It is argued, in this paper, that moral theories should not be discussed extensively when teaching applied ethics. First, it is argued that, students are either presented with a large amount of information regarding the various subtle distinctions and the nuances of the theory and, as a result, the students simply fail to take it in or, alternatively, the students are presented with a simplified caricature of the theory, in which case the students may understand the information they are given, (...) but what they have understood is of little or no value because it is merely a caricature of a theory. Second, there is a methodological problem with appealing to moral theories to solve particular issues in applied ethics. An analogy with science is appealed to. In physics there is a hope that we could discover a unified theory of everything. But this is, of course, a hugely ambitious project, and much harder than, for example, finding a theory of motion. If the physicist wants to understand motion, he should try to do so directly. We would think he was particularly misguided if he thought that, to answer this question, he first needed to construct a unified theory of everything. (shrink)

D Benatar argues that in the author’s recent article Moral theories in teaching applied ethics, the author overlooked important roles that could be played by moral theories in such teaching. In this reply, the cases that Benatar suggests are considered and for each an alternative approach is suggested that will avoid the costs discussed in the original paper and will also be a more effective response to that particular issue.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

In this essay, I examine the ‘Postulates of Linguistics’ chapter of A Thousand Plateaus. In regard to this chapter, I aim to demonstrate something that has remained unrecognised about minor language in Deleuze and Guattari. I aim to show not only the characteristics of Deleuzian speaking in tongues that overlap with Foucaultian speaking-freely and with Derridean speaking-distantly, but also and more importantly, I hope to show how it is possible for us to make a language speak in tongues. Derrida's way (...) of speaking is made only by forming an enunciation that states a self-contradiction, which thereby makes the enunciation imply more than it says. Foucault's way of speaking is made only by forming an enunciation that states the truth directly and loudly, which thereby makes the enunciation do more than it says. And finally, Deleuze way of speaking is made only by forming an enunciation that states a command abstracted from its context, which thereby makes the enunciation proliferate. All three ways of speaking are made not for the benefit of the speaker, but ‘in favour of’ others. And perhaps this speaking ‘in favour of’ others will allow us to come to understand the true meaning of the phrase ‘capitalism and schizophrenia’. (shrink)

Interest in John Maynard Keynes has increased significantly over the past decade with the publication of his collected writings, increased access to his unpublished papers, and the resulting explosion of secondary literature. Responding to this renewed attention, this collection brings together economists and historians of economics with scholars from philosophy and other related fields to reconsider Keynes’s work and its legacy. Several of these essays look at Keynes not simply as an economist, but more broadly as a philosopher. Special attention (...) is directed to his views on aesthetics and moral philosophy, as well as his contributions as a probability theorist. The development of the Keynesian heritage is also considered: How did Keynesian ideas become assimilated and domesticated into the mainstream of economic thought—to the point of becoming dominant as the orthodoxy of the economics profession? What was the relationship between postwar British conservatives, Keynes’s work, and Britain’s relative economic decline? The archivist in charge of Keynes’s papers provides an additional vantage point on Keynes’s working methods and the broad range of scholars interested in his writings. Finally, all of the essays are followed by a responder’s comments, thus providing an exchange of viewpoints. _Contributors. _A. W. Coats, Allin F. Cottrell, Jacqueline Cox, William Darity, John Davis, Robert Dimand, Peter Groenewegen, Kevin Hoover, Henry E. Kyburg Jr., David Laidler, Michael S. Lawlor, Greg Lilly, D. E. Moggridge, R. M. O’Donnell, Kerry Pearce, Jochen Runde, Teddy Seidenfeld, J. D. Tomlinson. (shrink)

Ruth Millikan has long argued that the phenomenon of confused thought requires us to abandon certain traditional programmes for mental semantics. On the one hand she argues that confused thought involves confused concepts, and on the other that Fregean senses, or modes of presentation, cannot be useful in theorizing about minds capable of confused thinking. I argue that while we might accept that concepts can be confused, we have no reason to abandon modes of presentation. Making sense of confused thought (...) requires recognizing modes of presentation. (shrink)

Imagination and Chance illuminates the different philosophical projects that animate Ricoeur’s hermeneutics and Derrida’s deconstruction. Basic concepts in Ricouer such as discourse, metaphor and symbol, and tradition are examined, and texts by Derrida including “White Mythology,” Introduction to Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry, and “The Double Session” are analyzed. The book also includes a previously untranslated round table discussion between Ricoeur and Derrida.

