This article argues that we live in a highly technical world in which people are disappearing. Religion does not have the tools to help us resist this extinction since it has itself diminished humanity by positing a perfect Other Being, which controls our lives. The author argues that we need to reclaim a sense of ourselves as essentialising animals. We need to have a more body-based sense of humanity, which will lead to a fuller awareness and acceptance of difference and (...) combat hierarchical and alienating thinking. (shrink)

Research on the nature of science and science education enjoys a longhistory, with its origins in Ernst Mach's work in the late nineteenthcentury and John Dewey's at the beginning of the twentieth century.As early as 1909 the Central Association for Science and MathematicsTeachers published an article – ‘A Consideration of the Principles thatShould Determine the Courses in Biology in Secondary Schools’ – inSchool Science and Mathematics that reflected foundational concernsabout science and how school curricula should be informed by them. Sincethen (...) a large body of literature has developed related to the teaching andlearning about nature of science – see, for example, the Lederman and Meichtry reviews cited below. As well there has been intensephilosophical, historical and philosophical debate about the nature of scienceitself, culminating in the much-publicised ‘Science Wars’ of recent time. Thereferences listed here primarily focus on the empirical research related to thenature of science as an educational goal; along with a few influential philosophicalworks by such authors as Kuhn, Popper, Laudan, Lakatos, and others. Whilenot exhaustive, the list should prove useful to educators, and scholars in otherfields, interested in the nature of science and how its understanding can berealised as a goal of science instruction. The authors welcome correspondenceregarding omissions from the list, and on-going additions that can be made to it. (shrink)

This volume contains 17 articles on various aspects of Islamic thought in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia. The first 9 articles concentrate especially on the Qur’ān and its exegesis, Kalām and Sufism; the second 8 articles deal with Javanese Islam, and with Islam and modernity in Southeast Asia.

Researchers typically attempt to fulfill disclosure and informed consent requirements by having participants read and sign consent forms. The present study evaluated the reading levels of informed consent forms used in psychology research and other fields (medical research; social science and education research; and health, physical education, and recreation research). Two standardized measures of readability were employed to analyze a randomly selected sample (N = 108) of informed consent forms used in Institutional Review Board-approved research projects at a midwestern university (...) during the 1987-1988 academic year. Results indicate that informed consent forms are typically written at a higher reading level than is appropriate for the intended population and that there are no consistently significant differences in readability among areas of research or between college student and noncollege student participants. Due to the unacceptably high reading level of the consent forms, one must question whether participants can comprehend the information contained in the consent forms. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

In this article, we examine how the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child can be useful in pediatric bioethics. Adopted in 1989, the CRC reflects norms that have been deliberated upon for a long period of time and endorsed by most nations. The United States is now the only country that has not ratified the CRC.1 International human rights law shares many key moral concepts with clinical pediatric bioethics, and the CRC provides a considered language common to many (...) jurisdictions that can assist bioethicists in their daily practice and help health-care organizations in their policy development and international interactions. There may, however, be practical challenges with using the CRC in the practice of.. (shrink)

Smoking behavior and personality type are two things that have strong connection to stress intensity. In this research toward 98 students of Tarumanagara University was found that there is no correlation between stress intensity and smoking behavior intensity r s (98) = 0,108, p > 0.05. The correlation between personality type and stress intensity is significant enough r s (98) = 0,215p < 0.05. The final objective of this research is to know whether stress intensity has a correlation with smoking (...) behavior intensity, while personality type is being controlled (by separating Type A and Type B). The result indicated that there is no correlation between stress and smoking behavior neither for Type A personality r s (24) = 0,210, p > 0.05 nor for Type B personality r s (27) = -0,238, p . 0.05. (shrink)

The legal risks associated with health research involving human subjects have been highlighted recently by a number of lawsuits launched against those involved in conducting and evaluating the research. Some of these cases have been fully addressed by the legal system, resulting in judgments that provide some guidance. The vast majority of cases have either settled before going to trial, or have not yet been addressed by the courts, leaving us to wonder what might have been and what guidance future (...) cases may bring. What is striking about the lawsuits that have been commenced is the broad range of individuals/institutions that are named as defendants and the broad range of allegations that are made. The research community should take this early experience as a warning and should reflect carefully on practices where research involving human subjects is concerned. (shrink)

