Federal guidelines require that informed consent be obtained from participants when they are enrolled in a research study. When conducting research with children, the guidelines utilize the term permission to describe parents' agreement to enroll their children in a study. The basic components of consent and permission are well described and identical, with the exception of the person for whom the decision to participate is being made. Beyond permission, when enrolling minor participants in research, affirmative agreement to participate in research (...) or assent must be obtained from the child participants themselves. The concept of children's assent to research, however, is poorly defined, resulting in inconsistency in its pursuit and, consequently, in its utility. The interface between cognitive development, emotional, and social development must be examined as it pertains to this special situation of decision making. For this process to meaningfully protect minors, the assent process must be clarified, decisions regarding parental veto power must be more convincingly justified, and researchers must be better educated and held accountable for the valid execution of this process. Strategies for implementing the assent process more effectively are presented. (shrink)

Details the intellectual development of George Herbert Mead as a thinker of great originality and as a practitioner of social reform.

Mainstream economics evaluates capitalism primarily from the perspective of efficiency. Social philosophy typically applies other or additional normative criteria, such as equality, democracy, and community. This essay examines the implications of these contrasting sets of criteria in the evaluation of capitalism. Its first two sections consider the criteria themselves, assuming that a trade-off exists between them. The last three sections question whether such a trade-off necessarily occurs, and explore the claim that improvements in nonefficiency dimensions of capitalist society may enhance, (...) rather than conflict with, efficiency. (shrink)

This book offers a close reading of Adorno’s more explicitly political writings and his work on fascist and anti-Semitic propaganda, and argues for the continuing relevance of these works for contemporary political practice. Adorno’s criticism of political violence and mass movements has, surprisingly, yet to be brought to bear upon contemporary developments in critical theory in the vein of Slavoj Žižek and Alan Badiou. Since a significant portion of this book is dedicated to offering an Adornian response to Žižek, it (...) situates Adorno in the contemporary discussion on strategies for resistance to global capitalism. (shrink)

Mainstream economics evaluates capitalism primarily from the perspective of efficiency. Social philosophy typically applies other or additional normative criteria, such as equality, democracy, and community. This essay examines the implications of these contrasting sets of criteria in the evaluation of capitalism. Its first two sections consider the criteria themselves, assuming that a trade-off exists between them. The last three sections question whether such a trade-off necessarily occurs, and explore the claim that improvements in nonefficiency dimensions of capitalist society may enhance, (...) rather than conflict with, efficiency. (shrink)

This paper argues that exploitation is a central and non-redundant concept in a Marxian understanding of capitalism. This finding runs counter to John Roemer’s conclusion in his critical reexamination of exploitation. For a static setting with perfectly competitive markets, Roemer shows that exploitation is a property of agents which derives from unequal wealth endowments, that is, from differential ownership of productive assets, not a social relation between capitalists and workers. Further, he shows that DOPA suffices in this setting to generate (...) core phenomena in Marxian theory-accumulation, domination, alienation, and inequality-with no reference to an independent notion of exploitation. Roemer concludes that DOPA is the central analytical category in Marxian theory, and exploitation a redundant, indeed incorrect, concept therein. A direct implication is that distributive justice should be Marxism’s central ethical concern. The basis for Roemer’s sweeping conclusion is that his model is general, incorporating no special institutional assumptions and abstracting from any impediments to market equilibria. That is, his conclusion rests on an ahistorical, timeless economic model. (shrink)

What is sin? Is it simply wrongdoing? Why do its effects linger over time? In this sensitive, imaginative, and original work, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness lay at the very heart of the biblical tradition. Spanning nearly two thousand years, the book brilliantly demonstrates how sin, once conceived of as a physical burden, becomes, over time, eclipsed by economic metaphors. Transformed from a weight that an individual carried, sin becomes a debt that must be (...) repaid in order to be redeemed in God's eyes. Anderson shows how this ancient Jewish revolution in thought shaped the way the Christian church understood the death and resurrection of Jesus and eventually led to the development of various penitential disciplines, deeds of charity, and even papal indulgences. In so doing it reveals how these changing notions of sin provided a spur for the Protestant Reformation. Broad in scope while still exceptionally attentive to detail, this ambitious and profound book unveils one of the most seismic shifts that occurred in religious belief and practice, deepening our understanding of one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience. (shrink)

Drawing on an extensive yet concise review of the history of cross-cultural aesthetics, the volume presents the scientists and artists working in the new world of transformative arts.

Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah: The Case for a Sixth-Century Date of Composition. By Aaron D. Hornkohl. Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, vol. 74. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Pp. viii + 517. $210.

This article treats the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic 3rd person singular pronoun נוולא nawla, attested four times in the vast rabbinic corpus: three times in the Babylonian Talmud and one time in Tractate Sofrim. First, it is shown that the form is epicene, as it can have both masculine and feminine antecedents. Second, the four attestations reveal a specialized meaning for the form, to wit, ‘this-one’ or ‘that-one’ when there are specifically two items under discussion. Which is to say, the form (...) נוולא nawla is not used for simple ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘this’ or ‘that’, for which JBA and other Aramaic dialects have familiar and widely attested forms. Third, the article proposes that the form is borrowed from the Hurro-Urartian family, well known for its epicene pronouns. See, for example, Hurrian anni=lla, ani=lla, etc., Urartian i=ne=lə, ina=ne=lə, etc. Even though these forms are plural forms, while נוולא nawla is a singular form, comparative evidence demonstrates that when pronouns are borrowed from one language to another, they at times may jump person and number. (shrink)

How Old Is the Hebrew Bible? By Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten. The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Pp. xvi + 221. $45.