ABSTRACTThe bio-political discourses of nationhood and homo/sexuality burgeon geo-culturally and historically, and this article presents a case-study of Poland post-2004 EU enlargement. Focused on...

This study examines the relationship between corporate diversification strategy and the pollution activity of subsidiaries within the U.S. chemical industry using TRI data (EPA's Toxic Release Inventory). The subsidiaries of conglomerates were found to exhibit higher pollution levels for direct emissions than those of firms pursuing more related diversification strategies. Additionally, the subsidiaries of conglomerates exhibited more variance in overall pollution emissions compared to related diversified firms.

If all reasonable people of goodwill and patience will eventually reachconsensus, then anyone who fails to join inthat consensus as being unreasonable or lackingin good will or patience. The ``nice''''(consensual) and ``nasty'''' (intolerant) faces ofcommunitarianism are thus joined. This articleattempts to deny communitarians that excuse forintolerance by undermining Keith Lehrer''s proofof the inevitability of rational consensusamong all patient people of good will.

In the Scholium to the Definitions at the beginning of the {\em Principia\/} Newton distinguishes absolute time, space, place and motion from their relative counterparts and attempts to justify they are indeed ontologically distinct in that the absolute quantity cannot be reduced to some particular category of the relative, as Descartes had attempted by defining absolute motion to be relative motion with respect to immediately ambient bodies. Newton's bucket experiment, rather than attempting to show that absolute motion exists, is one (...) of five arguments from the properties, causes and effects of motion that attempts to show that no such program can succeed, and thus that true motion can be adequately analyzed only by invoking immovable places, i.e., the parts of absolute space. (shrink)

Christopher Preston’s Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think About Animals is a timely and nuanced assessment of how some key wild animal populations have been faring in these unprecedented recent decades. The book is carefully crafted and engaging and is certain to educate any reader. In particular, any of its major sections would well serve undergraduate or graduate level courses on environmental ethics, or even a section on that topic in a more general philosophy survey. Robert (...) Frodeman offered a vision of philosophers as those who “best serve[ ] society as professional amateurs, helping communities gain a sense of how the parts of our lives fit together. How . . . the truths that science discovers relate to our lived experiences in the world” (Frodeman “A Sense of the Whole,” in Earth Matters 2000, p. 119). Each section of Preston’s book is a stand-alone testament to that vision. (shrink)

Despite widespread knowledge that fraternity members are frequently involved in the sexual assaults of women, fraternities are rarely studied as social contexts-groups and organizations-that encourage the sexual coercion of women. An analysis of the norms and dynamics of the social construction of fraternity brotherhood reveals the highly masculinist features of fraternity structure and process, including concern with a narrow, stereotypical conception of masculinity and heterosexuality; a preoccupation with loyalty, protection of the group, and secrecy; the use of alcohol as a (...) weapon against women's sexual reluctance; the pervasiveness of violence and physical force; and an obsession with competition, superiority, and dominance. Interfraternity rivalry and competition-particularly over members, intramural sports, and women-encourage fraternity men's commodification of women. We conclude that fraternities will continue to violate women socially and sexually unless they change in fundamental ways. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultants often confront the most difficult clinical encounters, typically in the setting of chronically critically ill patients and surrogate decision makers. These encounters require not only analytical skills but interpersonal skills as well. In this article, I focus on an interpersonal skill absent from the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities Task Force’s Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation. I introduce the psychoanalytic concept of transference and argue that knowledge and use of transference phenomena are sometimes indispensable (...) for ethics consultation with surrogate decision makers. For solicitation of moral views, disclosure of relevant beliefs and values, and identification of the central ethical question—essential to assessment and analysis—cannot at times begin without recognition and working through of transference. (shrink)

This essay argues for a distinction between bioethics in the customary sense and the “bioethical”—where the latter involves exploration of disturbing literary and/or artistic material. The “bioethical” signifies an affective and imaginative sphere in which we experience the mattering-to-us-morally of other human beings and non-human animals. The essay further argues that Cormac McCarthy’s writings allow us to explore the bioethical, with certain philosophical implications of this discussed in detail.

Núñez and colleagues (2019) chronicle in extraordinary detail the “demise” of cognitive science, as it was first defined in the late 1970s. The problem is that their account, however accurate, misses the forest for the trees. Cognitive science circa 2019 is alive and well; it just has not followed the path anticipated by its founders over 40 years ago.

Volume 2, Issue 4, December 2018, Page 440-457.