Robustness has long been recognized as an important parameter for evaluating game-theoretic results, but talk of ‘robustness’ generally remains vague. What we offer here is a graphic measure for a particular kind of robustness (‘matrix robustness’), using a three-dimensional display of the universe of 2 × 2 game theory. In such a measure specific games appear as specific volumes (Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stag Hunt, etc.), allowing a graphic image of the extent of particular game-theoretic effects in terms of those games. The (...) measure also allows for an easy comparison between different effects in terms of matrix robustness. Here we use the measure to compare the robustness of Tit for Tat’s well-known success in spatialized games (Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation . New York: Basic Books; Grim, P. et al. (1998). The philosophical computer: Exploratory essays in philosophical computer modeling . Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press) with the robustness of a recent game-theoretic model of the contact hypothesis regarding prejudice reduction (Grim et al. 2005. Public Affairs Quarterly, 19 , 95–125). (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive exploration of ancient and modern tyranny in the history of political thought. Waller R. Newell argues that modern tyranny and statecraft differ fundamentally from the classical understanding. Newell demonstrates a historical shift in emphasis from the classical thinkers' stress on the virtuous character of rulers and the need for civic education to the modern emphasis on impersonal institutions and cold-blooded political method. By diagnosing the varieties of tyranny from erotic voluptuaries like Nero, the steely determination (...) of reforming conquerors like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar and modernizing despots such as Napoleon and Ataturk to the collectivist revolutions of the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Nazis and Khmer Rouge, Newell shows how tyranny is every bit as dangerous to free democratic societies today as it was in the past. (shrink)

Hume's is/ought distinction has long limited the role of empirical research in ethics, saying that data about what something is cannot yield conclusions about the way things ought to be. However, interest in empirical research in ethics has been growing despite this countervailing principle. We attribute some of this increased interest to a conceptual breakdown of the is/ought distinction. MacIntyre, in reviewing the history of the is/ought distinction, argues that is and ought are not strictly separate realms but exist in (...) a close relationship that is clarified by adopting a teleological orientation. We propose that, instead of recovering a teleological orientation, society tends to generate its own goals via democratic methods like those described by Rousseau or adopt agnosticism about teleology such as described by Richard Rorty. In both latter scenarios, the distinction between is and ought is obscured, and the role for empirical research grows, but for controversial reasons. MacIntyre warns that the is/ought distinction should remain, but reminds ethicists to make careful arguments about when and why it is legitimate to move from is to ought. (shrink)

I link together the nuptial number, that ‘whole geometric number', represented as the areas of two distinct figures -- a square and a rectangle -- with the ‘triangles in ascending order'. I locate an indeterminancy in the conditions for the production of the ‘divine creature', which I take to be a philosopher , and suggest a new interpretation of the breakdown of the eugenics programme. I try to show how and why that breakdown is metaphysically necessary. I argue that Plato (...) uses mathematical indeterminancy not only to suggest that the decline is necessary, but also to issue an epistemic warning to us, to the effect that we should avoid trying to come to a philosophical understanding of forms by focusing on even very fine particulars. (shrink)

Alan Turing, one of the fathers of computing, warned that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could one day pose an existential risk to humanity. Today, recent advancements in the field AI have been accompanied by a renewed set of existential warnings. But what exactly constitutes an existential risk? And how exactly does AI pose such a threat? In this chapter we aim to answer these questions. In particular, we will critically explore three commonly cited reasons for thinking that AI poses an existential (...) threat to humanity: the control problem, the possibility of global disruption from an AI race dynamic, and the weaponization of AI. (shrink)

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the works in which Ausonius of Bordeaux and Libanius of Antioch, writing within a few years of each other, recall their long and varied careers is that there is so little resemblance between them; the impressions given by these experienced and successful teachers could hardly be more disparate. The reader of Ausonius finds in his Protrepticus a familiar enough picture of the terrors of the schoolroom; his Professores offer at first sight a series of (...) bland commemorations apparently deficient in the interesting information which might be expected from such an archive. Libanius' many volumes, on the other hand, compared where appropriate with the Vitae Sophistarum of Eunapius, present a situation which is well summarised by the following sentences from Walden's work The Universities of Ancient Greece : ‘There was, among the sophists of the fourth century…little, if any, of that spirit of brotherhood… that usually exists in a community of scholars at the present day. Instead there were jealousy, spite and often unrelenting hatred’. This striking divergence between Ausonius and his Eastern counterparts is unlikely to reflect a basic difference between East and West, or between Latin- and Greek-speaking milieux; the complaints of Augustine about his problems in Africa and Rome warn against such a simple answer. When one adds the evidence provided seven centuries later by the Frenchman Peter Abelard, whose plaintive Historia Calamitatum — an account of the disasters he suffered, not those which he caused — is remarkably similar to the prickly self-justification of Libanius in its account of bitter scheming and almost military manoeuvres in the educational world, one is forced to consider whether the evidence of Ausonius is not a serious anomaly, and to seek an explanation. (shrink)

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the works in which Ausonius of Bordeaux and Libanius of Antioch, writing within a few years of each other, recall their long and varied careers is that there is so little resemblance between them; the impressions given by these experienced and successful teachers could hardly be more disparate. The reader of Ausonius finds in his Protrepticus a familiar enough picture of the terrors of the schoolroom; his Professores offer at first sight a series of (...) bland commemorations apparently deficient in the interesting information which might be expected from such an archive. Libanius' many volumes, on the other hand, compared where appropriate with the Vitae Sophistarum of Eunapius, present a situation which is well summarised by the following sentences from Walden's work The Universities of Ancient Greece : ‘There was, among the sophists of the fourth century…little, if any, of that spirit of brotherhood… that usually exists in a community of scholars at the present day. Instead there were jealousy, spite and often unrelenting hatred’. This striking divergence between Ausonius and his Eastern counterparts is unlikely to reflect a basic difference between East and West, or between Latin- and Greek-speaking milieux; the complaints of Augustine about his problems in Africa and Rome warn against such a simple answer. When one adds the evidence provided seven centuries later by the Frenchman Peter Abelard, whose plaintive Historia Calamitatum — an account of the disasters he suffered, not those which he caused — is remarkably similar to the prickly self-justification of Libanius in its account of bitter scheming and almost military manoeuvres in the educational world, one is forced to consider whether the evidence of Ausonius is not a serious anomaly, and to seek an explanation. (shrink)

