Pure time preference is a preference for something to come at one point in time rather than another merely because of when it occurs in time. In opposition to Sidgwick, Ramsey, Rawls, and Parfit we argue that it is not always irrational to be guided by pure time preferences. We argue that even if the mere difference of location in time is not a rational ground for a preference, time may nevertheless be a normatively neutral ground for a preference, and (...) this makes it plausible to claim that the preference is rationally permitted. (shrink)

In this survey of feminist theory, Rosemarie Tong provides coverage of the psychoanalytic, existential and postmodern schools of feminism. The author guides the reader through the complexities of even the most notoriously difficult thinkers. Students will meet and become familiar with many of the essential figures in the feminist tradition, from Wollstonecraft and Engel, on through de Beauvoir, Dinnerstein, and Daly, and up to Mitchell and Cixous. The text treats all views with respect and encourages students to think critically and (...) sympathetically about a wide range of views that have a direct relevance to their own lives. (shrink)

Rosemary Hennessy confronts some of the impasses in materialist feminist work on rethinking `woman' as a discursively constructed subject. She argues for a theory of discourse as ideology taking into account the work of Kristeva, Foucault and Laclau.

We investigate how the perceived uncertainty of a conditional affects a person's choice of conclusion. We use a novel procedure to introduce uncertainty by manipulating the conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. In Experiment 1, we show first that subjects reduce their choice of valid conclusions when a conditional is followed by an additional premise that makes the major premise uncertain. In this we replicate Byrne. These subjects choose, instead, a qualified conclusion expressing uncertainty. If subjects are given (...) a third statement that qualifies the likelihood of the additional premise, then the uncertainty of the conclusions they choose is systematically related to the suggested uncertainty. Experiment 2 confirms these observations in problems that omit the additional premise and qualify the first premise directly. Experiment 3 shows that the qualifying statement also affects the perceived probability of the consequent given the antecedent of the conditional. Experiment 4 investigates the effect of suggested uncertainty on the fallacies and shows that increases in uncertainty reduce the number of certain conclusions that are chosen while affirming the consequent but have no effect on denying the antecedent. We discuss our results in terms of rule theories and mental models and conclude that the latter give the most natural account of our results. (shrink)

We believe that “caching” a baby would have been too great a danger in human prehistory, and thus could not serve as the context for prelinguistic vocalization. Rather, infants were most likely carried at all times. Thus, the question arises of why the cry of an infant is such a loud vocalization.

In this paper I seek to distinguish a feminist virtue ethics of care from (1) justice ethics, (2) narrative ethics, (3) care ethics and (4) virtue ethics. I also connect this contemporary discussion of what makes a virtue ethics of care feminist to eighteenth and nineteenth century debates about male, female, and human virtue. I conclude that by focusing on issues related to gender - primarily those related to the systems, structures, and ideologies that create and sustain patterns of male (...) domination and female subordination - we can begin to appreciate that true care and bona-fide virtue can flourish only in societies that treat all persons with equal respect and consideration. (shrink)

No other cluster of medical issues affects the genders as differently as those related to procreationcontraception, sterilization, abortion, artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, and genetic screening. Rosemarie Tong s approach to feminist bioethics serves as a catalyst to bring together different feminist voices in hope of actually doing something to make gender equity a present reality rather than a mere future possibility.".

ABSTRACTBusiness actors often act in ways that may harm other parties. While the law aims to restrict harmful behavior and to provide remedies, legal systems do not anticipate all contingencies and legal regulations are not always well-enforced. This article argues that the logic of double effect, which has been developed and deployed in other areas of practical ethics, can be useful in helping business actors decide whether or not to pursue potentially harmful activities in commonplace business activity. The article illustrates (...) how LDE helps to explain the exploitative nature of payday lending, the distinction between permissible and impermissible forms of market competition, and the potential wrong of imposing risk of harm on others. The article also addresses foundational debates about LDE itself. We offer the article as an illustration of the sort of “midlevel” theorizing that can address directly the needs of practitioners. (shrink)

