In this article, I examine the relationship between self-knowledge practices among women of color and structural patterns of ignorance by offering an analysis of Gloria E. Anzaldúa's discussions of self-writing. I propose that by writing about her own experiences in a manner that hails others to critically interrogate their own identities, Anzaldúa develops important theoretical resources for understanding self-knowledge, self-ignorance, and practices of knowing others. In particular, I claim that in her later writings, Anzaldúa offers a rich epistemological account of (...) these themes through her notion of autohistoria-teoría. The notion of autohistoria-teoría demonstrates that self-knowledge practices, like all knowledge practices, are social and relational. Moreover, such self-knowledge practices require contestation and affirmation as well, including, resistance and productive friction. (shrink)

Solidarity belongs to the basic principles of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and is part of the ethical repertoire of European moral traditions and European healthcare systems. This paper discusses how leaders of Catholic healthcare organizations (HCOs) can understand their institutional moral responsibility with regard to the preservation of solidarity. In dealing with this question, we make use of Taylor's philosophy of modern culture. We first argue that, just as all HCOs, Catholic ones also can embody and strengthen solidarity by just (...) doing their quintessential job, that is, to care for people with ill health. Second, we focus on the Catholic identity of these organizations and argue that this characteristic can empower a radical commitment to solidarity. Finally, we argue that CST provides a critical ethical framework for approaching solidarity from the perspective of the common good. (shrink)

Educators find themselves in the midst of arising tide of urban school reform marked byevermore centrally designed and monitoredsystems of accountability. In response to thislooming high-stakes gaze of surveillance, thisessay offers an ethics of educationalleadership predicated upon taking up thechallenge of creatively and courageouslyauthoring one's ethical self. It seeks tocontribute to mapping an ethical terrain whichcan support the production of pedagogicalpractices, initiatives, and agendas asdistinctive, bold responses to theproliferation of one-dimensional,technicist-driven efforts which narrowlycalculate and assess student learning, teacherwork, school effectiveness, (...) and which offeranemic, foreclosed readings of a possiblefuture. My claim is that a consideration ofFoucault's ethics draws us closer torecognizing what such a project would mean andask of the educator as leader. (shrink)

Many authors have argued that all studies of socially specific modalities of human action and experience depend on some form of “philosophical anthropology”, i.e. on a set of general assumptions about what human beings are like, assumptions without which the very diagnoses of the cultural and historical variability of concrete agents' practices would become impossible. Bourdieu was sensitive to that argument and, especially in the later phase of his career, attempted to make explicit how his historical-sociological investigations presupposed and, at (...) the same time, contributed to the elaboration of an “idea of the human being”. The article reconstructs Bourdieu's philosophical anthropology, starting with his genetic sociology of symbolic power, conceived as a form of critical theory, and concluding with an account of the conditio humana in which recognition appears as both the fundamental existential goal through which human agents strive to confer meaning on their lives and the source of the endless symbolic competition that keeps society moving. The agonistic vision of the social universe that grounds his sociological studies returns in his philosophical anthropology under the guise of a singular synthesis between Durkheim's thesis that “Society is God” and Sartre's idea that “hell is other people”. (shrink)

RESUMO O objetivo deste artigo é o de ilustrar a oposição dos comunitaristas ao contratualismo, a partir da análise de um caso específico: a crítica de Michael Sandel ao voluntarismo contido na teoria de Rawls. Sandel chama de "voluntarismo" a tese pela qual princípios políticos e morais se legitimam a partir de um exercício da vontade individual, sob a forma da "escolha" ou do "consentimento". Esta tese, como procuraremos argumentar, está na base do contratualismo moderno, embora somente em Rawls ela (...) atinja sua formulação mais perfeita. Sandel propõe como alternativa ao voluntarismo o que ele chama de "cognitivismo", inspirado na visão de mundo dos antigos. Segundo o cognitivismo, os princípios políticos e morais são derivados de fins ou "bens" que são mais descobertos do que propriamente escolhidos. ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to illustrate the opposition between communitarianism and contratualism, from the analysis of a specific case: Michael Sandel's criticism of voluntarism in the theory of Rawls. For Sandel "voluntarism" is the thesis according to which political and moral principles are legitimate from an exercise of individual will, such as "choice" or "consent". We shall argue that this thesis is the grounding basis of modern contractualism, although only with Rawls it reaches its purest form. Sandel suggests as an alternative to voluntarism what he calls "cognitivism", inspired in the ancient understanding of the world. According to cognitivism, the legitimation of political and moral principles streams from ends or "goods" which are discovered rather than chosen. (shrink)

