Why equality cannot be conditional on a shared human “nature” but has to be for all For centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. But appeals to natural equality invited gradations of natural difference, and the ambiguity at the heart of “nature” enabled generations to write of people as equal by nature while barely noticing the exclusion of those marked as inferior by their gender, race, (...) or class. Despite what we commonly tell ourselves, these exclusions and gradations continue today. In Unconditional Equals, political philosopher Anne Phillips challenges attempts to justify equality by reference to a shared human nature, arguing that justification turns into conditions and ends up as exclusion. Rejecting the logic of justification, she calls instead for a genuinely unconditional equality. Drawing on political, feminist, and postcolonial theory, Unconditional Equals argues that we should understand equality not as something grounded in shared characteristics but as something people enact when they refuse to be considered inferiors. At a time when the supposedly shared belief in human equality is so patently not shared, the book makes a powerful case for seeing equality as a commitment we make to ourselves and others, and a claim we make on others when they deny us our status as equals. (shrink)

School-based education in England has undergone significant changes since 2010, with a huge expansion of academies, schools outside local authority control, funded directly by central government. Academies and local authority (LA) maintained schools are subject to different legislative and regulatory frameworks. This paper focuses on the governance of LA maintained schools, single academy trusts (SATs) and schools that are part of multi-academy trusts (MATs). The research involved analysing legislative provision, policy documents, and documents addressing the governance arrangements of a sample (...) of 23 secondary schools. Our findings reveal a fragmented state-funded secondary school system as regards overall governance, school admissions, the curriculum, and the use of funding. Significantly schools in MATs, which are governed by the trust board, lack the autonomy of either SATs or maintained schools and are instead under the ultimate control of the trust board. The paper argues that there is a need for greater consistency regarding the governance of state-funded schools. (shrink)

Much attention in philosophy of religion has been devoted to the question of whether faith is epistemically rational. But is it morally and practically permissible? This paper explores a response to a family of arguments that Christian faith is morally impermissible or practically irrational, even if epistemically justified. After articulating the arguments, I consider how they would fare if they took seriously the traditional notion that genuine faith is always accompanied by Christian hope. I show how the norms of hope (...) regulate Christian faith in such a way that it does not involve, and certainly does not entail, the morally and practically problematic attitudes and behaviors with which it is associated. (shrink)

The environmental crisis is the most prominent challenge humanity has ever had to battle with, and humanity is currently failing. The Anthropocene—or so called ‘age of humans’—is indeed a period when the survival of humanity has never been so much at risk. This book locates itself in the field of critical green political theory. Fremaux's analysis of the current environmental crisis calls for us to embrace radical shifts in our modes of being; or, in other words, socially progressive innovations that (...) will be described within the unique framework of "Green Republicanism." In offering a constructive and emancipatory delineation of what could be considered an ecological civilization that is respectful of its natural environment and social differences, this book describes how to shift from an ‘arrogant speciesism’ and materialistic lifestyle to a post-anthropocentric ecological humanism focusing on the ‘good life’ within ecological limits. This new political regime calls for a radical reinvention of our societies, a decentering of the humans within our metaphysical worldview, and a withdrawal of the capitalist technosphere at the benefit of the biosphere. It will require a new economic paradigm that replaces the unsustainable capitalist logic of growth by sustainable degrowth and steady economics. Rooted in ethical thinking and political philosophy, this book seeks to offer a concrete roadmap of how sustainable societies can be fostered. (shrink)

I distinguish between the classical Gricean approach to conversational implicatures , which I call the action-theoretic approach, and the approach to CIs taken in contemporary cognitive science. Once we free ourselves from the AT account, and see implicating as a form of what I call “conversational tailoring”, we can more easily see the many different ways that CIs arise in conversation. I will show that they arise not only on the basis of a speaker’s utterance of complete sentences but also (...) on the basis of sub-sentential clauses—cases of so-called embedded implicatures—as well as from discourse segments containing several sentences—cases that Geurts calls ‘multiplicatures’. I will argue that they arise also from contents that are themselves implicit, such as presupposed contents or other implicatures. All but the first sort of case are difficult for the traditional Gricean AT account to handle, whereas they fall naturally out of an account that sees conversational participants as engaged in conversational tailoring—i.e., as engaged in a process of shaping informational and discourse structural properties of utterances in their successive conversational turns, and hence shaping their interlocutors’ cognitive environments. (shrink)

Bishop is a professor of nursing; Scudder is a professor of philosophy.

