There is a view that what we owe to other people is explained by the fact that they are human beings who share in a common human life. There are many ways of construing this explanatory idea, and I explore a few of these here; the aim is to look for constructions that contribute to an understanding of what we owe to people with profound and multiple learning difficulties and disabilities. In exploring the idea of sharing in (...) a common life I construe ‘sharing’ as ‘participating in’, and ‘common life’ as the social life characteristic of the environment that someone lives in. My principal purpose is to render the idea of sharing in a common life in terms that help explain its eligibility as a ground for establishing the moral status of people with PMLD. The participatory options I examine each make some call on agency, if only as something hoped for in the future, including when hope flies in the face of expectation. Accordingly I look at conceptions of actual and potential participation in social life, and at the idea of treating people as if they have the potential to participate, even when the existence of any such potential is unlikely. I conclude with some thoughts on the relation between participation and the moral status of profoundly disabled people, and about how much, and how little, the argument has achieved. (shrink)

This thesis lies in the overlap of environmental political theory and environmental ethics. More specifically, it focuses on the intersection between distributive ecological justice (justice to nature), and environmental justice (distributing environmental goods between humans). Against the backdrop of the current sixth extinction crisis, I address the question of what constitutes a just usage of ecological space. I define ecological space as encompassing environmental resources, benefits provided by ecosystems and physical spaces and when considering its just usage I not only (...) take into account claims to ecological space held by other humans but also the demands of justice with regards to nonhuman living beings such as animals and plants. In order to address my overall research question, I look at three areas of inquiry in particular. My first area of concern is questions around how environmental justice can be made compatible with a theory of ecological justice. Here I defend a specific definition of ecological space and provide a critique of theories of justice that are based on the view that humanity has an original ownership of the Earth. Secondly, I defend a biocentric approach to distributive ecological justice based on all living beings constituting together a community of fate, and I additionally clarify the relationship between justice and biodiversity loss. Lastly, considering that the current situation of life on Earth does not resemble the circumstance of moderate scarcity where all needs could theoretically be met (as usually assumed by the most influential theories of justice), I inquire into how demands of environmental and ecological justice differ in different circumstances of scarcity, and what could be considered a just compromise between these two domains of justice. I then apply these last considerations to the Half-Earth proposal for creating large protected areas for nonhuman species, which has been advocated by E. O. Wilson and other ecologists as a means to slow the current rate of anthropogenic species extinctions. In essence, the Half-Earth proposal might be ambitious, but I argue there are good reasons to consider it as one building block of a (distributively) just future for life on Earth. (shrink)

Personalisation is the new mantra in social care; this article focuses on how personalisation can be achieved in practice, by presenting an analysis of data from people with learning disabilities and their personal assistants, where traditional care relationships have often been shown to be disempowering. The focus here is on the ways in which both parties use references to shared knowledge, joint experiences or personal-life information. These strategies can be used for various social goals, and instances are given where (...) shared references are used during non task-related talk. Both parties are seen on occasion to attempt to refer to shared information, and dense layers of inference can result, which move the interaction onto an ordinary, more symmetrical and friendly footing. The article concludes that shared knowledge referencing creates a way to shift between the personal and the professional, to blur the boundaries, and to create a new and more personalised relationship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Just Share: Justice and Fairness in Resource Allocation*Pat Milmoe Mccarrick (bio) and Martina Darragh (bio)Each of us has some basic sense of what the words “fair” or “just” or “fairness” or “justice” mean. Each of us probably also has an idea of what is “fair” in health care. The attempt by the state of Oregon in the mid-1980s to quantify this notion made a previously private exercise a (...) public one. This transition has been chronicled in the bioethics literature that focuses on resource allocation. These works examine both theories of justice and concepts of “health”; the fair distribution of health resources has been of continuing interest since the beginning of bioethics in the 1960s. Early writing on justice includes authors Tom L. Beauchamp, Robert H. Blank, James F. Childress, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Paul T. Menzel, Paul Ramsey, and Robert M. Veatch (VII).During the 1980s, bioethicists such as Daniel Callahan and Norman Daniels proposed thinking of health care decisions not as moments of personal crisis but as choices that span a lifetime, possibly involving tradeoffs in other areas of one’s life, e.g., education. The Oregon experience added another dimension to the discussion. The initial rank-ordering of health services by cost produced a skewed list—for example, surgery for life-threatening conditions ranked below minor, elective procedures. For the project to make sense, the ranking algorithm could not be based on cost alone, but rather on a combination of costs and benefits both to individuals and to the community—“concatenations of individual and group goods” (I, Jecker and Jonsen 1995). Various metaphors have been used in the literature to facilitate discussion of this shift from individual to individual/community trade-offs: medical services as a “commons” (I, Asch 1995, Jecker and Jonsen 1995, Michels 1994); resource allocation as a “lifeboat” (I, Campbell 1995; III, Kaveny 1994); medical care as “shares” in a community health (III, Nelson 1992, Ford and Kissick 1995; II, Anderson 1993); and rationing as traveling through the desert with one jug of water for two people (a story from the Halachah literature) (I, Zoloth-Dorfman 1995). [End Page 81]Such metaphors do not promote any one “theory of justice” but rather draw from the work of a number of bioethicists as well as from theological, sociological, economic, and business literature. The five major conceptions of justice that are referenced most frequently are: “(1) a libertarian conception, which takes liberty to be the ultimate political ideal; (2) a socialist conception, which takes equality to be the ultimate political ideal; (3) a welfare liberal conception, which takes contractual fairness or maximal utility to be the ultimate political ideal; (4) a communitarian conception, which takes the common good to be the ultimate political ideal; and (5) a feminist conception, which takes a gender-free society to be the ultimate political ideal” (I, Sterba 1995).The use of new metaphors also draws on expanded concepts of “health.” “As health care is currently practiced, the most powerful symbols for public and professional alike are those that promise the defeat of time” (I, Campbell 1995). When medical care is perceived as an unrelated series of individual cures, the fact that health care resources are finite cannot be addressed.Reflections concerning the difficulties in limiting the use of health care resources have an ancient lineage and reveal a tight bond with the obsession to postpone death at all costs. Plato in Book 3 of the Republic recognizes the quandary of infinite expectations and finite resources that characterizes the challenge of health care choices. (I, Engelhardt 1996)The proliferation of expensive medical technologies and the loss of autonomy by health care professionals further complicates perceptions of the crucial issues at hand. Some have said that Americans place too much emphasis on individualism to address these issues. Daniels et al. believe that this is too pessimistic a view and that the American commitment to protecting equal opportunity for all provides a firm basis for developing a public consensus on what is fair in health care (III, Daniels, Light, and Caplan 1996). Finally, several authors suggest that the nature of all four principles of medical ethics, not justice alone, must be... (shrink)

