In the target article, Schilbach et al. defend a perspective that focuses on the neural basis of social cognition during live, ongoing interactions between individuals. We argue that a second-person neuroscience would benefit from formal approaches borrowed from economics and behavioral ecology and that it should be extended to social interactions in nonhuman animals.

When the policies and activities of one country or generation harm both other nations and later generations, they constitute serious injustices. Recognizing the broad threat posed by anthropogenic climate change, advocates for an international climate policy development process have expressly aimed to mitigate this pressing contemporary environmental threat in a manner that promotes justice. Yet, while making justice a primary objective of global climate policy has been the movement's noblest aspiration, it remains an onerous challenge for policymakers. -/- Atmospheric Justice (...) is the first single-authored work of political theory that addresses this pressing challenge via the conceptual frameworks of justice, equality, and responsibility. Throughout this incisive study, Steve Vanderheiden points toward ways to achieve environmental justice by exploring how climate change raises issues of both international and intergenerational justice. In addition, he considers how the design of a global climate regime might take these aims into account. Engaging with the principles of renowned political philosopher John Rawls, he expands on them by factoring in the needs of future generations. Vanderheiden also demonstrates how political theory can contribute to reaching a better understanding of the proper human response to climate change. By showing how climate policy offers insights into resolving contemporary controversies within political theory, he illustrates the ways in which applying normative theory to policy allows us to better understand both. -/- Thoroughly researched and persuasively argued, Atmospheric Justice makes an important step toward providing us with a set of carefully elaborated first principles for achieving environmental justice. (shrink)

In distributing the costs associated with climate change, most scholars have focused exclusively upon mitigation burdens. Few consider the distribution of adaptation costs, which concern projects that seek to minimize harm from human-induced climate change.

The phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change—in which weather patterns and attendant ecological disruption result from increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere through human activities—challenges several conventional assumptions regarding moral responsibility. Multifarious individual acts and choices contribute (often imperceptibly) to the causal chain that is expected to produce profound and lasting harm unless significant mitigation efforts begin soon. Attributing responsibility for such harmful consequences is complicated by what Derek Parfit terms “mistakes in moral mathematics,” or failures to correctly (...) assess the various individual contributions to collectively produced harm. Combined with the difficulties in attributingresponsibility to agents for spatially and temporally distant harmful effects and that of holding agents culpable for effects (resulting from socially-acceptable acts) about which they may be ignorant, this paper attempts to sort out several ethical problems surrounding the identification of responsible parties contributing to climate change. (shrink)

Does the receipt of benefits from some common resource create an obligation to contribute toward its maintenance? If so, what is the basis of this obligation? I consider whether individual contributions to climate change can be impugned as wrongful free riding upon the stability of the planet's climate system, when persons enjoy its benefits but refuse to bear their share of its maintenance costs. Two main arguments will be advanced: the first urges further modification of H.L.A. Hart’s “principle of fairness” (...) as the basis for demanding that would-be free riders pay their fair share in the context of climate change, while the second claims that remedial action on climate change is better captured through collective action analysis than through harm principles that seek to connect individual actions to bad environmental outcomes. (shrink)

In this challenging and provocative book, Steve Fuller contends that our continuing faith in science in the face of its actual history is best understood as the secular residue of a religiously inspired belief in divine providence. Our faith in science is the promise of a life as it shall be, as science will make it one day. Just as men once put their faith in God's activity in the world, so we now travel to a land promised by (...) science. In "Science", Fuller suggests that the two destinations might be the same one. Fuller sympathetically explores what it might mean to live scientifically. Can science give a sense of completeness to one's life? Can it account for the entirety of what it is to be human? And what does our continuing belief in scientific progress say about us as a species? In answering these questions, Fuller ranges widely over the history of science and religion - from Aristotle and the atomists to Dawkins and the neo-Darwinists - and takes a close look at what science is, how its purpose has changed over the years, and what role religion and in more recent years atheism have played in its progression. Science, argues Fuller, is now undergoing its own version of secularization. We are ceasing to trust science in its institutional forms, formulated by an anointed class of science priests, and instead we are witnessing the emergence of what Fuller calls Protscience' - all sorts of people, from the New Age movement to anti-evolutionists, claiming scientific authority as their own. Fuller shows that these groups are no more anti-scientific than Protestant sects were atheistic. Fearless and thought-provoking, Science questions some of our most fundamental beliefs about the nature and role of science, and is a distinct and important contribution to debates about evolution, intelligent design, atheism, humanism, the notion of scientific progress, and the public understanding of science. (shrink)