Nursing practice invites nurses to embody caring practices that meet, comfort and empower vulnerable others. Such a practice requires a commitment to meeting and helping the other in ways that liberate and strengthen and avoid imposing the will of the caregiver on the patient. Being good and acting well (phronesis) occur in particular situations. A socially constituted and embodied view of agency, as developed by Merleau‐Ponty, provides an alternative to Cartesian and Kantian views of agency. A socially constituted, embodied view (...) of agency is less mechanistic and less deterministic than Descartes' and Kant's radical separation of mind and body, and more responsive and generative than Kant's vision of moral agency as constituted by autonomous choice makers who are uninfluenced by emotion. The role of emotion in perception and judgement is explored in this paper. Distinctions between techne and phronesis are drawn. The role of emotion in market relationships and procedural ethics drawn for the abstract, general other are strategies for exchange of goods and services, but these same market relationships are dependent on well‐functioning nonmarket relations of noncalculated giving and receiving. (shrink)

Past decades have witnessed the growing success of branding as a corporate activity as well as a rise in anti-brand activism. While appearing to be contradictory, both trends have emerged from common sources – the transition from industrial to post-industrial society, and the advent of globalization – the examination of which might lead to a socially grounded understanding of why brand success in the future is likely to demand more than superior product performance, placing increasing demand on corporations with regard (...) to a broader envelop of socially responsible behavior. Directions for strategic and managerial options are suggested. (shrink)

Focusing on the concept of “the moral self” this essay explores relationships between Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and John Dewey’s moral pragmatism and tries to evaluate the extent to which in his work on ethics Aristotle may be considered a pragmatist. Aristotle foreshadows pragmatism, for example, in preferring virtue-based to rule-based ethics, in contending that the moral status of a person’s actions and the nature of the person’s selfhood are interdependent, and in stressing the key role of habits in character formation. (...) Aristotle, however, may seem far from the status of pragmatist when he privileges the life of contemplation and posits a moral self that is more static than the one proposed by Dewey. This essay contends that if more attention is paid to Aristotle’s treatment of friendship and to his highlighting of the need for reciprocity then the moral self that emerges from Nicomachean Ethics becomes more dialectical and more at one with that proposed by the American pragmatist. Aristotle, then, may be regarded as setting Dewey on the path towards a model of moral self that is not only deeply concerned about the lives of others but that is also dependent on others for its own existence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAny conceptualisation of evil, arguably, has to empower us to resist or transform it in our lived worlds. The latter concern motivates this paper much more than a thorough analysis of evil itself. Drawing on Jewish and Christian thought, I tentatively consider evil as resulting from the incomplete or failed cultivation of the humane. Along this line, evil is the opposite of humanity; it is the antihuman, the subhuman, or the demonic. Gratuitous violence, hatred, resentment, and malice manifest this dark (...) ‘power’ of evil. In the aforementioned traditions, peace and justice are conceived as being dependent on the inner order or unity of the soul. Conversely, iniquity – as the manifestation of evil – in the world reflects conflicts or disorders in individual souls. Hence the need to constitute one’s personhood. Such continuous creation takes place through genuine human encounters, where and when love, friendship, and gratitude are allowed to unfold themselves. These ‘dispositions’ are conceived as counterweights to evil. I will work out this argument, but also briefly examine how education, rural and urban planning, economic and political ‘systems’ can either breed or curtail evil. (shrink)

