Many normative political theorists have engaged in the systematic collection and/or analysis of empirical data to inform the development of their arguments over the past several decades. Yet, the approach they employ has typically not been treated as a distinctive mode of theorizing. It has been mostly overlooked in surveys of normative political theory methods and methodologies, as well as by those critics who assert that political theory is too abstracted from actual political contestation. Our aim is to unearth this (...) grounded normative theory (GNT) approach – to identify its definitive practices and highlight its potential significance. We detail four overlapping commitments characteristic of GNT. These include commitments to expanding the comprehensiveness of input for normative arguments through original empirical research and/or analysis, recursivity in the development of normative claims, attentiveness to the systematic inclusion of a range of voices and ways of knowing, and accountability to those engaged by the theorist in empirical contexts. We discuss methodological distinctions within GNT, including between more- and less-solidaristic approaches. We discuss how GNT answers calls for theorists to engage more closely with empirical political dynamics and we consider responses to possible critiques. (shrink)

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein appeals to clarity when he characterises the aim, task and results of philosophy. In this essay I suggest that his ‘picture theory’ of language implies that clarity has aesthetic significance in philosophical work. Wittgenstein claims that the task of philosophy is to make thoughts clear. In the ‘picture theory’ of thought and language, a thought expressed in language is a proposition with a sense and a proposition is a picture of reality. The question I pose (...) is: how should we construe clarity, if making a thought clear is making clear a picture of reality? Following a close analysis of the picture theory, paying particular attention to the notions of depicting, presenting and mirroring, I conclude that the result of philosophical work – the clarification of propositions – will be pleasurable, inexpressible and intrinsically valuable. For these reasons I suggest that the attainment of a clear thought is an aesthetic experience. (shrink)

In perpetuating and exacerbating restricted access to essential medicines, current trade-related intellectual property rules on medicines may violate core human rights to health and medicines. In this light, there should be serious questions about their necessity, and their justification should be critically assessed from the perspective of human rights standards.

Drawing from our interdisciplinary qualitative study of LGBTI conservative Christians and their allies, we name an especially toxic form of shame—what we call sacramental shame—that affects the lives of LGBTI and other conservative Christians. Sacramental shame results from conservative Christianity's allegiance to the doctrine of gender complementarity, which elevates heteronormativity to the level of the sacred and renders those who violate it as not persons, but monsters. In dispensing shame as a sacrament, nonaffirming Christians require constant displays of shame as (...) proof that LGBTI church members love God and belong in the community. Part of what makes this shame so harmful is that parents and pastors often dispense it with sincere expressions of care and affection, compounding the sense that one's capacity to give and receive love is damaged. We foreground LGBTI Christian movements to overcome sacramental shame by cultivating nonhubristic pride, and conclude by discussing briefly their new understandings of love and justice that could have far‐reaching benefits. (shrink)

German philosopher Martin Heidegger stirred educators when in 1951 he claimed teaching is more difficult than learning because teachers must ‘learn to let learn’. However in the main he left the aphorism unexplained as part of a brief four-paragraph, less than two-page set of observations concerning the relationship of teaching to learning; and concluded at the end of those observations that to become a teacher is an ‘exalted matter’. This paper investigates both of Heidegger's claims, interpreting letting learn in the (...) context of Heidegger's larger philosophical project, and suggesting why in light of that project to become a teacher is an exalted concern. The methodology guiding the inquiry is largely hermeneutic, the purpose of the essay to interpret teaching from a Heideggerian perspective: its nature and general method. (shrink)

In both the Tractatus and the Investigations, Wittgenstein claimed that the aim of philosophy is to achieve clarity: to see clearly the logic or grammar of our language. However, his view of clarity underwent an important change, one of many changes that led Wittgenstein to write, in the preface to the Investigations, that his new ideas “could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against the background of my old way of thinking.” I argue that certain (...) “grave mistakes” of the Tractatus were due to an idealised conception of clarity, and that a revised understanding of clarity is one of the main achievements of the Investigations. In the Tractatus Wittgenstein wrongly assumed that when we see language clearly, what we see will be determinate, exact, and complete. In the Investigations he realised that when we see language clearly we cannot specify in advance whether what we see will be determinate or vague, exact or inexact, complete or incomplete. I characterise this insight as a truism: when we see clearly, what we see might not be clear. Wittgenstein wants the Tractatus to serve as a warning to the reader of the Investigations; his own past mistakes are instructive and this is why we should read the Investigations against the background of his old way of thinking. (shrink)

