The African church has been identified by many as a key factor in the struggle against HIV/aids. Not only are international funding organizations and Christian NGOs looking to partner with the local church, but some northern churches are also looking to bypass NGOs and enter into a direct relationship with the African church. This article fuses political and theological theories and analysis such as participatory development theory, democratic administration and transformational development in a case study of partnership between a Canadian (...) church and a Zimbabwean church. (shrink)

We describe the informed consent procedures in a research clinic in Santiago, Chile, and a qualitative study that evaluated these procedures. The recruitment process involves information, counseling and screening of volunteers, and three or four visits to the clinic. The study explored the decision‐making process of women participating in contraceptive trials through 36 interviews. Women understood the research as experimentation or progress. The decision to participate was facilitated by the information provided; time to consider it and to discuss it with (...) partners or relatives; and perceived benefits such as quality of care, non‐cost provision of methods and medical care. For some women, participation was an opportunity to express altruism. The main obstacles for participation were perceived side effects or risks. The final risk‐benefit balance was strongly influenced by women’s needs. Women perceived that the consent form benefited the clinic, proving that participants had made a free decision, and benefited the volunteers by warranting their right to free medical care. The most important problem detected was occasional misunderstanding of the information given on the form. We concluded that a full decision‐making process enhances women’s ability to exercise their right to choose, and assures research institutions that trials are conducted without coercion and that the participants are committed to the study. Researchers have the responsibility of conducting this process. (shrink)

We normally take it for granted that other people will live on after we ourselves have died. Even if we do not believe in a personal afterlife in which we survive our own deaths, we assume that there will be a "collective afterlife" in which humanity survives long after we are gone. Samuel Scheffler maintains that this assumption plays a surprising - indeed astonishing - role in our lives.

It is frequently claimed that nursing is vital to the safe, humane provision of health care and health service to our populations. It is also recognized however, that nursing is a costly health care resource that must be used effectively and efficiently. There is a growing recognition, from within the nursing profession, health care policy makers and society, of the need to analyse the contribution of nursing to health care and its costs. This becomes increasingly pertinent and urgent in a (...) situation, such as that existing in Ireland, where the current financial crisis has lead to public sector employment moratoria, staff cuts and staffing deficits, combined with increased patient expectation, escalating health care costs, and a health care system restructuring and reform agenda. Such factors, increasingly common internationally, make the identification and effective use of the nursing contribution to health care an issue of international importance. This paper seeks to explore the nature of nursing and the function of the nurse within a 21st century health care system, with a focus on the Irish context. However, this analysis fits into and is relevant to the international context and discussion regarding the nursing workforce. This paper uses recent empirical studies exploring the domains of activity and focus of nursing, together with nurses perceptions of their role and work environment, in order to connect those findings with core conceptual questions about the nature and function of nursing. (shrink)

Israel Scheffler is the pre-eminent philosopher of education in the English-speaking world today. This volume collects seventeen original, invited papers on Scheffler's philosophy of education by scholars from around the world. The papers address the wide range of topics that Scheffler's work in philosophy of education has addressed, including the aims of education, cognition and emotion, teaching, the language of education, science education, moral education, religious education, and human potential. Each paper is followed by a response from (...) Scheffler himself. The collection is essential reading for anyone concerned with contemporary scholarship in philosophy of education, or with the place of this singularly important author in it. (shrink)

A Síndrome de Kabuki é um distúrbio bastante raro, com múltiplas anomalias congênitas. O objetivo do estudo foi descrever características comportamentais, cognitivas e sociais de uma criança com seis anos de idade com Síndrome de Kabuki, e suas implicações no processo escolar. Como resultados, verif..

