The Fair-Start Defense justifies affirmative action preferences as a response to harms caused by race- and sex-based discrimination. Rather than base a justification for preferences on the traditional appeal to self-esteem, I argue they are justified in virtue of the effects institutional discrimination has on the goals and aspirations of its victims. In particular, I argue that institutional discrimination puts women and blacks at an unfair competitive disadvantage by causing academic disidentification. Affirmative action is justified as a means of negating (...) this unfair disadvantage. (shrink)

BackgroundIn the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM) cohort, participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, heart, and abdomen, that generated incidental findings (IFs). The approach to managing these unexpected results remain a complex issue. Our objectives were to describe the CAHHM policy for the management of IFs, to understand the impact of disclosing IFs to healthy research participants, and to reflect on the ethical obligations of researchers in future MRI studies.MethodsBetween 2013 and 2019, 8252 participants (...) (mean age 58 ± 9 years, 54% women) were recruited with a follow-up questionnaire administered to 909 participants (40% response rate) at 1-year. The CAHHM policy followed a restricted approach, whereby routine feedback on IFs was not provided. Only IFs of severe structural abnormalities were reported.ResultsSevere structural abnormalities occurred in 8.3% (95% confidence interval 7.7–8.9%) of participants, with the highest proportions found in the brain (4.2%) and abdomen (3.1%). The majority of participants (97%) informed of an IF reported no change in quality of life, with 3% of participants reporting that the knowledge of an IF negatively impacted their quality of life. Furthermore, 50% reported increased stress in learning about an IF, and in 95%, the discovery of an IF did not adversely impact his/her life insurance policy. Most participants (90%) would enrol in the study again and perceived the MRI scan to be beneficial, regardless of whether they were informed of IFs. While the implications of a restricted approach to IF management was perceived to be mostly positive, a degree of diagnostic misconception was present amongst participants, indicating the importance of a more thorough consent process to support participant autonomy.ConclusionThe management of IFs from research MRI scans remain a challenging issue, as participants may experience stress and a reduced quality of life when IFs are disclosed. The restricted approach to IF management in CAHHM demonstrated a fair fulfillment of the overarching ethical principles of respect for autonomy, concern for wellbeing, and justice. The approach outlined in the CAHHM policy may serve as a framework for future research studies.Clinical trial registrationhttps://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/nct02220582. (shrink)

Emerging adult newlywed couples often experience many demands on their time, and three common problems may surface as couples try to balance these demands—problems related to finances, sleep, and sex. We used two waves of dyadic data from 1,001 emerging adult newlywed couples to identify four dyadic latent profiles from husbands’ and wives’ financial management behaviors, sexual satisfaction, and sleep quality: Flounderers, Financially Challenged Lovers, Drowsy Budgeters, and Flourishers. We then examined how husbands’ and wives’ marital satisfaction, in relation to (...) profile membership, varied at a later wave. We found that Financially Challenged Lovers and Flourishers had significantly higher marital satisfaction than Drowsy Budgeters and Flounderers. Whereas, Financially Challenged Lovers and Flourishers did not differ in terms of marital satisfaction, Drowsy Budgeters seemed to have slightly higher marital satisfaction than Flounderers for wives only. However, we did not find evidence that these connections meaningfully differed by sex. Implications for the efforts of clinicians and educators are discussed. (shrink)

An implicit association test (IAT) measures differential association of 2 target concepts with an attribute. The 2 concepts appear in a 2-choice task (e.g., flower vs. insect names), and the attribute in a 2nd task (e.g., pleasant vs. unpleasant words for an evaluation attribute). When instructions oblige highly associated categories (e.g., flower + pleasant) to share a response key, performance is faster than when less associated categories (e.g., insect + pleasant) share a key. This performance difference implicitly measures differential association (...) of the 2 concepts with the attribute. In 3 experiments, the IAT was sensitive to (a) near-universal evaluative differences (e.g., flower vs. insect), (b) expected individual differences in evaluative associations (Japanese + pleasant vs. Korean + pleasant for Japanese vs. Korean subjects), and (c) consciously disavowed evaluative differences (Black + pleasant vs. White + pleasant for self-described unprejudiced White subjects). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Shortages of new therapeutics to treat coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have forced clinicians, public health officials, and health systems to grapple with difficult questions about how to fairly allocate potentially life-saving treatments when there are not enough for all patients in need (1). Shortages have occurred with remdesivir, tocilizumab, monoclonal antibodies, and the oral antiviral Paxlovid (2) -/- Ensuring equitable allocation is especially important in light of the disproportionate burden experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic by disadvantaged groups, including Black, Hispanic/Latino (...) and Indigenous communities, individuals with certain disabilities, and low-income persons. However, many health systems have resorted to first-come, first-served approaches to allocation, which tend to disadvantage individuals with barriers in access to care (3). There is mounting evidence of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in access to medications for COVID-19 (4, 5). -/- One potential method to promote equitable allocation is to use a weighted lottery, which is an allocation strategy that gives all eligible patients a chance to receive the scarce treatment while also allowing the assignment of higher or lower chances according to other ethical considerations (6). We sought to assess the feasibility of implementing a weighted lottery to allocate scarce COVID-19 medications in a large U.S. health system and to determine whether the weighted lottery promotes equitable allocation. (shrink)