The author explores how the discursive practices of social texts relate to the subjectivities of readers. Employing Dorothy Smith's notion of femininity as textually mediated discourse, the author analyzes how teenage girls read the depictions of femininity in the glossy advertisements of fashion magazines. Through interviews with 48 girls aged 13 to 17 years, she explores both why and how young girls negotiate “what it means to be a woman.” Most young girls in her study draw on stereotypical meanings of (...) adult femininity. By giving these stereotypes truth status, these readers valorize not only patriarchal meanings of womanhood but also naturalize associations between femininity and the commodities through which this femininity is expressed as the everyday doing of gender. The author concludes by discussing implications of this study for both a feminist theory and a feminist politics of culture. (shrink)

According to Roger Scruton, it is not possible for photographs to be representational art. Most responses to Scruton’s scepticism are versions of the claim that Scruton disregards the extent to which intentionality features in photography; but these cannot force him to give up his notion of the ideal photograph. My approach is to argue that Scruton has misconstrued the role of causation in his discussion of photography. I claim that although Scruton insists that the ideal photograph is defined by its (...) ‘merely causal’ provenance, in fact he fails to take the causal provenance of photographs seriously enough. To replace Scruton’s notion of the ideal photograph, I offer a substantive account of the causal provenance of photographs, centred on the distinctive role of ‘the photographic event’. I conclude that, with a proper understanding of the photographic process, we have good reason to re-open the question of photography as a representational art. (shrink)

Concerns regarding corporate ethics have grown steadily throughout the past decade. In order to remain competitive, many organizational leaders are faced with the challenge of creating an ethical environment within their organization. A model is presented showing the process and elements necessary for the institutionalization of organizational ethics. The transformational leadership style lends itself well to the creation of an ethical environment and is suggested as a means to facilitate the institutionalization of corporate ethics. Finally, the benefits of using transformational (...) leadership are demonstrated through the components of a psychological contract, organizational commitment, and ethical culture to institutionalize organizational ethics. (shrink)

This 2010 text pursues Adam Smith's views on moral judgement, humanitarian care, commerce, justice and international law both in historical context and through a twenty-first-century cosmopolitan lens, making this a major contribution not only to Smith studies but also to the history of cosmopolitan thought and to contemporary cosmopolitan discourse itself. Forman-Barzilai breaks ground, demonstrating the spatial texture of Smith's moral psychology and the ways he believed that physical, affective and cultural distance constrain the identities, connections and ethical obligations (...) of modern commercial people. Forman-Barzilai emphasizes his resistance to the sort of relativism, moral insularity and cultural chauvinism that too often accompany localist critiques of cosmopolitan thought today. This is a fascinating, revisionist study that integrates the perspectives of intellectual history, moral philosophy, political theory, cultural theory, international relations theory and political economy, and will appeal across the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Are mystical experiences primarily formed by the mystic's cultural background and concepts, as modern day "constructivists" maintain, or do mystics in some way transcend language, belief, and culturally conditioned expectations? Do mystical experiences differ in the different religious traditions, as "pluralists" contend, or are they identical across cultures? Twelve contributors here attempt to answer these questions through close examination of a particular form of mystical experience, "Pure Consciousness"--the experience of being awake but devoid of intentional content for consciousness. The contributors (...) analyze pure consciousness and other mystical experiences from historical Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish sources, as well as from modern mystics. They demonstrate that pure consciousness poses serious conceptual problems for a contructivist understanding of mysticism. Revealing the inconsistencies and inadequacies of current models, they make significant strides towards developing new models for the phenomenon of mysticism, breaking new ground for our understanding of mysticism and of human experience in general. (shrink)

Photography is valued as a medium for recording and visually reproducing features of the world. I seek to challenge the view that photography is fundamentally a recording process and that every photograph is a record—a view that I claim is based on a ‘single-stage’ misconception of the process. I propose an alternative, ‘multi-stage’ account in which I argue that causal registration of light is not equivalent to recording and reproducing an image. Intervention or non-intervention by photographers is more sophisticated than (...) the traditional view allows. Using the multi-stage account, I describe four models for producing photographic images and pictures. (shrink)

