Norms, Values, and Society is the second Yearbook of the Vienna Circle Institute, which was founded in October 1991. The main part of the book contains original contributions to an international symposium the Institute held in October 1993 on ethics and social philosophy. The papers deal among others with questions of justice, equality, just social institutions, human rights, the connections between rationality and morality and the methodological problems of applied ethics. The Documentation section contains previously unpublished papers by (...) Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Charles W. Morris and Edgar Zilsel, and the review section presents new publications on the Vienna Circle. The Vienna Circle Institute is devoted to the critical advancement of science and philosophy in the broad tradition of the Vienna Circle, as well as to the focusing of cross-disciplinary interest on the history and philosophy of science in a social context. The Institute's Yearbooks will, for the most part, document its activities and provide a forum for the discussion of exact philosophy, logical and empirical investigations, and analysis of language. (shrink)

Background: Family members and healthcare providers play an integral role in a person’s assisted dying journey. Their own needs during the assisted dying journey are often, however, unrecognized and underrepresented in policies and guidelines. Circumstances under which people choose assisted dying, and relational contexts such as the sociopolitical environment, may influence the experiences of family members and healthcare providers. Ethical considerations: Ethics approval was not required to conduct this review. Aim: This scoping review aims to identify the relational influences on (...) the experiences of family members and healthcare providers of adults who underwent assisted dying and of those unable to access assisted dying due to the loss of capacity to consent. Methods: A literature search was conducted in four databases, including MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature and PsycINFO. The search retrieved 12,074 articles, a number narrowed down to 172 articles for full-text screening. Thirty-six articles met the established inclusion criteria. A feminist relational framework guided the data analysis. Results: Five key themes on the influences of family members’ and healthcare providers’ experiences throughout the assisted dying process were synthesized from the data. They include relationships as central to beginning the process, social and political influences on decision making, complex roles and responsibilities of family members and healthcare providers, a unique experience of death, and varying experiences following death. Conclusion: The feminist relational lens, used to guide analysis, shed light on the effect of the sociopolitical influences and the relationships among patients, families, and healthcare providers on each other’s experiences. Addressing the needs of the family members and healthcare providers is vital to improving the assisted dying process. Including families’ and healthcare providers’ needs within institutional policies and enhancing collaboration and communication among those involved could improve the overall experience. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept the idea that there are duties to promote or create just institutions. But are the addressees of such duties supposed to be individuals – the members of the citizenry? What does it mean for an individual to promote or create just institutions? According to the ‘Simple View’, the citizenry has a collective duty to create or promote just institutions, and each individual citizen has an individual duty to do their part in (...) this collective project. The simple view appears to work well with regard to – you guessed it – ‘simple’ scenarios but it is riddled with further questions and problems. In this chapter, we raise five problems for the Simple View: (a) We suggest that one cannot develop a view concerning the citizenry’s duty to promote just institutions in isolation from a conception of the ontological relationship between the state and its citizens; (b) We argue that it is not obvious that the citizenry is the right entity to be attributed duties in the first place; (c) We show that a plausible account of collective duties to promote just institutions must not remain silent on the complexities and difficulties amorphous, unorganized group face in vis-à-vis collective action; (d) We contend that without allocation principles for contributory duties amongst the citizenry, or – alternatively – a method for practical deliberation that is action-guiding in collective action contexts, the claim that the citizens have a collective duty to promote just institutions remains moot; and, finally, (e) We demonstrate that the problem of reasonable disagreement is a serious threat to a collective duty to promote or create just institutions – it potentially undermines such a duty altogether and allows for conflicting contributory duties amongst the citizenry. We hope that our discussion will ultimately help improve existing theories and conceptual frameworks with a view to better understanding citizens’ obligations to promote justice under non-ideal conditions. (shrink)

In Oneself as Another, Ricœur famously writes of the ethical intention as “aiming at the ‘good life’ with and for others, in just institutions.” This article explores the potential meaning of “just institutions,” a theme underdeveloped in Ricœur’s work. While many have argued that institutions necessarily reify and so cannot aim toward just ends, the article draws on Ricœur’s differentiation between objectification and reification to show why this need not be the case. While reification (...) destroys human value and meaning because it reduces human activity to a thing, objectification characterizes the positive externalization of ourselves in objects—in words, deeds, structures, and institutions. Institutions such as the law are structures that can positively objectify our just aspirations, even if we must continually guard against these structures’ reified reduction. Ricœur shows us how objectification, including objectification of values in institutions, can be something not only positive but necessary in order for values to flourish. (shrink)

It has become accepted that social choice is impossible in the absence of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. This view is challenged here. Arrow obtained an impossibility theorem only by making unreasonable demands on social choice functions. With reasonable requirements, one can get very attractive possibilities and derive social preferences on the basis of non-comparable individual preferences. This new approach makes it possible to design optimal second-best institutions inspired by principles of fairness, while traditionally the analysis of optimal second-best (...) class='Hi'>institutions was thought to require interpersonal comparisons of well-being. In particular, this approach turns out to be especially suitable for the application of recent philosophical theories of justice formulated in terms of fairness, such as equality of resources. (shrink)

