Research involving recently deceased humans that are physiologically maintained following declaration of death by neurologic criteria—or ‘research involving the recently deceased’—can fill a translational research gap while reducing harm to animals and living human subjects. It also creates new challenges for honouring the donor’s legacy, respecting the rights of donor loved ones, resource allocation and public health. As this research model gains traction, new empirical ethics questions must be answered to preserve public trust in all forms of tissue donation and (...) in the practice of medicine while respecting the legacy of the deceased and the rights of donor loved ones. This article suggests several topics for immediate investigation to understand the attitudes and experiences of researchers, clinical collaborators, donor loved ones and the public to ensure research involving the recently deceased advances ethically. (shrink)

ObjectiveParenting sensitivity and mutual parent-child attunement are key features of environments that support children’s learning and development. To-date, observational measures of these constructs have focused on children aged 2–6 years and are less relevant to the more sophisticated developmental skills of children aged 7–8 years, despite parenting being equally important at these ages. We undertook a rigorous process to adapt an existing observational measure for 7–8-year-old children and their parents. This paper aimed to: describe a protocol for adapting an existing (...) framework for rating parent-child interactions, determine variations in parents’ sensitive responding and parent-child mutual attunement by family demographics, and evaluate the psychometric properties of the newly developed measure.MethodParent-child dyads completed one home visit, including a free-play observation and parent questionnaire. Dyads were provided with three toy sets: LEGO® Classic Box, Classic Jenga®, and animal cards. The Coding of Attachment-Related Parenting was adapted for use with 7–8-year-old children, and rating procedures were streamlined for reliable use by non-clinician/student raters, producing the SCARP:7–8 Years. Trained staff rated video-recorded observations on 11 behaviors across two domains.ResultsData were available for 596 dyads. Consistently strong inter-rater agreement on the 11 observed behaviors was achieved across the 10-week rating period. Average ICCs were 0.77 for sensitive responding and 0.84 for positive mutuality. These domains were found to be related but distinct constructs. For both domains, average ratings were strongly associated with the main toy used during the observation. Adjusted multivariate linear regression models revealed that less sensitive responding was associated with younger parent, male parent, non-English speaking background, and greater neighborhood disadvantage. Construct validity was demonstrated using six parent-reported psychosocial and parenting measures.ConclusionThe SCARP: 7–8 Years shows promise as a reliable and valid measure of parent-child interaction in the early school years. Toy selection for direct observation should be considered carefully in research and practice settings. (shrink)

BackgroundAn increasing number of studies utilize intracranial electrophysiology in human subjects to advance basic neuroscience knowledge. However, the use of neurosurgical patients as human research subjects raises important ethical considerations, particularly regarding informed consent and undue influence, as well as subjects’ motivations for participation. Yet a thorough empirical examination of these issues in a participant population has been lacking. The present study therefore aimed to empirically investigate ethical concerns regarding informed consent and voluntariness in Parkinson’s disease patients undergoing deep brain (...) stimulator (DBS) placement who participated in an intraoperative neuroscience study.MethodsTwo semi-structured 30-minute interviews were conducted preoperatively and postoperatively via telephone. Interviews assessed participants’ motivations for participation in the parent intraoperative study, recall of information presented during the informed consent process, and participants’ postoperative reflections on the research study.ResultsTwenty-two participants (mean age = 60.9) completed preoperative interviews at a mean of 7.8 days following informed consent and a mean of 5.2 days prior to DBS surgery. Twenty participants completed postoperative interviews at a mean of 5 weeks following surgery. All participants cited altruism or advancing medical science as “very important” or “important” in their decision to participate in the study. Only 22.7% (n = 5) correctly recalled one of the two risks of the study. Correct recall of other aspects of the informed consent was poor (36.4% for study purpose; 50.0% for study protocol; 36.4% for study benefits). All correctly understood that the study would not confer a direct therapeutic benefit to them.ConclusionEven though research coordinators were properly trained and the informed consent was administered according to protocol, participants demonstrated poor retention of study information. While intraoperative studies that aim to advance neuroscience knowledge represent a unique opportunity to gain fundamental scientific knowledge, improved standards for the informed consent process can help facilitate their ethical implementation. (shrink)