A fresh vision of the common good through pnumatological lenses Daniela C. Augustine, a brilliant emerging scholar, offers a theological ethic for the common good. Augustine develops a public theology from a theological vision of creation as the household of the Triune God, bearing the image of God in a mutual sharing of divine love and justice, and as a sacrament of the divine presence. The Spirit and the Common God expounds upon the application of this (...) vision not only within the life of the church but also to the realm of politics, economics, and care for creation. The church serves a priestly and prophetic function for society, indeed for all of creation. This renewed vision becomes the foundation for constructing a theological ethic of planetary flourishing in and through commitment to a sustainable communal praxis of a shared future with the other and the different. While emphatically theological in its approach, The Spirit and the Common Good engages readers with insights from political philosophy, sociology of religion, economics, and ecology, as well as forgiveness/reconciliation and peacebuilding studies. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a strong concept of sharing – a close interactive relation that pre-consciously allows humans to grasp themselves and each other as human – is crucial for the human form of life. This concept of sharing is used to reconstruct some of Peirce’s insights. Sharing is no part of Peirce’s account of person, morality and interpersonal relations. But his rhetorical analysis of assertion as close, indexical interaction shows that sharing is (...) necessary in semiotics and pragmatism. The concept of sharing is used to reconstruct his metaphysics of evolutionary agape love and sympathetic relations as a selection principle of commonly pursued purposes. Finally, sharing is shown to have economic meaning: the form of life in which humans may satisfy their needs may consist in sharing directly the necessities of life with each other. If humans live together and develop projects and purposes with one another because they share with one another what is here and now, democracy is needed: as the only form of government that allows for free and equal participation of the people. (shrink)

In this chapter we first discuss the main principles of justice and note the standard objections to them, which we believe necessitate a hybrid approach. The hybrid account we defend is primarily based on the distributive principle of sufficientarianism, which we interpret as the idea that each country should have the means to provide a minimally decent quality of life for each of its citizens. We argue that sufficientarian considerations give good reason to think that what we call the (...) ‘ability to pay objection’ should be taken much more seriously in this debate. Following this, our account emphasises what we believe are the two most important moral desiderata in any attempt to distribute responsibility for dealing with climate change: the ability to mitigate the problem and the making of culpable contributions to the problem. After noting that our proposal includes enough detail to be a useful start for policy makers, we defend our account against some potential objections. (shrink)

Within modern liberal political philosophy, discussions on justice have been centered upon an individualism-based distributive justice and the ‘fair share’ due to each person. According to the liberal theory of justice, the individual is an entity of rational reason and moral autonomy and considers the interests of others and of the community from a viewpoint that is focused on one’s own interests. As practical principles of justice, the principle of desert has attempted to separate the individual’s natural and inherent abilities (...) (merit) from the individual’s intentional efforts (desert); while the principle of needs has transmuted into a set of minimum exclusivity rights to protect the individual’s autonomy from serious harm and injury. Procedural justice theorists such as Rawls have attempted to invalidate the merit of the individual in an attempt to establish the identity of individuals whom are independent of the community, in the effort to promote their ideas on how to mitigate the social inequality that results from natural arbitrariness. The requirement to finalize this logical process is astrong moral reason equipped individual with the capacity of rational action. However, paradoxically, the logic of excessive reason has created an individual who isexclusive-rights-empowered but becomes ‘isolated and selfish’. The issues resulting from this situation are, first, the rational individual who is equipped with moral autonomynow becomes hidden behind a system-guaranteed set of exclusive rights; and second, the individual who should have been a rational actor and actively participating in cooperation and reciprocal relationships, does not find it easy to overcome the temptations of becoming a strategically located but passive and selfish actor within the mass market order. The result is that individuals easily relinquish their moral autonomy and exhibit a tendency to focus on personal gain. This has resulted in an increase in the polarization of society, and an increase of conflict between classes; and has engendered a crisis in the common good of the family and the political community. The true ‘good life’ and the ‘well-ordered community’ cannot be obtained by individuals who are only interested in their ‘share’, but requires ‘good citizens’ who are concerned about the happiness of others and of the society. When we are able to understand that the rational and selfish individual is necessarily non-self-sufficient; and acknowledge that there is a need for mutual philia with others, we will then be able to overcome rational reason and embrace civic friendship. The good citizen of a healthy community that is based on civic friendship, is an individual who has assimilated the virtue of justice, and will be able to aid inovercoming the limitations of modern liberalism, assist in the resolution of the pressing societal and individualistic crises and contribute to theestablishment of a ‘well-ordered community’. (shrink)

The present study investigates how laughter features in the everyday lives of 3-5-year old children in Swedish preschools. It examines and discusses typical laughter patterns and their functions with a particular focus on children’s and intergenerational (child-adult/educator) laughter in early education context. The research questions concern: who laughs with whom; how do adults respond to children’s laughter, and what characterizes the social situations in which laughter is used and reciprocated. Theoretically, the study answers the call for sociocultural approaches that contextualize (...) children’s everyday social interaction, e.g., in different institutions or homes, to study the diverse conditions society forms for learning, sociality and socialization and development of shared norms. Methodologically, the study makes use of mixed methods: it uses descriptive statistics that identify prevalent patterns in laughter practices and, on the basis of these results, examines social-interactional situations of children’s laughter in detail. It was found that children’s laughter tended to be directed to children and adults’ laughter tended to be directed to adults. 87% of children’s laughter was directed to other children, and adults directed their laughter to other adults 2,7 times as often as to children. The qualitative interaction analysis shows that children and adults exhibited different patterns of laughter. Children primarily sought and received affiliation through laughter in the peer group, and the adults were often focused on the institutional and educational goals of the preschool. Overall, the study shows that intergenerational reciprocal laughter was a rare occurrence and suggests that laughter between generations is interesting in that it can be seen as indicative of how children and adults handle alterity in their everyday life. By deploying multiple methods, the present study points to the importance of viewing emotion and norm sharedness in social interaction not just as a matter of communicating an emotion from one person to another, but as an intricate process of inviting the others into or negotiating the common emotional and experiential ground. (shrink)

For thousands of years, various spiritual traditions and social activists have appealed to humans to adopt compassionate ways of living to address the suffering of life. Yet, along with our potential for compassion and self-sacrifice, the last few thousand years of wars, slavery, tortures, and holocausts have shown humans can be extraordinarily selfish, callous, vicious, and cruel. While there has been considerable engagement with these issues, particularly in the area of moral psychology and ethics, this paper explores an evolutionary (...) analysis relating to evolved resource-regulation strategies that can be called “care and share” versus “control and hold.” Control and hold are typical of primates that operate through intimidatory social hierarchies. Care and share are less common in non-human primates, but evolved radically in humans during our hunter-gatherer stage when our ancestors lived in relatively interdependent, small, mobile groups. In these groups, individualistic, self-focus, and self-promoting control and hold strategies (trying to secure and accumulate more than others) were shunned and shamed. These caring and sharing hunter-gatherer lifestyles also created the social contexts for the evolution of new forms of childcare and complex human competencies for language, reasoning, planning, empathy, and self-awareness. As a result of our new ‘intelligence’, our ancestors developed agriculture that reduced mobility, increased group size, resource availability and storage, and resource competition. These re-introduced competing for, rather than sharing of, resources and advantaged those who now pursue (often aggressively) control and hold strategies. Many of our most typical forms of oppressive and anti-compassionate behavior are the result of these strategies. Rather than (just) thinking aboutindividualscompeting with one another, we can also consider these different resource regulation strategies ascompeting within populationsshaping psychophysiological patterns; both wealth and poverty change the brain. One of the challenges to creating a more compassionate society is to find ways to create the social and economic conditions that regulate control and hold strategies and promote care and share. No easy task. (shrink)

In recent years, the sharing economy has attracted considerable attention, both scholarly and popular, relating to its capacity to enforce or undermine extant economic conventions. However, the process through which technological developments can effectively have this outcome of altering extant conventions on what is morally acceptable or desirable is still unclear. In this paper, we draw on the work of Boltanski and Thévenot and the notion of agencement to investigate the moral and performative dimension of controversies related to the (...) SE. The research stems from a qualitative case-based study of the controversy following Uber’s implementation in Montréal’s taxi market. We contribute to the literature on the SE through an empirical study of the moral debates entailed in the unfolding in situ of a SE device. We also add to the literature using the ‘Orders of Worth’ framework by showing how a compromise is solidified. We find that beyond discursive strategies, it is the concrete recomposition of laws, conventions, devices, persons, etc. that harmonised different definitions of the common good. Finally, we contribute to the literature on the relationship between technology, ethics, and social change by capturing the specific values that legitimise Uber, and by following their unfolding throughout a controversy. (shrink)

