Written by researchers in their field, this book is about the skills beyond basic word recognition that are necessary for the processing and comprehension of spoken and written language. It offers topics such as: language and text analysis; cognitive processing and comprehension; development of literacy; literacy and schooling; and more.

Virtue ethics is perhaps the most important development within late twentieth-century moral philosophy. Rosalind Hursthouse, who has made notable contributions to this development, here presents a full exposition and defense of her neo-Aristotelian version of virtue ethics. She shows how virtue ethics can provide guidance for action, illuminate moral dilemmas, and bring out the moral significance of the emotions.

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing (...) so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent. (shrink)

This paper argues for a new understanding of Strawson’s distinction between personal, impersonal, and self-reactive attitudes. Many Strawsonians take these basic reactive attitude types to be distinguished by two factors. Is it the self or another who is treated with good- or ill-will? And is it the self or another who displays good- or ill-will? On this picture, when someone else wrongs me, my reactive attitude is personal; when someone else wrongs someone else, my reactive attitude is impersonal; and when (...) I wrong someone else, my attitude is self-reactive. Against this account, I argue that the basic reactive attitude types are better distinguished according to whether they express partial or impartial concern. This fits Strawson’s discussion in “Freedom and Resentment”, and it allows us to see an important point that the alternative approach obscures. Namely, while attitudes like resentment, gratitude, shame, and pride can arise as responses to our own treatment and behavior, they can also arise as third-party responses to the treatment and behavior of our family members, romantic partners, and close friends. Similarly, attitudes like moral indignation and disapprobation also have a wider scope than is often acknowledged; they can arise as responses to others’ treatment, but they can also arise as responses to our own treatment when we react impartially to circumstances involving ourselves. (shrink)

This volume brings together twenty original essays on the changes and continuities in gender relations and intersecting politics of sexuality, race, class and location. The book is located in debates about contemporary culture at a moment of rapid technological change, global interconnectedness and the growing cultural dominance of neoliberalism and postfeminism. The collection traverses disciplines, spaces and approaches. It is marked by an extraordinarily wide focus, ranging from analyses of celebrity magazines and makeover shows to examinations of the experiences of (...) young female migrants, 'mail order brides' and young women who repudiate feminism. The contributions are united by their attempts to think through the ways in which experiences and representations of femininity are changing in the twenty-first century. Are we seeing new femininities? Are neoliberalism and postfeminism constructing new identities and subjectivities? What kinds of analytic tools and cultural politics are needed to critically engage with the current moment? This book will be of interest to everyone studying gender, media or cultural studies. (shrink)

From a clinical ethics perspective, I explore several traditional arguments that deem deception as morally unacceptable. For example, it is often argued that deception robs people of their autonomy. Deception also unfairly manipulates others and is a breach of important trust-relations. In these kinds of cases, I argue that the same reasons commonly used against deception can provide strong reasons why deception can be extremely beneficial for patients who lack mental capacity. For example, deception can enhance, rather than impair, autonomy (...) in certain cases. I argue that deception ought to only be used after considering several key morally relevant factors and provide a practical and morally justifiable framework for exploring these issues. (shrink)

