This research project investigated the extent to which nurses engage in two important kinds of ethical behaviours: ethical activism (where they try to make hospitals more receptive to nurses’ participation in ethics deliberations) and ethical assertiveness (where they participate in ethics deliberations even when not formally invited). This research probed not only the extent to which nurses engage in these ethical behaviours but also whether this is influenced by professional, training and organizational factors. A random sample of 165 nurses from (...) three major hospitals in Los Angeles provided the data. Regression analyses indicate that both ethical activism and ethical assertiveness are strongly influenced by nurses’ perceptions of the receptivity of hospitals to their inclusion in ethics deliberations. In addition, nurses’ education in ethics is a significant predictor of ethical activism. The findings have important implications for the content of nurses’ ethics training as well as for expanding the boundaries of nurses’ participation in ethics deliberations. The authors define ethics deliberations as specific meetings of a number of people to discuss an ethical issue, such as one regarding the care of a patient. (shrink)

[Marilyn McCord Adams] In this paper I begin with Aristotle's Categories and with his apparent forwarding of primary substances as metaphysically special because somehow fundamental. I then consider how medieval reflection on Aristotelian change led medieval Aristotelians to analyses of primary substances that called into question how and whether they are metaphysically special. Next, I turn to a parallel issue about supposits, which Boethius seems in effect to identify with primary substances, and how theological cases-the doctrines of the Trinity, (...) the Incarnation, and of the human soul's separate survival between death and resurrection-call into question how and to what extent supposits are metaphysically special. I conclude with some reflections on various senses of being metaphysically special and how they pertain to primary substances and supposits. /// [ Richard Cross] Scotus's belief that any created substance can depend on the divine essence and/or divine persons as a subject requires him to abandon the plausible Aristotelian principle that there is no merely relational change. I argue that Scotus's various counterexamples to the principle can be rebutted. For reasons related to those that arise in Scotus's failed attempt to refute the principle, the principle also entails that properties cannot be universals. (shrink)

A distinguished philosopher and a practicing minister, Marilyn McCord Adams has written a highly original work on a fundamental dilemma of Christian thought -- ...

If cultures are always in the making, this book catches one kind of culture on the make. Academics will be familiar with audit in the form of research and teaching assessments - they may not be aware how pervasive practices of 'accountability' are or of the diversity of political regimes under which they flourish. Twelve social anthropologists from across Europe and the Commonwealth chart an influential and controversial cultural phenomenon.

China has undergone a media revolution that has transformed the domestic context for making foreign policy as well as domestic policy. The commercialization of the mass media has changed the way leaders and publics interact in the process of making foreign policy. As they compete with one another, the new media naturally try to appeal to the tastes of their potential audiences. Editors make choices about which stories to cover based on their judgments about which ones will resonate best with (...) audiences. In China today, that means a lot of stories about Japan, Taiwan, and the United States, the topics that are the objects of Chinese popular nationalism. The publicity given these topics makes them domestic political issues because they are potential focal points for elite dis-agreement and mass collective action, and thereby constrains the way China' leaders and diplomats deal with them. Even relatively minor events involving China' relations with Japan, Taiwan, or the United States become big news, and therefore relations with these three governments must be carefully handled by the politicians in the Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee. Because of the Internet, it is impossible for Party censors to screen out news from Japan, Taiwan or the United States that might upset the public. Common knowledge of such news forces officials to react to every slight, no matter how small. Foreign policy makers feel especially constrained by nationalist public opinion when it comes to its diplomacy with Japan. Media marketization and the Internet have helped make Japan China' most emotionally charged international relationship. (shrink)

Who would the Saviour have to be, what would the Saviour have to do to rescue human beings from the meaning-destroying experiences of their lives? This book offers a systematic Christology that is at once biblical and philosophical. Starting with human radical vulnerability to horrors such as permanent pain, sadistic abuse or genocide, it develops what must be true about Christ if He is the horror-defeater who ultimately resolves all the problems affecting the human condition and Divine-human relations. Distinctive elements (...) of Marilyn McCord Adams' study are her defence of the two-natures theory, of Christ as Inner Teacher and a functional partner in human flourishing, and her arguments in favour of literal bodily resurrection and of a strong doctrine of corporeal Eucharistic presence. The book concludes that Christ is the One in Whom, not only Christian doctrine, but cosmos, church, and the human psyche hold together. (shrink)

