In this study we test how the composition of crime news articles contributes to reader perceptions of the moral blameworthiness of vehicular homicide offenders. After employing a rigorous process to develop realistic experimental vignettes about vehicular homicide in Minnesota, we deploy a survey to test differential assignments of suggested punishment. We find that readers respond to having very little information by choosing neutral or mid-point levels of punishment, but increase recommended punishment based on information about morally charged conduct. By contrast, (...) information about the perpetrator’s immigration status caused respondents to split into two groups on whether the offense deserves neutral or increased punishment. We find that political ideology strongly influences recommendations for more severe punishment when the immigration status of the perpetrator is revealed. We argue that this difference represents a moral dimension to punishment and blameworthiness that incorporates factors outside the active offense and therefore reveals the social influence of differential reporting in shaping public perception. (shrink)

Book Reviews in this article Baptism and Resurrection: Studies in Pauline Theology against its Graeco‐Roman Background. By A.J.M. Wedderburn. Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians. By Frances Young and David Ford. Jesus and God in Paul's Eschatology. By L. Joseph Kreitzer. The Acts of the Apostles : By Hans Conzelmann. The Genesis of Christology: Foundations for a Theology of the New Testament. By Petr Pokorny. The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Theological Thought as Prolegomena to a Future Christology. (...) By Hans Küng, translated by J.R. Stephenson. The Incarnation: Collected Essays in Christology. By Brian Hebblethwaite. Models for God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. By Sallie McFague. Pp. xv, 224, London, SCM Press, 1987, £8.50 Symbol and Sacrament: A Contemporary Sacramental Theology. By Michael G. Lawler. The Sacrifice We Offer: The Tridentine Dogma and its Reinterpretation. By David N. Power. New Eucharistic Prayers: An Ecumenical Study of their Development and Structure. Edited by Frank C. Senn. To Join Together: The Rite of Marriage. By Kenneth W. Stevenson. Company of Voices: Daily Prayer and the People of God. By George Guiver. The Long‐Legged Fly. By Don Cupitt. Approaches to Auschwitz. By Richard L. Rubenstein and John K. Roth. Natural Law and Justice. By Lloyd L. Weinreb. Christian Morality: The Word Becomes Flesh. By Josef Fuchs S.J., translated by Brian McNeil. Medicine in Contemporary Society: King's College Studies 1986–87. Edited by Peter Byrne. Military Ethics: Guidelines for Peace and War. By N. Fotion and G. Elfstrom. Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action. By Alan Donagan. Persons and Personality: A Contemporary Inquiry. Edited by Arthur Peacocke and Grant Gillet. The Rationality of Emotion. By Ronald de Sousa. The Psychology of Personality: An Epistemological Inquiry. By James T. Lamiell. Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art. By Anne Sheppard. The Ascetic Element in Culture and Criticism. By Geoffrey Gait Harpham. Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. By Michael Heim. Education and Philosophical Anthropology: Toward a New View of Man for the Humanities and English. By David Holbrook. Evolution and the Humanities. By David Holbrook. Further Studies in Philosophical Anthropology. By David Holbrook. Women in Western Political Philosophy. Edited by Ellen Kennedy and Susan Mendus. The Light of the Soul: Theories of Ideas in Leibniz, Malebranche and Descartes. By Nicholas Jolley. Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas. By Stephen M. Nadler. Later Medieval Philosophy : An Introduction. By John Marenbon. Either/Or. By Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Howard and Edna Hong, Princeton University Press, 1987: Vol. One, Wittgenstein. By A.C. Grayling. Questions on Wittgenstein. By Rudolf Haller. The False Prison: A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein's Philosophy. By David Pears, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Vol. One, The Later Wittgenstein: The Emergence of a New Philosophical Method. By S. Stephen Hilmy. Knowledge of God: Calvin, Einstein and Polanyi. By Iain Paul. Conceptual Change and Religious Practice with Special Reference to Jews in Britain and Israel. By Janice Williams. The World's Religions. Edited by Stewart Sutherland, Leslie Houlden, Peter Clarke and Friedhelm Hardy. Religions in Conversation: Christian Identity and Religious Pluralism. By Michael Barnes. Theravāda Buddhism, A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modem Colombo. By Richard Gombrich. Mahāyāna Buddhism, The Doctrinal Foundations. By Paul Williams. Hinduism in Great Britain: The Perpetuation of Religion in an Alien Cultural Milieu. Edited by Richard Burghart. The Way of the Black Messiah. By Theo Witvliet. The Meaning of Religious Conversion in Africa. By Cyril C. Okorocha. Common Ground: Christianity, African Religion and Philosophy. By Emmanuel K. Twesigye. Islamic Spirituality I: Foundations. Edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. By Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor. Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine. By J. Neusner. Language and the Worship of the Church. Edited by David Jasper and R.C.D. Jasper. The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development and Meaning of Stational Liturgy. By John E. Baldovin. Leontii Presbyteri Constantinopolitani Homiliae. Edited by Cornells Datema and Pauline Allen. Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. By James A. Brundage. Melchior Hoffman: Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of Reformation. By Klaus D Alonso de Zorita: RoyalJudge and Christian Humanist, 1512–1585. By Ralph H. Vigil. Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571–1591. By Stafford Poole. Archbishop William Laud. By Charles Carlton. The Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1730. By Callum G. Brown. Pastors and Pluralism in Württemberg, 1918–1933. By David J. Diephouse. The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol. One: Preliminary History and the Time of Illusions, 1918–1934. By Klaus Scholder. Reforming Fundamentalism. Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism. By George M. Marsden. The Hellenistic Philosophers Vol. II: Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and Bibliography. By A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley. Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed. Edited by R.C.D. Jasper and G. J. Cuming. The Way of Paradox: Spiritual Life as Taught by Meister Eckhart. By Cyprian Smith. Meister Eckhart: The Man from whom God Hid Nothing. Edited by Ursula Fleming. The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola: A New Translation. Translated by Elisabeth Meier Tetlow. Courtfield and the Vaughans: An English Catholic Inheritance. By Mary Vaughan. Trinity College, Washington D.C.: The First Eighty Years, 1897–1977. By Columba Mullaly. John Henry Newman on the Idea of Church. By Edward Jeremy Miller. Journey from Paradise: Aft Athos and the Interior Life. By Ralph Harper. (shrink)

