speaker intends to be communicating---to find supplementary channels of information about the object to which the indexical refers. To keep the discussion manageable, I will oversimplify the epistemology of conversation. I ignore the fact that people sometimes lie and sometimes make mistakes. I talk freely about what (...) one learns and the information one gets from an utterance. (shrink)

This article introduces and motivates the notion of a “properly extensive” quantity by means of a puzzle about the reliability of certain canonical length measurements. An account of these measurements’ success, I argue, requires a modally robust connection between quantitative structure and mereology that is not mediated by the dynamics and is stronger than the constraints imposed by “mere additivity.” I outline what it means to say that length is not just extensive but properly so and then briefly sketch an (...) application of proper extensiveness to the project of providing a reductive ground for metric quantitative structure. (shrink)

In our society, some aspects of life are off-limits to commerce. We prohibit the selling of children and the buying of wives, juries, and kidneys. Tainted blood is an inevitable consequence of paying blood donors; even sophisticated laboratory tests cannot supplant the gift-giving relationship as a safeguard of the purity of blood. Like blood, health care is too precious, intimate, and corruptible to entrust to the market.The hospice movement in the United States is approximately 40 years old. During these past (...) four decades, the concept of holistic, multidisciplinary care for patients who are suffering from a terminal illness has evolved from a modest, grassroots constellation of primarily volunteer-run and community-governed endeavors to a multimillion dollar industry where the surviving nonprofits compete with for-profit providers, often publicly traded, managed by M.B.A.-trained executives, and governed by corporate boards. The relatively recent emergence of for-profit hospice reflects an increasing commercialization of health care in the United States, the potentially adverse impact of which has been well documented. (shrink)

Nurses have moral obligations incurred by membership in the profession to participate knowingly in health policy advocacy. Many barriers have historically hindered nurses from realizing their potential to advance health policy. The contemporary political context sets additional challenges to policy work due to polarization and conflict. Nursing education can help nurses recognize their role in advancing health through political advocacy in a manner that is consistent with disciplinary knowledge and ethical responsibilities. In this paper, the authors describe an exemplar of (...) Elizabeth Barrett's “Power as Knowing Participation in Change” theory as a disciplinary lens within a doctoral nursing health policy course. Barrett (radically) emphasizes “power as freedom” instead of “power as control.” This approach is congruent with nursing disciplinary values and enhances awareness of personal freedom and building collaborative relationships in the policy process. The theory was used in concert with other traditional policy content and frameworks from nursing and other disciplines. We discuss the role of nursing ethics viewed as professional responsibility for policy action, an overview of Barrett's theory, and the design of the course. Four student reflections on how the course influenced their thinking about policy advocacy are included. While not specific to policymaking, Barrett's theory provides a disciplinary grounding to increase students' awareness of freedom and choices in political advocacy participation. Our experience suggests that Barrett's work can be fruitful for enhancing nurses' awareness of choices to participate in change across settings. (shrink)

One cue that may facilitate children's word learning is iconicity, or the correspondence between a word's form and meaning. Some have even proposed that iconicity in the early lexicon may serve to help children learn how to learn words, supporting the acquisition of even noniconic, or arbitrary, word–referent associations. However, this proposal remains untested. Here, we investigate the iconicity of caregivers’ speech to young children during a naturalistic free‐play session with novel stimuli and ask whether the iconicity of caregivers’ speech (...) facilitates children's learning of the noniconic novel names of those stimuli. Thirty‐four 1.5‐2‐year‐olds (19 girls; half monolingual English learners and half bilingual English‐Spanish learners) participated in a naturalistic free‐play task with their caregivers followed by a test of word‐referent retention. We found that caregivers’ use of iconicity, particularly in utterances in which they named the novel stimuli, was associated with the likelihood that children learned that novel name. This result held even when controlling for other factors associated with word learning, such as the concreteness and frequency of words in caregiver speech. Together, the results demonstrate that iconicity not only can serve to help children identify the referent of novel words (as in previous research) but can also support their ability to retain even noniconic word‐referent mappings. (shrink)

