The aim of this article is to investigate the impact neoliberalism has in shaping the discourse of the European Union’s policy of Lifelong Learning. The literature review initially presents the theoretical framework of neoliberalism as the dominant ideological and economic paradigm of our time. Thereafter, it takes a view on how neoliberalism perceives the four objectives of the European Union’s Lifelong Learning policy, namely employability/adaptability, personal fulfillment, social inclusion, and active citizenship. Through the analysis of European Commission’s policy documents on (...) Lifelong Learning, this article explores whether these objectives, with focus on social inclusion and active citizenship, can be realized within the ideological, political, and economic framework set by the neoliberal paradigm. The data underwent Qualitative Analysis using the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis and Qualitative Content Analysis as well as Quantitative Analysis of textual data. The results indicate that only employability and adaptability seem to be compatible with the neoliberal rhetoric since the flexible and adaptable employee better serves the needs of the markets. The role neoliberalism holds for the individual is that of the consumer, product user, and voter. Therefore, the non-economic objectives of Lifelong Learning cannot be equally developed as they constitute the complete antithesis of neoliberalism’s basic principles. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

Negotiation research primarily focuses on negotiators? interests in order to understand negotiation and offer advice about the prospective outcome. Win-win outcomes, i.e., outcomes that serve the interests of all negotiating parties, have been established and promoted as the ultimate goal for any negotiation situation. We offer a perspective that draws on Aristotle's philosophical program and discuss how the outcome is not defined by the parties? interests, but by the intersubjective validity of claims, which can essentially be treated as representative of (...) the ?truth.? (shrink)

In this paper we ask whether the two-factor theory of delusions is compatible with two claims, that delusions are pathological and that delusions are adaptive. We concentrate on two recent and influential models of the two-factor theory: the one proposed by Max Coltheart, Peter Menzies and John Sutton (2010) and the one developed by Ryan McKay (2012). The models converge on the nature of Factor 1 but diverge about the nature of Factor 2. The differences between the two models are (...) reflected in different accounts of the pathological and adaptive nature of delusions. We will explore such differences, considering naturalist and normativist accounts of the pathological and focusing on judgements of adaptiveness that are informed by the shear-pin hypothesis (McKay and Dennett 2009). After reaching our conclusions about the two models, we draw more general implications for the status of delusions within two-factor theories. Are there good grounds to claim that delusions are pathological? Are delusions ever adaptive? Can delusions be at the same time pathological and adaptive? (shrink)

In his recent article in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 'The Paradox of Voting and Ethics of Political Representation', Alexander A. Guerrero argues it is rational to vote because each voter should want candidates they support to have the strongest public mandate possible if elected to office, and because every vote contributes to that mandate. The present paper argues that two of Guerrero's premises require correction, and that when those premises are corrected several provocative but compelling conclusions follow about the rationality (...) of voting and duties of elected officials: (A) Voting is typically rational for the members of a political party’s base; (B) Voting is often (but not always) irrational for “swing” voters (i.e. independent voters who are not affiliated with any political party, as well as “undecided” voters who are considering voting across party lines); and (C) Elected officials have a moral duty to respond to changing levels of popular support once in office, as indicated by properly monitored and corroborated public opinion polls of constituents, functioning more as delegates the lower their level of popular support. Finally, I suggest that the last of these conclusions has wide-ranging implications for political ethics. I illustrate these implications by focusing on the questions -- under debate in the 2016 US Presidential election cycle -- of whether a sitting President has a moral duty to nominate or not nominate a new Supreme Court justice during his or her final year in office, and similarly, whether US Senators have a moral duty to obstruct, or not obstruct, confirmation of the President’s eventual nominee. (shrink)

X and Y are desperate to bake infinite pie! With the help of quirky and uber-smart Aunt Z, X and Y will use math concepts to bake their way to success!