In this article, we will consider how the regulation of populations is not just a feature of prisons, but of all institutions and organisations that control members though hierarchies, divisions and norms. While nurses and other allied health professionals are considered to be predominantly self‐regulatory, practice is guided by a code of conduct and codes of ethics that act as rules that serve to uphold the safety of the patient, whether they are a sick person in a hospital bed or (...) an inmate in a prison. The codes of conduct espouse a number of rules that to a certain extent govern the behaviour of individual and groups of practitioners through reciprocal rewards and punishments. Supervision is one method of monitoring the effectiveness of the codes of conduct and ethics while regulating both the minimum standard of individual practice and of training organisations. It is posited that one of the possible effects of clinical supervision is to make the person effectively self‐regulatory as, an autonomous practitioner. We take the view that professional autonomy is a highly problematic concept requiring closer examination. (shrink)

In this article, we contribute to sociological literatures on morality, professional and institutional contexts, and morally stigmatized ‘dirty work’ by emphasizing and exploring how they mutually inform one another in lawyers’ work activities. Drawing on interview data with 58 practitioners in the commercial legal industry in Singapore, we analyze how they experience professional and institutional constraints on the expressions of morality in their work. Our findings illustrate how a dominant managerial and economic focus maintains and reproduces a constrained form of (...) morality, limited to instrumental, utilitarian and commercial ends, and subordinated to lucrative client and firm interests. We discuss our findings in terms of the need to research and reform professions in ways that support more rounded and unconstrained moral reflexivity and autonomy in how work is undertaken and valued. This in turn has implications for how organizations and professions might achieve alternative moral institutional orders, and for legal work to avoid the moral and social taints of dirty work. (shrink)

Some photographs show determinate features of a scene because the photographed scene had those features. This dependency relation is, rightly, a consensus in philosophy of photography. I seek to refute many long-established theories of photography by arguing that they are incompatible with this commitment. In Section II, I classify accounts of photography as either single-stage or multi-stage. In Section III, I analyze the historical basis for single-stage accounts. In Section IV, I explain why the single-stage view led scientists to postulate (...) “latent” photographic images as a technical phenomenon in early chemical photography. In Section V, I discredit the notion of an invisible latent image in chemical photography and, in Section VI, extend this objection to the legacy of the latent image in digital photography. In Section VII, I appeal to the dependency relation to explain why the notion of a latent image makes the single-stage account untenable. Finally, I use the multi-stage account to advance debate about “new” versus “orthodox” theories of photography. (shrink)

Pt. I. The apparent good. Evaluative cognition -- Perceiving the good -- Phantasia and the apparent good -- pt. II. The apparent good and non-rational motivation. Passions and the apparent good -- Akrasia and the apparent good -- pt. III. The apparent good and rational motivation. Phantasia and deliberation -- Happiness, virtue, and the apparent good -- Practical induction -- Conclusion : Aristotle's practical empiricism.

This article explores how textual analysis can help us understand subjectivity as an empirical, rather than purely theoretical, phenomenon. The texts discussed here are advice columns in adolescent magazines; the analysis takes as its starting point girls’ accounts of magazine reading. Drawing on focus group discussions and interviews with 48 girls between the ages of 13 and 17 years, I explore how the accomplishment of ‘individuality’– as a culturally and historically-specific task of adolescence – is mediated by advice texts. Because (...) my analysis directs us to the existence of embodied subjects, I employ the notion of ‘Subject-ivity’. As a concept, ‘Subject-ivity’ reminds the analyst of the presence of an embodied, rather than theoretically constructed Self, brought into existence as a practical mode of consciousness. It thus provides a potential bridge between the sociological world of social subjects and highly theoretical work on subjectivity. (shrink)

We thank the commentators for their thoughtful engagement with our paper.1 In different ways, they make the same substantial point: our suggested interventions are not enough to solve the problems of organisational failure. On this we wholeheartedly agree. Organisational failure in healthcare is complex and multifaceted, it cannot be solved by one intervention in medical education. We did not intend to imply that our proposals alone would solve organisational failure, and this positioning misconstrues the aims of our paper. We had (...) more modest ambitions, we wanted to shift the analytical emphasis away from the individual and explore the implications raised by our analysis for our piece of the jigsaw—medical education. Having stepped away from such grand claims, the commentators make some valid points to which we would like to respond more specifically. Jesudason makes the distinction that normalisation of deviance (NoD) is well suited to understand institutional misfeasance but not malfeasance.2 We are inclined to agree; NoD can do some things but not all. Likewise, …. (shrink)