Ethnic minority groups have been shown to obtain poorer final year degree outcomes than their majority group counterparts in countries including the US, the UK and The Netherlands. Obtaining a lower degree classification may limit future employment prospects of graduates as well as opportunities for higher level study. To further investigate this achievement gap, we analysed performance levels across three academic years of study of 3,051 Black, Asian and White students from a UK University. Analyses of covariance investigated effects (...) of ethnicity and work placement experience (internships) on first, second and final year marks, whilst statistically controlling for a number of factors thought to influence achievement, including prior academic performance. Results demonstrated superior achievement of White students consistently across all years of study. Placement experience reduced, but did not eliminate, the size of the achievement gap exhibited by final year students. Sex, parental education and socioeconomic status had no significant main effects. Female students showed a more complex pattern of results than males, with Black females not showing the same final year uplift in marks as their Asian and White counterparts. Implications and possible explanations are discussed. (shrink)

An inordinate number of low wage workers in essential industries are Black, Hispanic, or Latino, immigrants or refugees — groups beset by centuries of discrimination and burdened with disproportionate but preventable harms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article examines the extent to which diversity characteristics and stakeholder role influence individuals’ corporate social orientation (CSO). Our findings indicate that one’s relationship to the organization as well as diversity, gender, and race influence one’s CSO. Specifically, we found that employees’ greatest concern was economic whereas customers had a stronger ethical orientation. The results also suggest that women as well as Black employees and customers place more emphasis on whether an organization is fulfilling its discretionary responsibilities than do (...) males and Whites. A model using the concept of value congruence is presented to guide future research. (shrink)

What is African American Politics? What form should it take? How does it conceptualize white supremacy? In In the Shadow of Du Bois, Robert Gooding-Williams uses the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and Fredrick Douglass to provide answers to these questions. While the choices of Douglass and Du Bois make a great deal of sense, they reproduce the tendency of confining political theory to literature – a move that bounds the genre in problematic ways. In this article, I (...) in effect attempt to “unbound” the genre by considering Ella Baker, a civil rights era political organizer. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Josiah Royce on RaceIssues in ContextJacquelyn Ann K. KegleyAll philosophy, whether or not we want to admit it, is done in a context, filtered through lenses that are personal, intellectual, historical, cultural, social, and political. Thus to fairly treat and fully understand Royce's views on race, we must set a situational framework. First, Royce's 1906 article entitled "Race Questions and Prejudices" is the lead piece in a collection that (...) implements his philosophy of loyalty. It applies his principle of loyalty to what he considers one of the most significant social/political issues of his time—the race question. As we discuss Royce and race issues, the philosophy of loyalty must be in the background as a point of reference. Indeed, Royce tells us that he will address the various questions in his article "Race Questions and Prejudices" by calling attention to "a few principles which seem to me to be serviceable to any one who wants to look at race questions fairly and humanely" (6).Secondly, except for W. E. B. DuBois and Jane Addams, no other major figure associated with pragmatic philosophy substantially addressed issues of race and racism in their written work, nor did anyone so early in the twentieth century as did Royce. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk, which came out in 1903, immediately preceded Royce's article. Jane Addams briefly touched on race issues in her 1915 Democracy and Social Ethics. Alain Locke, who sought to study with Royce at Harvard but could not because of Royce's premature death, gave his "Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Race" in 1915, but they were published posthumously. John Dewey's "Race Prejudice and Friction" appeared in 1922. There is an absence of treatment of race issues in George Herbert Mead, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Alfred North Whitehead. Thus Shannon Sullivan and I agree that Royce stands out in the history of classical American philosophy in taking an antiracist focus on race questions when very few philosophers—especially white male philosophers—took scholarly time to think about these issues.1 [End Page 1]Another important context for Royce's article is the political climate of the time. Royce identifies the era as one in which there were "more ways and places in which men find themselves in the presence of alien races with whom they have to live in the same social order" (4). It was a time of "white anxiety." In 1905, Theodore Roosevelt gave his famous "On American Motherhood" speech in which he warned of white "race suicide" if white families continued to reproduce at a slower rate than other races. Thus, Royce was speaking and writing against racism in a time of anti-immigration and proimperialism sentiment due to white anxiety in the United States about the possible decline of global white supremacy. It is in this setting that Royce highlights the color line as a significant problem.Royce states the problem as follows:This is the problem of dealing with the men who seem to us somehow very widely different from ourselves in physical constitution, in temperament, in all their deeper nature, so that we are temped to think of them as natural strangers to our souls, while nevertheless we find that they are stubbornly there in our world and that they are men as much determined to live as we are, and are men who, in turn, find us as incomprehensible as we find them.(5)With increased contact among different populations, the age-old problem of how to deal with people who seem different from one's own group intensifies. There will be, says Royce, numerous questions including those of superiority-inferiority, power and sovereignty, and a new assessment of the ways in which these "different" people might be helpful or perilous to one's own group interests. Royce notes that one cannot assume an automatic answer. He asks, "Is it a ‘yellow peril,' or a ‘black peril,' or perhaps after all, is it not rather some form of ‘white peril' which threatens the future of humanity in this day of great struggles and of complex issues?" (6). With the question posed in this... (shrink)

K. E. Boxer explores moral responsibility, and whether it is compatible with causal determinism. She suggests that to answer this question we must focus on responsibility in the sense of liability, and that an incompatibilist view may only be preserved on an understanding of the moral desert of punishment that many find morally problematic.

