Historically, judicial enforcement of constitutional rights to health care has played a fairly limited role in enabling access to health care, a trend particularly prevalent in North America, and reflected in many other regions. This trend is due in part to judicial resistance to recognizing socioeconomic rights like health as appropriately legal, or as appropriately enforceable in light of the doctrine of separation of powers. This resistance is evident in judicial deference to social and economic policy, a reluctance to view (...) socioeconomic claims as invoking “fundamental values” that courts consider themselves authorized to protect: and a real reluctance to recognize and enforce “positive” obligations pertaining to social welfare. As a result, health has often fallen largely into the political rather than legal sphere, and domestic courts have been relatively reluctant to review health policies from a human rights perspective, given the belief that doing so would exceed the appropriate democratic function of the judiciary. (shrink)

Historically, judicial enforcement of constitutional rights to health care has played a fairly limited role in enabling access to health care, a trend particularly prevalent in North America, and reflected in many other regions. This trend is due in part to judicial resistance to recognizing socioeconomic rights like health as appropriately legal, or as appropriately enforceable in light of the doctrine of separation of powers. This resistance is evident in judicial deference to social and economic policy, a reluctance to view (...) socioeconomic claims as invoking “fundamental values” that courts consider themselves authorized to protect: and a real reluctance to recognize and enforce “positive” obligations pertaining to social welfare. As a result, health has often fallen largely into the political rather than legal sphere, and domestic courts have been relatively reluctant to review health policies from a human rights perspective, given the belief that doing so would exceed the appropriate democratic function of the judiciary. (shrink)

Backround Education in ethics and professionalism should reflect the realities medical students encounter in the hospital and clinic. Method We performed content analyses on Case Observation and Assessments (COAs) written by third-year medical students about ethical and professional issues encountered during their internal medicine and paediatrics clinical clerkships. Results A cohort of 141 third-year medical students wrote 272 COAs. Content analyses identified 35 subcategories of ethical and professional issues within 7 major domains: decisions regarding treatment (31.4%), communication (21.4%), professional duties (...) (18.4%), justice (9.8%), student-specific issues (5.4%), quality of care (3.8%), and miscellaneous (9.8%). Conclusions Students encountered a wide variety of ethical and professional issues that can be used to guide pre-clinical and clinical education. Comparison of our findings with results from similar studies suggests that the wording of an assignment (specifying “ethical” issues, “professional” issues, or both) may influence the kinds of issues students identify in their experience-based clinical narratives. (shrink)

Inventing the Market explores two paradigms of the market in the thought of Adam Smith and G.W.F. Hegel, bridging the gap between economics and philosophy, it shows that both disciplines can profit from a broader, more historically situated ...

A major obstacle to broad support of clinical ethics consultation is suspicion regarding the nature of the moral expertise it claims to offer. The suspicion seems to be confirmed when the field fails to make its moral expertise explicit. In this vacuum, critics suggest the following:Clinical ethics consultation's legitimacy depends on its ability to offer an expertise in moral matters.Expertise in moral matters is knowledge of a singular moral truth which applies to everyone.The claim that a clinical ethics consultant can (...) offer knowledge of a singular moral truth in virtue of her professional training is absurd, false, or gravely immoral.Therefore,The field is illegitimate. (shrink)

A provocateur does not pose a threat of harm. Hence, a forceful response to provocation is generally considered wrongful. And yet, a provocateur is often denied recourse to a self-defence justification if she defends herself against such a violent response. In recent work, Kimberly Ferzan argues that a provocateur forfeits defensive rights but this forfeiture cannot be explained in the same way as an aggressor’s rights forfeiture. Ordinarily, one forfeits the right not to be harmed and to self-defend against harm (...) by threatening to violate another person’s rights. But provocateurs forfeit their defensive rights because they bring about the situation in which defence becomes necessary. As I argue here, positing these two types of forfeiture justifications is neither desirable nor necessary. I suggest a unified rights forfeiture account that grounds rights forfeiture in moral responsibility for an unjust threat. My account offers clearer distinctions than alternative unified accounts, which I briefly discuss. Furthermore, the account can provide better explanations of intuitively plausible judgements. A provocateur will have less extensive defensive rights than an innocent victim, but will not lose all her defensive rights simply because ‘she started it.’. (shrink)