Background:Acting ethically, in accordance with professional and personal moral values, lies at the heart of nursing practice. However, contextual factors, or obstacles within the work environment, can constrain nurses in their ethical practice – hence the importance of the workplace ethical climate. Interest in nurse workplace ethical climates has snowballed in recent years because the ethical climate has emerged as a key variable in the experience of nurse moral distress. Significantly, this study appears to be the first of its kind (...) carried out in New Zealand.Aim/objective:The purpose of this study was to explore and describe how registered nurses working on a medical ward in a New Zealand hospital perceive their workplace ethical climate.Research design/participants/context:This was a small, qualitative descriptive study. Seven registered nurses were interviewed in two focus group meetings. An inductive method of thematic data analysis was used for this research.Ethical considerations:Ethics approval for this study was granted by the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s Central Regional Health and Disability Ethics Committee on 14 June 2012.Findings:The themes identified in the data centred on three dominant elements that – together – shaped the prevailing ethical climate: staffing levels, patient throughput and the attitude of some managers towards nursing staff.Discussion:While findings from this study regarding staffing levels and the power dynamics between nurses and managers support those from other ethical climate studies, of note is the impact of patient throughput on local nurses’ ethical practice. This issue has not been singled out as having a detrimental influence on ethical climates elsewhere.Conclusion:Moral distress is inevitable in an ethical climate where the organisation’s main priorities are perceived by nursing staff to be budget and patient throughput, rather than patient safety and care. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore the conditions for nurses' daily patient education work by focusing on managers' way of speaking about the patient education provided by nurses in hospital care. An explorative, qualitative design with a social constructionist perspective was used. Data were collected from three focus group interviews and analysed by means of critical discourse analysis. Discursive practice can be explained by the ideology of hegemony. Due to a heavy workload and lack of time, managers could ‘see’ neither their (...) role as a supporter of the patient education provided by nurses, nor their role in the development of nurses' pedagogical competence. They used organisational, financial, medical and legal reasons for explaining their failure to support nurses' provision of patient education. The organisational discourse was an umbrella term for ‘things’ such as cost‐effectiveness, which were prioritised over patient education. There is a need to remove managerial barriers to the professional development of nurses' patient education. Managers should be responsible for ensuring and overseeing that nurses have the prerequisites necessary for providing patient education as well as for enabling continuous reflective dialogue and opportunities for learning in practice. (shrink)

This article is a contribution to the critical sociology of science perspective introduced and developed by Pierre Bourdieu. The paper proposes a transversalist theory of science and technology production and diffusion. It is here argued that science and technology are comprised of multiple regimes where each regime is historically grounded, possesses its own division of labour, modes of cognitive and artifact production and has specific audiences. The major regimes include the disciplinary regime, utilitarian regime, transitory regime and research-technology regime. Though (...) each regime is autonomous, they are simultaneously closely interlaced. In science and technology, autonomy is not antithetical to interdependence and reciprocity. This study demonstrates for the four specified regimes of production and diffusion that differentiation is not contrary to interaction. In science, differentiation and interaction comprise two sides of the same coin. All regimes exhibit a measure of transversality. (shrink)

Medical issues affecting health care have become everyday media events. In response to mounting public concern, growing numbers of bioethicists are being appointed to medical school faculties and public policy panels. However the ideas voiced in these forums are seldom informed by feminist perspectives. In this important book, a distinguished group of feminist scholars and activists discuss crucial bioethics topics in a feminist light. Among the subjects explored are the care/justice debates, transforming bioethics, practice, and reproduction. The book also covers (...) less commonly discussed issues, such as culturally appropriate responses to reproductive health problems in developing countries. (shrink)

Is causation either necessary or sufficient (or both) to make a belief-desire pair the reason for which one acts? In this paper I argue in support of a negative answer to this question, and thus attempt to shift the burden of proof onto the causal theorists. I also provide an outline of a different account of reasons and rationalization. Motivating my inquiry is a concern to show that ordinary ascriptions of reasons are not hostage to future accounts of how the (...) brain works. (shrink)