Filosofia e Educação como “Modo de vida”: o cuidado de si, do outro e o agradecimento a Asclépio Resumo: Este artigo é parte dos resultados de pesquisas empreendidas no Grupo de Pesquisa GPEFE - Grupo de Pesquisa Estudos Foucaultianos e Educação da Universidade São Francisco. As análises partem de referenciais teóricos filosóficos da Antiguidade grega, em especial Platão e avança por entre os contemporâneos como Nietzsche, Foucault, dentre outros, com intuito de perscrutar o enigmático pedido de Sócrates a Críton, quando (...) Sócrates pediu que sacrificasse um galo a Asclépio. O que Sócrates queria dizer com este “enigma”? “– Devemos um galo a Asclépio”. Então perguntamos: Sócrates foi curado? Curado de que doença? Doenças? Qual ou quais livros de Platão poderiam esclarecer o enigma? Quem era o deus Asclépio? Em que momento Asclépio se tornou importante para os helenos? Qual a simbólica do galo para os atenienses? Existe algum legado através desse enigma que possa nos ajudar de alguma forma a nos educar e educarmos? Tais leituras podem ser importantes para a esfera da Educação? Palavras-chave: Filosofia e Educação, Parrhesía, Epimeléia heautou. Philosophy and Education as “Way of life”: care for the self, care for the others and gratitude to Asclepius: This article is part of the results of a research undertaken in the Research Group GPEFE - Grupo de Pesquisa Estudos Foucaultianos e Educação at the University São Francisco. The analyzes depart from philosophical theoretical references from the Greek Antiquity, especially Plato, and advance with contemporary authors such as Nietzsche, Foucault, among others, in order to examine Socrates' cryptic request to Crito, when Socrates asked that he sacrificed a cock to Asclepius. What did Socrates mean by this “enigma”? “-We owe a cock to Asclepius”. So we ask: was Socrates healed? Healed of what disease? Diseases? Which book or books of Plato could enlighten the riddle? Who was the god Asclepius? When did Asclepius become important to the Hellenes? What is the symbol of the cock for the Athenians? Is there a legacy through this puzzle that can somehow help us to educate and educate ourselves? Can such readings be important to the sphere of Education? Keywords: Philosophy and education, Parrhesía, Epimeléia heautou. Filosofía y Educación como “Modo de vida”: cuidarse a sí mismo, al otro y agradecer a Asclepio Resumen: Este artículo es parte de los resultados de investigaciones realizadas en el Grupo de Investigación GPEFE - Grupo de Pesquisa Estudos Foucaultianos e Educação de la Universidad São Francisco. Los análisis parten de referenciales teóricos filosóficos de la Antigüedad Griega, en particular Platón, y avanzan entre los contemporáneos como Nietzsche, Foucault, entre otros, con el fin de escrutar el enigmático pedido de Sócrates a Críton, cuando Sócrates le rogó que sacrificara un gallo a Asclepio. ¿Qué Sócrates quería decir con este “enigma”? “-Debemos un gallo a Asclepio”. Entonces nos preguntamos: ¿Sócrates fue sanado? ¿Curado de qué enfermedad? ¿Enfermedades? ¿Cuál o cuáles libros de Platón podría aclarar el enigma? ¿Quién era el dios Asclepio? ¿En qué momento Asclepio se hizo importante para los helenos? ¿Cuál es la simbología del gallo para los atenienses? ¿Hay algún legado a través de ese enigma que pueda ayudarnos de algún modo a educarnos y a educar? ¿Tales lecturas pueden ser importantes para la esfera de la Educación? Palabras clave: Filosofía y educación, Parrhesía, Epimeléia heautou. Data de registro: 25/10/2019 Data de aceite: 27/05/2020. (shrink)

Some people believe that the demands of morality coincide with the requirements of an enlightened self-interest. Others believe that morality is diametrically opposed to considerations of self-interest. This book argues that there is another position, intermediate between these extremes, which makes better sense of the totality of our moral thought and practice. Scheffler elaborates this position via an examination of morality's content, scope, authority, and deliberative role. Although conflicts between morality and self-interest do arise, according to this position, nevertheless (...) morality is fundamentally a reasonable and humane phenomenon. Moreover, the psychological bases of effective moral motivation have sources deep within the self, and morally motivated individuals try to shape their own interests so as to avoid conflict with morality. Since human practices and institutions help to determine the prevalence of these motives, and since in this and other ways they influence the degree to which conflicts between morality and self-interest actually occur, the extent of such conflict is not fixed or immutable, and is in part a social and political issue. (shrink)

