The moral basis of liberal education

The moral right to liberal education involves issues of distribution and of content. The former issue bears on the distribution of educational resources. The latter issue bears on the issue of multiculturalism. Both issues are discussed from the standpoint of equal rights.Presented as the first Distinguished Lecture to the Association for Philosophy of Education at its meeting in New York, 28 December 1991.     

A Third Principle of Justice

In this paper I argue that in order to secure the commitment of believers in reasonable comprehensive doctrines to political liberalism a third principle of justice needs to be adopted in the Original Position. Rawls acknowledges that neutral legislation by the liberal state may negatively affect some reasonable comprehensive doctrines, and I offer a third principle of justice to help alleviate this problem. This principle, which I believe is in keeping with the United States constitutional history especially where church-state relations are concerned, maintains that a constitutional regime should, insofar as possible, avoid adopting rules with harmful effects upon those comprehensive doctrines which satisfy the conditions of reasonable pluralism.     

The Question of God in an Age of Science: Constructions of Reality and Ultimate Reality in Theology and Science

Both science and theology have lately faced a crisis of authority. Their shared realization of the extent to which knowledge is underdetermined by the data and socially constructed provides a kind of common ground for reconsideration of their respective methods of inquiry as well as of the status of the claims they have warrant to make. Both fields are now consciously and critically employing a models approach. This article proposes criteria for assessing models and applies the criteria to one model from each field. The model of understanding evolution as a struggle for existence is considered from the field of science, and the traditional model for understanding the God-world relation as that of a king's relation to his kingdom is considered from the field of theology. Each of these models is evaluated with respect to its credibility, religious viability, and moral adequacy. In each case an alternative analogy is proposed and argued for.     

Forms of Authority and the Real Ad Verecundiam

This paper provides a typology of appeals to authority, identifying three distinct types: that which is based on a command; that which is based on expertise; and that which is based on dignity. Each type is distinguished with respect to the reaction that a failure to follow it ordinarily evokes. The rhetorical roots of Locke's ad verecundiam are traced to the rhetorical practices of ancient Rome.     

Group climate in an open-ended cancer support group

A number of well-described, controlled studies assessing cancer support group intervention support their effectiveness. All of these experimental groups have been close-ended and typically involve six to eight weekly sessions. Because many cancer patients are unable or unwilling to participate in closed, extended-session groups, there is particular need for analysis of the effectiveness of short-term, open-ended groups. Additionally, objective measures are needed to delineate the factors contributing to a successful outcome in cancer support groups. We used the Short Form of the Group Climate Questionnaire (GCQ-S) to characterize 23 sessions in an open-ended, short-term, Veterans Hospital based cancer support group. The cancer group scored significantly lower on the Avoiding and Conflict dimensions (p<.001) compared to a normative psychotherapy group sample. There was no difference on the Engaged dimension. This pilot study suggests that a cancer support group in this setting can create an environment where members are cohesive and take responsibility for their own change process, while keeping interpersonal conflict to a minimum. Based on these preliminary findings, we encourage controlled clinical trials examining the efficacy of open-ended cancer support groups.At the time of this study, Dr. Daroff was a resident in Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco.     

Should a criminal receive a heart transplant? Medical Justice vs. Societal Justice

Should the nation provide expensive care and scarce organs to convicted felons? We distinguish between two fields of justice: Medical Justice and Societal Justice. Although there is general acceptance within the medical profession that physicians may distribute limited treatments based solely on potential medical benefits without regard to nonmedical factors, that does not mean that society cannot impose limits based on societal factors. If a society considers the convicted felon to be a full member, then that person would be entitled to at least a “decent minimum” level of care — which might include access to scarce life-saving organs. However, if criminals forfeit their entitlement to the same level of medical care afforded to all members of society, they still would be entitled to a kind of “rudimentary decent minimum” granted to all persons on simple humanitarian grounds. Almost certainly this entitlement would not include access to organ transplants.     