This chapter offered in hommage to Jacques Taminiaux’s long and fruitful career reflecting on ontological, political, and aesthetic issues, starts following the lead of his reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of these issues, as following the same “Platonic filiation” as in most of German Idealism’s representatives. Namely, Heidegger seems to interpret praxis beyond all relation to interaction and interlocution, but also that his revaluation of the role of art in politics is because he confers the utmost importance upon poiêsis as an (...) “internal potency in the human understanding of Being, of the Lichtblick,” namely, as a “high-ranked theôria.” It primarily addresses the question of how theôria-Sophia, praxis-phronêsis, poiêsis-technê in their relatedness and oppositions, are connected with the “ethical” (practical) dimension of transcendental reduction, following some hints from Taminiaux’s (2004) reflections on Heidegger’s “metamorphosis” of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction (both eidetic and transcendental), as having proved that “reduction was at the core of Husserl’s theoretical project.” However, Taminiaux thinks that “it is not an exaggeration to claim that the contrast” he has just sketched “entails as many difficulties as those implicit in Husserl’s concept of reduction” (Taminiaux 2004, 44). Thus, the primal motivation for this text’s proposal stems from its interest in finding out whether this appealing and well-argued reading of the Greek and Platonic connivance between theôria-poiêsis in contrast to the fragility and contingency of human practical judgments and the human intrigue of our worldly abode—a reading retrieved by modern and contemporary German philosophers, including Heidegger—is in seamless accordance with the canonical contemporary interpretation of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and reduction. Or whether an alternative reading could be risked. What has characterized the success of Taminiaux’s original and piercingly acute reading of the history of philosophy is his close and severe scrutiny of texts transmitted by the tradition in dialogue with our experience of the “matters themselves.” Hence, in the wake of this essential and everlasting teaching, this text risks an alternative reading of the phenomenological reduction, specifically of its transcendental version, as an eminently practical—namely, ethical—achievement (Leistung), driven by a practical virtue, responsibility. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to determine the development of moral judgement in first-year and senior baccalaureate nursing students. These students were enrolled in three separate nursing programmes, each of which differed significantly in ethical content. The sample totalled 180 students enrolled in three New England programmes. Programme A included an ethics course taught by a professor of ethics. Programme B integrated ethical issues into all nursing theory courses. Programme C did not include ethical content in theory courses. The (...) design was of a developmental cross-sectional study. The dependent variable was the development of moral judgement, as measured by Rest’s Defining Issues Test. The independent variable was the amount of ethics taught in the nursing programmes and the level of academic education. The senior nursing students from programme A scored significantly higher than the other senior groups on the Defining Issues Test. The conclusion is that an ethics course with group participation and a decision-making element significantly facilitated nursing students’ development of moral judgement. (shrink)

Most moral philosophers agree that if a moral agent is incapable of performing some act ϕ because of a physical incapacity, then they do not have a reason to ϕ. Most also claim that if an agent is incapable of ϕ-ing due to a psychological incapacity, brought about by, for example, an obsession or phobia, then this does not preclude them from having a reason to ϕ. This is because the 'ought implies can' principle is usually interpreted as a claim (...) about physical, rather than psychological, capacities. In this paper I argue for an opposing view: if we don't have reasons to do things that we are physically incapable of doing, then neither do we have reasons to do things we are psychologically incapable of doing. I also argue that extending the 'ought implies can' principle to psychological capacities makes the principle more attractive. (shrink)

Demographic differences among consumer groups have become increasingly important to the development of marketing strategies. Marketers depend heavily on the sales force to implement strategies at the consumer level and, not surprisingly, different groups may view the salesperson’s role differently. Unfortunately, unethical sales practices targeted at various consumer groups, and especially at seniors, have been utilized as well. The purpose of this study is to provide initial empirical evidence of the ethical ideological make-up of four age segments outlined by Strauss (...) and Howe (1991, Generations: The History of America’s Future 1584–2069, Morrow, New York) and to examine the propensity for these groups (seniors, in particular) to respond differentially to potentially unethical sales tactics. Data were collected from 179 respondents representing the four generational age groups. MANOVA revealed that the seniors in this study were distinct with respect to ethical ideology and less accepting of unethical sales tactics. Managerial implications are discussed for sales organizations to maximize their effectiveness across consumer groups. (shrink)

For a long time, emotions have been ignored in the attempt to model intelligent behavior. However, within the last years, evidence has come from neuroscience that emotions are an important facet of intelligent behavior being involved into cognitive problem solving, decision making, the establishment of social behavior, and even conscious experience. Also in research communities like software agents and robotics, an increasing number of researchers start to believe that computational models of emotions will be needed to design intelligent systems. Nevertheless, (...) modeling emotions in technical terms poses many difficulties and has often been accounted as just not feasible. In this article, there are identified the main problems, which occur when attempting to implement emotions into machines. By pointing out these problems, it is aimed to avoid repeating mistakes committed when modeling computational models of emotions in order to speed up future development in this area. The identified issues are not derived from abstract reflections about this topic but from the actual attempt to implement emotions into a technical system based on neuroscientific research findings. It is argued that besides focusing on the cognitive aspects of emotions, a consideration of the bodily aspects of emotions—their grounding into a visceral body—is of crucial importance, especially when a system shall be able to learn correlations between environmental objects and events and their “emotional meaning”. (shrink)