Contemporary appeals for a deepening of civic friendship in liberal democracies often draw on Aristotle. This paper warns against a certain kind of attempt to use Aristotle in our own theorising, namely accounts of civic friendship that characterise it as similar in some way to Aristotelian virtue friendship. The most prominent of these attempts have focused on disinterested mutual regard as a basic ingredient in all Aristotelian forms of friendship. The argument against this is that it inadequately accounts for the (...) idea of a virtue friend as another self, which we find in Aristotle’s thought. When we attend closely to that, we see that civic friendship is different in a fundamental way from virtue friendship because virtue friends are keenly committed to the moral improvement of one another. It is argued that Aristotle does not see civic friendship in the same way. However, if this argument about the differences between the forms of friendship cannot be accepted, the paper argues that we should not draw on Aristotle for an understanding of civic friendship because any similarity it might have to virtue friendship would license illiberal interventions in the lives of citizens in service of some idea of moral improvement. A seeming connection between Aristotelian civic friendship and thick conceptions of citizenship is replaced with a connection between it and thinner conceptions. (shrink)

The key to the euthanasia debate lies in how best to regulate what doctors do. Opponents of euthanasia frequently warn of the possible negative consequences of legalising physician assisted suicide and active euthanasia while ignoring the covert practice of PAS/AE by doctors and other health professionals. Against the background of survey studies suggesting that anything from 4% to 10% of doctors have intentionally assisted a patient to die, and interview evidence of the unregulated, idiosyncratic nature of underground PAS/AE, this paper (...) assesses three alternatives to the current policy of prohibition. It argues that although legalisation may never succeed in making euthanasia perfectly safe, legalising PAS/AE may nevertheless be safer, and therefore a preferable policy alternative, to prohibition. At a minimum, debate about harm minimisation and the regulation of euthanasia needs to take account of PAS/AE wherever it is practised, both above and below ground. (shrink)

_Purpose._ This article reveals the importance of the analysis of the theory of generations to identify the essential characteristics of the phenomenon of youth. _Theoretical basis_ of this study is socio-philosophical anthropology, i.e. philosophical anthropology using certain methods of sociological, socio-psychological and ethnological research, as well as philosophical comprehension of the application of these methods in special sciences. _Originality._ The authors rethought the theoretical and practical potential of generational theory through its reconceptualization based on philosophical anthropology, which created an opportunity (...) to shift research attention from the attempts to identify superhistorical characteristics of youth to the identification of the essential nature of specific historical and sociocultural features of young people as representatives of a particular culture. _Conclusions._ Defining the youth phenomenon requires accounting at least three constraints that on the one hand, play a role of warnings that deter from theoretical and practical errors in the study of the youth phenomenon, and on the other hand, guidelines for identifying real, specific characteristics of youth as a social phenomenon. Limitations of theoretical and practical analysis of young people are as follows: first, the need to consider demographic data not as final, but only as initial and preliminary, such that require further substantive socio-cultural analysis; second, the inadmissibility of ignoring the cultural diversity of the manifestations of the youth phenomenon, instead the need to identify the special characteristics of youth of different ethnic, religious and other groups; third, the need to take into account the specifics of self-identification of those who identify themselves as young people as a social group. (shrink)

There is probably no student of modern philosophy, and certainly no listener to the Third Programme, who has never received the warning that he must on no account deduce an “ought” from an “is.” This prohibition, it is claimed, is securely based in established and unchallengeable principles of logic. Professor Flew was speaking for many others when he said, in the course of a broadcast entitled “Problems of Perspectives”, “I think it is very important indeed to make as clear as (...) we can and to underline with all possible emphasis that this is a point of inexorable logic”. And Professor Popper, to take but one other example, has expressed himself no less trenchantly: “Perhaps the simplest and most important point about ethics is purely logical, I mean the impossibility to derive nontautological ethical rules—imperatives, principles of policy, aims or however we may describe them—from statements of fact”—a view that is fully endorsed by Mr. Hare in his Language of Morals. (shrink)

Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease is a fatal, transmissible, neurodegenerative disorder for which there is currently no effective treatment. vCJD arose from the zoonotic spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. There is now compelling evidence for human to human transmission through blood transfusions from presymptomatic carriers and experts are warning that the real epidemic may be yet to come. Imperatives exist for the development of reliable, non-invasive presymptomatic diagnostic tests. Research into such tests is well advanced. In this article the ethical implications of (...) the availability of these tests are elaborated and comparisons drawn with predictive genetic testing for Huntington’s disease and screening for HIV. Paramount to considerations is the issue of whom to test, weighing up respect for personal autonomy against obligations to benefit and protect society. A paradigm is proposed similar to that used for HIV screening but with unique features: compulsory testing of all blood/organ donors and individuals undergoing surgery or invasive procedures who have a significant risk of disease transmission. (shrink)