Vigorous debate over the moral propriety of cognitive enhancement exists, but the views of the public have been largely absent from the discussion. To address this gap in our knowledge, four experiments were carried out with contrastive vignettes in order to obtain quantitative data on public attitudes towards cognitive enhancement. The data collected suggest that the public is sensitive to and capable of understanding the four cardinal concerns identified by neuroethicists, and tend to cautiously accept cognitive enhancement even as they (...) recognize its potential perils. The public is biopolitically moderate, endorses both meritocratic principles and the intrinsic value of hard work, and appears to be sensitive to the salient moral issues raised in the debate. Taken together, these data suggest that public attitudes toward enhancement are sufficiently sophisticated to merit inclusion in policy deliberations, especially if we seek to align public sentiment and policy. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to assess Rosabeth Moss Kanter's work on tokenism in light of more than a decade of research and discussion. While Kanter argued that performance pressures, social isolation, and role encapsulation were the consequences of disproportionate numbers of women and men in a workplace, a review of empirical data concludes that these outcomes occur only for token women in gender-inappropriate occupations. Furthermore, Kanter's emphasis on number balancing as a social-change strategy failed to anticipate backlash from (...) dominants. Blalock's theory of intrusiveness suggests that surges in the number of lower-status members threaten dominants, thereby increasing gender discrimination in the forms of sexual harassment, wage inequities, and limited opportunities for promotion. Although Kanter's analysis of the individual consequences of tokenism was compelling to researchers and organizational change agents, continued reliance on numbers as the theoretical cause of, and as the solution to, gender discrimination in the workplace neglects the complexities of gender integration. (shrink)

What considerations place genuine constraints on an adequate semantics for normative and evaluative expressions? Linguists recognize facts about ordinary uses of such expressions and competent speakers’ judgments about which uses are appropriate. The contemporary literature reflects the widespread assumption that linguists don’t rely upon an additional source of data—competent speakers’ judgments about possible disagreement with hypothetical speech communities. We have several good reasons to think that such judgments are not probative for semantic theorizing. Therefore, we should accord these judgments no (...) probative value for the development of a semantics for our moral terms. Such judgments can no longer be presumed to put pressure on theories according to which our moral expressions share a semantics with ordinary, descriptive terms. Many rivals to pure, Descriptivist theories count among their advantages the ability to accommodate these judgments. If these judgments have no probative value, such theories lose an important source of support. (shrink)

The phenomenon of industrial melanism became widely acknowledged as a well-documented example of natural selection largely as a result of H.B.D. Kettlewell’s pioneering research on the subject in the early 1950s. It was quickly picked up by American biology textbooks starting in the early 1960s and became ubiquitous throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. While recent research on the phenomenon broadly supports Kettlewell’s explanation of IM in the peppered moth, which in turn has strengthened this example of natural selection, textbook (...) IM entries have actually declined in recent years in favor of other examples. In a previous paper, we drew attention to the pivotal role visual aspects played in the introduction of IM into textbook accounts. The present article continues this investigation by analyzing textual passages on industrial melanism within a stratified random sample of textbooks from the 1960s to the 2000s. The fact that this example of natural selection was included by multiple publishers independently, in a short period of time, makes it uniquely qualified for a textbook study of this kind. The purpose of the present project was to determine whether these textbooks contain what has come to be known as the standard peppered moth story. Three complete series were also inspected for change across time. Our analysis focused on the amount of text devoted to industrial melanism; what specific science content elements were present; and what, if any, nature of science aspects were included. The study documents an increase in the amount of text devoted to industrial melanism over the decades. In spite of this increase, only modest changes in science content and NOS aspects were found. (shrink)

Spinoza is often taken to claim that suicide is never a rational act, that a ‘free’ person acting by the guidance of reason will never terminate his/her own existence. Spinoza also defends the prima facie counterintuitive claim that the rational person will never act dishonestly. This second claim can, in fact, be justified when Spinoza's moral psychology and account of motivation are properly understood. Moreover, making sense of the free man's exception-less honesty in this way also helps to clarify how (...) Spinoza should, and indeed does, recognize the possibility of rational suicide. (shrink)

This provocative book paved the way for nursing research informed by f eminist scholarship, critical theory, and post-modern thought. Controv ersial then, relevant today.

Many UK public companies invest considerable resources in charitable donations and community involvement. Using semi‐structured interviews with public company officers, the author sought to investigate the motivations behind this activity. Was it undertaken because of an expectation of commercial benefit, out of a sense of obligation, or for other reasons? It appeared that public companies were increasingly anxious to make connections between corporate activity in the community and business activities. Public companies linked with local communities clearly felt a sense of (...) connection with them. Corporate officers were constantly dealing with the management of reputation, which was seen as a valuable business asset, and community links made this task easier. (shrink)