IN THIS PAPER I CONSIDER THE VALUE OF FRIENDSHIP FROM AN ARISTOTELIAN POINT OF VIEW. THE ISSUE IS OF CURRENT INTEREST GIVEN RECENT CHALLENGES TO IMPARTIALIST ETHICS TO TAKE MORE SERIOUSLY THE COMMITMENTS AND ATTACHMENTS OF A PERSON. HOWEVER, I ENTER THAT DEBATE IN ONLY A RESTRICTED WAY BY STRENGTHENING THE CHALLENGE ARTICULATED IN ARISTOTLE'S SYSTEMATIC DEFENSE OF FRIENDSHIP AND THE SHARED LIFE. AFTER SOME INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, I BEGIN BY CONSIDERING ARISTOTLE'S NOTION THAT GOOD LIVING OR HAPPINESS ("EUDAIMONIA") FOR (...) AN INDIVIDUAL NECESSARILY INCLUDES THE HAPPINESS OF OTHERS. SHARED HAPPINESS ENTAILS THE RATIONAL CAPACITY FOR JOINTLY PROMOTING COMMON ENDS AS WELL AS THE CAPACITY TO IDENTIFY WITH AND COORDINATE SEPARATE ENDS. THIS EXTENDED NOTION OF HAPPINESS PRESUPPOSES THE EXTENSION OF SELF THROUGH ATTACHMENTS, AND I NEXT CONSIDER CERTAIN MINIMAL CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR ATTACHMENT. FINALLY, I DISCUSS HOW ARISTOTLE'S NOTION OF A FRIEND AS "ANOTHER SELF" IS COMPATIBLE BOTH WITH A CONCEPTION OF THE SEPARATENESS OF THE INDIVIDUALS AND OF THE DISTINCTIVE WAYS IN WHICH EACH INDIVIDUAL REALIZES VIRTUE WITHIN A SHARED LIFE. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ideal of Shared Decision Making Between Physicians and PatientsDan W. Brock (bio)IntroductionShared treatment decision making, with its division of labor between physician and patient, is a common ideal in medical ethics for the physician-patient relationship.1 Most simply put, the physician's role is to use his or her training, knowledge, and experience to provide the patient with facts about the diagnosis and about the prognoses without treatment and (...) with alternative treatments. The patient's role in this division of labor is to provide the values—his or her own conception of the good—with which to evaluate these alternatives, and to select the one that is best for himself or herself. As a rough guide to practice, this is a reasonable conception; most of the time it is likely to produce sound treatment decisions. However, as an ideal it is too simplistic, and is subject to several challenges that I will explore in this paper.Some challenges relate to the physician's role. This facts/values division of labor seems to assume that the physician can and should provide the facts about treatment alternatives in a value-neutral form. But some have questioned whether the sciences on which medicine is based are, or can be, value free. Moreover, the concepts of health and disease, and of the normal and pathological, are held by many to be value laden. And even if it is possible for physicians to provide only value-neutral facts to the patient, should the physicians' role be restricted in this way?Other challenges that I will present in the paper are to the patient's role [End Page 28] as provider of the values for the evaluation of the different treatment alternatives. One defense of this role is based on the claim that physicians are not in a position to know reliably what is in a patient's best interests (Buchanan, forthcoming). I believe at least as influential—even if often not explicitly stated—is an extreme subjectivism about values that assumes that the patient's own ultimate values, which define his or her own conception of the good, are incorrigible. By incorrigible, I mean they cannot be mistaken. In the standard case in which treatment is pursued for the patient's benefit, this extreme subjectivism is thought to support the patient's values guiding treatment decision making and treatment. I will explore this incorrigibility claim and will argue that on each of the main philosophical conceptions of the good for persons it is indefensible and should not be the basis for shared treatment decision making.Underlying this view of the physician-patient division of labor are assumptions and beliefs about the nature and relation of facts and values, and science and ethics, that are largely the legacy of a logical positivism that has long since been rejected by most philosophers. It is time that these unstable foundations for our normative ideal of the physician-patient relation were finally removed and replaced with more defensible underpinnings.Two Models of the Physician-Patient RelationshipPositivists insisted on a relatively sharp distinction between descriptive or empirical claims and science, on the one hand, and evaluative claims and ethics, on the other.2 Descriptive statements and the claims of science were to be true or false according to whether they in fact correctly described and explained the world. By remaining properly descriptive or empirical, science could, at least in principle, be entirely value neutral or value free.In its more extreme versions, positivism held that ethical judgments lacked cognitive content, but were instead expressions of emotions or attitudes, and as such could be neither true nor false, correct or mistaken. Because no evaluative statements were held to be logically entailed by any descriptive or empirical statements, moral reasoning was thought to be properly understood not as reasoning but as attempts at nonrational persuasion.3 Many drew from this an extreme subjectivism in ethics along the lines of what I have called above the incorrigibility thesis—there is no meaningful sense in which an individual's ultimate values defining his or her own conception of the good life could be mistaken, false, or unfounded.These... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Finding PartnershipThe Benefit of Sharing and the Capacity for ComplexityMichaela Amering (bio)Keywordsrecovery, empowerment, trialog, user involvement, schizophreniaIs There Ignorance and Arrogance? In Psychiatry? In Medicine?Adding insight to injury' is the paraphrase psychiatrist Pat McGorry (1992) coined for his reproach of 'pushing for "insight" or "acceptance of diagnosis"' without carefully taking into account the complexities of the individual situation, context, and needs. That must be about the kind of (...) behavior Marga Reimer has in mind in her paper on treatment adherence in the absence of insight, which depicts mental health professionals characterized by arrogance against the common sense of motivating compliance by perceived or anticipated benefits on different everyday life levels, but instead trying to get people to believe in a mental illness such as schizophrenia and wishing them to want treatment for that in the form of medication.In addition, Reimer presents examples from general medicine to make her point that adherence follows perceived or anticipated benefits instead of being a result of insight into a medical model of illness and McGorry (1992) also suggests that disregard for the active role that patients may play as reflected in psychiatry in terms such as 'case management' and 'compliance' "is a failing which extends to mainstream medicine and probably to most systems of human service delivery." On the other hand, Bill Anthony (2006), one of the most eminent experts on psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery in a personal report on his own medical illness, multiple sclerosis—MS, and the assistance he has been receiving in connection with it, describes the 'MS-Community' as exemplary with respect to instilling courage and hope, continually providing information and opportunities for exchange, and for never questioning a person's ultimate freedom of choice. In contrary, in mental health care he does not experience the medical profession as acting with full respect and support for its patients and suggests a great deal more work and transformation—especially concerning coercive treatments—ahead to follow this example. Similarly, it has been suggested that psychiatry should be better integrated into medicine to overcome stigma and discrimination of psychiatric health problems and interventions. A pertinent example of an initiative in this direction is the proposal of a fusion of mental health and incapacity legislation to arrive at ethically consistent legal situations with regard to involuntary [End Page 77] treatment across medicine (Dawson and Szmukler 2006).Is There Something Called Schizophrenia? and How Much Longer?Reimer's main example—schizophrenia—is the diagnosis that poses some of the greatest problems to the field and to the recognition of psychiatry as a scientific medical discipline. The current concept as well as the term 'schizophrenia' will probably not be around much longer; 'a century of schizophrenia is enough' (Kelly and Murray 2002). Suggested solutions for the problems of the diagnosis of schizophrenia concern the urgent complement of the categorical with a dimensional approach (Allardyce et al. 2007), a change also put forward as one of the essential remedies to undermine the stigma of mental illness that is often exacerbated by clinical diagnosis (Corrigan 2007). Such a move would also clearly help against the still prevalent experiences of users of services and their families and friends, whose hopes and dreams have been crushed and whose resilience has been undermined by clinical situations, which in times of psychotic crises, not only forced diagnoses but also prognoses—often scientifically unfounded—on them (Amering and Schmolke 2009).Is There a Solution? Can We Use Our Talents? And Those of People With a Lived Experience of Mental Health Problems and Care?Clinicians as well as scientists know that health, illness, and recovery occur in complex ways and contexts. People faced with mental health problems clearly realize the complexities of their situation and are especially motivated to appreciate the variety of factors and interactions that need to be integrated to arrive at a valid assessment. Ideally, the therapeutic relationship—essentially a partnership—holds a formidable chance of sharing efforts and creating the wisdom for finding and facing the truths necessary to develop solutions that can uphold and work in line with the complexities of human life.I would argue that psychiatric professionals are certainly part... (shrink)