Drawing upon John Rawls’s framework in The Law of Peoples, this paper argues that MNEs have a responsibility to promote well-ordered social and political institutions in host countries that lack them. This responsibility is grounded in a negative duty not to cause harm. In addition to addressing the objection that promoting well-ordered institutions represents unjustified interference by MNEs, the paper provides guidance for managers of MNEs operating in host countries that lack just institutions. The paper argues (...) for understanding corporate responsibility in relation to the specific institutional environment in which MNEs operate. (shrink)

We can see what happens in our social world as done by individual and collective agents and as consequences of what such agents do. We can also see these same events as effects of how our social world is structured — of our ground-rules, practices, or social institutions. These two ways of viewing lead to different descriptions and explanations of social phenomena. Here I will discuss how they can also lead to different moral assessments.

It is natural to think of political philosophy as being concerned with reflection on some of the ways in which groups of human beings come together to confront together the problems that they face together: in other words, as the domain, par excellence, of collective action. From this point of view it might seem surprising that the notion of collective obligation rarely assumes centre-stage within the subject. If there are, or can be, collective obligations, then these must surely constrain the (...) ways in which we can act collectively. Indeed, one might even suspect that considerations about collective obligations ought to play a central role in demarcating the form that any legitimate form of political organization ought to take. -/- Elsewhere I have argued that we have good reasons for accepting the existence of global collective obligations - in other words, collective obligations which fall on the world’s population as a whole.(Wringe 2006, 2010, forthcoming, under review) For example, the existence of such obligations provides a plausible solution to a problem which is sometimes thought to arise if we think that individuals have a right to have their basic needs satisfied. In this paper, I shall argue that in many situations, forward-looking global obligations give rise to an obligation on individuals to work towards bringing into existence and support an institutional system which will enable their obligations to be met. Call such an obligation the ‘Obligation to Promote Satisfactory Global Institutions.’ I shall also examine a significant challenge to this line of argument, which I call the ‘Pluralist Challenge’ One might suppose that the ‘Obligation to Promote Satisfactory Global Institutions’ could be met by providing strategic support to attempts to modify and extend existing international institutions. After all, creating new institutions is a difficult matter: perhaps it would be better, especially where stringent obligations are concerned, to concentrate on those institutions which we already have. On the other hand, existing international institutions are subject to a range of significant moral and ethical criticisms. It would simply be naïve to suppose that their existence of such institutions is based on an international consensus about what justice requires; and it is not clear how we could motivate individuals who have severe ethical reservations about the existence of such institutions, or why we should wish to. This suggests that those who think that there are global collective obligations, and that such obligations should play an important role in shaping how we think of international distributive justice are faced with a significant dilemma: either support a program of extending and strengthening existing institutions in a way which risks entrenching some existing forms of injustice; or commit oneself to a program of attempting to build new institutions which will have to compete with those institutions we have already and which are unlikely to be in a position to meet help us to discharge our collective obligations at any point in the near future. Neither option seems satisfactory. I shall argue that our response should be to look for plausible ethical constraints on how international institutions should be developed, and suggest that these constraints are likely to take a cosmopolitan form. (shrink)

How much should we sacrifice for the sake of others? While some argue in favour of significant sacrifices, others contend that morality cannot demand too much from individuals. Recently, the debate has taken a new turn by focusing on moral demands under non-ideal conditions in which the essential interests of many people are set back. Under such conditions, in some views, moral theories must require extreme moral demands as anything less is incompatible with equal consideration of everyone’s interests. The insistence (...) on the extremeness of moral demands, however, presupposes a simplistic account of non-ideal conditions as characterized mainly by the non-compliance of many individuals. Non-ideal conditions are also characterized by institutional non-compliance, whereby institutions often do not do what they ought to do. Institutional non-compliance is significant as it increases the size of moral demands significantly, thereby exacerbating the conflict between these demands and the self-interest of individuals subjected to these institutions. I argue that individuals have a meta-interest in not experiencing such internal conflicts as these can undermine their affirmation of self-respect. Meta-interest can be advanced by adopting the promotion of just institutions as an ultimate aim, as such institutions lessen the conflict and, accordingly, enable us to live more harmonious lives. Moreover, the promotion of just institutions allows us to affirm our sense of self-respect under non-ideal conditions too. Because the promotion of just institutions is in our self-interest, this is not an extreme but a moderate moral demand. (shrink)

How much should we sacrifice for the sake of others? While some argue in favour of significant sacrifices, others contend that morality cannot demand too much from individuals. Recently, the debate has taken a new turn by focusing on moral demands under non-ideal conditions in which the essential interests of many people are set back. Under such conditions, in some views, moral theories must require extreme moral demands as anything less is incompatible with equal consideration of everyone’s interests. The insistence (...) on the extremeness of moral demands, however, presupposes a simplistic account of non-ideal conditions as characterized mainly by the non-compliance of many individuals. Non-ideal conditions are also characterized by institutional non-compliance, whereby institutions often do not do what they ought to do. Institutional non-compliance is significant as it increases the size of moral demands significantly, thereby exacerbating the conflict between these demands and the self-interest of individuals subjected to these institutions. I argue that individuals have a meta-interest in not experiencing such internal conflicts as these can undermine their affirmation of self-respect. Meta-interest can be advanced by adopting the promotion of just institutions as an ultimate aim, as such institutions lessen the conflict and, accordingly, enable us to live more harmonious lives. Moreover, the promotion of just institutions allows us to affirm our sense of self-respect under non-ideal conditions too. Because the promotion of just institutions is in our self-interest, this is not an extreme but a moderate moral demand. (shrink)