Distributed cognition provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of data from socio-technical systems within a problem-solving framework. While the approach has been applied in tightly constrained activity domains, composed of well-structured problems and highly organised infrastructures, little is known about its use in other forms of activity systems. In this paper, we explore how distributed cognition could be applied in less well-constrained settings, with ill-structured problems and loosely organised resource sets, critically reflecting on this using data from a field (...) study. The findings suggest that the use of distributed cognition in an augmented form can be useful in the analysis of a wide range of activity systems in loosely coupled settings. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The public controversy over sex‐based differentials in insurance pricing makes heavy use of terms like ‘fairness’ and ‘discrimination’; in particular, both sides argue that their position is the one dictated by considerations of fairness. Appeal to a basic principle of distributive justice shows that these differentials are not fair. Nevertheless, there is a substantial ethical argument to be made for the industry's status quo, based on the liberty of the low‐risk insurees. The paper considers an alternative reform proposal, with (...) a qualitatively different freedom cost; seven factors are then identified as useful in evaluating the trade‐off between the freedom and justice at stake in any questionable insurance classification variable. A brief concluding section attempts to generalise this analysis to provide a broad framework for the analysis of other discrimination issues. (shrink)

Autism is currently one of the most pressing issues in healthcare. Scholarship on the topic is commonly found among psychologists, educators, and, to some extent, philosophers. Surprisingly little scholarship, however, has focused on the ethical issues relevant to autism. Bioethicists ought to give autism consideration, though this may prove to be more diffi cult than it seems at fi rst glance. The neurodiversity movement is likely to be credited with starting discussions on autism and related issues of justice and ethics, (...) but perhaps this movement has set its sights short. Rather than looking for recognition of neurological divergence, a society that is grounded in neurological pluralism may be better suited to reach this movement’s aims. (shrink)

Using an inductive methodology based on one key component of transitional justice--namely, truth commissions--African Truth Commissions and Transitional Justice attempts to place them within the context of other elements such as trials of human rights abusers, the strengths and weaknesses of amnesty, and the importance of memorialization.

This Special Issue examines ethics in fashion to further critical understanding of the various drivers and barriers, nuances and layers of complexity in fashion production, marketing, and consumption, and aims toward a more future-oriented perspective through the lens of ethics. Research on ethical issues in fashion is growing but is fragmented across diverse domains, from supply chain and operations management, to psychology and sociology, to marketing and consumption. Furthermore, there has been only a peripheral focus on ethics and limited application (...) of ethical theories or frameworks to fashion’s ethical dilemmas. This Special Issue brings together diverse domains and unpacks salient ethical issues using the lens of ethical theories and frameworks to advance theory development on balancing social justice with environmental responsibility, decision-making in ethical situations, and newer forms of greenwashing and consumerism. The selected papers use varied methodologies and offer novel insights across different global contexts. (shrink)

According to Federalist President John Adams, the legislative assembly “should be an exact portrait, in miniature, of the people at large, as it should think, reason and act like them.” It is one thing to have the legislative assembly reflect the true composition of the people at large and quite another to prearrange the voting districts so as to better ensure the desired assembly, irrespective of the verisimilitude between the composition of the people and the assembly. In such district-engineered elections, (...) the legislative assembly may not reflect the true complexion of the people as a whole but rather the complexion the engineers ideally desire the people as a whole to have. Politically inspired district drawing, unlike its racially motivated counterpart is deemed constitutionally acceptable, save at extremes, by most members of the United States Supreme Court and non-justiciable by some members thereof. There are powerful and complex arguments investigated supporting both positions. (shrink)

Through a series of essays and cases based on real-life experiences, this book explores the interrelatedness of ethics and management and helps healthcare professionals at all levels of an organization overcome barriers to ethical decisions.

Just war theory applied to counterinsurgency.

This is the first English translation of Santob do Carrion's Proverbios morales (Moral Proverbs) and also the first book-length study of that monumental work. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly (...) increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The case of post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) provides an interesting lens through which to reflect on the interconnected and often conflicting challenges of implementation of internationally brokered peace agreements, external support to democratic transition and consolidation, and contemporary notions of sovereignty and state building. This chapter suggests that in the case of BiH, certain contradictions and tradeoffs have been and may still be necessary to ensure a foundation for future stability and democratic consolidation. The situation in post-Dayton BiH can (...) be described as a frozen conflict that has remained frozen in large part due to an international presence that ensures that an imperfect peace prevails while also providing a basis for incremental reform. The peace implementation process in BiH is briefly reviewed by looking at two reform strategies: the “soft” protectorate strategy used in BiH as a whole and the “hard” protectorate option exercised in the District of Brčko. The aim is to demonstrate that while a democratic end-state remains the goal in such transitions, the means toward getting there can include a number of contradictory policy options. (shrink)

