ABSTRACT This essay is a critical study of Jason Brennan's Against Democracy. We make three main points. First, we argue that Brennan's proposal of a right to competent government only works if one considers the absence of government a viable proposition, something most of his opponents are not prepared to do. Second, we suggest that Brennan's account of competent decision-making is blind to forms of oligarchic power that work against the very ideals of justice and epistemic virtue that competence is (...) meant to safeguard. Third, we muster empirical evidence to argue that, in the real world, democracy is not just about making decisions and selecting policies, in which case Brennan's argument misses its mark. (shrink)

This encyclopedia presents important research on ethics. The five set volume includes discussions on religious, spiritual, economic, political, medical, environmental, and business ethics.

Today’s medical training environment exposes medical trainees to many aspects of what has been called “the hidden curriculum.” In this article, we examine the relationship between two aspects of the hidden curriculum, the performance of emotional labor and the characterization of patients and proxies as “bad,” by analyzing clinical ethics discussions with resident trainees at an academic medical center. We argue that clinicians’ characterization of certain patients and proxies as “bad,” when they are not, can take an unnecessary toll on (...) trainees’ emotions. We conclude with a discussion of how training in ethics may help uncover and examine these aspects of the hidden curriculum. (shrink)

Se propone una reflexión filosófica sobre el imperativo ético y político de pensar y reconstruir nuestro pasado a partir de la experiencia del sujeto latinoamericano oprimido y resistente. En este orden de ideas, el objetivo principal del artículo es emprender una búsqueda de aquellos lugares en los que habitan y se conservan en el tiempo las memorias de los latino-americanos antes y después del proceso de colonización o de “invasión” de la Modernidad europea. Esta indagación se inclina específicamente hacia esas (...) memorias “no oficiales”, construidas desde las comunidades en sus prácticas culturales, que mediante la rememoración y la tradición oral crearon vínculos de resistencia contra el olvido, al tiempo que preservaban aspectos fundamentales de sus tradiciones. Así, llamamos lugares a aquellos elementos que albergan fragmentos de lo pretérito invisibilizado por el discurso histórico oficial y que permiten establecer un vínculo trascendente entre pasado y presente, una recreación del pasado que surge a partir de la reconstrucción interpretativa de ruinas, rastros y vestigios de un tiempo que no ha dejado de ser y al que aún es posible acceder y conocer. Posteriormente, se destacan algunos episodios importantes de nuestra historia latinoamericana en los que esas memorias encuentran su lugar. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false ES-CO X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabla normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} This essay presents a reading of modern liberalism from Leo Strauss´thought. Starting with his analysis of Carl Schmitt’s Concept of the Political and its critique of liberal “neutralization and depolitization”, Strauss posits an affirmation of the (...) problem of natural right, for which it is a fundamental first step to study the political philosophy of Hobbes. In contrast with Schmitt and Hobbes, Strauss´ thought points towards a consideration of classical natural right as a riposte to the political nihilism or apolitical cosmopolitanism of late-modernity, both products of radical historicism as well as methodological positivism. Strauss considers the search of natural right qua representation of the idea of justice a distinct alternative to the affirmation of the will through sovereign power. Normal 0 21 false false false ES-CO X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4. (shrink)

In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then (...) put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on developing an experimental technique for inducing flow and creating instances of effortless action in the laboratory. The effort to experimentally induce flow involves two conditions which are correlated with the flow state: The firstis the idea that the challenges of a given task are well within one’s capabilities; the other involves perceived goals and immediate feedback from the given task. The chapter explores these factors along with other contextual factors, including autonomy and distractions, to experimentally induce (...) flow and demonstrate instances of effortless action in the laboratory. One of the most extensively used approaches for experimental induction of flow in the laboratory involves exploring difficulty levels of video games. (shrink)

This article addresses the lack of gender specificity in immigration literature on ethnic economies. In particular women's work in income-generating economic activity in ethnic enterprises is unveiled. Immigrant Iranian women's combined utilization of ethnic, gender, and class resources in the ethnic economy of Los Angeles is examined through two case studies of women's entrepreneurial endeavors in family-run businesses and in home-operated businesses. This article illustrates how ethnic resources are gender specific and that there is differential access to these resources in (...) the ethnic economy. (shrink)