The primary purpose of government is to secure public goods that cannot be achieved by free markets. The Coordination Principle tells us to consolidate sovereign power in a single institution to overcome collective action problems that otherwise prevent secure provision of the relevant public goods. There are several public goods that require such coordination at the global level, chief among them being basic human rights. The claim that human rights require global coordination is supported in three main steps. First, I (...) consider Pogge's and Habermas's analyses as alternatives to Hobbesian conceptions of justice. Second, I consider the core conventions of international law, which are in tension with the primacy of state sovereignty in the UN system. Third, I argue that the just war tradition does not limit just causes for war to self-defense; it supports saving innocent third parties from crimes against humanity as a just reason for war. While classical authors focused less on this issue, the point is especially clear in twentieth-century just war theories, such as those offered by the American Catholic bishops, Jean Elshtain, Brian Orend, and Michael Walzer. Against Walzer, I argue that we add intractable military tyranny to the list of horrors meriting intervention if other ad bellum conditions are met. But these results require us to reexamine the "just authority" of first resort to govern such interventions. The Coordination Principle implies that we should create a transnational federation with consolidated powers in place of a treaty organization requiring near-unanimity. But to be legitimate, such a global institution must also be directly answerable to the citizens of its member states. While the UN Security Council is inadequate on both counts, a federation of democracies with a directly elected executive and legislature could meet both conditions. (shrink)

The relation between violence and the institution was truly thematized for the first time in the writings of Hume, and in an entirely different way in Saint-Just's texts on the Republic and the institution. Gilles Deleuze's early works represent an original attempt at reconstruction of a possible dialogue between these two dissimilar authors. Regardless of the possibility of reconstruction of Deleuze's own theory of the institution , and analysis of the various combinations of the terms institution and revolution, the (...) intention is above all to examine the link between violence and the institution. Deleuze's attempt to make a preliminary systematic examination of the figure of the institution came about as a result of the conjoining of several fragments of his famous predecessors. (shrink)

This article presents an analytic critique of the predominant revisionist theoretical paradigm of just war (henceforth: revisionism). This is accomplished by means of a precise description and explanation of the practicability problem that confronts it, namely that soldiers that revisionism would deem “unjust” are bound to fail to fulfil the duties that revisionism imposes on them, because these duties are overdemanding. The article locates the origin of the practicability problem in revisionism’s overidealized conception of a soldier as an individual (...) rational agent analogous to the aggressor or defender in a case of lethal self-defense, who is capable of reflecting on the morality of his status in war and of the killing he performs and thus of recognizing his revisionist duties. Revisionism, however, ignores the following fact: Killing in war is not a natural human behavior. This is why training soldiers to kill is—and arguably always has been—a necessity for the existence of war and the killing that occurs in it. Moreover, this training involves a certain level of moral desensitization to violence whose goal is to prevent soldiers from thoroughly reflecting on the morality of the killing they engage in. Hence, war and killing can only exist if soldiers are trained in such a way that they do not reflect on whether they could be addressees of revisionist duties in the first place. This means that military training is a “constitutive condition” of soldiers and war, which is why it cannot excuse their noncompliance with revisionist duties, thus making these duties categorically overdemanding. The argument here draws on the paradigmatic example of modern US military killing conditioning (MC), but embeds it into a broader military-historical perspective that describes how soldiers have always needed to be mentally and morally influenced in order to enable war and killing. The article’s explanation of revisionism’s practicability problem has a constructive consequence for future theory-building in the ethics of war: It implies that a potentially revised ethical theory of war must necessarily analyze the institutions that allocate belligerent resources, if it aims to morally assess battlefield behavior in a practicable manner. (shrink)

Diverse and dynamic societies face a problem of social control. Institutions of social control, of which the police are a part, are a necessary part of just and legitimate governance. But in our non-ideal world they are also responsible for injustices of their own. This project raises questions of political philosophy as they apply to the professional police agency. It begins by constructing an inchoate, but mainstream view about just policing, legalism, according to which police power is (...) justified by the criminal code, and just policing is just the faithful enforcement of law. This view is undermined by the practical realities of policing, which involves widespread and unavoidable police discretion. It then develops an account of just and legitimate police discretion, including principles of proportionality, liberal neutrality, and democratic responsiveness. This sheds lights on controversial police tactics, order maintenance initiatives, and community policing strategies. This account also informs the just institutional arrangement of police powers, informing ongoing debates about police reform and abolition. (shrink)