Many parents are hesitant about, or face motivational barriers to, vaccinating their children. In this paper, we propose a type of vaccination policy that could be implemented either in addition to coercive vaccination or as an alternative to it in order to increase paediatric vaccination uptake in a non-coercive way. We propose the use of vaccination nudges that exploit the very same decision biases that often undermine vaccination uptake. In particular, we propose a policy under which children would be vaccinated (...) at school or day-care by default, without requiring parental authorization, but with parents retaining the right to opt their children out of vaccination. We show that such a policy is likely to be effective, at least in cases in which non-vaccination is due to practical obstacles, rather than to strong beliefs about vaccines, ethically acceptable and less controversial than some alternatives because it is not coercive and affects individual autonomy only in a morally unproblematic way, and likely to receive support from the UK public, on the basis of original empirical research we have conducted on the lay public. (shrink)

It may soon be possible to develop pills that allow parents to induce in themselves more loving behaviour, attitudes and emotions towards their children. In this paper, I consider whether pharmacologically induced parental love can satisfy reasonable conditions of authenticity; why anyone would be interested in taking such parental love pills at all, and whether inducing parental love pharmacologically promotes narcissism or results in self-instrumentalization. I also examine how the availability of such pills may (...) affect the duty to love a child. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the relationship between a parent and a child is objectively valuable, but few believe that there is any objective value in first creating a child in order to parent her. But if it is indeed true that all of the objective value of procreative-parenting comes from parenting, then it is hard to see how procreative-parenting can overcome two particularly pressing philosophical challenges. A first challenge is to show that it is morally permissible for prospective parents to (...) procreate given that adoption takes us much closer to both environmental and social justice. A second challenge is to show that it is morally permissible for biological parents to parent their biological child given that other prospective parents are willing and able to do a much better job at furthering the child's interests. In this essay, I argue that there is value in procreative-parenting, and that this value is of sufficient magnitude so as to block both the case against procreation and the case in favour of child re-distribution. (shrink)

In my paper “Parental Love and the Ethics of Sex Selection,” published in the previous issue of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, I set out to determine whether a plausible argument could be constructed in support of a common intuition about the ethics of sex selection. The intuition in question is that sex selection for nonmedical reasons is incompatible with a proper parental love: that is, with the sort of love that a parent ought (...) to have for her child or, equivalently, with the sort of love that someone accurately describable as a good parent will have for her child. I concluded that there is a prima facie compelling argument that fits the bill, though I did little more than introduce and set that argument out. In the current paper, my aim will be to subject it to closer scrutiny, by considering a number of possible objections to it. I will start by asking why the argument should be thought to apply only to sex selection for nonmedical reasons and not to cases in which selection is employed in order to prevent the birth of children with serious sex-linked genetic conditions. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that parents have a fundamental moral obligation to consider and treat their children as each other’s equals. Yet the question of what grounds the equality of status among children in the eyes of their parents has so far been largely neglected in the literature on the philosophy of childhood and the ethics of parenthood. This paper fills this gap by developing a novel theory of the basis of filial equality: it argues that parents ought to consider (...) and treat their children as equals by virtue of loving them. Parental love is the basis of filial equality. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that children who were selected for particular traits or genetically enhanced might feel, for this reason, less securely, spontaneously and fairly loved by their parents, which would constitute significant harm. ‘Parents’ refers, throughout this chapter, to the people who perform the social function of rearing children, rather than to procreators. I rely on an understanding of adequate parental love which includes several characteristics: parents should not make children feel they are loved conditionally, for (...) features such as intelligence, looks or temperament; they should not burden children with parental expectations concerning particular achievements of the child; and parental love is often expressed in spontaneous enjoyment and discovery of children’s features. This understanding of parental love provides a reason to question the legitimacy of parental use of selection and enhancement and to explain why parents should not engage on a quest for the ‘best child’. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to explore the forcefulness of the adoption challenge to procreative parenting. After framing the challenge, I consider two of the most developed attempts to respond to it, due to Luara Ferracioli and Elizabeth Brake. I argue that neither strategy is a promising way to vindicate the permissibility of procreative parenting. I then present several reasons to value procreative parenting that are underappreciated in the recent literature. Though these considerations deserve more philosophical attention, I’m (...) agnostic about whether they are strong enough to overcome the adoption challenge. I explain why this agnosticism is reasonable, and the debate about permissibility arguably intractable, in the context of prevailing deontological assumptions structuring discussions of procreation. I conclude by arguing that an independently interesting metaethical thesis, which I call deontic fictionalism, may give us some perspective on this debate and others like it. (shrink)