Muʽtazilah is one of the kalām schools in which intellectual freedom is seen the most and therefore divergences within the sect are the most common. Although al-usûl al-ḥamsa/five principles constitute the main framework on which Muʽtazilah has agreed, opposing ideas have emerged within the sect on the principles of ʽadl (divine justice) and al-manzilah bayna al-manzilatayn and on the issues of nature and imamah. As a matter of fact, Muʽtâzilī scholars wrote many refutations to each other on the disputed issues. (...) One of those who have opposing views within the Muʽtazilah is Muḥammad b. Shabīb al-Baṣrī (d. mid 3rd/9th century), who lived between the end of 2nd and the middle of the 3rd century of hijra. Ibn Shabīb is one of the students of Ibrāhīm Ibn Sayyār al-Naẓẓām (d. 231/845), who was one of the leading scholars of Muʽtazilah. He initially opposed the principle of al-manzilah bayna al-manzilatayn, while he was Muʽtezilî, and accepted the Murji’ah approach on this issue. However, after he accepted the idea of irjā’, he continued his loyalty to Muʽtazilah with regard to the principles of tawhīd (divine unity) and ʽadl. Ibn Shabīb, who had a theological assembly of his own and is respected by the people in Baṣra, was an important scholar who stands out with his comprehensive knowledge of religious and philosophical schools of his time. In the doxographical tradition, his adoption of Murjī’ ideas is generally emphasized, except that he has not been referred to much. However, when the sources of kalām are examined meticulously, it is understood that he influenced many Muslim theologians with his works and views and that he was a source for them regarding many topics. The most important reason for this is that he was one of the first scholars to defend the Islamic belief against various philosophical and religious movements. Naturally, this situation provided him with a wide knowledge of religious and philosophical trends. Considering the quotations made from him, it is understood that he recorded this accumulation in a doxographical work. Another remarkable feature of Ibn Shabīb is that he was one of the first scholars to write in the genre of Kitāb al-Tawhīd. It is possible to see both contextual and methodological effects of this work in the quotations and narratives of Al-Māturīdī's book with the same name. What makes him different is that he adopts Muʽtazilī and Murjī’ ideas at the same time and develops a unique discourse on the subjects of grave sins and waʽīd (divine warning). Although he was raised in a strong tradition of thought such as Muʽtazilah, his ability to oppose his sect and his teacher Al-Naẓẓām and also to develop a different definition of faith despite accepting the doctrine of irjā’, makes him stand out as an original and intellectual personality. His different definition of faith is important in that it represents a more moderate approach to the issue of takfīr. For, he drew an encompassing framework based on the Quran and the Sunnah regarding the definition of faith and the conditions of takfīr, thus, he tried to preserve the unity of Muslims. He did not consider the denial of controversial issues that are not explicitly included in the Quran and Sunnah as a reason for takfīr. With this attitude, Ibn Shabīb took an important approach in ensuring social peace and free thought. In this article, all the information contained in Muʽtazilī sources, and doxographical works related to the life, scientific personality and theological views of Ibn Shabīb are gathered and analyzed, and then his theological thought is reconstructed based on these data. From this point of view, identifications and evaluations have been made regarding the issues that make him different and unique in the history of Muslim thought. (shrink)

This essay has three general themes. The first involves the claim that nudging threatens human agency. My basic response is that human agency is fully retained (because nudges do not compromise freedom of choice) and that agency is always exercised in the context of some kind of choice architecture. The second theme involves the importance of having a sufficiently capacious sense of the category of nudges, and a full appreciation of the differences among them. Some nudges either enlist or combat (...) behavioral biases but others do not, and even among those that do enlist or combat such biases, there are significant differences. The third general theme is the need to bring various concerns (including ethical ones) in close contact with particular examples. A legitimate point about default rules may not apply to warnings or reminders. An ethical objection to the use of social norms may not apply to information disclosure. Here as elsewhere, abstraction can be a trap. We continue to learn about the relevant ethical issues, about likely public reactions to nudging, and about differences across cultures and nations. Future progress will depend on a high level of concreteness, perhaps especially in dealing with the vexing problem of time-inconsistency. (shrink)

Industrial wind turbines are frequently thought of as benign. However, the literature is reporting adverse health effects associated with the implementation of industrial-scale wind developments. This article explores the historical evidence about what was known regarding infra and low-frequency sound from wind turbines and other noise sources during the period from the 1970s through the end of the 1990s. This exploration has been accomplished through references, personal interviews and communications, and other available documentation. The application of past knowledge could improve (...) the current siting of industrial wind turbines and avoid potential risks to health. (shrink)