Successful clinical trials are important for all of us, but they can be extremely complicated to design and run, so work must be done to consider what commonly goes wrong and how these issues can be addressed. Gelinas et al suggest an ethical argument for institutional prioritisation of clinical trials conducted among limited populations. This is to ensure successful recruitment and prevent competing trials rendering each other irrelevant through lack of statistical power. But they overlook the fact that effective prioritisation (...) already occurs, and their suggestion produces yet another hurdle for researchers to overcome. Their argument hinges around the claim that allocation of participants to trials represents an inevitable rationing scenario and, like all rationing scenarios, the best methods should be used for objectively determining how limited resources are distributed to achieve the end goal.1 Although they acknowledge that both individuals and clinicians may have preferences as to which trial a patient participates in, trial interventions are by definition experimental, and therefore choosing between trials is not really analogous to choosing between alternative clinical interventions. Here it seems that although clinical instinct is important when determining treatment options, a clinical trial is a specific attempt to create systematic justified knowledge and thus individual patient/clinician autonomy …. (shrink)

This article examines two potential Rawlsian arguments, namely the moral dualism argument and the educative effect of institutions argument as regards the extension of the primary subject of justice to personal conduct. The article makes two claims. First, while moral dualism is a logical step to make, it suffers from a potential conflict between the principles that apply to institutions and those that govern personal conduct. Second, despite the attractive features of the educative effect of institutions argument, (...) an explanative gap has to be filled in order to account for how and why individuals comply to just institutions. In the end, the article concludes that extending Rawls’s theory of justice to include personal conduct may be difficult to sustain. (shrink)

Whether institutions and not just individual doctors have a right to not participate in medical assistance in dying (MAID) is controversial, but there is a tendency to frame the issue of institutional non‐participation in a particular way. Conscience is central to this framing. Non‐participating health centres are assumed to be religious and full participation is expected unless a centre objects on conscience grounds. In this paper we seek to reframe the issue. Institutional non‐participation is plausibly not primarily, let (...) alone exclusively, about conscience. We seek to reframe the issue by making two main points. First, institutional non‐participation is primarily a matter of institutional self‐governance. We suggest that institutions have a natural right of self‐governance which, in the case of health centres such as hospitals or hospices, includes the right to choose whether or not to offer MAID. Second, there are various legitimate reasons unrelated to conscience for which a health centre might not offer MAID. These range from considerations such as institutional capacity and expertise to a potential contradiction with palliative care and a concern to not conflate palliative care and MAID in public consciousness. It is a mistake to frame the conversation simply in terms of conscience‐based opposition to MAID or full participation. Our goal is to open up new space in the conversation, for reasons unrelated to conscience as well as for non‐religious health centres who might nonetheless have legitimate grounds for not participating in MAID. (shrink)

Using the principles of John Rawls' theory of justice, this book offers an alternative political vision; one which describes a mode of governance that will enable communities to implement a sustainable and socially just future. Rawls described a theory of justice that not only describes the sort of society in which anyone would like to live but that any society can create a society based on just institutions. While philosophers have demonstrated that Rawls's theory can provide a (...) framework for the discussion of questions of environmental justice, the problem for many philosophical theories is that discussions of sustainable development open the need to address questions of ecological interdependence, historical inequality in past resource use and the recognition that we cannot afford to ignore the limitations of growth. These ideas do not fit in comfortably in standard discourse about theories of justice. In contrast, this book frames the discussion of global justice in terms of environmental sustainability. The author argues that these ideas can be used to develop a coherent political theory which reconciles cosmopolitan arguments and the non-cosmopolitan or nationalist arguments concerning social and environmental justice. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environment philosophy and ethics, moral and political philosophy, global studies and sustainable development. (shrink)

This chapter situates John Rawls’ just savings principle in a discussion about how much a nation-state should save. The main question addressed is whether this principle is a viable alternative to the dominant utilitarian theory of optimal growth. Rawls certainly gives savings a different aim (i.e., to create and maintain just institutions) and introduces additional permissibility conditions on reaching this goal (i.e., the necessary burdens should be fairly shared between generations). He thereby gives rise to the field (...) of research now known as intergenerational justice. To assess the relative merits of the just savings principle, however, more details are needed; and this chapter aims to supply some of them. First, the principle of just savings is given a more determinate form whereby it is understood as a two-stage combination of a priority principle at the stage of institutional development and a difference principle at the maintenance stage. Second, some of its practical bearings are explored (i.e., its implications for real-life savings decisions). Among other things, the idea that the principle leads to a steady-state economy is problematized, and its relevance to concrete problems, such as climate change and the design of pension schemes, is assessed. (shrink)