BackgroundEgg donor agencies are increasingly being used as part of IVF in the US, but are essentially unregulated, posing critical ethical and policy questions concerning how providers view and use them, and what the implications might be.MethodsThirty-seven in-depth interviews of approximately 1 h were conducted – with 27 IVF providers and 10 patients.ResultsClinicians vary in their views and interactions concerning egg donor agencies, ranging widely in whether and how often they use agencies. Agencies may offer egg recipients increased choices, but (...) raise ethical and other concerns regarding respect for donors as individuals, potential harms, justice, and donors constituting a vulnerable group. The quality of agencies appears to vary considerably, from acceptable to problematic. Agencies’ medical and psychological screenings of donors can range, and be minimal. Not all agencies adequately track donors’ prior numbers of donations, or share the relevant records with clinics. Clinics may find that potential donors have genetic mutations and medical problems about which they were unaware. Yet agencies and clinics do not provide care for such donors, generating stress. Dissemination of donors’ personal data can potentially threaten confidentiality. Questions emerge of whether increased monitoring/oversight of agencies may be beneficial.ConclusionsThese data, the first to examine providers’ views and interactions regarding egg donor agencies, suggest wide variations in quality and use of agencies, and have critical implications for practice, policy, education and research. Given the potential limitations of the current model of self-regulation of agencies, the present data suggest needs to consider stronger professional guidelines or possible governmental regulations to establish, require and enforce higher standards for agencies to follow, regarding advertising to potential donors and recipients, arranging for appropriate informed consent concerning risks and benefits involved, and for quality control. Appropriate informed consent should be obtained from potential egg donors, including the fact that they may learn about mutations or medical problems about which they were unaware, but for which they will not receive treatment as part of this process. Enhancing understanding among the public-at-large about what egg donation entails may also be helpful. (shrink)

This article sheds new light on Themistius’ argument in what is philosophically the most original section of his extant work, namely On Aristotle's On the Soul 100.16–109.3: here, Themistius offers a systematic interpretation of Aristotle's ‘agent’ intellect and its ‘potential’ and ‘passive’ counterparts. A solution to two textual difficulties at 101.36–102.2 is proposed, supported by the Arabic translation. This allows us to see that Themistius engages at length with a Platonizing reading of the enigmatic final lines of De anima III.5, (...) where Aristotle explains ‘why we do not remember’. This Platonizing reading can be safely identified with the one developed in a fragmentary text extant only in Arabic under the title Porphyry's treatise On the soul. While Themistius rejects this reading, he turns out to be heavily influenced by the author's interpretation of the ‘agent’, ‘potential’ and ‘passive’ intellect. These findings offer us a new glimpse into Themistius’ philosophical programme: he is searching for an alternative to both the austere Aristotelianism of Alexander of Aphrodisias and the all too Platonizing reading of Aristotle adopted by thinkers such as Porphyry. (shrink)

Dans sa 5ème promenade, Rousseau relate ses expériences de la rêverie qui vont à contre-courant de la théorie de l’imagination poétique chez Bachelard. Celle-ci sépare rigoureusement l’imagination de la perception du monde, alors que Rousseau se dit incapable à distinguer, par moments, ses rêveries de la perception de la nature.

This note analyses the significance of the name Laelia in Martial 10.68. It is argued that the name evokes Laelia, wife of Scaevola Augur and mother-in-law of Crassus Orator, who was famed for her elegant Latin. The punch line of Martial’s epigram is that his Laelia, conversely to the above, speaks like the Greek prostitute Lais.

Fernando Ortiz introduced his account of transculturation to replace Melville Herskovits’s notion of acculturation as a way of describing the historical contact between cultures. Ortiz understood the idea of acculturation to be promoting a kind of assimilationist model very different from what he witnessed in his native Cuba. Transculturation conforms neither to the model of cosmopolitanism promoted by Kant’s universal history, nor to the kind of multiculturalism that is rooted in Herder’s rival approach to history. Instead, it presents a concept (...) of cultural contact and cultural transformation that highlights the way the material and economic conditions of social existence shape the institutions in which cultures more narrowly conceived are embedded and relate to each other. By bringing transculturation into dialogue with the idea of the porosity of cultures initially promoted in 1925 by Walter Benjamin in his essay on Naples, we find a way to free transculturation from Ortiz’s tendency to lapse into biological metaphors with the danger of retaining a reference to cultural purity that he would not endorse. Transculturation, thus revised, recommends itself as a term helpful for thinking about a world shaped by mass migration and the new technological forms of ever more rapid cultural exchange. Properly understood, it promotes a future where openness and sharing are valued over ownership and preservation. (shrink)

