In the U.S. there has been considerable interest in connecting low-income households to alternative food networks like Community Supported Agriculture. To learn more about this possibility we conducted a statewide survey of CSA members in California. A total of 1149 members from 41 CSAs responded. Here we answer the research question: How do CSA members’ socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds, household conditions potentially interfering with membership, and CSA membership experiences vary between lower-income households and higher-income households? We divided members into LIHHs (...) and HIHHs. We present comparisons of LIHHs’ and HIHHs’ employment, race/ethnicity, household composition and education, use of food support, and enjoyment of food-related activities; conditions interfering with membership and major life events; and sources of information influencing decision to join, reasons for joining, ratings of importance of and satisfaction with various CSA attributes, gaps between importance of and satisfaction with various CSA attributes, valuing of the share and willingness to pay more, and impacts of membership. We find that LIHHs are committed CSA members, often more so than HIHHs, and that CSA members in California are disproportionately white, but that racial disproportionality decreases as incomes increase. We conclude by considering: the economic risks that LIHHs face in CSA membership, the intersection of economic risks with race/ethnicity and cultural coding in CSA; and the possibilities of increasing participation of LIHH in CSA. (shrink)

California is a landmark setting for studying produce recovery efforts and policy implications because of its global relevance in agricultural production, its complex network of food recovery organizations, and its environmental and public health regulations. Through a series of focus groups with organizations involved in produce recovery (gleaning organizations) and emergency food operations (food banks, food pantries), this study aimed to deepen our understanding of the current produce recovery system and determine the major challenges and opportunities related to the produce (...) recovery system. Operational and systematic barriers to produce recovery were highlighted by both gleaning and emergency food operations. Operational barriers, such as the lack of appropriate infrastructure and limited logistical support were found to be a challenge across groups and were directly tied to inadequate funding for these organizations. Systematic barriers, such as regulations related to food safety or reducing food loss and waste, were also found to impact both gleaning and emergency food organizations, but differences were observed in how each type of regulation impacted each stakeholder group. To support the expansion of food recovery efforts, participants expressed need for better coordination within and across food recovery networks and more positive and transparent engagement from regulators to increase understanding of the specifics of their unique operational constraints. The focus group participants also provided critiques on how emergency food assistance and food recovery are inscribed within the current food system and for longer term goals of reducing food insecurity and food loss and waste a systematic change will be required. (shrink)

In Talking about, Unnsteinsson defends an intentionalist theory of reference by arguing that confused referential intentions degrade reference. Central to this project is a “belief model” of both identity confusion and unconfused thought. By appealing to a well‐known argument from Campbell, I argue that this belief model falls short, because it fails to explain the inferential behavior it promises to explain. Campbell's argument has been central in the contemporary literature on Frege's puzzle, but Unnsteinsson's account of confusion provides an opportunity (...) for more clarity about how the argument is best interpreted, and what it shows. (shrink)

A joke is amusing if and only if it’s fitting to be amused by it; an act is regrettable if and only if it’s fitting to regret it. Many philosophers accept these biconditionals and hold that analogous ones obtain between a wide range of additional evaluative properties and the fittingness of corresponding responses. Call these the _fit–value biconditionals_. The biconditionals give us a systematic way of recognizing the role of fit in our ethical practices; they also serve as the bedrock (...) of various metaethical projects, such as fitting-attitude analysis of value and the ‘fittingness first’ approach. Yet despite the importance of the biconditionals, there is very little discussion of their proper interpretation. This paper argues that any plausible interpretation of the fit_–_value biconditionals must disarm several kinds of apparent counterexample. For instance, that an achievement is pride-worthy doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to take pride in it because the achievement might not be mine or that of anyone close to me; that a joke is amusing doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to be amused by it for six straight months; and that a person is loveable doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to love him romantically because that person might be my sibling. We consider possible responses to such counterexamples and develop what we consider the most promising interpretation of the biconditionals. The upshot is that certain widespread assumptions about fit and its relation to value and reasons should be reconsidered. (shrink)

Increasingly, metaphors are the target of political critique: Jewish groups condemn Holocaust imagery; mental health organizations, the metaphorical exploitation of psychosis; and feminists, “rape metaphors.” I develop a novel model for making sense of such critiques of metaphor.