Just-war theory has a long and distinguished history that stretches back to the Christian theologians of medieval Europe. Yet principles of just war must develop alongside social norms, standards of military practice and technology, and civilian-military relationships. Since World War II, and especially since American involvement in Vietnam, military ethics has developed into an academic cottage industry. As commonly taught to undergraduates and military practitioners, contemporary just-war theory seeks to ensure the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of (...) nation-states. The theory insists that the only just wars are defensive ones and forbids wars of national aggrandizement. On this view, because of the right to collective self-determination, wars must not seek to remake the world order, as that would undermine state sovereignty.In recent decades, however, cosmopolitan philosophers have challenged various aspects of the traditional edifice in an attempt to use just-war theory to enhance the protection of human rights around the world. Scholars have argued for greater scope for humanitarian intervention to protect individuals against their own government, for principles of justice after war to ensure that all states are legitimate, and most radically, for the responsibility of ordinary combatants to assess for themselves the justice of their military's cause. On this last argument, because combatants whose cause is just have done nothing to lose their immunity from harm, attacking them is unjust, and combatants whose cause is unjust cannot fight with discrimination.This publication surveys these recent developments, and it finds that they provide a radical challenge to both the theory and the practice of contemporary warfare. Of particular importance is its insistence on the need to strengthen international institutions, so as to provide combatants with an impartial perspective on their side's cause, and to strengthen military ethics education; and its suggestion that policies on dishonorable discharge be rethought. However, this monograph also challenges certain aspects of the new approach, suggesting important connections between military ethics and democratic theory and practice. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper offers an account of institutional testimonial justice and describes one way that it breaks down, which we call institutional opacity. An institution is opaque when it becomes resistant to epistemic evaluation and understanding by its agents and users. When one cannot understand the inner workings of an institution, it becomes difficult to know how to comport oneself testimonially. We offer an account of an institutional ethos to explain what it means for an institution to be testimonially (...) class='Hi'>just; we then describe how an ethos of institutional testimonial justice can break down when the institution becomes opaque. An opaque institution is especially problematic for individuals and groups already rendered epistemically vulnerable during their interactions with that institution, which we call epistemically vulnerabilised individuals. We articulate the features of an encounter between an epistemically vulnerabilised individual and an opaque institution. We end by tracing ameliorative strategies that could help repair a deteriorated institutional ethos of testimonial justice. (shrink)

Background Institutional review board (IRB) expertise is necessarily limited by maintaining a manageable board size. IRBs are therefore permitted by regulation to rely on outside experts for review. However, little is known about whether, when, why, and how IRBs use outside experts.Methods We conducted a national survey of U.S. IRBs to characterize utilization of outside experts. Our study uses a descriptive, cross-sectional design to understand how IRBs engage with such experts and to identify areas where outside expertise is most frequently (...) requested.Results The survey response rate was 18.4%, with 55.4% of respondents reporting their institution’s IRB uses outside experts. Nearly all respondents who reported using outside experts indicated they do so less than once a month, but occasionally each year (95%). The most common method of identifying an outside expert was securing a previously known subject matter expert (83.3%). Most frequently, respondents sought consultation for scientific expertise not held by current members (69.6%). Almost all respondents whose IRBs had used outside experts reported an overall positive impact on the IRB review process (91.5%).Conclusions Just over half of the IRBs in our sample report use of outside experts; among them, outside experts were described as helpful, but their use was infrequent overall. Many IRBs report not relying on outside experts at all. This raises important questions about what type of engagement with outside experts should be viewed as optimal to promote the highest quality review. For example, few respondents sought assistance from a Community Advisory Board, which could address expertise gaps in community perspectives. Further exploration is needed to understand how to optimize IRB use of outside experts, including how to recognize when expertise is lacking, what barriers IRBs face in using outside experts, and perspectives on how outside expert review impacts IRB decision-making and review quality. (shrink)

Exploring the concept of citizenship from the history of political philosophy provides suggestions about what corporate citizenship could mean. The metaphor of corporate citizenship suggests an institutional approach to corporate social responsibility. Citizenship is a social role, characterized by an orientation towards the social contract, collective and active responsibility, as well as a positive attitude towards the juridical state. By analogy, corporate citizenship is a social role, characterized by the social contract of business, a participatory ethics of business, the precautionary (...) principle and the promotion of just international institutions. It is considered that corporate citizenship depends on a number of interacting institutional conditions that hold society partly responsible for the social performance of their companies. Finally, the problem of the dissolution of corporate social responsibility is reviewed in an institutional environment where everyone is considered responsible. (shrink)

Over many years, different theories have been developed to guide the social practices and policies of institutions so that they demonstrate equal concern and respect for all, and satisfy the requirements of justice. Although the normative principles described in a theory may support just institutions, whether this results in just outcomes will depend on how the decisions that implement the principles are made and actioned. As a societal institution charged with caring for people, ensuring just (...) outcomes is a distinct concern in healthcare. Relationships within this institution are constitutive of human flourishing and are also important to justice. Yet, it is not possible to create, maintain or evaluate interpersonal relationships in the same manner as institutions because rather than being universal and impartial, they are particular and partial. Consequently, the link between theories of justice that guide decision-making in relation to structures or institutions, and the relationships that influence those with a proximate effect on individuals, is not explicit. To address this gap, this article argues that a focus on human flourishing provides a nexus between the decision-making for just institutions and just outcomes for individuals. (shrink)