Bergson scholars such as Leonard Lawlor, Alexander Lefebvre, Philip Soulez, and Frederic Worms have recently argued that Bergson “places the phenomenon of war at the center of his analysis” in Two Sources of Morality and Religion. We want to contribute to this line of interpretation. We claim that Bergson’s account of the causes of, and solution to, the problem of war can be effectively understood in light of a central tenet of classical political philosophy, namely, the City of God, (...) both the concept and Augustine’s great text, de Civitate dei contra paganos. We highlight the shared view of the root of war in Augustine and Bergson, namely the lust for domination, libido dominandi. Our contribution provides a useful heuristic for understanding Bergson’s account of war, not a claim of Augustine’s influence on Bergson. (shrink)

Christiane Bailey and Chloë Taylor (Editorial Introduction) Sue Donaldson (Stirring the Pot - A short play in six scenes) Ralph Acampora (La diversification de la recherche en éthique animale et en études animales) Eva Giraud (Veganism as Affirmative Biopolitics: Moving Towards a Posthumanist Ethics?) Leonard Lawlor (The Flipside of Violence, or Beyond the Thought of Good Enough) Kelly Struthers Montford (The “Present Referent”: Nonhuman Animal Sacrifice and the Constitution of Dominant Albertan Identity) James Stanescu (Beyond Biopolitics: Animal Studies, Factory (...) Farms, and the Advent of Deading Life) Ian Werkheiser (Domination and Consumption: An Examination of Veganism, Anarchism, and Ecofeminism) Cynthia Willett (Water and Wing Give Wonder: Trans-Species Cosmopolitanism) Corey Lee Wrenn (Nonhuman Animal Rights, Alternative Food Systems, and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex) Emily R. Douglas (Eat or Be Eaten: A Feminist Phenomenology of Women as Food) Gary Steiner’s Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013) Chloë Taylor (“Postmodern” Critical Animal Theory: A Defense) Patrick Llored (La déconstruction derridienne peut-elle fonder une communauté politique et morale entre vivants humains et non humains?) Jan Dutkiewicz (“Postmodernism,” Politics, and Pigs) Gary Steiner (Response to Commentators). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface That an overtly white-nationalist misogynist demagogue was voted into power in the United States is cause for alarm and despair. As the election results sink in and analyses take shape, we at Feminist Studies mark this moment via poetry, a tradition of feminist expression that we have long nurtured. We include in this issue a special section on poems responding to the election. Raw by necessity, they allow (...) for a collective processing of feelings experienced in this moment, even as we prepare for the courage and acuity needed in days ahead. The scholarly works in this issue offer reflections on the travels of the term gender: in French Canadian feminist circles; the misreadings of gender and sexuality in histories of post-WWII New York City; and the gains and gaps in activism against gender-based violence and inequality. Geneviève Pagé recounts how the term gender was taken up in French Canadian scholarship, while Alix Genter offers a visual history of what butchness meant in 1950s and 1960s New York City. Julie R. Enszer tracks the representation of women writers through literary grants offered by the National Endowment for the Arts and in Norton anthologies, making the case that gender parity remains an elusive goal. Elizabeth Jean Hornbeck narrates the 1980 horror film The Shining as a commentary on violence against women and child abuse that uses the Gothic form to salutary effect. Nikki Lane reviews recent scholarship in black queer ethnography, and Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor introduces us to the feminist eco-art of Pamela Longobardi. Our featured poets, apart from our special section, are Hannah Baker Saltmarsh and Karen An-hwei Lee. Our closing forum on trigger warnings narrates the innovative practices that Alexis Lothian and Ramzi Fawaz propose in response to a contentious pedagogical debate. 560Preface Geneviève Pagé describes the history of the journey of the term gender in feminist circles in Montreal, using this case to comment on the dilemmas that arise from Anglocentrism in feminism. Pagé argues that in many ways, the term gender was not well suited to the context she highlights: Quebec feminists already possessed an intellectual infrastructure for referencing the meanings of the term gender through alternative phrasing, such as rapport sociaux de sexe. Furthermore, the grammatical concept of genre was “a concept central to the French language, but only peripheral in the English language,” and therefore, its use in French carried a potential “naturalizing” connotation. Nonetheless, given the dominance of English in feminist theory, Pagé concludes that “the polysemic nature of gender” allowed “for a fluid and multiple account of the local and global processes at work in the construction of women and men” in this context. Alix Genter gives us a nuanced understanding of butch genders and butch-femme aesthetics. Rather than relying on a stereotypical version of the 1950s queerly legible butch in masculine clothes, Genter argues that butchness itself was visually nuanced and coded in different ways than expected. Referencing a rich archive of 1950s-era photographs, Genter demonstrates that butch-identified women “conveyed their identities through alternate means that included clandestine codes and plays on women’s fashions.” This approach to butch aesthetics and lesbian self-representation opens up the common notion of a strict butch-femme contrast and introduces the concept of conscious mutual survival between the two lesbian identities. The appreciation of nuance continues in Nikki Lane’s review essay of reflexive ethnographic research about black queer communities. Lane’s review of recent work by Jafari S. Allen, Marlon Bailey, Mignon Moore, and Mireille Miller-Young highlights the attention these authors give to the complex politics of sexuality in everyday experiences of black communities. With an emphasis on the illuminating potential of ethnography and qualitative methodologies, Lane discusses how each text adds to our understanding of processes of “racialization, gendering, and sexualization.” Lane concludes that black queer and feminist ethnographic methods help accrue an embodied knowledge—the “flesh”—of black queer experience. Preface 561 The art featured in this issue is by Pamela Longobardi, who uses found-plastic objects to create painting, sculptures, installations, assemblages, photographs, and community-art projects. As an artist with training in biology, Longobardi focuses on the... (shrink)

