Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy最新文献

{"title":"Stigma and Openness","authors":"C. Mills","doi":"10.13021/G8PPPQ.292009.112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13021/G8PPPQ.292009.112","url":null,"abstract":"Most of us exchange information about ourselves, our families, and our friends with others all the time. We make casual conversation with seatmates on an airplane, chat with colleagues at the workplace, send holiday letters with a summary of our family news, and have heart-to-heart conversation with our friends about the minutia of our lives. My question is how information about someone's mental illness should be treated in our routine exchanges with one another. On the one hand, it is widely regarded that mental illness should be regarded as any other illness: admitted openly and discussed without shame, on the model of how we treat diseases such as cancer or diabetes. If I would mention that my sister had breast cancer, why wouldn't I mention that she was struggling with bipolar disorder, when the conversation had turned to the topic of current family crises? If I would mention that my child was being treated for diabetes, why wouldn't I mention that he was being treated for depression? Mental illness is a genuine illness, with an identifiable physiological basis in aberrant brain chemistry. To avoid mentioning mental illness, when one would have openly mentioned some other form of illness, is to perpetuate a stigma surrounding mental illness that--one hopes--is woefully outdated. It certainly seems important to act collectively to reduce the stigma that wrongly surrounds mental illness, and one way to do this is to refuse to shroud mental illness in protective secrecy, as if it were indeed something one should hide. On the other hand, three distinctive features of mental illness need to be considered in deciding how best to proceed with open communication about it. The first feature is shared by other socially sensitive conditions such as homosexuality and AIDS, so we may gain insight by comparing how information about these other conditions should be shared as well. The other two, however, seem distinctive to mental illness. Reducing the Stigma of Mental Illness First, even if we believe that mental illness is unfairly stigmatized, the ongoing existence of stigma means that we need to weigh an individual's interest in avoiding the deleterious consequences of revealing his illness against the good to be achieved by taking one small step toward the goal of stigma reduction. Here we need to perform some weighing of clear and significant immediate harm to one individual versus diffuse and distant collective gains. This raises a host of philosophical difficulties. As with many collective action problems, such as those faced in reducing global warming, any one individual's contribution either to solving or worsening the problem is miniscule, if not completely without any actual practical significance, whereas the costs to the individual of engaging in or refraining from the relevant behavior may be great. We might want to distinguish here between the individual herself choosing to take the step of announcing her illness and someone else making that","PeriodicalId":82464,"journal":{"name":"Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy","volume":"165 1","pages":"19-23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66668212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ethics and Poverty Tours","authors":"Evan Selinger","doi":"10.13021/G8PPPQ.292009.109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13021/G8PPPQ.292009.109","url":null,"abstract":"A new word has entered into travel discourse: \"poorism.\" \"Poorism\" refers to organized tours that bring predominantly middle and upper class people to impoverished regions. Programs exist in Brazil (South America), Soweto (Africa), Mumbai (India), Rotterdam (Netherlands), and New York (United States). According to a recent Newsweek article, the poorism market already is \"booming.\" Poorism attracts attention because advocates characterize it as a moral enterprise, a form of conscientious consumerism. But poorism is at best a morally complex endeavor. The Poorism Debate: Advocates Just as advocates of ecotourism associate nature-based tourism with environmental education and environmental justice, so too do champions of poorism associate their endeavor with education (raising awareness of global suffering) and justice (providing needed funds to destitute regions either by direct transfers to the poor themselves or by targeted spending within the impoverished areas visited). The Newsweek article focuses on trips taken by Kevin Outterson, a law professor at Boston University. Outterson offers the following observations on the consciousness-raising potential of poorism, as well as its capacity to promote service learning and beneficent volunteerism: \"We live in a world of both poverty and abundance.Many universities encourage foreign study programs as part of a globalized curriculum. But it is possible to visit middle-income countries like Brazil and Mexico without actually encountering poverty, other than chance encounters on the streets. I took my students into Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro because the residents of Rocinha make the tourist experience of Rio possible.... Rocinha residents are the workers, cooks, maids, street sweepers, waiters, store clerks and street vendors who serve Ipanema, Leblon and Copacabana. To understand how Brazil works, you need to experience more than one perspective, especially if you can do that with the permission of the community. My students have generally been impressed with many aspects of Rocinha, especially how the community has self-organized in response to government neglect.