Where does math come from? From a textbook? From rules? From deduction? From logic? Not really, Eugenia Cheng writes in Is Math Real?: it comes from curiosity, from instinctive human curiosity, "from people not being satisfied with answers and always wanting to understand more." And most importantly, she says, "it comes from questions": not from answering them, but from posing them. Nothing could seem more at odds from the way most of us were taught math: a rigid and autocratic (...) model which taught us to follow specific steps to reach specific answers. Instead of encouraging a child who asks why 1+1 is 2, our methods of education force them to accept it. Instead of exploring why we multiply before we add, a textbook says, just to get on with the order of operations. Indeed, the point is usually just about getting the right answer, and those that are good at that, become "good at math" while those who question, are not. And that's terrible: These very same questions, as Cheng shows, aren't simply annoying questions coming from people who just don't "get it" and so can't do math. Rather, they are what drives mathematical research and push the boundaries in our understanding of all things. Legitimizing those questions, she invites everyone in, whether they think they are good at math or not. And by highlighting the development of mathematics outside Europe, Cheng shows that-western chauvinism notwithstanding--that math can be for anyone who wishes to do it, and how much we gain when anyone can. (shrink)

We have questioned the assumption that SV (agent-action) structures are basic and primary and have shown that thetic VS unaccusative structures, involving an event+theme unit, are better candidates for simple, primary proto-syntactic “fossils.” We have shown that thetic unaccusative structures are simpler syntactically, prosodically, semantically and informationally, and have suggested that this is due to the fact that syntactic evolution progressed from a stage with thetic statements (with no arguments, such as It is cold, or with only one argument, typically (...) unaccusative, such as Spanish Ha llegado Juan (has arrived Juan) or Serbian Pao sneg (fallen.PP snow)), to more complex categorical assertions, involving agents and a syntactic and intonational separation between the subject and the predicate. Obviously, this raises many questions. How did thetic statements intergrade into categorical statements, and what were the evolutionary factors that facilitated this transition? Did both of the informational dichotomies (Topic-Comment and Focus-Background) develop from thetic statements or are F-B structures simpler than T-C? We leave these questions for future research. (shrink)

In Rita Charon's account of narrative medicine, empathy seems to be an essential element of the clinical relationship. However, empathy has not received much attention, which I believe is problematic. First, I show that not only is there no clear definition of what empathy is, but that this conceptual gap creates ambiguity about its role in the practice of narrative medicine. Second, I argue that certain passages in Charon's work seem to implicitly characterize empathy as a combination of cognitive empathy, (...) affective empathy, and sympathy, and that its inclusion in the practice of narrative medicine can be problematic. Third, following Dan Zahavi, I argue that a phenomenological account of empathy not only seems most compatible with the practices, values, and theoretical framework of narrative medicine, but is also capable of resolving the problems posed by alternative definitions of empathy and the ambiguity about the role of empathy in narrative medicine. (shrink)

El debate como método para mejorar la expresión y comprensión oral en Educación Primaria se está viendo reforzado por las últimas legislaciones educativas, como la LOMLOE, que da muchísima importancia al desarrollo de competencias y habilidades. En este proyecto de intervención educativa se pretende despertar el interés de los alumnos por nuevos temas de debate, incrementando su capacidad de razonamiento y análisis, habituándolos a recibir críticas y desarrollando aptitudes comunicativas. Se realizará a lo largo de un curso escolar, dividiendo tres (...) fases (acercamiento, profundización y liga de debates), que ayudará al profesorado a mejorar la competencia comunicativa de sus alumnos. (shrink)

In How to Bake Pi, math professor Eugenia Cheng provides an accessible introduction to the logic and beauty of mathematics, powered, unexpectedly, by insights from the kitchen: we learn, for example, how the béchamel in a lasagna can be a lot like the number 5, and why making a good custard proves that math is easy but life is hard.

Gustave Le Gray was one of the most technically accomplished and aesthetically enlightened of the early "artist-photographers." Trained as a painter of portraits and landscapes, Le Gray was attracted in the 1840s to the artistic potential of photographic processes. As a photographer he evolved and refined much of photography's primary aesthetic theory. By 1855 he had influenced, if not taught, every important photographer in France. Drawing on entirely new material Eugenia Parry Janis fully analyzes the life and work of (...) Le Gray and demonstrates the originality of his artistic achievement in the context of discoveries about his personal and professional history. Janis, approaching the photographs of Le Gray with the methods and sensibilities of an art historian, reveals telling connections between Le Gray's choices of subject matter and formal means of presentation and the existing pictorial practice of other media such as painting. This same approach makes her sensitive to Le Gray's departures from such traditional practice, and she skillfully illustrates how he evolved from student painter into master photographer. In doing so she gives us a glimpse of the way in which Le Gray's manipulation of the photographic process was always informed by his pictorial needs and by his developing style. (shrink)

