The increase in ethnically and linguistically diverse older adults in Canada necessitates attention to their experiences and needs for healthy ageing. Arab immigrant women often report challenges in maintaining health, but little is known about their ageing experiences. This interpretive descriptive study uses a transnational life course framework to understand Arab Muslim immigrant women's experiences of engaging in health‐promoting practices as they age in Canada. Women's stories highlight social dimensions of health such social connectedness, social roles and social support that (...) are constructed and maintained within different migration contexts across the life course. Barriers and facilitators to healthy ageing in this population centred around five themes: (i) the necessity of staying strong, (ii) caring for self while caring for others, (iii) double jeopardy of chronic illnesses and loneliness, (iv) inadequate support within large social networks and (v) navigating access to health‐supporting resources. The findings point to transnational connections and post‐migration social support as major influencers in creating facilitators and barriers to healthy ageing for Arab Muslim immigrant women. (shrink)

The law often calls on the concept of public interest for assistance. Privacy law makes use of this concept in several ways, including to justify consent waivers for secondary research on health information. Because the law sees information privacy as a means for individuals to control their personal information, consent can only be set aside in special circumstances. Ballantyne and Schaefer argue that only public interest, and only a broad conception of public interest, can do the special ‘normative justificatory work’ (...) to override consent requirements. Other, similar-sounding concepts, such as public benefit, public good and social value, also provide useful services. But none more so than public interest. In fact, they argue, public interest is the superior concept precisely because it can capture those concepts as well as a range of other interests. Our response focuses on this claim. We argue their strategy is not as promising as it might first seem. Ballantyne and Schaefer construe the important role that public interest plays in this context as their endpoint. They claim that unless the concept is open and content-rich, it will lose some of its importance. But by refusing to place limits around it, their inquiry leads us back to a catch-all concept that lacks clear focus or meaning. In reply, we argue that, for practically minded theorists, a narrow conception of public interest is more useful. Further, the narrowing of public interest in this context can be achieved by first analysing it in its legal, rather than ethical, sense. (shrink)

The second edition of this volume is a comprehensive, practical and up-to-date analysis of the principles and rules of construction and post-probate issues, including how the courts interpret wills once they become the subject of litigation. This comprehensive work takes account of all recent case law-as well as new legislation such as the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act 2009-pertaining to trustees, trusts, trusts of land, and the amendments of the Rules of the Superior Courts by SI No 254 of (...) 2016 relating to the conduct of trials, and SI No 255 of 2016 which deals with pre-trial procedures. Part 1 provides the principles and rules of construction, and the rules of intrinsic and extrinsic evidence, which are applied by the courts when attempting to ascertain and give effect to a testator's intention from vague or uncertain language used by him or her in creating gifts. Part 2 deals with issues that may arise in construction suits concerning, not only uncertain language used in the creation of gifts, but also the actual legal validity of such gifts. Part 3 supplies a useful constructive and interpretative methodology that may be applied for construing and interpreting relevant statutory provisions. Part 4 deals with the forms and procedures required for instituting construction suits, and with issues involving the award of costs. This book is written primarily with legal practitioners in mind and will be of practical use in construction and probate litigation matters. It will also be a useful resource for academic lawyers, students engaged in professional courses, and those undertaking law degrees. [Subject: Wills & Trusts, Irish Law]. (shrink)

The place of play in the education of young children has been the focus of much interest in the past. But the findings from this research project demonstrate that there remains a significant amount of confusion about the role that play has in young children's education. In particular we found that there is a clear distinction between the rhetoric and reality of play in the reception class. Further, there was evidence of real anguish for some early years workers who were (...) failing to offer the play activities that they knew should be provided. These findings are particularly interesting at present, since the debate on the role of play has once again emerged as fundamental in the attempt to define a curriculum appropriate to the needs of the 3-6 year olds who, from the year 2000, will be required to work within the highly contentious Foundation Stage of the National Curriculum. (shrink)

