We bear witness to a sweeping social movement for change—fostered and driven by a powerful group of Black nurses and nursing students determined to call out and dismantle anti‐Black racism and discrimination within the profession of nursing. The Black Nurses Task Force, launched by the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO) in July 2020, is building momentum for long‐standing change in the profession by critically examining the racist and discriminatory history of nursing, listening to and learning from the lived experiences (...) of the Black nursing community, and shaping concrete, actionable steps to confront anti‐Black racism and discrimination in academic settings, workplaces, and nursing organizations. The Black Nurses Task Force and the RNAO are standing up and speaking out in acknowledgment of the magnitude of anti‐Black racism and discrimination that exist in our profession, health system, justice system, and economic system. This social movement is demonstrating, in actions, how individuals and a collective act as change agents to drive meaningful and widespread change for our present and future Black nurses. We also acknowledge the Black nurses who have gone before us. (shrink)

Racism against Black people, Indigenous and other racialized people continues to exist in healthcare and academic settings. Racism produces profound harm to racialized people. Strategies to address systemic racism must be implemented to bring about sustainable changes in healthcare and academic settings. This quality improvement initiative provides strategies to address systemic racism and discrimination against Black nurses and nursing students in Ontario, Canada. It is part of a broader initiative showcasing Black nurses in action to end racism and discrimination. We (...) have found that people who have experienced racism need healing, support and protection including trauma-related services to facilitate their healing. Implementing multi-level, multi-pronged interventions in workplaces will create healthy work environments for all members of society, especially Black nurses who are both clients/patients and providers of healthcare. (shrink)

The problem of suffering is essentially a problem in philosophical theology. For many philosophical systems the phenomena of suffering set no special problem at all. The most influential philosophies of the present age, for example, have almost nothing to say on the subject—and there is no reason why, on their metaphysical; principles, they should say anything. The problem is a relevant one only for those philosophies which claim to be in at least general accord with the “religious interpretation of the (...) universe.” But for them it is crucial. Given a Weltanschauung like that of Absolute Idealism, for which the ultimate principle from which all things derive their being is an Infinite and Perfect Spirit, and it becomes at once a clear obligation to offer some explanation of how we are to reconcile the Goodness of God with the existence in the world of so much suffering which is prima facie just bad. As we all know, the problem is an extraordinarily hard one to solve. But, inasmuch as the religious interpretation of the universe demands its solution as a condition of its own possibility, its importance is proportionate to its difficulty. (shrink)

I have chosen my topic for this evening with an eye to something rather more than its intrinsic philosophical interest. Modern man, as we are all painfully aware, is facing a crisis of peculiar gravity. Perhaps the odds are not so very heavy against a third world war followed by world collapse into anarchy and barbarism. At such a time the philosopher is bound to ask himself whether there is no contribution which his science can make towards the succour of (...) civilization. (shrink)

This paper is an essay based on many years of reviewing journal submissions and discussions with business ethics scholars on a range of themes regarding methods. To some extent, it contains condensed thoughts from two experienced scholars in the field, which we hope will be useful, especially to emerging scholars who, to some extent, may still be wrestling with some of the issues raised in the paper. The validity and reliability of research methods in business ethics research is discussed in (...) terms of legitimate methods to employ in the discipline, the epistemic challenges in the discipline, the debate between qualitative and quantitative methods, and some considered comments on ‘researching well’ in this discipline. Within each theme, we attempt to convey our distilled thoughts in the hope that methods employed in future studies will avoid some of the failures we have observed in the past. (shrink)

The reconstructive turn in memory theory challenges us to provide an account of successful remembering that is attentive to the ways in which we use memory, both individually and socially. I investigate conceptualizations of accuracy and integrity useful to memory theorists and argue that faithful recollection is often a complex epistemological/ethical achievement.

McCarthy, Homan, and Rozier’s call for a renewal of open and honest dialogue between secular and theologically grounded bioethics is admirable. Yet, their essay argues for more than mere dia...

All else being equal, creating a miserable person makes the world worse, and creating an ecstatic person makes it better. Such claims are easily justified if it can be better, or worse, for a person to exist than not to exist. But that seems to require that things can be better, or worse, for a person even in a world in which she does not exist. Ingmar Persson defends this seemingly paradoxical claim in his latest book, Inclusive Ethics. He argues (...) that persons that never exist are merely possible beings for whom non-existence is worse than existence with a good life. We argue that Persson's argument, as stated in his book, has false premises and is invalid. We reconstruct the argument to make it valid, but the premises remain highly problematic. Finally, we argue, one can make sense of our procreative obligations without letting merely possible beings into the moral club. (shrink)

I have argued elsewhere that the psychological criterion of personalidentity entails that a person is not an object, but a series ofpsychological events. As this is somewhat counter-intuitive,I consider whether the psychological theorist can argue that a person, while not a substance, exists in a way that is akin to theway that substances exist. I develop ten criteria that such a`quasi-substance' should meet, and I argue that a reasonablecase can be made to show that the psychological theorist's conception of a (...) person meets these criteria. (shrink)

The biomedicalist conceptualization of disablement as a personal medical tragedy has been criticized by disability studies scholars for discounting the difference between disability and impairment and the ways disability is produced by socio-environmental factors. This paper discusses prospects for partnerships between disability studies teaching/research and medical education; addresses some of the themes around the necessity of critical disability studies training for medical students; and examines a selection of issues and themes that have arisen from disability education courses within medical schools (...) globally. The paper concludes that providing there is a commitment from senior management, universities are well positioned to apply both vertical and horizontal approaches to teaching disability studies to medical students. (shrink)

cellence of current Locke exegesis, however, should not blind us to the fact that recent readings are in urgent need of supplementation: and one aim of this paper is to show how this might be achieved.