In my paper “Parental Love and the Ethics of Sex Selection,” published in the previous issue of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, I set out to determine whether a plausible argument could be constructed in support of a common intuition about the ethics of sex selection. The intuition in question is that sex selection for nonmedical reasons is incompatible with a proper parental love: that is, with the sort of love that a parent ought (...) to have for her child or, equivalently, with the sort of love that someone accurately describable as a good parent will have for her child. I concluded that there is a prima facie compelling argument that fits the bill, though I did little more than introduce and set that argument out. In the current paper, my aim will be to subject it to closer scrutiny, by considering a number of possible objections to it. I will start by asking why the argument should be thought to apply only to sex selection for nonmedical reasons and not to cases in which selection is employed in order to prevent the birth of children with serious sex-linked genetic conditions. (shrink)

In 2003, the United Kingdom's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published a report entitled Sex Selection: Options for Regulation. The report outlined the findings of a 2-year review of available sex selection techniques and recommended that the United Kingdom ought not to permit any regulated technique to be used other than for medical reasons. In so doing, it reflected the widespread opinion—repeatedly expressed in the public consultations that formed the cornerstone of the HFEA's review—that there is something ethically unacceptable, or (...) at least ethically suspect, about sex selection for nonmedical, or “social,” reasons. (shrink)

For now, the best way to select a child's genes is to select a potential child who has those genes, using genetic testing and either selective abortion, sperm and egg donors, or selecting embryos for implantation. Some people even wish to select against genes that are only mildly undesirable, or to select for superior genes. I call this selection drift– the standard for acceptable children is creeping upwards. The President's Council on Bioethics and others have raised the parental (...) class='Hi'>love objection: Just as we should love existing children unconditionally, so we should unconditionally accept whatever child we get in the natural course of things. If we set conditions on which child we get, we are setting conditions on our love for whatever child we get. Although this objection was prompted by selection drift, it also seems to cover selecting against genes for severe impairments. I argue that selection drift is not inconsistent with the ideal of unconditional parental love and, moreover, that the latter actually implies that we should practise selection drift – in other words, we should try to select potential children with the best genetic endowments. My endowment argument for the second claim works from an analogy between arranging an endowment prior to conception to fund a future child's education, and arranging a genetic endowment by selecting a potential child who already has it, where in both cases the child would not have existed without the endowment. I conclude with some programmatic remarks about the nonidentity problem. (shrink)

This paper outlines the full details of Lucretius’ treatment of parental love. It shows that Lucretius is faithful to Epicurus’ notorious claim that parental love is not natural: in addition to orthodox Epicurean hedonist concerns, Lucretius asserts that children do not “belong to” their parents by nature; as such, even though parental love is now ubiquitous and indeed a cultural norm, there is no basis for the naturalness of parental love. This model (...) of the relationship between parents and children does not, however, apply in the case of certain animals, who do have natural parental love for their offspring. Focusing on two famous scenes, the sacrifice of Iphigenia and the forlorn heifer seeking her sacrificed calf, the paper argues that by highlighting the fragility of human parental love in comparison to that of the animals Lucretius brings to his Roman readers’ attention the relative weakness of the familial ties that bond human beings together, and at the same time he emphasizes the need to maintain them if social and political concord, with all its benefits, is to continue. It transpires that unlocking the details of Lucretius’ treatment of parental love brings a key lesson of the poem into clearer focus. (shrink)