\" Generalized further, advocates who adopt Outterson's outlook insist that poorism should be an obligation that all tourists accept. Mainstream tourism ostensibly idealizes geographies and further insulates people fromawareness of the extent of existing inequality. Poorism can provide a needed glimpse into the underbelly of geopolitics. Dramatically put, then, if the slogan \"We should never forget\" captures an appropriate attitude concerning the immorality of turning a blind eye toward the barbarism that occurred during the Holocaust, then the slogan \"We should not avoid\" seems to capture an appropriate attitude toward activities such as poorism that reveal large-scale degradation that the privileged may be complicit in by virtue of their ignorance of human rights violations. Timothy Engstrom, co-editor of a recent book on theories and ","PeriodicalId":82464,"journal":{"name":"Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy","volume":"93 1","pages":"2-7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66668536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Holocaust and Moral Education","authors":"Lawrence A. Blum","doi":"10.4324/9781315126357-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315126357-5","url":null,"abstract":"F\"\"(\"1he belief that schoo~ hav.e a resp?nsibility t~ teach ~ values is a very old Idea m Amencan education. In recent years, however, the aims and methods of programs in moral education have become a subject of intense debate. Some critics believe that such programs distract schools from their essential academic mission. Religious conservatives, wary of curricula that they perceive as favoring moral relativism, insist that the teaching of values should be left to parents and religious institutions. Their distrust extends to classroom efforts to foster \"critical thinking II by inviting students to discuss their personal responses to texts and historical events. One of the most widely adopted and controversial approaches to moral education addresses the specific issues of prejudice, conformity, and individual responsibility. It does this by examining the rise of Nazism and its culmination in the Holocaust. Facing History and Ourselves, an organization created in 1976, has produced a curriculum and resource book and conducts workshops for teachers. Its materials are now offered, in some form, to 500,000 students mostly eighth and ninth graders each year. The program received an unexpected burst of attention last fall, when a political scientist who had criticized it for not presenting the \"Nazi point of view\" was named historian of the House of Representatives. Once her comments attracted public notice, Christina Jeffrey was abruptly dismissed. But her remarks provoked a spate of articles and letters in national publications concerning the teaching of the Holocaust. Most commentators spent little time refuting the charge that Facing History had fail.ed to aChi.eve \"balance or objectivity\" in its exploration of NaZIsm. Other, more significant questions about the program its assumptions and moral purposes engaged them instead. Was the Holocaust a \"unique\" event in human history? Is it legitimate to compare the Holoca~st to other historical crimes, such as those perpetrated m the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Cambodia in the 1970s, Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990s? Should the Holocaust be used as a reference point for teaching children about racism and social injustice in general about scapegoating, intolerance, and prejudice that can occur in any society?","PeriodicalId":82464,"journal":{"name":"Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70632345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Crossing a Moral Line: Long-Term Preventive Detention in the War on Terror","authors":"A. Walen","doi":"10.13021/G8PPPQ.282008.115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13021/G8PPPQ.282008.115","url":null,"abstract":"It is often argued that suspected terrorists captured in the war on terror can be detained just the same way captured enemy soldiers can: until the relevant war is over. But there is a deep disanalogy between suspected terrorists and captured enemy soldiers. Soldiers cannot be held accountable for the use of force (as long as it conforms to the law of war), whereas terrorists normally can. Detaining people who can be held accountable as if they cannot is crossing an important moral line, sacrificing the rights of the individual for the welfare of the whole.","PeriodicalId":82464,"journal":{"name":"Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy","volume":"28 1","pages":"15-21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66666744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Performance-Enhancing Technologies and the Values of Athletic Competition","authors":"D. Wasserman","doi":"10.13021/G8PPPQ.282008.116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13021/G8PPPQ.282008.116","url":null,"abstract":"For decades, the American criminal justice system has been engaged in a \"war on drugs\" that critics say cannot be won. The enthusiasm for that war has been flagging for some time; a 1989 issue of the Quarterly (then called QQ) featured an article by Claudia Mills titled \"The War on Drugs: Is it Time to Surrender?\" In amateur and professional sports, however, the war on performance-enhancing drugs has been steadily escalating in recent years. Major doping scandals have roiled several sports, and drug testing has become ever more stringent. Yet at the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where concerns about doping were pervasive, a few voices called for surrender. Some commentators argued that the war on doping was futile, since the technological sophistication of the dopers would always outstrip, if only for a few critical weeks or months, the capacity to detect their work. Others, however, argued that even if the war could be won, it wouldn't be worth fighting. As John Tierney wrote in the New York Times, \"We all know the body can be improved. We all know Olympic athletes have the highest-functioning bodies in the world. They can call themselves natural, just as they used to call themselves amateur, but at some point that claim may seem the most unnatural thing of all.