BackgroundUsing an effective method for evaluating Institutional Review Board (IRB) performance is essential for ensuring an IRB’s effectiveness, efficiency, and compliance with applicable human research standards and organizational policies. Currently, no empirical research has yet been published in China evaluating IRB performance measures by the use of a standardized tool. This study was therefore conducted to develop a Chinese version of the IRB Researcher Assessment Tool (IRB-RAT), assess the psychometric properties of the Chinese version (IRB-RAT-CV), and validate the tool for (...) use in China.MethodsIn this cultural adaptation, cross-sectional validation study, the IRB-RAT-CV was developed through a back-translation process and then distributed to 587 IRB staff members and researchers in medical institutions and schools in Hunan Province that review biomedical and social-behavioral research. Data from the 470 valid questionnaires collected from participants was used to evaluate the reliability, content validity, and construct validity of the IRB-RAT-CV.ResultsParticipants’ ratings of their ideal and actual IRB as measured by the IRB-RAT-CV achieved Cronbach's alpha 0.989 and 0.992, Spearman-Brown coefficient 0.964 and 0.968, and item-total correlation values ranging from 0.631 to 0.886 and 0.743 to 0.910, respectively.ConclusionThe IRB-RAT-CV is a linguistically and culturally applicable tool for assessing the quality of IRBs in China. (shrink)

This article first examines a number of different definitions of lying, from Aldert Vrij, Warren Shibles, Sissela Bok, the Oxford English Dictionary, Linda Coleman and Paul Kay, and Joseph Kupfer. It considers objections to all of them, and then defends Kupfer’s definition, as well as a modified version of his definition, as the best of those so far considered. Next, it examines five other definitions of lying, from Harry G. Frankfurt, Roderick M. Chisholm and Thomas D. Feehan, David (...) Simpson, Thomas Carson, and Don Fallis. It finds reason to reject these definitions, in favor of the two definitions of lying previously defended, namely:(i) To lie (to another person) = df. to make a believed-false statement (to another person) with the intention that that statement be believed to be true (by the other person).(ii) To lie (to another person) = df. to make a believed-false statement (to another person), either with the intention that that statement be believed to be true (by the other person), or with the intention that it be believed (by the other person) that that statement is believed to be true (by the person making the statement), or with both intentions. (shrink)

The pioneering anthology Home Girls features writings by Black feminist and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and writings. This edition features an updated list of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides a fresh assessment of how Black women's lives have changed-or not-since the book was first published. Contributors are Tania Abdulahad, Donna Allegra, Barbara A. Banks, Becky Birtha, Julie Carter, (...) Cenen, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Cliff, Michelle T. Clinton, Willie M. Coleman, Toi Derricotte, Alexis De Veaux, Jewelle L. Gomez, Akasha (Gloria) Hull, Patricia Jones, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Raymina Y. Mays, Deidre McCalla, Chirlane McCray, Pat Parker, Linda C. Powell, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Spring Redd, Gwendolyn Rogers, Kate Rushin, Ann Allen Shockley, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Shirley O. Steele, Luisah Teish, Jameelah Waheed, Alice Walker, and Renita Weems. (shrink)

"First Published in 1992, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.".

Critics of Hannah Arendt's Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy argue that Arendt fails to address the most important problem of political judgment, namely, validity. This essay shows that Arendt does indeed have an answer to the problem that preoccupies her critics, with one important caveat: she does not think that validity is the all-important problem of political judgment--the affirmation of human freedom is.

This essay examines the significantly different approaches of John Rawls and Hannah Arendt to the problem of judgment in democratic theory and practice.

On what basis should we make an epistemic assessment of another’s authority to impart knowledge? Is social identity a legitimate feature to take into account when assessing epistemic reliability? This paper argues that, in some cases, social identity is a relevant feature to take into account in assessing a person’s credibility.

This chapter contains section titled: The Value Problem Sosa's Solution Epistemically Valuable False Beliefs Organic Unities Gettier.

This is a unique, groundbreaking collection of autobiographical essays by leading women in philosophy. It provides a glimpse at the experiences of the generation that witnessed, and helped create, the remarkable advances now evident for women in the field.

For many decades, race and racism have been common areas of study in departments of sociology, history, political science, English, and anthropology. Much more recently, as the historical concept of race and racial categories have faced significant scientific and political challenges, philosophers have become more interested in these areas. This changing understanding of the ontology of race has invited inquiry from researchers in moral philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and aesthetics. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of (...) Race offers in one comprehensive volume newly written articles on race from the world's leading analytic and continental philosophers. It is, however, accessible to a readership beyond philosophy as well, providing a cohesive reference for a wide student and academic readership. The Companion synthesizes current philosophical understandings of race, providing 37 chapters on the history of philosophy and race as well as how race might be investigated in the usual frameworks of contemporary philosophy. The volume concludes with a section on philosophical approaches to some topics with broad interest outside of philosophy, like colonialism, affirmative action, eugenics, immigration, race and disability, and post-racialism. By clearly explaining and carefully organizing the leading current philosophical thinking on race, this timely collection will help define the subject and bring renewed understanding of race to students and researchers in the humanities, social science, and sciences. (shrink)

