In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17.1 (2003) 73-75 [Access article in PDF] Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics. Sonia Kruks. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 200. $35.00 h.c. 0-8014-3387-8; $16.95 pbk. 0-8014-8417-0. Sonia Kruks' latest book, Retrieving Experience, is a valuable contribution to ongoing debates about the relevance of feminist philosophy in a period of relative political quietism. It also offers timely (...) reminders of historical continuities between phenomenological and postmodern conceptions of subjectivity and political engagement. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Fanon, and the later Sartre, Kruks proposes to "explore women's embodied experiences" and to "ask whether they might not offer some means to help build affective bonds among women who are in many ways radically different from one another" (6). The book approaches this task by means of two secondary issues. First, should feminist thought be oriented by phenomenological or postmodernist theoretical strategies? Second, can women's embodied experience be the conceptual basis for political and epistemological practices that avoid the pitfalls of "identity politics" or an "epistemology of provenance"? The answer to both questions comes through the notion of praxis developed in Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason. By thinking of embodiment as praxis or work, a strategy implicit in Beauvoir's idea that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." Kruks seeks to resolve the ethical affront of finding one's individuality reduced to the "generality" of a collective—the ethical affront to which feminists of various generations and theoretical persuasions must respond.Retrieving Experience explores the significance of recognition as a political norm. Identifying Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew as a pivotal work in the history of identitarian theorizing, she situates recent appeals for race- and gender-based political mobilization in the United States with respect to the dialectical relationship between the Look, shame, and recognition existentialists observed in situations of anti-Semitic and colonial domination during and immediately after the Second World War. Legitimating knowledge gained under oppressive conditions formed an important element of African, Southeast Asian, and ultimately African-American and feminist resistance to cultural imperialism. However, Kruks warns, discourses of "recognition" risk placing the blame for group domination on individuals' face-to-face interactions while concealing the role of state and economic institutions in enabling social disdain to systematically damage a group's quality of life. Moreover, they suggest that the experience of subjugation alone justifies knowledge claims or counts, without further elaboration, as an act of political engagement. Kruks argues that knowers and actors need to identify conceptual and practical mediations enabling individual interactions, experiences, and strategies to prompt the recognition and transformation of [End Page 73] group situations. Sartre's notion of praxis, she suggests, explains how an individual can participate in a collectivity while acting autonomously or acquiescing to subjection.The most important passages in Retrieving Experience examine the affective aspects of the decision to take up a political identity or engage in political action. Going beyond Sartre's account of mediations, Kruks suggests that the sensory and emotional qualities of embodiment are themselves mediators, the products of praxis as well as its vehicles. Since any act of social knowledge involves the emotions, affect plays an important role in the process whereby individuals from different cultural, economic, and bodily situations learn about and shape one another's' environment through the act of knowledge. Individuals, then, may have a moral responsibility to learn about others in a way that gives them "sympathetic bodies." Drawing on Maria Lugones' social epistemology, Kruks argues that "world-traveling" or existing simultaneously in several communities or sets of power relations is a bodily act, but also a fully cultural, ethical act rather than a natural way of being. One is not born, but becomes, an embodied knower. Understanding female embodiment as a kind of work or "world-traveling" praxis enables feminist solidarity—"respectful recognition" to replace a historically implausible "sisterhood" or a distinct epistemological perspective as a regulative ideal for feminist politics.But how far can the... (shrink)

Molecular biologists and biochemists often use diagrams to present hypotheses. Analysis of diagrams shows that their content can be expressed with linguistic representations. Why do biologists use visual representations instead? One reason is simple comprehensibility: some diagrams present information which is readily understood from the diagram format, but which would not be comprehensible if the same information was expressed linguistically. But often diagrams are used even when concise, comprehensible linguistic alternatives are available. I explain this phenomenon by showing why diagrammatic (...) representation is especially well suited for a particular kind of explanation common in molecular biology and biochemistry: namely, functional analysis, in which a capacity of the system is explained in terms of capacities of its component parts. (shrink)

