This article draws on the insight that people and communities have fundamental relationships with place. People are defined and shaped by place; and place is, in turn, defined and shaped by communi...

This paper examines four interpretations of the observation that humanitarian intervention might be used ‘selectively’ or ‘inconsistently’ in order to elucidate the normative commitments of the deliberative process in international relations. The paper argues that there are several types of concerns that are implicit in the accusation of inconsistency, and only some of them amount to objections to humanitarian intervention as a whole. The paradox of humanitarian intervention is that intervention is prohibited except where the intervention is humanitarian, yet humanitarian (...) reasons never exist in isolation, and it is nearly impossible to determine the real reason for intervention (or any other collective action) in the international arena. The problems revealed by an examination of inconsistency in the example of humanitarian intervention turn out to be general problems with applying the norms of practical reasoning to moral questions dealing with collective agents. (shrink)

Charles Beitz has presented us with a new and novel theory of human rights, one that is motivated by a concern for the enforcement of human rights in modern international practice. However, the focus on states in his human rights project generates a tension between the universal aspirations of individual human rights and the vulnerable individuals who through rendition or state failure find themselves outside the international state system. This paper argues that Beitz and other theorists of human rights make (...) a mistake when they define human rights in statist terms. The scope of a theory of human rights must include all human beings, even if not simply in virtue of their humanity. The aspiration for human rights to be political and not metaphysical is interesting and admirable, but the human scope of human rights must be retained in order for human rights to retain their critical force. (shrink)

This article argues that a state-centered theory of global justice exhibits an epistemic problem of perspective, and that this worry exhibits a gendered character. Within a liberal domestic theory of justice, the public/private distinction has been repeatedly shown to be bad for women because it creates a domain for injustice that becomes invisible to public policy and the law. This article argues that state-centered theories of global justice create an analogous space that is cut off from questions of global justice. (...) The article therefore suggests that this way of framing questions of global justice is problematic, and is problematic for women in particular. Just as the public/private distinction in liberal domestic justice leaves cases of injustice outside the vision of the law, the hard distinction between the domestic (state) sphere and the international realm of justice leaves cases of injustice invisible to international law. For the question of global justice, the privileging of sovereignty and non-intervention compromises the ability of the theory to achieve its purported goal of universal justice. (shrink)

This article argues that a state-centered theory of global justice exhibits an epistemic problem of perspective, and that this worry exhibits a gendered character. Within a liberal domestic theory of justice, the public/private distinction has been repeatedly shown to be bad for women because it creates a domain for injustice that becomes invisible to public policy and the law. This article argues that state-centered theories of global justice create an analogous space that is cut off from questions of global justice. (...) The article therefore suggests that this way of framing questions of global justice is problematic, and is problematic for women in particular. Just as the public/private distinction in liberal domestic justice leaves cases of injustice outside the vision of the law, the hard distinction between the domestic sphere and the international realm of justice leaves cases of injustice invisible to international law. For the question of global justice, the privileging of sovereignty and non-intervention compromises the ability of the theory to achieve its purported goal of universal justice. (shrink)

Contemporary literature in philosophy of action seems to be divided overthe place of action in the natural causal world. I think that a disagreementabout ontology underlies the division. I argue here that human action isproperly understood only by reference to a category of process or activity,where this is not a category of particulars.