In settler-colonial Canada, the state does not receive Indigenous testimony as credible evidence. While the state often accepts Indigenous testimony in formal hearings, the state fundamentally rejects Indigenous evidence as a description of the world as it is, as an onto-epistemology. In other words, the Indigenous worldview formation, while it functions as a knowledge system that knows and predicts life, is not admitted to regulatory discussions about effects of resource extraction projects on life. Particularly in such resource-extraction review hearings, partly (...) for obvious reasons of ecological ethics, there is no space for Indigenous relational-ontology. I theorize that beyond racism, white supremacy, and greed, settler-colonial onto-epistemological structures are structured to systematically eliminate the potential for relational-ontologies. This exclusion is complementary to resource-extractivist and legal positivist procedures and is biased against Indigenous knowledge and knowledge-sharing procedures; it is a crisis of state integrity and is philosophically unsound. In my analysis of Canadian National Energy Board documents, I ferret out some of these structures that de facto discredit Indigenous onto-epistemologies; I propose this fundamental problem of the Canadian settler-colonial state must be recognized and changed if the calls of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation commission are to be met. (shrink)

The philosopher Graham Harman argues that contemporary debates about the nature of reality as such, and about the nature of objects in particular, can be meaningfully applied to social theory and practice. With Immaterialism, he has recently provided a case-based demonstration of how this could happen. But social theorists have compelling reasons to oppose object-oriented social theory’s 15 principles. Fidelity to Harman’s aesthetic foundationalism, and his particular use of serial endosymbiosis theory as a mechanism of social change, constrain the very (...) practices which it is supposed to enable. However, social theory stands to benefit from object-oriented philosophy through what we call posthuman relationism – characterised as a commitment to the reality of the nonhuman, but not divorced from the human. The emphasis in object-oriented social theory on how objects withdraw from cognitive or affective capture and representation needs to be tempered by an equal focus on how objects appeal. (shrink)

MacIntyre’s theory of practices, institutions, and their respective kinds of goods, has revived and enriched the ethical critique of market economies, and his view of politics as centrally concerned with common goods and human flourishing presents a ma jor challenge to neutralist liberal theorists’ attempts to exclude distinctively ethical considerations from political deliberation. However, the rejection of neutrality does not entail the rejection of liberalism tout court : questions of human flourishing may be accorded a legitimate role in political decisions—including (...) those about economic systems - provided that the powers of the state remain sub ject to certain recognizably liberal constraints. Further, although neutralist liberals often defend market economies on the mistaken grounds that they alone are consistent with the principle of ethical neutrality, a non-neutralist defence of them should not be ruled out, especially if the substantive theory of goods used to evaluate them is somewhat less restrictive than MacIntyre’s. (shrink)

The philosopher Graham Harman argues that contemporary debates about the nature of reality as such, and about the nature of objects in particular, can be meaningfully applied to social theory and practice. With Immaterialism, he has recently provided a case-based demonstration of how this could happen. But social theorists have compelling reasons to oppose object-oriented social theory’s 15 principles. Fidelity to Harman’s aesthetic foundationalism, and his particular use of serial endosymbiosis theory as a mechanism of social change, constrain the very (...) practices which it is supposed to enable. However, social theory stands to benefit from object-oriented philosophy through what we call posthuman relationism – characterised as a commitment to the reality of the nonhuman, but not divorced from the human. The emphasis in object-oriented social theory on how objects withdraw from cognitive or affective capture and representation needs to be tempered by an equal focus on how objects appeal. (shrink)

In Indian philosophy, a pramāṇa is an epistemic instrument or doxastic practice that results in a veridical cognition (in an event of knowing). For just about all Indian thinkers, perception (pratyakṣa) and inference (anumāna) are the foundational pramāṇas, although they debated energetically over how to characterize the content of the resultant cognitions and how to explain the basis for the authority of these pramāṇas. Debate also includes the relationship of knowledge to religious liberation, the role of scripture in knowing, and (...) the possibility of omniscience. (shrink)