_Sustaining Loss_ explores the uncanny, traumatic weaving together of the living and the dead in art, and the morbid fascination it holds for modern philosophical aesthetics. Beginning with Kant, the author traces how aesthetic theory has been drawn back repeatedly to the moving power of the undead body of the work of art. He locates the most potent expressions of this philosophical compulsion in Hegel's thesis that art is a thing of the past, and in Freud's view that the work (...) of art is the haunting of the present by the endless suffering of what is dead but still has claims over the living. The book asserts that modern aesthetics holds the key to unlocking the tortured relation of modernity to the past it is perpetually leaving behind. As the capacity to withstand the inescapable force of a past that is dead for us becomes the supreme test for a fully modern, fully secular philosophy, aesthetics moves to the center of philosophical reflection. But, the author argues, this secular philosophical orientation can be sustained only if aesthetic theory remains oriented by intimate contact with modernist works of art. _Sustaining Loss_ examines not only Kant, Hegel, and Freud, but also the contemporary artists Gerhard Richter and Ilya Kabakov, whose art turns fruitfully against art's own past. To live as a modern, the author asserts, is to live with the dead past that modernist art ceaselessly disgorges. Overall, the book aims to articulate an aesthetic theory suitable to the task of living in a time when, in Flannery O'Connor's words, "The blind don't see and the lame don't walk, and what's dead stays that way.". (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being developed for use in medicine, including for diagnosis and in treatment decision making. The use of AI in medical treatment raises many ethical issues that are yet to be explored in depth by bioethicists. In this paper, I focus specifically on the relationship between the ethical ideal of shared decision making and AI systems that generate treatment recommendations, using the example of IBM’s Watson for Oncology. I argue that use of this type of system creates (...) both important risks and significant opportunities for promoting shared decision making. If value judgements are fixed and covert in AI systems, then we risk a shift back to more paternalistic medical care. However, if designed and used in an ethically informed way, AI could offer a potentially powerful way of supporting shared decision making. It could be used to incorporate explicit value reflection, promoting patient autonomy. In the context of medical treatment, we need value-flexible AI that can both respond to the values and treatment goals of individual patients and support clinicians to engage in shared decision making. (shrink)

This paper challenges a common dogma of the literature on forgiveness: that only victims have the standing to forgive. Attacks on third-party forgiveness generally come in two forms. One form of attack suggests that it follows from the nature of forgiveness that third-party forgiveness is impossible. Another form of attack suggests that although third-party forgiveness is possible, it is always improper or morally inappropriate for third parties to forgive. I argue against both of these claims; third-party forgiveness is possible, and (...) in some cases it is morally appropriate for third parties to forgive (or refuse to forgive) wrongdoers for wrongs done to victims. I also propose an explanation of third parties’ standing to forgive: third parties have the standing to forgive when it is appropriate for them to take wrongs done to victims ‘personally’. While appropriately ‘taking a wrong personally’ does not require seeing oneself as a victim, it typically does require being in some form of personal relationship with victims. Thus, while the standing to forgive is not grounded exclusively in having been wronged, the prerogative to forgive is normally limited to victims and their loved ones. And once we recognize the importance of third-party forgiveness in our moral lives and the norms that govern it, we can more easily adjudicate between competing accounts of the nature of forgiveness.​. (shrink)

This paper presents a poststructuralist, postcolonial and feminist interrogation of the ‘Girl Effect’. First coined by Nike inc, the ‘Girl Effect’ has become a key development discourse taken up by a wide range of governmental organisations, charities and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). At its heart is the idea that ‘girl power’ is the best way to lift the developing world out of poverty. As well as a policy discourse, the Girl Effect entails an address to Western girls. Through a range of (...) online and offline publicity campaigns, Western girls are invited to take up the cause of girls in the developing world and to lend their support through their use of social media, through fundraising and consumption. Drawing on a wide range of policy documents, media outputs and offline events, this paper explores the way in which the Girl Effect discourse articulates notions of girlhood, empowerment, development and the Global North/south divide. (shrink)

Most interpreters hold that Kant rejects actually infinite tota synthetica as conceptually impossible. This view is attributed to Kant to relieve him of the charge that the first antinomy’s thesis argument presupposes transcendental idealism. I argue that important textual evidence speaks against this view, and Kant in fact affirms the conceptual possibility of actually infinite tota synthetica. While this means the first antinomy may not be decisive as an indirect argument for idealism, it gives us a better account of how (...) our ideas of the unconditioned generate the antinomies, and it allows us to see important and often overlooked elements in Kant’s account of the infinite. (shrink)