This chapter discusses three puzzles about practical conditionals and inferences and shows how the flexible, contextualist semantic framework for “ought”. The chapter develops elsewhere resolves all three puzzles more satisfactorily than any of its three most prominent rivals, the relativist account of Niko Kolodny and John MacFarlane, the wide-scoping account of John Broome, and the “trying on” account of James Dreier. The chapter first introduces the puzzle cases and six desiderata for their solutions, and then shows how only flexible contextualism (...) about “ought” is able to resolve each while satisfying all six desiderata. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 13.1 (2005) 111-114 [Access article in PDF] Response to Elvira Panaiotidi, "The Nature of Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts in Music Education" Janice Waldron Michigan State University Elvira Panaiotidi makes a strong case that MEAE and praxialism represent, respectively, the poesis and praxis strands of the Aristotelian conception of art and that, consequently, one cannot conclude that the two accounts are ontologically incompatible. At (...) this point I wish only to respond to an implication which I believe may be present and discuss its relevance. That is that the search for ontological explanations has historically preceded (or at least should precede) the development of music education theory. A brief look at the historical record indicates that the development of music education theory seems to have been dominated by the search for axiological more than ontological explanations. Panaiotidi lists both aspects as integral parts of the theoretical kernel, however, the need to justify music education in terms of value has, at least in the United States, apparently preceded any search for meaning.Michael Mark recounts a report of the Boston School Committee in 1837, at which certain arguments of Aristotle were invoked in order to persuade the commitee of the value of music instruction.1 The entire transcript of that meeting amounts to a polemic about the value of music, resulting from its supposed effects on the spirit, character, or health, yet the record is devoid of any discussion of what might actually constitute music.2 Marie McCarthy describes how the search for aesthetic foundations over a century later was fostered by a need to "explain [music education's] importance in the curriculum."3 Of the scholars of this period, Abraham Schwadron in particular was quite explicit in articulating how his theory of aesthetics was motivated by what he considered an appalling inability for music educators to validate their field's existence.4This is not to imply that the authors of our current philosophies were not searching for or failed to provide strong ontological arguments for music education or to insist that they have always framed the question: What is valuable about music? as the question: What is music? in order to address these ideological [End Page 111] and political pressures. I am merely suggesting that the search for ontological explanations has generally followed the search for value. The historical pattern is one of reaction to various pressures, followed by the eventual development of an aesthetic philosophical framework which was intended, directly or indirectly, to respond to those pressures. The magnitude of such pressures to justify the place of music in the curriculum would seem to differentiate music education paradigms from those of the social sciences and humanities, of which, the author asserts, they are hybrids. Combined with the marked differences in social and political pressures which are found in various times and places in America, it would also account for the emotional tone of the debate, to which the author also alludes. Presumably, such emotion results not only from various scholars' attachments to their ontological beliefs, but from the practical consequences which occur when a theory is ultimately rejected or implemented at the classroom level, based on its perceived ability to define what is valuable in music education.Although this differentiation is subtle and does not detract from the strength of Panaiotidi's central argument, it has implications for the eventual implementation of any unitary theory. Specifically, if we accept that, ontologically speaking, praxialism and aestheticism are two sides of the same coin, it is likely that the argument will simply transform into an axiological question concerning which side is more valuable, a fact to which the author also alludes. Considering past evidence, the overriding concern for value justification may make implementing any unitary theory difficult, regardless of the benefits that could potentially be gained through such a "balanced music education." Consider, for example, that a unitary theory would be less susceptible to ideological use because of its breadth. In other fields such as literature or science, this would be a... (shrink)

The seventeenth-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, was expelled from the Amsterdam Portuguese- Jewish community when he was a young man, and in his philosophy he adopts a critical, even hostile attitude toward sectarian religions. Scholars have debated the extent to which Spinoza's thought, despite his own fraught relationship to Judaism, belongs to the history of Jewish philosophy. This review article looks at various trends in scholarship on Spinoza and Judaism, and particularly at recent illuminating work showing the precedents of Spinoza's (...) ideas in medieval Jewish rationalism, especially Maimonides. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 37-57 [Access article in PDF] Gersonides on Providence: A Jewish Chapter in the History of the General Will Steven Nadler The notion of the "general will" has proven to be one of the more influential and at the same time enduringly perplexing concepts in the history of ideas. Its most famous appearance is of course, in Rousseau's political philosophy as (...) the expression, ideally embodied in the sovereign's commands, of what is in the common or public interest. The general will (la volonté générale) is, Rousseau says, the will of "the body of the people," that is, "the will that one has a citizen" for the common good. It thus stands in contrast to the "particular will" (la volonté particulière), the expression of one's individual and particularistic preference.1 In this political context, what gives the general will its generality is the universality of interest it represents. Its scope extends to all citizens and it specifies what is in the best interest of the members of the body politic as a whole. Although the general will may or may not coincide with each and every individual's private interest, all citizens are, as a matter of fact, properly served by its fulfillment.In his book The General Will Before Rousseau, Patrick Riley demonstrates how this central idea of eighteenth-century political thought actually has its origins in seventeenth-century theological debates over divine, not human, justice. The mystery [of the origins of the general will] is solved when one realizes that the term volonté générale was well established in the seventeenth-century, though not primarily as a political idea. In fact, the notion of "general will" was originally a theological one, referring to the kind of will that God (supposedly) had in deciding who would be granted grace sufficient for salvation and who would be consigned to hell. The [End Page 37] question at issue was: if "God wills that all men be saved"--as St. Paul asserts in a letter to his disciple Timothy--does he have a general will that produces universal salvation? And if he does not, why does he will particularly that some men not be saved? 2Part of the problem to which the appeal to God's general will was thought by some to afford a solution was the apparent injustice in the distribution of grace. Grace seemed to fall abundantly upon those who were not deserving of it and unprepared to use it properly and insufficiently, and all too rarely upon those who, it was believed, were most worthy of it. Malebranche, for one, believed that God wills, with a general volition, that all people be saved; other factors, however, hinder that "simple" volition from being carried out. But this question about divine aid was simply one element in a larger body of questions--extending across the realms of both nature and grace--about evil in God's creation: why is there sin, suffering, and imperfection in the world if the world was created and is governed by a wise, just, and omnipotent God? As Riley shows--and as I shall briefly review--the notion of the general will was employed by some early modern theologians in an attempt at theodicy, that is, an explanation or justification of God's ways in the face of such a conundrum.My aim in this paper is to take Riley's project one step further. I show that the use of the generality of divine purpose and effect that one finds in seventeenth-century theological discussions of the problem of evil appears in a similar form in an even earlier theodicean context. In his account of divine providence and especially in his explanation of why in this lifetime righteous people suffer and wicked people prosper, the fourteenth-century rabbi and philosopher Levi ben Gershom--Gersonides (or, to use his Hebrew acronym, RaLBaG)--appeals to the generality of the ways of nature established by God much... (shrink)