This paper develops a dialogue on value and measurement in education that began at a special symposium at ECER in September 2015. The paper seeks to continue the dialogue by commenting on the main respondent’s contribution from Network 9. We hope to clarify how different sides of the assessment debate can be misunderstood by others. What emerges in our paper is suggestive but nonetheless points to how thinking in opposing camps can limit our understanding of assessment as a human activity. (...) Taking up key points made by the respondent to the symposium, we focus on the comparison between the requirements of design in technological problem-solving situations and those that arise when we take seriously the requirements of assessment and valuing as a human activity. This discussion sets up a wider analysis of the problem of ethics across the sciences and humanities historically. While remaining tentative, the discussion points to a particular problem related to our ability to defend practical rationality agains.. (shrink)

Moral taint occurs when one’s personality has been compromised by the introduction of something that produces disfigurement of the moral psyche. While taint may be traced to vicarious liability for our voluntary associations, the thought that we might be responsible for taint and that taint is something we must confront and make amends for becomes problematic when taint is acquired by circumstantial luck. I argue that the idea of circumstantial taint—for example, the idea that people can be morally compromised by (...) their heritage—is coherent. In such cases, although taint is not due to a deficient level of care or to an unsavory quality of will, shame is the appropriate affect and atonement the appropriate response. The concept of moral taint is helpful in assisting our comprehension of more vexing cases of responsibility and blame where shame and a need for atonement exist. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to carry out an analysis of the multi-voiced, multi-cultural self discussed by Latina feminists in light of a Heideggerian phenomenological account of persons or “Existential Analytic.” In so doing, it points out similarities as well as differences between the Heideggerian description of the self and Latina feminists' phenomenological accounts of self, and critically assesses María Lugones's important notion of “world-traveling.” In the end, the essay defends the view of a “multiplicitous” self which takes insights (...) from Lugones's view of the self that “travels ‘worlds’” and from other Latina feminists' accounts of self as well as from Martin Heidegger's account of Dasein. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to carry out an analysis of the multi-voiced, multi-cultural self discussed by Latina feminists in light of a Heideggerian phenomenological account of persons or "Existential Analytic." In so doing, it points out similarities as well as differences between the Heideggerian description of the self and Latina feminists' phenomenological accounts of self, and critically assesses María Lugones's important notion of "world-traveling." In the end, the essay defends the view of a "multiplicitous" self which takes insights (...) from Lugones's view of the self that "travels 'worlds'" and from other Latina feminists' accounts of self as well as from Martin Heidegger's account of Dasein. (shrink)

The themes of this issue—which include the meaning of our health and disease concepts, the so-called “medical gaze” and its embedded power relations, and the epistemic value of mixing therapy with research—are introduced by reflecting on a case about an infant girl whose head is observed to be somewhat flat.

Background:Metaphors are often used within the context of ethics and healthcare but have hardly been explored in relation to moral reasoning.Objective:To describe a central set of metaphors in one case and to explore their contribution to moral reasoning.Method:Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 parents of a child suffering from the neurodegenerative disease CLN3. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and metaphors were analyzed. The researchers wrote memos and discussed about their analyses until they reached consensus.Ethical considerations:Participants gave oral and written consent (...) and their confidentiality and anonymity were respected.Findings:A central set of metaphors referred to the semantic field of the hands and arms and consisted of two central metaphors that existed in a dialectical relationship: grasping versus letting go. Participants used these metaphors to describe their child’s experiences, who had to “let go” of abilities, while “clinging” to structures and the relationship with their parent. They also used it to describe their own experiences: participants tried to “grab” the good moments with their child and had to “let go” of their child when he approached death. Participants, in addition, “held” onto caring for their child while being confronted with the necessity to “let go” of this care, leaving it to professional caregivers.Discussion:The ethical analysis of the findings shows that thinking in terms of the dialectical relationship between “grasping” and “letting go” helps professional caregivers to critically think about images of good care for children with CLN3. It also helps them to bear witness to the vulnerable, dependent, and embodied nature of the moral self of children with CLN3 and their parents.Conclusion:Metaphorical reasoning may support the inclusion of marginalized perspectives in moral reasoning. Future studies should further explore the contribution of metaphorical reasoning to moral reasoning in other cases. (shrink)