This book treats Hannah Arendt as a distinctly political writer who attempts to carve out a way in which humanity, poised between the Holocaust and the atom bomb, might reclaim its position as the creators of a world fit for human habitation. Marilyn LaFay argues that Arendt tries to bring a humanity into modernity, rejecting the argument that Arendt is an 'antimodernist lover of the Greek polis.' Rather, Arendt tries to politically reconcile the potential of humanity with the demands (...) of the modern condition: she encourages us to locate and use the expressive element of the modern for our political ends. This work identifies the paradox of Arendt's choice of an expressive, existentialist interpretation of politics over that of a politics of vision and imagination, concluding that Arendt's politics leads to little more than political aesthetics. (shrink)

Politics of Reality includes nine essays that examine sexism, the exploitation of women, the gay rights movement and other topics from a feminist perspective. -/- The essays "The Problem That Has No Name" and "A Note On Anger" have been translated into Spanish by Maria Lugones for circulation in la Asociacion Argentina de Mujeres en Filosofia.

Women have historically been prevented from living autonomously by systematic injustice, subordination, and oppression. The lingering effects of these practices have prompted many feminists to view autonomy with suspicion. Here, Marilyn Friedman defends the ideal of feminist autonomy. In her eyes, behavior is autonomous if it accords with the wants, cares, values, or commitments that the actor has reaffirmed and is able to sustain in the face of opposition. By her account, autonomy is socially grounded yet also individualizing and (...) sometimes socially disruptive, qualities that can be ultimately advantageous for women. Friedman applies the concept of autonomy to domains of special interest to women. She defends the importance of autonomy in romantic love, considers how social institutions should respond to women who choose to remain in abusive relationships, and argues that liberal societies should tolerate minority cultural practices that violate women's rights so long as the women in question have chosen autonomously to live according to those practices. (shrink)

Abstract:In this forum, Marilyn Strathern and Jade S. Sasser review Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway's edited volume Making Kin, Not Population: Reconceiving Generations (Prickly Paradigm Press, 2018). Responses from multiple authors featured in the book follow.

In his article ‘A Critique of the Doctrine of Universal Salvation’, J. D. Bettis criticises the argument that all men will be saved because ‘God's love is both absolutely good and absolutely sovereign’ . I would like to argue that either some of Bettis's criticisms are confused, or else that he is not using ‘love’ in anything like its ordinary sense. I will not attempt a full defence of universalism here, however. In particular, I will not try to defend it (...) against the sort of criticisms Bettis says an Arminian might raise. (shrink)

To understand the radical potential of Heidegger’s model of practice, we need to acknowledge the role that temporality plays within it. Commentaries on Heidegger’s account of practical engagement, however, often leave the connection between purposiveness and temporality unexplored, a tendency that persists in the contemporary discourse generated by the interaction between the phenomenological tradition and certain approaches within cognitive science. Taking up a temporality-oriented reading that redresses this can, I want to argue here, reveal new illuminating sites for the intersection (...) between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, particularly between Heideggerian perspectives and what have become known as enactive approaches to the study of cognition. According to the latter, cognition is an inherently relational process through which the interaction of a living being and its environment generates meaning and, ultimately, a world of significance defined by the cogniser’s self-concern. I will suggest that this emphasis upon the inextricable intertwining of agent and world renders enactive models of cognition particularly congenial to a mutually enriching dialogue with Heidegger’s account of purposiveness, particularly if we read the latter in terms of the temporal framework that Being and Time offers us. (shrink)

Ministerial formation is a multifaceted activity involving critical thinking, the acquisition of knowledge, skills development, religious identity formation and the development of ministerial and spiritual maturity expected of church ministers. Education is not merely the accumulation of a prescribed set of academic credits but includes the holistic formation of all aspects of the individual. However, theological educators are concerned about the capacity to foster such values and skills in the distance and electronic environment. Some see distance education as ‘distancing’ the (...) students in more significant ways than simply geographic distance. These issues are of fundamental importance for they reflect the deeper convictions of theologians that distance education may not be a suitable medium for ministerial formation. This article creates a conceptual map of the theological and pedagogical challenges for ministerial formation and highlights how the possibility of formation is being carried out in the distance-learning environment. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine how increasing understanding and explicit awareness of social consciousness can develop through transformations in worldview. Based on a model that emerged from a series of qualitative and quantitative studies on worldview transformation, we identify five developmental levels of social consciousness: embedded, self-reflexive, engaged, collaborative, and resonant. As a person's worldview transforms, awareness can expand to include each of these levels, leading to enhanced prosocial experiences and behaviours. Increased social consciousness can in turn stimulate further transformations (...) in worldview. We then consider an educational curriculum to facilitate the understanding of worldview and the cultivation of social consciousness as core capacities for twenty-first century students and global citizens. (shrink)

This book presents a series of studies by the late Marilyn McCord Adams of medieval philosophical and theological views regarding the powers that govern human psychological processes. She explores which of them were taken to be ours to exercise and control, and which to be controlled and exercised only by God.