India has produced several drafts of data policies. In this work, they are referred to [1] JBNSCR 2018, [2] DPDPR 2018, [3] NSAI 2018, [4] RAITF 2018, [5] PDPB 2019, [6] PRAI 2021, [7] JPCR 2021, [8] IDAUP 2022, [9] IDABNUP 2022. All of them consider Artificial Intelligence (AI) a social problem solver at the societal level, let alone an incentive for economic growth. However, these policy drafts warn of the social disruptions caused by algorithms and encourage the careful use (...) of computational technologies in various social contexts. Hence, the emerging data society and its implications in India's social contexts demand immense social science attention, which needs to be improved in the policy drafts, primarily because they are creations of industry stakeholders, technocrats, bureaucrats, and experts from tech schools. In the larger social milieu of digital infrastructure emerging, the fundamental question is whether India's national philosophy envisioned in the Indian constitution is reflected in the policy papers. The paper enquires whether the national data policy upholds the core values dispersed through the philosophy of the Indian constitution, which, among other things, is not confined only to inclusion, diversity, rights, liberty, justice and equality. By focusing on constitutional values, the paper seeks to offer a broader and more critical understanding of India's approach to AI policy by bringing together analyses of a wide array of policy documents available in the public realm. (shrink)

To Wrestle With Demons offers a rare glimpse of a psychiatrist's innermost thoughts about how his work affects patients, deeply move him, and reflects the society in which we live. Describing the unconscious as music, "a silent and explosive score," Dr. Ablow recalls the process of helping patients ferret out the past from the deep recesses of their minds. In so doing, he becomes enchanted with "the subtlety and power of human interaction." He describes the lonely gentleman who, gaining a (...) sense of security from hearing voices, refuses the medication that would take them away...the depressed woman whose extreme dependence on others is rooted in a violent and abusive childhood...the doting husband whose obsessive devotion to his ill wife harks back to the tragic loss of a childhood friend. In delving into the minds of his patients, Dr. Ablow must also wrestle with his own demons. He speaks with unabashed candor about the guilt he feels exchanging empathy for money, his struggle to help a homeless veteran, and the embarrassment of warning a mother of her son's intent to kill her. Through his eyes, the reader confronts a patient's suicide and a close colleague's murder. While sharing these private revelations, Dr. Ablow provides to us all a looking glass to society. Discussed here, among many issues are poverty, the insanity defense, patients' rights, sexual malpractice, and changing medical economics. Captured is the critical moment which psychiatry now finds itself - attempting to integrate technology with spirituality, science with the soul, and economics with empathy. To Wrestle With Demons offers anyone who has ever wondered whether psychiatrists are touched by the lives of their patients a resounding yes. (shrink)

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a chronic illness that requires intensive lifelong management of blood glucose concentrations by means of external insulin administration. There have been substantial developments in the ways of measuring glucose levels, which is crucial to T1D self-management. Recently, continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) has allowed people with T1D to keep track of their blood glucose levels in near real-time. These devices have alarms that warn users about potentially dangerous blood glucose trends, which can often be shared with (...) ther people. CGM is consistently associated with improved glycemic control and reduced hypoglycemia and is currently recommended by doctors. However, due to the costs of CGM, only those who qualify for hospital provision or those who can personally afford it are able to use it, which excludes many people. In this paper, I argue that unequal access to CGM results in: (1) unjust health inequalities, (2) relational injustice, (3) injustice with regard to agency and autonomy, and (4) epistemic injustice. These considerations provide prima facie moral reasons why all people with T1D should have access to CGM technology. I discuss the specific case of CGM policy in the Netherlands, which currently only provides coverage for a small group of people with T1D, and argue that, especially with additional considerations of cost-effectiveness, the Dutch government ought to include CGM in basic health care insurance for all people with T1D. (shrink)

After summarizing the content of my book, Kant and Mysticism, I warn against four preliminary misconceptions. The book never argues that Kant viewed himself as a mystic, fully acknowledges Kant’s negative view of mysticism, offers no comprehensive overview of mystical traditions, and aims to initiate a dialogue, not to have the final word. I then respond to the foregoing essays by the five critics.

Moral distress is a pervasive phenomenon in healthcare for which there is no straightforward “solution.” Rhetoric surrounding moral distress has shifted over time, with some scholars arguing that moral distress needs to be remedied, resolved, and eradicated, while others recognize that moral distress can have some positive value. The authors of this paper recognize that moral distress has value in its function as a warning sign, signaling the presence of an ethical issue related to patient care that requires deeper exploration, (...) rather than evidencing identification of the “right” course of action. Once the experience of moral distress is identified, steps ought to be taken to clarify the moral issue, and, if possible and reasonable, the patient’s values ought to be prioritized. This paper offers concrete actions steps, drawn from theory, which can be used in clinical practice to provide peer support or to facilitate self-reflection for morally distressed individuals. This approach empowers morally distressed individuals to explore ethical issues, identify concrete steps that can be taken, and mitigate feelings of powerlessness that are often associated with moral-constraint distress. The questions guide individuals and peers to reflect first on the micro-space and then more broadly on the institutional culture, facilitating meso- and macro-reflection and action. (shrink)