Is religious faith consistent with being an intellectually virtuous thinker? In seeking to answer this question, one quickly finds others, each of which has been the focus of recent renewed attention by epistemologists: What is it to be an intellectually virtuous thinker? Must all reasonable belief be grounded in public evidence? Under what circumstances is a person rationally justified in believing something on trust, on the testimony of another, or because of the conclusions drawn by an intellectual authority? Can it (...) be reasonable to hold a belief on a topic over which there is significant, entrenched disagreement among informed inquirers, or should such disagreement lead all parties to modify or suspend their own judgments? Is there anything about faith that exempts it from measurement against such epistemic norms? And if we would so evaluate it, how exactly should we understand the intellectual commitments faith requires? The volume's introduction provides a roadmap of the central issues and controversies as currently discussed by philosophers. In fourteen new essays written to engage nonspecialists as well as philosophers working in religion and epistemology, a diverse and distinguished group of thinkers then consider the place of intellectual virtue in religious faith, exploring one or more of the specific issues noted above. (shrink)

The ambiguity regarding whether a given intervention is perceived as enhancement or as therapy might contribute to the angst that the public expresses with respect to endorsement of enhancement. We set out to develop empirical data that explored this. We used Amazon Mechanical Turk to recruit participants from Canada and the United States. Each individual was randomly assigned to read one vignette describing the use of a pill to enhance one of 12 cognitive, affective or social domains. The vignettes described (...) a situation in which an individual was using a pill to enhance the relevant domain under one of two possible enhancement conditions, one perceived as enhancing above the norm, what most people recognize as a clear case of enhancement, whereas the other perceived as enhancing towards the norm, with the individual using the enhancement having a modest, but subclinical deficit. Participants were asked how comfortable they were with the individual using the enhancement and about the impact the enhancement might have had in the individuals’ success in life. We found that irrespective of the domain to be enhanced, participants felt significantly more comfortable with ETN than with EAN, and they regarded the enhancement intervention as contributing to greater success in life with ETN rather than EAN. These data demonstrate that the therapy enhancement distinction is morally salient to the public, and that this distinction contributes to the angst that people feel when considering the propriety of CAS enhancement. (shrink)

Abstract:There is debate about the ontological status of conventional entities in Abhidharma thought. Buddhist texts often draw a distinction between two different kinds of entities, ultimately real entities (paramārtha-sat) and conventionally real entities (saṃvṛti-sat), but are often unclear about what the distinction entails. The debate about whether past and future dharmas are ultimately real reveals that Sam.ghabhadra and Vasubandhu—two prominent Abhidharma philosophers—fundamentally disagree about whether reality consists in one or many modes of being. Saṃghabhadra's Sarvāstivāda position is best understood as (...) the ontologically pluralist view that a dharma can enjoy three distinct but equally fundamental temporal modes of being. Vasubandhu's position is that reality is univocal, that everything is real in the same sense. Because Saṃghabhadra is a pluralist and Vasubandhu is not, Saṃghabhadra affirms the reality of conventional entities whereas Vasubandhu does not. (shrink)

The debate over the propriety of cognitive enhancement evokes both enthusiasm and worry. To gain further insight into the reasons that people may have for endorsing or eschewing pharmacological enhancement, we used empirical tools to explore public attitudes towards PE of twelve cognitive, affective, and social domains. Participants from Canada and the United States were recruited using Mechanical Turk and were randomly assigned to read one vignette that described an individual who uses a pill to enhance a single domain. After (...) reading the vignette, participants were asked how comfortable they were with the individual using the enhancement. People were significantly more comfortable when they read about enhancement of certain CAS domains than others. We found a modest negative correlation between comfort level and the degree to which the PE was perceived as changing core features of the person. We also found a modest correlation between comfort level and the degree to which the PE was perceived as improving success in life. Finally, using a sequential mixed method technique, we found that participants who felt uncomfortable about PE use overwhelmingly focused on a lack of need and, to a lesser degree, expressed concerns about safety; those who felt comfortable about PE use most frequently mentioned the safety of the pill and its ability to provide a positive outcome. The data provide novel insights into public enthusiasms and concerns over the use of PE. (shrink)