Heideggerian philosophy is frequently chosen as a philosophical framing, and/or a hermeneutic analytical structure in qualitative nursing research. As Heideggerian philosophy is dense, there is merit in the development of scholarly resources that help to explain discrete Heideggerian concepts and to uncover their relevance to contemporary human experience. This paper uses a meta-synthesis methodology to pool and synthesise findings from 29 phenomenological research reports on Being-with in the nurse–patient relationship. We firstly considered and secured the most relevant Heideggerian elements to (...) nurse–patient Being-with. Under these deductive codes, we then inductively developed sub-themes that seemed to explain the multifaceted nature of Being-with, through a secondary analysis and synthesis of published data from 417 patient, carer and nurse participants. Dasein-with was enhanced when nurses had first-hand experience with a phenomenon. Nurses moved between the inauthentic they-mode, and the authentic self-mode. Through circumspection, technology and people were encountered environmentally feeding into nursing attention, assessment and communication. Nursing as a social arrangement was expressed through either leaping-in care or leaping-ahead care. There was a place for both inauthentic and authentic discourse that nurses wove through the ontic everydayness of nursing tasks. (shrink)

The aim of this study was interpret the existential construct of family caring following Acute Coronary Syndrome. Family support is known to have a positive impact on recovery and adjustment after cardiac events. Few studies provide philosophically-based, interpretative explorations of carer experience following a spouse’s ischaemic event. As carer experiences, behaviours and meaning-making may impact on the quality of the support they provide to patients, further understanding could improve both patient outcomes and family experience. Fourteen spouses of people experiencing Acute (...) Coronary Syndrome in Sydney, Australia were engaged in a single, semi-structured interview. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using hermeneutic interpretation within a Heideggerian phenomenological framework. Acute Coronary Syndrome disrupts lived temporality, and the projected potential for carers’ being-alongside. Carers experienced an existential uncertainty that arose from difficulty in diagnosis, and situated fear as an attuned, being-towards-death. They constructed protective strategies to insulate their partner and themselves from further stress and risk, however, unclear boundaries for protection heightened carer anxiety. The existential structure of care included one of two possible Heideggerian modes: leaping-in care was a dominating mode that required a high level of carer vigilance; leaping-ahead care was a metaphorical walking alongside, as carers gave back control, freeing opportunities for the person to ‘own’ care. Supporting carers through the intensive phase of leaping-in care, and equipping them for informed leaping-ahead care should be a focus in both the acute and post-discharge care phases. (shrink)

The responsible research and innovation framework seeks to bring science closer to society, with scientific research conducted not just for the benefit of society, but with role players in society engaging with scientists on research and innovation at every stage. A central focus of the RRI framework is the approach taken to embed these concepts in the higher education training of science students. In this study the direct engagement between science students and the public is explored as an opportunity for (...) achieving RRI learning outcomes. The study also explores the potential benefits that such direct engagement with the public holds for postgraduate biotechnology students. The case study described here suggests that even brief interactions with the public through science engagement activities such as “Speed-Date-a-Scientist” can contribute towards affirmation of choice of career, students’ motivation as researchers and shaping of their identity as scientists, important processes in their own learning to become scientists. Students also indicated a greater sense of motivation to do research that benefits the public, resonating with RRI learning outcomes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reifying Relevance in Mild Cognitive Impairment:An Appeal for Care and CautionJanice E. Graham (bio) and Karen Ritchie (bio)KeywordsAlzheimer’s disease, construction, dementia, market forces, mild cognitive impairmentWe thank the reviewers for their thoughtful comments that probe shadowy areas in our argument, and we welcome this opportunity to elucidate our position. First, we are not repudiating the natural and social facts of pathologic brain degeneration and the physical and cognitive impairments (...) that manifest in people affected by dementia disorders. We are, however, questioning the epistemology, politics, and persistence by some to harden the construct of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) prematurely as a "natural" precursor to dementia. We suggested insufficiencies in viewing MCI as prodromal to Alzheimer's disease (AD; Graham and Ritchie 2006, 36), and pointed to evidence for the prognostic irrelevance of some MCI subcategories (35). The commentators have read our manuscript as suggesting that AD and MCI are different kinds, and that a diagnosis of AD is more "real" than that of MCI. But AD is also fraught with classification issues, as we describe in the section of our paper that deals with consensus committees, published practice guidelines, and the determination of treatment efficacy. Like MCI, AD is a heterogeneous condition, but unlike MCI, AD is a constructed practical kind that does some "work" beyond essentialist (neural degeneration, brain atrophy) claims. Its criteria identify people with well-defined dementia symptoms and multiple cognitive and functional impairments who are in need of, and benefit from, support. Even with these criteria, however, there have been great attempts to achieve definitional accuracy in dementia diagnoses. Practical refinements to the differential diagnosis of dementia based on solid research evidence have made way for more specific recognitions of vascular dementias, dementia of the Lewy body type, and other subtypes beyond AD. So AD too has been subject to more careful, more cautious operationalization in recent years, with research supporting multiple factors and the comorbidity of several types (kinds) of dementia in any one individual.Our paper takes up concerns that are not resolved for dementia and suggests that the nascent category of MCI is still so insufficiently defined as to be ambiguous, and as such, is in danger of identifying individuals with what will be, and has [End Page 57] already been, linked to a debilitating and deeply stigmatizing and fatal disorder (AD). We are not contesting the reality that some people begin to display early signs of cognitive loss, nor are we suggesting that symptoms be ignored; as researchers, we stand behind the careful tracking of symptoms and signs in patients and research participants as an essential clinical and research practice. In a era where the public has been made wary of the potentially fatal effects of new treatments whose more careful scrutiny in specific populations would have saved lives (e.g., Fontanarosa, Rennie, and DeAngelis 2004; Psaty and Furberg 2005), and made all the more popular by what Kramer coined "diagnostic bracket creep" (1993, 15), we are questioning the drivers and value of a premature diagnostic classification whose definitional accuracy is neither sufficient nor effective for specific identification of individuals.That matters of fact are constructed does not take away from their natural fact. Some people have subjective reports or show objective evidence of cognitive decline while having preserved activities of daily living—the construction of this evidence indicates they are not normal and they are not demented. Based on such evidence, where then does the balance of probability for MCI lie? A multidisciplinary international group of experts gathered in Stockholm in 2003 to discuss MCI concepts (Winblad et al. 2004). They acknowledged that the heterogeneous etiology of MCI contributes to "some confusion concerning the specific boundaries of the condition", stating that this "not normal, not demented" condition is nonetheless "useful both clinically and as a research entity" (p. 241). Importantly, they concluded that MCI needs "better definition" (p. 246). It was at this stage that we first wrote our manuscript, and in the subsequent two years we have eagerly awaited new studies, and the recognition of flexible, practical subtypes to evolve.We state "that MCI cannot be considered to be a separate clinical entity" (Graham and... (shrink)