I compare a ‘realist’ with a ‘social–relational’ perspective on our judgments of the moral status of artificial agents (AAs). I develop a realist position according to which the moral status of a being—particularly in relation to moral patiency attribution—is closely bound up with that being’s ability to experience states of conscious satisfaction or suffering (CSS). For a realist, both moral status and experiential capacity are objective properties of agents. A social relationist denies the existence of any such objective properties in (...) the case of either moral status or consciousness, suggesting that the determination of such properties rests solely upon social attribution or consensus. A wide variety of social interactions between us and various kinds of artificial agent will no doubt proliferate in future generations, and the social–relational view may well be right that the appearance of CSS features in such artificial beings will make moral role attribution socially prevalent in human–AA relations. But there is still the question of what actual CSS states a given AA is capable of undergoing, independently of the appearances. This is not just a matter of changes in the structure of social existence that seem inevitable as human–AA interaction becomes more prevalent. The social world is itself enabled and constrained by the physical world, and by the biological features of living social participants. Properties analogous to certain key features in biological CSS are what need to be present for nonbiological CSS. Working out the details of such features will be an objective scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Contemporary persons are daily confronted with enormous quantities of information, some of which reveal causal connections between their actions and harm that is visited upon distant others. Given their limited cognitive and information processing capacities, persons cannot reasonably be expected to respond to every cry for help or call to action, but neither can they defensibly refuse to hear and reflect upon any of them. Persons have a limited obligation to know, I argue, which requires that they inform themselves and (...) others about their role in harmful social practices, with a view toward challenging the norms that sustain such practices. In this paper, I explore this obligation to know, and the related idea of excusable ignorance, offering accounts of the epistemic burden that it entails for persons in their capacities as citizens and in the context of global climate change and of reproach as a potentially effective tool for rectifying rather than excusing ignorance. (shrink)

Analysis of the use of the key term the people shows that it has varied both semantically and syntactically along the time-line of the evolution of the CPC.

Are there circumstances under which scientists and engineers doing their ordinary jobs can be thought of as participants in a social movement? The technoscientists analyzed in this article are at the forefront of a new way of doing chemistry; they are attempting to redesign chemical products and synthesis pathways to significantly reduce health effects and environmental damage from industrial chemicals. Green chemistry practitioners and entrepreneurs now constitute a small minority of chemists and chemical engineers in the university, government, and corporate (...) sectors, but the innovators gradually are institutionalizing their efforts and winning converts. Drawing on concepts from social movement theory, the authors argue that examining green chemistry as a social movement sheds light on the intentional social organization of emerging scientific and engineering disciplines, advances thinking about the role of expertise in social change, and uncovers a possible pathway toward reconstructing chemical technologies on a more environmentally sustainable basis. The article closes with questions about potential coalitions among green chemists and engineers, regulators, and activist sectors of civil society. (shrink)

Conscientious objection was barely mentioned in debates about the ethics of healthcare provision before the 1970s.1 The conscientious objections that attracted public and academic attention were those of conscripts who objected to participation in military forces, and of parents who objected to the vaccination of their children. All of this was changed by the 1973 US Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion in the USA. Shortly after this decision, the American Medical Association's (AMA) (...) House of Delegates, the peak policy-making body within the AMA, adopted a resolution that sought to protect hospital employees from having to contribute to the provision of abortion if they felt that doing so was immoral. The resolution was adopted in response to a specific controversial court decision, but the language employed in it was broad in scope. House of Delegates Health Policy 5.995 contained a conscience clause stating that ‘Neither physician, hospital, …. (shrink)