Ethics support staff help others to deal with moral challenges. However, they themselves can also experience moral challenges such as issues regarding (breaching) confidentiality when practicing ethics support. Currently there is no insight in these confidentiality issues and also no professional guidance for dealing with them. To gain insight into moral challenges related to Moral Case Deliberation (MCD), we studied a) beliefs and experiences of MCD facilitators regarding breaching confidentiality, b) considerations for (not) breaching confidentiality, and c) needs for an (...) ethics support tool. Data collection consisted of qualitative research methods: six semi-structured interviews; analyses of a) two recorded MCD sessions, and b) a focus group with MCD facilitators. Findings: MCD facilitators mention different conceptions and interpretations of confidentiality and various moral challenges. Questions concerning confidentiality ultimately cause reflections on roles and responsibilities of facilitators. Needs for ethics support vary from seeking advice to procedural and sometimes normative guidance for MCD facilitators. Education for MCD facilitators should focus on developing a concrete tool that stimulates awareness and reflection(skills). (shrink)

What is conscientious objection? -- Should conscientious objectors be accommodated? -- Assessing objectors' beliefs and reasons -- Accommodation and conscientious provision.

Approximately 50 years have passed since Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote A Defense of Abortion (1971). Her article has significantly shaped the philosophical literature on abortion. In this paper, I will summarize some of the interesting and important work done on the topic since Thomson's article. I will highlight Thomson as a defender of the claim that abortion is morally permissible and Don Marquis as an influential opponent of that claim. I will start by articulating Thomson's case, focusing on the violinist (...) analogy. I will underscore key questions, concepts, and objections the analogy raises. I will then examine briefly how philosophers have addressed some of these issues. Next, I will outline Marquis’ work, provide a similar commentary on it, and discuss some of its main responses. I will then survey other philosophers who have addressed abortion beyond the scope of providing specific replies to Thomson or Marquis. I will close by highlighting significant points of agreement and disagreement in the literature, as well as crucial gaps in the current research. The paper is not an attempt to address every work on the topic over the last five decades, nor is it aimed at taking a position on the moral permissibility of abortion. My goal is to provide an overview of the dialectic. (shrink)

This book assesses and defends Kant's Critical epistemology, and the rich yet neglected resources it provides for understanding and resolving fundamental issues regarding human experience, perceptual judgment, empirical knowledge and cognitive sciences. Kenneth Westphal first examines Kant's methods and strategies for examining human sensory-perceptual experience, and then examines Kant's central, proper, and subtle attention to judgment, and so to the humanly possible valid use of concepts and principles to judge particulars we confront. This provides a comprehensive account of Kant's anti-Cartesianism, (...) the integrity of his three principles of causal judgment, and Kant's account of disciminatory perceptual-motor behaviour, including both sensory reafference and perceptual affordances. Westphal then defends the significance of Kant's subtle and illuminating account of causal judgment for three main philosophical domains: history and philosophy of science, theory of action and human freedom, and philosophy of mind. Kant's Critical Epistemology will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Kant and the relations of his thought to contemporary philosophical debates and to the sciences of the mind. (shrink)

Keisha Ray and Jane Falls Cooper’s article “Bioethics of Environmental Injustice: Ethical, Legal, and Clinical Implications of Unhealthy Environments” seeks to give environmental concerns greater p...