In A Dentist and a Gentleman the sociologist Tracey Adams retells a familiar professionalization story, this time about elite dental practitioners in nineteenth‐century Ontario who launched a status‐enhancement project to reshape their self‐ and public image into “professional gentlemen” and establish monopoly control over dental practice. Dentists secured legislation in 1868 giving them authority to set entrance requirements, test and license practitioners, and establish a college. In subsequent decades they campaigned against those they called “quacks” who practiced without a license, (...) advertised, charged low fees, maintained dirty offices, misled patients about pain, or brought the gentlemanly status of dentistry into disrepute.Despite early resistance, the project had mostly succeeded by 1918, as dentists skillfully linked their expertise to emerging public health concerns and a professional image subtly reoriented toward an ideal of public service. By 1900 dental rhetoric was warning Canadians of an impending crisis of tooth decay and dental disease that would bring physical deterioration and mass feeblemindedness in its wake. Racial degeneracy, dentists warned, began in the mouth; the advance of civilization produced too much soft food and sugar, too little chewing, and too many high‐strung and overindulgent mothers. Only dentists, as “sentinels at the portal of the alimentary tract” , could stand against this threat to Anglo‐Saxon civilization. Rhetoric like this, combined with doses of guilt heaped on mothers, teachers, school boards, and public health agencies, resulted by 1915 in regular dental inspections of schoolchildren, free dental clinics, and the creation of the army dental corps.Dentistry brought unique twists to this familiar professionalization story. Prior to 1860 dentistry was an especially low‐status craft, associated with uneducated, itinerant tooth‐drawers or craftsmen like blacksmiths and gunsmiths . Professionalizing dentists therefore felt a special imperative to recast themselves as “gentlemen”; this image also reassured the upper‐middle‐class women who were dentists' main clientele. Unexpectedly, as Adams shows in an intriguing analysis, dentists benefited from an invaluable social alliance with physicians, who offered no opposition of the sort they raised against other rival groups of healers to dentists' professional aspirations.The study deals extensively with how gender shapes professions. Dentistry's professionalization, Adams insists, involved the adoption of a new ideal of personal masculinity, as seen in admonitions to dentists to establish firm, courteous, expert authority over their clients and in dentists' efforts to shape the imagined persona of the ideal dental assistant as uniquely female and wifelike. This masculine crafting of the profession notwithstanding, Ontario dentists evinced less overt opposition to women aspirants than did doctors or lawyers. Nevertheless, the proportion of female practitioners was much lower in dentistry than in medicine or law and remains substantially lower today. Adams brings considerable insight to her discussion of these facts and their causes, and she presents useful comparisons among the professions.This study has a few limitations. Perhaps because the author's sources are mainly professional journals, her account mostly mirrors the outlook of the professionalizing elite and her prose occasionally adopts their moralizing and improving tone. Regrettably, the book deals scarcely at all with what dentists actually did. One learns little about how changing scientific and medical ideas affected dentists' work, how dentists utilized anaesthesia and coped with the problem of pain, and what controversies over diagnostics and treatment animated the profession or about dentists' training and income. This is a history of dentistry's professionalization, not of dental medicine per se. But Isis readers impressed by this solid and modest study will hope that a history of dental practice will be Tracey Adams's next project. (shrink)

This work, which first appeared in 1936, offers in addition to an historical treatment displaying Cassirer's characteristic insight, an analysis of quantum mechanics largely unaffected by subsequent development in the field. The author argues, on the basis of epistemological considerations, that quantum mechanics necessitates no major revisions in our basic understanding of causality. The new laws simply refer to "definite collectives" rather than things or events and are no less determinate than the old. In the final part the author stresses (...) the independence of causality and continuity in nature and closes by sensibly warning the reader against attempting to establish ethical freedom within the gaps of physical law. Henry Margenau has expanded the bibliography and added a helpful preface which, in part, reports Cassirer's thoughts up to 1945.--R. P. (shrink)

The nine essays in this volume resulted from a symposium on "criminal justice and punishment" at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, in response to concerns about the workability and defensibility of any system of punishment. Among the contributors are Professors of Philosophy, Law, and Government, and the executive director of a Law Enforcement Commission. What emerges as the central focus of the book is a predominant interest in "retributivism." As J. B. Cederblom writes in the introduction, the retributive or (...) "just deserts" theory of punishment has come to dominate at the present time. The extent to which the retributivist position is promoted in opposition to an indistinct representation of utilitarianism, makes the book less challenging as a statement of the retributive position on punishment. Without a doubt, the more recent works of R. M. Hare and David Lyons, among others writing on utilitarian theory, do much to make easy claims against the theory appear facile if not naive. It is interesting that the bibliography does not refer to Hare’s work and mentions only one essay by Lyons. This is not to condemn the book, however, for it serves an important role in reawakening philosophers to the importance of a long-standing debate with a revived and healthy retributivism. But it is a warning that it is oftentimes too easy to defend a position when the opposition is not represented at the hearing. (shrink)