Scholars concerned with abuses of the “resource privilege” by the governments of developing states sometimes call for national sovereignty over the natural resources that lie within its borders. While such claims may resist a key driver of the “resource curse” when applied to mineral resources in the ground, and are often recognized as among a people’s territorial rights, their implications differ in the context of climate change, where they are invoked on behalf of a right to extract and combust fossil (...) fuels that is set in opposition to global climate change mitigation imperatives. Moreover, granting full national sovereignty over territorial carbon sinks may conflict with commitments to equity in the sharing of national mitigation burdens, since much of the planet’s carbon sink capacity lies within territorial borders to which peoples have widely disparate access. In this paper, I shall explore this tension between a global justice principle that is often applied to mineral resources and its tension with contrary principles that are often applied to carbon sink access, developing an analysis that seeks to reconcile what would otherwise appear to be fundamentally incompatible aims. (shrink)

Most self-improvement programs train people to identify and solve problems by grappling with them endlessly, often to no avail. Executive coach Steve Sisgold, however, knows that the body--not the mind--is the most reliable and effective pathway to realizing your innermost desires and achieving success. His unique, body-centric approach will show you how to get out of your head and take charge of every area of your life with increased awareness, clarity, and confidence. Whole Body Intelligence teaches you how to (...) become aware of subtle body sensations--such as gripping the phone or clenching your jaw during a tense conversation--and how to interpret their meanings, linking them to negative thoughts and behaviors that are impeding your success and happiness. You will recognize the patterns and imprints that have shaped your experiences and decisions for your entire life and learn how to change these thoughts and behaviors before they become self-sabotaging. No more overthinking! Decisions will become easier to make and you will stay engaged, resilient, and relaxed in any situation. With an easy-to-follow 30-day plan, body centric stress management tools, and inspiring stories of people who have changed their lives using this system, Whole Body Intelligence empowers you to channel the power of your body to achieve your wildest dreams. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relationship between ‘hardcore’ horror films, and the discursive context in which mainstream horror releases are being dubbed ‘extreme’. This chapter compares ‘mainstream’ and ‘hardcore’ horror with the aim of investigating what ‘extremity’ means. I will begin by outlining what ‘hardcore’ horror is, and how it differs from mainstream horror (both in terms of content and distribution). I will then dissect what ‘extremity’ means in this context, delineating problems with established critical discourses about ‘extreme’ horror. Print press (...) reviewers focus on theatrically released horror films, ignoring microbudget direct-to-video horror. As such, their adjudications about ‘extremity’ in horror begin from a limited base that misrepresents the genre. Moreover, ‘extremity’ is not a universally shared value, yet it is predominantly presented as if referring to an objective, universally agreed-upon standard. Such judgements change over time. Moreover, in contrast to marketers’ uses of ‘extreme’, press critics predominantly use the term as a pejorative. Although academics have sought to defend and contextualise particular maligned films and directors, scholars have focused on a handful of infamous examples. As I will explain, academic publishers implicitly support that narrow focus. As such, the cumulative body of scholarly work on ‘extreme’ horror inadvertently replicates print press critics’ mischaracterisation of the genre. These discursive factors limit our collective understandings of ‘horror’, its ostensible ‘extremity’. and of ‘extremity’ qua concept. Given that the discourse of ‘extremity’ is so commonly employed when censuring representations that challenge established genre conventions, it is imperative that horror studies academics attend to peripheral hardcore horror texts, and seek to develop more robust conceptual understandings of extremity. (shrink)

As Darrel Moellendorf observes in Mobilizing Hope, climate change and poverty are intertwined in various ways, including the facts that climate impacts threaten to exacerbate global poverty as well...