Testimony is an invaluable source of knowledge. We rely on the reports of those around us for everything from the ingredients in our food and medicine to the identity of our family members. Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the epistemology of testimony. Despite the multitude of views offered, a single thesis is nearly universally accepted: testimonial knowledge is acquired through the process of transmission from speaker to hearer. In this book, Jennifer Lackey shows that this (...) thesis is false and, hence, that the literature on testimony has been shaped at its core by a view that is fundamentally misguided. She then defends a detailed alternative to this conception of testimony: whereas the views currently dominant focus on the epistemic status of what speakers believe, Lackey advances a theory that instead centers on what speakers say. The upshot is that, strictly speaking, we do not learn from one another's beliefs - we learn from one another's words. Once this shift in focus is in place, Lackey goes on to argue that, though positive reasons are necessary for testimonial knowledge, testimony itself is an irreducible epistemic source. This leads to the development of a theory that gives proper credence to testimony's epistemologically dual nature: both the speaker and the hearer must make a positive epistemic contribution to testimonial knowledge. The resulting view not only reveals that testimony has the capacity to generate knowledge, but it also gives appropriate weight to our nature as both socially indebted and individually rational creatures. The approach found in this book will, then, represent a radical departure from the views currently dominating the epistemology of testimony, and thus is intended to reshape our understanding of the deep and ubiquitous reliance we have on the testimony of those around us. (shrink)

Civil society organizations (CSOs) have significantly impacted on the politics of health research and the field of bioethics. In the globalHIVepidemic,CSOs have served a pivotal stakeholder role. The dire need for development of new prevention technologies has raised critical challenges for the ethical engagement of community stakeholders inHIVresearch. This study explored the perspectives ofCSOrepresentatives involved inHIVprevention trials (HPTs) on the impact of premature trial closures on stakeholder engagement. Fourteen respondents fromSouthAfrican and internationalCSOs representing activist and advocacy groups, community mobilisation initiatives, (...) and human and legal rights groups were purposively sampled based on involvement inHPTs. Interviews were conducted fromFebruary‐May 2010. Descriptive analysis was undertaken across interviews and key themes were developed inductively.CSOrepresentatives largely described positive outcomes of recent microbicide andHIVvaccine trial terminations, particularly inSouthAfrica, which they attributed to improvements in stakeholder engagement. Ongoing challenges to community engagement included the need for principled justifications for selective stakeholder engagement at strategic time‐points, as well as the need for legitimate alternatives toCABs as mechanisms for engagement. Key issues forCSOs in relation to research were also raised. (shrink)

In this collection of original essays, international scholars put Asian traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, into conversation with one or more contemporary feminist philosophies, founding a new mode of inquiry that attends to diverse voices and the complex global relationships that define our world. -/- These cross-cultural meditations focus on the liberation of persons from suffering, oppression, illusion, harmful conventions and desires, and other impediments to full personhood by deploying a methodology that traverses multiple philosophical styles, historical (...) texts, and frames of reference. Hailing from the discipline of philosophy in addition to Asian, gender, and religious studies, the contributors offer a fresh take on the classic concerns of free will, consciousness, knowledge, objectivity, sexual difference, embodiment, selfhood, the state, morality, and hermeneutics. One of the first anthologies to embody the practice of feminist comparative philosophy, this collection creatively and effectively engages with global, cultural, and gender differences within the realms of scholarly inquiry and theory construction. -/- http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-16624-9/asian-and-feminist-philosophies-in-dialogue. (shrink)

Introduction -- Elucidating complexity theories -- Complexity in the natural sciences -- Complexity in social theory -- Towards transdisciplinarity -- Complexity in philosophy: complexification and the limits to knowledge -- Complexity in ethics -- Earth in the anthropocene -- Complexity and climate change -- American dreams, ecological nightmares and new visions -- Complexity and sustainability: wicked problems, gordian knots and synergistic solutions -- Conclusion.

How, in a secular world, should we resolve ethically controversial and troubling issues relating to health care? Should we, as some argue, make a clean sweep, getting rid of the Hippocratic ethic, such vestiges of it as remain? Jennifer Jackson seeks to answer these significant questions, establishing new foundations for a traditional and secular ethic which would not require a radical and problematic overhaul of the old. These new foundations rest on familiar observations of human nature and human needs. (...) Jackson presents morality as a loose anatomy of constituent virtues that are related in different ways to how we fare in life, and suggests that in order to address problems in medical ethics, a virtues-based approach is needed. Throughout, attention is paid to the role of philosophy in medical ethics, and how it can be used to clarify key notions and distinctions that underlie current debates and controversial issues. By reinstating such concepts as justice, cardinal virtue, and moral duty, Jackson lays the groundwork for an ethics of health care that makes headway toward resolving seeming dilemmas in medical ethics today. This penetrating and accessible book will be invaluable to students of sociology and health care, as well as those who are interested in the ethical uncertainties faced by the medical world. (shrink)