This paper outlines a theory and computer implementation of causal meanings and reasoning. The meanings depend on possibilities, and there are four weak causal relations: A causes B, A prevents B, A allows B, and A allows not‐B, and two stronger relations of cause and prevention. Thus, A causes B corresponds to three possibilities: A and B, not‐A and B, and not‐A and not‐B, with the temporal constraint that B does not precede A; and the stronger relation conveys only the (...) first and last of these possibilities. Individuals represent these relations in mental models of what is true in the various possibilities. The theory predicts a number of phenomena, and, contrary to many accounts, it implies that the meaning of causation is not probabilistic, differs from the meaning of enabling conditions, and does not depend on causal powers or mechanisms. The theory also implies that causal deductions do not depend on schemas or rules. (shrink)

A mathematician and scientist in residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago helps readers explore the concept of infinity through unique concepts including chessboards, a chicken-sandwich sandwich and the creation of infinite cookies from an infinite dough ball.

Delusions are usually considered as harmful and dysfunctional beliefs, one of the primary symptoms of a psychiatric illness and the mark of madness in popular culture. However, in recent times a much more positive role has been advocated for delusions. More specifically, it has been argued that delusions might be an answer to a problem rather than problems in themselves. By delivering psychological and epistemic benefits, delusions would allow people who face severe biological or psychological difficulties to survive in their (...) environment - although this has obvious epistemic costs, as the delusion is fixed and irresponsive to compelling counterevidence. In other words, it has been argued that delusions are biologically adaptive. The adaptiveness of delusions has been compared by Ryan McKay and Daniel Dennett to a shear pin, a mechanism installed in the drive engine of some machines which is designed to shear whenever the machine is about to break down. By breaking, shear pins prevent the machine from collapsing and allow it to keep functioning, although in an impaired manner. Similarly, when delusions form, they would allow a cognitive or psychological system which is about to collapse to continue its functioning, although in an impaired manner. However, this optimistic picture of delusions risks being undermined by both theoretical and empirical considerations. Using Sarah Fineberg and Philip Corlett’s recent predictive coding account as a paradigmatic model of the biological adaptiveness of delusions, I develop two objections to it: principles of parsimony and simplicity suggest that maladaptive models of delusions have an upper hand over adaptive models; and the available empirical evidence suggests that at least some delusions stand good chances of being psychologically adaptive, but it is unlikely that they also qualify as biologically adaptive. (shrink)

Delusions are symptoms of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and dementia. By and large, delusions are characterized by their behavioral manifestations and defined as irrational beliefs that compromise good functioning. In this overview paper, we ask whether delusions can be adaptive notwithstanding their negative features. Can they be a response to a crisis rather than the source of the crisis? Can they be the beginning of a solution rather than the problem? Some of the psychological, psychiatric, and philosophical literature has (...) recently suggested that they can. We consider different types of delusions and different ways in which they can be considered as adaptive: psychologically (e.g., by increasing wellbeing, purpose in life, intrapsychic coherence, or good functioning) and biologically (e.g., by enhancing genetic fitness). Although further research is needed to map the costs and benefits of adopting and maintaining delusional beliefs, a more nuanced picture of the role of delusions in people's lives has started to emerge. (shrink)

Sem pretender esgotar o tema, este trabalho visa refletir sobre o conceito de Modernidade aqui entendida como a construção de uma perspectiva ou projeto de futuro. O ponto de partida são as reflexões teóricas de Jurgen Habermas e nesse sentido pretende ser uma contribuição para a elaboração de uma noção emancipatória de Modernidade podendo também servir como contribuição para o debate entorno dos rumos de uma reconstrução do país também emancipadora.

O objetivo deste trabalho é o de examinar processos de exclusão e expulsão que vem se ampliando nos diversos aspectos da vida sob as condições atuais do neoliberalismo e como se manifesta na ocupação/desocupação do território, no papel da informação nesse processo e como as alterações das condições tanto da ocupação da terra quanto de produção e uso da informação impostas podem resultar na expulsão de moradores e na exclusão de usuários. Este trabalho também aponta possibilidades de surgimento de condições (...) alternativas por meio da construção de contraracionalidades na constituição de uma esfera pública política e democrática. Elaborei 7 Notas. (shrink)

In the present paper, we substantiate the theory according to which the ailments of imagination presented by Immanuel Kant, especially in his work Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, are sources of artistic creation. It is obvious that not anyone suffering from melancholia, nostalgia, hypochondria or any other ailment of the soul, which Immanuel Kant refers to, becomes a creator of culture. Genius is required for this, but instead of diminishing the creative power of the genius, it seems to (...) be enhanced by the ailments of imagination or generally, by the ailments of the soul. The hypertrophic imagination in the case of a genius plays a major role in the process of fixation in the individual and collective memory of what Immanuel Kant names. (shrink)