Background:In Ontario, Canada, patients who lack decision-making capacity and have no family or friends to act as substitute decision-makers currently rely on the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee to consent to long-term care (nursing home) placement, but they have no legal representative for other placement decisions.Objectives:We highlight the current gap in legislation for difficult transition cases involving unrepresented patients and provide a novel framework for who ought to assist with making these decisions and how these decisions ought to (...) be made.Research design:This paper considers models advanced by Volpe and Steinman with regard to who ought to make placement decisions for unrepresented patients, as well as current ethical models for analyzing how these decisions should be made.Participants and research context:We describe an anonymized healthcare transition case to illustrate the fact that there is no legally recognized decision-maker for placement destinations other than long-term care facilities and to show how this impacts all stakeholders.Ethical considerations:The case provided is an anonymized vignette representing a typical transition case involving an unrepresented patient.Findings:As a result of a gap in provincial legislation, healthcare providers usually determine the appropriate placement destination without a clear framework to guide the process and this can cause significant moral distress.Discussion:We argue for a team decision-making approach in the short term, and a legislative change in the long-term, to respect the patient voice, evaluate benefit and risk, enhance collaboration between healthcare providers and patients, and promote social justice. We believe that our approach, which draws upon the strengths of interprofessional teams, will be of interest to all who are concerned with the welfare and ethical treatment of the patients for whom they care.Conclusions:One of the main strengths of our recommendation is that it provides all members of the healthcare team (including nurses, social workers, therapists, and others) an increased opportunity to advocate on behalf of unrepresented patients. (shrink)

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's original essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" transformed the analysis of colonialism through an eloquent and uncompromising argument that affirmed the contemporary relevance of Marxism while using deconstructionist methods to explore the international division of labor and capitalism's "worlding" of the world. Spivak's essay hones in on the historical and ideological factors that obstruct the possibility of being heard for those who inhabit the periphery. It is a probing interrogation of what it means to have political subjectivity, to (...) be able to access the state, and to suffer the burden of difference in a capitalist system that promises equality yet withholds it at every turn. Since its publication, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued. In these phenomenal essays, eight scholars take stock of the effects and response to Spivak's work. They begin by contextualizing the piece within the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights. Then, through the lens of Spivak's essay, they rethink historical problems of subalternity, voicing, and death. A final section situates "Can the Subaltern Speak?" within contemporary issues, particularly new international divisions of labor and the politics of silence among indigenous women of Guatemala and Mexico. In an afterword, Spivak herself considers her essay's past interpretations and future incarnations and the questions and histories that remain secreted in the original and revised versions of "Can the Subaltern Speak?"—both of which are reprinted in this book. (shrink)

This paper contributes to inquiries into the genealogy of governmentality and the nature of secularization by arguing that pastoralism continues to operate in the algorithmic register. Drawing on Agamben’s notion of signature, I elucidate a pair of historically distant yet archaeologically proximate affinities: the first between the pastorate and algorithmic control, and the second between the absconded God of late medieval nominalism and the authority of algorithms in the cybernetic age. I support my hypothesis by attending to the signaturial kinships (...) between, on the one hand, temporality and authority in our contemporary conjuncture, and, on the other, obedience and submission in Christian thought from late antiquity and the late Middle Ages. I thereby illustrate the hidden genealogical continuities between theological-pastoral technologies of power and technocratic-algorithmic modalities of governance. I conclude by suggesting that medieval counter-conducts may be redeployed in our present circumstances for emancipatory ends. (shrink)

We present and defend a view labeled “practiceism” which provides a solution to the incompatibility problems. The classic incompatibility problem is inconsistency of:1. Someone who intentionally violates the rules of a game is not playing the game.2. In many cases, players intentionally violate the rules as part of playing the game.The problem has a normative counterpart:1’. In normal cases, it is wrong for a player to intentionally violate the rules of the game.2’. In many normal cases, it is not wrong (...) for a player to intentionally violate the rules of the game.According to both formalism and informalism, the rules of the game include the formal rules of the game. Both traditional positions avoid the incompatibility problems by rejecting 1 and 1'. Practiceism rejects 2 and 2’: it maintains that the rules are the rules manifested in playing the game, not the formal rules.Practiceism presents two theses: (... (shrink)