Transforming Classroom Culture lays bare the key challenges that face today's increasingly diverse professoriate. Drawing on the experience of teachers from a wide range of universities, it reveals the rich potential for transformative teaching and learning in America's college classrooms. The book's contributors demonstrate how both parties to the learning encounter-faculty as well as students--interrogate and renegotiate their positions in shifting, dynamic systems of power that reflect wider national and global contexts. University faculty, staff, and administrators will be particularly interested (...) in learning about the creative and collaborative strategies by which faculty surmount obstacles to effective teaching practice. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that we are entitled to see in Schütz’s article “Equality and the Social Meaning Structure” the proposal for a formal analysis of group membership understood as a kind of We-experience irreducible to pure We-relationships. First I argue that such an account defines the experience of group membership as a “situation definition process”. Then I show the relevance of this approach for the description of membership experiences and current debates on Collective Intentionality. Finally, (...) I point to its unclarified conceptual presuppositions—such as the at­tribution of situations to groups—, and propose an interpretative solution by drawing on the notions of “social situation” and community of relevances from The Structures of the Life-World. (shrink)

Pandit Gopinath Kaviraj of Varanasi, India was a well-known interpreter of the Hindu Tantric traditions, who also practiced kundalini yoga according to his own understanding of four sequential paths. This study attempts to reconstruct the stages of Kaviraj's system of Tantric yoga by analyzing and integrating innumerable partial discussions scattered throughout his writings, in an effort to reveal the hidden structure of transformations. Primary research materials include collections of Kaviraj's essays on the Hindu Tantric traditions written in Bengali and Hindi, (...) and his philosophical notebook, Svasambedana . ;The concepts of formal and material ontologies, developed for linguistic theory by Ashok Kumar Gangadeen, are adopted in analyzing the category structure of Kaviraj's four paths. A synchronic methodology is used to present Kaviraj's interpretations of the Kashmir Saiva, S akta Tantric and Sahajiy a Vaisnava traditions in relation to known Tantric concepts and practices, found in the classical texts and secondary literature on these traditions. Categories that belong to the material ontologies of the various Tantric sects are examined for trans-sectarian thematic unity and for explicating the processual patterns that constitute the formal ontology which Kaviraj sees as underlying his own four paths. This formal ontology is based on the principle of increments of consciousness by which kundalini/ develops. ;Each of Kaviraj's Tantric paths incorporates orthodox Hindu forms of spiritual realization, but utilizes different means to them, as well as moves beyond them to uniquely Tantric forms of integral realization. Technical terms are discussed from the relevant traditional Hindu perspective and then from their revalorization in relation to uniquely Tantric forms of yogic realization. ;Kaviraj's systemic perspective on the architectonics of his four Tantric paths is also reconstructed and systematized from various schemata found in Svasambedana. Analyses are concerned both with structural replication and with understanding the series of paths as a single continuum based on laws of dialectical synthesis. Finally, there is a discussion of Kaviraj's supreme integral yoga , his own advanced practice for universal integral Self-realization, as taught by his guru and other adepts of the Jnanaganj asram of Tibet. An inquiry is made into its kala-structure, and it is suggested to be an innovative fifth path which utilizes the structure of the other four paths for the bestowal of universal grace. (shrink)

This article analyses how child victims of abuse may be subjected to hermeneutical injustice. I start by explaining how child victims are hermeneutically marginalised by adults’ social and epistemic authority, and the stigma around child abuse. In understanding their abuse, I highlight two epistemic obstacles child victims may face: (i) lack of access to concepts of child abuse, thereby causing victims not to know what abuse is; and (ii) myths of child abuse causing misunderstandings of abuse. When these epistemic obstacles (...) cause the child victims to fail to see themselves as being abused and/or to get adults to recognise that they are being abused, I argue that this constitutes hermeneutical injustice. While some may justify obstructing epistemic access to concepts of abuse on the grounds of parental rights and protection of children’s innocence, I reply that both grounds are unjust in light of children’s basic rights and the fact that children can easily be taught such concepts in a child-appropriate manner. The case of child abuse prompts important reflections on existing epistemic injustice literature, particularly on the ways in which hermeneutical injustice materialises, the epistemic responsibilities of institutional bodies and individuals, and the interrelationship between testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