Inspired by Smith, Ben-Moshe suggests that we should only accommodate conscientious objections (COs) in medicine based on moral beliefs that are true, or which closely approximate to the truth. He suggests that we can identify moral truths by consulting our consciences when our consciences adopt the standpoint of an impartial spectator. He also suggests some (surprisingly modest) changes to our current practices in regard to the management of CO in medicine that would be needed were his proposal to be adopted. (...) Here, I argue that both Smith and Ben-Moshe underestimate the difficulties involved in adopting the standpoint of an impartial spectator. In particular, both authors fail to recognise the extent to which cognitive bias and ideological commitments prevent many of us from identifying the standpoint of an impartial spectator and also prevent us from realising that we are failing to be impartial. I also consider some different changes to current practices that would be needed if we were to take on Ben-Moshe’s approach to CO in medicine while also recognising the difficulties involved in adopting the standpoint of an impartial spectator. (shrink)

The quality of our public discourse – think of the climate change debate for instance – is never very high. A day spent observing it reveals a litany of misrepresentation and error, argumentative fallacy, and a general lack of good will. In this paper I focus on a microcosmic aspect of these practices: the use of two types of argument – the argumentum ad hominem and appeal to authority – and a way in which they are related. Public debate is (...) so contaminated by the misuse of the ad hominem tactic that it is important to have an understanding of one of the ways in which its use may be legitimate. So readers who might have expected an analysis of the ad hominem fallacy will, on the contrary, be presented with an account of one of the places for its potential success. In ad hominem, arguers are viewed as legitimate constitutive targets for their own argument; in authority arguments, arguers provide a legitimate constitutive warrant for an argument they deploy. These types of argument are connected in so far as the identities of persons deploying them carry the cognitive weight of the argument. If authority arguments sometimes deserve to succeed, ad hominem attacks on them are potentially legitimate. An important motivation for this analysis is that in identifying the success conditions for one of the ad hominem types we attain some clarity in the evaluation of their use. (shrink)

Science and technology studies has perhaps provided the most ambitious set of challenges to the boundary separating history and philosophy of science since the 19th century idealists and positivists. STS is normally associated with `social constructivism', which when applied to history of science highlights the malleability of the modal structure of reality. Specifically, changes to what is implies changes to what has been, can be and might be. Latour's account of Pasteur's scientific achievement is a case in point. Two polar (...) attitudes towards the world's modal malleability are identified: over - and under - determination, which correspond, respectively, to a belief in the inevitability and the precariousness of science as a form of knowledge. The distinctness of these positions reflects a cordon sanitaire between the history and the philosophy of science. Consequently, historical agents are not given full voice as constructors of reality: They are either quarantined to a foreign realm called `the past' by the historian or selectively assimilated to an imperial present by the philosopher. The second half of the essay explores what it might mean to restore a robust sense of reality construction to the historical agents. My case in point here is that of the 13th century Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon, who has been alternatively seen as a mad medieval or a proto-modernist. To give Bacon full voice would involve taking the future that he envisaged as a normative benchmark for judging our own world. (shrink)

Baer et al. seek to develop a single index for distributing the burdens associated with climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to do so in a...

Oliver Cromwells historical reputation underwent significant change during the nineteenth century. Writers such as Thomas Carlyle were prominent in this reassessment, creating a Cromwell that found particular support among Nonconformists in the north of England. Projects to memorialize Cromwell included the raising of public statues. This article traces the history of the Manchester statue, the first major outdoor statue of Cromwell to be unveiled in the country. The project originated among Manchester radical Liberal Nonconformists in the early 1860s but was (...) not realized until 1875. It was the gift of Elizabeth Heywood; the sculptor was Matthew Noble. The project, including its intended site in Manchesters new Town Hall, was contentious, exposing political and religious divisions within the community, reinforcing the view that the reassessment of Cromwells place in the making of modern Britain was far from settled. (shrink)

Ambivalence, broadly defined as feeling more than one emotion at a time, is thought to be a central aspect of human experience and to play an important role in a range of psychological processes. Ambivalence is experienced in close relationships, identity development, social and political attitudes, decision-making behavior, anxiety states, as well as in psychotherapeutic change. Eight under-graduate students participated in phenomenological interviews that were transcribed and served as the basis for the investigation. The primary purpose of this paper is (...) to shed light on the meaning of the experience of ambivalence by explicating the organizational relationships of its constituent meanings. The paper will also clarify the relation of ambivalence to important psychological processes and developmental transitions during young adulthood. (shrink)