We argue that the notion of "mental institutions"-discussed in recent debates about extended cognition-can help better understand the origin and character of social impairments in autism, and also help illuminate the extent to which some mechanisms of autistic dysfunction extend across both internal and external factors (i.e., they do not just reside within an individual's head). After providing some conceptual background, we discuss the connection between mental institutions and embodied habits of mind. We then discuss the significance (...) of our view for understanding autistic habits of mind and consider why these embodied habits are sometimes a poor fit with neurotypical mental institutions. We conclude by considering how these insights highlight the two-way, extended nature of social impairments in autism, and how this extended picture might assist in constructing more inclusive mental institutions and intervention strategies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation by Daniel PhilpottGlen StassenJust and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation Daniel Philpott New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 365pp. $29.95Just and Unjust Peace deals with an important question: What does a holistic framework of justice consist of in the wake of its massive despoliation? The wounds of political injustice include the following: violation of the victim’s (...) human rights, harms to the victim’s person, the victim’s ignorance of the source and circumstances of political injustices, the lack of acknowledgment of the suffering, the standing victory of the wrongdoer’s political injustice, and harm to the person of the wrongdoer. In such situations, Philpott argues, “what the government and community withhold is... an acknowledgment not only that a victim has rights but also that his rights were violated and that he suffered because of this violation” (37).The definition of justice in this context of wounds is reconciliation. It “encompasses peace settlements, human rights, democracy, and other key goals of negative and positive peace [as well as]... a broad restoration of right relationship involving a multiplicity of practices that each redress wounds of injustice in a particular way” (48–49).Daniel Philpott affirms peace as human rights, equality, and the rule of law, plus actors and institutions like the United Nations that spread this justice. He presents a fair summary of contending positions on human rights and works to develop overlapping agreement. “What is most essential to right relationship in the political order is human rights, their popular legitimacy, and their corresponding virtues” (55). But also, “It is in redressing wrong conduct—the other dimension of justice—that political reconciliation becomes far more distinctive” (55). This requires a deeper understanding of just peacemaking with restorative justice based in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and in insightful assessment of the burgeoning practices of truth commissions and restorative justice in the transitions from dictatorship to democracy.Philpott’s “rooted reason” invites different religions to speak from their depths but also encourages them to speak with reasons that can convince in public discourse (18, 20). Envisioning the incorporation of reconciliation into the modern state “is the life’s work of Rabbi Marc Gopin. In today’s Middle East, [End Page 211] Gopin argues, Jews as well as Christians and Muslims cannot afford to ignore the peacebuilding potential of traditional religious concepts” (132). Philpott also exhibits sensitive understanding of Islam, asking, “Do Islamic texts and traditions contain the materials for the construction of the ethic of political reconciliation that I am proposing? Can Muslims, on the basis of their religious convictions, join in an overlapping consensus on such an ethic?” His answer is a clear yes (153).He identifies and assesses six practices of a politics of reconciliation. The first involves building socially just institutions and relations between states: “Since 1974, some ninety societies... have sought to replace dictatorships with democracies.... A similarly intense global wave of peace operations sponsored by the United Nations... has sought to foster human rights and democratic institutions in states that have seen civil war” (175–76). The second has to do with the practices of political acknowledgment of wrongs: “Human rights are the standard that gives truth commissions and other public forms of acknowledgment form and direction” (188). The third pertains to reparations, with attention to the ongoing effects of historical injustices for descendants (195 and 201). The fourth addresses judicial punishment: “In practicing judicial punishment, a state redresses the violation of the victim’s rights insofar as it expresses, reaffirms, and thereby strengthens human rights as the legally valid values of its realm or of relations between it and another state” (237). The fifth is apology: “Like all of the other practices, apologies performed in political contexts have grown in frequency” (198). Finally, there is forgiveness. “Political injustices harm victims by robbing them of their agency and of their ability to pursue their own and others’ flourishing.... Forgiveness... re-empowers the victim as agent... [and liberates] from anger and resentment” and can also lead to recognition of the victim’s suffering, and to mutual respect for human rights (266–68... (shrink)

The concept of indoctrination is typically used to characterize the actions of individual educators. However, it has become increasingly common for citizens to raise concerns about the indoctrinatory effects of institutions such as schools and universities. Are such worries fundamentally misconceived, or might some state of affairs obtain under which it can be rightly said that an educational institution is engaged in indoctrination? In this paper Christopher Martin outlines what the concept of institutional indoctrination could mean. He then uses (...) Jürgen Habermas's discourse theory in order to develop a specific conception of institutional indoctrination: an educational institution indoctrinates when it exercises its authority in order to support the deliberative norm that some belief P ought to be exempt from tests of or challenges to its truth or rightness just because it is belief P. Martin argues that this norm undermines conditions of symmetrical and inclusive public discourse essential to the development of knowledge and understanding among free and equal citizens. That is, institutional indoctrination involves a closing of the public mind. (shrink)

As the national debate intensifies over what marriage is and who may marry, Mary Lyndon Shanley argues that although the state should continue to play a role in regulating personal relations, the law must be fundamentally reformed if marriage is to become a more just institution. Thirteen prominent writers and thinkers respond, including Nancy F. Cott, William N. Eskridge, Jr., Amitai Etzioni, Martha Albertson Fineman, and Cass R. Sunstein.