This essay offers constructive criticism of the book “In Defense of Kant’s Religion” (2008), by Chris L. Firestone and Nathan Jacobs. Follow the link given here to see the published version of this article. In the same journal issue where that version appeared (Faith & Philosophy 29.2), Jacobs and Firestone each published essays that claimed to respond to my criticisms of their book; but for the most part they merely skirted around the points my article makes, often avoiding the key (...) issues (e.g., by imputing alleged "fallacies" to my paper and using these as excuses to avoid discussing the genuine issues), sometimes making claims that were simply false in the process. In Faith and Philosophy 29.3 (July 2012):340-346, I published a general response to the whole debate over their book, without going into the sad details of the tactics they employed. But in a footnote (p.342n) I referred the reader to a detailed, point-by-point rebuttal to their (non-)arguments, as an addendum to that article, that would be uploaded here on my academia. edu site. This version of my original paper uploaded here contains the identical text for the paper itself (i.e., the first 15 pages of the original typescript have not been changed); but I have added an Appendix (starting on p.16) that responds, point-by-point to the Firestone and Jacobs essays. Warning to the faint-hearted: this discussion should not be read by anyone who is considering giving up their study of philosophy on the grounds that philosophers typically waste their time merely talking past each other, because for such a person, reading the Appendix to the version of the paper uploaded here could be the straw that breaks the camel's back! As I wrote it, I found myself sometimes wishing I had not published a promise to provide such material, because it is an embarrassment to philosophy that philosophers sometimes treat each other in the way illustrated by the two essays I am responding to. I only hope that taking the trouble to publish such a detailed response will help some readers recognize how important it is to give one's interlocuter the benefit of the doubt wherever possible (as I have tried to do here, for Firestone and Jacobs--and I would welcome their detailed explanations, if they think I have not done so). In any case, I hope the (unpublished) Appendix, uploaded here, will illustrate the fact that there are more important values to consider, when conducting a philosophical argument, than merely persuading others that "I’m right!". (shrink)