This paper explores the implications of conceptualising phenomenology as explanatory for the ongoing dialogue between the phenomenological tradition and cognitive science, especially enactive approaches to cognition. The first half of the paper offers three interlinked arguments: Firstly, that differentiating between phenomenology and the natural sciences by designating one as descriptive and the other as explanatory undermines opportunities for the kind of productive friction that is required for genuine ‘mutual enlightenment’. Secondly, that conceiving of phenomenology as descriptive rather than explanatory risks (...) committing us to what Zahavi (2019) identifies as the error of equating the phenomenological with the phenomenal. Finally, that the erroneous reduction to the descriptive occludes the rich resources that the phenomenological tradition can contribute to investigations of non-human cognition. The second half of the paper then turns to focus specifically on the promising relationship between phenomenology and enactive approaches to cognition. It will suggest that phenomenology must be seen as having explanatory capacities if it is to shed light on the structures of “mind in life” (Thompson, 2007), before drawing on the model of explanation put forward by Louis Sass to explore what this might look like. (shrink)

The problem of evil is one of the most discussed topics in the philosophy of religion. For some time, however, there has been a need for a collection of readings that adequately represents recent and ongoing writing on the topic. This volume fills that need, offering the most up-to-date collection of recent scholarship on the problem of evil. The distinguished contributors include J.L. Mackie, Nelson Pike, Roderick M. Chisholm, Terence Penelhum, Alvin Plantinga, William L. Rowe, Stephen J. Wykstra, John Hick, (...) and Diogenes Allen. Including an introductory essay and a selected bibliography, this comprehensive and completely up-to-date collection is an invaluable guide to current scholarship in this highly debated area of the philosophy of religion. Oxford Readings in Philosophy aims to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available. (shrink)

In the lead article, Vardoulakis argues that Heidegger elides and occludes animportant difference between two senses of what it means for something to becalculable. On the one hand, there is‘that which can be calculated with somecertainty’, which Vardoulakis dubs the‘calculated’. On the other, there is‘calculating’, the process of proceeding‘even though we know that such acalculation can never be certain or secure as it lacks a determinate measurement’.Iwant to suggest, however, that such a distinction does play a significant role inHeidegger’s work, (...) albeit in an unexpected place: his analyses of time. I will traceout what I consider to be two likely manifestations of the different senses of thecalculable. Turningfirst toBeing and Time, I will propose that we can read therelationship between world-time and now-time through this lens. For Heidegger,the pernicious factor that gives rise to the ordinary conception of time is not time’scalculability as such, but rather the dominance of what Vardoulakis calls thecalculated. Secondly, I want to draw out the role that the dynamic betweencalculating and calculated can be seen to play in Heidegger’s analyses of theAnaximander fragment, especially the way he distinguishes time’s‘allocationcharacter’(Zuweisungscharakter) from mere‘numerability’. (shrink)

South Africa is a complex society filled with diversity of many kinds. Because of the enormous and profound changes of the last 20 years of democracy, this can be perceived as a society in social identity crisis which is increasingly spilling over into many areas of life. Churches have also gone through a process of reformulating their identity and have restructured theological education for all its members resulting in growing multicultural student bodies. These new student constituencies reflect a wide spectrum (...) of cultural backgrounds, personal histories and theological commitments, and represent diversity in race, ethnicity, culture, class, gender, age, language and sexual orientation. These issues of diversity are theologically complicated and contested as they are attached to religious dogma. Diversity exists as a threat and promise, problem and possibility. Using current conceptualisations of diversity in South African Higher Education this article will seek to understand the notion of diversity and difference and the possibility of developing transformative remedies within the theological education curriculum. (shrink)

Some theodicists, skeptical theists, and friendly atheists agree that God-justifying reasons for permitting evils would have to have an instrumental structure: that is, the evils would have to be necessary to secure a great enough good or necessary to prevent some equally bad or worse evil. D.Z. Phillips contends that instrumental reasons could never justify anyone for causing or permitting horrendous evils and concludes that the God of Restricted Standard Theism does not exist—indeed, is a conceptual mistake. After considering Phillips’ (...) and other objections in the neighborhood, I argue that the Expanded Theism of Christian theology does forward a God who ‘digs in’ and eternally answers for horrors. (shrink)