Clinical ethics support for health care professionals and patients is increasingly seen as part of good health care. However, there is a key drawback to the way CES services are currently offered. They are often performed as isolated and one-off services whose ownership and impact are unclear. This paper describes the development of an integrative approach to CES at the Center of Expertise and Care for Gender Dysphoria at Amsterdam University Medical Center. We specifically aimed to integrate CES into daily (...) work processes at the CEGD. In this paper, we describe the CES services offered there in detail and elaborate on the 16 lessons we learned from the process of developing an integrative approach to CES. These learning points can inform and inspire CES professionals, who wish to bring about greater integration of CES services into clinical practice. (shrink)

Frank Jackson often writes as if his descriptivist account of public language meanings were just plain common sense. How else are we to explain how different speakers manage to communicate using a public language? And how else can we explain how individuals arrive at confident judgments about the reference of their words in hypothetical scenarios? Our aim in this paper is to show just how controversial the psychological assumptions behind in Jackson’s semantic theory really are. First, we explain how Jackson’s (...) theory goes well beyond the commonsense platitudes he cites in its defence. Second, we sketch an alternative explanation of those platitudes, the jazz model of meaning, which we argue is more psychologically realistic. We conclude that the psychological picture presupposed by Jackson’s semantic theory stands in need of a much more substantial defence than he has so far offered. (shrink)

For more than 100,000 years, H. sapiens lived as foragers, in small family groups with low reproductive variance. A minority of men were able to father children by two or three women; and a majority of men and women were able to breed. But after the origin of farming around 10,000 years ago, reproductive variance increased. In civilizations which began in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, and then moved on to Greece and Rome, kings collected thousands of women, whose children (...) were supported and guarded by thousands of eunuchs. Just a few hundred years ago, that trend reversed. Obligate sterility ended, and reproductive variance declined. For H. sapiens, as for other organisms, eusociality seems to be an effect of ecological constraints. Civilizations rose up in lake and river valleys, hemmed in by mountains and deserts. Egalitarianism became an option after empty habitats opened up. (shrink)

Although the expression 'intellectual property' is widely used, it could be argued that the very idea of intellectual property is incoherent. After all, ideas are not like land, houses or clothing; surely they are not the sorts of things that can be owned? I shall examine two arguments - one ontological, one jurisprudential - that put pressure on the coherence of the idea of intellectual property, both leading to the conclusion that intellectual property rights are not genuine property rights, but (...) rights to monopolies. In setting up and responding to the first argument, I discuss the applicability of the type/ token distinction to intellectual property law; a distinction I also appeal to as a way of clarifying my response to the second argument. (shrink)

R??SUM???? travers l?????tude de la correspondance philosophique entre Descartes et Henry More, je souhaiterais montrer que les th??mes centraux en sont la consid??ration de la nature de l???espace et le statut de l???infini, bien que la pol??mique aborde??galement le probl??me ontologique de la distinction entre l?????tendue et la pens??e, et les questions physiques de la n??gation du vide et de l???atomisme. More rejette l???hypoth??se cart??sienne d???un univers ind??fini, qu???il consid??re??tre une mani??re d??tourn??e de postuler le caract??re infini de l???univers, ce (...) qui revient?? attribuer tout autant l???infinit???? la mati??re qu????? Dieu, d???o?? le fait que Descartes soit un mat??rialiste selon Henry More. ABSTRACT The correspondence between Descartes and More covers a diversity of each author???s fundamental philosophical views. Their polemics range over not only general aspects of physics, but also extend to cosmology and theology. On the one hand, we have God as infinite and His creation as indefinite for Descartes; on the other hand, God as extant, ubiquitous and omnipresent, and His creation as limited for Henry More. It is this last problem that constitutes the focus of my essay, strictly speaking??? the problem of the universe as infinite. (shrink)