Epicurus denies that human beings have natural parental love for their children, and his account of the development of justice and human political community does not involve any natural affinity between human beings in general but rather a form of social contract. The Stoics to the contrary assert that parental love is natural; and, moreover, they maintain that natural parental love is the first principle of social οἰκείωσις, which provides the basis for the naturalness (...) of justice and human political community. The Stoics are, therefore, obliged to refute Epicurus’ denial of the naturalness of parental love in order to support their own theory of social οἰκείωσις; and we have good evidence for the arguments that they employed against the Epicureans on this account. Likewise, the Epicureans are obliged not only to defend their own position but also to undermine the competing Stoic theory of social οἰκείωσις; and the foundational premise of a natural bond between parent and child is an obvious target. However, beyond dogmatically restating Epicurus’ denial of natural parental love, the evidence for the Epicurean line of attack against the Stoics is currently unclear. In this paper I argue that we can go some way towards uncovering it via an analysis of some fragmentary passages from an unidentified work of the Epicurean Demetrius of Laconia that contain a puzzling discussion of Epicurus’ stance on parental love. (shrink)

That our ecological future appears grave can no longer come as any surprise. And yet we have so far failed, collectively and individually, to begin the kind of action necessary to shift our path away from catastrophic climate collapse. -/- In this stark and startling little book, Rupert Read helps us to understand the direness of our predicament while showing us a metaphor and a method — a way of thinking — by which we might transform it. From the relatively (...) uncontroversial starting point that we love our own children, we are introduced to a logic of care that iterates far into the future: in caring for our own children, we are committed to caring for the whole of human future; in caring for the whole of human future, we are committed to caring for the future of the natural world. Out of such thinking, hope emerges. -/- As Read demonstrates in this urgent call to action, accepting that we care for our own offspring commits us to a struggle on behalf of us all. (shrink)

In this chapter I critique the contemporary Western ideal of unconditional maternal love. In the first section, I draw some preliminary distinctions and clarify the scope and limitations of my inquiry. In the second section, I argue that unloving mothers exist, and are not psychologically abnormal. In the third section, I go further and suggest that lack of maternal love can be fitting and even morally permissible. In the fourth section, I sketch some implications that lack of maternal (...) love and unrequited filial love have for the debate on reasons for love. I conclude with avenues for future research. (shrink)

I develop a model of love or care between children and their parents guided by experiences of parents, especially mothers, with disabilities. On this model, a caring relationship requires both parties to be aware of each other as a particular person and it requires reciprocity. This does not mean that children need to be able to articulate their interests, or that they need to be self-reflectively aware of their parents’ interests or personhood. Instead, parents and children manifest their understanding (...) of one another as unique, irreplaceable individuals, with identifiable needs and interests through their interactions with one another. (shrink)

A crucial part of William Rowe’s evidential argument from evil implies that God, like a loving parent, would ensure that every suffering person would be aware of his comforting presence. Rowe’s use of the “loving parent” analogy however fails to survive scrutiny as it implies that God maximally loves all persons. It is the argument of this paper that no one could maximally love every person; and whatever variation there is in the divine love undercuts the claim that (...) every suffering person would be aware of the divine presence. (shrink)

The author observes that Plato's Republic and Job have a common premise, namely the extremely unjust treatment of a just person to prove that the person is just, proceeding with a close comparative commentary on both works.