This article seeks to demonstrate a particular application of Foucault's philosophical approach to a particular issue in education: that of personal autonomy. The paper surveys and extends the approach taken by James Marshall in his book Michel Foucault: Personal autonomy and education. After surveying Marshall's writing on the issue I extend Marshall's approach, critically analysing the work of Rob Reich and Meira Levinson, two contemporary philosophers who advocate models of personal autonomy as the basis for a liberal education.

This article seeks to demonstrate a particular application of Foucault's philosophical approach to a particular issue in education: that of personal autonomy. The paper surveys and extends the approach taken by James Marshall in his book Michel Foucault: Personal autonomy and education. After surveying Marshall's writing on the issue I extend Marshall's approach, critically analysing the work of Rob Reich and Meira Levinson, two contemporary philosophers who advocate models of personal autonomy as the basis for a liberal education.

Health-care professionals in end-of-life care are frequently confronted with patients who seem to be ‘ambivalent’ about treatment decisions, especially if they express a wish to die. This article investigates this phenomenon by analysing two case stories based on narrative interviews with two patients and their caregivers. First, we argue that a respectful approach to patients requires acknowledging that coexistence of opposing wishes can be part of authentic, multi-layered experiences and moral understandings at the end of life. Second, caregivers need to (...) understand when contradictory statements point to tensions in a patient’s moral experience that require support. Third, caregivers should be careful not to negatively label or even pathologize seemingly contradictory patient statements. (shrink)

The dominant model for bioethical inquiry taught in medical schools is that of principlism. The heritage of this methodology can be traced to the Enlightenment project of generating a universalizable justification for normative morality arising from within the individual, rational agent. This project has been criticized by Alasdair MacIntyre who suggests that its failure has resulted in a fragmented and incoherent contemporary ethical framework characterized by fundamental intractability in moral debate. This incoherence implicates principlist conceptions of bioethics. Medical ethics as (...) practiced, though, is partially in keeping with teleological alternatives to principlism. Nonetheless, the hegemony of principlism threatens to harm the practice of good medicine whenever it is used to provide justification for the sanction or prohibition of practices, despite not being equipped to grant moral authority to such justifications. An example of this failure and its resulting harm is expressed in the growing obsolescence of living donor liver transplantation. (shrink)

Two of the most important modern Indian Buddhist pioneers are the polyglot explorer and Marxist revolutionary, Rāhul Sāṅk tyāyan (1893–1963), and the Pali scholar and Gandhian nationalist, Dharmānand Kosambī (1876–1947). Although best known as scholars of Buddhism, it is their lesser-known personal lives—namely, their political involvement in anti-colonial efforts, social reform projects, and travels abroad—that are of primary focus in this study. Through an examination of their activities and writings, this essay reveals the methods they employed and the networks of (...) support they utilized in order to propagate Buddhism. In particular, it focuses on two features common to both of their lives: first, their relations with transnational Buddhist organizations and Euro-American and other Asian intellectuals, and second, their collaborative efforts with Indian elites whom they shared similar social, educational and national concerns. These two factors, I argue, were essential to their reconfiguration of a modern Indian Buddhism that was relevant to contemporary Indian concerns. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMetaphysics has long been regarded as providing meaning to the world. Subsequent progressive replacement attempts of this narrative by a scientific approach have generally led to a view of life as being void of meaning. However, this has not affected the quest for meaning or for an understanding of this meaning, despite an increasing societal neglect of the importance of its pursuit. This article aims to contribute to a philosophical understanding of the sense of life in the world, drawing on (...) Jean-Luc Nancy's understanding of sense as developed in his Sense of the World. To talk of “sense” rather than of “meaning” is an unconventional choice in the field, yet both differ from one another in that sense refers to an opening as the very possibility of meaningfulness generally. This means that, to understand meaning, we must understand sense. Key to Nancy's conception of sense is the transitivity of the verb being; being traverses itself from being as non-being “to” being as existence. Nancy is concer... (shrink)