This paper discusses the widespread use of "trolley problems" in the ethics classroom from a critical perspective. After tracing the enormous popularity of ‘trolleyology’ in recent moral philosophy, differentiating various functions these hypotheticals are supposed to fulfill in ethical discourse and carving out the underlying conception of normative ethics as a quasi-scientific enterprise, I examine how they are constructed and how they affect their recipient. Against this background, I argue that despite their popularity, the use of trolley problems in the (...) ethics classroom turns out to be questionable for a number of reasons, most of which have already been advanced in the philosophical debate but hardly been reflected upon in the didactic context. Finally, I argue that the deconstruction of trolleyesque scenarios would be a good educational use of them. When it comes to using cases for didactic purposes, I suggest we give trolley problems a rest and develop more realistic scenarios. (shrink)

The notion of ‘illocutionary silencing’ has been given a key role in defining the harms of pornography by several feminist philosophers. Though the literature on silencing focuses almost exclusively on the speech act of sexual refusal, oddly enough, it lacks a thorough analysis of that very act. My first aim is to fill this theoretical gap. I claim that refusals are “second-turn illocutions”: they cannot be accomplished in absence of a previous interrogative (or open) call by the hearer. Furthermore, I (...) maintain that refusals constitute authoritative illocutions only when preceded by requests for permission. The secondary goal of my paper is to assess Mary Kate McGowan’s (2009) account of silencing as authority denial. Despite its virtues, I argue that ultimately it should be rejected on two grounds: (i) it entails an objectification of female sexuality; (ii) if sexual advances are requests for permission (as McGowan implies), a man who asks a woman for sex cannot fail to ratify her authority over her own body. I conclude by sketching an alternative explanation for the failure of women’s refusals, according to which women may be unable to refuse sex for their interlocutors’ advances are intended as imperative (or closed) calls. (shrink)

This paper presents the contribution of the pragmatic sociology of critical capacities to the understanding of environmental conflicts. In the field of 'environmental valuation', nowadays colonised by economics, the approach of plural modes (or 'regimes') of engagement provides a sociological understanding of the unequal power of conflicting 'languages of valuation'. This frame entails a shift from 'values' to 'modes of valuation', and links modes of valuation to modes of practical engagement and coordination with the surrounding environment. Different social sources of (...) incommensurability are thus detected and reframed as critical tension within and among modes of human coordination with the environment. (shrink)

We surveyed IRB chairs' perspectives on offering individual genetic research results to participants and families, including family members of deceased participants, and the IRB's role in addressing these issues. Given a particular hypothetical scenario, respondents favored offering results to participants but not family members, giving choices at the time of initial consent, and honoring elicited choices. They felt IRBs should have authority regarding the process issues, but a more limited role in medical and scientific issues.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to consider some of the philosophical and bioethical issues raised by the creation of the draft social values framework developed to facilitate data collection and country-specific presentations at the inaugural workshop on "Social values and health priority setting" held in February 2011. -/- DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Conceptual analysis is used to analyse the term "social values", as employed in the framework, and its relationship to related ideas such as moral values. The structure of the framework (...) (process and content values) is considered in light of current debate in philosophy and bioethics about the political and moral aims served by these kinds of values, and the extent to which they are either suited to, or sufficient for, the policy context. -/- FINDINGS: There is much to be gained by engaging with the arguments presented in the philosophical literature in order to further refine the framework. The framework should remain neutral in respect of the importance of procedural values in different contexts and should be as inclusive as possible in respect of the principles it includes. Further development would be best served by taking a multidisciplinary approach. The framework could provide a valuable space in which future debates about procedural/substantive values can be considered. -/- ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The paper brings philosophical and bioethics perspectives to bear on a new framework proposed for the analysis of social values in health priority setting. It identifies how such a practical, policy-focused framework might be informed by engagement with deeper, and often unresolved, questions or principle around resource allocation in health. (shrink)