Bio-heteronormative conceptions of the family have long reinforced a nuclear ideal of the family as a heterosexual marriage, with children who are the genetic progeny of that union. This ideal, however, has also long been resisted in light of recent social developments, exhibited through the increased incidence and acceptance of step-families, donor-conceived families, and so forth. Although to this end some might claim that the bio-heteronormative ideal is not necessary for a social unit to count as a family, a more (...) systematic conceptualization of the family—the kind of family that matters morally—is relatively underexplored in the philosophical literature. This paper makes a start at developing and defending an account of the family that is normatively attractive and in line with the growing prevalence of non-conventional families and methods of family-formation. Our account, which we call a constitutive-affirmative model of the family, takes the family to be constituted by an ongoing process of relevant affective and affirmative relations between the putative family members. (shrink)

In this article, we focus on a particular kind of emotional impact of the pandemic, namely the phenomenology of the experience of moral injury in healthcare professionals. Drawing on Weber's reflections in his lecture Politics as a Vocation and data from the Experiences of Social Distancing during the COVID-19 Pandemic Survey, we analyse responses from healthcare professionals which show the experiences of burnout, sense of frustration and impotence, and how these affect clinicians’ emotional state. We argue that this may relate (...) to the ethical conflicts they experience when they are forced to make clinical decisions where there are no optimal outcomes, and how in turn that impacts on their own emotional state. We then further examine the notion of ‘burnout’ and the phenomenology of ‘moral injury’. Our argument is that these experiences of moral injury across a range of clinicians during the pandemic may be more prevalent and long-standing in psychiatry and mental health than in other areas of healthcare, where ethically difficult decisions and resource constraints are common outside times of crisis. Hence, in these clinical arenas, moral injury and the phenomenology of emotional changes may be independent of the pandemic. The insights gained during the pandemic may provide wider insights into the challenges of developing services and training the workforce to provide appropriate mental health care. (shrink)

Deception sometimes results in nonconsensual sex. A recent body of literature diagnoses such violations as invalidating consent: the agreement is not morally transformative, which is why the sexual contact is a rights violation. We pursue a different explanation for the wrongs in question: there is valid consent, but it is not consent to the sex act that happened. Semantic conventions play a key role in distinguishing deceptions that result in nonconsensual sex (like stealth condom removal) from those that don’t (like (...) white lies). Our framework is also applicable to more controversial cases, like those implicated in so-called “gender fraud” complaints. (shrink)