Why do we find agents less blameworthy when they face mitigating circumstances, and what does this show about philosophical theories of moral responsibility? We present novel evidence that the tendency to mitigate the blameworthiness of agents is driven both by the perception that they are less normatively competent—in particular, less able to know that what they are doing is wrong—and by the perception that their behavior is less attributable to their deep selves. Consequently, we argue that philosophers cannot rely on (...) the case strategy to support the Normative Competence theory of moral responsibility over the Deep Self theory. However, we also outline ways in which further empirical and philosophical work would shift the debate, by showing that there is a significant departure between ordinary concepts and corresponding philosophical concepts, or by focusing on a different type of coherence with ordinary judgments. (shrink)

Michael Devitt ([2006a], [2006b]) argues that, insofar as linguists possess better theories about language than non-linguists, their linguistic intuitions are more reliable. (Culbertson and Gross [2009]) presented empirical evidence contrary to this claim. Devitt ([2010]) replies that, in part because we overemphasize the distinction between acceptability and grammaticality, we misunderstand linguists' claims, fall into inconsistency, and fail to see how our empirical results can be squared with his position. We reply in this note. Inter alia we argue that Devitt's focus (...) on grammaticality intuitions, rather than acceptability intuitions, distances his discussion from actual linguistic practice. We close by questioning a demand that drives his discussion—viz., that, for linguistic intuitions to supply evidence for linguistic theorizing, a better account of why they are evidence is required. (shrink)

This essay addresses feminist approaches to medical aid in dying (MAID), considering whether it is a practice that should be supported for women and other marginalized groups. Some feminists have raised rights and justice-based arguments in support of MAID; others have taken a care-based approach to suggest that the practice violates relationships of care and only worsens distrust between marginalized groups and the medical establishment. I argue that we need to adopt both justice and care approaches to develop a robust (...) feminist account of MAID. I defend a woman’s right to choose death in cases of terminal illness or suffering but argue that relational concerns of care, trust, and trustworthiness must be addressed at the same time to ensure that MAID is justly practiced and accessible to all those who want it. (shrink)

Despite the conceptual problems in identifying the placebo effect, an increasing number of multidisciplinary inquiries rest on the assumption that there is a distinct class of effects, placebo effects. In this chapter, I argue against this assumption. I present cases and characterizations of the placebo effect as offered in the literature, and argue that the latter are subject to insurmountable problems. Moreover, I argue that identification of placebo effects as such is not useful for the three main purposes offered in (...) the literature. I then offer suggestions for why it may remain intuitive that some effects are placebo effects and close by noting the potential benefits of ultimately explaining away these intuitions. (shrink)

Jennifer Church presents a new account of perception, which shows how imagining alternative perspectives and possibilities plays a key role in creating and validating experiences of self-evident objectivity. She explores the nature of moral perception and aesthetic perception, and argues that perception can be both literal and substantive.

Decision-Making Capacity First published Tue Jan 15, 2008; substantive revision Fri Aug 14, 2020 In many Western jurisdictions the law presumes that adult persons, and sometimes children that meet certain criteria, are capable of making their own medical decisions; for example, consenting to a particular medical treatment, or consenting to participate in a research trial. But what exactly does it mean to say that a subject has or lacks the requisite capacity to decide? This question has to do with what (...) is commonly called “decisional capacity”, a central concept in health care law and ethics, and increasingly an independent topic of philosophical inquiry. -/- Decisional capacity can be defined as the ability of subjects to make their own medical decisions. Somewhat similar questions of capacity arise in other contexts, such as capacity to stand trial in a court of law and the ability to make decisions that relate to personal care and finances. However, the history behind the more general legal notions of capacity to stand trial and capacity to manage one’s life is different and operates somewhat differently in law (Roth, Meisel, & Litz 1977; Zapf & Roesch 2005). For the purposes of this discussion the notion of decisional capacity will be limited to medical contexts only; most notably, those where decisions to consent or to refuse treatment or participation in clinical research are concerned. (shrink)

This collection of ten essays elucidates some of the more challenging aspects of Anscombe’s work and affirms her reputation as one of our most original ...