In this practitioner’s perspective on the role of ethics in fraud prevention, I outline the situation that compelled Nedcor Bank in South Africa to establish their own fraud investigation and prevention unit. A brief discussion of the role, functions and achievement of the fraud unit follow this. Then the various components of the bank’s fraud detection and prevention strategies are described. These include the nurturing of a commitment to zero tolerance towards fraud amongst the entire staff, the communication strategy, control (...) mechanisms, and culture change within the bank. These respective dimensions are then examined to reveal the role that ethical values and considerations play with regard to each of them. It is concluded that ethics does not only provide the foundation for the entire strategy, but also forms an integral part of each strategic dimension. (shrink)

The current debate surrounding the implementation of the Kyoto Treaty raises several issues that ought to be of interest to social and political philosophers. Proponents and critics alike have invoked ideas of fairness in justification of their positions. The two distinct conceptions of fairness that are involved in this debate—one of fair shares, and another of fair burdens—helpfully illuminate the proper role of fairness in designing an equitable and effective global climate regime. In this paper, I critically examine the idea (...) of fairness as manifest in two contending visions of the proper international response to mounting evidence that human activity is causing climate change, and that harm from this change is likely to exacerbate existing inequalities. In addition, I recommend one idea of fairness (the fair shares conception) and the political program that it implies. (shrink)

In the past sixty years computer technology has revolutionized the way information is processed, stored, distributed, and communicated. These changes have greatly affected myriad ways of life including especially the activities of government, commerce and social life broadly construed. This entry will not attempt to cover the broad sweep of ethical issues raised by information and computer technology. It will focus on those questions within computer ethics raised by the Internet.

The aim of this paper is to say something about the continuing impact of the Holocaust as an historical event through the application of aspects of Arendt's political thought and, at the same time, to say something about Arendt's distinctive understanding of the problems of post-Holocaust culture. An aim of this sort carries the intrinsic danger that the event in question becomes simply an illustration or grist to a particularinterpretative mill, an outcome that would be particularly undesirable here if it (...) afforded the Nazi Holocaust merely exemplary status. However, the danger may be easier to avoid in this case than in many due to a particular aspect of Arendt's thought itself. She places consistent emphasis upon the importance of the unprecedented event, the eventthat even with hindsight carries a sense of complete improbability and which changes the world and how we think about it. Arendt usually has in mind here ''positive'' political events such as acts of foundation but I want to suggest that implicitly her thought can also accommodate the notion of the Holocaust as an unprecedented ''negative''; an event that persists in its impact not because, like foundational acts, it establishes a self-reproducing arena of action and judgment, but because it insinuates a self-reproducing form of ruin. Arendt would have been sympathetic, I think, to Yehuda Bauer's description of the Holocaust as an ''upside-down miracle.''1 Undoubtedly, she regarded the Holocaust as having a symbolic significance, representing the apotheosis of the experience of modernity. The destruction of the personality in its juridical, moral and political forms enacted as a principle the superfluousness of mankind already present in the experience of modern mass society, where the vital distinction between freedom and necessity is obscured as social life fallsincreasingly under the rule of impersonal processes.2 This symbolic rendering aside, however, implicit in Arendt's thoughts on the political conditions of cognition, is an available sense of a continuing, more than symbolic significance attaching to the Holocaust as an unprecedented negative occurrence which changed things for good. Equally, and by the same token, bringing Arendt's thought to bear here will reveal an acute sense of the irreversible novelty of the contemporary, post-Holocaust situation and of the unprecedented cultural and political predicament it involves: the internal relation she posits between human plurality and cognitive certification illuminates the sense in which events involving the emasculation of plurality, and a consequent erosion of the basis of cognition, create problematic legacies for the historical imagination and in turn pose a continuing threat to freedom. I will suggest that Arendt's political thought is self-consciously located within, and structured by, this situation. It has been argued that the Holocaust represents an ''unmasterable'' episode; that it resists proper comprehension or analysis. There may be good reasons for thinking that in some sense this is true. Some critics of this view have taken it to imply that we cannot learn anything from the Holocaust as an historical event.3 In fact, I will argue, Arendt's approach delivers a sense in which this ''unmasterable'' event may carry a particular kind of significance and establishes a particular kind of point to attempts at Holocaust remembrance. At issue throughout will be the Arendtian conception of judgment. I shall suggest that what is at stake is the possibility of judgment and that this implicates the possibility of culture. I will begin by looking at some symptoms of what I take to be the problem of the Holocaust as an historical event, as an object for historical memory, and at how these may be generalised in a way which invites an Arendtian commentary. (shrink)