This article examines the problems concerning personal identity. It identifies two issues that are central to the question of personal identity: one concerns causality and the other concerns the notion of first person. It discusses the difficulty in determining the relation between personal identity and the first person and attempts to identify what it is about the first person that contributes so much to our puzzlement about the identity of the self, over and above the problems raised by the causal (...) complexity of persons. It outlines the connection between causality and the identities of concrete objects generally, and how specifically it applies to the case of persons. (shrink)

In this book, a distinguished international group of legal theorists re-examine legal positivism as a prescriptive political theory and consider its implications for the constitutionally defined roles of legislatures and courts. The issues are illustrated with recent developments in Australian constitutional law.

The standard version of the psychological criterion or theory of personal identity takes it that psychological connectedness is not necessary for personal identity, or for what matters in survival. That is, a future person can be you, and/or have what matters in survival for you, even though there is no psychological connectedness between you and that future person. David Lewis, however, holds that psychological connectedness is necessary to both identity and what matters (which he takes to coincide). This entails, Lewis (...) acknowledges, that if a human body were to live longer than connectedness lasts, then that body would ‘embody’ or ‘constitute’ a different person later on than it did to begin with. Moreover, Lewis accepts, a body may embody more than one person at any one time. Lewis claims that this can be reconciled to some degree with common sense if we count by person stages rather than by persons. I show, though, that Lewis' view cannot be salvaged in this way, and, moreover, that it leads to further absurdities. I conclude that as an account of identity and of what matters in survival, it is highly implausible, and most unsatisfactory. (shrink)

‘ “I desire”’ Jebb, whose note I now take as read. In this and my ensuing discussion I seek to show that never has that meaning. The scholiast's note is a sophism, and Jebb's is another. Jebb says that the primary sense is to love; he prudently leaves unstated the next step in the fallacy, that to love might mean to have just fallen in love with; and he concludes that poetry ‘could easily draw’ the sense to desire. Actually applies (...) as between parents and children, rulers and their subjects, and to other not necessarily amenable persons or not prima facie acceptable things with whom or which one has to associate continually ; its general sense is to ‘do with’, to brook; it ranges from like to either extreme, be fond of or tolerate. In its various nuances it resembles which never means to ‘desire’. (shrink)

Carter argues that Wittgensteinian moral philosophy – typified by the work of Raimond Gaita and Christopher Cordner – rests on shaky foundations because it vacillates between grounding moral judgements in grammar and in a form of life. In this article, I respond to Carter's criticism. I defend Wittgensteinian moral philosophy by showing that Gaita and Cordner specifically repudiate the purported dichotomy between grammar and a form of life. I then go on to explain why Wittgensteinian moral philosophers are right not (...) to try to ground moral judgements in features of a shared form of life. (shrink)

In the light of what appear to be clear counterexamples, I argue that Jaegwon Kim’s comparative evaluation of functional reduction and reduction via necessary identities is problematic. I trace the problem to two sources: a misplaced metaphysical assumption about the explanatory role of identities and an excessively strong and narrow criterion for successful reductive explanation. Appreciating where Kim’s critique runs astray enhances our understanding of the role of necessary identities in reductive explanation.

This work presents essays on topics of philosophy of language. The text is organized around themes such as the nature of truth and meaning, the semantic nature of quantifiers, and the distinction between semantics and pragmatics.

ABSTRACT Nadeem Hussain argues that Nietzsche's rejection of intrinsic values led him to reject the existence of values generally, but that he wanted his “free spirits” to pretend to believe in values as a way to avoid practical nihilism. I examine Hussain's textual evidence and find it unsupportive of and sometimes even hostile to his fictionalist interpretation. I argue that this interpretation ignores what Nietzsche regarded as the value of the knowledge that nothing has intrinsic value, which is to allow (...) his free spirits to go beyond the kind of phenomenology that Hussain claims Nietzsche wanted to preserve for them. Recognizing this central aspect of Nietzsche's project adds support to the much more natural subjectivist realist interpretation that Hussain rejects en route to his fictionalist interpretation. Finally, I sketch a better-supported interpretation of Nietzsche's use of pretense in valuation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Imagine that you are given access to an AI chatbot that compellingly mimics the personality and speech of a deceased loved one. If you start having regular interactions with this “thanabot,” could this new relationship be a continuation of the relationship you had with your loved one? And could a relationship with a thanabot preserve or replicate the value of a close human relationship? To the first question, we argue that a relationship with a thanabot cannot be a true (...) continuation of your relationship with a deceased loved one, though it might support one’s continuing bonds with the dead. To the second question, we argue that, in and of themselves, relationships with thanabots cannot benefit us as much as rewarding and healthy intimate relationships with other humans, though we explain why it is difficult to make reliable comparative generalizations about the instrumental value of these relationships. (shrink)