Entre las críticas de los más férreos oponentes de la teoría kuhniana de la ciencia sobresale un reparo que fue planteado simultáneamente tanto por Popper, como por su discípulo Watkins. Ambos filósofos sostuvieron que, si nos comprometemos con la tesis que afirma que hay Ciencia Normal, tendríamos que aceptar la consecuencia absurda de que las teorías científicas degeneran en dogmas. En este trabajo mostraré que la tesis de Kuhn no tiene las implicaciones desastrosas atrás señaladas y que Popper -y Watkins- (...) ofrecen una imagen increíblemente distorsionada de la naturaleza misma de la Ciencia Normal y de los paradigmas, a tal punto que las razones en las cuales Popper basa la acusación de dogmatismo dependen de un argumento defectuoso. Para ello, voy a contrastar los patrones históricos que Kuhn identifica en los episodios de Ciencia Normal, con las características que le atribuyen sus críticos. Argumentaré, a partir de las contribuciones de Hooke a la mecánica clásica, que no es cierto que uno de los atributos que distingue a los “científicos normales” sea la adhesión doctrinaria, i.e., que el científico normal está obligado a suscribir una teoría por moda o por autoridad. Palabras-clave: paradigmas, ciencia normal, teoría dominante, dogma, mecánica clásica de partículas. (shrink)

Someday soon (if it hasn't happened in secret already), a human will be cloned, and mankind will embark on a scientific and moral journey whose destination cannot be foretold. In Copycats: The Science and Ethics of Cloning, Arlene Judith Klotzko describes the new world of possibilities that can be glimpsed over the horizon. In a lucid and engaging narrative, she explains that the technology to create clones of living beings already exists, inaugurated in 1996 by Dolly the sheep, the (...) first mammal cloned from a single adult cell. Dolly is the culmination of a long scientific quest to understand the puzzle of our development from one cell into a complex organism--the outcome of a "fantastic experiment" envisioned six decades before her birth. Scientists have since cloned mice, cows, goats, pigs, rabbits and cats. Using the same laboratory tools and techniques, they are trying to grow an embryo, cloned from a single cell of a human being. Their goal is not to make copies of existing people, but to design therapies for currently untreatable diseases and the afflictions of old age. Our fascination with cloning is about much more than science and its extraordinary medical implications. In riveting prose, full of illusions to art, music and the cinema, Klotzko shows why the prospect of human cloning triggers our dearest hopes and especially our darkest fears, forcing us to ponder anew what it means to be human. And what it would be like to have "a clone of your own.". (shrink)

RESUMEN Se analiza si la versión de la justicia como equidad, presentada en El liberalismo político, es genuinamente una concepción política. Se examina el problema de la razonabilidad de las doctrinas comprehensivas, y se indaga luego si el argumento en dos etapas afecta la integridad estructural del liberalismo político. Se concluye que J. Rawls fracasa en su intento de justificar un liberalismo independiente de una doctrina comprehensiva de carácter liberal. ABSTRACT The article analyzes whether the conception of justice as fairness, (...) set forth by Rawls in Political Liberalism, is a genuine political conception. It first examines the issue of reasonableness of comprehensive doctrines and then goes on to inquire whether the two-step argument affects the structural integrity of political liberalism. The paper concludes that J. Rawls fails in his attempt to justify liberalism independently of a comprehensive liberal doctrine. (shrink)

Four years after the Panama Papers scandal, tax avoidance remains an urgent moral-political problem. Moving beyond both the academic and policy mainstream, I advocate the “democratization of tax enforcement,” by which I mean systematic efforts to make tax avoiders accountable to the judgment of ordinary citizens. Both individual oligarchs and multinational corporations have access to sophisticated tax avoidance strategies that impose significant fiscal costs on democracies and exacerbate preexisting distributive and political inequalities. Yet much contemporary tax sheltering occurs within the (...) letter of the law, rendering criminal sanctions ineffective. In response, I argue for the creation of Citizen Tax Juries, deliberative minipublics empowered to scrutinize tax avoiders, demand accountability, and facilitate concrete reforms. This proposal thus responds to the wider aspiration, within contemporary democratic theory, to secure more popular control over essential economic processes. (shrink)

Over the past decade, the number of clinical trials registered with the Food and Drug Administration has increased dramatically. The business of clinical research has become more diverse, involving academic institutions, clinician-researchers in community settings, pharmaceutical companies, and contract research organizations. This growth has been accompanied by increasing concerns about the ethical conduct of research. Much of this concern has been directed to procedural issues including institutional review board review, data monitoring, and informed consent forms. However, the protection of human (...) subjects cannot be achieved by relying solely on procedural safeguards. There are more nuanced issues related to recruitment and retention of subjects, and to the process of informed consent, that are generated during the interaction between study staff and subjects. It is only through an examination of these relationships that one can more fully define and understand the challenges of protecting subjects in research. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyze the metaphorological project of Hans Blumenberg in relation to the philosophical developments of conceptual history in the mid-twentieth century. It is argued that Blumenberg, based on the study of metaphor, seeks to endow philosophy with a historical substrate that gives rise to the concept, forgotten by the inheritance of the cartesian philosophy. In this way, metaphors, but also myths and anecdotes, fulfill a pragmatic guiding function of thought and expe- rience, becoming indispensable for human life.