Given the lack of effective curative treatment options and in light of a significant reconceptualization of Alzheimer’s disease, the focus of dementia research has shifted towards prevention, risk prediction, and detection in very early disease stages. In the context of these shifts, the edited volume Preventing Dementia?: Critical Perspectives on a New Paradigm of Preparing for Old Age (edited by Annette Leibing and Silke Schicktanz) collects critical and insightful positions on the new paradigm of dementia prevention from an interdisciplinary and (...) international perspective. The editors introduce the overarching topic of prevention by reflecting on the optimistic framing of modifiable risk factors and their novelty in the dementia context. Leibing and Schicktanz call for a cautious reception of the findings in the Lancet report(s) and draw attention to epistemic, ethical, and socio-political issues of what the editors term the contested “new dementia” and to the effect that this might have on rethinking individual and societal perceptions of aging. The contributions of the anthology depict the social and cultural dimensions of dementia discourses and consider the ethical implications of the changing conceptions of Alzheimer’s disease as well as the shift towards early disease stages and prevention. With this, the anthology initiates a debate about the often implicit unresolved social, ethical, and political implications and preconditions of the medical understanding and handling of cognitive disorders. (shrink)

Yet ethical theorists seem perennially to be drawn off into lengthy debates about side issues, with the result that the important questions are lost in the confusion and are dealt with more or less absent-mindedly. Amid the endless arguments about naturalism, the definability of good, the verifiability of ethical judgments, the scientific, extra-scientific or super-scientific status of ethics, it is difficult to locate the fundamental issues, the issues which all of us resolve, reflectively or absentmindedly, in one way or another, (...) and the resolution of which influences profoundly, for better or worse, the directions taken in dealing with specific moral, social, and political problems. There are, nevertheless, important problems in ethics; and different solutions of them have extensive consequences for practice. (shrink)

The founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure inaugurated semiology, structuralism, and deconstruction and made possible the work of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan, thus enabling the development of French feminism, gender studies, New Historicism, and postcolonialism. Based on Saussure's lectures, _Course in General Linguistics_ traces the rise and fall of the historical linguistics in which Saussure was trained, the synchronic or structural linguistics with which he replaced it, and the new look of diachronic linguistics that (...) followed this change. Most important, Saussure presents the principles of a new linguistic science that includes the invention of semiology, or the theory of the "signifier," the "signified," and the "sign" that they combine to produce. This is the first critical edition of _Course in General Linguistics_ to appear in English and restores Wade Baskin's original translation of 1959, in which the terms "signifier" and "signified" are introduced into English in this precise way. Baskin renders Saussure clearly and accessibly, allowing readers to experience his shift of the theory of reference from mimesis to performance and his expansion of poetics to include all media, including the life sciences and environmentalism. An introduction situates Saussure within the history of ideas and describes the history of scholarship that made _Course in General Linguistics_ legendary. New endnotes enlarge Saussure's contexts to include literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy. (shrink)

A trailblazing exploration of the political stakes of curiosity. Perry Zurn explores the political philosophy of curiosity—the heartbeat of political resistance and a critical factor in social justice. Drawing on philosophy and political theory as well as feminist theory, race theory, disability studies, and trans studies, he tracks curiosity in the structures of political marginalization and resistance.

Why do design arguments—particularly those emphasizing machine metaphors such as “Organisms and/or their parts are machines”—continue to be so convincing to so many people after they have been repeatedly refuted? In this essay I review various interpretations and refutations of design arguments and make a distinction between rationally refuting such arguments (RefutingR) and rendering them psychologically unconvincing (RefutingP). Expanding on this distinction, I provide support from recent work on the cognitive power of metaphors and developmental psychological work indicating a basic (...) human propensity toward attributing agency to natural events, to show that design arguments “make sense”unless one is cued to look more closely. As with visual illusions, such as the Müller-Lyer arrow illusion, there is nothing wrong with a believer's cognitive apparatus any more than with their visual apparatus when they judge the lines in the illusion to be of unequal length. It takes training or a dissonance between design beliefs and other beliefs or experiences to play the role that a ruler does in the visual case. Unless people are cued to “look again” at what initially makes perfect sense, they are not inclined to apply more sophisticated evaluative procedures. (shrink)