Should perfectionist ideals of meaningful work play a significant part in the design of economic systems? In an influential article (Meaningful Work and Market Socialism), Richard Arneson rejected this traditional socialist view. Instead, he maintained, it should be left to the market, as a system that is consistent with the principle of neutrality, to determine the extent to which such work is available, and socialists should restrict their normative concerns primarily to issues of distributive justice. Against this it is argued (...) here that market economies appear to be neutral only if understood in neo-classical, rather than institutionalist terms. From the latter perspective, market economies can be shown to take a number of institutionally distinct forms, which differ significantly in how far they favour the satisfaction of preferences for meaningful work. Collective choices between these alternative systems should take account of these differences, and the adoption of market economies does not avoid the need for perfectionist judgments in politics. (shrink)

Applied naturalism -- Natural rights -- Applied positivism -- A concept of interpretive methodology -- Application of principles of public policy -- Interpretative sources of law -- The formulation of legal principles -- The formulation and application of principles of interpretative construction -- The formulation and application of principles of constructive interpretation -- Application of appropriate equitable principles -- The formulation and application of determinant legal tests and criteria by the courts -- The practical adoption of the jurisprudential process of (...) conceptualisation -- Legal factors and formulae determining correct motion procedures -- The usefulness of templates and principles in maintaining integrity of law in legal practice. (shrink)

Prepare for practice with the essential text dedicated to Canadian legal and ethical issues! Focused solely on the ever-changing, and often complex health care landscape in Canada, Ethical & Legal Issues in Canadian Nursing 4th, Edition expertly covers the often intertwined ethical and legal issues that health care professionals face today. This fourth edition includes discussion points at the end of every chapter along with tables and illustrations to help you fully comprehend the material. Plus, the clear and straightforward writing (...) style presents information just as you will encounter it in your day-to-day practice, ensuring you're even more prepared to make an impact from the start! -- From the publisher. (shrink)

Environmental chemicals accumulate in all human bodies and have the potential to affect the health of men and women, adults, and children. This article advances “precautionary consumption”—the effort to mediate personal exposure to environmental chemicals through vigilant consumption—as a new empirical site for understanding the intersections between maternal embodiment and contemporary motherhood as a consumer project. Using in-depth interviews, I explore how a group of 25 mothers employ precautionary consumption to mediate their children’s exposure to chemicals found in food, consumer (...) products, and the home. Most of the mothers in the study situate their children’s chemical “burdens” within their own bodies and undertake the labor of precautionary consumption as part of a larger and commodity-based motherhood project. In actively expanding the sphere of responsible motherhood to include managing children’s body burdens, these mothers navigate multiple and overlapping contexts that hold women accountable for children’s futures and value the agency of the proactive consumer. Yet, as the sphere of responsible mothering expands, women without financial resources, time, and family stability are pushed to the margins of normative motherhood. (shrink)

Feminist bioethics is a relatively new field, the major works in which only started to appear in the late 1980s. At first feminist bioethicists focused mainly on issues of particular concern to women such as reproduction. Recently, papers have begun to appear that show that a feminist analysis can be brought to bear on any subject traditional bioethics discusses. So far, however, feminist bioethics has not been brought to bear on psychiatry. There have been feminist critiques of psychiatry and feminist (...) discussions of certain diagnostic categories that disproportionately affect women, but these are concerned with womens issues within psychiatry and how psychiatry has been used to oppress women. Certainly these are important, but what has been missing is a discussion of psychiatry in the sense that feminist bioethics suggests a general critique of psychiatry and the rethinking of the practice of psychiatry, regardless of whether the specific instances involved are womens issues. In this paper I look at what such a feminist bioethical intervention into psychiatry would look like. (shrink)

Arneson says that he disagrees both with the main claims of Arneson (1987) and with my criticisms of these in Keat (2009). What is arguably the most important of the former disagreements is left until the final paragraphs, where he declares that he (now) rejects the principle of state neutrality and that we are comrades in believing that good perfectionist arguments for the promotion of meaningful work can be constructed (and may legitimately provide a basis for state action). I am (...) more than happy to be counted a comrade in this respect. But otherwise I disagree with much of what he says in his response: I not only continue to support the criticisms I made in Keat (2009), but also disagree with another of Arneson’s main criticisms of Arneson (1987). So I shall both defend myself from his objections, and defend Arneson from his own. (shrink)