Four experiments investigated uncertainty about a premise in a deductive argument as a function of the expertise of the speaker and of the conversational context. The procedure mimicked everyday reasoning in that participants were not told that the premises were to be treated as certain. The results showed that the perceived likelihood of a conclusion was greater when the major or the minor premise was uttered by an expert rather than a novice (Experiment 1). The results also showed that uncertainty (...) about the conclusion was higher when the major premise was uttered by a novice and an alternative premise by an expert, compared to when the major premise was uttered by an expert and the alternative by a novice (Experiment 2). Similarly, the believability of a conclusion was considerably lower when the minor premise was uttered by a novice and denied by an expert, as opposed to when an expert uttered the minor premise and a novice denied it (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 showed that the nature of the uncertainty induced by a denial of the minor premise depended on whether or not the context was a conversation. These results pose difficult problems for current theories of reasoning, as current theories are based on the results of experiments in which the premises are treated as certain. Our discussion of the results emphasises the importance of pragmatics in reasoning, namely, the role of general knowledge about the world in assessing the probability of a premise uttered by an expert or a novice and the role of interpretations of the premise based on pragmatic inferences in revising these initial probabilities. (shrink)

Drawing on resources from pragmatist thought allows religious ethicists to take account of the central role traditions play in the formation and development of moral concepts without thereby espousing moral relativism or becoming traditionalists. After giving an account of this understanding of the concept of tradition, I examine the ways in which understandings of tradition play out in two contemporary examples of tradition-based ethics: works in comparative ethics of war by James Turner Johnson and John Kelsay. I argue that a (...) pragmatist approach to tradition-based ethics allows for a nuanced and flexible understanding of moral traditions, and one that holds great promise for international consensus-building around shared ethical norms for the use of armed force. (shrink)

The question of how to respond to the deep political divides in the United States today has resulted in the emergence of two camps. On one side are those who argue that the cultivation of civic virtues like civility will lead to more respectful interpersonal relationships through which consensus and mutual understanding can be built. On the other are those who argue that our commitment to justice is primary and may require uncivil behavior to disrupt and change unjust structural relationships. (...) In Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society, Jason Springs helps to bridge the divide between these two positions. Because he takes a relational approach that centers both interpersonal and structural relationships, Springs makes both mutual respect and just structures central to his conception of healthy conflict. Taking relationality seriously thus helps to overcome this impasse, but it also raises significant questions about the impact of asymmetrical relationships on citizens’ responsibilities to engage in healthy conflict. (shrink)

Bloom's book underscores the importance of specifying the role of words and grammar in cognition. We propose that the cognitive power of language lies in the lexicon rather than grammar. We suggest ways in which studies involving children and patients with aphasia can provide insights into the basis of abstract cognition in the domain of number and mathematics.

John Corner _Critical Ideas in Television Studies_ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999 ISBN 0-19-874221-5 hb; 0-19-874220-7 pb 139 pp.

The roles of women and of feminine identity have been historically and traditionally constructed around motherhood. However, recent years have seen a growing trend among women to remain childless/ childfree. Drawing on interviews with 25 voluntarily childless women, this article considers the extent to which this trend results from the appeal or pull of the perceived advantages of a childfree lifestyle as well as the ways childfree women might represent a more fundamental and radical rejection of motherhood and the activities (...) associated with it. The article concludes by considering how to recast understandings of feminine identity away from a mother-centered focus. (shrink)

1. IntroductionA paternalistic act is one in which the protection or promotion of a subject's welfare is the primary reason for attempted or successful coercive interference with an action or state of that person. My aim in this paper is to determine the conditions under which such acts are Justified. The route I take is through the concept of consent, with actual consent providing the foundation for a rather complex condition which I claim is necessary and sufficient for the Justification (...) of paternalism.Because a paternalistic act apparently violates a subject's right to non-interference, it constitutes a problem in the general area of rights. Ideally, then, one should have a developed and convincing theory of rights — that is, a theory which contains an analysis of the concept of a right, and offers solutions to the central problems, e.g. who has rights and why, what considerations override prima facie rights, and how the relative importance of prima facie rights is determined — from which the solutions to various problems about paternalism can be derived. (shrink)