Don Ihde and Lambros Malafouris (Philosophy and Technology 32:195–214, 2019) have argued that “we are homo faber not just because we make things but also because we are made by them.” The emphasis falls on the idea that the things that we create, use, rely on—that is, those things with which we engage—have a recursive effect on human existence. We make things, but we also make arrangements, many of which are long-standing, material, social, normative, economic, institutional, and/or political, and (...) many of which are supported by various technologies, including AI, more and more. Critical theorists, such as Habermas, have argued that we need a “depth” or critical hermeneutics (one that combines hermeneutical understanding with scientific explanation) to provide a full account of this kind of recursivity. For Habermas, the explanatory aspect of critical hermeneutics has been modeled on neo-Marxist and neo-Freudian theories. We propose a new critical hermeneutical approach that uses the tools of embodied cognitive science, affordance theory, material engagement theory, and the concept of the socially extended mind. (shrink)

In 2008, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon acquired a painting called The Flight into Egypt which was attributed to the French artist Nicolas Poussin. Thought to have been painted in 1657, the painting had gone missing for more than three centuries. Several versions were rediscovered in the 1980s and one was passed from hand to hand, from a family who had no idea of its value to gallery owners and eventually to the museum. A painting that had been sold (...) as a decorative object in 1986 for around 12,000 euros was acquired two decades later by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon for 17 million euros. What does this remarkable story tell us about the nature of art and the way that it is valued? How is it that what seemed to be just an ordinary canvas could be transformed into a masterpiece, that a decorative object could become a national treasure? This is a story permeated by social magic the social alchemy that transforms lead into gold, the ordinary into the extraordinary, the profane into the sacred. Focusing on this extraordinary case, Bernard Lahire lays bare the beliefs and social processes that underpin the creation of a masterpiece. Like a detective piecing together the clues in an unsolved mystery he carefully reconstructs the steps that led from the same material object being treated as a copy of insignificant value to being endowed with the status of a highly-prized painting commanding a record-breaking price. He thereby shows that a painting is never just a painting, and is always more than a piece of stretched canvass to which brush strokes of paint have been applied: this object, and the value we attach to it, is also the product of a complex array of social processes – with its distinctive institutions and experts – that lies behind it. And through the history of this painting, Lahire uncovers some of the fundamental structures of our social world. For the social magic that can transform a painting from a simple copy into a masterpiece is similar to the social magic that is present throughout our societies, in economics and politics as much as art and religion, a magic that results from the spell cast by power on those who tacitly recognize its authority. By following the trail of a single work of art, Lahire interrogates the foundations on which our perceptions of value and our belief in institutions rest and exposes the forms of domination which lie hidden behind our admiration of works of art. (shrink)

Just War Thinking reconsiders the intersection between morality and pragmatics in foreign policy and modern warfare. The book argues that a political ethic of responsibility should motivate the contemporary application of military force by states in order to protect international security and human life, considering the challenges posed by today's new wars: targeted killing, humanitarian intervention, terrorism, jus post bellum, and the influences of public opinion and supranational institutions.

Just a Song: Chinese Lyrics from the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries. By Stephen Owen. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, vol. 114. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019. Pp. 420. $49.95.

The idea that social and political institutions can be designed in order to achieve specific human ends goes back, at least, to Plato’s presentation of the appropriate form of the just city-state i...

_Just Doctoring_ draws the doctor-patient relationship out of the consulting room and into the middle of the legal and political arenas where it more and more frequently appears. Traditionally, medical ethics has focused on the isolated relationship of physician to patient in a setting that has left the physician virtually untouched by market constraints or government regulation. Arguing that changes in health care institutions and legal attention to patient rights have made conventional approaches obsolete, Troyen Brennan points the way (...) to a new, more aware and engaged medical ethics. The medical profession is no longer isolated, even theoretically, from the liberal, market-dominated state. Old ideas of physician beneficence and altruism must make way for a justice-based medical ethics, assuming a relationship between equals more compatible with liberal political philosophy. Brennan offers clinical examples of many of today's most challenging medical problems—from informed consent to care rationing and the repercussions of the HIV epidemic—and gives his recommendation for a new ethical perspective. This lively and controversial plea for a rethinking of medical ethics goes right to the heart of medical care at the end of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Just Lawyers proposes a model for the regulation and organization of lawyers, guided by an ideal of access to justice. It is grounded in empirical analysis of why people complain about lawyers, the nature of existing legal institutions, and the ethical ideals of the profession. Parker weaves the normative theory of deliberative democracy with the empirical law and society tradition of research on the limits and possibilities of law. She shows that access to justice can only occur in (...) the interaction between courtroom justice, informal everyday justice, and social movementpolitics. Lawyers' justice should educate people's justice to improve the justice quality of everyday relationships and transactions, while community concerns (including community access to justice concerns) should reshape lawyers' regulation, organization, andpractices to improve substantive justice. Just Lawyers shows how legal proffesionalism can only be revitalized through the reform of access to justice beyond lawyers. (shrink)

Just War Thinking reconsiders the intersection between morality and pragmatics in foreign policy and modern warfare. The book argues that a political ethic of responsibility should motivate the contemporary application of military force by states in order to protect international security and human life, considering the challenges posed by today's new wars: targeted killing, humanitarian intervention, terrorism, jus post bellum, and the influences of public opinion and supranational institutions.