Gideon Rosen (2014) has drawn our attention to cases of duress of a particularly interesting sort: the person's ‘mind is not flooded with pain or fear’, she knows exactly what she is doing, and she makes a clear-headed choice to act in, as Rosen says, ‘awful ways’. The explanation of why we excuse such actions cannot be that the action was not voluntary. In addition, although some duress cases could also be viewed as necessity cases and thus as justified, Rosen (...) wisely sets aside that complicating factor by zeroing in on those cases where the action clearly is not justified. So why do we excuse in these cases, where the action is not justified and the agent acted voluntarily?Rosen thinks the key lies in the ‘ill will’ condition, ‘the idea that an act is blameworthy only if it manifests insufficient concern or regard for those affected’. He says this is relatively uncontroversial; much of my paper is taken up with calling the ‘ill will’ condition into question. I also take issue with Rosen on just how justifications and excuses differ. I argue in favour of understanding justifications (in a context where we are asking how justifications and excuses differ) as not requiring truth, but only reasonable belief. (shrink)

This title, first published in 1973, brings together a variety of papers by Israel Scheffler, one of America’s leading educational philosophers. The essays each stress the importance of critical thought and independent judgement to the organization of educational activities. In the first section, Scheffler adopts a metaphilosophical approach, emphasizing the role of philosophy in educational thought. A number of key concepts are dealt with next, including the study of education and its relation to theoretical disciplines, philosophical interpretations of (...) teaching, and the education of teachers. The final section is critical, and deals with the writings of several key thinkers in the field. A broad and authoritative study, this reissue will provide any Philosophy student with an essential background to the criticism and theories surrounding the philosophy of education. (shrink)

[ Samuel Scheffler] Some egalitarian liberals have proposed a division of moral labour between social institutions and individual agents, but the division-of-labour metaphor has been understood in different ways. This paper aims to disentangle some of these different understandings, with an eye to clarifying the appeal of the egalitarian-liberal project and the challenges that it faces. The idea of a division of moral labour is best understood as the expression of a strategy for accommodating diverse values. It is not (...) an apology for economic self-interest or a device for justifying personal acquisitiveness. /// [Véronique Munoz-Dardé] Are there distinctively political values? Certain egalitarians seem to think that equality is one such value. Scheffler's contribution to the symposium seeks to articulate a division of moral labour between norms of personal morality and the principles of justice that regulate social institutions, and using this suggests that the egalitarian critique of Rawls can be deflected. In this paper, instead, I question the status of equality as an intrinsic value. I argue that an egalitarianism which focuses on the status of equality as valuable in itself embraces a theory of value with the worst elements of utilitarianism while leaving behind any of the intuitive appeal that utilitarianism has. In its place I press that we need a political conception of egalitarianism which stresses the role we engage beyond those found in the norms of personal morality. (shrink)

[Samuel Scheffler] Some egalitarian liberals have proposed a division of moral labour between social institutions and individual agents, but the division-of-labour metaphor has been understood in different ways. This paper aims to disentangle some of these different understandings, with an eye to clarifying the appeal of the egalitarian-liberal project and the challenges that it faces. The idea of a division of moral labour is best understood as the expression of a strategy for accommodating diverse values. It is not an (...) apology for economic self-interest or a device for justifying personal acquisitiveness. /// [Véronique Munoz-Dardé] Are there distinctively political values? Certain egalitarians seem to think that equality is one such value. Scheffler's contribution to the symposium seeks to articulate a division of moral labour between norms of personal morality and the principles of justice that regulate social institutions, and using this suggests that the egalitarian critique of Rawls can be deflected. In this paper, instead, I question the status of equality as an intrinsic value. I argue that an egalitarianism which focuses on the status of equality as valuable in itself embraces a theory of value with the worst elements of utilitarianism while leaving behind any of the intuitive appeal that utilitarianism has. In its place I press that we need a political conception of egalitarianism which stresses the role we engage beyond those found in the norms of personal morality. (shrink)

In this anthology, distinguished scholars--Thomas Nagel, T.M. Scanlon, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Samuela Scheffler, Conrad D. Johnson, Bernard Williams, Peter Railton, Amartya Sen, Philippa Foot, and Derek Parfit-- debate arguments for and against the moral doctrine of consequentialism to present a complete view of this important topic in moral philosophy.