: Although a wide variety of feminist approaches to bioethics presently share a common feminist methodology (sometimes referred to as "raising the woman question"), they do not all share the same feminist politics, ontology, epistemology, and ethics. As a result of their philosophical differences, feminist bioethicists do not always agree on which biomedical principles, practices, and policies are best suited to serving women's interests. In other words, some feminist bioethicists insist that so-called "assisted reproduction" enhances women's procreative liberty, while others (...) claim that it does nothing of the sort. Although such disagreement among feminist bioethicists reassures the general public that the feminist "program" for bioethics is not ideologically monolithic, it also confuses the public, especially women. In order to overcome this confusion, feminist bioethicists should work toward developing the kind of shared theoretical base that will foster frequent consensus on the biomedical principles, practices, and policies most likely to serve the interests of most women in the U.S. today. (shrink)

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is tasked with facing the hundred-year history of Indian Residential Schools. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is frequently invoked in relation to the Canadian TRC, perhaps because this is one of the few TRCs worldwide that Canadians know. Whilst the South African TRC is mainly applauded as an international success, I argue that loose analogizing is often more emotive than concise. Whilst much indeed can be drawn from the South African experience, it (...) is important to specify the Canada–South Africa analogy. In this article, I do so by focussing on the institutional approach to truth and how this relates to issues of settler/White denial. The South African experience teaches that narrow approaches to truth collude with superficial views of reconciliation that deny continuities of violence. Consequently, I argue that Indigenous–settler reconciliation requires a broad truth that locates residential schools on a continuum of violence, linking extraordinary abuses with structural injustices and historic colonization with lived relationships. (shrink)

Cost-benefit analysis is commonly understood to be intimately connected with utilitarianism and incompatible with other moral theories, particularly those that focus on deontological concepts such as rights. We reject this claim and argue that cost-benefit analysis can take moral rights as well as other non-utilitarian moral considerations into account in a systematic manner. We discuss three ways of doing this, and claim that two of them (output filters and input filters) can account for a wide range of rights-based moral theories, (...) including the absolute notions of moral rights proposed by Hayek, Mayo, Nozick, and Shue. We also discuss whether the use of output filters and input filters can be generalized to cover other non-utilitarian theories, such as Kantian duty ethics and virtue ethics. (shrink)

The relationship between international order and justice has long been central to the study and practice of international relations. For most of the twentieth century, states and international society gave priority to a view of order that focused on the minimum conditions for coexistence in a pluralist, conflictual world. Justice was seen either as secondary or sometimes even as a challenge to order. Recent developments have forced a reassessment of this position. This book sets current concerns within a broad historical (...) and theoretical context; explores the depth and scope of this presumed solidarism amidst the difficulties of acting on the basis of a more strongly articulated liberal position; and underscores the complexity and abiding tensions inherent in the relationship between order and justice. Chapters examine a wide range of state and transnational perspectives on order and justice, including those from China, India, Russia, the United States, and the Islamic world. Other chapters investigate how the order-justice relationship is mediated within major international institutions, including the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and the global financial institutions. (shrink)

"Künstlerische Selbstverletzung - seit den 1960er Jahren international fester Bestandteil der Performance Art - polarisiert, verstört und wirft vor allem Fragen nach Handlungsmotivationen auf. Rosemarie Brucher deutet dieses radikale Phänomen als Bewältigungsversuch bedrohter Autonomie und damit in erster Linie als Ermächtigungsstrategie. In dieser Ambivalenz aus Subjektermächtigung und Naturunterwerfung lässt sich künstlerische Selbstverletzung vor dem Hintergrund von Immanuel Kants Ästhetik des Erhabenen lesen, was die Autorin exemplarisch an VALIE EXPORT und Stelarc darlegt. Eine solche Bezugsetzung eröffnet nicht nur einen innovativen Zugang (...) zu dieser Kunstform, sondern wirft zugleich auch ein neues Licht auf Kants Erhabenheitskonzeption"--Back cover. (shrink)

