Liao, Shen-yi, Vanessa Carbonell. Materialized Oppression in Medical Tools and Technologies
2023, American Journal of Bioethics 23(4), pp. 9-23
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Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
It is well-known that racism is encoded into the social practices and institutions of medicine. Less well-known is that racism is encoded into the material artifacts of medicine. We argue that many medical devices are not merely biased, but materialize oppression. An oppressive device exhibits a harmful bias that reflects and perpetuates unjust power relations. Using pulse oximeters and spirometers as case studies, we show how medical devices can materialize oppression along various axes of social difference, including race, gender, class, and ability. Our account uses political philosophy and cognitive science to give a theoretical basis for understanding materialized oppression, explaining how artifacts encode and carry oppressive ideas from the past to the present and future. Oppressive medical devices present a moral aggregation problem. To remedy this problem, we suggest redundantly layered solutions that are coordinated to disrupt reciprocal causal connections between the attitudes, practices, and artifacts of oppressive systems.Comment: available in this Blueprint
Liberto, Hallie. The Problem with Sexual Promises
2017, Ethics, 127(2): 383-414.
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Added by: Emma Holmes, David MacDonald, Yichi Zhang, and Samuel Dando-MooreAbstract:
I first distinguish promises with positive sexual content (e.g., promises to perform sexual acts) and promises with negative sexual content (e.g., promises to refrain from sexual acts—as one does when making monogamy promises). I argue that sexual content—even positive sexual content—does not cause a promise to misfire. However, the content of some successful promises is such that a promisee ought not to accept the promise, and, if she does accept, she ought then to release her promisor from the promise. I argue that both positive and negative sexual promises have content of this kind.Comment (from this Blueprint): Liberto argues that promises to have sex, and promises not to have sex, are a special type of promise that it is morally wrong to make. She does this by first arguing why promises to have sex are “overextensive”. This means that sexual promises promise something too important: sex. After she concludes that promises to have sex are overextensive she spends the second half of the paper arguing why promises not to have sex (i.e. monogmany promises) are not disanalogous to promises to have sex, and thus are also overextensive.
Lim, Chong-Ming. Vandalizing Tainted Commemorations
2020, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 48(2): 185-216
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Added by: Björn FreterAbstract: What should we do about “tainted” public commemorations? Recent events have highlighted the urgency of reaching a consensus on this question. However, existing discussions appear to be dominated by two naïve opposing views – to remove or preserve them. My aims in this essay are two-fold. First, I argue that the two views are not naïve, but undergirded by concerns with securing self-respect and with the character of our engagement with the past. Second, I offer a qualified defence of vandalising tainted commemorations. The defence comprises two parts. I consider two prominent suggestions – to install counter-commemorations and to add contextualising plaques – and argue that they are typically beset with difficulties. I then argue that in some circumstances, constrained vandalism is a response to tainted commemorations which effectively adjudicates the demands of the two opposing viewsComment: Lim’s paper represents one of the best attempts to charitably understand the view of those who support preservation, and furthermore constructively engages with them to the extent where a reasonable yet striking solution is proposed. Encouraged to be read with Lim, C.-M. (2020), “Transforming problematic commemorations through vandalism”, Journal of Global Ethics, 16(3): 414–421, where Lim defends the feasibility of his radical solution.
Lin, Shuen-Fu. Those Who Fly Without Wings: Depictions of the Supreme Ideal Figure in the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi
2022, In Chong, Kc. (ed.), Dao Companion to the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 16. Springer, Cham.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: I Xuan ChongAbstract:
In pre-Qin Chinese canonical texts, the supreme ideal figure with impeccable virtue and wisdom is usually referred to as the Sage (sheng 聖 or shengren 聖人). The Zhuangzi, however, is an exception. In this famous Daoist text, the supreme ideal has been referred to, in different contexts, as a Perfect Person (zhiren, 至人), a Daemonic Person (shenren, 神人), or an Authentic Person (zhenren, 真人), in addition to the Sage. Most scholars, when discussing the meanings of these terms, treat them as synonyms used by the author(s) of the Zhuangzi to designate the same figure. Very few scholars believe that they refer to four different types of ideal figures with different levels of perfection. In this article, I will first focus on depictions of the Sage, the Perfect Person, the Daemonic Person, and the Authentic Person in the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi to see whether they are used by the author to refer to the same or four different levels of a supreme ideal figure. I will then move on to discuss Zhuangzi’s art of writing as manifested in these depictions. The interpretive strategy I adopt is that of close reading with an eye to addressing the larger issues around the Inner Chapters in early Chinese culture.Comment: This chapter offers a careful reading of Zhuangzi's descriptions of the "ideal person".
Linda Zagzesbki. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge.
1996, Cambridge University Press.