Among the meritorious attempts to unravel the enigma of artistic creation are the views of Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer. In the following, we want to emphasise an aspect that is less discussed in the specialised literature, namely the relation between memory and creation. We are talking about the authentic creation that Kant and Schopenhauer consider to be the one that carries in itself the Aesthetic Ideas. With minor differences, the concept, as well as the associated linguistic expression, come together (...) in the work of both German philosophers. An authentic work of art is the work of genius and it has the role of transmitting Ideas. Thus, we will be able to observe “the secret” of a work of art – the Aesthetic Idea. (shrink)

Various theorists contend that we may live in a computer simulation. David Chalmers in turn argues that the simulation hypothesis is a metaphysical hypothesis about the nature of our reality, rather than a sceptical scenario. We use recent work on consciousness to motivate new doubts about both sets of arguments. First, we argue that if either panpsychism or panqualityism is true, then the only way to live in a simulation may be as brains-in-vats, in which case it is unlikely that (...) we live in a simulation. We then argue that if panpsychism or panqualityism is true, then viable simulation hypotheses are substantially sceptical scenarios. We conclude that the nature of consciousness has wide-ranging implications for simulation arguments. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 5, Page 486-493, June 2022.

For millennia it has been discussed whether literature appropriately can or should be used in education for a moral purpose. Taking as a premise that it can actually be educative and not merely moralising, we tackle the case made against such use, based on the claim that it would be perverting the aesthetic nature of literature as a form of art, as it would be instrumentalised. Given that this claim is based on a dichotomy between an aesthetically educative approach and (...) a morally educative approach to literature, we examine how warranted such a formulation of this dichotomy is. We argue that, at least on some occasions, those two educative approaches to literature—the aesthetic and the moral—can actually be mutually reinforcing in such a way that aesthetic appreciation will suffer if the moral is not deeply examined with both mind and heart, and vice versa. This does not mean, however, that this relation of mutual contribution will always obtain in a neat way. It may actually be the case that just in a few cases, and only if carried out in a pedagogically appropriate manner, it will be correct to use literature with a morally educative purpose. (shrink)

This article argues that existing approaches to programming ethical AI fail to resolve a serious moral-semantic trilemma, generating interpretations of ethical requirements that are either too semantically strict, too semantically flexible, or overly unpredictable. This paper then illustrates the trilemma utilizing a recently proposed ‘general ethical dilemma analyzer,’ GenEth. Finally, it uses empirical evidence to argue that human beings resolve the semantic trilemma using general cognitive and motivational processes involving ‘mental time-travel,’ whereby we simulate different possible pasts and futures. I (...) demonstrate how mental time-travel psychology leads us to resolve the semantic trilemma through a six-step process of interpersonal negotiation and renegotiation, and then conclude by showing how comparative advantages in processing power would plausibly cause AI to use similar processes to solve the semantic trilemma more reliably than we do, leading AI to make better moral-semantic choices than humans do by our very own lights. (shrink)

Resumen: En el presente ensayo nos apoyaremos en algunos escritos fundamentales de Talcott Parsons, especialmente en lo referente a su disputa epistemológica contra el empirismo, para luego mostrar sus propias inconsistencias e ir más allá de él en la propuesta de una forma novedosa de trabajo teórico para las ciencias sociales: la teorización sistemática dinámico-estructuralista, como distinta a la teoría sistémica funcional-estructural. La idea principal es trascender las posturas representacionalistas y antiteoricistas en pos de miradas teóricas abiertas a la crítica (...) y la autocrítica. Así, frente a una mirada que confunde distintas dimensiones del continuo empírico-metafísico sin otorgarles su relativa autonomía analítica, que a nivel teórico-social y de modelos de la sociedad piensa en términos funcionales y sistémicos, que considera que cada uno de sus conceptos refiere de manera cabal a dicho mundo social y que cree que es factible la construcción de teorías acabadas, nuestra mirada busca distinguir dimensiones, complementar tradiciones plurales, y mantenerse siempre abierta a la crítica externa y la autocrítica.: In this essay we will rely on some of the key writings of Talcott Parsons, especially with regards to his epistemological dispute against empiricism, to show his own inconsistencies and go beyond him in proposing a new form of theoretical work for the social sciences: systematic and dynamic-structuralist theorizing, as distinct from functional-structural systemic theory. The main idea is to transcend the representationalist and anti-theoretical positions in favour of a view of theory open to criticism and self-criticism. In this way, and against those outlooks that confuse the different dimensions of the empirical-metaphysical continuum without giving them their relative analytic autonomy, that think in terms of functions and systems when talking about models of society, that consider each concept to be a representation of the social world, and that believe theories can be closed for good, our own outlook seeks to distinguish dimensions, complement plural traditions, and stay open to external critique and self-criticism. (shrink)