There is a conflict between the wishes of terminally ill patients to allow withdrawal of treatment and become donors after cardiac death (DCD) and the limit on interventions required by the dead-donor rule (DDR). Once a breathing tube is removed, hours can pass before the patient expires. This interim time complies with the DDR, but often makes donation impossible. The consequences are the nullification of donors’ wishes and the waste of organs for transplantation. Since the DDR was developed, attitudes on (...) end-of-life interventions have evolved, organ donation has been embraced, and the field of organ transplantation has been firmly established. A new ethical approach is needed that, based on patients’ autonomy, considers organ donation a goal of care and views the donated organs as having a profound value for the donor and recipient. It is time to prioritize patients’ autonomous desire to donate life-giving organs to others and thus promote continuity of care for the donated organs over the modality of death pronouncement. To support patients’ desire to be organ donors, the conversation should be open to allow medical intervention in the peri-extubation period. (shrink)

An outstanding question for Hybrid dual process models of reasoning is whether both basic and more complex forms of conditional inference result...

There is a long tradition of arguing that design and science are importantly different. One such argument is that the separation of science and design is an implication that can be drawn from the Simon–Kroes model of the nature of technical artifacts. This paper argues that the Simon–Kroes model does not imply a radical separation between science and design: if we accept the Simon–Kroes model of the nature of technical artifacts and their production, then we must also accept that all (...) the sciences also produce technical artifacts, and in importantly similar ways. Moreover, the placing of both science and design in a naturalist framework reinforces this conclusion and opens up new vistas for synergetic cross-disciplinary discussion of design and methodology. (shrink)

We examine the claim that design is demarcated from science by having wicked problems while science does not and argue that it is wrong. We examine each of the ten features Rittel and Weber hold to be characteristic of wicked problems and show that they derive from three general sources common to science and design: agent finitude, system complexity and problem normativity, and play analogous roles in each. This provides the basis for a common core cognitive process to design and (...) science. Underlying our arguments is a shift to a strategic problem-solving conception of method in both disciplines that opens up new opportunities for synergetic cross-disciplinary research and practice. (shrink)

Political responses to metropolitan growth in the United States and elsewhere should include careful ethical deliberation, but ethical judgment and action are limited by the involvement of individual moral agents in the complex processes that give shape to the built environment. I propose that casting the built environment as a heterogeneous sociotechnical ensemble can provide useful insight into the limits of ethics, particularly through the concept of obduracy. To the extent components of an ensemble are obdurate, they can stop or (...) deflect even well-considered actions even as they impose constraints on moral agency itself. From this possibility spring a number of worthwhile lines of inquiry at the confluence of ethics and technology studies. (shrink)

This study of Western philosophic systems, their types, history, relations, and projected future in the next half century, stems from Robert S. Brumbaugh’s forty-year fascination with the paradox of the many consistent overarching systems of ideas that are nevertheless mutually exclusive. Brumbaugh argues that when we isolate these systems’s patterns and look at them more abstractly, they consistently fall into four main types, and the interaction of these four types of explanation and order is a dominant theme in the (...) history of Western philosophy. In Brumbaugh’s view these four philosophic systems are not, as some critical historians and thinkers have claimed, so different that they are mutually unintelligible, forcing us to make a choice among them that is entirely arbitrary. But neither are they, as a majority of past thinkers and historians have hoped, simply parts of some single "right" or "orthodox" scheme. Their mutual understanding requires a method of transformation that interprets one to another without destroying their diversity. The history of Western philosophy from the fifth century A.D. to the present shows a pattern of alternating revolutions in systematic method and direction of explanation. Brumbaugh feels that the pattern is continuing in a change toward a revised Platonism, just beginning with the twenty-first century. He anticipates that it will be a Platonism of a new texture, one that has matured and learned a great deal in the course of the adventures of its ideas through space and time. (shrink)

Conducive production (the concept developed in the first article of this issue) is a process of creative coordination in production, which also contributes to the development of the social fabric. To understand how, this article looks inside the conducive production process and examines how producer and consumer activities link together in collaborative dialogues. The conventional views of economic man are contrasted with this new view of productive human beings in the jazz economy. Jazz is used as a metaphor for the (...) interactive processes of creation and coordination in the conducive economy. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt was born in 1906 into an East Prussian Jewish family. In 1933 she fled the Nazi regime and after brief stays in Prague and Geneva she found a temporary home in Paris. In 1941 she succeeded in gaining entry to the United States, where after ten years she became a citizen. Arendt had short‐term positions at a number of universities, but was most closely identified with the New School for Social Research in New York, where she was professor (...) of Political Philosophy at the time of her death in 1975. Much of her most important work attempted either to address the anti‐Semitism that had forced her to leave Europe or to celebrate the political ideals of the United States that had enabled her to find refuge there. In the course of exploring these issues she presented a synoptic view of the Western tradition of political thought from the time of the early Greeks to her own day. (shrink)