Plausibly, you should believe what your total evidence supports. But cases of misleading higher-order evidence—evidence about what your evidence supports—present a challenge to this thought. In such cases, taking both first-order and higher-order evidence at face value leads to a seemingly irrational incoherence between one’s first-order and higher-order attitudes: you will believe P, but also believe that your evidence doesn’t support P. To avoid sanctioning tension between epistemic levels, some authors have abandoned the thought that both first-order and higher-order evidence (...) have rational bearing. This sacrifice is both costly and unnecessary. We propose a principle, Evidential Calibration, which requires rational agents to accommodate first-order evidence correctly, while allowing rational uncertainty about what to believe. At the same time, it rules out irrational tensions between epistemic levels. We show that while there are serious problems for some views on which we can rationally believe, “P, but my evidence doesn’t support P”, Evidential Calibration avoids these problems. An important upshot of our discussion is a new way to think about the relationship between epistemic levels: why first-order and higher-order attitudes should generally be aligned, and why it is sometimes—though not always—problematic when they diverge. (shrink)

Philippa Foot is one of the most original and widely respected philosophers of our time; her work has exerted a lasting influence on the development of moral philosophy. In tribute to her, twelve leading philosophers from both sides of the Atlantic have contributed essays exploring the various topics in moral philosophy to which she has made a distinctive contribution--virtue ethics, naturalism, non-cognitivism, relativism, categorical requirements, and the role of rationality in morality.

This paper reviews the ethical literature on conflicts between health professionals and parents about medical decision-making for children. We present the results of a systematic review which addressed the question ‘when health professionals and parents disagree about the appropriate course of medical treatment for a child, under what circumstances is the health professional ethically justified in overriding the parents’ wishes?’ We identified nine different ethical frameworks that were put forward by their authors as applicable across various ages and clinical scenarios. (...) Each of these frameworks centred on a different key moral concept including harm, constrained parental autonomy, best interests, medically reasonable alternatives, responsible thinking and rationality. (shrink)

Using “big data” from sensors worn continuously outside the lab, researchers have observed patterns of objective physiology that challenge some of the long-standing theoretical concepts of emotion and its measurement. One challenge is that emotional arousal, when measured as sympathetic nervous system activation through electrodermal activity, can sometimes differ significantly across the two halves of the upper body. We show that traditional measures on only one side may lead to misjudgment of arousal. This article presents daily life and controlled study (...) data, as well as existing evidence from neuroscience, supporting the influence of multiple emotional substrates in the brain causing innervation on different sides of the body. We describe how a theory of multiple arousals explains the asymmetric EDA findings. (shrink)

The sort of ethical theory derived from Aristotle, variously described as virtue ethics, virtue-based ethics, or neo-Aristotelianism, is becoming better known, and is now quite widely recognized as at least a possible rival to deontological and utilitarian theories. With recognition has come criticism, of varying quality. In this article I shall discuss nine separate criticisms that I have frequently encountered, most of which seem to me to betray an inadequate grasp either of the structure of virtue theory or of what (...) would be involved in thinking about a real moral issue in its terms. In the first half I aim particularly to secure an understanding that will reveal that many of these criticisms are simply misplaced, and to articulate what I take to be the major criticism of virtue theory. I reject this criticism, but do not claim that it is necessarily misplaced. In the second half I aim to deepen that understanding and highlight the issues raised by the criticisms by illustrating what the theory looks like when it is applied to a particular issue, in this case, abortion. (shrink)

According to the standard account of actions and their explanations, intentional actions are actions done because the agent has a certain desire/belief pair that explains the action by rationalizing it. Any explanation of intentional action in terms of an appetite or occurrent emotion is hence assumed to be elliptical, implicitly appealing to some appropriate belief. In this paper, I challenge this assumption with respect to the " arational " actions of my title---a significant subset of the set of intentional actions (...) explained by occurrent emotion. These actions threaten the standard account, not only by forming a recalcitrant set of counterexamples to it, but also, as we shall see, by undercutting the false semantic theory that holds that account in place. (shrink)

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Original Title -- Original Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 The philosophical context -- 2 Structuralism -- 3 Semiology as a science of signs -- 4 S/Z -- 5 Marxism, language, and ideology -- 6 On the subject of Lacan -- 7 The critique of the sign -- 8 Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.