In our contemporary post-modern context, it has become increasingly awkward to talk about a good that is shared by all. This is particularly true in the context of mammoth multi-national corporations operating in global markets. Nevertheless, it is precisely some of these same enormous, aggrandizing forces that have given rise to recent corporate scandals. These, in turn, raise questions about ethical systems that are focused too myopically on self-interest, or the interest of specific groups, locations or cultures. The obvious traditional (...) alternative to moral bellybutton gazing is the common good, which challenges the modern business enterprise to realize non-instrumental values that can only be attained in our life together. The common good dictates that leadership should be judged, first of all, according to moral criteria rather than professional competence. It helps correct the distorted prioritization of the maximization of profit in every business decision, recognizing that businesses have a multitude of rights and responsibilities, and the common good reminds us that the first of these is not always profit-making. (shrink)

According to the Gospel of Matthew, disciplemaking seems to be the signature mark of faithful disciples of Jesus the Christ. Van Aarde refers to this, with reference to Von Harnack and Lohmeyer as the manifesto of the church, being on the same level of meaning as Deuteronomy 6 in the Old Testament. It may be fair to say that this 'natural' way of being and doing was in more than one way exchanged for evangelism practices that did nothing to show (...) forth that following the Christ is a better or best way of living life, here already, to its fullest. These practices even reflected negatively on disciplemaking as such. A personal conviction is that 'discipling' may even be one of the missing links in the so-called missional conversation. This article will reflect on current theory on discipling and the natural necessity thereof. It will also draw upon findings in empirical research conducted by the National Church Life Surveys during 2014 in South Africa that may give an indication whether discipling is a common praxis among selected South African denominations and congregations. The focus will be on 'Faith-Sharing' as a core quality among adult attenders and includes several measures of the involvement of attenders in the outreach of the congregation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13.3 (2003) 189-192 [Access article in PDF] Is There a Common Morality? Robert M. VeatchSenior EditorOne of the most exciting and important developments in recent ethical theory—especially bioethical theory—is the emergence of the concept of "common morality." Some of the most influential theories in bioethics have endorsed the notion using it as the starting point of their systems. This issue of the (...) Journal is devoted to these developments.The core idea of a common morality is that all humans—at least all morally serious humans—have a pretheoretical awareness of certain moral norms. The claim is that normal humans intuit or in some other way know that there is something wrong with things like lying or breaking promises or killing people. These purportedly universally shared insights can provide the raw data from which ethical theories are constructed. As such, they are perhaps analogous to the raw sense data that are relied on in the natural sciences to launch the construction of scientific theories and accounts of the nature of reality. Some common morality theorists suggest an analogy between the natural and the moral sciences.In the natural sciences there is a widely shared belief that some raw sensory data are perceived by all normal humans and provide the basis for the construction of various scientific theories. For example, it is widely believed that all normal humans looking at the top light on a traffic signal perceive something that in English is called "red." Of course, different cultures will use different language to describe this experience. They may parse the boundaries differently (varying on the exact borderline between red and orange), provide widely differing accounts of why the experience of "red" occurs, and eventually generate significantly different theoretical formulations to explain the experience of redness. Moreover, some individuals may look at that top light of the traffic signal and not see color at all. One generally, however, does not account for this by denying there is any objective, generally shared basis for the experience that produces a sensation of redness in normal people. One simply explains the experience of the one who fails to see color by positing a defect in perception, called "color-blindness."Some moral theorists suggest that something analogous happens when humans look at the moral scene. The claim is that all normal humans in all places and cultures "see" certain moral requiredness. They see that some behaviors are, in some sense, generally wrong; that other behaviors are generally right; that [End Page 189] some character traits are generally praiseworthy, others blameworthy. No sophisticated common morality theorist denies that, as with color-blindness, there may be occasional outliers who for one reason or another fail to intuit or perceive these simple, abstract moral norms. Certainly, people in different cultures will define the terms differently, will recognize different limits on the norms, and will construct different theories to account for their experience. The primitive idea that there is something generally wrong with killing other humans will be articulated very differently in different cultures—some referring to the "sacredness of life;" others to a duty not to kill, a right to life, or a prohibition on killing the innocent. Some may extend the insight to a duty to prolong living, others limit it merely to a prohibition of direct, active killing. Some may endorse more exceptions—for killing of unjust aggressors, for killing in just war, for killing in self-defense; others, such as pacifists, will be much more stingy in doling out exceptions. Certainly, people at different times and places will articulate the norms in different language and embed them in different theories. The basic claim of common morality theorists, however, is that there is some primitive, pretheoretical insight that is shared by all normal, morally serious persons.Recently, the notion of a common morality has served as a starting point for bioethical theories as diverse as Bernard Gert, Charles Culver, and Danner Clouser's Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals (1997) and the latest edition of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress's Principles of Biomedical Ethics... (shrink)

Against the common view that a European identity is a functional precondition for legitimate EU governance, this article argues that conceptual weaknesses of the term ‘collective identity’ have led to a confusion of several analytic dimensions of ‘identity’ and to an overestimation of strong forms of collective identity. Insights provided by analytic philosophy will be introduced in order to redefine and differentiate ‘collective identity’. The ways in which people refer to themselves as members of we-groups will be outlined and (...) illustrated in order to contribute to an innovative model of the problem and therefore the policy-related formation of collective identities. The article concludes that a strong European identity is not a functional precondition for legitimate everyday democratic governance in the EU. Only in extraordinary situations and in order to institutionalize integration in ethically sensitive policy fields is it necessary that EU citizens discursively agree on an ethical self-understanding of their way of life. (shrink)

Inspired by the thinking of authors such as Andrew Feenberg, Tim Ingold and Richard Sennett, this article sets forth substantial criticism of the ‘social uprooting of technology’ paradigm, which deterministically considers modern technology an autonomous entity, independent and indifferent to the social world (practices, skills, experiences, cultures, etc.). In particular, the authors’ focus on demonstrating that the philosophy,methodology and experience linked to open source technological development represent an emblematic case of re-encapsulation of the technical code within social relations (reskilling practices). (...) Open source is discussed as a practice, albeit not unique, of community empowerment aimed at the participated and shared rehabilitation of technological production ex-ante. Furthermore, the article discusses the application of open source processes in the agro-biotechnological field, showing how they may support a more democratic endogenous development, capable of binding technological innovation to the objectives of social (reducing inequalities) and environmental sustainability to a greater degree. (shrink)