Discourses of interdisciplinary health‐care are becoming more centralised in the context of global healthcare practices, which are increasingly based on multisystem interventions. As with all dominant discourses that are narrated into being, many others have been silenced and decentralised in the process. While questions of the nature and constituents of interdisciplinary practices continue to be debated and rehearsed, this paper focuses on the discourse of interdisciplinary collaboration using psychiatry as an example, with the aim of highlighting competing and alternative discourses. (...) The fundamental premise of this paper is that collaborative relationships form the basis of interdisciplinary practices in psychiatry. Through a critical engagement and a deconstructive reading of the pretext, context and subtexts of interdisciplinarity, we interrogate the concept of interdisciplinary practice within psychiatry. We contend that an important part of understanding and further conceptualising the discourse is through fracturing it. This process is illustrated in the successive stages of our conceptual map of discourse development: establishing, maintaining and developing discourses. An understanding of interdisciplinary practice is not only critical for psychiatry, but also offers important insights into the performance of collaborative failures and indeed successes across nursing and allied health professions. (shrink)

Bridging disciplines have much to teach us about how to combine analytical tools to tackle problems and questions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. This article uses examples from the older bridging disciplines of geography and anthropology in order to consider what the relatively young undertaking labeled “interdisciplinary studies” can learn from their long existence. It explains what is meant by the fallacy of nomothetic claim and considers the fruitful production of answers and solutions by viewing process (methodology) not domain (academic (...) turf), as the key to interdisciplinary success. Staking claim to interdisciplinarity is shown to be unproductive while finding the need for interdisciplinary approaches and following the mandates of that need in the pursuit of solutions to problems and questions strengthens both the disciplines and the development of interdisciplinary studies. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt famously argued that acts of violence are corrosive to a free and plural politics. However, the broader implications of her critique of violence are less well known. Reading her concept of violence comprehensively, with regard to (ostensibly non-political) labor and work as well as action, this article reveals its broader relevance for contemporary political thought: the political question of violence lies at the heart of our ecological crisis and is crucial for the social structure of labor domination. While (...) Arendtian politics is without normative guarantees, the conceptual distinction between instrumental violence and free politics is crucial, because it renders the political judgment of violence possible. In every realm of human activity, the refusal to acknowledge violence stunts our capacity to care for the world. (shrink)

Poovey has argued that the anesthetized “unresisting body” can offer no impediment to a doctor's interpretation of its conduct. In contrast, drawing on ethnographic data of anesthetic practice, this article suggests that the technological augmentation of the body required by present-day anesthesia enhances the ability of an unconscious body to convey its needs and shape the course of the anesthetic. In analyzing the expressions of anesthesia's cyborgs, the author draws on Haraway, Latour, and Suchman to reconsider the characteristics of agency (...) and how an unconscious body might “resist” or inform a doctor's interpretation. This attempt to explore the nature and distribution of agency within a collective is intended as a contribution to the debates surrounding medical dominance and those theorizing the role of technology in health care. (shrink)

Kant’s account of the freedom gained through virtue builds on the Socratic tradition. On the Socratic view, when morality is our end, nothing can hinder us from attaining satisfaction: we are self-sufficient and free since moral goodness is (as Kant says) “created by us, hence is in our power.” But when our end is the fulfillment of sensible desires, our satisfaction requires luck as well as the cooperation of others. For Kant, this means that happiness requires that we get other (...) people to work for our ends; and this requires, in turn, that we gain control over the things other people value so as to have influence over them. If this plan for happiness is not subordinated to morality, then what is most valuable to us will be precisely what others value. This is the root of the “passions” that make us evil and make us slaves whose satisfaction depends on others. But, significantly, this dependence is a moral slavery and hence does not signal a loss, or even diminishment of the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility. (shrink)