Plato’s Lysis has generated a range of scholarly responses, both with respect to its philosophical content and whether its aporetic conclusion— that what is philon is “neither those who are loved nor those who love, nor those who are like nor those who are unlike, nor those who are good, nor those who are akin (oi oikeioi), nor any of the others we have gone through” (222e3-5)—is genuine or masks a doctrinal resolution available within the text. In a series (...) of papers on the Lysis, Francisco Gonzalez has presented an historically and philologically sophisticated interpretation which claims that in the Lysis, Socrates replaces traditional notions of “kinship” (or what is oikeion) with a philosophical kinship grounded in wisdom, one which ultimately undermines the filial bond between parents and children. I argue that Gonzalez’s interpretation cannot account for the numerous instances of non-philosophical friendships in the dialogue and thus succumbs to the danger of ascribing closure to a dialogue whose aporia is ultimately genuine. In my conclusion, I probe whether this critique poses problems for “Third Way” interpretations of Plato’s dialogues. (shrink)

Research exploring the needs of families of childhood cancer survivors is critical to improving the experiences of future families faced by this disease. However, there are numerous challenges in conducting research with this unique population, including a relatively high mortality rate. In recognition that research with cancer survivors is a relational activity, this article presents a series of cases of parents bereaved by childhood cancer who unintentionally received invitations to participate in survivorship research. We explore six ethical considerations, and compare (...) our experiences with that described previously. Our considerations include the sharing of confidential information with external parties to confirm past patients’ vital status and appropriate researcher responses to bereaved parents. The management of researchers’ emotional safety when working with illness populations and the fact that study invitations can elicit grief responses in non-bereaved families are discussed. To conclude, we argue for the benefits of inviting bereaved parents whose children died after treatment completion in survivorship research. Such parents’ early survivorship experiences will otherwise be systemically neglected. We argue that discussing complex cases can assist researchers to protect participants’ and researchers’ emotional well-being. We hope to contribute to the dearth of discussion about research operating procedures to address these issues. (shrink)

In a recent Inquiry article Louis Pascal argues that the problem of massive starvation in the modern world is the result of a genetically-based human propensity to produce as many offspring as possible, regardless of ecological conditions. In this paper biological and anthropological objections to Pascal's thesis are discussed as well as the conclusions he draws from it. It is suggested that natural selection has produced humans who are flexible in their reproductive behavior in order to cope with rapidly changing (...) environments. The implications of both arguments for the population movement and the attempt to eliminate starvation are discussed. (shrink)

While parents have long received guidance on how to raise children, a relatively new element of this involves explicit references to infant brain development, drawing on brain scans and neuroscientific knowledge. Sometimes called ‘brain-based parenting’, this has been criticised from within sociological and policy circles alike. However, the engagement of parents themselves with neuroscientific concepts is far less researched. Drawing on 22 interviews with parents/carers of children living in Scotland, this article examines how they account for their use of concepts (...) and understandings relating to neuroscience. Three normative tropes were salient: information about children’s processing speed, evidence about deprived Romanian orphans in the 1990s, and ideas relating to whether or not children should ‘self-settle’ when falling asleep. We interrogate how parents reflexively weigh and judge such understandings and ideas. In some cases, neuroscientific knowledge was enrolled by parents in ways that supported biologically reductionist models of childhood agency. This reductionism commonly had generative effects, enjoining new care practices and producing particular parent and infant subjectivities. Notably, parents do not uncritically adopt or accept neurobiological and/or psychological knowledge; rather, they reflect on whether and when it is applicable to and relevant for raising their children. Thus, our respondents draw on everyday epistemologies of parenting to negotiate brain-based understandings of infant development and behaviour, and invest meaning in these in ways that cannot be fully anticipated within straightforward celebrations or critiques of the content of parenting programmes drawing on neuropsychological ideas. (shrink)

This book examines the negative power that child maltreatment has on individuals and society ethically and politically, while analyzing the positive power that parental love and healthy families have. To address how best to confront the problem of child maltreatment, it examines several policy options, ultimately defending a policy of licensing parents, while carefully examining the tension between child and adult rights and duties.