Increasingly, nurses conduct scientific inquiry into complex health‐care problems by collaborating on teams with researchers from other highly specialized fields. As cross‐disciplinary research proliferates and becomes institutionalized globally, researchers will increasingly encounter the need to integrate their particular research perspectives within inquiries without sacrificing the potential contributions of their discipline‐specific expertise. The work of the philosopher Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) offers the necessary philosophical grounding. Here, I defend a role for philosophy in cross‐disciplinary research and present selected ideas in Lonergan's work. (...) These include: (1) a dynamic, normative pattern that each inquirer operates uniquely also forms the common core, or unity, in knowing; (2) the possibility of cross‐disciplinary knowledge development is dependent on each researcher's consciousness of her or his attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibleness; and (3) shifts in researchers' viewpoints, or horizons, facilitate their collaborative inquiry and their grasp of the unity in knowing. The desire to know, shared by team members, drives their inquiry. Lonergan's stance is consistent with nursing values because it respects, but does not unconditionally privilege, any researcher or discipline. Arguments support a claim that Lonergan's perspective is well suited to guide nurse researchers participating on cross‐disciplinary health research teams. (shrink)

Disorders of consciousness and the self are at the forefront of schizophrenia symptomatology. Patients are impaired in feeling themselves as the authors of their thoughts and actions. In addition, their flow of consciousness is disrupted, and thought fragmentation has been suggested to be involved in the patients’ difficulties in feeling as being one unique, unchanging self across time. Both impairments are related to self disorders, and both have been investigated at the experimental level. Here we review evidence that both mechanisms (...) of motor control and the temporal structure of signal processing are impaired in schizophrenia patients. Based on this review, we propose that the sequencing of action and perception plays a key role in the patients’ impairments. Furthermore, the millisecond time scale of the disorders, as well as the impaired sequencing, highlights the cooperation between brain networks including the cerebellum, as proposed by Andreasen (1999). We examine this possibility in the light of recent knowledge on the anatomical and physiological properties of the cerebellum, its role in timing, and its involvement in known physiological impairments in patients with schizophrenia, e.g., resting states and brain dynamics. A disruption in communication between networks involving the cerebellum, related to known impairments in dopamine, glutamate and GABA transmission, may help to better explain why patients experience reduced attunement with the external world and possibly with themselves. (shrink)

Numerous researchers have investigated accounting students’ levels of moral reasoning, ethical choice and judgment employing the Defining Issues Test and using its P score as an indicator of moral reasoning. Not surprisingly, a number of DIT studies report conflicting results. Moreover, despite widespread use of the DIT, there is concern that it may not adequately measure all facets of ethical judgment :1–26, 2010). Thus, we endeavor to provide insight not only into the contradictory results but also about the applicability of (...) the DIT for studying accounting students. To do so, we collect published and unpublished DIT studies employing accounting students as subjects and use meta-analysis to aggregate findings across these studies to quantify their results, examining commonly employed variables. We show significant relationships between P scores and some variables but not others. Further, our findings demonstrate that the DIT provides added insights when exploring questions of ethical choice, and ethics instruction, particularly when the instruction is embedded in an accounting course. Finally, we find that the level of DIT P scores reported in the studies relates to whether the study was published. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research. (shrink)

The concept of the ‘material’ was the focus of much feminist work in the 1970s. It has always been a deeply contested one, even for feminists working within a broadly materialist paradigm of the social. Materialist feminists stretched the concept of the material beyond the narrowly economic in their attempts to develop a social ontology of gender and sexuality.Nonetheless, the quality of the social asserted by an expanded sense of thematerial – its ‘materiality’ – remains ambiguous. New terminologies of materiality (...) and materialization have been developed within post-structuralist feminist thought and the literature on embodiment. The quality of ‘materiality’ is no longer asserted – as inmaterialist feminisms – but is problematized through an implicit deferral of ontology in these more contemporary usages, forcing us to interrogate the limits of both materialist and post-structuralist forms of constructionism. What really matters is how these newer terminologies of ‘materiality’ and ‘materialization’ induce us to develop a fuller social ontology of gender and sexuality; one that weaves together social, cultural, experiential and embodied practices. (shrink)

This paper seeks to analyse small‐ and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) managers' representations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and CSR communication in a corporate communication perspective. The basic question is: how strategic is CSR communication in SMEs? Corporate communication and CSR theories are used to establish an ideal typology of CSR concepts informing an analysis of qualitative data in the form of interviews with three middle managers in two Danish SMEs. A CSR communication model published earlier by the authors is challenged (...) from a SME perspective. Results from an Internet‐based questionnaire survey of 1071 SMEs pave the way for the analysis. Our analysis shows that SME managers clearly have an inside‐out approach to CSR, with a strong emphasis on the internal (corporate culture) dimension. However, SMEs and/or SME managers tend not to communicate externally about the CSR activities of the company. Based on these findings, the paper argues that CSR communication in SMEs is challenged by the global economy and is under revision. The contribution of the paper is to provide an insight into SMEs' present stage in relation to a possible future approach to strategic CSR communication. The paper also reminds us that SMEs have no interest in turning their local and authentic practice into a forced marketing and branding exercise, leaving them with an artificial picture of who they are and strive to be in the future. They should keep on acting locally but force themselves to think globally. (shrink)