Perhaps more controversial than whether physicalism is true is what exactly would have to be true for physicalism to be true. Everyone agrees that, intuitively at least, physicalism is the thesis that there is nothing over and above the physical. The disagreements arise in how to get beyond this intuitive formulation. Until about ten years ago, participants in this debate were concerned primarily with answering two questions. First, what is it for a property, kind, relation, or individual to be a (...) physical one? (shrink)

BackgroundLittle is known about volunteers from Northern research settings who participate in vaccine trials of highly infectious diseases with no approved treatments. This article explores the motivations of HIV immunocompromised study participants in Canada who volunteered in a Phase II clinical trial that evaluated the safety and immunogenicity of an Ebola vaccine candidate.MethodsObservation at the clinical study site and semi-structured interviews employing situational and discursive analysis were conducted with clinical trial participants and staff over one year. Interviews were recorded, transcribed (...) and analysed using critical qualitative interpretivist thematic analytical techniques. Patterns were identified, clustered and sorted to generate distinct and comprehensive themes. We then reassembled events and contexts from the study participants’ stories to develop two ideal portraits based on "composite characters" based on study participants features. These provide ethnographically rich details of participants’ meaningful social worlds while protecting individual identities.ResultsTen of the 14 clinical trial participants, and 3 study staff were interviewed. Participant demographics and socio-economic profiles expressed limited contextual diversity. Half were men who have sex with men, half were former injection drug users experiencing homelessness, one was female, none were racialized minorities and there were no people from HIV endemic countries. Fully 90% had previous involvement in other clinical studies. Their stories point to particular socio-economic situations that motivated their participation as clinical labor through trial participation.ConclusionsOur findings support Fisher’s argument of “structural coercion” in clinical trial recruitment of vulnerable individuals experiencing precarious living conditions. Clinical trials should provide more detail of the structural socio-economic conditions and healthcare needs which lie “under consent” of study participants. Going well beyond an overly convenient narrative of altruism, ethical deliberation frameworks need to sufficiently address the structural conditions of clinical trials. We offer concrete possibilities for this and acknowledge that further research and clinical data should be made available underlying study participant contexts with regards to recruitment and participation in resource poor settings, in both the South and the North. (shrink)

IntroductionDespite the need for trained physician ethicists, fellowships in clinical ethics are limited and primarily offered to thosewho have completed a graduate degree. The standardization of credentialing for clinical ethics consultants (CECs) and the restructuring of undergraduate medical education allow innovative models to train CECs that can provide an expanded opportunity for formal ethics training at an earlier stage.MethodsAt the University of Michigan Medical School we developed, implemented, and evaluated a pre-doctoral clinical ethics fellowship program from 2017 to 2019 for (...) senior medical students, designed to meet established competencies for CECs. Consultation notes from the beginning and end of the fellowship program were randomly selected for each fellow and independently rated by two faculty ethicists who used the validated Ethics Consultation Quality Assessment Tool (ECQAT).1 Inter rater reliability and trends in scores over time were calculated.ResultsThree students successfully completed the fellowship at the University of Michigan Medical School, conducted at least 50 formal ethics consultations, and spent approximately 40 hours a week on service for a minimum of six months. All students finished the fellowship with teaching and policy development experience, first-authored peer-reviewed manuscripts, and national presentations. The fellows demonstrated improvement in their ECQAT overall holistic rating score; all ended their fellowship with a holistic score of adequate or above. There was 92 percent agreement between raters withrespect to the acceptability of the fellows’ ethics consult notes. Two fellows have taken and passed the Healthcare Ethics Consultant-Certification (HEC-C) exam offered by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH).ConclusionsIntegration of a pre-doctoral fellowship model that meets professional certification standards for clinical ethics consultation creates an opportunity for medical students to become trained CECs early in their career. (shrink)

While the richness of Heideggerian philosophy is attractive as a healthcare research framework, its density means authors rarely utilise its fullest possibilities as an hermeneutic analytic structure. This article aims to clarify Heideggerian hermeneutic analysis by taking one discrete element of Heideggerian philosophy (Being-towards-death), and using it’s clearly defined structure to conduct a meta-synthesis of Heideggerian phenomenological studies on the experience of living with a potentially life-limiting illness. The findings richly illustrate Heidegger’s philosophy that there is either an inauthentic positioning (...) towards death, or an authentic positioning towards death with a proposition that (1) death is certain; (2) death is indefinite; (3) death is non-relational; and (4) death is not-to-be-outstripped. None of the 29 included studies on the experience of a confrontation with death fully utilised this framework, despite claiming a grounding in Heideggerian thought. This demonstrates the value in modelling how Heideggerian existential structures can be used proactively as analytical ‘hooks’ for data in research claiming a basis in this philosophy and/or method. By modelling the potential application of an important Heideggerian philosophical construct to published qualitative data, this meta-synthesis has revealed new domains and more nuanced understandings of the temporal structure of Being-towards-death. Such an approach helps to more fully unveil the existential concerns of people at the core of interpretative phenomenological enquiry and may provide a blueprint to map either primary or synthesised data to other key ontological existentials. (shrink)