In Epistemic Two-Dimensional Semantics, David Chalmers seeks to develop a version of 2-D semantics which can vindicate the rationalist claim that there are constitutive connections between meaning, possibility and a priority. Chalmers lays out different ways of filling in his preferred epistemic approach to 2-D semantics so as to avoid controversial philosophical assumptions. In these comments, however, I argue that there are some distinctively rationalist commitments in Chalmers's epistemic approach to 2-D semantics. I start by explaining why Chalmers's approach requires (...) a canonical language that affords subjects accurate a priori access to the space of possibility. I then argue that traditional worries about rationalism will simply re-emerge as worries about whether there can be a canonical vocabulary and how we could come to recognize one if there were. The moral is that Chalmers's 2-D semantic framework builds in substantive metaphysical and epistemological commitments which stand in need of further defense. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the drivers involved in an alternative business model: cross-sector social partnerships between for-profit, predominantly multinational corporations and nonprofit organizations. We explore these cross-sector social partnerships from the perspective of these primary stakeholders, examining the questions of power differentials and the definitions and determinants of success. In order more deeply to understand these drivers, we review the evolution of the concept of “value” and the perception of the value that each stakeholder brings to the partnership. We (...) then describe and offer the results of an empirical, qualitative study of 18 CSSPs, where we analyze each partner's representations of success, outcomes sought and distinctions in determinants of value within the partnerships. (shrink)

Matthew Benton, John Hawthorne, and Yoaav Isaacs (BHI) claim that evil must be evidence against God’s existence, because the absence of evil would be (presumably excellent) evidence for it. Their argument is obviously valid on standard Bayesian epistemology. But in addition to raising a few reasons one might doubt its premise, I here highlight the rather misleading meaning, in BHI’s argument, of evil’s being evidence against God. BHI seek to establish that if one learned simply “that there was evil,” perhaps (...) via an oracle, one would gain evidence of some strength or other against God. But when we commonly observe that there is evil in the world, we learn a stronger proposition. And determining the evidential impact of that stronger proposition is not so easy. The interesting questions about the evidential impact of even a general awareness of evil in the world remain open. (shrink)

Using an ethnographic and longitudinal interview study of college women and in-depth interviews with their parents, I argue that mid-tier flagship universities still push women toward gender complementarity—a gender-traditional model of economic security pairing a career oriented man with a financially dependent woman. Combining multilevel and intersectional theories, I show that the infrastructure and campus peer culture at Midwest University supports this gendered logic of class reproduction, which reflects an affluent, white, and heterosexual femininity. I argue that this logic may (...) only work for a minority of students, and plays a role in reinforcing class inequities among women. (shrink)

The following address considers the relevance of business ethics education to our students. Is our concept of ethics one of practiceand application? And, if so, are we accountable to our students, our institutions and ourselves, for the practical impact that we haveor, conversely, that we do not have? Aren’t we responsible in part if one of our students ventures forth and does not act in an ethicalmanner? Though a positive response to this query may not be popular, what is the (...) alternative? If we are not responsible for the impact(or lack thereof) that we have on our students, then what is our purpose? The discussion further explores the nature of this impact andthe process by which we can amplify the results. (shrink)

The American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business has called for stronger ethics programs. There are two problems with this battle cry. First, the AACSB rejects, with weak arguments, the single best way to get ethics into the curriculum. Second, the AACSB can only vaguely describe some unpromising alternatives to that strategy. A number of leading business ethicists have challenged the AACSB to defend and clarify its views, to little avail. The proposed Procedures and Standards cannot by themselves bring about (...) any significant change in the teaching of business ethics. There is a gap between the AACSB’s professed objectives and the means for achieving the objectives and determining whether they are being achieved. The Statement about Curriculum Content gives great prominence to the teaching of business ethics, but the interpretation of the statement, especially in the standards for measuring achievement, shows how improbable it is that the proposed Procedures and Standards will have the desired impact. We must recognize the constraints on the AACSB as we consider current standards and the controversy over a free-standing course versus an integrated curricular approach. The evident conclusion is a call, not only to the AACSB but to all business school educators, to set the stage for strengthened ethics education rather than to have standards imposed on us from outside. (shrink)