We develop a cultural evolutionary theory of the origins of prosocial religions and apply it to resolve two puzzles in human psychology and cultural history: (1) the rise of large-scale cooperation among strangers and, simultaneously, (2) the spread of prosocial religions in the last 10–12 millennia. We argue that these two developments were importantly linked and mutually energizing. We explain how a package of culturally evolved religious beliefs and practices characterized by increasingly potent, moralizing, supernatural agents, credible displays of faith, (...) and other psychologically active elements conducive to social solidarity promoted high fertility rates and large-scale cooperation with co-religionists, often contributing to success in intergroup competition and conflict. In turn, prosocial religious beliefs and practices spread and aggregated as these successful groups expanded, or were copied by less successful groups. This synthesis is grounded in the idea that although religious beliefs and practices originally arose as nonadaptive by-products of innate cognitive functions, particular cultural variants were then selected for their prosocial effects in a long-term, cultural evolutionary process. This framework (1) reconciles key aspects of the adaptationist and by-product approaches to the origins of religion, (2) explains a variety of empirical observations that have not received adequate attention, and (3) generates novel predictions. Converging lines of evidence drawn from diverse disciplines provide empirical support while at the same time encouraging new research directions and opening up new questions for exploration and debate. (shrink)

Rather than reading Shaftesbury in anticipation of later forms of disinterestedness, this essay seeks to unpack the larger significance of his aesthetics by tracing his ideas back to their ancient sources. This essay looks to the venerable tradition of world contemplation. It argues that Shaftesbury advances a specifically Stoic model of world contemplation in The Moralists. The text’s principal concern is not with this or that beautiful object but with the whole of which it and the viewer are indivisibly a (...) part; its aim is not so much to account for how we perceive beauty as to foster a characteristically Stoic orientation toward the world, one in which we overcome our egocentric view of things and align ourselves with the natural workings of the world or universe in its entirety. Far from being ‘autonomous’ from the rest of life, the Stoic world contemplation Shaftesbury advocates entails a robust affirmation of existence, clear-eyed gratitude for being part of the universe, whatever the challenges and however fleeting our time in it may be. (shrink)

Post-structuralist discourses have usually been associated with forms of critique and deconstruction of social, cultural and philosophical phenomena. However, this article attempts to provide a generative approach to understanding educational leadership through Michel Foucault’s notions of power and subjectification, and Judith Butler’s notions of performativity and discursive agency through re-signification. We argue that leadership is not simply a list of traits, characteristics or behaviours to be implemented. Rather, we argue that leaders are performatively constituted through everyday practices and discourses. The (...) aim is to interrupt prevailing discourses that often re-inscribe certain forms of meaning and understanding in educational leadership. This disruption subsequently provides possibility for putting forward otherwise silenced ideas about what leadership is and how leadership ‘identity’ (subjectivity) is formed, thus expanding the methodological tools scholars can use to talk about leadership. (shrink)

It is known that people have been getting distressed for a long‐time and healthcare workers, like the military, seem to fit criteria for being at particular risk. Fairly recently a term of art, moral distress, has been added to types of distress at work, though not restricted to work, they can suffer. There are recognized scales that measure psychological distress such as the General Health Questionnaire and the Kessler scales but moral distress it is claimed is different warranting its own (...) scale. This seems to be because of both the intensity and nature of moral problems encountered at work that is so powerful and so destructive of moral agency and integrity. This paper will focus on how, if at all, moral distress is different by examining the idea of moral normativity. Moral normativity is understood as roughly the sort of thing that all rational persons would endorse regardless of his interests, having an “automatic reason giving force” and is likely to also require an overriding force. Specifically, it will examine how this force of moral claims seems to be needed for moral distress to be so destructive of healthcare professional's moral agency and integrity. This is related to the idea of warrantedness of the reaction of distress. Even if morality had such a strong normativity, one can still ask is distress the correct or warranted reaction? It seems plausible that if distress is a correct response for it to be both moral and warranted it needs a strong account of moral normativity. The idea of a distinct form of distress as moral distress may be true in theory but is too contested both ontologically and epistemologically for a useful practice of measurement at present. (shrink)