This essay argues that religion is a distinctive form of human activity, and offers a philosophical account of what religion fundamentally is (and what it is not), within the context of the Free Exercise Clause. §I promotes religion as an action-theoretic concept. §II presents the claim that atheism can be regarded as a religion: this claim is rejected on the basis that religion cannot be defined as a set of propositional beliefs concerning metaphysics and morality. §III defends a paradigmatic account (...) of religion as a kind of activity ordered to a concept of transcendence or superior nature, and argues that morally excellent human actions can be identified as religious, but only in a secondary or derivative way. §IV contends with the problem of including act-omissions as instantiations of religious exercise, and proposes a solution with reference to recent arguments implicating two-way powers. (shrink)

This thesis develops a disjunctivist approach to action as an alternative to the standard causal theory, or 'causalism'. The standard theory promotes a concept of action as constituted by a bodily event joined to certain mental conditions by a bond of causation. A disjunctivist approach, in contrast, claims that action must be distinguished by more than merely its etiology: action and mere movement are fundamentally different kinds. Recent objections to the causal theory of action are first surveyed, and the common (...) causalist assumption claiming Aristotle as the progenitor of the causal theory is examined and dismissed. More refined interpretations of Aristotle's thought on action yield two different concepts: action as change, and action as a unified psychophysical process. The latter in particular is argued to hold promise as a basis for developing the disjunctivist approach to action. The remainder of the thesis therefore considers a contemporary account of psychophysicality, known as 'embodiment theory', with the conclusion that the intelligibility of the account depends on appeal to a recent variant of top-down causation. The thesis also concludes that consideration of the concept of an animal agent makes it entirely unsurprising that the mental and physical are always found together in voluntary movement, and that the embodiment theory’s central notion of ‘property fusion’ potentially complements a naturalistic variant of top-down causation in explanations of agency. (shrink)

This thesis develops a disjunctivist approach to action as an alternative to the standard causal theory, or 'causalism'. The standard theory promotes a concept of action as constituted by a bodily event joined to certain mental conditions by a bond of causation. A disjunctivist approach, in contrast, claims that action must be distinguished by more than merely its etiology: action and mere movement are fundamentally different kinds. Recent objections to the causal theory of action are first surveyed, and the common (...) causalist assumption claiming Aristotle as the progenitor of the causal theory is examined and dismissed. More refined interpretations of Aristotle's thought on action yield two different concepts: action as change, and action as a unified psychophysical process. The latter in particular is argued to hold promise as a basis for developing the disjunctivist approach to action. The remainder of the thesis therefore considers a contemporary account of psychophysicality, known as 'embodiment theory', with the conclusion that the intelligibility of the account depends on appeal to a recent variant of top-down causation. The thesis also concludes that consideration of the concept of an animal agent makes it entirely unsurprising that the mental and physical are always found together in voluntary movement, and that the embodiment theory’s central notion of ‘property fusion’ potentially complements a naturalistic variant of top-down causation in explanations of agency. (shrink)

Adolescents develop the ability to reason through and rationalize their choices in accordance with their personal goals and beliefs as they progress through their teenage years. This concept of ‘em...

Almost 40 years ago, scholars identified a “chilly climate” for women in college classrooms. To examine whether contemporary college classrooms remain “chilly,” we conducted quantitative and qualitative observations in nine classrooms across multiple disciplines at one elite institution. Based on these 95 hours of observation, we discuss three gendered classroom participation patterns. First, on average, men students occupy classroom sonic space 1.6 times as often as women. Men also speak out without raising hands, interrupt, and engage in prolonged conversations during (...) class more than women students. Second, style and tone also differ. Men’s language is assertive, whereas women’s is hesitant and apologetic. Third, professors’ interventions and different structures of classrooms can alter existing gender status hierarchies. Extending Ridgeway’s gender system framework to college classrooms, we discuss how these gendered classroom participation patterns perpetuate gender status hierarchies. We thus argue that the chilly climate is an underexplored mechanism for the stalled gender revolution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Descartes’s Demon and the Madness of Don QuixoteSteven NadlerDescartes’s “malicious demon” (genius malignus, le mauvais génie)—the evil deceiver of the Meditations on First Philosophy whose hypothetical existence threatens to undermine radically Descartes’s confidence in his cognitive f aculties—is an artful philosophical and literary device. There is considerable debate over the significance of this powerful and malevolent being within Descartes’s argumentative strategy. Some insist that its role is a substantive (...) one, with Descartes in troducing the deceiver in order to deepen yet further the skeptical doubts of the First Meditation, doubts from which he hopes, by the grace of a benevolent God, eventually to rescue himself. 1 Others claim that its role is merely a rhetorical one, with the demon meant simply to reinforce already philosophically well-established skeptical doubts that, in the face of everyday habit, are difficult to sustain. 2 Either way, there is no underestimating the force of the hypothesis as an epistemological tool for subverting our faith in our reasoning and sensory powers. [End Page 41]It is useful to place the “evil genius” in the context of seventeenth-century intellectual culture 3 not just for our understanding of what may have been the historical origins of this most extreme and “metaphysical” 4 of all skeptical doubts but also for broadening our appreciation of its significance beyond epistemology alone. When we grasp the various practical (moral, legal, and social) problems and the literary and artistic possibilities raised by the demon hypoth esis, we can see why such an improbably hyper-skeptical thesis is nonetheless deserving of general interest. To take just one example, Richard Popkin, in his seminal work on the history of skepticism in early modern thought, describes the knotty problems that are generated in the legal context of a trial when the issue of the demonic is raised (as in the case of someone on trial for witchcraft). 5In the service of this contextualizing project I compare Descartes’s meditator (with his self-assumed skeptical pose) with a near-contemporary literary character of particular fame and importance. What is especially striking—and instructive—in this comp arison are the parallels and resonances between the kind of general, systematic, philosophically-generated hyperbolic doubt that Descartes introduces by way of his deceptor potentissimus et malignus and the initially more particular (but perhaps eq ually systematic) distrust of the faculties that is suggested by Don Quixote’s own “rationalization” of his illusions. 6 In fact precisely the same philosophical problem is raised both in the first major work of modern philosophy and in the first modern novel: in the face of the possibility of ongoing deception by some powerful and malicious being, how can we possibly trus t our sensory and rational faculties to provide us with true and reliable knowledge? Descartes’s philosophical work can even provide us with a key to understanding part of the nature of Don Quixote’s madness, to systematizing it in its epistemological dim ensions. Reciprocally, it may be that Cervantes’s hero gives us a concrete picture of what it would be like to try to live in the radically deceptive world of the skepticism of the First Meditation. [End Page 42]Did Cervantes’s novel have a direct influence on Descartes’s philosophical reflections? The first part of Don Quixote was published in 1604; the second part, written after several pirated editions of Part I had been circulating for a number of year s, appeared in 1614, the year before Cervantes’s death. The novel was immediately and enormously popular and was quickly translated into a number of other languages. The first French translation of Part I (by César Oudin) was published in 1614. In 1618, François de Rosset translated Part II, and these two translations were published together in one volume in 1639, 1646, and 1665. 7 We can be confident that Descartes knew about Cervantes’s works; and while we cannot say with certainty that he read Don Quixote, given his education, social status, interest in novels of chivalry, and the intellectual circles in which he traveled, it would be surprising if he did not. He... (shrink)