Abstract. The placebo effect these days is no longer merely the insubstantial, subjective response that some patients have to a sham treatment, like a sugar pill. It has been reconceived as a powerful mind-body phenomenon. Because of this, it has also emerged as a complex reference point in a number of high-stakes conversations about the metaphysical significance of experiences of religious healing, the possible health benefits of being religious, and the feasibility of using double-blind placebo-controlled trials to investigate the efficacy (...) of prayer. In each of these conversations, the placebo effect is always pointing toward some larger issue, serving some larger agenda. The agendas, though, tend to pull in different directions, leading to a situation that feels at once fractured and stalemated. This essay reviews the main areas of interest, and proposes some specific issues where humanistic scholars of religion in particular might be able to introduce constructive and creative new perspectives. (shrink)

This article initially discusses reasons why Freud researchers turn to critical realism since this is what led me to compare causality in the two traditions in the first place. Three arguments on causality follow. First, it is argued that Freud's analyses of unconscious processes merit closer attention by critical realists, focusing on the relation between causal unconscious processes and rationality, and causal unconscious processes and social change. It may be objected that this does not concern the discussion of causality proper, (...) to which I would reply that what we consider to be causally efficacious ultimately is relevant to our conception of causality. The second argument, which is the centrepiece, outlines Freud's conception of causality, his idea of overdetermination and his treatment of motives and reasons as causes. His notions of causality are compared to those of critical realism. Freud's idea of retroactive causality is discussed in relation to delayed causality in critical realism and the idea of disembedded space-time components. Finally, Freud's concept of determinism and the related concepts of repetition and chance are discussed and compared to ubiquity determinism in critical realism and the distinctions between causal and non-causal correlations and necessary and accidental sequences of events. While the first argument concerns presuppositions for the discussion of causality in psychoanalysis and its relevance for critical realism, the third concerns implications and/or applications of the two views on causality. It is my contention that the second argument needs to be placed in context of the other two in order for the two conceptions of causality to be understood adequately and most revealingly compared. (shrink)

This account of the good will has struck many readers as counterintuitive. Whereas Kant seems to think that the person in whom a sense of duty must overcome indifference or contrary inclination can and does display a good will, our intuitions about human goodness suggest that there is something deficient or lacking in the grudging agent. Aristotle, for example, would think that the grudging moralist displays continence, rather than virtue, because he thinks it is the mark of the virtuous person (...) that he does not experience a conflict between the rational and nonrational parts of the soul and that his emotions and appetites harmonize with rational judgments. (shrink)

In this paper, I reflect on an important article by Bob Veatch in the inaugural issue of the Hastings Center Report, entitled “Experimental Pregnancy.” It is a report and elegant analysis of the Goldzieher Study, in which nearly 400 women were randomized to receive hormonal contraception or placebo absent consent or disclosure about placebo use, resulting in several pregnancies. Noting the study’s limited notoriety, I first consider the narratives that have instead dominated bioethics’ approach to pregnancy and research: thalidomide and (...) diethylstibesterol. These narratives have facilitated a narrow focus on avoiding fetal risk, to the exclusion of other ethically relevant considerations. I then revisit “Experimental Pregnancy” and offer two ways in which Bob’s analysis serves as an important corrective, first, by foregrounding research subjects, and second, by normalizing pregnancy and thus foregrounding foundational ethical considerations that are sometimes lost amidst pregnancy’s presumed exceptionalism. (shrink)

Because of the transfer of responsibility from hospitals to community-based settings, providers in home-based care have more responsibilities and a wider range of tasks and responsibilities than before, often with limited resources. The increased responsibilities and the complexity of tasks and patient groups may lead to several ethical challenges. A systematic search in the databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, and SveMed+ was carried out in February 2019 and August 2020. The research question was translated into a modified PICO worksheet. A total of (...) 40 articles were included. The review is conducted according to the Vancouver Protocol. The main findings from the systematic literature review show that ethical challenges experienced by healthcare and social care providers in home-based care are related to autonomy and balancing ethical principles, decisions regarding intensity of care, challenges related to priority settings, truth-telling, and balancing the professional role. Findings regarding ethical challenges within home-based care are in line with findings from institutional healthcare and social care settings. However, some significant differences from the institutional context are also highlighted. (shrink)