In this paper I make a preliminary analysis of Western (or global North) discourses on sexual violence, focusing on the important concepts of “consent” and “victim.” The concept of “consent” is widely used to determine whether sexual violence has occurred, and it is the focal point of debates over the legitimacy of statutory offenses and over the way we characterize sex work done under conditions involving economic desperation. The concept of “victim” is shunned by many feminists and nonfeminists alike for (...) its apparent eclipse of agency. Putting these concepts into a global framework sheds light on their limitations. Bringing in the debate over the concept “honor crime” reveals contrasting assumptions about the nature of sexual violence. The comparative analysis used in this paper shows how we can avoid universalizing from specific frameworks, but also how we can learn from the discourses elsewhere toward developing an account of commonalities across contexts. Ultimately I argue that in applications to sexual violence, “consent” has intrinsic limitations, “victim” has context-based dangers, and “honor crime” makes both correct as well as incorrect assumptions. (shrink)

In this response to the comments on my book, Rape and Resistance: Understanding the Complexities of Sexual Violation, I offer a futher elaboration of the crucial concept of sexual subjectivity put forward as a way to approach the normative evaluation of sexual practices. This concept makes possible a healthy pluralism without retreating to a facile libertarian view that would render consent sufficient to determine morally unproblematic sex. The concept of sexual subjectivity sanctions experimentation in our sexual lives and the question (...) arises as to whether this opens the door to anything. Yet the concept of experimentation also presupposes that some experiments fail and that all require assessment. I argue that assessment is best done in intra-group discussions where people share broad experiences and aims, but it is also possible to communicate concerns and ideas across groups. I then discuss my use of Foucault to elaborate the specific challenges that are encountered when one tries to speak about rape and sexual violations, and also the ways we can use his work to develop more effectively resistant speaking practices. (shrink)

In her article, Alcoff argues for the need to examine the reality of race philosophically. According to Alcoff, liberal notions of universality as well as the postmodern critique of essentialism make it difficult to address race and its ongoing significance in social life. By engaging with authors like Charles W. Mills and Paul Gilroy, Alcoff aims to show that it is possible to develop an account of race as social and historical reality without essentializing the category of race.

As hospital ethics committees become more common in American hospitals, their degree of success should be measured. Just as new technological procedures are evaluated, institutional innovations should also be evaluated. Currently, little is known about the success of HECs, and some authors have wondered whether these committees serve any useful purpose at all. This article reviews the descriptive results of a 1990 study on HEC success as they pertain to the question of how to measure committee success.

In the Critique of Judgment Kant argues that we may assume a certain ‘common inner sense’ on pain of skepticism. I present an interpretation of this argument, which holds that its skeptical threat involves the threat of a regress for judgment, that it argues for a principle underlying both empirical cognition and judgments of beauty, and that no ‘everything is beautiful problem’ results. This principle is essentially ‘epistemologically normative’ rather than moral, although in the end the moral raises its head. (...) Kant's account is important not only for his aesthetic theory but for his theory of empirical cognition. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Serene Khader’s effort to develop a decolonized approach to transnational feminism takes a helpfully nonideal approach. Much of decolonial theory has criticized universalism in order to espouse pluralism. Khader attempts to develop a form of minimalist universalism compatible with a significant dose of pluralism in regard to how we understand liberation from gender-based forms of oppression, and she effectively shows how the nonideal, meliorative approach can do this. I address three issues here: (1) the serious challenge her universalist account (...) poses to critical theory and some other trends in continental philosophy; (2) the persuasive analysis of, approach to, and critique that she makes of ‘gender role eliminativism’ and (3) the epistemic and dialogic questions left remaining in her defense of feminist universalism, in relation to who can theoretically formulate the universal. (shrink)

Feminist philosophy has been concerned with race and racism since its inception for both historical and conceptual reasons. Historically, the struggle against sexism consistently followed in the footsteps of the struggle against slavery and racism, both in the nineteenth as well as the twentieth centuries. Women who resisted slavery and racism began to rethink common beliefs about women's role, and took inspiration from the abolitionist and civil rights struggles. Nineteenth‐century transcendentalist Margaret Fuller Ossoli made a conceptual analogy between slavery as (...) an unfair restriction on human freedom and the social and economic restrictions on white women. Simone de Beauvoir argued that slaves and white women had been infantilized in similar ways. Many early feminist accounts of sexism borrowed from analyses of slavery and racism, how these were justified through attributions of inferiority and dependence, and how these affected the subjectivity of the oppressed. (shrink)

I argue here that first person speech on sexual violence remains an important dimension of the movement for social change in regard to sexual violence, and that the public speech of survivors faces at least three groups of obstacles: 1) the problem of epistemic injustice, that is, injustice in the sphere of knowledge 2) the problem of language and power, and 3) the problem of dominant discourses. I explain and develop these points and end with a final argument concerning the (...) critical importance of speaking publicly on these areas of human experience. (shrink)