Animal welfare has been conceptualized in such a way that the use of animals in science and for food seems justified. I argue that those who have done this have appropriated the concept of animal welfare, claiming to give a scientific account that is more objective than the sentimental account given by animal liberationists. This strategy seems to play a major role in supporting merely limited reform in the use of animals and seems to support the assumption that there are (...) conditions under which animals may be raised and slaughtered for food that are ethically acceptable. Reformists do not need to make this assumption, but they tend to conceptualize animal welfare is such a way that death does not count as harmful to the interests of animals, nor prolonged life a benefit. In addition to this prudential value assumption, some members of this community have developed strategies for defending suitably reformed farming practices as ethical even granting that death and some other forms of constraints are harms. One such strategy is the fiction of a domestic contract. However, if one accepts the conceptualization of human welfare give by L. W. Sumner, and applies it to animals in the way that I think is justified, an accurate conceptualization of animal welfare has different implications for which uses of animals should be regarded as ethically acceptable. In this paper I give an historical and philosophical account of animal welfare conceptulization and use this account to argue that animal breeders, as custodians of the animals they breed, have the ethical responsibility to help their animal wards achieve as much autonomy as possible in choosing the form of life made available to them and to provide that life. Attempts to avoid these implications by alluding to a contract model of the relationship between custodians and their wards fail to relieve custodians of their ethical responsibilities of care. (shrink)

We present a new understanding of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist on the model of Stump’s account of God’s omnipresence and Green and Quan’s account of experiencing God in Scripture. On this understanding, Christ is derivatively, rather than fundamentally, located in the consecrated bread and wine, such that Christ is present to the believer through the consecrated bread and wine, thereby making available to the believer a second-person experience of Christ, where the consecrated bread and wine are the way (...) in which she shares attention with him. The consecrated bread and wine are then, in a sense, icons of Christ. (shrink)

The quest for a ``theory of nonhuman minds'''' to assessclaims about the moral status of animals is misguided. Misframedquestions about animal minds facilitate the appropriation ofanimal welfare by the animal user industry. When misframed, thesequestions shift the burden of proof unreasonably to animalwelfare regulators. An illustrative instance of misframing can befound in the US National Research Council''s 1998 publication thatreports professional efforts to define the psychologicalwell-being of nonhuman primates, a condition that the US 1985animal welfare act requires users of primates (...) to promote. Thereport claims that ``psychological well-being'''' is a hypotheticalconstruct whose validity can only be determined by a theory thatdefines its properties and links it to observed data. Thisconception is used to contest common knowledge about animalwelfare by treating psychological well-being as a mentalcondition whose properties are difficult to discover. Thisframework limits regulatory efforts to treat animal subjects lessoppressively and serves the interests of the user industry.A more liberatory framework can be constructed by recognizing thecontested nature of welfare norms, where competing conceptions ofanimal welfare have implications about norm-setting authority, asit does in other regulatory contexts, e.g., food safety. Properlyconceptualized welfare should include both the avoidance ofdistressful circumstances and the relationship between ananimal''s capacities to engage in enjoyable activities and itsopportunities to exercise these capacities. This conception ofanimal welfare avoids appropriation by scientific experts. (shrink)

I examine Jacques Maritain's definition of art and what it contributes to debates on definitions of art in contemporary aesthetics. Of particular concern are the so-called ‘fine arts’. I make three claims; first, that Maritain's definition of art is superior to other traditional and contemporary theories in avoiding their pitfalls and accommodating key data to be met by definitions of art, such as the existence of avant-garde art. Second, I claim that in accommodating avant-garde art, in particular ‘conceptual art’, Maritain's (...) definition of art refutes the Wittgensteinian argument that art is an ‘open concept’ which cannot be defined. My final, resulting claim is that Maritain's definition deserves to be the pre-eminent definition of art today. This article consists of four sections. Section one provides some context of definitions of art and the data and conditions that have to be met by a viable definition. Section two provides the foundation and first pillar of Maritain's definition of art, what I identify as a cumulative ‘descriptive’ definition. Section three provides the second pillar of Maritain's definition of art, applicable specifically to the fine arts. Section four applies Maritain's full descriptive definition to the problem of conceptual art. (shrink)

I examine Jacques Maritain's views on the relationship between art and ethics or what is today called the ‘ethical criticism of art’, and examine what Maritain's thought can contribute to debates in contemporary aesthetics and wider society. In part I of the article, I approach Maritain's attempted reconciliation of artistic freedom and the demands of morality in three steps, first recalling Maritain's definition of art, second looking at Maritain's analysis of the extra-artistic concerns of the artist, and third offering a (...) critique of Maritain's views on why art is valued by the community and what justifiable moral claims of the community upon the artist might be—particularly regarding the method of production of artworks. Comparing Maritain's theories to those of contemporary writers in part II, I argue that Maritain's ethics of art can be used to complement Jacques Rancière's notions of the ‘distribution of the sensible’ and ‘artistic regimes’, and that, in the terminology of the ethical criticism of art, Maritain affirms a position which is a composite of ‘moderate moralism’ and ‘ethicism’—a position which is both explanatorily powerful in ascertaining how and why we recognise and value art, and flexible in accommodating changing artistic forms and practices. (shrink)

In 2012, a U.S. Institute of Medicine report called for a different approach to health care: “Left unchanged, health care will continue to underperform; cause unnecessary harm; and strain national, state, and family budgets.” The answer, they suggested, would be a “continuously learning” health system. Ethicists and researchers urged the creation of “learning health organizations” that would integrate knowledge from patient‐care data to continuously improve the quality of care. Our experience with an ongoing research study on atrial fibrillation—a trial known (...) as IMPACT‐AFib—gave us some insight into one of the challenges that will have to be dealt with in creating these organizations. Although the proposed educational intervention study placed no restrictions on what providers and health plans could do, the oversight team argued that the ethical principle of beneficence did not allow the researchers to be “bystanders” in relation to a control group receiving suboptimal care. In response, the researchers designed a “workaround” that allowed the project to go forward. We believe the experience suggests that what we call “bystander ethics” will create challenges for the kinds of quality improvement research that LHOs are designed to do. (shrink)

Still the Heart of Darkness analyzes Richard Preston's best-selling account of an Ebola virus outbreak in Reston, Virginia in 1989. Through a textual examination of The Hot Zone, this essay demonstrates how Preston grounds his narrative about the threat of rare emerging viruses from the third world in terms of the colonialist discourse about Africa as the white man's grave, most notably Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. By foregrounding previous outbreaks in Africa, Preston simultaneously darkens its landscape and inscribes (...) the Ebola filovirus as an external biological threat to Americans in a post-Cold War world with porous borders. (shrink)

Presents a plethora of approaches to developing human potential in areas not conventionally addressed. Organized in two parts, this international collection of essays provides viable educational alternatives to those currently holding sway in an era of high-stakes accountability.