The odds of encountering a senior citizen selling on the street have increased. The claim that they have no choice but to work and sell on the street, despite the dangers, illnesses, and psychological issues they may face, to provide for their family’s needs is very evident. Therefore, this study explores the quality of life, lived experiences, challenges, and coping mechanisms of senior citizen street vendors in Bulacan, Philippines. The study employed Heideggerian Phenomenology and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Moreover, the (...) following themes arise (1) Golden years, (2) Socially connected, and (3) Unknown journey. These themes highlighted the experiences and challenges faced by the participants. Moreover, it is highly suggested that local government agencies enhance and strictly monitor the existing program that alleviates mental and physical health concerns and senior citizens' safety and financial assistance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Uttering the Unutterable: Aristotle, Religion, and Literature by Louis GroarkeJay R. ElliottGROARKE, Louis. Uttering the Unutterable: Aristotle, Religion, and Literature. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023. 336 pp. Cloth, $120.00Louis Groarke’s Uttering the Unutterable is an extraordinarily ambitious book. Its aims include: to provide a definition of literature; to argue that literature must be morally good; to argue that literature is necessarily concerned with an “utterable” transcendent reality; to (...) advance a version of Aristotelian realism in metaphysics and epistemology; to defend the Western “tradition” in literature and philosophy; to criticize the entire enterprise of structuralist and poststructuralist literary theory; to criticize the entire enterprise of analytic philosophy of language; to resurrect the Chicago School of literary criticism associated with figures such as R. S. Crane and Richard McKeon; to relitigate the mid-twentieth-century battles between the Chicago School and “New Criticism”; and to offer an homage to Groarke’s former teacher, the Chicago-trained Bernard Suits.At the center of Groarke’s project is his aspiration to formulate an Aristotelian literary theory and to defend it against a wide variety of alternative perspectives. But as the above list of Groarke’s ambitions suggests, he carries out this aspiration in a highly unusual way. For Groarke, questions of literary theory are not to be debated exclusively— or even primarily—through discussion of literature. This book contains very few examples of literary works, and none of them is discussed in depth. Indeed, for Groarke, matters of literary theory are not even to be [End Page 719] discussed primarily in terms of literary theory. Rather, Groarke’s central conviction is that we can approach literature properly only by situating it within the context of certain fundamental questions in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and religion. Readers who pick up this work expecting a discussion of Aristotle’s Poetics will be sorely disappointed. Groarke barely mentions this seminal work of Aristotelian literary criticism. Rather, his project begins from a diagnosis of what ails contemporary literary criticism: that it suffers, not so much from a false view of literature, as from a false view of truth, goodness, and reality. He accordingly undertakes to provide a better view of those fundamental matters, one that he derives from aspects of Aristotle’s thought. According to Groarke, it is these aspects of Aristotle that have the most to offer literary theorists today.Groarke draws his most important Aristotelian inspiration from Aristotle’s discussion of theōria in Nicomachean Ethics 10.7–8. In Groarke’s view, Aristotelian theōria is a truthful vision of a supreme reality that transcends human life and pervades the universe. This vision, for Groarke, is what literature is (or should be) about. On this basis, he critiques forms of literary criticism that see literature as concerned only with politics, or with class distinctions, or with entertainment, or with language itself. As Groarke sums up his argument: “[L]iterature supplies opportunities for intelligence gathered up in an artful and superlative moment of beholding of what is fundamental, real, meaningful, and true. Literature provides an avenue for contemplation (theōria), facilitating a divine-like gaze upon the world.” For Groarke, Aristotelian theōria allows us to behold what is “fundamental, real, meaningful, and true.” It is especially valuable because it affirms the essential unity of these attributes. Like Aristotle’s god, Groarke’s transcendent reality is simultaneously the highest reality and the summation of all value. For Groarke, to engage in theōria is thus to affirm that the universe is suffused with moral significance. It is this stance that Groarke thinks literature should promote.I have a great deal of sympathy both for Groarke’s reading of Aristotle and for his sense that these aspects of his thought are relevant to fundamental questions about literature. But I found the experience of reading this book challenging. The bulk of Groarke’s work is not devoted to developing his Aristotelian conception, applying it to literary case studies, or considering any problems it might raise. Rather, Groarke applies most of his time and energy to attacking what he perceives to be the myriad enemies of his Aristotelian outlook in the... (shrink)

Are conspiracy theorists epistemically vicious? That is the conventional wisdom. It has distinguished supporters, including Quassim Cassam, Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule. For me, a trait is an epistemic virtue if leads to the discovery of salient truths and the avoidance of pernicious falsehoods, and an epistemic vice the contrary. As such epistemic virtues and vices are role‐relative, context‐relative and end‐relative. I argue that that it is not necessarily or even usually vicious to be a conspiracy theorist, even if we (...) restrict the conspiracies in question to conspiracies on the part of Western government agencies, the reason being that many such theories are now known to be true. Finally I contend that the policy suggested by some polemicists of systematic skepticism towards conspiracy theories would be intellectually suicidal and hence vicious. (shrink)

Classical real-valued probabilities come at a philosophical cost: in many infinite situations, they assign the same probability value—namely, zero—to cases that are impossible as well as to cases that are possible. There are three non-classical approaches to probability that can avoid this drawback: full conditional probabilities, qualitative probabilities and hyperreal probabilities. These approaches have been criticized for failing to preserve intuitive symmetries that can be preserved by the classical probability framework, but there has not been a systematic study of the (...) conditions under which these symmetries can and cannot be preserved. This paper fills that gap by giving complete characterizations under which symmetries understood in a certain “strong” way can be preserved by these non-classical probabilities, as well as by offering some results to make it plausible that the strong notion of symmetry here is the right one. Philosophical implications are briefly discussed, but the main purpose of the paper is to offer technical results to help make further philosophical discussion more sophisticated. (shrink)

This article confronts the challenges and opportunities presented by medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) representing families impacted by the family regulation system. Based on the authors’ experience developing a collaboration between a medical-legal partnership, interdisciplinary law school clinic and nurse home visiting program focused on clients impacted by the family regulation system, the article challenges traditional conceptions of the MLP model and proposes an expanded vision for MLPs to address systemic injustice and improve outcomes for families.

Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim (1493–1541), colloquially known as Paracelsus, emerges as a pivotal figure in the transition from medieval to early modern scientific paradigms. Within the realm...

As self-conscious curators and critics of moral history, the early Confucians are relevant to the contemporary debate over the fate of memorials dedicated to morally flawed individuals. They provide us with a pragmatic justification that is distinct from those utilized in the current debate, and in many respects superior to the alternatives. In addition to supplying this curative philosophic resource, the early Confucian practices of ancestral memorialization suggest preventative measures we might adopt to minimize the chances of establishing divisive and (...) oppressive memorials in the future. (shrink)

In this essay an engineer and a philosopher, after many conversations, develop an argument for why the Aristotelian version of virtue ethics is the most promising way to develop what we call artificial moral, social agents, i.e. robots. This, evidently, applies to humans as well. There are several claims: first, that humans are not born moral, they are socialized into morality; second, that morality involves affect, emotion, feeling, before it engages reason; third, that how a moral being feels is related (...) to some narrative, whether moral or not; and finally, that narrativity is what builds a sense of a “moral” I, namely an authorial moral self. (shrink)

In his seminal article “How to Derive ‘Ought’ from ‘Is’,” which was published in 1964, John R. Searle offered a counterexample to Hume’s law. Here, Searle reconstructs the historical context in which that article appeared, when the task of moral philosophers—especially in the Anglophone world—was supposed to be metaethics, which aims to describe the use of ethical terms and their logical behavior. Searle stands by the validity of his derivation, and in light of his subsequent philosophical developments—notably his social ontology (...) and philosophy of action—he explains why his derivation is valid and why it is relevant, not only for metaethics but also for moral philosophy strictly understood. (shrink)

Mysticism is condemned as often as it is praised. Much of the condemnation comes from mysticism’s apparent disregard of morality and ethics. For mystics, the experience of “union” transcends all moral concern. In this careful examination of the works of such practitioners or examiners of mysticism as Paul Tillich, Thomas Merton, Evelyn Underhill, and Martin Buber, the author posits a spectrum of uneasy relationships between mysticism and morality. Horne explores the polarities of apophatic (imageless) and imaginative mysticism, the contemplative and (...) the active life, and morality and amorality. He stresses the importance of the distinction between “proper-name” (entirely personal) morality and “social” morality, for the history of Christian mysticism is a mix of minimal moral concern, proper-name morality, and social morality. The volume will be of interest to students of religious experience, ethics, and the recent history of mysticism. Carefully reasoned and documented, the argument is couched in clear prose, easily accessible to lay readers as well as to scholars. (shrink)

It is often loosely said that Ramsey The foundations of mathematics and other logical essays, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Abingdon, pp 156–198, 1931) and de Finetti Studies in subjective probability, Kreiger Publishing, Huntington, 1937) proved that if your credences are inconsistent, then you will be willing to accept a Dutch Book, a wager portfolio that is sure to result in a loss. Of course, their theorems are true, but the claim about acceptance of Dutch Books assumes a particular method of (...) calculating expected utilities given the inconsistent credences. I will argue that there are better ways of calculating expected utilities given a potentially inconsistent credence assignment, and that for a large class of credences—a class that includes many inconsistent examples—these ways are immune to Dutch Books and single-shot domination failures. The crucial move is to replace Finite Additivity with Monotonicity, then \\le P\)) and then calculate expected utilities for positive U via the formula \\, dy\). This shows that Dutch Book arguments for probabilism, the thesis that one’s credences should be consistent, do not establish their conclusion. Finally, I will consider a modified argument based on multi-step domination failure that does better, but nonetheless is not as compelling as the Dutch Book arguments appeared to be. (shrink)

Selective mutism is an anxiety disorder in which an individual is unable to speak in certain social situations though may speak normally in other settings (Hua & Major, 2016 ). Selective mutism in adults is rare, though people with this condition might have other methods of communicating their needs outside of verbal communication. Healthcare professionals rely on a patient’s ability to communicate to establish if they have decision-making capacity. This commentary responds to a case of a young adult patient with (...) selective mutism and social anxieties that significantly limited his ability to communicate with anyone in the healthcare team. This required a creative, patient-centered approach to engage in meaningful communication. (shrink)