How ought we to understand the sources and limits of the authority of family members to make health care decisions for their decisionally incapacitated relatives? This question is becoming increasingly crucial as the population ages and the power of medical technology waxes. It is also becoming increasingly contested, as faith in advance directives shows signs of waning, and the moral complexities of intimate relationship become more theoretically patent.This last point—the newly visible moral richness of intimate relationship—provides this paper with its (...) field. I am interested in probing the images of the relationship between self and other, particularly self and intimate other, that seem presupposed by some leading attempts to determine the basis for proxy decision-making authority, and what constraints it must observe. In the light of both recent work in the philosophy of mind and considerations closer to common experience, the reigning images seem too slight to support the weight of current practices and beliefs about proxy authority; supplanting them with images more faithful to our experience will have implications for our practice with proxies. (shrink)

How ought we to understand the sources and limits of the authority of family members to make health care decisions for their decisionally incapacitated relatives? This question is becoming increasingly crucial as the population ages and the power of medical technology waxes. It is also becoming increasingly contested, as faith in advance directives shows signs of waning, and the moral complexities of intimate relationship become more theoretically patent.This last point—the newly visible moral richness of intimate relationship—provides this paper with its (...) field. I am interested in probing the images of the relationship between self and other, particularly self and intimate other, that seem presupposed by some leading attempts to determine the basis for proxy decision-making authority, and what constraints it must observe. In the light of both recent work in the philosophy of mind and considerations closer to common experience, the reigning images seem too slight to support the weight of current practices and beliefs about proxy authority; supplanting them with images more faithful to our experience will have implications for our practice with proxies. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that despite undeniable fundamental differences between Descartes’ and Spinoza’s accounts of human action, there are some striking similarities between their views on right action, moral motivation, and virtue that are usually overlooked. I will argue, first, that both thinkers define virtue in terms of activity or freedom, mutatis mutandis, and thus in terms of actual power of acting. Second, I will claim that both Descartes and Spinoza hold a non-consequentialist approach to virtue, by which human (...) actions are evaluated as virtuous or good on the basis of their motivational forces rather than their consequences. I will show further that both philosophers identify virtue qua free action with the highest good, and thus with that which is to be sought for its own sake and not as a means to anything preferable to it. (shrink)

Many commentators have contrasted the way that sociability is theorized in the writings of Mary Astell and Damaris Masham, emphasizing the extent to which Masham is more interested in embodied, worldly existence. I argue, by contrast, that Astell's own interest in imagining a constitutively relational individual emerges once we pay attention to her use of religious texts and tropes. To explore the relevance of Astell's Christianity, I emphasize both how Astell's Christianity shapes her view of the individual's relation to society (...) and how Masham's contrasting views can be analyzed through the lens of her charge that Astell is an “enthusiast.” In late seventeenth-century England, “enthusiasm” was a term of abuse that, commentators have recently argued, could function polemically to dismiss those deemed either excessively social or antisocial. By accusing Astell of enthusiasm, I claim, Masham seeks to marginalize the relational self that Astell imagines and to promote a more instrumental view of social ties. I suggest some aspects of Astell's thought that may have struck contemporaries as “enthusiastic” and contrast her vision of the self with Masham's more hedonistic subject. I conclude that, although each woman differently configures the relation between self and society, they share a desire to imagine autonomy within a relational framework. (shrink)