Over the last three years I have been fortunate to teach an unusual class, one that provides an academic background in ethical and social and political theory using the medium of comedy. I have taught the class at two schools, a private liberal arts college in western Pennsylvania and a public regional state university in southern Georgia. While the schools vary widely in a number of ways, there are characteristics that the students share: the school in Pennsylvania had a large (...) population of students raised in a middle class industrial context, and the school in Georgia had a majority of students from middle-to-lower class agricultural backgrounds. Because of recent collapses in the economy of the tool and dye industry in the Great Lakes region, and the ongoing concerns for development in rural and urban areas of the southeastern United States, both groups of students were in similarly dire economic and working conditions. All faced the distinct possibility that they would not do as well in life as their parents. Most of the students grew up with television and film and had a love of comedy when they arrived at college. -/- Entertainment and mass media contributed to the students' mindset and the lens through which they viewed and interpreted their lived experience. Comedic mass media in the form of television sitcoms and films were common choices for inexpensive entertainment, in their childhood, in their past, in their homes, and now in their college dorms and apartments. In asking students to connect their own history with cultural trends depicted in comedy in film and television, even through the history of television, gave the students a familiar venue to critically consider their own intellectual growth and development and that of American society as a whole. -/- Many of them were familiar with the internet, and enjoyed the internet as a source of information about celebrities as well as the history and episodes of their favorite television shows and films. Students are rediscovering and discovering television programs that their professors may have watched as children, with the availability of a wide range of comedy television programs available on cable, especially TVLand, Comedy Central and Nick-at-Night. -/- In this article I will elaborate on the value of comedy as a teaching tool for philosophers and professors. I will provide a number of examples, showing how comedy can provide fertile examples of ethical theory at work, and I will show how comedy can be used to clarify cultural norms and values. Finally, I will discuss the political activism and student empowerment involved in teaching Philosophy, Comedy and Film in southern Georgia. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the idea of collective epistemic commonality suggested by Charles Taylor's example, and contrasts it with a distributive notion of epistemic commonality. It describes a number of accounts of collective epistemic commonality, and then argues that, contrary to what Taylor suggests, conversation is not constitutive of collective epistemic commonality as such, but rather presupposes basic forms of collective epistemic commonality. Taylor's remarks indicate that understanding the consensus is insufficient as whatever proposition people rationally and openly accept in conversation. (...) It is suggested that joint attitudes are irreducible, relational, and pre-reflective, and that such attitudes are joint, in the respect that the participants are aware of themselves as a ‘we’. Highly inferential beliefs need some form of communication, and are probably really some form of joint commitment. (shrink)

Life-Sharing for a Creative Tomorrow is a study of human beings as arising from Nature, yet transcending it; related to each other as members of the human race, yet free to choose personal ties with and commitment to others in interpersonal relations. The trials and risks of love, the specific characterization of being human within moral and aesthetic expressions are considered in the context of the communal social structures in the world. The truth and integrity of selfhood, vis-à-vis (...) psychological influences and outside pressures is presented as the necessary safeguard of one's identity, while sharing a creative life of beauty and wisdom, in solidarity with Others, for a truly human future. (shrink)

The book offers a new treatment of the capacity to perceive, act on, and know about the world together with others. I argue that creatures capable of joint attention stand in a unique perceptual and epistemic relation to their surroundings: they operate in an environment that they, through their communication with their fellow perceivers, help constitute. I show that this relation can be marshaled to address a range of questions about the social aspect of the mind and its perceptual and (...) cognitive capacities. I begin with a conceptual question about a complex kind of sociocognitive phenomenon—perceptual common knowledge—and develop an empirically informed account of the spatial structure of the environment in and about which such knowledge is possible. In the course of his argument, I address such topics as demonstrative reference in communication, common knowledge about jointly perceived objects, and spatial awareness in joint perception and action. (shrink)

In her groundbreaking work, Elinor Ostrom suggested that communities are able to self-organize and develop rules which allow them to effectively manage common-pool resources while avoiding the “tragedy of the commons”, as proposed by Hardin. Based on empirical case studies of how forests, irrigation, grazing land and fisheries are organized all over the world, Ostrom suggested several principles that can serve as guidelines for managing common-pool resources. In the 21st century new initiatives have been based on sharing. (...) There are various examples such as car and bike sharing in cities, internet platforms such as Wikipedia, community gardens and many others. There is a reason to believe that these efforts will continue to grow and become more popular as people realise the economic, social and ecological benefits. The aim of this paper is to analyse to what extent Ostrom’s findings are relevant to these new, often urbanised or digitalised forms of sharing. Can the famous design principles for which she won the Nobel prize be applied or do we need to search for a different set of principles that are more suitable for these new emerging forms of ‘the commons’? Our findings suggest that although Ostrom’s framework needs to be adapted before being applied to the reality of urban and digitalised environments, some of her findings remain relevant. (shrink)

Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons. We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

Hobbes’s account of sovereign power can be seen as an impetus to Arendt’s passion for authentic political life. From the Human Condition, we will see how the distinction between labor, work, and action can be read as a response to Hobbes’s accounts of both human nature and the necessity for harsh restrictions on citizens in society. In particular, the need for compelled silence, for Hobbes, appears as a dialectical counterpoint to the role of speech in the space of appearances (...) for Arendt. Hobbes also has a hand in drawing Arendt to her final interest in Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Here, Arendt addresses the problem of imperialism in Hobbes’s account of global power. She sees a way beyond imperialism through the cosmopolitan bond we share around the aesthetic domain. Aesthetic cosmopolitanism is a unique way into Arendt’s fight against tyranny. (shrink)

Hobbes’s account of sovereign power can be seen as an impetus to Arendt’s passion for authentic political life. From the Human Condition, we will see how the distinction between labor, work, and action can be read as a response to Hobbes’s accounts of both human nature and the necessity for harsh restrictions on citizens in society. In particular, the need for compelled silence, for Hobbes, appears as a dialectical counterpoint to the role of speech in the space of appearances (...) for Arendt. Hobbes also has a hand in drawing Arendt to her final interest in Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Here, Arendt addresses the problem of imperialism in Hobbes’s account of global power. She sees a way beyond imperialism through the cosmopolitan bond we share around the aesthetic domain. Aesthetic cosmopolitanism is a unique way into Arendt’s fight against tyranny. (shrink)

Solidarity is a principle oriented toward the common good that ensures that each person can have the necessary goods and services for a dignified life. As such, it is very often approached in a theoretical manner. In this empirical study, we explored the development of a culture of solidarity within an organizational context. In particular, we qualitatively investigated how a culture of solidarity can concretely spread within and beyond organizations by conducting 68 semi-structured interviews with members of three (...) common good-oriented organizations located in the Philippines, Korea, and Paraguay. We found that a culture of solidarity develops through a three-step process that includes constructing the solidarity mission, sharing solidarity, and disseminating solidarity, which together form a virtuous circle. We further found that solidarity is not supported by constrained, instrumentalized, or sacrificial actions, but can instead be a free, authentic, and fulfilling way for members of an organization to flourish while serving the mission of their company. (shrink)