Calls to recognize a right of return are a recurring feature of refugee crises. Particularly when such crises become long-term, advocates of displaced people insist that they be allowed to return to their country of origin. I argue that this right is best understood as the right of refugees to return, not to a prior territory, but to a prior political status. This status is one that sees not just any state, but a refugee's state of origin, take responsibility (...) for safeguarding their welfare. This entitlement I characterize as an institutional right: a right that presupposes, and is a necessary feature of, a particular institution. The institution of which the right of return is an indispensable part is the international political system that sees authority exercised by sovereign states. The institutional argument for a right of refugee return presupposes two basic factual claims about states: they play a central role in safeguarding rights and they pursue exclusionary policies of border control. Importantly, the institutional view presupposes only that states do perform both functions, not that they are justified in doing so. On a purely normative level, the institutional account assumes little more than the moral equality of human beings. (shrink)

The just war tradition assumes that civil war is a possible site of justice. It has an uneasy relationship with liberalism, because the latter resists the idea that insurgency and counterinsurgency can be justified in moral terms. The paper suggests that, even if this is true, these two schools of thought are closer to each other than often appears to be the case. In particular, the paper argues that insurgency and counterinsurgency can be justified using the liberal assumptions that (...) nonviolent opposition is the proper non-institutional technique to fight oppressive regimes, and that law enforcement is the appropriate response to unjustified rebellions. Given these assumptions, insurgent warfare is limited to circumstances in which, firstly, nonviolent resistance is no longer a reasonable course of action; and secondly, insurgents have the intention to create the political conditions that are needed to make it a coherent option again.Counter insurgent warfare, in turn, is restrained to those situations in which, first, there is a rebellion or revolution even though the use of nonviolent strategies for conflict and change remains a reasonable choice; and second, police agencies lack the resources that arerequired for managing and suppressing rebel activities. Of course, these requirements should be taken as presumptions, and there may be cases when they do not hold. (shrink)

This is a book about the American Dream: how to understand this central principle of American public philosophy, the ways in which it is threatened by a number of winner-take-all economic trends, and how to make it a reality for workers and their families in the 21st century. Integrating political philosophy and the history of political thought with recent work in economics, political science, and sociology, this book calls for renewed political and policy commitment to “just work.” -/- Such (...) a commitment is essential to combat the negative moral externalities of an economy where the fruits of growth are increasingly claimed by a relatively small portion of the population: slower growth, rising inequality, declining absolute mobility, dying communities, the erosion of social solidarity, lack of faith in political leaders and institutions, exploding debt, ethnic and nationalist backlash, widespread hopelessness, and the rapid rise in what economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case call deaths of despair. -/- Covid-19 threatens to pour gasoline on these winner-take-all fires, further concentrating economic and political power in the hands of those best suited to withstand (and even profit from) the pandemic-driven economic crisis. In this book, the author provides a model for understanding the American Dream and making it a reality in a post-Covid-19 economy. -/- A tour de force, this book is essential reading for scholars and researchers of political philosophy, political economy, political theory, and economics, as well as for the layperson trying to make sense of the post-pandemic world. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the location of the sources of global poverty and injustice. I take it as granted that the members of the globally lowest income group live in unacceptable conditions and suffer from injustice. Yet the source of this injustice is a debatable question. Often the existing global institutions are seen as major causes behind this injustice. By taking the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations as a practical example, I aim to show that blaming the (...) class='Hi'>institutions as such can lead to misguided conclusions. The WTO, in fact, is quite just if one merely analyses its institutional structure. I argue that the major source of injustice are rather the prevailing power structures and the conduct of individual governments within this institutional framework, in other words the metaprocedural unfairness in the trade negotiations. I further argue that applications of Rawlsian theory of justice tend to be misleading at the global institutional level, as they focus disproportionately on the institutional structure, and tend to underestimate the relevance of the conduct of governments and the existing power structures, which allow powerful countries to use the institutional framework unjustly in their favour. (shrink)

This article is part of a longer term project between the Department of Religion and Theology at the University of the Western Cape and Umea University in Sweden. At both the institutions the teaching of ethics as a module within social science curricula has been an important focus area. The critical investigation of the growth of the ethics modules in the Department of Religion and Theology addresses questions of the growth in the number of students taking ethics as a (...) module that have been escalated in the last few years. This research seeks to explore social justice as a pedagogy to teach ethics. The article investigates the relationship between socially just pedagogies and social justice as a means of knowledge production. The ethics modules and students at the Department of Religion and Theology at the University of the Western Cape are the context of the study, and different socially just pedagogies will be investigated as relevant and significant pedagogies for teaching ethics for social change. Particular attention is given to the interaction between the lecturer, student and non-human phenomena as means of knowledge production. The nature of the interaction determines the effectiveness of pedagogies for a social justice agency. (shrink)