While most interpreters take the opening of De Anima III 2 to be an oblique reference to some sort of conscious awareness, I argue that Aristotle intends to explain what I call ‘joint perception’: when conjoined with Aristotle’s subsequent claim that perceiving and being perceived are the same activity, the metaperception underpins the perception of a unified object. My interpretation is shown to have a more satisfactory account of the aporiai that follow. While I argue that the immediate focus of (...) the metaperceptual account is joint perception, it may also be applicable to other kinds of complex perception, which I briefly consider in the closing section. (shrink)

This article offers an account of settler witnessing of residential school survivor testimony that avoids the politics of recognition and the pitfalls of colonial empathy. It knits together the concepts of bearing witness, Indigenous storytelling, and affective reckoning. Following the work of Kelly Oliver, it argues that witnessing involves a reaching beyond ourselves and responsiveness to the agency and self-determination of the other. Given the cultural genocide of residential schools, responsiveness to the other require openness to and nurturing of Indigenous (...) ways of knowing and being. In order to illustrate the complexities and challenges of settler witnessing, the author reflects on her experiences in attending six of the TRC’s national events and, in particular, what she has learned from Frederick “Fredda” Paul, Passamaquoddy Elder, healer, storyteller, and residential school survivor. The article analyzes aesthetics and emotions in the staging of TRC events and making meaning over time and the temporality of transitional justice. (shrink)

Feminist critiques of intention challenge some aspects of traditional just war reasoning, including the criteria of right intention and discrimination. I take note of these challenges and propose some directions just war reasoners might take in response. First, right intention can be evaluated more accurately by judging what actors in war actually do than by attempting to uncover inward dispositions. Assessing whether agents in war have taken due care to minimize foreseeable collateral damage, avoided intentional targeting of noncombatants, corrected previous (...) mistakes in their later actions, and taken responsibility to repair unintended damage they cause are examples of ways in which just war reasoners can evaluate intention by looking at actions. (shrink)

Feminist standpoint theory posits feminism as a way of conceptualizing from the vantage point of women's lives. However, in current work on feminist standpoint the material links between lives and knowledges are often not explained. This essay argues that the radical marxist tradition standpoint theory draws on-specifically theories of ideology post-Althusser-offers a systemic mode of reading that can redress this problem and provide the resources to elaborate further feminism's oppositional practice and collective subject.

The Japanese scholar Miura Baien (1723-1789) worked throughout his life to produce a philosophical analysis of the natural world. Misinterpretations of his intentions arise from drawing diagrams on his behalf that are inconsistent with his text, or by applying to his text Western academic terms that are quite foreign to his thought. When Baien's text is examined in his own terms we can understand its significant role in the scientific thought of the Edo period.

Joyce, Rosemarie Since the middle of last century, there has been a gradual change in Australian society with regard to how one understands and practises authority and obedience. In the past, those who were in positions of authority, be it church or civil, could expect to be revered and their decisions to be obeyed even if there was no personal agreement with the decision in question. But the situation has changed and continues to change. Many would agree that those who (...) exercise authority today have to earn the respect they require to be shown and that they do not always have the unilateral right to make decisions that affect the general community! (shrink)

Feminist standpoint theory posits feminism as a way of conceptualizing from the vantage point of women's lives. However, in current work on feminist standpoint the material links between lives and knowledges are often not explained. This essay argues that the radical marxist tradition standpoint theory draws on-specifically theories of ideology post-Althusser-offers a systemic mode of reading that can redress this problem and provide the resources to elaborate further feminism's oppositional practice and collective subject.

This article revisits the question of ectogenesis (out-of-body gestation) as our neonatal care and biogenetic technologies bring us closer to the possibility. In 1923, J.B.S. Haldane wrote approvingly of ectogenesis as a eugenic technique, using a science fiction format. In the 1970s and 1980s, feminists debated whether ectogenesis, if possible, would be liberating or oppressive for women. Given current legal and bioethical issues, we must now take seriously the possible costs of ectogenesis: the possibility of growing bodies for use as (...) spare parts, the erosion of the autonomy of women in the reproductive process, the denigration of the body through the loss of the physicality of pregnancy and childbirth. (Abstract prepared by Aaron Lee.). (shrink)

This empirical study advances the understanding of the theory of investment in human capital by outlining limitations to its applicability in the context of return to education. The study uses the concept of moral hazard to examine circumstances when financial support for education purpose generates less desirable post-graduation incomes. This study explores the relationship between financial support and post-graduation incomes using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation that is designed to measure the economic situation of individuals. Results (...) suggest that students are less likely to engage in moral hazardous behavior to the degree to which they are older and to the degree to which they receive costlier financial assistance. (shrink)