In recent years, discussion around memory modification interventions has gained attention. However, discussion around the use of memory interventions in the criminal justice system has been mostly absent. In this paper we start by highlighting the importance memory has for human well-being and personal identity, as well as its role within the criminal forensic setting; in particular, for claiming and accepting legal responsibility, for moral learning, and for retribution. We provide examples of memory interventions that are currently available for medical (...) purposes, but that in the future could be used in the forensic setting to modify criminal offenders’ memories. In this section we contrast the cases of dampening and enhancing memories of criminal offenders. We then present from a pragmatic approach some pressing ethical issues associated with these types of memory interventions. The paper ends up highlighting how these pragmatic considerations can help establish ethically justified criteria regarding the possibility of interventions aimed at modifying criminal offenders’ memories. (shrink)

The American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business has called for stronger ethics programs. There are two problems with this battle cry. First, the AACSB rejects, with weak arguments, the single best way to get ethics into the curriculum. Second, the AACSB can only vaguely describe some unpromising alternatives to that strategy. A number of leading business ethicists have challenged the AACSB to defend and clarify its views, to little avail. The proposed Procedures and Standards cannot by themselves bring about (...) any significant change in the teaching of business ethics. There is a gap between the AACSB’s professed objectives and the means for achieving the objectives and determining whether they are being achieved. The Statement about Curriculum Content gives great prominence to the teaching of business ethics, but the interpretation of the statement, especially in the standards for measuring achievement, shows how improbable it is that the proposed Procedures and Standards will have the desired impact. We must recognize the constraints on the AACSB as we consider current standards and the controversy over a free-standing course versus an integrated curricular approach. The evident conclusion is a call, not only to the AACSB but to all business school educators, to set the stage for strengthened ethics education rather than to have standards imposed on us from outside. (shrink)

This paper discusses the widespread use of "trolley problems" in the ethics classroom from a critical perspective. After tracing the enormous popularity of ‘trolleyology’ in recent moral philosophy, differentiating various functions these hypotheticals are supposed to fulfill in ethical discourse and carving out the underlying conception of normative ethics as a quasi-scientific enterprise, I examine how they are constructed and how they affect their recipient. Against this background, I argue that despite their popularity, the use of trolley problems in the (...) ethics classroom turns out to be questionable for a number of reasons, most of which have already been advanced in the philosophical debate but hardly been reflected upon in the didactic context. Finally, I argue that the deconstruction of trolleyesque scenarios would be a good educational use of them. When it comes to using cases for didactic purposes, I suggest we give trolley problems a rest and develop more realistic scenarios. (shrink)

In the nineteenth century, William Whewell claimed that his confirmation criterion of consilience was a truth-guarantor: we could, he believed, be certain that a consilient theory was true. Since that time Whewell has been much ridiculed for this claim by critics such as J. S. Mill and Bas van Fraassen. I have argued elsewhere that, while Whewell's claim that consilience can guarantee the truth of a theory is clearly wrong, consilience is indeed quite useful as a confirmation criterion (Snyder 2005). (...) Here I will show that, even when consilience gives evidence for a theory that turns out to be false, there is an important sense in which consilience shows that the theory has captured something correct about the natural-kind structure of the physical world. Whewell was therefore correct to claim that consilience provides a "criterion of reality" (Whewell [1847] 1967, vol. 2, 68). Consilience provides this by giving justification for the claim that we have really `cut nature at its causal joints', to adapt Plato's famous phrase. Because of this, consilience can play a role in an argument for scientific realism. (shrink)

