Already a subscriber? - Login here
Not yet a subscriber? - Subscribe here

Browse by:



Displaying: 1-11 of 11 documents


symposium on sex

1. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 30 > Issue: 2
Allison B. Wolf

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The last fifteen years have seen an increasing social science scholarship into the nature and pervasiveness of hooking up amongst college students,1 but research on the philosophical and ethical issues within hookup culture and practice has not kept pace. To the extent that hooking up has been taken up by philosophers, it has been as part of a larger conversation about the ethics of casual sex, broadly construed; a conversation which is dominated by questions of objectification. As such, investigations into the ethics of hookup sex have been limited to questions of whether someone was used in the encounter.2 This essay aims to change this by utilizing Ann Cahill’s recent book, Overcoming Objectification, to argue that the ethical problems with hookup sex in Guyland are not rooted in women’s objectification but rather their derivatization.
2. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 30 > Issue: 2
Natasha McKeever Orcid-ID

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
It is usually taken for granted that romantic relationships will be sexual, but it seems that there is no necessary reason for this, as it is possible for romantic relationships to not include sex. Indeed, sometimes sex is a part of a romantic relationship for only a relatively short period of it. Furthermore, scientific explanations of the link between sex and love don’t seem fully satisfying because they tell us only about the mechanics of sex, rather than its meaning or phenomenology. Therefore, the question of why it is that the archetypal romantic relationship includes sex, calls for philosophical analysis, yet it has been under-explored in philosophy. In this paper, I attempt to remedy this. I argue that sex is important to romantic love because it partly constitutes, builds, and expresses four of the central goods of a romantic relationship: 1) pleasure, 2) union, 3) intimacy, and 4) vulnerability and care. Thus, sex can be, and often is, an important vehicle for romantic love, though it is not essential for it.
3. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 30 > Issue: 2
Mark Piper

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
It is often claimed that adultery can be morally permissible in cases where those engaged in adulterous behavior are part of an open marriage. Yet this only follows if the institution of open marriage itself can be justified. This problem has been generally overlooked, but it deserves attention, as it is far from evident that open marriage has sterling moral credentials. I argue that the most promising general justification of the institution of open marriage is not based on consequentialist or aretaic principles, but rather on the principle of respect for autonomy. Yet while this principle justifies the institution of open marriage in the most general sense, it does not justify every case of adultery involving an open marriage. Whether a given case of adultery is rendered morally permissible by the presence of an open marriage will depend on whether the open marriage in question satisfies several other moral desiderata.

symposium on psychotherapy

4. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 30 > Issue: 2
Rick A. Stephan, Omar M. Alhassoon, Ava Torre-Bueno

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Recent studies indicate that adapting common components of universal healing practices increases the effectiveness of multicultural therapies, especially incorporating initial and reformulated myths. The Socratic method, part of an original philosophical process directed toward therapeutic goals, has long been instrumental to many psychotherapies, but limited in application to dialectical discourse. Through a rediscovery and clarification of the original integrated Socratic-Platonic method inclusive of mythmaking as well as systematic questioning, the authors argue that this new, more comprehensive model provides a foundation for increasing the effectiveness of multicultural psychotherapies.
5. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 30 > Issue: 2
Shannon B. Proctor

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Habits and habitudes are peculiar in that they are both a condition of human agency, as well as one of its most significant hurdles. They open up the world by providing us with ways of being within it (e.g., how we perceive, move about, and generally orient ourselves in space). However, they also confine our worldly behavior given their repetitive and often predictable nature. This tension between spontaneity and repetition arises out of the two-fold temporal structure of habits—i.e., the habitual body simultaneously directs us toward the future and the past. An understanding of this tension is generally important for thinking about how individuals can do things differently. More urgently, this work has applications in the treatment of addictions and other compulsive behaviors where the difficulties of disrupting habitual repetition are much more pronounced.

articles

6. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 30 > Issue: 2
Victoria I. Burke

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
In this paper I defend the view that conscience exemption clauses for medical practitioners (doctors, nurses, technicians, pharmacists) should be limited by patient protection clauses. This view was also defended by Mark Wicclair, in his book on conscience exemptions in medicine (2011). In this article, I defend Wicclair’s view by supplementing it with Hegelian ethical theory and feminist critical theory. Conscience exemptions are important to support as a matter of human rights. They support an individual’s right to protect their deepest value-commitments. A true understanding of conscience is dialectical, however, and it requires patient protection clauses because they too protect individuals in their deepest value-commitments. I show that the defense of patient protection clauses is historically supported by the theory of “conscience [Gewissen]” developed by G. W. F. Hegel in the nineteenth century (mostly in the Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]).
7. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 30 > Issue: 2
Janna Thompson

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Intergenerational justice gives present citizens obligations to past as well as future generations. Present members of a political society have an obligation to respect the contributions of their predecessors. But respect for past generations also means taking their intergenerational objectives into account in political decision-making—giving them weight in determining intergenerational policies—and thus treating past generations as participants in intergenerational policymaking. Neither the inability of the dead to have experiences, nor epistemological difficulties in determining their interests, nor the entitlement of present citizens to make political decisions are reasons for ignoring or discounting the intergenerational concerns of past generations.
8. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 30 > Issue: 2
Shane Ryan

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Standard representative democracy is criticised on democratic grounds and the case is made for an alternative system of democratic governance. The paper discusses ways in which representative democracy falls short of the democratic ideal of self-governance. Referendum and initiative are examined as mechanisms that further self-governance, but are argued not to go far enough. Direct democracy is considered as an alternative to representative democracy, but the case is made that even on democratic grounds direct democracy is unnecessarily demanding. It is argued that this is also the case with regard to Budge’s proposal for direct democratic governance, which retains a place for representation and for political parties. Real-time democracy is defended as a superior alternative. In real-time democracy, a voter’s vote is attached to an elected representative’s weighed parliamentary vote. The voter, however, is able to withdraw that vote and vote independently of her representative in parliamentary votes.
9. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 30 > Issue: 2
Ryan Jenkins, Duncan Purves

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Many social trends are conspiring to drive the adoption of greater automation in society, and we will certainly see a greater offloading of human decisionmaking to robots in the future. Many of these decisions are morally salient, including decisions about how benefits and burdens are distributed. Roboticists and ethicists have begun to think carefully about the moral decision making apparatus for machines. Their concerns often center around the plausible claim that robots will lack many of the mental capacities that are indispensable in human moral decision making, such as empathy. To the extent that robots may be robustly artificially intelligent, these concerns subside, but they give way to new worries about creating artificial agents to do our bidding, if those artificial agents have moral standing. We suggest that the question of AI consciousness poses a dilemma. Whether artificially intelligent agents will be conscious or not, we will face serious difficulties in programming them to reliably make moral decisions.
10. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 30 > Issue: 2
Brian K. Powell

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
One popular sort of argument for the death penalty depends on the idea of possibly saving innocent lives through added deterrent value. Defenders of such arguments generally concede that: a) we do not know whether or not the death penalty actually adds marginal deterrent value beyond life in prison, and b) any actual death penalty regime is likely to include the execution of some innocent people. Use of the death penalty might save some innocent people, but it is also likely that it will lead us to kill some innocent people. In the present paper, I attempt to give consideration to both sorts of innocents. I argue that it is morally more serious to intentionally kill people who are innocent than it is to fail to save innocent people whose death is in no way intended. Thus, in the absence of compelling evidence that our use of the death penalty would save significantly more innocent people than it would kill, we should err on the side of not using the death penalty as a means to try to achieve added deterrent value.

11. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 30 > Issue: 2

view |  rights & permissions | cited by