One of the most provocative projects in recent analytic philosophy has been the development of the doctrine of externalism, or, as it is often called, anti-individualism. While there is no agreement as to whether externalism is true or not, a number of recent investigations have begun to explore the question of what follows if it is true. One of the most interesting of these investigations thus far has been the question of whether externalism has consequences for the doctrine that we (...) have authoritative, a priori self-knowledge of our mental states. The selected works presented in this volume, some previously published, some new, are representative of this debate and open up new questions and issues for philosophical investigation, including the connection between externalism, self-knowledge, epistemic warrant, and memory. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers advocate expansion of philosophical methods to include empirical investigation into the concepts used by ordinary people in reasoning and action. We propose also including methods of qualitative social science, which we argue serve both moral and epistemic goals. Philosophical analytical tools applied to interdisciplinary research designs can provide ways to extract rich contextual information from subjects. We argue that this approach has important implications for bioethics; it provides both epistemic and moral reasons to use the experiences and perspectives (...) of diverse populations to better identify underlying concepts as well as to develop effective interventions within particular communities. (shrink)

This paper undertakes textual exegesis and rational reconstruction of Mukula Bhaṭṭa’s Abhidhā-vṛttta-mātṛkā, or “The Fundamentals of the Communicative Function.” The treatise was written to refute Ānandavardhana’s claim, made in the Dhvanyāloka, that there is a third “power” of words, vyañjanā (suggestion), beyond the two already accepted by traditional Indian philosophy: abhidhā (denotation) and lakṣaṇā(indication).1 I argue that the explanation of lakṣaṇā as presented in his text contains internal tensions, although it may still be a compelling response to Ānandavardhana.

This article first briefly examines the textual structure of the Vangisathera Samyutta of the Pali Samyutta-nikaya in conjunction with two other versions preserved in Chinese translation in Taisho vol. 2, nos. 99 and 100. Then it compares the main teachings contained in the three versions. These three versions of this collection on the subject of the venerable Vangisa represent three different early Buddhist schools within the Sthavira branch. This comparative study of these three different versions focuses on three major topics: (...) Arhants at the pravarana ceremony; sensual desire and the way to extinguish it; and the Buddha’s teachings to Vangisa. It reveals similarities and significant differences in structure and doctrinal content, thus advancing the historical/critical study of early Buddhist doctrine in this area. (shrink)

As Axel Honneth has recently noted, the critical concerns of social philosophers during the past three decades have been focused primarily on questions of justice, with ethical issues about the human good being largely excluded. In the first section I briefly explore this exclusion in both ‘Anglo-American’ political philosophy and ‘German’ critical theory. I then argue, in the main sections, that despite this commitment to their exclusion, distinctively ethical concepts and ideals can be identified both in Rawls’s Theory of Justice (...) and in Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action, taking these as exemplary, representative texts for each theoretical school. These ethical elements, and their implications for the critical evaluation of economic institutions, have gone largely unnoticed. In the final section I indicate the kinds of debates that might be generated, were these to be given the attention they arguably deserve. I focus especially on the significance of empirical issues, and hence on the role of social science in social criticism. (shrink)

Obesity is a public health problem influenced by behavioral patterns that span an ecological spectrum of individual-level factors, social network factors and environmental factors. Both individual and environmental approaches necessarily include significant influences from social networks, but how and under what conditions social networks influence behavior change is often not clearly mapped out either in the obesity literature or in many intervention designs. In this paper, we provide an analysis of recent empirical work in obesity research that explicates social network (...) influences on eating behaviors. We argue that a relational rather than individualistic view of personhood should help us better understand the content and context of social network relations that inform health behavior choices. We introduce the concept of ‘identity-constitutive affiliations’ as the glue that binds these social relationships together. Finally, we outline the implications for public health ethics in the development of effective interventions to address overweight and obesity, leveraging the content and context of social network ties to reinforce healthy (or alter unhealthy) eating. More complex treatment of positive and negative behaviors stemming from social network connections should lead to more comprehensive theoretical models of health behavior change and more effective public health interventions. (shrink)