Scheffler discusses the role of thick concepts in the context of Williams’s main ethical book. He is critical of Williams’s distinction between thick and thin concepts, pointing out that with great problems, justice cannot be said to be either thick or thin.

Lately there has been a renewal of interest among political philosophers and theorists in the idea of cosmopolitanism. However, there is little consensus among contemporary theorists about the precise content of a cosmopolitan position. This article calls attention to two different strands in recent thinking about cosmopolitanism. One strand presents it primarily as a doctrine about justice. The other presents it primarily as a doctrine about culture and the self. Although both forms of cosmopolitanism have some appeal, each is sometimes (...) interpreted in ways that render it untenable. This article attempts to distinguish between the more and the less plausible versions of each form of cosmopolitanism. In each case, the distinction turns on how the normative status of particular interpersonal relationships and group affiliations is understood. (shrink)

Many recent political philosophers have attempted to demonstrate that choice and responsibility can be incorporated into the framework of an egalitarian theory of distributive justice. This article argues, however, that the project of developing a responsibility-based conception of egalitarian justice is misconceived. The project represents an attempt to defuse conservative criticism of the welfare state and of egalitarian liberalism more generally. But by mimicking the conservative’s emphasis on choice and responsibility, advocates of responsibility-based egalitarianism unwittingly inherit the conservative’s unsustainable justificatory (...) ambitions, unattractive moralism, and questionable metaphysical commitments. More importantly, they misrepresent the nature of our concern with equality as a value. (shrink)

In John Rawls’s theory, the role of the principles of justice is to regulate the basic structure of society—its major social, political and economic institutions—and to specify the fair terms of cooperation for free and equal persons. Some have interpreted Rawls as excluding contract law, and perhaps the private law as a whole, from the basic structure. However, this interpretation of Rawls is untenable, given the motivations for his emphasis on the basic structure and the highly inclusive characterisations he gives (...) of it. Yet if he includes private law within the basic structure, he seems committed to holding that its design and operations should be regulated by his two principles of justice, which govern the distribution of basic liberties, economic resources and opportunities. This would leave it unclear whether there was any room for values other than distributive values to inform the design of private law. Leaving no role for other values might be unproblematic if distributive justice were a master normative category with equal regulative authority over all basic social institutions. But we should not assume that this ‘distributivist paradigm’ gives the best interpretation either of private law or of the fair terms of cooperation for a society of free and equal people. We need to think further about how non-distributive values may inform the principles of justice that regulate the institutional structure of society. And we need to ask how much of law, whether public or private, is regulated solely by principles of justice that focus on the distribution of basic liberties, economic resources and opportunities. (shrink)

1. Stoicism in classical Latin literature -- 2. Stoicism in Christian Latin thought through the sixth century.

Justifications and excuses are defenses that exculpate. They are therefore much more like each other than like such defenses as diplomatic immunity, which does not exculpate. But they exculpate in different ways, and it has proven difficult to agree on just what that difference consists in. In this paper I take a step back from justification and excuse as concepts in criminal law, and look at the concepts as they arise in everyday life. To keep the task manageable, I focus (...) primarily on excuses and excusing activities, distinguishing them from justifications as well as from other close relatives, in particular, forgiving and pardoning. I draw upon J.L. Austin’s classic A Plea for Excuses, but expand on his account, suggesting that we offer excuses for reasons besides those he mentions. My hope is that my examination of excuses and excusing activities will help us rethink our views on just how justifications and excuses differ, views which often are worked out without much attention to how these concepts function in everyday life and to the connection between offers of excuses and justifications and the rules of civility. (shrink)

Israel Scheffler, Noam Chomsky; IV.—What is Said to be, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 59, Issue 1, 1 June 1959, Pages 71–82, https://doi.org/1.

Clarke A. Chambers interviews Marcia Eaton, professor in the Department of Philosophy.