A major goal of this work is to specify some steps of the process by which participants maintain coherency in their conversations.The underlying element of the analysis is a construct called a “context space.” Roughly, a group of utterances that refers to a single issue or episode forms the basis for a context space. Superficially, a conversation is a sequence of utterances; at a deeper level it is a structured entity whose utterances can be parsed into hierarchically related context spaces.As (...) a conversation proceeds, each conversant builds a discourse model that includes the conversation's context space structure, a notion of the present discourse topic, and a list of items being focused upon. Conversational coherency depends upon a lack of conflict between the respective models of the participants. Conflicts are prevented by speakers following high level syntactic and semantic relational rules that enable listeners to identify their discourse models. These rules, given in the study, are highly integrated with the view of conversation presented here—a hierarchy of related context spaces. (shrink)

Bioethics has entered a new era: as many commentators have noted, the familiar mantra of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice has proven to be an overly simplistic framework for understanding problems that arise in modern medicine, particularly at the intersection of public policy and individual preferences. A tradition of liberal pluralism grounds respect for individual preferences and affirmation of competing conceptions of the good. But we struggle to maintain (or at times explicitly reject) this tradition in the face of individual (...) preferences that we find distasteful, suspect, or even repugnant, especially where the broader social good or respect for equality is at stake. Directed donation presents us with such a dilemma: can we uphold the right of self-determination through respect of individual preferences regarding disposition of transplantable organs while at the same time maintaining an allocation system that reflects values of equity and justice claimed to underlie the socially negotiated practice of transplantation? Or are some preferences simply to be deemed unethical and not respected, even if that leads to a reduction in the number of transplantable organs available and to an apparent disregard for the autonomous decisions of the recently deceased? (shrink)

We discuss a case where medically optimal investigations of health problems in a donor-conceived child would require their egg donor to participate in genetic testing. We argue that it would be justified to contact the egg donor to ask whether she would consider this, despite her indicating on a historical consent form that she did not wish to take part in future research and that she did not wish to be informed if she was found to be a carrier of (...) a ‘harmful inherited condition’. We suggest that we cannot conjecture what her current answer might be if, by participating in clinical genetic testing, she might help reach a diagnosis for the donor-conceived child. At the point that she made choices regarding future contact, it was not yet evident that the interests of the donor-conceived child might be compromised by her answers, as it was not foreseen that the egg donor’s genome might one day have the potential to enable diagnosis for this child. Fertility consent forms tend to be conceptualised as representing incontrovertible historical boundaries, but we argue that rapid evolution in genomic practice means that consent in such cases is better seen as an ongoing and dynamic process. It cannot be possible to compel the donor to aid in the diagnosis of the donor-conceived child, but she should be given the opportunity to do so. (shrink)

The so-called ‘mental files theory’ in the philosophy of mind stems from an analogy comparing object-concepts to ‘files’, and the mind to a ‘filing system’. Though this analogy appears in philosophy of mind and language from the 1970s onward, it remains unclear to many how it should be interpreted. The central commitments of the mental files theory therefore also remain unclear. Based on influential uses of the file analogy within philosophy, I elaborate three central explanatory roles for mental files. Next, (...) I outline several common criticisms of the file picture, which have been a source of resistance to the view. Finally, I outline several interpretations of the theory, thus highlighting that the best interpretation of the file-theory's central analogy remains a live issue. (shrink)

I argue that we are sometimes morally responsible for having and using (or not using) our concepts, despite the fact that we generally do not choose to have them or have full or direct voluntary control over how we use them. I do so by extending an argument of Angela Smith's; the same features that she says make us morally responsible for some of our attitudes also make us morally responsible for some of our concepts. Specifically, like attitudes, concepts can (...) be (a) conceptually and rationally connected to our evaluative judgments, (b) in principle subject to rational revision (reasons‐responsive), and (c) the basis for actual and potential moral assessments of people that we have good reasons to endorse. Thus, we are open to moral appraisal on the basis of having and using (or not using) our concepts when they reflect our evaluative judgments, though even then it is not always appropriate to praise or blame us on that basis. (shrink)