Racism as an independent topic of investigation in philosophy has considerably developed since the 1990s, when it appeared as part of growing debates that, on the one hand, investigated the political meaning of race and, on the other, its ontology and whether it existed at all. Likewise, with the idea of racism, its broadly normative meaning is critiqued by some philosophers, while others ask how best to conceive of it and identify its immorality. There were a few early and significant (...) forays in philosophy about the nature of racism, of which three works stand out because of the way they set the terms of the debate: David Theo Goldberg's Racist Culture, Charles W. Mills’ The Racial Contract, and Jorge L.A. Garcia's “The Heart of Racism.”1 This collection reacts to the latter fork in the discussion but does so in ways that significantly touch on the former.The collection begins with Jorge L. Garcia's “Virtue Ethics in Social Theory: Defending a Volitional Analysis of Racism from Tommie Shelby's Challenges.” It is a clarification and defense of his influential volitional analysis of racism (VAR) from three prominent objections: that VAR inadequately accounts for the immorality of racism because it relies on the assumed wrongness of racism built into ordinary usage of the term ‘racist;’ that it mistakenly separates intention from belief; and that it does not fully account for the racism of some troubling mental states that cannot be traced back to a racist ill-will. Garcia's account of racism as fundamentally rooted in racist ill-will, along with Lawrence Blum's, is representative of agent-centered theories of racism. Not only do they attempt to explain individual or personal racism, but they also hold that racism in institutions, structures, or systems traces back to the racism of persons.Current accounts of structural racism, however, claim that it exists and operates independently of infection from intentionally racist persons, that the focus on racist persons cannot adequately account for how racism works in society, and that, instead, we should concentrate on structures and ideologies. Amelia Wirts sharply defends this view in her, “What does it mean to say ‘The Criminal Justice System is Racist’?” She explains how structural racism applies to America's criminal justice system and other “intermediate” (between individual and societal level) structures. Wirts argues that personal accounts of racism, and in particular Garcia's VAR, do not adequately account for the patterns of racial disparity in the criminal justice system or its disproportionate harm to black people. She advocates, instead, for a patterned view of structural racism, the patterns of which operate “as if it were designed to disproportionately harm” some racialized group. Additionally, Wirts adds that such patterns are particularly racist when they fuel racist ideological symbols, as the criminal justice system does in relation to the idea of the black criminal.Structural analyses of racism are powerfully instructive, and Alisa Bierria, in “Structural Racism Within Reason,” offers an account that takes an epistemic turn that advances our understanding of their meaning. More than the idea that personal and structural racism beget each other in continuous looping effects, and more than the view that racism is best understood as an ideology that provides the content to racist attitudes or policy proscriptions, she argues that structural racism structures reason. Drawing on the 2012 case of Marissa Alexander, who unsuccessfully tried to use Florida's Stand Your Ground Law to justify her firing a warning shot at her estranged, abusive husband to protect herself from his murderous threat, Bierra argues that structural racism extends constructed and controlling intentions onto its targets, and, as in the case she discusses, it uses those constructed and fictional intentions to justify their punishment and depriving them of equal justice.Structural analyses of racism are essential additions to the philosophical understanding of racism that have appropriately challenged the centrality of agent-centered accounts. The increasing academic focus on structural explanations, however, along with the current overuse of “systemic racism” in popular discourse, threatens to eclipse the value of accounts of agent-centered accounts. In “Is Racism Essentially Systemic?” Michael Hardimon counsels against this trend. He reminds us that racism is not essentially systemic, and that the dominance of structural explanations could obscure its other forms and even the proper understanding of structural racism. Indeed, structures once constructed might operate independently of human intention, but they are designed, initiated, and often operated by persons.After considering the direction of the current philosophical discussion about the meaning of racism and its immorality, the next set of articles expands the discussion into matters of class, xenophobia, and white nationalism. Lawrence Blum's “Race and Class Together” starts it off. Blum builds class into his analysis of racism and critiques its absence in anti-racist theory. He argues that paying attention to class is required to secure justice for the victims of racism because pursuing justice is often a matter of both. Blum contends that race and class are “normatively distinct axes of injustice” and that, depending on the question, racial injustice needs to be addressed separately. However, there are aspects of racial injustice that can only be dealt with through a class analysis and require class or combined class–race focused policies. Pointing to the fact that many of the members of groups targeted by racism (he considers blacks, Indigenous peoples, and Latinxs) share cross-class interests, which includes shared interests with some whites, which they do not share with more economically privileged members of their own groups, Blum argues that these interests should be addressed through “class-focused policies,” in a manner that will secure justice for disadvantaged racial groups.Shifting from the class-race analysis, José Jorge Mendoza, in “‘Go Back to Where You Came From!’ Racism, Xenophobia, and White Nationalism,” turns our attention toward white nationalism to examine whether it is best understood as an expression of racism or xenophobia. Although he recognizes the importance of xenophobia in white nationalism, Mendoza does not neglect its connections with racist ideas. However, he acknowledges that emphasizing the role of race in condemnations of white nationalism risks overextending the concept of race, i.e., in regards to pan-racial groups, because some members of those groups are racially identified as white. Thus, the charge of racism against white nationalism in such cases may not clearly apply. To deal with those cases, Mendoza cleverly decouples the ideas of “radicalization” and “racial formation,” and he puts forward a new concept, “racial disintegration,” to account for the operation and shifting targets of white nationalism.In the final piece, David H. Kim and I discuss xenophobia and racism in the case of “Anti-Asian Racism.” We move from general theories of racism to inquire about what is at the base of anti-Asian racism. Little is said in contemporary accounts of racism about anti-Asian racism. This is due, in part, to the high level of abstraction in those discussions but also because much of the literature takes anti-blackness as the model of racism. Our piece addresses this lacuna in a manner not beholden to the black-white binary. We discuss how the idea of anti-Asian racism is a conceptual problem in the American context dominated by that binary. We then argue that xenophobia as a form of civic ostracism, and to some extent xenophilia, play a particular role in how anti-Asian racism functions and its immorality.The pieces in this collection resonate with current events and controversies involving racism and illustrate the potential of the debate to relate to and speak those events, not just to the specialized interests of a cloistered academic conversation. Each piece demonstrates the potential for extending vital lines of debate and discussion that touches the raw nerve of the public discussion of racism. (shrink)

The objective of the article is to examine the extensions of a clinical measure of efficacy, the Number Needed to Treat (NNT), in different settings including screening, scanning, genetic testing and primary prevention, and the associated ethical implications. We examine several situations in which the use of the NNT or NNS (Number Needed to Screen) has been suggested, such as Prostate-Specific Antigen for prostate cancer, Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans, genetic testing and banning of smoking. For each application, we explore the (...) ethical implications of the relevant measure. We have found that the different measures have different ethical implications. For example, the Number Needed to Prevent is the only measure that can be lower than one, indicating with a numerical example that prevention is better than cure. Conversely, we raise questions about the acceptability of genetic screening. In a realistic example, we show that primary prevention of the effects of arsenic in drinking water, targeted to the most susceptible, would require to genetically screen a large number of subjects, whereas giving rise to ethical concerns. We warn against the abuse of testing, in particular genetic testing, we show that different measures are associated with different ethical issues and that prevention tends to be better than cure. (shrink)

“Wrongful birth” is a controversial malpractice action, which has arisen in the past two decades, secondary to an expanding knowledge of human genetics and the constitutionally protected access to abortion. Under the wrongful birth claim, parents of a child with a congenital illness or abnormality may bring suit against a physician who allegedly failed to provide appropriate prenatal counseling or information. Typically, the parents claim that they were inadequately warned of a potential problem in their child, and that this paucity (...) of timely information prevented them from avoiding the pregnancy or from obtaining an abortion. While these cases have arisen in a variety of clinical circumstances, a characteristic example is the obstetrician who fails to offer amniocentesis to a woman of advanced maternal age who subsequently gives birth to a child with Down syndrome. Since the parents were prevented from learning of the abnormality and therefore exercising the option to terminate the pregnancy, they may claim damages for themselves for the wrongful birth of the infant. (shrink)