This contribution presents a corpus of spatial descriptions and describes the development of a human-driven spatial language robot system for their comprehension. The domain of application is an eldercare setting in which an assistive robot is asked to “fetch” an object for an elderly resident based on a natural language spatial description given by the resident. In Part One, we describe a corpus of naturally occurring descriptions elicited from a group of older adults within a virtual 3D home that simulates (...) the eldercare setting. We contrast descriptions elicited when participants offered descriptions to a human versus robot avatar, and under instructions to tell the addressee how to find the target versus where the target is. We summarize the key features of the spatial descriptions, including their dynamic versus static nature and the perspective adopted by the speaker. In Part Two, we discuss critical cognitive and perceptual processing capabilities necessary for the robot to establish a common ground with the human user and perform the “fetch” task. Based on the collected corpus, we focus here on resolving the perspective ambiguity and recognizing furniture items used as landmarks in the descriptions. Taken together, the work presented here offers the key building blocks of a robust system that takes as input natural spatial language descriptions and produces commands that drive the robot to successfully fetch objects within our eldercare scenario. (shrink)

Recent developments in biogerontology—the study of the biology of ageing—suggest that it may eventually be possible to intervene in the human ageing process. This, in turn, offers the prospect of significantly postponing the onset of age-related diseases. The biogerontological project, however, has met with strong resistance, especially by deontologists. They consider the act of intervening in the ageing process impermissible on the grounds that it would (most probably) bring about an extended maximum lifespan—a state of affairs that they deem intrinsically (...) bad. In a bid to convince their deontological opponents of the permissibility of this act, proponents of biogerontology invoke an argument which is grounded in the doctrine of double effect. Surprisingly, their argument, which we refer to as the ‘double effect argument’, has gone unnoticed. This article exposes and critically evaluates this ‘double effect argument’. To this end, we first review a series of excerpts from the ethical debate on biogerontology in order to substantiate the presence of double effect reasoning. Next, we attempt to determine the role that the ‘double effect argument’ is meant to fulfil within this debate. Finally, we assess whether the act of intervening in ageing actually can be justified using double effect reasoning. (shrink)

In this study, the author uses ethnographic and interview data from a women's floor in a university residence hall to examine how some heterosexual women's gender strategies contribute to their homophobia. The author describes a prevailing heterosexual erotic market on campus—the Greek party scene—and the status hierarchy linked to it. Within this hierarchy, heterosexual women assign lesbians low rank because of their assumed disinterest in the erotic market and perceived inability to acquire men's erotic attention. Active partiers invest more in (...) this social world and prefer higher levels of social distance from lesbians than do others. These women also engage in same-sex eroticism primarily designated for a male audience. They define their behaviors as heterosexual, reducing the spaces in which lesbians can be comfortable. Finally, the author concludes by discussing the unique nature of women's homophobia and the links between sexism and heterosexism. (shrink)

El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar las nuevas coordenadas de los discursos en torno al cuerpo de las mujeres en el contexto posfeminista, prestando especial atención a la emergente “sensibilidad fit” que configura uno de los nuevos nodos discursivos. Se trata de explorar las tensiones entre las nuevas proclamas feministas de liberación femenina y la perduración de las exigencias patriarcales, en lo que parece resolverse bajo la estrategia de alineamiento total entre el propio deseo y el deseo del sistema (...) a través de narrativas del cuidado del cuerpo, del amor propio y del desarrollo personal. Para ello, pondré en relación tres conceptos centrales: “posfeminismo” (Gill, 2007), “salutismo” (Crawford, 1980) y “dispositivo fitness” (Costa, 2010), a través de la figura del “empresario de sí” propuesto por Michel Foucault. Todo ello finalmente será ejemplificado a partir de una publicación paradigmática de este tipo de discursos, Fitness emocional. Una potente herramienta de bienestar personal (2017), de Nessi Arauz. Con ello se pretende ahondar y exponer las distintas tramas de poder que se encuentran en los nuevos discursos posfeministas de “la mujer empoderada”, que se imbrican con discursos salutistas y que pueden encuadrarse en las nuevas derivas del giro psicológico de la racionalidad neoliberal. (shrink)

Cooperation in business ethics research is important across disciplines, to help strengthen the base of a field which is still new in Europe. A study on recruitment interviewing in Germany, U.K. and the Netherlands is used to demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary business ethics research, particularly across cultures.