Surgical training has traditionally involved a lengthy apprenticeship to a series of master surgeons, who teach medical students and residents the techniques of surgery while allowing them to work on patients in the operating room. This article examines surgical training as a structured environment that prepares students for the embodied lessons taught by a surgeon. It argues that even the most seemingly mechanical of surgical techniques contains social lessons when taught by a surgeon within the rich environment of the operating (...) room. (shrink)

Our aesthetic judgments are embedded in and shaped by unjust social orders. But can our aesthetic judgments themselves—“this is beautiful; that is not”—be unjust? This article argues that they can. Admitting that this is so does not require us to be unduly revisionary with respect to our concept of justice. Rather, the thought that aesthetic judgments are unjust flows naturally from familiar egalitarian constraints.

This article describes a new prenatal genetic test that is painless, early, and increasingly available. State legislatures have reacted by prohibiting abortion for reason of fetal sex or of fetal diagnosis and managing genetic counseling. This article explores these legislative responses and considers how physicians and genetic counselors currently communicate post-testing options. The article then examines the challenges ahead for genetic counseling, particularly in light of the troubling grip of abortion politics on conversations about prenatal diagnosis.

Global production networks connect multiple producers involved in fragmented manufacturing processes. Major brands and retailers, considered as lead firms, are under increasing pressure to ensure products made through GPNs are produced sustainably. Theories of governance developed to understand dynamics in outsourced production can provide insight into this issue. However, these theories and related empirical research have often focused on relationships between lead firms and upper-tier suppliers. When manufacturing involves multiple fragmented stages, understanding the role of lead firms becomes more difficult. (...) This article considers new governance roles that lead firms, as buyers, are playing when attempting to promote sustainable practices across all stages of production for buyer-driven industries. The focus is exploring the nature of new governance approaches which lead firms have developed in order to address diverse sustainability challenges found within GPNs, particularly related to lower-tier suppliers. These approaches can involve lead firms working through vertical buyer–seller links or developing new horizontal relationships, which link lead firms with lower-tier suppliers and governance processes in these suppliers’ local productive systems. The findings draw from field research examining how top UK garment retailers provide governance to producers involved in creating cotton garments in India and a review of publicised policies and practices of these retailers related to promoting sustainable production. Five types of governance mechanisms that can involve vertical or horizontal links are identified. Considering the growth of new governance relationships expands previous conceptions of the roles of lead firm governance. (shrink)

Cultural forces such as film create and reinforce rigidly-defined images of a doctor's identity for both the public and for medical students. The authoritarian and hierarchical institution of medical school also encourages students to adopt rigidly-defined professional identities. This restrictive identity helps to perpetuate the power of the patriarchy, limits uniqueness, squelches inquisitiveness, and damages one's self-confidence. This paper explores the construction of a physician's identity using cultural theorists' psychoanalytic analyses of gender and race as a framework of analysis. Cultural (...) theorists' politically-motivated work provides an excellent point of departure for destabilizing parts of the authoritarian medical hierarchy that can damage a student's professional development. Drawing on such discourse, this paper examines the processes by which a doctor's identity becomes rigidly defined and fixed by daily training. It finally proposes a way for a medical student to extrapolate himself from the current definitions of this identity and create a broader, more malleable concept of professional identity by defining himself from outside of, rather than through, difference. (shrink)