There Are No Facts examines the uncommon ground we share in a post-truth world. It unpacks how attentive algorithms and extractive data practices are shaping space, influencing behavior and colonizing everyday life. Articulating post-truth territory as an architectural and infrastructural condition, it shows how these spatial architectures of attention and datamining are in turn situated within broader histories of empiricism, objectivity, science, colonialism and perception. These entanglements of people and data, code and space, knowledge and power are considered across (...) scales ranging from the trans-locality of the home to the planetary extent of the COVID-19 pandemic, with stops along the way at the corner bodega, a neighborhood for the proverbial 1%, a waterfront district in Toronto, and a national election. Through an introduction, nine chapters and a coda, the book addresses the erosion of a common ground on which truth claims were once negotiated and the epistemic fragmentation that results. It probes how these socio-technical systems bracket what we know about the world, how they construe our agency to act within it, and how they shape these spaces that, in turn, shape us. (shrink)

This work provides a rigorous analysis of what Tuomela calls ‘the we-perspective’. Tuomela's overarching project is to argue that ‘conceptualizing social life and theorizing about it requires the use of group concepts, indeed the we-perspective and, especially, the we-mode.’ Already some of the complexities of Tuomela's approach will be evident – viz. in the distinction, implied in the above quotation and carried through systematically throughout the work, between the ‘we-perspective’ and the ‘we-mode’. For, indeed, it is possible, on his (...) account, to take up the we-perspective from the I-mode and, indeed, this is probably quite common, but is not adequate to ground the analysis of social and institutional concepts. As Tuomela puts it, ‘The concept of social institution is a we-mode concept, and in actual practice, at least some we-mode thinking and acting is required for institutions to function adequately.’ Since ‘we-mode’ is the more central notion, let us begin with that. It will be instructive to quote Tuomela at length : " Agent A, a member of group g, has ATT, the attitude ATT with content p, in … ". (shrink)

Culture creates the context within which individuals experience life and comprehend moral meaning of illness, suffering and death. The ways the patient, family and the physician communicate and make decisions in the end-of-life care are profoundly influenced by culture. What is considered as right or wrong in the healthcare setting may depend on the socio-cultural context. The present article is intended to delve into the cross-cultural perspectives in ethical decision making in the end-of-life scenario. We attempt to (...) address the dynamics of the roles of patient, family and physician therein across two countries from East and West, namely, India and Germany. In India, where illness is more a shared family affair than an individual incident, a physician is likely to respect the family’s wishes and may withhold the ‹naked truth’ about the diagnosis of a fatal disease to the patient. In Germany, a physician is legally required to inform the patient about the disease. In India, advance directive being virtually non-existent, the family acts as the locus of the decision-making process, taking into account the economic cost of available medical care. In Germany, advance directive is regarded as mandatory and healthcare is covered by insurance. Family and the physician appear to play larger roles in ethical decision making for patients in India than for those in Germany, who place greater emphasis on autonomy of the individual patient. Our study explicates how culture matters in ethical decision-making and why the bioethical discourse is necessary in the concrete realities of the socio-cultural context. To explore the possibility of finding a common ground of morality across different cultures while acknowledging and respecting cultural diversity, thus remains a formidable challenge for the bioethicists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethics and the Elderly: The Challenge of Long-Term Care by Sarah M. Moses, and: Loving Later Life: An Ethics of Aging by Frits de LangeDolores L. ChristieEthics and the Elderly: The Challenge of Long-Term Care Sarah M. Moses maryknoll, ny: orbis, 2015. 206 pp. $38.00Loving Later Life: An Ethics of Aging Frits de Lange grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2015. 169 pp. $19.00Today many women and men (...) live beyond the so-called third age of life and enter their eighties, the "fourth age," during which the toll of time and the growing incidence of life-limiting conditions wear down even the best-preserved of the human species. Debilitating disease and normal ebbing of human function become more concentrated in this demographic bubble. As people enter their eighties, their world tends to narrow both physically and mentally, creating a need for increasing care. Often the elderly are rendered passive and dependent, forced to cede both autonomy and dignity. They become objects with little voice, requiring greater care and increasing cash. Likewise, as the baby boom generation enters this group, those living in the fourth age make up an increasing percentage of the population. Additionally, modern models of care for the elderly, often based on efficiency and cost-effectiveness, tend to erode their human dignity. Together these factors demonstrate a growing moral problem.What to do? These two books provide valuable road maps for how to proceed. They detail the reality and moral urgency of the situation. Both offer principles from philosophical and religious traditions that outline a good moral model: one of care, compassion, dignity, and community. They draw insights from Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, among [End Page 214] others. Both reference the Western biblical tradition, which honors the elderly even in the face of their limitations.Although the authors offer wise and thoughtful suggestions to address this growing moral crisis, they approach the serious moral issue very differently. Sarah Moses outlines a compelling case for a new interventional model for elderly living. While her book plays some muted chords that hint at "dissertation," the melody it conveys is strikingly forte and well worth the read.She presents two concrete examples of what good interaction with the elderly might look like. One draws from the international intentional outreach and residential community (the Community of Sant'Egidio), the other is a brick-and-mortar model (the Green House Project). Using both biblical paradigms and church teaching over the centuries, Moses makes the case for treating all persons with dignity and promoting their involvement in decision making as much as possible. The scriptural message she highlights—both our duty to the elderly and the "disappointment and depression" (105) of growing old—is particularly compelling.In her examples of good long-term care, community development is important. In the Sant'Egidio model, volunteers share a common life "through gathering for prayer and various outreach services to the poor" (39). There is motivation to support elderly in their own homes, but the project promotes small, family-like resident facilities when this is not possible. The physical place is less emphasized than the relationship among various age and economic groups.The Green House Project is based in a new vision of homes for the challenged elderly. Results of the project show that not only did staff remain in their jobs longer (nursing home employment turnover is extensive) but visitation by family members increased. Even such a simple thing as a different physical model for the actual building—replacing long halls and routinization with a more home-like environment—has positive results.Moses calls on leadership in church and community to educate, to designate funds for elder care, and to look beyond the caring and the construction of good facilities. She notes how important it is to work politically to change attitudes and actions.She sees care for all dependent people as a responsibility of both the church community and society in general. This includes fostering awareness, encouraging ongoing participation of the elderly in life—including church life—and allocating public resources. Bottom line: she calls for smaller institutions, meaningful opportunities for the... (shrink)

Background: Ethical problems are a universal phenomenon but rarely researched concerning patients dying from acute stroke. These patients often have a reduced consciousness from stroke onset and thereby lack ability to convey their needs and could be described as ‘incompetent’ decision makers regarding their own care. Objective: The aim of the study was to deepen the understanding of stroke team members’ reasoning about truth-telling in end-of-life care due to acute stroke. Research design: Qualitative study based on individual interviews utilizing (...) combined deductive and inductive content analysis. Participants and research context: A total of 15 stroke team members working in stroke units of two associated county hospitals in western Sweden participated. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by the Regional Ethics Review Board, Gothenburg, Sweden. Findings: The main findings were the team members’ dynamic movement between the categories ‘Truth above all’ and ‘Hide truth to protect’. Honesty was highly valued and considered as a reason for always telling the truth, with the argument of truth as common morality. However, the carers also argued for hiding the truth for different reasons such as not adding extra burden in the sorrow, awaiting a timely moment and not being a messenger of bad news. Withholding truth could both be seen as a way of protecting themselves from difficult conversations and to protect others. Discussion: The results indicate that there are various barriers for truthfulness. Interpreted from a virtue of ethics perspective, withholding of truth might also be seen as an expression of sound judgement to put the patient’s best interest first. Conclusion: The carers may need support in the form of supervision to be given space to reflect on their experience and thereby promote ethically justified care. Here, the multi-professional team can be of great value and contribute through inter-professional sharing of knowledge. (shrink)