For both John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum, the concept of love plays a significant role in moral psychology. Rawls views the sense of justice as grounded in parental love, and continuous with love of mankind. Nussbaum’s recent defence of patriotism revives the emotio n of love as essential for political contexts. I argue that love ought to play a substantial part in the shaping of global politics, and that a moral psychology of love (...) based merely on a combination of Rawls’s and Nussbaum’s accounts fails to produce an ad equate ground for conceptualizing moral motivation with respect to addressing transnational concerns of justice. I contend that by critically synthesizing Rawls’s and Nussbaum’s conceptions of love and moral psychology with resources from Kant’s ethics, it is possible to develop a more attractive, and potentially politically effective, conception of love of human beings in the framework of political liberalism. (shrink)

This book is a collage of ideas designed for eighth through twelfth grade students and their parents to have better relationships with one another and with the entire school community, to help and support their communities in different ways, and to appreciate the value of the experiences offered within and outside their communities.

Prospective parents are sometimes partial towards their future children, engaging in what I call ‘pre-parental partiality’. Common sense morality is as permissive of pre-parental partiality as it is of ordinary parental partiality—partiality towards one’s existing children. But I argue that existing justifications for partiality typically establish weaker reasons in support of pre-parental partiality than in support of parental partiality. Thus, either these existing justifications do not fully account for our reasons of parental partiality, or (...) our reasons to engage in pre-parental partiality are indeed typically weaker than our reasons to engage in parental partiality. (shrink)

Three claims about love and justice cannot be simultaneously true and therefore entail a paradox: (1) Love is a matter of justice. (2) There cannot be a duty to love. (3) All matters of justice are matters of duty. The first claim is more controversial. To defend it, I show why the extent to which we enjoy the good of love is relevant to distributive justice. To defend (2) I explain the empirical, conceptual and axiological arguments (...) in its favour. Although (3) is the most generally endorsed claim of the three, I conclude we should reject it in order to avoid the paradox. (shrink)

This discussion responds to two recent articles defending a child-centered view of parenting. Anca Gheaus and James Dwyer argue that children should be reared by the best available parent, who, in turn, should make choices based only on children’s welfare. They claim that love and respect require this fiduciary stance. However, love and respect do not justify child-centered norms. If children were competent, they would embrace norms that accommodate parental interests because they benefit from nonfiduciary rules, are (...) grateful to their parents, and reject discrimination produced by child-centered principles. Furthermore, child-centered accounts imply unreasonably broad obligations to children. (shrink)

At first glance, love seems to be a psychological state for which there are normative reasons: a state that, if all goes well, is an appropriate or fitting response to something independent of itself. Love for one’s parent, child, or friend is fitting, one wants to say, if anything is. On reflection, however, it is elusive what reasons for love might be. It is natural to assume that they would be nonrelational features of the person one loves, (...) something about her in her own right. According to the “quality theory,” for example, reasons for love are the beloved’s personal attributes, such as her wit and beauty. In J. David Velleman’s provocative and ingeniously argued proposal, the reason for love is the beloved’s bare Kantian personhood, her capacity for rational choice and valuation.1 But no such nonrelational feature works. To appreciate just one difficulty, observe that whatever nonrelational feature one selects as the reason for love will be one that another person could, or actually does, possess. The claim that nonrelational features are reasons for love implies, absurdly, that insofar as one’s love for Jane is responsive to its reasons, it will accept any relevantly similar person as a replacement. (shrink)

What is love? Is it an uncontrollable emotion? Is it, instead, socially shaped, both an emotion and a social practice? Can the bonds of care and affection between humans and non-human animals be said to be on a par with parent-child relationships between humans? Do parents owe love to their children – and do mothers and fathers, respectively, owe it to different degrees? Do subversive weddings challenge normative ideals about love? What is the significance of love (...) for the value of close personal or family relationships? All these questions and more are discussed in the articles included in this special issue. The contributors draw from a variety of disciplines including philosophy, sociology, political science, religious studies, and history, as well as from empirical work that they have undertaken in Canada, Belgium, Portugal, or Romania. From these different perspectives and experiences, each contribution addresses important questions about love and its relation to sexuality, monogamy, friendship, the family, parenthood, or society in general. (shrink)