"Active intervention" with suicidal callers to telephone crisis lines involves breaking confidentiality by dispatching emergency services, typically the police, to a suicidal person without that person's consent and sometimes without his or her knowledge.1 Those who oppose active intervention often refer to it as "nonvoluntary intervention." Active intervention is rapidly becoming the standard of practice for crisis centers and is required for certification by the American Association of Suicidology (AAS), the primary organization that certifies telephone crisis centers. A policy of (...) active intervention is also required for any crisis center affiliated with the Hope Line and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline .. (shrink)

“Active intervention” with suicidal callers to telephone crisis lines involves breaking confidentiality by dispatching emergency services, typically the police, to a suicidal person without that person’s consent and sometimes without his or her knowledge. In this paper I am concerned with the issue of whether active intervention is ethically justified from a feminist bioethical perspective, and if so, under what conditions.

Understanding the relationship between obesity and fast food consumption encompasses a broad range of individual level and environmental factors. One theoretical approach, the health capability framework, focuses on the complex set of conditions allowing individuals to be healthy. This qualitative study aimed to identify factors that influence individual level health agency with respect to healthy eating choices in uniformly constrained environments. We used an inductive qualitative research design to develop an interview guide, conduct open-ended interviews with a purposive sample of (...) 14 student fast food workers, and analyze the data. Data analysis was conducted iteratively during the study with multiple coders to identify themes. Emergent themes included environmental influences on eating behaviors and internal psychological factors. A localized, embedded approach to analyzing the factors driving the obesity epidemic is needed. Addressing contextual interactions between internal psychological and external environmental factors responds to social justice and public health concerns, and may yield more relevant and effective interventions for vulnerable communities. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a particular emphasis placed on conducting randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that compare the relative efficacy of psychosocial and pharmacological interventions. This article addresses relevant ethical considerations in the conduct of these treatment trials, with a focus on RCTs with children. Ethical concerns, including therapeutic misconception, treatment preference, therapeutic equipoise, structure of treatments, and balancing risks versus benefits, are introduced through a clinical scenario and discussed as they relate to psychotherapy versus medication RCTs. In each (...) case, suggestions are made for researchers seeking to minimize the impact of these ethical concerns on research participants. (shrink)

This paper builds on previous work that investigated anticancer drugs as ‘informed materials’, i.e., substances that undergo an informational enrichment that situates them in a dense relational web of qualifications and measurements generated by clinical experiments and clinical trials. The paper analyzes the recent transformation of anticancer drugs from ‘informed’ to ‘informing material’. Briefly put: in the post-genomic era, anti-cancer drugs have become instruments for the production of new biological, pathological, and therapeutic insights into the underlying etiology and evolution of (...) cancer. Genomic platforms characterize individual patients’ tumors based on their mutational landscapes. As part of this new approach, drugs targeting specific mutations transcend informational enrichment to become tools for informing their targets, while also problematizing the very notion of a ‘target’. In other words, they have become tools for the exploration of cancer pathways and mechanisms. While several studies in the philosophy and history of biomedicine have called attention to the heuristic relevance and experimental use of drugs, few have investigated concrete instances of this role of drugs in clinical research. (shrink)

As climate change continues to be a pressing issue affecting businesses, firms are taking proactive measures by integrating carbon considerations into their overall strategic planning for environmental sustainability. Nonetheless, the question of whether it pays to be green remains inconclusively answered. Based on an analysis of the 200 largest public listed firms by market capitalisation in Malaysia, the findings indicated that most of the firms are still reactive in managing their carbon activities; however, corporate carbon strategy does, indeed, lead to (...) better financial performance. The findings reaffirmed that going green pays off, particularly for firms with higher levels of foreign ownership. Interestingly, an inverse relationship was observed among firms with higher levels of government shareholdings. Additionally, the firms have been categorised into six different groups based on their scope and level of corporate carbon strategies, ranging from “wait-and-see” to “all-round explorer” classifications. Taken together, these findings enrich corporate carbon and sustainability literature and offer insights into theoretical and policy implications, along with suggestions for future research. (shrink)