\" To bolster his case, Tierney noted that the fans themselves include people \"with laser-corrected eyes, chemically whitened teeth and surgically enhanced anatomies. Not to mention the pharmacopeia coursing through our veins.\" These are still minority opinions. Just a year before the Olympics began, Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's lifetime home run record to a chorus of denunciation from sports pundits for his reported steroid use. Several months later, that chorus grew even more strident with the release of the Mitchell Report on doping in professional baseball, which gave Bonds lots of company and his detractors a surfeit of new targets. Along with cycling, the subject of frequent scandals involving widespread steroid use, baseball has now submitted itself to an intensive regime of drug testing and monitoring. But even in the unlikely event that anti-doping measures are successful in their narrow objective of deterring illegal drug use, they are ill-equipped to deal with a wider range of biotechnological interventions, which may bring far more significant changes in the performance capabilities of athletes. Unlike steroids, whose possession is illegal and whose use is widely regarded as unhealthy, these new technologies, genetic modification in particular, may at some point become legal and safe. Also unlike steroids, these technologies won't all be intended to confer a competitive advantage. Some, like the prosthetic limbs of runner Oscar Pistorius, will be designed to restore function lost to disease or disability; others, especially genetic modifications, will be intended for more general enhancement purposes. And in some cases, such as germline genetic engineering, the intervent","PeriodicalId":82464,"journal":{"name":"Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy","volume":"28 1","pages":"22-27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66666899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pushing Drugs or Pushing the Envelope: The Prosecution of Doctors in Connection with Over-Prescribing of Opium-Based Drugs","authors":"Deborah Hellman","doi":"10.13021/G8PPPQ.282008.118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13021/G8PPPQ.282008.118","url":null,"abstract":"When a doctor writes prescriptions in his office, following consultation with a patient, and receives no compensation other than the normal fee for service, can this still be drug trafficking? Recent court judgments have emphatically held that it can, but in so doing courts wrongly impose criminal liability on doctors for trusting patients.","PeriodicalId":82464,"journal":{"name":"Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy","volume":"28 1","pages":"7-12"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66667052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Enlightenment Thinking Could Bring Health Care for All Americans","authors":"S. Gambescia","doi":"10.13021/G8PPPQ.282008.120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13021/G8PPPQ.282008.120","url":null,"abstract":"Looking to the founding precepts of our nation, inspired by Enlightenment thinking, will do more to guide us in finding a way to finally provide basic health care services for all than trying to predict the vagaries of our political parties and their leaders.","PeriodicalId":82464,"journal":{"name":"Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy","volume":"28 1","pages":"19-23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66666816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Teaching the Bible in the Public Schools: Reading the Bible as Literature","authors":"J. Segal","doi":"10.13021/G8PPPQ.272007.157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13021/G8PPPQ.272007.157","url":null,"abstract":"There is increased interest in teaching the Bible \"as literature\" in public schools. The proponents may be in for a surprise. Read as literature, the Bible significantly parts company with central tenets of both Judaism and Christianity.","PeriodicalId":82464,"journal":{"name":"Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy","volume":"48 1","pages":"22-26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66666612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Soldiers, Slaves and the Liberal State","authors":"David J. Garren","doi":"10.13021/G8PPPQ.272007.159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13021/G8PPPQ.272007.159","url":null,"abstract":"Individuals in the liberal state who serve in the military ought to be permitted the right to exercise their liberty and autonomy and to refuse to serve in those wars they sincerely believe to be unjust.","PeriodicalId":82464,"journal":{"name":"Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy","volume":"27 1","pages":"8-11"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66666175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assisted Human Reproduction: Lessons of the Canadian Experience","authors":"R. Landau","doi":"10.13021/G8PPPQ.272007.161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13021/G8PPPQ.272007.161","url":null,"abstract":"The Canadian Assisted Human Reproduction Act, passed by the Canadian government on March 29, 2004, raises several important ethical issues.","PeriodicalId":82464,"journal":{"name":"Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy","volume":"27 1","pages":"18-23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66667076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}