Transformative technologies can radically alter human lives making us stronger, faster, more resistant to disease and so on. These include enhancement technologies as well as cloning and stem cell research. Such technologies are often approved of by many liberals who see them as offering us opportunities to lead better lives, but are often disapproved of by conservatives who worry about the many consequences of allowing these to be used. In this paper, we consider how a democratic government with mainly liberal (...) values that is governing a population divided between liberals and conservatives can introduce new transformative technologies and try to achieve consensus about the introduction of such technologies. To do so, we draw on recent work in moral psychology which enables us to better understand the intuitive and emotional responses that underpin conservative objections to such new technologies. We then show how a government may introduce incremental changes in our social practices that have the long-term effect of weakening conservative objections to transformative technologies and better enabling governments to achieve consensus about these. (shrink)

The transhumanist venture brings dramatically to the forefront the matter of Christian responsibility in a techno-scientific age. From the beginning, Christians have struggled to determine the roles they are expected to play in the divine–human narrative. This tension is palpable through the refrains of prophetic and apocalyptic literature, calling for a change of heart and action on the one hand but professing on the other that, without divine intervention, no meaningful transformation is possible. If the church is to fulfill its (...) mission, it cannot be via “business as usual,” following historic trends merely to react to exigencies of the moment. Recognizing that we are never where we are meant to be, the church has a significant opportunity to lead the way forward. (shrink)

The implications of Marxist state theories developed by Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband are useful for framing issues related to leftist strategy in twenty-first-century Venezuela. A relationship exists between each of the theories and three issues facing the Chavista movement: whether the bourgeoisie displays a sense of ‘class-consciousness’; the viability of tactical and strategic alliances between the left and groups linked to the capitalist structure; and whether socialism is to be achieved through stages, abrupt revolutionary changes, or ongoing state radicalisation (...) over a period of time. During Poulantzas’s lifetime, his concept of the state as a ‘strategic battlefield’ lent itself to the left’s promotion of ‘strategic alliances’ with parties to its right. The same concept is compatible with the ‘process of change’ in Venezuela, in which autonomous movements play a fundamental role in transforming the old state and the construction of new state structures. (shrink)

This article takes a ‘naturalistic’ look at the historically changing nature of the individual and its implications for the terms on which democracy might be realized, starting from classical Athens, moving through early debates in evolutionary theory, to contemporary moral and political thought. Generally speaking, liberal democracy sees individuality as the mark of an evolutionarily mature species, whereas socialist democracy sees it as the mark of an evolutionary immature species. Overall, the individual has been ‘de-naturalized’ over time, resulting in the (...) indeterminate figure who thrives in the post-truth condition. (shrink)

The relevance of Fuller's version of social epistemology to argumentation theory is highlighted, in response to critics who claim that I am not sufficiently critical of the social grounds of knowledge production. Responding to Lyne, I first consider the strengths and weaknesses of relying on economic images to capture the social. Then, I tackle two contrary objections: Brian Baigrie claims social epistemology is “not social enough,” while Angelo Corlett wonders whether it may be “too social.” Finally, I counter Malcolm Ashmore, (...) who argues that social epistemology is not sensitive to reflexive implications of its own doctrines. I conclude that a rhetoric needs to be forged that enables those wishing to transform knowledge production to make their case plausibly to those whose behavior needs to be changed most. At the moment, science critics preach to the converted, a fate that the social epistemologist should not wish to share. (shrink)