Community food security and environmental justice are parallel social movements interested in equity and justice and system-wide factors. They share a concern for issues of daily life and the need to establish community empowerment strategies. Both movements have also begun to reshape the discourse of sustainable agriculture, environmentalism and social welfare advocacy. However, community food security and environmental justice remain separate movements, indicating an incomplete process in reshaping agendas and discourse. Joining these movements through a common language of (...) empowerment and systems analysis would strongly enhance the development of a more powerful, integrated approach. That opportunity can be located in the efforts to incorporate community food security and environmental justice approaches in current Farm Bill legislation; in particular, provisions addressing community food production, direct marketing, community development, and community food planning. (shrink)

Communicating an unfavourable prognosis while maintaining patient hope represents a critical challenge for healthcare professionals. Duty requires respect for the right to patient autonomy while at the same time not doing harm by causing hopelessness and demoralisation. In some cases, the need for therapeutic privilege is discussed. The primary objectives of this study were to explore HPs’ perceptions of hope in the prognosis communication and investigate how they interpret and operationalise key ethical principles. Sixteen qualitative semistructured interviews with HPs from (...) different positions and experience, including doctors and nurses in four different departments, were conducted in the Ticino Cantonal Hospital, Switzerland. The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. HPs defined prognosis and patient hope as interdependent concepts related to future perspectives for subjective quality of life. Two main factors allow HPs to maximise the benefits and minimise the harm of their communication: respecting the patient’s timing and sharing the patient’s wishes. Time is required to reframe needs and expectations. Furthermore, communication needs to be shared by HPs, patients and their relatives to build common awareness and promote a person-centred approach to prognosis. In this process, interprofessional collaboration is key: doctors and nurses are complementary and can together guarantee that patients and relatives receive information in the most appropriate form when they need it. Organisational aspects and the HPs’ emotional difficulties, particularly in coping with their own despair, are barriers to effective communication that need further investigation. (shrink)

There is a dire need today to create spaces in which people can make meaning of their existence in the world, abiding by cultural frameworks and practices that acknowledge and validate a meaningful existence for all. People are not just isolated individuals but are connected in diverse ways with other persons within our natural and social environment which is part of the whole universe. The African philosophy of uBuntu or humaneness is re-emerging for its timely relevance and potential as indispensable (...) in our quest for global citizenship, peace, and mutual understanding in securing sustainable human development in the broader ecosystem. Comparative educationists have the challenge to devise theoretical frameworks, epistemological and pedagogical constructs as well as pragmatic, useful and effective ways of promoting the virtues of compassion and recognition of our common humanity in eliminating the ills of domination and control that are guided by greed, hatred, jealousy, and intolerance. Comparative Education for Global Citizenship, Peace and Shared Living through Ubuntu paves the way for a better understanding of the critical importance of the collective search and endeavor towards achieving the virtues of nonviolence, peace, shared values of living together, global citizenship, improved quality of life for all and a better appreciation of the positive implications of interdependence. (shrink)

In Common Values, now with a new preface, Bok writes eloquently and clearly while combining moral theory with practical ethics, demonstrating how moral values apply to all facets of life—personal, professional, domestic, and international. Drawing on a great deal of historical material, Bok also includes in her examination consideration of the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights; the World Parliament of Religions; the publication of Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II's proclamation on morality; and the International (...) Commission of Global Governance. Bok's defense of shared morality addresses a crucial topic for our time. (shrink)

The history of ethics contains many moral faculty theories, which usually are sorted by their metaphysics. The usual suspects include moral rationalism, moral sentiment theory and the varieties of ethical naturalism. Moral faculty theories differ importantly upon yet another dimension, on how widely it is distributed. Some, the Platonic elitists, suppose that moral truth can be discerned only by philosophical argument. Hence, they ascribe a revisionary task to normative theory, that of correcting nonphilosophers' moral errors. Others, the communalists, hold that (...) the moral faculty is universally distributed. Hence, they hold that normative theory's task is not to revise, but rather to discern and explain the shared moral conception that we all apply in our ordinary moral lives. I here offer arguments to support commonalism. (shrink)

It is a common thought that our experience of self in time plays a crucial role in living a good human life. This idea is seen both in views that say we must think of our lives as temporally extended wholes to live well and those that say living well requires living in the moment. These opposing views share the assumption that a person’s interests must be identified with either a temporally extended or temporally local perspective. David Velleman (...) has argued that both perspectives are necessary parts of human experience, and each has its own independent interests. I agree with Velleman that our experience is inherently multi-perspectival but argue that there are more than two relevant perspectives and reject the claim that these perspectives have independent interests. Expanding his metaphor of narrative, I describe the way in which these perspectives continuously influence and affect one another, and suggest that living well can be understood in terms of skillful management of the perspectives that make up this complex form of temporal self-experience. (shrink)

The effectiveness of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) in tackling grand social and environmental challenges depends on productive dialogue among diverse parties. Facilitating such dialogue in turn entails building common ground in form of joint knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions. To explore how such common ground can be built, we study the role of different facilitators and their strategies for bridging the perspectives of competing stakeholder groups in two contrasting MSIs. The German Partnership for Sustainable Textiles was launched in an initially (...) hostile communicative environment, whereas the Fossil Free Sweden Initiative proceeded in a fertile communicative environment. We trace how the facilitators in these initiatives achieved common ground through three bridging strategies—communicative integration, temporal calibration, and process alignment—adapted to the communicative environments of these MSIs. In hostile communicative environments, facilitators achieve common ground by steering diverging stakeholder groups towards ‘reconciling’ their different language registers, knowledge bases, and meaning systems to ‘meet in the middle’ on points of agreement and shared interests. In fertile communicative environments characterised by greater mutual trust, facilitators can steer interactants to ‘strategically appropriate’ to the language, knowledge, and meaning system of a particular stakeholder group to win this group’s support. Our analysis contributes to a better understanding of how productive multi-stakeholder dialogue can be facilitated. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging, provocative anatomy of modern society and its origins, novelist and historian John Ralston Saul explores the reason for our deepening sense of crisis and confusion. Throughout the Western world we talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet Saul shows that there has never before been such pressure for conformity. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We are obsessed with competition, yet the single largest item of international trade is a (...) subsidized market in armaments. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about "invasive government," yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are breaking down. While most observers view these problems separately, Saul demonstrates that they are largely manifestations of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the last 400 years, our "rational elites" have gradually instituted reforms in every phase of social life. But Saul shows that they have also been responsible for most of the difficulties and violence of the same period. This paradox arises from a simple truth which our elites deny: far from being a moral force, reason is no more than an administrative method. Their denial has helped to turn the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts - "Voltaire's bastards"--Whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertainment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose peoples increasingly dwell in a world of illusion. Already known to millions of readers as the author of novels which portray the overwhelming effects of this power on the modern individual by weaving together international finance, the oil and arms business, guerrilla warfare, drug traffic, and the world of art, here Saul lays aside the mask of fiction to speak in his own voice. Only by withdrawing from our addiction to "solutions," he argues, reclaiming the citizens' right to question and participate in public life, and recovering a common sense capacity for intelligent panic, can we find a way out of our permanent crisis. (shrink)