In the 1920s, scientists at the University of Cambridge’s Sir William Dunn Institute of Biochemistry made major contributions to the emerging discipline of biochemistry while also devoting considerable time and energy to the production of a humor journal entitled Brighter Biochemistry. Although humor is frequently regarded as peripheral to the work of science, the journal provides an opportunity to understand how it contributes to the social infrastructure of scientific communities as modern workplaces. Taking methodological cues from cultural history, ethnography, and (...) humor studies, this essay conducts a close and contextual reading of Brighter Biochemistry. This reading demonstrates how humor served as a central means through which members of the Dunn confronted workplace issues, including creating cooperative work teams, responding to gender discrimination, addressing funding anxiety, and defining professional identity. These conclusions provide a new perspective on the well-documented history of the Dunn and also offer a model for how historians of science can approach humor when its traces are encountered in other settings. (shrink)

The emphasis on duly in Kant's ethics is widely held to constitute a defect. Marcia W. Baron develops and assesses the criticism, which she sees as comprising two objections: that duty plays too large a role, leaving no room for the supererogatory, and that Kant places too much value on acting from duty. Clearly written and cogently argued, Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology takes on the most philosophically intriguing objections to Kant's ethics and subjects them to a rigorous yet (...) sympathetic assessment. (shrink)

First published in 1974, this book is a critical introduction to the work of four quintessential pragmatist philosophers: Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, George Herbert Mead and John Dewey. Alongside providing a general historical and biographical account of the pragmatist movement, the work offers an in depth critical response to the philosophical doctrines of the four main thinkers of the pragmatist movement, with reference to the theories of meaning, knowledge and conduct which have come to define pragmatism.

Anniversaries and funding crises prompt periodic calls to reevaluate the mission and public perceptions of the U.S. Land-Grant University system. One such call was issued by the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State Colleges and Land Grant Universities in their 1999 report, “Returning to Our Roots: the Engaged Institution.” Written by leaders of state universities and land-grant colleges, this report urges these institutions to engage more authentically and equitably in two-way relationships with their local constituents. Twenty years later, Land-Grant (...) Universities continue to struggle with building widespread public support for their missions and equitable involvement in research, teaching, and extension functions across diverse constituencies. While largely discounted by the Kellogg Commission, a fresh look at the role originally envisioned for the extension arm of the trifold land-grant mandate suggests that we may be conceiving of this system too narrowly. The establishment of statewide extension systems was once seen as a way to ensure that Land-Grant Universities would be accessible and responsive to all of a state’s residents. Extension systems continue to offer a front-door to a major public university in almost every county of the United States, but they tend to be viewed primarily as a way to translate science or distribute information from the university to the public. This discussion uses a historical and modern lens to reimagine the role that Extension could potentially play in catalyzing reciprocal, co-learning relationships between Land-Grant Universities and their diverse local constituencies. (shrink)

This book is a collection of eleven essays by one of the most interesting moral philosophers currently writing. It examines challenges to liberal thought posed by the changing circumstances of the modern world such as the conflicting tendencies toward global integration, and greater ethnic and communal identification. The author considers whether liberal principles of justice can accommodate social and global interdependencies while reaffirming the importance of individual responsibility and acknowledging the significance of people's diverse personal and communal allegiances.

Objectivity Under Attack: a fundamental feature of science is its ideal of objectivity, an ideal that subjects ...

In Chapter 4 of Science and Subjectivity, I offered several arguments critical of Professor Thomas Kuhn's views as expressed in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. His recent replies to these criticisms seem to me so inadequate as to suggest that he, and therefore others as well, may have failed to grasp their full import. Accordingly, I shall, in the first part of this paper, briefly recapitulate my earlier arguments and offer a short rejoinder to Professor Kuhn's replies. (...) The second part of the paper will expand upon my earlier discussion to consider the basic metaphors of vision and revolution, offered by Kuhn to replace the traditional notion of deliberation. My argument here will be that these new metaphors are incongruous in critical respects, and my discussion will conclude by considering their relations to the contrast between understanding and accepting a theory. (shrink)

Why should we care what happens to future generations? Samuel Scheffler argues that we are more invested in the fate of our descendants than we may realize. Implicit in our own attachments are powerful reasons for wanting the chain of human generations to persist into the indefinite future under conditions conducive to human flourishing.

Riordan, Marcia Recent advances in genetic technology may mean that the brave new world really is almost here. Non-invasive prenatal genetic diagnosis could finally allow hundreds of thousands of genetic traits to be determined with just one maternal blood test. This could bring genetic screening of the unborn child to a whole new level and mean that as a society we face a new set of challenges in areas such as disability rights, abortion and informed consent.