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Added by: Rie Iizuka, Contributed by: Wayne RiggsPublisher’s Note:
lmost all theories of knowledge and justified belief employ moral concepts and forms of argument borrowed from moral theories, but none of them pay attention to the current renaissance in virtue ethics. This remarkable book is the first attempt to establish a theory of knowledge based on the model of virtue theory in ethics. The book develops the concept of an intellectual virtue, and then shows how the concept can be used to give an account of the major concepts in epistemology, including the concept of knowledge. This highly original work of philosophy for professionals will also provide students with an excellent introduction to epistemology, virtue theory, and the relationship between ethics and epistemology.Comment: This book is highly original, cutting edge work, suitable for students at all levels. By introducing the notion of intellectual virtues in an Aristotelian model, Linda Zagzesbki developed a whole new field of epistemology, now known as virtue responsibilism. In this book, she not only tries to explain the notion of intellectual virtues but also define knowledge by way of intellectual virtues.
Lintott, Sheila. Sublime Hunger: A Consideration of Eating Disorders Beyond Beauty
2003, Hypatia 18 (4):65-86.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag UidhirAbstract: In this paper, I argue that one of the most intense ways women are encouraged to enjoy sublime experiences is via attempts to control their bodies through excessive dieting. If this is so, then the societal-cultural contributions to the problem of eating disorders exceed the perpetuation of a certain beauty ideal to include the almost universal encouragement women receive to diet, coupled with the relative shortage of opportunities women are afforded to experience the sublime.
Lintott, Sheila. Toward Eco-Friendly Aesthetics
2006, Environmental Ethics 28 (1):57-76.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag UidhirAbstract: Environmentalists can make individuals more eco-friendly by dispelling many of the myths and misconceptions about the natural world. By learning what in nature is and is not dangerous, and in what contexts the danger is real, individuals can come to aesthetically appreciate seemingly unappreciable nature. Since aesthetic attraction can be an extremely valuable tool for environmentalists, with potential beyond that of scientific education, the quest for an eco-friendly is neither unnecessary nor redundant. Rather, an eco-friendly aesthetic ought to be pursued in conjunction with other efforts to protect nature
Little, Margaret Olivia. Abortion, intimacy, and the duty to gestate
1999, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 2 (3):295-312.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon FoktAbstract: In this article, I urge that mainstream discussions of abortion are dissatisfying in large part because they proceed in polite abstraction from the distinctive circumstances and meanings of gestation. Such discussions, in fact, apply to abortion conceptual tools that were designed on the premiss that people are physically demarcated, even as gestation is marked by a thorough-going intertwinement. We cannot fully appreciate what is normatively at stake with legally forcing continued gestation, or again how to discuss moral responsibilities to continue gestating, until we appreciate in their own terms the goods and evils distinctive of gestational connection. To underscore the need to explore further the meanings of gestation, I provide two examples of the difference it might make to legal and moral discussions of abortion if we appreciate more fully that gestation is an intimacy.
Little, Margaret Olivia. Why a feminist approach to bioethics?
1996, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 6 (1):1-18.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon FoktAbstract: Many have asked how and why feminist theory makes a distinctive contribution to bioethics. In this essay, I outline two ways in which feminist reflection can enrich bioethical studies. First, feminist theory may expose certain themes of androcentric reasoning that can affect, in sometimes crude but often subtle ways, the substantive analysis of topics in bioethics; second, it can unearth the gendered nature of certain basic philosophical concepts that form the working tools of ethical theory.
Little, Margaret Olivia. The Moral Permissibility of Abortion
2014, In Andrew I. Cohen & Christopher Wellman (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics. Chichester: Wiley & Sons.. pp. 51-62.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon FoktAbstract: When a woman or girl finds herself pregnant, is it morally permissible for her to end that pregnancy? One dominant tradition says 'no'; its close cousin says 'rarely' - exceptions may be made where the burdens on the individual girl or woman are exceptionally dire, or, for some, when the pregnancy results from rape. On both views, though, there is an enormous presumption against aborting, for abortion involves the destruction of something we have no right to destroy. Those who reject this claim, it is said, do so by denying the dignity of early human life - and imperiling their own. I think these views are deeply flawed. They are, I believe, based on a problematic conception of how we should value early human life; more than that, they are based on a profoundly misleading view of gestation and a deontically crude picture of morality. I believe that early abortion is fully permissible, widely decent, and, indeed, can be honorable. This is not, though, because I regard burgeoning human life as 'mere tissue': on the contrary, I think it has a value worthy of special respect. It is, rather, because I believe that the right way to value early human life, and the right way to value what is involved in and at stake with its development, lead to a view that regards abortion as both morally sober and morally permissible. Abortion at later stages of pregnancy becomes, for reasons I shall outline, multiply more complicated; but it is early abortions - say, abortions in the first half of pregnancy - that are most at stake for women.
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