The invention of photography in the early 19th century changed the way that we see the world, and has played an important role in the development of western science. Notably, photographic vision is implicated in the definition of a new temporal relation to the natural world at the same time as modern biological science emerges as a disciplinary formation. It is this coincidence in birth that is central to this study. I suggest that by examining the relationship of early photography (...) to nature, we can gain some insight into the technological and epistemological underpinnings of biological vision. To this end, this article is primarily concerned with the role of photographic technology in the genealogy of biological vision. I argue that photography has always been ambiguously located between art and science, between nature and culture, and between life and death. Hence, while it may be a technological expression of the scientific desire to know and to control nature, photographic vision has continually disrupted and frustrated the ambitions of biological technoscience. The technovision of early biological science illustrates that the elusive temporality of nature has always been central to the production of knowledge of life. (shrink)

The importance of friendship in the later work of Michel Foucault is increasingly being recognized, but the relationship between friendship and Foucault's concept of 'life as a work of art' is not well understood. Friendship, traditionally associated with 'masculine' virtue, can be seen to undergo significant change in connection with the emergence of modern sexuality. I suggest that Foucault's work alerts us to the fact that friendship is a key site for challenging the stability of the modern gender regime and (...) the institution of heterosexuality that underlies it. By drawing on insights from Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida, I elaborate upon the significance of both friendship and the work of art in Foucault. I argue that the intrinsic connection of the aesthetic with beauty is central to Foucault's 'aesthetics of existence'. A focus on beauty enables us to see how friendship can be understood in terms of the work of art. Key Words: art • beauty • Derrida • finitude • Foucault • friendship • heterosexuality • masculinity • Nietzsche. (shrink)

The archipelago context of Maluku represents the living dynamics of Christian communities in that area, which becomes an ecclesiological foundation of the Gereja Protestan Maluku. Christianity, the embryo of the GPM, is the fruit of the evangelical works by European missionaries, particularly Dutch missions from the 18th century onwards. The Dutch-type Christianity had been adapted into models so that the form of institution and Protestant teachings in Maluku moved dynamically following socio-political and cultural changes along with the colonial and the (...) post-colonial history of Indonesian and Malukan society. It attempts to describe the manifestation of the Calvinism-model of Christianity that is continuously being contextualised through absorbing various elements of worldview, tradition, and the religiosity of the archipelago society. Cultural hermeneutics is used to interpret the socio-cultural phenomena in which the church lives in and to construct its theological understanding about Christian identity. The ecclesiological construction of GPM, in turn, is structured by plural social orders. The reality also influences the perspective about GPM from many different worldviews of the Malukan archipelago society. The contextual ecclesiological perspective, therefore, is constructed based on intermingled understandings that theology of the church can only be built by considering multifold dimensions of a particular society. The result of this research pertains to the constructive understanding of a specific ecclesial context of the GPM in their struggles for theologising their existence as God’s people and, at the same time, as an integral part of certain society in Maluku and Indonesia.Contribution: As the living contextual church that struggles for proclaiming God’s love, the GPM has a theological responsibility to conduct its church mission based on its ecclesiological understanding and practices contextually. The article contributes to the enrichment of the theological discourse on the crucial roles of a church in Maluku, in the eastern part of Indonesia. (shrink)

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has become one of the defining challenges of the twenty-first century. Food production and farming are a key if troubling component of that challenge. Livestock production accounts for well over half of annual global consumption of antimicrobials, though the contribution of the sector to drug resistance is less clear. As a result, there is an injunction to act in advance of incontrovertible evidence for change. In this paper we engage with the role of market actors in the (...) precautionary regulation of farming practices and AMR threats. The paper takes the UK poultry sector as exemplary of an audit-led process that has, in recent years, achieved impressive reductions in antimicrobial use. Using qualitative interview data with farmers and veterinarians we chart the changing practices that have accompanied this reduction in treatments. We use this analysis to raise some cautions around audit-led systems of regulation. Audits can lock farms and animals into particular versions of farming and animal health; they can elevate harmful compensatory practices (including disinfectant uses); and they can reproduce an actuarial approach to an issue that does not fit the conventions of risk management. The paper presents the considerable successes that have been achieved over a short period of time in a livestock sector, while generating notes of caution concerning the audit-led management of livestock-related AMR threats. (shrink)