A review of the paradigms of social influence – suggestion, imitation, normalization, conformity, compliance, conversion – leads me to diagnose a triple malaise: the shrinkage of paradigms to cognitive dual-processing theories of information; the dominant methodology of laboratory experiments falls short of the reality of (mass) communication; and the focus of social influence on inter-subjectivity is only half of the story. I will suggest two extensions of social influence theory to include mass media communication and the inter-objectivity of artefacts. We (...) need to be able to conceptualize the modalities of why, how and to what effect somebody might put up a wall to influence neighbours instead of contenting themselves with putting up a public note ‘Do not trespass!’. Social influence by fait accompli needs to be within the remit of social psychology, otherwise it loses its relevance in a technological society where artefacts mediate most inter-personal relations. (shrink)

Nurse leaders, including clinical nurse educators, who exercise stewardship at the point of service, may facilitate practising nurses' articulation of their shared value priorities, including respect for persons' dignity and self-determination, as well as equity and fairness. A steward preserves and promotes what is intrinsically valuable in an experience. Theories of virtue ethics and discourse ethics supply contexts for clinical nurse educators to clarify how they may facilitate nurses' articulation of their shared value priorities through particularism and universalism, as well (...) as how they may safeguard nurses' self-interpretation and discursive reasoning. Together, clinical nurse educators and nurses may contribute to management decisions that affect the point of service, and thus the health care organization. (shrink)

We have a strong intuition that personal identity is a determinate relationship. Parfit famously challenged this intuition. In this paper I explain how narrative identity theories can face that challenge and defend that personal identity is determinate thanks to what I call the social narrativity thesis. This move will raise some concerns regarding the also strong intuition that personal identity is what matters when we care about our future existence. I address this concern to show that narrative identity theories can (...) account for both intuitions at the same time. (shrink)

En este artículo argumento a favor de dos tesis. Primero, defiendo que las teorías narrativas de la identidad personal deben comprometerse con la intuición de que la identidad es una relación determinada. Segundo, muestro cómo las teorías narrativas pueden ser exitosas en este empeño dando cabida a la dimensión social de nuestra existencia en tanto personas. Para organizar mi exposición me centro en uno de los casos más conflictivos para las teorías de la identidad personal: los casos de duplicación. Ante (...) estos casos, las únicas opciones disponibles parecen ser bien aceptar que la identidad personal es indeterminada, o bien dar una respuesta arbitraria que permita conservar la determinación de la identidad a costa de vaciar la relación de identidad de toda su importancia práctica. Argumentaré por qué las teorías narrativas pueden escapar de ese dilema mediante una tercera vía. (shrink)

Public attitudes concerning cognitive enhancements are significant for a number of reasons. They tell us about how socially acceptable these emerging technologies are considered to be, but they also provide a window into the ethical reasons that are likely to get traction in the ongoing debates about them. We thus see Conrad et al’s project of empirically investigating the effect of metaphors and context in shaping attitudes about cognitive enhancements as both interesting and important. We sketch what we suspect is (...) a central theme that runs through these public attitudes, but that Conrad el al’s paper elides. We were disappointed that they did not more directly explore the efficacy of frames and metaphors associated with the values of authenticity and self-expression. This seems like a missed opportunity. Based on the premise that individualistic values enjoy centrality in Western and especially North American culture (e.g. Taylor 1989), we hypothesize that metaphors and frames informed by those values will be especially effective in shaping public attitudes. That is, when various kinds of novel enhancement are described as allowing people to more fully express themselves, or as helping people overcome obstacles to being authentic and true to their inner sense of themselves, those enhancements will be considered justified, and their use more likely to be viewed as socially acceptable by the public. We support our contention by drawing on work by Elliott (2004, 2011, c.f. Kadlac 2018), and discuss how this study, and others modeled on it, might shed light on our hypothesis. (shrink)

Imaginary is, in Taylor's thought, a category of understanding social praxis and the reasons people give to make sense of these practices. The ultimate reason is the hypergood, which influences the strong decisions. Those strong evaluations outline the moral framework from which people address their own lives and the lives of others. We only recognize our cultural framework as an `imaginary' — challenging the supposition it is something `objective' — when others make their apparition in our lives. After the encounter (...) nobody remains the same; something in our imaginary has changed. The outcome of this process is the `best account' we have to make sense of our life. If we accept the category of `imaginary' and the process of `best account' as accurate enough to address Latin American reality, the problem we have to solve is how we can find out a Latin American social imaginary. (shrink)

This paper argues that autonomy is an educational ideal. Since personal autonomy is essentially a matter of the person governing herself, a plausible account of autonomy presupposes an account of u person's identity. I support a conception of autonomy which presupposes a hierarchical theory of the self, yet allows rationality a significant place in a person's identity. I defend this conception of autonomy as an educational ideal from recent criticisms by Stone (1990) and Cuypers (1992).