The strapline “life finds a way,” from the classic movie Jurassic Park, referred to how the all-female dinosaurs in a theme park had been able to reproduce, despite the laws of nature. Similarly, the participants in the present study described how their lesbian mothers had shown that “life finds a way,” when having children and forming a family, prior to the legal recognition of same-sex parents in Sweden. The study draws on interviews with eight young Swedish adults, aged (...) 17–30 (average age 25). They had been raised by lesbian couples but were born prior to the legal recognition of same-sex parenthood. Prior to a legal change in 2003, a same-sex couple could not share legal parenthood. Further, female couples were excluded from Swedish assisted reproduction programs until 2005. The interviews have been analyzed thematically, and the article presents the results in four themes. The first theme, circumvent, oppose, or adapt to legal obstacles, shows the participants’ reflections on how their parents navigated legal obstacles in order to have children and to live together as a family. The second theme, legal obstacles do not affect everyday life, depicts a common experience of how a lack of legal recognition seldom mattered to the participants during their childhood. Rather, they explained how their parents had been able to form parenthood and close relations without legal recognition. In contrast, the third theme describes occasions when legal parenthood matters. This theme highlights occasions when the lack of legal parenthood was problematic or devastating for the participants, such as when parents divorced, or one parent died. The final theme, the meaning of legal parents in adulthood, explores the participants’ reflections on the meaning and impact of legal ties (or lack of legal ties) between themselves as young adults and their parents. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research on children and young adults with same-sex parents. (shrink)

In this paper my aim is to shed light on the common behavior of human beings by looking at '' first contacts '': the situation where people with unshared histories first meet. The limits of the human life form are given by what is similar in the common behavior of human beings. But what is similar should not be understood as something that is biologically or psychologically or transcendentally shared by all human beings. What is similar is (...) what human beings would recognize as similar in first or other contacts-a similarity that is, in a way, transcendentally grounded, but the content of this grounding remains tied to the local situation of actual encounters. To be a human person, it is both an empirical and a transcendental precondition that one knows the certainties of particular form of life and that one is capable of recognizing and dealing with an indefinite variety of human behaviors. Because I participate in form of life, I can interact with other form of life. By considering first contacts and by interacting with other communities, one can learn to understand better what the common behavior of human beings is/are. (shrink)

Most scientists recognize the importance of sharing data online in an open fashion. Nonetheless, many studies have documented the concerns that accompany data sharing activities, including loss of credit or IP, misuse and the time needed to curate interoperable data. To this end, discussions around data sharing often identify incentives that could potentially ameliorate these disincentivising concerns. Nonetheless, current Open Data discussions often rely on evidence‐based studies to identify the disincentives to overcome. This results in highly specific (...) and directed interventions. In contrast, this paper offers a different interpretation of these concerns. To do so, it makes use of the Thomas Theorem which suggests that: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences”. Using empirical evidence from sub‐Saharan African (bio)chemistry laboratories, this paper illustrates how individual perceptions of research environments – whether associated with evidence or not – are highly influential in shaping data sharing practices. It concludes with the suggestion that discussion on incentivising data sharing amongst scientific communities need to take a broader set of concerns into account and offer a more creative approach to ameliorating environmental disincentives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons ed. by Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru and Andrei TerianLaura Elena Savu WalkerMatei, Alexandru, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian, editors. Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons. Bloomsbury, 2021. 376pp.Far from “mourning” the demise of theory, this timely and thoughtfully curated essay collection testifies to its “renewed vitality,” its compelling presence “across (...) fields, domains of life, and geocultural boundaries,” and its power to build an ever-expanding world community of practioners who are forming what has come to be known as a “theory commons” (ix). As the collection’s editors point out, theory’s new lease on life hinges on ensuring both the democratic workings of this “world discourse formation” (1) and on the responsible theorizing of the very notion of community in “a world threatened by all kinds of anti-communal actions and reactions, from runaway globalization to exacerbated tribalism and tunnel-vision politics” (x). Working on the margins, specifically, out of a Romanian “lab” called The Critical Theory Institute (CTI), which opened its doors in early 2000, the contributors seek to revise the “standard history of theory,” one whose “Western origins, authority, and cultural compass ” strike them as “exceedingly reductive” (3). This project of geotheoretical repositioning and recalibration aims to recast theory as a “quintessentially cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, trans- and intercontinental undertaking” (4). As such, it carries on the project, launched in a previous volume, Romanian Literature as World Literature (2018), of fashioning an alternative to the nation-state paradigm that has long shaped literary and intellectual histories. In both of these works, Romanian critics and theorists have tuned into a wide range of voices, and tapped into a shared conceptual and methodological apparatus—itself the product of “an ethno-linguistic medley of traditions” (8). This approach informs what editors see as the “epoch-making” (17) discursive paradigm that has taken shape in globally networked post-Cold War societies (17), a viral model of cultural influence that fosters an ontology of “contact, contagion, of infection, dissemination, and horizontal accumulation” (15).To give us a sense of theory’s complex genealogy and evolution, the editors reference the Bulgarian critic Galin Tihanov, who has attributed [End Page 122] important developments in contemporary theory to the achievements of theorists (Nikolai Trubetskoi, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp, and Georg Lukács) and schools of thought (Russian Formalism and the Prague Linguistic Circle). In “Traveling Theory” (1983) and “Traveling Theory Reconsidered” (2000), Edward Said called attention to the migratory nature of contributions made, for instance, by Georg Lukács, whose theories moved across different European locales in this period. Since then, contemporary theory has branched out to integrate the travels and travails of scholars affiliated with theory labs located in Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and last, but not least, Romania (10).Theory in the “Post” Era highlights five characteristics that distinguish theory in the “post” era from earlier forms: 1) It has a “reluctantly epoch-alist” thrust (19; original italics), which assumes that the “post” lexicon entails “rupture, discontinuity, and opposition” (19), radical departures, tentative claims, provisional conclusions, and ex-centric perspectives; 2) it adopts a “self-reflexive and experimental” (20; original italics) stance in which theorists invoke inherited approaches or invent new ones; 3) it introduces a “transdisciplinary” (21; original italics) scope that allows authors to interrogate the foundations, aims, and methods of theoretical discourse and practice across several knowledge domains, from which they “borrow whole vocabularies and toolkits” (21); 4) it is “nationally, transnationally, and ecologically affiliative” (20) in ways that allow theorists to “think with others at a distance” (21) about global issues; and 5) it is programmatic, placing critical and theoretical concerns in the service of “the ethical, the political, and the communal” (22). Organized around three main themes (“Aesthetics,” “Temporalities,” and “Critical Modes”), the essays juxtapose discussions of pivotal historical events and cultural phenomena with literary analyses of Romantic era “classics,” modernist experiments, and postmodern works of the post-Communist era, a corpus that includes, but is not limited to, landmark works of national culture that are now part of a fast-expanding planetary... (shrink)

This work provides a rigorous analysis of what Tuomela calls ‘the we-perspective’. Tuomela's overarching project is to argue that ‘conceptualizing social life and theorizing about it requires the use of group concepts, indeed the we-perspective and, especially, the we-mode.’ Already some of the complexities of Tuomela's approach will be evident – viz. in the distinction, implied in the above quotation and carried through systematically throughout the work, between the ‘we-perspective’ and the ‘we-mode’. For, indeed, it is possible, on his (...) account, to take up the we-perspective from the I-mode and, indeed, this is probably quite common, but is not adequate to ground the analysis of social and institutional concepts. As Tuomela puts it , ‘The concept of social institution is a we-mode concept, and in actual practice, at least some we-mode thinking and acting is required for institutions to function adequately.’ Since ‘we-mode’ is the more central notion, let us begin with that. It will be instructive to quote Tuomela at length : " Agent A, a member of group g, has ATT, the attitude ATT with content p, in … ". (shrink)