In this paper I have tried to clarify the meaning of two very different sets of characteristics which philosophers have had in mind when they claimed that ethical terms were objective. I gave a very tentative answer to the question whether it is true to say that, in any of the distinguished senses, ethical statements are objective. Lastly, I indicated how the failure to make the distinction I draw was responsible for a number of confusions and unnecessary difficulties. More precisely, (...) in (1) I defined the first set of the characteristics in question, which together I have called solidity ; in (2) I give reasons why it is misleading to claim that ethical statements are solid and also misleading to claim they are not; in (3) I defined the second set of these characteristics, namely, proper contentiousness and proper complexity; in (4) I explained what I thought were the fundamental differences between these two sets of characteristics; in (5) I suggested that the solidity of an expression is normally a good reason for holding that the expression is properly contentious and properly complex; in (6) I claim that the failure to understand (4) and, therefore, also (5) leads to the following errors: (a) that, if an expression is solid , it must be properly contentious and properly complex ; that, if an expression is non-solid , it must be either properly contentious and properly simple , or properly non-contentious . (5) That, if an expression is properly contentious and properly complex , it must be solid ; if it is properly contentious and properly simple or if it is properly non-contentious , then it must be non-solid ; and lastly in (7) I have mentioned some common reasons for holding that ethical expressions have one or the other of the above-mentioned characteristics. (shrink)

Over one hundred genes have been isolated from the human genome and shown to be causally related to specific human genetic diseases. Studies with gene‐specific probes have demonstrated that the mutations resulting in a particular phenotype are highly heterogeneous as a group, ranging from alterations in transcription or RNA processing in the nucleus, through to errors in mRNA translation in the cytoplasm. Even where the gene‐specific probe is not available, defects have been localized to chromosomal regions by family studies. Recently (...) developed methods for moving along the chromosome from a linked marker to the mutation are resulting in rapid advances in the understanding of many monogenic disorders. (shrink)

The Danish theologian-philosopher K. E. Løgstrup is second in reputation in his homeland only to Søren Kierkegaard. He is best known outside Europe for his _The Ethical Demand_, first published in Danish in 1956 and published in an expanded English translation in 1997. _Beyond the Ethical Demand_ contains excerpts, translated into English for the first time, from the numerous books and essays Løgstrup continued to write throughout his life. In the first essay, he engages the critical response to _The Ethical (...) Demand,_ clarifying, elaborating, or defending his original positions. In the next three essays, he extends his contention that human ethics “demands” that we are concerned for the other by introducing the crucial concept of “sovereign expressions of life.” Like Levinas, Løgstrup saw in the phenomenon of “the other” the ground for his ethics. In his later works he developed this concept of “the sovereign expressions of life,” spontaneous phenomena such as trust, mercy, and sincerity that are inherently other-regarding. The last two essays connect his ethics with political life. Interest in Løgstrup in the English-speaking academic community continues to grow, and these important original sources will be essential tools for scholars exploring the further implications of his ethics and phenomenology. “K. E. Løgstrup’s work undoubtedly made in his time an original contribution to the field of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. This translation makes extracts from his later publications on moral philosophy accessible to an English-speaking audience. I am again impressed by the depth of his ideas, which are certainly not outdated and still relevant for contemporary debates in moral philosophy.” —_Bert Musschenga, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam _ “Making a large part of Knud Løgstrup’s legacy accessible to the English-speaking public is an event of enormous cultural, philosophical and political importance—and we are all in debt to his disciple, Kies van Kooten Niekerk, and the University Press of Notre Dame, for making it happen. Løgstrup, alongside few other giants of 20th Century ethical thought, like Emmanuel Levinas or Hans Jonas, anticipated and articulated all the major challenges and urgent tasks with which the coming century is likely to confront the moral self. Our ethical discourse was all the poorer so far for being barred access to his findings and proposition. This will no longer be the case.” —_Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus, University of Leeds_ “The publication of an English translation of Knut Eljert Løgstrup's later works in ethics provides a wider readership with the opportunity to better understand his important contribution to ethics in the second half of the last century. With his notion of the _Sovereign Expressions of Life_ Løgstrup articulates his rejection of moral atomism that has become influential in recent times. The introduction and annotation by Kees van Kooten Niekerk are very helpful to see how Løgstrup's thought developed beyond _The Ethical Demand.” —__Hans S. Reinders, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam_. (shrink)

Art and Authority explores the sources, nature, and limits of artistic freedom. K. E. Gover draws upon real-world cases and controversies in contemporary visual art to offer a better understanding of artistic authorship and authority. Each chapter focuses on a case of dispute over the rights of an artist with respect to his or her artwork.