A recent focus on philosophical methodology has reinvigorated ordinary language philosophy with the contention that philosophical inquiry is better served by attending to the ordinary use of language. Taking cues from findings in the social sciences that deploy methods utilizing language, various ordinary language philosophers embrace a guiding mandate: that ordinary language usage is more reflective of our linguistic and conceptual competencies than standard philosophical methods. We analyze two hypotheses that are implicit in the research from which ordinary language approaches (...) take their cues. This pair of optimistic assumptions (a) bind word meanings to properties of their corresponding concepts and (b) regard language as a direct reflection of our underlying cognitive processes and competencies. Polysemy and pragmatics complicate each assumption. Because the ordinary language philosopher’s methodological mandate compels us to consider how individuals process the utterances they encounter in deciphering the communicative intentions of speakers, failing to attend to the import of polysemy and pragmatics in philosophical and empirical methods has the potential to frustrate the aims of their insightful mandate. The significance of those two complications is worked out with the case study of knowledge. (shrink)

In ordinary conversation, speakers disagree not only about worldly facts, but also about how to use language to describe the world. For example, disagreement about whether Buffalo is in the American Midwest, whether Pluto is a planet, or whether someone has been canceled, can persist even with agreement about all the relevant facts. The speakers may still engage in “metalinguistic negotiation”—disputing what to mean by “Midwest”, “planet”, or “cancel”. I first motivate an approach to metalinguistic negotiation that generalizes a Stalnakerian (...) theory of communication by including linguistic commitments in the conversational common ground. Then, I turn to cases where the very status of a disagreement as metalinguistic or factual is unclear or contested. For example, after the publication of the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, some responses claimed to identify factual errors, while others took those same “errors” to be matters of interpretation. I’ll consider how to extend our theorizing about metalinguistic negotiation to this type of (even more) “meta” disagreement, using the discussion following the 1619 Project as a case study. On my view, in most such cases, there will be a metalinguistic negotiation going on. Still, I explain several ways in which, despite a dispute being metalinguistic, the factualist side can sometimes receive important vindication. I also discuss why it can make sense for speakers to contest the status of a dispute. (shrink)

"A rich historical pastiche of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy, science, and religion."—G. Y. Craig, New Scientist "This book, by a distinguished Italian historian of philosophy, is a worthy successor to the author's important works on Francis Bacon and on technology and the arts. First published in Italian (in 1979), it now makes available to English readers some subtly wrought arguments about the ways in which geology and anthropology challenged biblical chronology and forced changes in the philosophy of history in the (...) early modern era.... [Rossi] shows that the search for new answers about human origins spanned many disciplines and involved many fascinating intellects—Bacon, Bayle, Buffon, Burnet, Descartes, Hobbes, Holbach, Hooke, Hume, Hutton, Leibniz, de Maillet, Newton, Pufendorf, Spinoza, Toland, and, most especially, Vico, whose works are impressively and freshly reevaluated here."—Nina Gelbart, American Scientist. (shrink)

Plato’s attitude towards women in his major political works, the Republic and Laws, is complex. On the one hand, Plato argues that in well-run cities, women should hold positions of rule; but on the other, he suggests that women are inferior to men with respect to virtue. To reconcile these conflicting attitudes, some scholars argue that Plato’s progressive proposals are about women as they could be given the right education and environment, while his derogatory comments are about women as they (...) are. Surprisingly, however, commentators who defend this line of thought fail to identify which aspect or aspects of women’s current social position is the problem. I argue that a central problem is women’s role in the private family. More specifically, I argue that Plato thinks the institution of the private family and household is an impediment to virtue; since the private family and household is the primary domain of women, they will be particularly susceptible to its ill effects. In short, individuals’ characters are shaped by the institutions they inhabit; the private family and household is a character-shaping institution that is the primary domain for women, and as a result their characters will be shaped for the worse. (shrink)

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant argues that morality obliges us to believe in the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. I argue, however, that in two late essays – “The End of All Things” and “On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy” – Kant provides moral counterarguments to that position: these beliefs undermine moral agency by giving rise to fanaticism or fatalism. Thus, I propose, the Kantian position on the justification of religious belief (...) is ultimately antinomial. One ought, moreover, to understand Kant’s considered position concerning the immortality of the soul and the existence of God to be similar to that he proposes concerning the theoretical ideas of reason in the Appendix to the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason: they are necessary as regulative ideas guiding moral action, not endorsed or even postulated as propositions. In other words, they are subject matters not of belief, but of hope. (shrink)