Hispanics are grossly underrepresented in the receipt of STEM Ph.Ds. The National Science Foundation Science and Engineering Indicators suggest that only 7.8% of S and E doctoral recipients are Hispanic while their representation in the population is more than twice that, and that figure goes even higher if restricted to those within the college-age range. To address this gap, the NSF has awarded a grant to the City College of New York and the University of Texas at El Paso to (...) work with Hispanic STEM doctoral students to provide teaching training and preparation for academic positions so they can become role models for Hispanic community college undergraduates. In working to understand the career-decision making of our Fellows, in-depth interviews were conducted to understand what put them on the path to defy the odds and become a STEM doctoral recipient. Interview results suggest that isolated, critical incidents and chance events were responsible for a number of our students entering into doctoral programs. This research suggests that for some Hispanic STEM doctoral students the experience of chance events meant the path to a STEM doctorate was not assured from a young age and further, that the provision of “planned” critical incidents may support an increase in Hispanic STEM doctoral enrollment. (shrink)

Courts and legislatures are increasingly being called upon to restrict the autonomy of pregnant women by requiring them to behave in ways that others determine are best for the fetuses they carry. The state should not attempt to transform pregnant women into ideal baby‐making machines. Pregnant women make decisions about their behavior in the context of the rest of their lives, with all the attendant complexities and pressures. Our interest in helping future children by improving prenatal care would best be (...) furthered by helping pregnant women to make informed, less constrained choices, not by punishing women or depriving them of choices altogether. (shrink)

Hegel's discussion of the concept of “habit” appears at a crucial point in his Encyclopedia system, namely, in the transition from the topic of “nature” to the topic of “spirit” (Geist): it is through habit that the subject both distinguishes itself from its various sensory states as an absolute unity (the I) and, at the same time, preserves those sensory states as the content of sensory consciousness. By calling habit a “second nature,” Hegel highlights the fact that incipient spirit retains (...) a “moment” of the natural that marks a limitation compared to “pure thought” but that also makes perceptual consciousness possible. This makes Hegel's account analogous in important respects to John McDowell's “naturalism of second nature.” But Hegel's account of habit can be seen as a version of a Kantian synthesis of the productive imagination—and hence presupposes a given material that can become one's own by means of habit. This does not mean that Hegel falls into the Myth of the Given, but it does suggest that an appropriate account of second nature might be committed to something McDowell wants to deny: that nonconceptual states of consciousness play a role (even if not a justificatory role) in perception. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the use of correspondence as research data. It focuses on the author's own experience of this method and considers the methodological implications of correspondence as a research method for research in general and feminist research in particular. We argue that at present this method is not often used, even though it provides rich data and is a potential powerful tool for feminist research.

For Kant, any authentic moral demands are wholly distinct from the demands of prudence. This has led critics to complain that Kantian moral demands are incompatible with our human nature as happiness-seekers. Kant’s defenders have pointed out, correctly, that Kant can and does assert that it is permissible, at least in principle, to pursue our own happiness. But this response does not eliminate the worry that a life organized around the pursuit of virtue might turn out to be one from (...) which we cannot expect any of this (permissible) happiness. To address this worry, Kant would need to establish that there is a kind of harmony between virtue and our own happiness that can give us confidence that aiming at morality does not require us to abandon our hope for happiness in this life. This paper aims to show that Kant—building on insights from Rousseau that Kant identifies with Cynicism—does offer an account of such a harmony between virtue and worldly happiness. (shrink)

Noreen Khawaja's The Religion of Existence offers an interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard's account of sin and despair as an account of alienation and our struggle to overcome it. I argue that Khawaja's interpretation of Kierkegaard is incompatible with Kierkegaard's insistence that sin must necessarily be the sinner's own fault—a result of the sinner's own free choice. I consider two possible ways of harmonizing Khawaja's account with this claim, one proposing a fictive acceptance of fault for what is not actually one's (...) fault, and one based on the claim that sin presupposes sin-consciousness, but argue that neither constitutes a satisfactory solution. I conclude that while alienation does constitute sin for Kierkegaard, it does so for a different reason than Khawaja proposes. (shrink)

As we officially enter the Space Age this books comes as an inspired treatise and guide for a new level of consciousness.

Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said, "Ethics is aesthetics." It is unclear what such a claim might mean and whether it is true. This book explores contentious issues arising at the interface of ethics and aesthetics. The contributions reflect on the status of aesthetic en ethical judgments, the relation of aesthetic beauty and ethical goodness and art and character development. The book further considers the potential role art could play in ethical analysis and in the classroom and explores in what respects aesthetics (...) and ethics might be intertwined and even mutually supportive. (shrink)