The prevailing accounts of Aristotle's view of practical wisdom pay little attention to all the intellectual capacities discussed in Nicomachean Ethics Book 6. They also contrast the phronimos with the wicked, the continent or the incontinent, rather than with those who have 'natural virtue' (innate or habituated), and thereby they neglect the importance of experience, through which those capacities are acquired. When we consider them, we can see what sort of experience is needed and hence what sort aspirants to full (...) virtue should be trying to acquire. It turns out that much of the knowledge such experience yields is just plain worldly knowledge. But it is not to be despised on that account. The phronimos must meet a threshold of knowledge that he will, indeed, share with some of the wicked, but will have a superior version that goes beyond theirs. (shrink)

The recent interest in systematic review methods in bioethics has highlighted the need for greater transparency in all literature review processes undertaken in bioethics projects. In this article, I articulate features of a good bioethics literature review that does not aim to be systematic, but rather to capture and analyse the key ideas relevant to a research question. I call this a critical interpretive literature review. I begin by sketching and comparing three different types of literature review conducted in bioethics (...) scholarship. Then, drawing on Dixon-Wood's concept of critical interpretive synthesis, I put forward six features of a good critical interpretive literature review in bioethics: answering a research question, capturing the key ideas relevant to the research question, analysing the literature as a whole, generating theory, not excluding papers based on rigid quality assessment criteria, and reporting the search strategy. (shrink)

This volume contains comprehensive and scholarly editions of three Anglo-Saxon saints' lives: Birinus of Dorchester-on-Thames, Kenelm of Winchcombe, and Rumwold of Buckingham. Rosalind Love provides the Latin texts, based on all known manuscript versions, with a facing-page English translation, together with full annotation and a historical introduction which sets these works in the context of the development of hagiographical literature. Dr Love traces the growth and changes in hagiographical writing, one of the most important genres of medieval literature and (...) essential to the understanding of the religious mentality of the Middle Ages, and shows how the eleventh century saw significant new directions emerge in the cult of the saints and the writing of saints' lives. (shrink)

In recent years evolutionary theorists have been engaged in a protracted and bitter disagreement concerning how natural selection affects units such as genes, individuals, kin groups, and groups. Central to this debate has been whether selective pressures affecting group success can trump the selective pressures that confer advantage at the individual level. In short, there has been a debate about the utility of group selection, with noted theorist Steven Pinker calling the concept useless for the social sciences. We surveyed 175 (...) evolutionary anthropologists to ascertain where they stood in the debate. We found that most were receptive to group selection, especially in the case of cultural group selection. The survey also revealed that liberals and conservatives, and males and females, all displayed significant differences of opinion concerning which selective forces were important in humanity’s prehistory. We conclude by interpreting these findings in the context of recent research in political psychology. (shrink)

In jurisdictions where voluntary assisted dying is legal, eligibility assessments, prescription and administration of a VAD substance are commonly performed by senior doctors. Junior doctors’ involvement is limited to a range of more peripheral aspects of patient care relating to VAD. In the Australian state of Victoria, where VAD has been legal since June 2019, all health professionals have a right under the legislation to conscientiously object to involvement in the VAD process, including provision of information about VAD. While this (...) protection appears categorical and straightforward, conscientious objection to VAD-related care is ethically complex for junior doctors for reasons that are specific to this group of clinicians. For junior doctors wishing to exercise a conscientious objection to VAD, their dependence on their senior colleagues for career progression creates unique risks and burdens. In a context where senior colleagues are supportive of VAD, the junior doctor’s subordinate position in the medical hierarchy exposes them to potential significant harms: compromising their moral integrity by participating, or compromising their career progression by objecting. In jurisdictions intending to provide all health professionals with meaningful conscientious objection protection in relation to VAD, strong specific support for junior doctors is needed through local institutional policies and culture. There are no data in this work. (shrink)