Catholic Feminist Ethics Reconsidered

Taking Catholic sexual ethics and liberal feminist ethics as points of departure, this essay argues that both frameworks are ill‐prepared to deal with the moral problems raised by sex trafficking: while Catholic sexual ethics is grounded in a normative understanding of sexuality, liberal feminist ethics argues for women's sexual autonomy, resting upon freedom of action and consent. From a perspective that attends both to the phenomenological interpretation of embodied selves and the Kantian normative interpretation of dignity, it becomes possible to critique both the Catholic and the liberal feminist frameworks of ethics. I argue that Catholic sexual ethics requires a reconceptualization as social ethics in order to meet the challenges of our present time, but that the shift is possible without giving up the moral imperatives of both Catholic and feminist ethics to protect human dignity and women's rights.     

The contribution of school experience to students' resilience following a terror-related homicide

Schools have a significant effect on students' development, and serve as important social agencies for interventions for students facing disasters. However, little is known about the effect of students' school experience itself on their resilience when facing extreme negative events. The present study focused on students who were exposed to terror-related homicide with the aim of investigating the contribution of school climate resources to their resilience. Since resilience is associated not only with fewer negative outcomes, but also with positive change, the contribution of schools was studied as both inhibiting post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTS) and enhancing post-traumatic growth (PTG). A mixed-methods research design was used. The participants included 117 (52% girls) high school students (mean age = 14.54; SD = 1.49). Twenty-five of them were interviewed in addition to responding to the research questionnaires. Different aspects of the school climate were found to be associated with students' PTS and PTG, yielding two overarched factors explaining the school's role as a protective resource: sheltering and supporting. The former is associated with fewer PTS and the latter with higher PTG. The use of different resources for different forms of resilience is discussed.     

Things fall apart. The cultural complex in contemporary times1

These extraordinary months due to COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests, set as they are against a backdrop of the increasingly worrying climate emergency, have brought fear, anxiety and discord across the globe. But we have also experienced a deepening of our understanding of our connectedness, protests against injustice, expressions of social concern and a demand for change. The concept of the cultural complex as developed by Singer & Kimbles (2004) offers a helpful means of connecting the psychology of the individual psyche and the political phenomena of power relations. Using a small example to illustrate how it might operate at a local level, I suggest that a fundamental shift is taking place raising profound levels of anxiety as we move from the known to the unknown. The bipolar nature of these complexes means the extremes are surfacing bringing fears of the very real possibility of more entrenched attacks on democracy from the far right and the hunkering down behind armed borders. But there is also hope that different ways of living together may be developing from the ground up, ways that are rooted in our sense of interdependence – with each other and our planetary home.     

Changing the Criminal Justice System Response to Sexual Assault: An Empirical Study of a Participatory Action Research Project

In jurisdictions throughout the United States, thousands of sexual assault kits (SAKs; also known as a “rape kits”) have not been submitted by the police for forensic DNA testing. DNA evidence may be helpful to sexual assault investigations and prosecutions by identifying perpetrators, revealing serial offenders through DNA matches across cases, and exonerating those who have been wrongly accused. This paper describes a longitudinal action research project conducted in Detroit, Michigan after that city discovered approximately 11,000 untested sexual assault kits in a police department storage facility. We conducted a root cause analysis to examine individual, organizational, community, and societal factors that contributed to the development of the rape kit backlog in Detroit. Based on those findings, we implemented and evaluated structural changes to increase staffing, promote kit testing, and retrain police and prosecutors so that cases could be reopened for investigation and prosecution. As we conducted this work, we also studied how this action research project impacted the Detroit criminal justice system. Participating in this project changed stakeholders’ attitudes about the utility of research to address community problems, the usefulness of DNA evidence in sexual assault cases, and the impact of trauma on survivors. The results led to new protocols for SAK testing and police investigations, and new state legislation mandating SAK forensic DNA testing.