It occasionally happens that a book appears on the philosophical horizon that, despite its obvious virtuosity of style or form, has almost no substantial merit. Such is unfortunately the case with Stephen Dunning’s Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Inwardness. Some allowance should be made, of course, for the fact that, as Dunning himself admits, he is not a Kierkegaard scholar. It is not my intention to adopt what might be identified as a “trade union” perspective on scholarship, but it is important to (...) appreciate that one always puts oneself, or one’s work, at some risk when one ventures into an area of scholarship that is not properly one’s own. Kierkegaard left a legacy of over thirty published works and twenty volumes of journals and papers. Hence the waters of this area of philosophical scholarship are deep indeed and not for one who is unused to swimming in them. Before I launch into any specific criticisms, however, I will provide a brief sketch of the book. (shrink)

Christians have often held that on the day of judgment God will condemn some persons who have disobeyed him to a hell of everlasting torment and total unhappiness from which there is no hope of escape, as a punishment for their deeds up to that time. This is not the only way that hell has been or could be conceived of, but it has been the predominant conception in the Christian church throughout much of its history and it is the (...) one on which I shall focus in this paper. (shrink)

While differences do exist, there are many ethical issues which transcend national barriers. In order to contribute to the development of understanding of global ethics, this study documents the existing ethical perspectives of collegiate business students from two countries and identifies the determinants of their ethical orientations.A survey instrument was administered to USA and New Zealand (NZ) students enrolled in undergraduate business programs. The research instrument measured students' ethical perspectives across multilayered ethical domains and their self-professed decision method used in (...) evaluating ethical scenarios. (shrink)

Pediatric participation in non-therapeutic research that poses greater than minimal risk has been the subject of considerable thought-provoking debate in the research ethics literature. While the need for more pediatric research has been called morally imperative, and concerted efforts have been made to increase pediatric medical research, the importance of protecting children from undue research risks remains paramount.United States research regulations are derived largely from the deliberations and report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical (...) and Behavioral Research. The authors of this report specifically designated children as a vulnerable population and suggested additional protections, most of which became U.S. law. One of the more contested sets of regulations surrounds non-therapeutic research, e.g., research that does not offer the potential for direct benefit to participants. Federal regulations allow local Institutional Review Boards to approve non-therapeutic research posing a minor increase above minimal risk when it involves children who have the disease or medical condition that the research addresses. (shrink)

Le livre de Rebecca Rogers From the Salon to the Schoolroom ouvre pour les lecteurs une voie d’entrée érudite à tout ce que les historiens nous ont appris sur la vie des femmes françaises depuis deux siècles. Alors que l’ouvrage en anglais de cette étude fouillée rappelle aux lecteurs anglophones l’influence importante de la pédagogie française dans les écoles britanniques et nord-américaines, la version française souligne le rôle joué par les pensionnats privés dans l’éducation des femmes en...

PERSONS WHO ARE IN A MINIMALLY CONSCIOUS STATE DIFFER FROM those who are vegetative in that they have some awareness of themselves and others. Because of this awareness, their care should differ from the custodial care that is given to people in a persistent vegetative state. It should also include rehabilitative services that would help to increase their ability to function at their optimal level. This care also needs to include assistance in restructuring identity. Because persons in a minimally conscious (...) state have a story, a narrative, that both precedes and follows their time in health care institutions, their families are best equipped to help them work on their identity issues. Many families are willing to accept this challenge if proper support systems have been put in place. The principle of subsidiarity suggests that this should be done. In addition, this approach would build on the relational components of these individuals and would eliminate the feelings of abandonment that most patients in a minimally conscious state and their families currently experience. (shrink)

Australia is thought of as the home of marsupials, but South America has 60 or so species of these interesting mammals. The genome of one of these, the South American grey short-tailed opossum, Monodelphis domestica, has just been sequenced and published in June.1 The high quality 6× coverage is the first marsupial genome completed, pipping the 2× coverage of the Australian tammar wallaby at the post by half a year. The opossum genome has an unusual structure with fewer chromosomes than (...) the human genome (9 pairs versus 23 pairs) but a longer total length (3.4 billion versus 3 billion bases). The opossum autosomes, like those of all marsupials, are extremely large but, in contrast, the X chromosome is only 76 Mb long. The opossum genome has turned up several surprises and provided critical new information on the evolution of mammalian genomes2-6. BioEssays 29:1073–1076, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)