Abstract. The article is devoted to the possibilities of the formation and development of engineering thinking. The paper considers the features of engineering thinking, compares various concepts that characterize engineering activities. The authors compare the concepts of technical, economic, research thinking, identifying the principles of engineering thinking. The need for a humanitarian component in engineering thinking is noted. Consistency and multidimensionality are considered by the authors as the most important concepts for the formation of engineering thinking. In conclusion, the authors (...) point out that engineering thinking universally orients the employee when solving different types of tasks and contributes to greater variability in making standard and non-standard decisions in the production process. -/- . (shrink)

This paper focuses on the years preceding Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity in Chile (1970-1973) and, more precisely, on the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR). Since 1969, this Marxist revolutionary group had actively participated in the class struggle in Chile. However its political and social activism was not oriented towards the working class, but instead towards marginalized social sectors (inhabitants of informal settlements and landless rural workers). The paper thus seeks to elucidate the process which led the MIR to invest social (...) sectors that should have been considered as “unorthodox,” from a Marxist organization’s point of view. More generally, the analysis of a political experience taking place in a country where the working class was not as coherent or as massive as it was in 20th Century Western Europe and the United States aims at “deprovincializing” history and at using the concepts of “class” and “class struggle” in a manner which distances them from their potentially economicist and sociologizing implications. (shrink)

Este artículo se focaliza en el Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) y la problemática de la violencia política, que fue central en su historia. Abarcaremos el período 1965-1970 y estudiaremos el discurso que tuvo el MIR sobre este punto, construido tanto en los escritos teóricos como en los discursos de sus dirigentes, el lugar y el rol que ocupó la violencia en la práctica política del MIR, y por último la articulación entre prácticas políticas y representaciones. El artículo está estructurado (...) en torno a los siguientes ejes: el contexto político, ideológico e intelectual que provee al MIR argumentos permitiéndole legitimar el recurso a la violencia (ante los militantes y la sociedad); el debate en torno a la violencia en tanto regulador de las tensiones y divisiones internas; y por último, la interacción entre el uso de la fuerza por el MIR y el espacio público (la violencia y su efecto mediático, las respuestas del Estado). (shrink)

The sociocultural landscape of contemporaneity can be represented as a porous inhomogeneous space consisting of border zones. These zones, understood by P. Galison as “local coordination of beliefs and actions,” can be deployed due to already existing conditions, for example, a project may arise at a university. However, such zones do not create sustainable social configurations and infrastructures associated with new areas of knowledge. In this article, we expand the concept of trading zones and call them zones requiring local ontologies (...) that arise on the border between different knowledge and imagination systems and, in turn, require their own infrastructure. This approach supports the view on humanities not as “pre-packaged” knowledge, but as special “technique” forming local ontologies. For a humanities-as-technique to emerge, it is necessary that two or more systems of knowledge coincide in time and form an intermediate zone, on the basis of which some local ontology can unfold. Thus, for example, when combining contemporary philosophy and contemporary mathematics, new images of knowledge emerge. Humanities-as-technique are considered as the basis for the establishment of trading zones, which are understood as local ontologies. We also propose a system of concepts that can be used to describe and construct these trading zones on the territory of the humanities in a techno-oriented cultural environment. (shrink)

Delusions are usually depicted in one of two contrasting ways. They are either characterized as harmful and dysfunctional beliefs or as fostering engagement with the environment and sometimes even psychological wellbeing in the face of psychological or biological difficulties – something which, according to some accounts, would make them biologically adaptive. It is this “adaptive hypothesis” that I focus on in this paper, by empirically investigating the adaptiveness of delusions in a sample of people suffering from OCD. The paper shows (...) that delusions in OCD entertain complex and heterogeneous relationships with psychological wellbeing and engagement with the environment, highlighting some future directions that clinical and philosophical research on the topic should take. (shrink)