The problem of how to access and deploy the explanatory power of culture in historical accounts has long remained vexing. A recent approach, combining and transcending the "culture as structure"/ "culture as practice" divide among social historians, puts explanatory focus on the recursivity of meaning, agency, and structure in historical transformation. This article argues that meaning construction is at the nexus of culture, social structure, and social action, and must be the explicit target of investigation into the cultural dimension of (...) historical explanation. Through an empirical analysis of political alliance during the Irish Land War, 1879–1882, I demonstrate that historians can uncover meaning construction by analyzing the symbolic structures and practices of narrative discourse. (shrink)

The socio-historical events and libertarian cultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s shaped the Catholic mother-daughter relationship for the women in this feminist genealogical study. This study is based on interviews with 36 Anglo-Australian Catholic women – 13 sets of mothers and daughters – as well as dialogue between my mother and myself about family photographs. Women’s stories of secondary school days tell of the formation of lady-like identities circumscribed through uniform regulations, the cult of the Virgin Mary and ceremonies (...) of everyday Catholic school life. The abject maternal body resurfaces in adolescence with the flow of menstrual blood, and the heralding sexuality of young women is circumscribed through patriarchal institutions such as Catholicism. Amid their silenced and contested dialogue, although years apart, the stories between mothers and daughters in this study drew parallels. (shrink)

Everett’s main claim is that language is a “cultural tool”, created by hominids for communication and social cohesion. I examine the meaning of the expression “cultural tool” in terms of the influence of language on culture or of the influence of culture on language. I show that these hypotheses are not well-supported by evidence and that language and languages, rather than being “cultural tools” as wholes are rather collections of tools used in different language games, some cultural or social, some (...) cognitive. I conclude that the coincidence between language and culture is due to the fact that both originate from human nature. (shrink)

Every pregroup grammar is shown to be strongly equivalent to one which uses basic types and left and right adjoints of basic types only. Therefore, a semantical interpretation is independent of the order of the associated logic. Lexical entries are read as expressions in a two sorted predicate logic with ∈ and functional symbols. The parsing of a sentence defines a substitution that combines the expressions associated to the individual words. The resulting variable free formula is the translation of the (...) sentence. It can be computed in time proportional to the parsing structure. Non-logical axioms are associated to certain words (relative pronouns, indefinite article, comparative determiners). Sample sentences are used to derive the characterizing formula of the DRS corresponding to the translation. (shrink)

Many anti-obesity policies face a variety of ethical objections. We consider one kind of anti-obesity policy — modifications to food assistance programs meant to improve participants' diet — and one kind of criticism of these policies, that they are inequitable. We take as our example the recent, unsuccessful effort by New York State to exclude sweetened beverages from the items eligible for purchase in New York City with Supplemental Nutrition Support Program assistance. We distinguish two equity-based ethical objections that were (...) made to the sweetened beverage exclusion, and analyze these objections in terms of the theoretical notions of distributive equality and social equality. First, the sweetened beverage exclusion is unfair or violates distributive equality because it restricts the consumer choice of SNAP participants relative to non-participants. Second, it is disrespectful or violates social equality to prohibit SNAP participants from purchasing sweetened beverages with food stamps. We conclude that neither equity-based ethical objection is decisive, and that the proposed exclusion of sugar-sweetened beverages is not a violation of either distributive or social equality. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to question the significance of Derrida's deconstruction of the concepts of subject and history. While ‘postmodernity’ tends to be characterized by philosophical critique as the ‘liquidation of the subject’ or the ‘end of history’, I attempt to show that Derrida's deconstruction of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘historicity’ is not an elimination or destruction of these concepts, but an attempt to transform them in order to free them from their metaphysical-teleological presuppositions. This paper argues that this transformation, (...) which begins in Derrida's and continues in Stiegler's texts, leads to the notions of ‘psycho-social individuation’ and ‘doubly epokhal redoubling’. I maintain that such notions ‘supplement’ the metaphysical concepts of subject and history by forcing a reconsideration of the technical conditions of psychic individuation and the technological conditions of ‘epochality’. (shrink)