What are the sources of continuing antipathy toward homosexuality, and what might they tell us about changing forms of American masculinity? This article documents some emergent homophobias circulating among conservative activists in relation to campaigns against gay rights in the early 1990s and against gay marriage in 2004. As feminist critiques of traditional masculinity make their way into conservative rhetoric and as men struggle to define a role that maintains male authority without sounding overly authoritarian, new forms of homophobia have (...) emerged that are compatible with conservatives’ quest to be seen as compassionate protectors of the family. (shrink)

This essay identifies ‘oligarchic harm’ as a dire threat confronting contemporary democracies. I provide a formal standard for classifying oligarchs: those who use personal access to concentrated wealth to pursue harmful forms of discretionary influence. I then use Aristotle to think through both the moral and the epistemic dilemmas of oligarchic harm, highlighting Aristotle’s concerns about the difficulties of using wealth as a ‘proxy’ for virtue. While Aristotle’s thought provides great resources for diagnosing oligarchic threats, it proves less useful as (...) a guide to democratic institutional design. Aristotle raises a deep-seated objection to democratic forms of ‘rule by the poor.’ A successful response to oligarchy must move beyond Aristotle’s objection and affirm the demos’ tripartite status as many, free, and poor. I briefly outline the terms of this ‘new’ mixed regime: one that seeks to tame oligarchy through a mixture of aggregative, deliberative, and plebeian institutions. (shrink)

Diez, M.A. Discurso ... -- Urdaneta, A. Contestación ...

The claim that world politics looks different depending upon one's location is now commonplace within the field of International Relations (IR). This exciting new textbook offers students a text that speaks to the main concepts, categories and issues of world politics from the vantagepoints of the global South. International Relations from the Global South: Worlds of Difference examines the ways in which world politics have been addressed by traditional core approaches and explores the limitations of these treatments for understanding both (...) Southern and Northern experiences of the "international". The book encourages the reader to consider how key ideas have been developed in the discipline, and through systematic interventions by contributors from around the globe, aims at both transforming and enriching the dominant terms of scholarly debate. Each chapter is written according to a common structure, providing concrete examples of global South perspectives on world affairs, as well as discussion questions and suggestions for further reading. Drawing on a wide range of literatures, case studies and knowledges, this textbook is the first to speak to and from the global South, and will provide a new dimension to a variety of courses on international relations and IR theory. It is essential reading for students and teachers alike. (shrink)

Over the past decade, the number of clinical trials registered with the Food and Drug Administration has increased dramatically. The business of clinical research has become more diverse, involving academic institutions, clinician-researchers in community settings, pharmaceutical companies, and contract research organizations. This growth has been accompanied by increasing concerns about the ethical conduct of research. Much of this concern has been directed to procedural issues including institutional review board review, data monitoring, and informed consent forms. However, the protection of human (...) subjects cannot be achieved by relying solely on procedural safeguards. There are more nuanced issues related to recruitment and retention of subjects, and to the process of informed consent, that are generated during the interaction between study staff and subjects. It is only through an examination of these relationships that one can more fully define and understand the challenges of protecting subjects in research. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Conservative Challenge Trouble in Timbertown The Progressive Response Toward a New Language of Sexual Difference.

This article tackles the issue of offshore tax sheltering from the perspective of normative political realism. Tax sheltering is a pressing contemporary policy challenge, with hundreds of billions in private assets protected in offshore trusts and shell companies. Indeed, tax sheltering produces a variety of empirical dilemmas that render it a distinctive challenge for global governance. Therefore, it is crucial for normative political theorists to confront this problem. A realist approach offers three distinct advantages, elaborated in the three subsequent sections (...) of the article. First, it relaxes the theoretical burden by starting from the real practice of tax evasion rather than from an abstract theory of equality or justice. Second, this approach recognizes that sheltering is a political harm: a threat to the very maintenance of order, not just a problem of inequality or injustice. If politicians fail at such polity maintenance, realism's ethic of responsibility provides clear political reasons why they should be held accountable. Third, realism's focus on power and its acceptance of coercion open up new strategies for addressing the problem that would not be allowed by theories with a stronger emphasis on consensus. (shrink)