At first glance, love seems to be a psychological state for which there are normative reasons: a state that, if all goes well, is an appropriate or fitting response to something independent of itself. Love for one’s parent, child, or friend is fitting, one wants to say, if anything is. On reflection, however, it is elusive what reasons for love might be. It is natural to assume that they would be nonrelational features of the person one loves, (...) something about her in her own right. According to the “quality theory,” for example, reasons for love are the beloved’s personal attributes, such as her wit and beauty. In J. David Velleman’s provocative and ingeniously argued proposal, the reason for love is the beloved’s bare Kantian personhood, her capacity for rational choice and valuation. But no such nonrelational feature works. To appreciate just one difficulty, observe that whatever nonrelational feature one selects as the reason for love will be one that another person could, or actually does, possess. The claim that nonrelational features are reasons for love implies, absurdly, that insofar as one’s love for Jane is responsive to its reasons, it will accept any relevantly similar person as a replacement. (shrink)

This collection of original essays, written by scholars from disciplines across the humanities, addresses a wide range of questions about love through a focus on individual films, novels, plays, and works of philosophy. The essays touch on many varieties of love, including friendship, romantic love, parental love, and even the love of an author for her characters. How do social forces shape the types of love that can flourish and sustain themselves? What is (...) the relationship between love and passion? Is love between human and nonhuman animals possible? What is the role of projection in love? These questions and more are explored through an investigation of works by authors ranging from Henrik Ibsen to Ian McEwan, from Rousseau to the Coen Brothers. (shrink)

Japan is the world’s largest producer of love simulation games, revealing a curious feature: these games, in theory, assign female players to the unique task of seducing a male character, but, in reality, they promote the establishment of a network of friendship between women. Love cannot be achieved if this network is not carefully woven both in play and in real life. Based on the analysis of this double dynamics, outwardly contradictory, I would like to advance the following (...) hypothesis: that such games enable their users to ‘outsmart’ gender expectations. These games, called otome games, became popular in the context of a national panic related to the declining birthrate: they target the market of women who – living alone or with their parents – are held responsible for the future shortfall of the system. These new generations of women don’t start a family. They have no children. How do they manage to ward off exclusion and stigma? The study will focus on the strategies collectively devised to turn otome games into an identity-building tool, promoting friendship between players as a means of resistance against social norms. (shrink)

Is the wish to be biologically related to your children legitimate? Here, I respond to an argument in support of a negative answer to this question according to which a preference towards having children one is biologically related to is analogous to a preference towards associating with members of one’s own race. I reject this analogy, mainly on the grounds that only the latter constitutes discrimination; still, I conclude that indeed a preference towards children one is biologically related to is (...) morally illegitimate because, in the context of parental love, biological considerations are normatively irrelevant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 30.2 (2006) 450-470 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Romantic Love: A Literary Universal?Jonathan Gottschall Washington and Jefferson College (JG)Marcus Nordlund * Göteborg University (MN)ITo love someone romantically is—at least according to innumerable literary works, much received wisdom, and even a gradually coalescing academic consensus—to experience a strong desire for union with someone who is deemed entirely unique. It is to idealize this person, to think (...) constantly about him or her, and to discover that one's own life priorities have changed dramatically. It is to care deeply for that person's well-being and to feel pain or emptiness when he or she is absent.But is this intense emotional experience a universal experience, something that is characteristically and quintessentially human, or is it merely a sociocultural construct that belongs to a particular time and place? On this point there is less agreement, both within and between different academic disciplines. The audacious question we want to raise in the pages that follow is whether literature—or more specifically, a large-scale, multiple-coder content analysis of thousands of folk tales drawn from different parts of the planet—can contribute something to this difficult question about love, culture, and human nature.Let us first look briefly at the theoretical problem that we aim to address. A widespread view among literary scholars and social scientists over the last decades has been that romantic love is a social construction specific to Western culture. This is part of a relentless skepticism [End Page 450] toward assumptions that important categories of human psychology and emotion—romantic and parental love, gender, sexual orientation, and so on—are "natural" rather than constructed. This position is often, if not always, linked to an ideological concern to demystify (or at least problematize) what is perceived as an essentially destructive or oppressive emotion or belief. Taking her cue from Simone de Beauvoir, Marilyn Friedman gives no less than ten reasons why it may be problematic for women to fall in love with men. 1Of course, no argument of any kind can be strictly ideological in nature since it always involves empirical assumptions—either explicit or implicit—about the nature of things. For example, the psychoanalyst E. S. Persons opines that the "best evidence that romantic love is not hard-wired into the emotional repertoire of humanity but is a cultural construct is the fact that there are so many cultures in which it is virtually absent." 2 Another frequent argument for love's constructedness has been that "there is no definition that describes love throughout the ages or across cultures." 3In some literary-critical accounts, it is even argued that romantic love is a cultural invention that can be traced back with precision to the courtly troubadour culture of twelfth-century France. 4 According to yet another school, represented by the influential literary theorist Jonathan Culler, "the notion of romantic love (and its centrality to the lives of individuals) is arguably a massive literary creation." 5While the social constructivist position on romantic love typically involves a strong commitment to cultural specificity, a weaker version is held even by some cognitive theorists who grant more to biology and panhuman traits. From the perspective of their communicative theory of emotion, Philip Johnson-Laird and Keith Oatley argue that the "components [of romantic love] exist separately in different societies, but their integration into a recognizable complex is a cultural accomplishment [by the West]." 6At the other end of the romantic love continuum we find those who argue that this emotion belongs to a universal human nature: or, more specifically, that it can be attributed to specialised neural circuits whose ultimate purpose is to enhance reproductive success. Not surprisingly, this has been a favorite position among evolutionary psychologists, and it has recently received some support from neuroscientific studies.For example, the neuroscientists Andreas Bartels and Samir Zeki claim to have uncovered a "functionally specialised system" that lights up in fMRI (magnetic resonance) scans of brains whose owners claim to... (shrink)