Abram Brummett and Christopher Ostertag offer critiques of my argument that clinical ethics consultants have expertise but are not “ethics experts”. My argument begins within our less-than-ideal world and asks what a justification of a clinical ethics consultation recommendation might look like under those conditions. It is a challenge to what could be called an “inflationary” position on ethics expertise that requires agreement on or rational proof of metaethical facts about the values at stake in clinical ethics consultation. Brummett and (...) Ostertag critique three distinct steps in the argument. Two of those I have a brief answer for, and an assessment of the third demonstrates that Brummett and Ostertag do not consider the premise upon which I based my account. Instead, they assert a counter-premise without argument, which at best results in a stalemate between our two accounts. However, the reasons supporting my premise still seem to me to be stronger, so I am in the end unconvinced by their critiques. (shrink)

This volume brings together leading scholars from political theory, law, and economics in order to discuss the relationship between financial markets and justice, and invites us to rethink the place and role of financial markets in our societies.

The paper develops a responsibility-based account of professional ethics in banking. From this perspective, bankers have duties not only toward clients—the traditional focus of professional ethics—but also regarding the prevention of systemic harms to whole societies. When trying to fulfill these duties, bankers have to meet three challenges: epistemic challenges, motivational challenges, and a coordination challenge. These challenges can best be met by a combination of regulation and ethics that aligns responsibilities, recognition, and incentives and creates what Parsons has called (...) “integrated situations”. Professional associations play an important role for this purpose, especially as spaces in which peer recognition is earned. But financial incentives equally need to be brought in line, for example, through deferred bonuses or claw backs. Such measures can create a new culture of accountability in banking. (shrink)

In many Western capitalist economies, private indebtedness is pervasive, but it has received little attention from political philosophers. Economic theory emphasizes the liberating potential of debt contracts, but its picture is based on assumptions that do not always hold, especially when there is a background of structural injustice. Private debt contracts are likely to miss their liberating potential if there is deception or lack of information, if there is insufficient access to (regular forms of) credit, or if credit is overly (...) expensive. Markets for private debt can be mechanisms of structural injustice: rather than playing a neutral role, they reinforce injustices, because the failures of debt to be liberating disproportionately hit individuals in disadvantaged positions. By individualizing what are in fact structural problems, private debt can contribute to stigmatization, social exclusion and oppression. What is at stake, from a perspective of structural justice, is not only the distribution of income, but also the distribution of risk. The problems of private debt markets therefore require political attention. In addition to fighting the structural injustices that form the background condititions of private debt, it is also worth addressing private debt markets themselves. (shrink)

Critical congenital heart disease screening is rapidly becoming the standard of care in the United States after being added to the Recommended Uniform Screening Panel in 2011. Newborn screens typically do not require affirmative parental consent. In fact, most states allow parents to exempt their baby from receiving the required screen on the basis of religious or personally held beliefs. There are many ethical considerations implicated with allowing parents to exempt their child from newborn screening for CCHD. Considerations include the (...) treatment of religious exemptions in our current legal system, as well as medical and ethical principles in relation to the rights of infants. Although there are significant benefits to screening newborns for CCHD, when a parent refuses for religious or personal beliefs, in the case of CCHD screening, the parental decision should stand. (shrink)

“Chiaroscuro” is a art technique that makes use of light and shade to suggest depth and solidity on a flat surface. I argue that the standards regarding accountability in the second edition of the Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation , are chiaroscuro, because, despite the offered lists of competencies, it is very difficult to imagine how consultants might be held accountable to such standards. It is not clear to which of the many suggested standards a consultant should be held (...) accountable, and even if one stipulates that only the tabulated competencies are meant as standards, the vague wording makes it hard to know how a consultant might fail to meet the standards or perform excellently. In addition, because terms such as “ethics” and “ethical” are not defined in the document, we are left with no way to determine whether consultants have made appropriate recommendations. The document is useful as a point of discussion, but not yet ready to serve as a tool for holding practitioners accountable. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the moral responsibili- ties that companies have with regard to the development of their sector, especially when there are path dependences that can lead sectors on more or less morally accept- able paths, e.g., with regard to market access for disad- vantaged groups. The interdependencies between companies in a sector are underexplored in the literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Reflections on the normative status of profit-seeking and on the normative bases of CSR, however, provide (...) us with reasons for seeing sector-related responsibilities as an important component of CSR. Based on a case study of a financial institution, I analyze various morally relevant ways in which the strategic decisions of companies relate to those of other companies in their sector. I argue that companies have a co-responsibility to contribute to the development of the moral dimensions of their sectors, especially when they deal with vulnerable customers. (shrink)