This volume argues that educational problems have their basis in an ideology of binary opposites often referred to as dualism, and that it is partly because mainstream schooling incorporates dualism that it is unable to facilitate the thinking skills, dispositions and understandings necessary for autonomy, democratic citizenship and leading a meaningful life. Bleazby proposes an approach to schooling termed social reconstruction learning, in which students engage in philosophical inquiries with members of their community in order to reconstruct real social problems, (...) arguing that this pedagogy can better facilitate independent thinking, imaginativeness, emotional intelligence, autonomy, and active citizenship. (shrink)

Timothy Murphy argues in his article “In Defense of Irreligious Bioethics” (2012) that the role of religion in normative bioethics should be limited and that a viable means for limiting its role (o...

Does rationality require imprecise credences? Many hold that it does: imprecise evidence requires correspondingly imprecise credences. I argue that this is false. The imprecise view faces the same arbitrariness worries that were meant to motivate it in the first place. It faces these worries because it incorporates a certain idealization. But doing away with this idealization effectively collapses the imprecise view into a particular kind of precise view. On this alternative, our attitudes should reflect a kind of normative uncertainty: uncertainty (...) about what to believe. This view refutes the claim that precise credences are inappropriately informative or committal. Some argue that indeterminate evidential support requires imprecise credences; but I argue that indeterminate evidential support instead places indeterminate requirements on credences, and is compatible with the claim that rational credences may always be precise. (shrink)

Psychiatric ethics as professional and biomedical ethics -- The distinctiveness of the psychiatric setting -- Psychiatric ethics as virtue ethics -- Elements of a gender-sensitive ethics for psychiatry -- Some virtues for psychiatrists -- Character and social role -- Case studies in psychiatric virtues.

The phenomenon of pain presents problems and puzzles for philosophers who want to understand its nature. Though pain might seem simple, there has been disagreement since Aristotle about whether pain is an emotion, sensation, perception, or disturbed state of the body. Despite advances in psychology, neuroscience, and medicine, pain is still poorly understood and multiple theories of pain abound. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Pain is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting (...) and interdisciplinary subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into nine clear parts: Modelling pain in philosophy Modelling pain in neuroscience Modelling pain in psychology Pain in philosophy of mind Pain in epistemology Pain in philosophy of religion Pain in ethics Pain in medicine Pain in law. As well as fundamental topics in the philosophy of pain such as the nature, role, and value of pain, many other important topics are covered including the neurological pathways involved in pain processing, biopsychosocial and cognitive behavioural models of pain; chronic pain; pain and non-human animals; pain and knowledge; controlled substances for pain; pain and placebo effects; and pain and physician assisted suicide. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Pain is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and ethics. It will also be very useful to researchers of pain from any field, especially those in psychology, medicine, and health studies. (shrink)

Most theories of affective influences on judgement and choice take a valence-based approach, contrasting the effects of positive versus negative feeling states. These approaches have not specified if and when distinct emotions of the same valence have different effects on judgement. In this article, we propose a model of emotion-specific influences on judgement and choice. We posit that each emotion is defined by a tendency to perceive new events and objects in ways that are consistent with the original cognitive-appraisal dimensions (...) of the emotion. To pit the valence and appraisal-tendency approaches against one another, we present a study that addresses whether two emotions of the same valence but differing appraisals—anger and fear—relate in different ways to risk perception. Consistent with the appraisal-tendency hypothesis, fearful people made pessimistic judgements of future events whereas angry people made optimistic judgements. In the Discussion we expand the proposed model and review evidence supporting two social moderators of appraisal-tendency processes. (shrink)