Drawing on the well-established understanding of the zombie as metaphor for the deadening effects of consumer capitalism, this chapter seeks to account for three distinct changes that contextualise 21st century zombie fiction. The first is situational: the global economic crisis has amplified the anxieties that inspired Romero's critique of consumer capitalism in Dawn of the Dead (1978). The second is intellectual: as Chapman and Anderson (2011) note, there has been an “explosion of research on all aspects of disgust” in recent (...) years. The third concerns the subgenre itself: zombies have become increasingly sexualised since the late 1990s. These issues intersect in a numerous recent zombie films - including Zombie Strippers! (2008), Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! (2008), Big Tits Zombie (2010), and Zombies Vs Strippers (2012) - that are centred around or within strip clubs. Stripping epitomises the logic of consumer capitalism, offering tantalising promises but little physical satisfaction. Stripping translates sexual desire into a voyeuristic transaction, evacuated of corporeal messiness. The zombie’s decomposing body epitomises disgust, and its presence in the strip-club disturbs the fantasy typically provided within that context. In the zombie infected strip-club, intimate contact is damaging rather than desirous. In these respects, zombies hypostatize numerous tensions that are usually masked by fantasy and financial exchange. In doing so, these zombies reify the horrors of late capitalism. Their disgusting bodies disrupt the foundational logic of consumerism qua desire. (shrink)

Grace is a dance -- Sin is a sour note -- Jesus lived as us -- Grace isn't fair -- Jesus wasn't forsaken -- God isn't angry -- His faith changed everything -- Not your grandmother's hell -- Seeing through agape's eyes.

In mid-1996, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments and rule on two lower court cases that would, if upheld, legalize physician-assisted suicide in twelve states, including California. At about the same time, at a national meeting dealing with this controversial topic, several participants from the San Francisco Bay Area got together to ask, Based on the old principle of the suggestion was made that the local ethics committee network might be interested in developing guidelines for the care (...) of patients at the end of life in the unlikely event that laws would change by Supreme Court action. Thus the coordinator of the Bay Area Network of Ethics Committees (BANEC) and several BANEC members began to discuss this question. (shrink)

Ram Dass is one of America's most renowned spiritual teachers. Born Richard Alpert, he received his Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University and taught there and at Harvard University before going to India and receiving the name Ram Dass () from his guru. He has long been involved in many charitable service organizations, particularly those devoted to providing healthcare for underserved populations. Among his many books are BeHereNow, HowCanIHelp, and CompassioninAction; his newest book is StillHere:EmbracingAging,Changing,andDying.

This chapter surveys the origin and development of environmental justice discourse from its early use as a civil rights strategy to resist the siting of hazardous waste facilities in the neighborhoods of poor people of color to its more contemporary usage as a directive for equity in global cooperation in pursuit of environmental sustainability. From debates among scholars and activists over the demands of justice as applied to problems of global climate change mitigation and adaptation, or climate justice, it examines (...) three principles of justice invoked in a landmark climate treaty and later applied to the design and evaluation of international climate change policy efforts. The chapter concludes by considering potential new directions that environmental justice theorizing might take in the context of other issues in environmental politics. (shrink)

This paper consists of the text of a key-note address to the Vincentian Business Ethics Conference in Chicago in 2013. The content is substantially as delivered; some few ad hoc comments have been removed to preserve consistency of meaning in a printed text. The speech is presented by a senior executive of a number of FTSE listed firms. It offers his insights into the 2007 / 8 financial crisis and some retrospective interpretations of both ‘what’ happened and ‘how’ this changed (...) things. These insights, and some clear criticisms, are complemented with his suggestions for a way to reconstruct business in society less unsustainably. (shrink)

This article explores the role of changing memes in large systems change toward marriage equality—popularly referred to as same-sex marriage—in the United States. Using an abbreviated case history of the transformation, the article particularly explores the shifting memes or core units of culture, in this case, word phrases associated with marriage equality over time, influencing the social change process. Using both the case history and the empirical work on memes, the article identifies nine lessons to support others tackling large systems (...) change challenges. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)