Pain research is still dominated by biomedical perspectives and the need to articulate pain in ways other than those offered by evidence based medical models is pressing. Examining closely subjective experiences of pain, this book explores the way in which pain is situated, communicated and formed in a larger cultural and social context. Dimensions of Pain explores the lived experience of pain, and questions of identity and pain, from a range of different disciplinary perspectives within the humanities and social sciences. (...) Discussing the acuity and temporality of pain, its isolating impact, the embodied expression of pain, pain and sexuality, gender and ethnicity, it also includes a cluster of three chapters discusses the phenomenon and experience of labour pains. This volume revitalizes the study of pain, offering productive ways of carefully thinking through its different aspects and exploring the positive and enriching side of world-forming pain as well as its limiting aspects. It will be of interest to academics and students interested in pain from a range of backgrounds, including philosophy, sociology, nursing, midwifery, medicine and gender studies. (shrink)

Farm to school programs have been positioned as interventions that can support goals of the global food sovereignty movement, including strengthening local food production systems, improving food access and food justice for urban populations, and reducing distancing between producers and consumers. However, there has been little assessment of how and to what extent farm to school programs can actually function as a mechanism leading to the achievement of food sovereignty. As implemented in North America, farm to school programs encompass activities (...) not only related to school food procurement, but also to the development of student knowledge and skills under the framework of food literacy. Research on farm to school initiatives has largely been conducted in countries with government-supported national school feeding programs; this study examines farm to school organizing in Canada, where there is no national student nutrition program. Using qualitative fieldwork and document analysis, we investigate the farm to school movement in British Columbia, in a context where civil society concerns related to education and health have been the main vectors of farm to school mobilization. Our analysis suggests that, despite limited institutional infrastructure for school meals, the British Columbia farm to school movement has contributed toward realizing goals of food sovereignty through two main mechanisms: advocacy for institutional procurement of local and sustainable foods and mobilizing food literacy for increased public engagement with issues of social justice and equity in food systems. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory provides an overview of the analytical frameworks and theoretical concepts feminist theorists have developed to challenge established knowledge. Leading feminist theorists, from around the globe, provide in-depth explorations of a diverse array of subject areas, capturing a plurality of approaches. The Handbook raises new questions, brings new evidence, and poses significant challenges across the spectrum of academic disciplines, demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of feminist theory.

When a person finds herself in peril her right to be rescued is activated and a rescue duty is imposed on those who are in a position to help. In this article, I argue that the activation of the right to be rescued needs to be suitably constrained so that the rescuee is prevented from arbitrarily controlling the normative situation between herself and potential rescuers. Such control would be in conflict with the moral equality of persons. I argue that the (...) activation of the right to be rescued should be conditional on the person having a justification for the action that caused her peril. One implication of my view is that the right to be rescued cannot fulfill the function that Jonathan Quong ascribes to it. The right to be rescued turns out to be an unsuitable ground for the necessity condition which constrains the permissible use of defensive force. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a general profile of individuals with psychopathy, autism, and acquired sociopathy as well as look specifically at the abilities of these individuals with respect to the moral domain. These individuals are individually and collectively interesting because of their significant affective and social impairments. I argue that none of these individuals should be considered full moral agents based on a proposed account of moral agency consisting of the following two necessary conditions: the capacity for moral judgment (...) and the capacity for moral motivation. Since each of these groups of individuals fails to satisfy the criteria in a different way, these arguments help to distinguish three primary ways in which emotion contributes to moral motivation. I conclude with a suggested general implication of this discussion for related debates in moral theory. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 65-66.

This book offers a balanced and comprehensive account of philosophical thought from the middle of the fourteenth century to the emergence of modern philosophy at the turn of the seventeenth century.

This article analyses the two main rhetorical techniques of “argumentation” and “persuasion” employed in politico-philosophical debates recorded in early Chinese argumentative texts of the Warring States period. Through the analysis of pertinent case studies drawn from the received literature, the contribution explores the formal, structural, and grammatical features of these techniques, with attention paid to the wide selection of rhetorical and literary devices they make use of. It also further provides an overview of the historical and socio-cultural background against which (...) such techniques developed among so called “wandering persuaders”, who were travelling from court to court to offer their services as political advisors and diplomats to the local rulers of the time. (shrink)