A dramatic shift in British and French ideas about empire unfolded in the sixty years straddling the turn of the nineteenth century. As Jennifer Pitts shows in A Turn to Empire, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Jeremy Bentham were among many at the start of this period to criticize European empires as unjust as well as politically and economically disastrous for the conquering nations. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the most prominent British and French liberal thinkers, including John Stuart (...) Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville, vigorously supported the conquest of non-European peoples. Pitts explains that this reflected a rise in civilizational self-confidence, as theories of human progress became more triumphalist, less nuanced, and less tolerant of cultural difference. At the same time, imperial expansion abroad came to be seen as a political project that might assist the emergence of stable liberal democracies within Europe. Pitts shows that liberal thinkers usually celebrated for respecting not only human equality and liberty but also pluralism supported an inegalitarian and decidedly nonhumanitarian international politics. Yet such moments represent not a necessary feature of liberal thought but a striking departure from views shared by precisely those late-eighteenth-century thinkers whom Mill and Tocqueville saw as their forebears. Fluently written, A Turn to Empire offers a novel assessment of modern political thought and international justice, and an illuminating perspective on continuing debates over empire, intervention, and liberal political commitments. (shrink)

Ethical codes have been hailed as an explicit vehicle for achieving more sustainable and defensible organizational practice. Nonetheless, when legal compliance and corporate governance codes are conflated, codes can be used to define organizational interests ostentatiously by stipulating norms for employee ethics. Such codes have a largely cosmetic and insurance function, acting subtly and strategically to control organizational risk management and protection. In this paper, we conduct a genealogical discourse analysis of a representative code of ethics from an international corporation (...) to understand how management frames expectations of compliance. Our contribution is to articulate the problems inherent in codes of ethics, and we make some recommendations to address these to benefit both an organization and its employees. In this way, we show how a code of ethics can provide a foundation for ethical sustainability, while addressing management intentions and employees’ ethical satisfaction. (shrink)

It is a remarkable thing to find oneself suddenly surprised by an author after having spent years analysing, interpreting, and teaching their works. And yet, that is precisely the experience of many Kant specialists in recent times, as greater attention than ever has been placed on Kant’s discussions of gender and race. Part of the disorientation for Kantians surely comes from the way in which these investigations—oriented as they are by questions of empire as opposed to say, metaphysics—are able to (...) make a body of work that has been long-familiar seem strange and new. It is in this vein that I want to use my discussion here as an opportunity to reconsider one of Kant’s most familiar texts, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in order to focus on the case of moral failure presented by the person who has chosen an easy path in life: one who has ‘seine Talente verrosten ließ’ (4:423; let their talents rust, 75), to use Kant’s phrase.1 With this in focus, I will identify four subsequent counter examples offered up by Kant, each meant to offer specific cases of non-Europeans in a manner that can provide further moral instruction on this point. What this approach should reveal is not only Kant’s unsurprising consistency regarding the need for self-improvement, but also the compatibility he evidently saw between engaging his readers in moral guidance, on the one hand, and identifying non-European others as counterexamples of a morally worthless existence, on the other. (shrink)

This book employs contemporary philosophy, scientific research, and clinical reports to argue that pain, though real, is not an appropriate object of scientific generalisations or an appropriate target for medical intervention. Each pain experience is instead complex and idiosyncratic in a way which undermines scientific utility. In addition to contributing novel arguments and developing a novel position on the nature of pain, the book provides an interdisciplinary overview of dominant models of pain. The author lays the needed groundwork for improved (...) models and targeted treatments at a time when pain science, pain medicine, and philosophy are explicitly searching for both and failing to find them. The Complex Reality of Pain will be of interest to a broad range of researchers and students, including those working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, cognitive science, neuroscience, medicine, health, cognitive and behavioural psychology, and pain science. (shrink)