Certain of our traits are thought more central to who we are: they comprise our individual identity. What makes these traits privileged in this way? What accounts for their identity centrality? Although considerations of identity play a key role in many different areas of moral philosophy, I argue that we currently have no satisfactory account of the basis of identity centrality. Nor should we expect one. Rather, we should adopt an error theory: we should concede that there is nothing in (...) reality corresponding to the perceived distinction between the central and peripheral traits of a person. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that there exist distinctive obstacles to relying on moral testimony. In this paper, I criticize previous attempts to identify these obstacles and offer a new theory. I argue that the problems associated with moral deference can't be explained in terms of the value of moral understanding, nor in terms of aretaic considerations related to subjective integration. Instead, our uneasiness with moral testimony is best explained by our attachment to an ideal of authenticity that places special demands on (...) our moral beliefs. (shrink)

Multiple selves is a conventional assumption in behavioural welfare economics for modelling intrapersonal well-being. Yet an important question is which self has normative authority over others. In this paper, we advance an argument for what we call the ‘ontological approach’ to personal identity in behavioural welfare economics. According to this approach, ethical questions – such as which preference should be granted normative authority over another – can be informed by the ontological criterion of personal persistence, which aims at determining what (...) it takes for an individual to persist from one time to another. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 2, Page 356-370, April 2022.

It is commonly argued that values “fill the logical gap” of underdetermination of theory by evidence, namely, values affect our choice between two or more theories that fit the same evidence. The underdetermination model, however, does not exhaust the roles values play in evidential reasoning. I introduce WAVE – a novel account of the logical relations between values and evidence. WAVE states that values influence evidential reasoning by adjusting evidential weights. I argue that the weight-adjusting role of values is distinct (...) from their underdetermination gap-filling role. Values adjust weights in three ways. First, values affect our trust in the testimony of others. Second, values influence the evidential thresholds required for justified epistemic judgments. Third, values influence the relative weight of a certain type of evidence within a body of multimodal discordant evidence. WAVE explains, from an epistemic perspective, rather than psychological, how smokers, for example, can find the same evidence about the dangers of smoking less persuasive than non-smokers. WAVE allows for a wider effect of values on our accepted scientific theories and beliefs than the effect for which the underdetermination model allows alone; therefore, science studies scholars must consider WAVE in their research and analysis of evidential case studies. (shrink)

This paper offers a narrative approach to understanding the process of clinical reasoning in complex cases involving medical uncertainty, moral ambiguity, and futility. We describe a clinical encounter in which the pediatric health care team experienced a great deal of conflict and distrust as a result of an ineffective process of interpretation and communication. We propose a systematic method for analyzing the technical, ethical, behavioral, and existential dimensions of the clinical reasoning process, and introduce the Clinical Reasoning Discussion Tool—a dialogical (...) and interpretive device aimed at improving communication, understanding, empathy, and moral deliberation in the clinical setting. (shrink)

This paper identifies cultural disenchantment as a crucial concept in Rorty's understanding of liberalism, and considers how Rorty's use of this term draws on but also differs from similar ideas in Nietzsche and Weber. It argues that Rorty's notion of disenchantment complements his Darwinian view of human nature and his conception of the self as a centerless web of beliefs and desires. These three principal ideas form the basis of Rorty's novel theoretical approach to liberal democracy and of his belief (...) in its ability to sustain itself without its traditional rationalist justifications. (shrink)