This paper assumes that the argument for the existence of localized character traits is correct and explores whether a virtue ethical theory can be grounded in localized traits. The central claim is that the localized traits can be evaluatively integrated under thick ethical concepts. The attempt to ground a type of virtue ethics in localized character traits in terms of thick concepts is new. Philosophers who have previously attempted to take seriously the experimental evidence have tended to argue for some (...) sort of more globalised traits that are also compatible with the evidence. One category includes wider traits specific to domains or social settings instead of narrow situations. Other philosophers accept the evidence for localized traits but argue that it is possible for an individual to actively widen or group these traits. The view we will consider differs because it does not require us to attempt to widen the local traits that Doris (2002) finds to be empirically adequate, but to take the traits as the foundations of a virtue ethical theory. The causal, psychologically real traits will be the localized traits identified by Doris, but the ability to evaluatively integrate such traits will retain the thick ethical discourse characteristic of virtue ethics. Such evaluative integration is necessary for identification of which local traits to cultivate and the management of situations in which we find ourselves. (shrink)

One finds in the systems of natural languages some explicit means of elaborating not only upon the directness of the causal relationship believed to exist between two events X and Y (i.e. some means of specifying just how inevitably event X gives or gave rise to event Y), but also some manner of indicating just who or what is understood to be the primary instigator of the caused event. The goal of the present paper is to explore these notions in (...) detail and arrive at a formal, logic-based means of capturing them. (shrink)

This is a paper about philosophical inquiry and cooking. In it, I suggest that thinking about cooking can illuminate our understanding of other forms of inquiry. Specifically, I think it provides us with one way to circumvent the dilemma of absolutism and relativism. The paper is divided into two sections. In the first, I sketch the background against which my project is situated. In the second, I develop an account of cooking as inquiry, by exploring five aspects of recipe creation (...) and use. (shrink)

An examination of human dietary choice as a unifying cause for both the environmental and animal-rights movements.

This project is a philosophical analysis of the practice of bioethics consultation---what might be called the philosophy of bioethics. It assesses claims made about the purposes and appropriate aims of the field, in order to establish whether an identifiable conceptual unity underlies the practice. The conclusion is that no such unity exists. ;The project begins by assessing the history of the field, in the hope that a historical analysis will explain why the field arose at all, which reason could then (...) be used as a basis for claiming a particular purpose for bioethics consultation. However, it becomes clear that history has bequeathed diverse and sometimes conflicting goals to bioethics consultation. History suggests that the field exists both as a service to physicians and as a service to patients, though the interests of these two parties may be in tension. ;This work also assesses contemporary accounts of bioethics consultation and shows that they are radically divergent and incommensurable, in addition to often being too vague to guide the practice. An investigation of possible philosophical arguments regarding bioethics consultation also fails to disclose a single coherent foundation for the field. The project ends with a conceptual geography of twelve possible roles a bioethics consultant may play, and finds that though some are in tension, none may be ruled out of court on independent grounds in the absence of an overarching account of the appropriate aims of the field. ;What this project demonstrates is that there is no conceptual unity underlying the practice of bioethics consultation. Instead, the enterprise must be understood as comprised of a plurality of roles serving a diversity of purposes and a heterogeneity of goods with no single uniting purpose. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas compares ethical responsibility to a maternal body who bears the Other in the same without assimilation. In explicating this trope, he refers to a biblical passage in which Moses is like a “wet nurse” bearing Others whom he has “neither conceived nor given birth to”. A close reading of this passage raises questions about ethics, maternity, and sexual difference, for both the concept of ethical substitution and the material practice of mothering.

Intellectual contribution in the form of authorship is a fundamental component of the academic career. While research has addressed questionable and harmful authorship practices, there has largely been no discussion of how U.S. academic institutions interpret and potentially mitigate such practices through the use of institution-level authorship policies. To gain a better understanding of the role of U.S. academic institutions in authorship practices, we conducted a systematic review of publicly available authorship policies for U.S. doctoral institutions, focusing on components such (...) as specification of authorship criteria, recommendations for discussing authorship, dispute resolution processes, and guidance for faculty-student collaborations. We found that only 24% of the 266 Carnegie R1 and R2 Universities had publicly available authorship policies. Within these policies, the majority specified criteria for authorship, but provided less guidance about actual processes for applying such criteria, handling authorship disputes, and managing faculty-student author teams. Further, we found that any discussion of dispute resolution practices typically lacked specificity. Recommendations grounded in these findings are offered for institutions to leverage their ability to guide the authorship process by adopting an authorship policy that acknowledges disciplinary diversity while still offering substantive guidance. (shrink)