In this article, the authors operationalize the intersection of gender and race in survey research. Using quantitative data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, they investigate how gender/racial stereotypes about African Americans affect Whites’ attitudes about two types of affirmative action programs: job training and education and hiring and promotion. The authors find that gender/racial prejudice towards Black women and Black men influences Whites’ opposition to affirmative action at different levels than negative attitudes towards Blacks as a group. Prejudice (...) toward Black women has a larger effect on Whites’ policy preferences than does prejudice toward Black men or Blacks in general. In future research, survey methodologists should develop better intersectional measures to further document these gender/racial attitudes. (shrink)

This article examines birthday party decorations as a way of understanding the materiality and religious place-making of an expanding Baptist congregation in central Sweden in the early twentieth century. The fiftieth birthday party for Magnus Johanson, held at Salem Chapel in Falun, Dalarna county, in 1906, was decorated with birch branches, large Swedish flags and bunting and an elaborately laid table featuring coffee cups and refreshments. From an analysis of these material elements and a deeper investigation into the lives of (...) Johanson and his wife Kristina, it can be seen that evangelicals had a flexible approach to their ‘sacred’ spaces. Social activities and the act of decorating them created not only a sense of congregational fellowship and belonging but also the opportunity for congregations to display their connection to external cultural and political identities. Through the construction of chapel buildings and their subsequent decoration, male and female members were able to demonstrate a complementary creativity. Together they contributed to the cre-ation of Salem as a multi-purpose, comfortable and accepted place within Falun’s evolving religious landscape. (shrink)

This article reflects on childhood times based on the words chrónos, kairós and aión, which the Greeks use to conceptualize time, in dialogue with different authors, such as Kohan, Pohlmann, Skliar, Kohan and Fernandes. In the pedagogical field, we explore how Pedagogy of Childhood has focused on the importance of childhood temporality and children’s agency, with contributions from Hoyuelos, Parrini, Aguilera et al., Barbosa, Oliveira-Formosinho e Araújo, Oliveira-Formosinho, Pinazza and Gobbi. We reflect on what forms of organizing time are possible (...) when we think about children and their childhoods. Would it be a continuous and chronological time, a time of opportunity for the instant or the timeless intensity of the aiónic? Would it be possible to open spaces in school for other temporalities, given its immersion in chronological time, and its extreme emphasis on routine? We seek a relationship between forms of temporality, philosophy, and early education in order to explore alternative possibilities in the relationship between child and the school context, and conclude that, since the child’s is the aiónic time of intense experience, it is in the heightened dynamic immediacy and the multiple symbolic languages of play that it may be possible to create pedagogical structures that provide a dwelling for childhood temporality. (shrink)