Some Buddhists claim that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence and thereby endorse a kind of global anti‐realism. Buddhist global fictionalists argue that for these Buddhists, ordinary discourse is best understood in global fictionalist terms. I argue here that these attempts fail because the types of fictionalism that these accounts are modeled after structurally rely on a non‐fictionalist domain of discourse to establish normative constraints within the target fictionalist domain. If the goal of appealing to fictionalism is to help (...) explain how discourse involving reference to entities that are unreal can still be governed by non‐arbitrary norms of acceptance, such that some conventional claims can be meaningfully described as conventionally true in contrast to other such claims that are conventionally false, then Buddhist global fictionalism undermines its own goals. It does so by eliminating the very feature of a fictionalist account – the ability to appeal to a non‐fictionalist domain – that makes possible the norms that fictionalism is invoked to explain in the first place. (shrink)

In this article, Laura Quintana elaborates on a conceptual distinction between violence and rage. Along with this distinction, she recognises that while rage may possess a destructive potential, it can also be politicised in emancipatory practices that confront conditions of injustice and structural violence. Her analysis centers on contemporary political movements in Latin America, which she views as collective manifestations of rage. Within these movements, the manifestation of rage is intertwined with forms of care and communal labor. Quintana characterises (...) such movements as embodying a “dignified rage” (digna rabia) that calls for an emancipatory transformation of the status quo. She contends that these practices can be understood in terms of the notion of “anti-violence,” as it has been coined by Étienne Balibar. In this she diverges from Judith Butler, since, according to Quintana’s analysis, such practices challenge the demand for non-violence that has often served to neutralise the disruptive force of such manifestations and movements. (shrink)

This commentary examines twelve stories in which parents recount how they (and often their co-parent) decided whether or not to circumcise their newborn sons. Several debated whether this should be their decision to make. The stories offer an intimate glimpse into people's efforts to do the best for children in a context of incomplete and changing information and intense public controversy. The commentary explores the diverse meanings and contradictory commonsense beliefs that surround foreskin removal in the United States today. Considering (...) these parents' reflections—and their silences—can help us appreciate the real-life consequences of debates about the ethics of male circumcision. (shrink)

This paper explores the effect of different types of incubation task (visual, numerical and verbal) with various levels of attentional focus and cognitive effort (non-demanding, low-demanding and high-demanding) on the resolution of insight problems. The most effective was found to be the low-demanding task (regardless of its nature), which although requiring attentional focus, leaves resources available for the unconscious analytical restructuring process, obtaining a high percentage of success in solving the problem shortly after completion of the incubation task. Overall findings (...) support the hypothesis of Unconscious Analytic Thought (UAT), according to which the restructuring required in insight problem solving implies a covert thinking process that includes a relevant, analytic and goal-oriented search. The findings are discussed in the light of UAT and are compared with the main theories of insight in problem solving. (shrink)

An ongoing argument often made by business ethicists is that a singular preoccupation on profitability, will lead, in the long run, to disvalue for all the stakeholders and the communities it affects, and often, economic challenges for the company. On the other hand, we argue, a preoccupation with ethics and CSR as the primary aims of a for-profit company, it is, on its own, like a preoccupation with profitability, unsustainable. Indeed, without economic viability, a company will fail. Both of these (...) contentions point to our conclusion that one must take care in changing habits and rethinking business models. We illustrate through case examples, that merely being ethical and socially responsible is insufficient for the long-term well-being of business just as a preoccupation with profits for their own sake also is insufficient. What is realistic, practical, pragmatic, sustainable and profitable for corporations, and what also serves the interests of multiple stakeholders including those in the communities they serve, is a true balance of ethics, CSR, and economic value-added. Expanding on the recent work of Husted and Allen, we call this a strategic global strategy approach. (shrink)