How is love different from lust or infatuation? Do love and marriage really go together “like a horse and carriage”? Does sex have any necessary connection to either? And how important are love, sex, and marriage to a well-lived life? In this lively, lucid, and comprehensive textbook, Raja Halwani pursues the philosophical questions inherent in these three important aspects of human relationships, exploring the nature, uses, and ethics of romantic love, sexuality, and marriage. The book is (...) structured in three parts: _Love_ begins by examining how romantic love differs from other types of love, such as friendship and parental love. It asks which properties of love are essential, whether people have a choice in whom they love, and whether lovers have moral obligations to one another that differ from those they owe to others _Sex_ demonstrates the difficulty in defining sex and the sexual, and examines what constitutes good and bad sex in terms of pleasure, 'naturalness', and moral permissibility. It offers theoretical and applied ethical approaches to a wide range of sexual phenomena _Marriage_ traces the history of the institution, and describes the various forms in which marriage exists and the reasons why people marry. It also surveys accounts of why people should or should not marry, and introduces the main arguments for and against gay marriage. Features include: suggestions for further reading online eResource site with dowloadable discussion questions a clear, jargon-free writing style. (shrink)

Bleiman and Boisen offer a simple yet profound perceptual framework designed to lead us back to dominion -- the state where we feel balanced, connected and in harmony with ourselves and the world. People from all walks of life, from parents and teachers to couples and corporate executives, will find this a powerful tool for effecting change at the personal and global level.

Is moral responsibility compatible with determinism? Peter Strawson’s first answer is: I do not know what the thesis of determinism is. His second answer seems to be: Yes, it is, and we can see this by looking to relevant pockets of our ordinary practices and attitudes, especially our responses (resentment, anger, love, forgiveness) to quality of will. His second answer has shaped subsequent discussions of moral responsibility. But what exactly is Strawson’s compatibilism? And is it a plausible view? By (...) attending to Strawson’s account of parenting and the development of moral agents from children to adults, I’ll clarify and defend the following account: For Strawson, the appropriateness conditions for holding responsible change by degrees, over time, based on an agent’s susceptibility to empathy and quality of will, and this shows us that determinism is irrelevant to responsibility. (shrink)