This paper shows that several live philosophical and scientific hypotheses – including the holographic principle and multiverse theory in quantum physics, and eternalism and mind-body dualism in philosophy – jointly imply an audacious new theory of free will. This new theory, "Libertarian Compatibilism", holds that the physical world is an eternally existing array of two-dimensional information – a vast number of possible pasts, presents, and futures – and the mind a nonphysical entity or set of properties that "read" that physical (...) information off to subjective conscious awareness (in much the same way that a song written on an ordinary compact-disc is only played when read by an outside medium, i.e. a CD-player). According to this theory, every possible physical “timeline” in the multiverse may be fully physically deterministic or physically-causally closed but each person’s consciousness still entirely free to choose, ex nihilo, outside of the physical order, which physically-closed timeline is experienced by conscious observers. Although Libertarian Compatibilism is admittedly fantastic, I show that it not only follows from several live scientific and philosophical hypotheses, I also show that it (A) is a far more explanatorily powerful model of quantum mechanics than more traditional interpretations (e.g. the Copenhagen, Everett, and Bohmian interpretations), (B) makes determinate, testable empirical predictions in quantum theory, and finally, (C) predicts and explains the very existence of a number of philosophical debates and positions in the philosophy of mind, time, personal identity, and free will. First, I show that whereas traditional interpretations of quantum mechanics are all philosophically problematic and roughly as ontologically “extravagant” as Libertarian Compatibilism – in that they all posit “unseen” processes – Libertarian Compatibilism is nearly identical in structure to the only working simulation that human beings have ever constructed capable of reproducing (and so explaining) every general feature of quantum mechanics we perceive: namely, massive-multiplayer-online-roleplaying videogames (or MMORPGs). Although I am not the first to suggest that our world is akin to a computer simulation, I show that existing MMORPGs (online simulations we have already created) actually reproduce every general feature of quantum mechanics within their simulated-world reference-frames. Second, I show that existing MMORPGs also replicate (and so explain) many philosophical problems we face in the philosophy of mind, time, personal identity, and free will – all while conforming to the Libertarian Compatibilist model of reality. -/- I conclude, as such, that as fantastic and metaphysically extravagant as Libertarian Compatibilism may initially seem, it may well be true. It explains a number of features of our reality that no other physical or metaphysical theory does. (shrink)

I argue that work in medical ethics which attempts to humanize medicine without examining hidden assumptions (about medicine's ontology, explanations, goals, relationships) has the dehumanizing effect of legitimating practices which treat persons as abstractions. After illustrating the need to reexamine the field of medical ethics and the doctor-patient relationship in particular, I use Foucault's work to provide a social, historical framework for discussion. This background begins to demonstrate that doctor-patient relationships cannot be made satisfactory by new hospital policies or interpersonal (...) skills, but have deep-rooted problems due to medicine's place in social history. Real progress requires social or structural change. (shrink)

Theorists have long debated whether John Rawls’ conception of justice as fairness can be extended to nonideal (i.e. unjust) social and political conditions, and if so, what the proper way of extending it is. This paper argues that in order to properly extend justice as fairness to nonideal conditions, Rawls’ most famous innovation – the original position – must be reconceived in the form of a “nonideal original position.” I begin by providing a new analysis of the ideal/nonideal theory distinction (...) within Rawls’ theoretical framework. I then systematically construct a nonideal original position, showing that although its parties must have Rawls’ principles of ideal justice and priority relations as background aims, the parties should be entirely free to weigh those aims against whatever burdens and benefits they might face under nonideal conditions. Next, I show that the parties ought to aim to secure for themselves a special class of nonideal primary goods: all-purpose goods similar to Rawls’ original primary goods, but which in this case are all-purpose goods individuals might use to (A) promote Rawlsian ideals under nonideal conditions, (B) weigh Rawls’ principles of ideal justice and priority relations against whatever burdens and benefits they might face under nonideal conditions, and (C) effectively pursue their most favored weighting thereof. I then defend a provisional list of nonideal primary goods which include opportunities to participate effectively in equitable and inclusive grassroots reform movements guided by a series of substantive aims. Finally, I briefly speculate on how the parties to the nonideal original position might deliberate to principles of nonideal justice for distributing nonideal primary goods, suggesting that those goods should be distributed in proportion to unjust disadvantage. (shrink)