Some assertions give rise to the acquaintance inference: the inference that the speaker is acquainted with some individual. Discussion of the acquaintance inference has previously focused on assertions about aesthetic matters and personal tastes (e.g. 'The cake is tasty'), but it also arises with reports about how things seem (e.g. 'Tom seems like he's cooking'). 'Seem'-reports give rise to puzzling acquaintance behavior, with no analogue in the previously-discussed domains. In particular, these reports call for a distinction between the specific acquaintance (...) inference (that the speaker is acquainted with a specific individual) and the general acquaintance inference (that the speaker is acquainted with something or other of relevance). We frame a novel empirical generalization -- the specific with stage-level generalization -- that systematizes the observed behavior, in terms of the semantics of the embedded 'like'-clause. We present supporting experimental work, and explain why the generalization makes sense given the evidential role of 'seem'-reports. Finally, we discuss the relevance of this result for extant proposals about the semantics of 'seem'-reports. More modestly, it fills a gap in previous theories by identifying which reports get which of two possible interpretations; more radically, it suggests a revision of the kind of explanation that should be given for the acquaintance behavior in question. (shrink)

Drawn from the authors' experiences in the UK, Australia and mainland Europe and with contributions from across the globe, this clear and accessible book includes a wide range of examples. The authors show the reader how to: identify ethical issues which may arise with any research project, gain informed consent, provide information in the right way to participants, and present and disseminate findings in line with ethical guidelines.

The author shares her insights into the kabbalistic Judaism of her grandfather, serving up a series of inspiring stories about spiritual life.

The postwar welfare state provides social insurance against economic, health, and related risks in an uncertain world. Because everyone can envision themselves to be among the unfortunate, social insurance fuses self-interest and solidarism in a normative principle Friedman (2020) calls probabilistic justice. But there is a competing principle of status defense, where the aim is to erect boundaries between socioeconomic strata and discourage cross-class mobility. We argue that this principle dominates when inequality is high and uncertainty low. The current moment (...) is one of high inequality and high uncertainty, which results in intense status anxiety, yet does not rule out solidaristic solutions. Our contributions are to diagnose the causes of our current malaise, and to theorize the normative bases for the political choice facing contemporary western democracies. (shrink)

Debates continue to surround the system in the United States for allocating transplantable cadaveric organs, due in large part to the scarcity of such organs in relation to the number of individuals waiting to undergo transplantation. Candidates awaiting transplantation gain access to cadaveric organs by being placed by individual transplant programs on the national list of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, overseen by the United Network for Organ Sharing. In recent years, the UNOS board has visited the issue of (...) multiple listing, that is, allowing one candidate to be registered on the waiting lists of two or more transplant programs, and has continued to permit multiple listing. (shrink)

This article draws on the philosophical work on dialogic rationality offered by Charles Taylor as well as qualitative studies of dialogues between politically opposed college students to argue that these conversations succeed as tools of democracy precisely because they fail as interventions. That is, the democratic strength of such dialogue is the way in which it is unreliable as a means of producing particular outcomes. Students whose political views eventually shifted partly in response to dialogue understood this not as a (...) process of changing their commitments, but rather of finding a better expression for the commitments they already held. But the interviews show, too, just how rare it is for such shifts to occur at all, at least for these students in a period of political polarization and mutual distrust. The interviews suggest as well that the appeal to already shared ground is not the whole story of what prompts people to change their minds in these kinds of conversations. Rather the asking of direct but respectful questions was a crucial ingredient. Finally, dialogue did not independently cause the most profound changes in political views. Instead, it was the direction of students' lives that over time shifted their outlook. Their dialogue experience then gained meaning in retrospect, as the beginning of a process of self-questioning that was brought to fruition only later, as a first time that they had heard alternative possibilities for how value commitments can be expressed through politics. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Pacific Islander population is the second fasting growing population in the United States and Arkansas is home to the largest Marshallese population in the continental US. The Marshal...