In Henry Sidgwick's taxonomy in The Methods of Ethics, a method is a rational procedure for generating rules for right action, a principle is the statement of the ultimate good, and both these elements combine to form the moral theory, which shows the connection between the rules for right action to the good achieved by acting on those rules. Any method can be matched to any principle, but only satisfactory theories connect methods and principles plausibly or logically. ;Rightness, the proper (...) end of a method, is the proper end for agents as such; the rules generated by the method need not be linked by them to the goods. A method of generating rules of rightness is all there is to the moral theory of Jural Intuitionism, which is correct as far as it goes. But theorists need more than rules for rightness; they also need the standard of the good on which rightness depends. Philosophical Intuitionists know rightness depends on goodness, but misidentify that good as individual excellence. Jural Intuitionists correctly identify the aimed-at end for agents, rightness; Philosophical Intuitionists correctly link rightness to goodness. ;Common Sense Morality is sufficient for agents, who unconsciously identify the good as Utilitarians do, namely, as universal happiness. Common Sense Morality provides the data for fashioning a hybrid moral theory. That theory links the Egoist, Intuitionist, and Utilitarian methods to the Utilitarian principle. Sidgwick thinks he has shown that the Intuitionist and Utilitarian methods do, but the Egoist method does not, serve the Utilitarian end. Thus the moral theory on which Common Sense Morality is founded fails. Moral philosophy betrays a Dualism of Practical Reason, wherein the rational ends of individual happiness and universal happiness require conflicting rules for action. ;Pace Sidgwick, the Intuitionist method does not serve the Utilitarian end: Intuitionism requires that one believe both that rightness does and does not have intrinsic value. There is another problem: Sidgwick is biased, since for him only consequentialism is a moral theory. Finally, Sidgwick fails because he is committed both to Common Sense Morality and precision, and expects more systematization than morality allows. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Causa sive ratio. La raison de la cause, de Suarez à LeibnizSteven NadlerVincent Carraud. Causa sive ratio. La raison de la cause, de Suarez à Leibniz. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002. Pp. 573. € 42,00.Over the last two decades, there has been a good deal of outstanding work on the problem of causation in early modern philosophy. Some of it has been devoted to first-order questions: for (...) example, on whether this or that thinker allows for real causal activity among finite substances (and which ones). Other studies, by contrast, have focused on second-order questions, especially the proper formulation of the causal principle itself. Vincent Carraud's book is primarily concerned with second-order questions, although it does have something to say with respect to first-order questions as well. But the depth and breadth of this study makes it much more than just another entry in the ongoing discussion over who thought what about causality among the early moderns. Carraud has a large and complex story to tell: the development of the principle of sufficient reason in the seventeenth century. In particular, he wants to know which philosophers can truly be said to have adopted that principle in its most rigorous formulation. It is both a philosophical and a historical story, and it appears in what is surely one of the most important and interesting books in early modern philosophy in recent years.Carraud directs our attention to a particular phrase that originates with Descartes but then seems to reappear (in various forms) throughout the period: causa sive ratio, "cause or reason." Every term in the phrase is subject to interpretation, of course—'cause,' 'reason' and especially 'or'—and the thesis it embodies (and a philosopher's attitude toward it) is a function of how those terms are to be understood. Carraud's interest is in what this phrase can tell us about how a select group of philosophers (primarily Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche and Leibniz) regard the relationship between causality and intelligibility.The story begins with Suarez, the late sixteenth-century Scholastic. Suarez's contribution to the rise of the principle of sufficient reason is modest but crucial. He privileges efficient causation over all of the other Aristotelian varieties. While he still grants some explanatory role for formal, material and final causes, they have lost their status as "true" causes for Suarez; in fact, they qualify as causes only by analogy with efficient causation. As Carraud reads Suarez, the ratio causae belongs properly only to the efficient cause, since it alone can provide the reason for the existence and being of a thing.It is Descartes, however, who occupies the central role—both historically and philosophically—in Carraud's story. For it is he who truly effects the ultimate reduction (or, as Carraud puts it, unicité) of causality. In the Cartesian scheme, all but efficient causes are banished. Moreover, the efficient cause of an effect is now defined as the sufficient cause, one that explains why the effect is as it is. "La primauté et l'absoluité de la cause lui viennent de ce qu'elle rend raison de l'effet... Les causes sont d'abord les raisons (suffisantes) des effets, en quoi elles les expliquent" (199-200). Moreover, with Descartes we find a universal application of the principle of causality to all things, even to those that previously either were not regarded as sufficiently real to need a cause (the objective reality of ideas) or were regarded as standing outside the domain of causality altogether (God). It is not that God is a caused being for Descartes. Rather, the important thing is that God is, like all existing things, subject to the causal question. That is, it is legitimate to ask why God does not need a cause. And, in Carraud's account, this is where ratio comes in to its own. God is not a caused being, but there is a reason (in God's immense power) why God does not require a cause. Moreover, the only analogy we have for thinking of the way in which God's immensity forestalls God needing a cause is in terms of efficient causality itself... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:New Essays on the RationalistsSteven NadlerRocco J. Gennaro and Charles Huenemann, editors. New Essays on the Rationalists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. xvii + 391. Cloth, $60.00.Here is yet another collection of essays on early modern philosophy. The focus this time is on the Seventeenth century, in particular "the rationalists." What this apparently involves is, as the old-fashioned classification has it, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. But there (...) is no overall theme to the essays, nothing uniting them besides the fact that almost all are devoted to those three thinkers and the fact that the volume was inspired by a summer seminar run by Jonathan Bennett.What the editors mean by "the rationalists" (besides the extensional definition) is [End Page 437] thinkers "united in the belief that the intellect and human reason are powerful tools in our ability to know about the ultimate nature of mind and matter." What is supposed to separate "the rationalists" from "the empiricists" is "a belief in the power of human reason" (xv). This is a fairly weak claim; and I, for one, am skeptical that such categories are truly useful (or even valid—one would be hard-pressed to find a single issue on which Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz all agree and on which those who are usually called "empiricists" unanimously dissent). In the light of so much important and creative work done over the last twenty years in seventeenth-century philosophy, it would have been nice to see a volume devoted to "the rationalists" include at least one sophisticated discussion of the legitimacy and grounds of such a label.The essays in this book are divided into three categories: Matter and Substance; Freedom and Necessity; and Mind and Consciousness. The contributors are a broad mix of scholars: some established and accomplished, others new and up-and-coming. The quality of the work is consistently high. There is a lot of detailed and careful work here, both in the attention to the historical texts and in philosophical analyses. However, not all of the essays are of great scope or interest; in fact, most are not. There is a definite tendency toward the small-scale (but not brevity): a concern with micro-problems (for example, the chapter by Clarence Bonnen and Daniel Flage, "Distinctness," is devoted to the question of what the "distinctness" of an idea is for Descartes) and an emphasis on theses and arguments (such as Geoffrey Gorham's examination of the "similarity condition" for causation in Descartes, "Causation and Similarity in Descartes,"). If there is indeed an "analytical" way of doing history of philosophy, that school is well represented here.And then there are a couple of essays that stand out by transcending this narrowness of focus. The chapters by Catherine Wilson ("The Illusory Nature of Leibniz's System") and Don Garrett ("Teleology in Spinoza and Early Modern Rationalism") are, without question, the boldest and most interesting of the collection. Wilson argues that, in the light of Leibniz's changing and inconsistent views on substance, there really is no metaphysical "system" in his philosophy. Garrett, in what is, to my mind, the best essay in the book (although I think I disagree with him), defends an account of teleology in Spinoza's metaphysics, and then compares Spinoza's views on teleology with those of Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz; he concludes that Spinoza not only accepted teleological explanations of particular phenomena, but did so more strongly than anyone else in the modern period. Experts will, of course, disagree with the claims made by Wilson and Garrett; that is what this game is all about. But it is truly refreshing to see scholars such as these taking on large-scale issues.It is worth noting that there is also a nice, indirect dialogue between two of the essays: Charles Huenemann's interesting account of a consistent necessitarianism in Spinoza ("The Necessity of Finite Modes and Geometrical Containment in Spinoza's Metaphysics,") and Edwin Curley and Gregory Walski's argument (in "Spinoza's Necessitarianism Reconsidered,") that, when it comes to the finite modes, Spinoza is not a strong or absolute necessitarian. What is truly unfortunate about the collection, however... (shrink)