The past year in bioethics in Australia has been relatively predictable. We continue to struggle with rising healthcare costs, though thankfully not on par with numerous other countries due to a relatively positive economic outlook. We are still fighting difficulties associated with higher medical indemnity costs, which have again caused many physicians to leave private practice, particularly in high-risk and specialty practice areas. In response, the federal government delayed the imposition of the medical indemnity levy for physicians until mid 2005. (...) In May, the Australian Law Reform Commission and the Australian Health Ethics Commission issued their final joint report on genetic testing entitled “Essentially Yours” and endorsed use of genetic tests by insurance companies, despite the concerns of some geneticists and many members of the public about their scientific reliability. However, they also advocated the establishment of the Human Genetics Commission of Australia to oversee such uses of genetic tests in terms of both scientific and actuarial reliability, and debates continue over the implementation of this and a number of their other recommendations. And state governments continue to phase in smoking bans in public places, with most implementing full bans in enclosed restaurants and cafes and planning to require provision of nonsmoking areas in all pubs within the next year. a. (shrink)

Theological ethics, particularly Christian theological ethics, is very well-equipped both to treat the interests and needs of future generations as a genuine and pressing concern – and also to evade some of the questions they pose about temporality, by appealing to judgement beyond history. Phenomenological approaches to the question of future generations are important as a counterbalance to this tendency in theological ethics, insofar as they force us to remain with, and wrestle with, the relation to future persons as future. (...) In this article I show that drawing on phenomenological approaches, in order to attend to temporality, produces an account of justice and responsibility to future generations that is more adequate theologically, as well as ethically. Attending to how the other, the future and the imperative of justice interrelate yields an approach to theological ethics that does not need to assume for the ethicist the God’s-eye view – the view from outside time, narrative or interpersonal encounter – and that is thus able to grapple with the core questions raised by bringing future generations into ethics. (shrink)

The United States Supreme Court, in its decision Ferguson v. City of Charleston,ruled that to conduct drug tests on pregnant women in public hospitals and to share that information with the police without obtaining a search warrant amounted to a violation of the women's constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment. Set within the political context of public policy designed to monitor the activities of pregnant women and the ongoing incidence of prosecutions for ‘foetal abuse’,this note shows how the Supreme Court’s (...) decision, while on the one hand vindicating the rights of pregnant women to be free from unlawful searches upon their person, does not definitively determine the important question of the extent to which the state may regulate women’s behaviour during pregnancy. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

Motivation has been the subject of much research in the sport psychology literature, whereas athlete mental health has received limited attention. Motivational complexities in elite sport are somewhat reflected in the mental health literature, where there is evidence for both protective and risk factors for athletes. Notably, few studies have linked motivation to mental health. Therefore, the key objective of this study was to test four mental health outcomes in the motivational sequence posited by the Hierarchical Model of Intrinsic and (...) Extrinsic Motivation: motivational climate  basic psychological needs  motivation  mental health outcomes. Elite team-sport athletes (140 females, 75 males) completed seven psychometric inventories of motivation-related and mental health variables. Overall, the athletes reported positive motivational patterns, with autonomous motivation and task climate being more prevalent than their less adaptive counterparts. Elevated depressive symptoms and poor sleep quality affected nearly half of the cohort. Structural equation modelling supported pathways between motivational climate, basic needs, motivation, and mood, depressive symptoms, sleep quality, and trait anxiety. Specifically, a task climate was positively associated with the three basic psychological needs, and an ego climate was positively associated with competence. Autonomy and relatedness had positive and negative associations with autonomous and controlled forms of motivation, respectively. Controlled motivation regulations were positively associated with the four mental health outcomes. Integrated regulation had a negative association with anxiety, and intrinsic regulation had a positive association with depressive symptoms. These findings highlight the complexities of and interrelations between motivation and mental health among athletes, and support the importance of considering mental health as an outcome of motivation. (shrink)