John Harsanyi has offered an argument grounded in Bayesian decision theory that purports to show that John Rawls's original position analysis leads directly to utilitarian conclusions. After explaining why a prominent Rawlsian line of response to Harsanyi's argument fails, I argue that a seemingly innocuous Bayesian rationality assumption, the continuity axiom, is at the heart of a fundamental disagreement between Harsanyi and Rawls. The most natural way for a Rawlsian to respond to Harsanyi's line of analysis, I argue, is to reject continuity. I then argue that this Rawlsian response fails as a defence of the difference principle, and I raise some concerns about whether it makes sense to posit the discontinuities needed to support the other elements of Rawls's view, although I suggest that Rawls may be able to invoke discontinuity to vindicate part of his first principle of justice.

According to Wlodek Rabinowicz's fitting-attitude analysis of comparative value, it is possible to analyse both standard and non-standard value relations in terms of the standard preference relations and two levels of normativity. In a recent article, however, Johan Gustafsson has argued that Rabinowicz's analysis violates a principle of value–preference symmetry, according to which for any value relation, there is a corresponding preference relation. Gustafsson has proposed an alternative analysis which respects this principle and which allegedly accounts for the idea that originally motivated Rabinowicz's analysis, namely, that in some cases different preference relations between a pair of items are equally permissible. The goal of my article is to show that the arguments offered by Gustafsson in favour of his account do not succeed. In particular, I argue that Gustafsson faces a dilemma: either he abandons the principle of value–preference symmetry or he cannot make conceptual room for multiple permissible preferences.

This article describes the culture of activist black Christian congregations that propelled campaigns to dismantle legalized racial segregation and advocate for equal justice. Historically, as the imperfections of American democracy were exposed, the most marginal people in the society acted persistently and repeatedly to extend the benefits of democracy to all citizens. The article highlights the distinctive social and intellectual contributions of the secular activist W. E. B. Du Bois and social gospel minister Martin Luther King. The author sees the contemporary discussion and faith-based mobilization around reversing mass incarceration as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement. Finally, the article suggests that leadership for the next global human rights revolution is likely to emerge from students and young leaders who are committed to radically inclusive conceptions of democracy, equality, and social justice.

Most people believe that some optimific acts are wrong. Since we are not permitted to perform wrong acts, we are not permitted to carry out optimific wrongs. Does the moral relevance of the distinction between action and omission nonetheless permit us to allow others to carry them out? I show that there exists a plausible argument supporting the conclusion that it does. To resist my argument, we would have to endorse a principle according to which, for any wrong action, there is some reason to prevent that action over and above those reasons associated with preventing harm to its victim(s). I argue that it would be a mistake to value the prevention of wrong acts in the way required to resist my argument.

When the third Earl Grey attempted, between 1846 and 1851, to promote federations in Australasia, South Africa, and British North America, he found scant support either at home or in the colonies concerned. He failed (except, in a sense, in New Zealand) partly because his schemes were more visionary than practically suited to existing colonial conditions, and partly because measures “imposed by the imperial authority” were apt to encounter difficulties abroad and, therefore, political trouble at home. Following Grey's departure from the Colonial Office, imperial policy makers refrained from prescribing federal systems for the settlement colonies. His abortive plans, however, had consequences during the next twenty years which, though different from Grey's intentions, amply vindicated the ability of the imperial government to exert its authority, and established, in the end, the desirability of colonial federations. For a decade and a half after 1850, the home government repeatedly and successfully frustrated local proposals for federation in the three continental groups of colonies. Then, between 1864 and 1870, it hurried to completion the union of British North America, and set about promoting that of South Africa. At the same time, it refrained from pressing any such development upon Australia, and actually arranged the dismantling of New Zealand's federal/provincial system.

No inconsistency was involved. Britain's policy towards all these colonies was designed in favor of its own interests, tempered by a remarkable consideration of those of the colonies. The chief imperial object during the period in question (c. 1850-1870) was to reduce the country's military and political commitments; and the chosen device for the purpose was encouragement of colonial self-government, in various forms, including republican independence in the Boer states of South Africa.

Sign-Based Construction Grammar (sbcg) is, on the one hand, a formalized version of Berkeley Construction Grammar (bcg), and, on the other hand, a further development of constructionist Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (hpsg). The volume edited by Hans Boas and Ivan Sag is the first book length presentation of the framework. Its centerpiece is a 130-page synopsis of the theory by Ivan Sag. The other contributions to the volume provide background, justification, case studies, an extension to diachronic syntax and a presentation of the FrameNet Constructicon. This review gives a guided tour of the framework, explaining its central notions and assumptions, as well as the notation in which they are cast. It also compares the sbcg framework with other types of Construction Grammar and with hpsg. The case studies are summarized and briefly evaluated.

Claimed rights to sexual expression unlinked to the creation of children are among the strongest challenges facing the free exercise of religion in the United States today. Such rights gained importance by means of a series of Supreme Court opinions associating consensual sexual expression unlinked to children with human dignity and even personal identity. These were accompanied by legal and cultural movements, led by more privileged Americans, diminishing children's rights in favor of adults', in the context of sex, marriage, and parenting. Laws and regulations protecting and promoting sexual expression detached from children are powerfully affecting religious institutions that operate health care, educational, and social services available to all Americans; the Catholic Church is a particularly prominent supplier of all of these services. Respecting the Catholic Church, it is possible but quite difficult to maintain respect for its free exercise of religion in the current environment, potentially by highlighting its measurable contributions to the common good. It might also be useful to show the close link between Catholic teachings on sex and marriage and the entire Catholic cosmology, such that coercing Catholics to behave otherwise is tantamount to coercing them to practice a different faith.

By the turn of the twenty-first century, scholars had transformed our understanding of class, race, and ethnicity in the rise and demise of the US coal industry. Under the twin impact of the modern Black Freedom Movement and the rise of the New Labor History, studies of American labor and race relations fragmented during the late twentieth century. Following the lead of pioneering labor historian Herbert Gutman, one influential body of scholarship resuscitated the early history of the United Mine Workers of America and accented the emergence of remarkable forms of labor solidarity across the color line during the industrial era. Before this scholarship could gain a firm footing in the historiography of labor and working-class history, however, social activist and labor scholar Herbert Hill forcefully argued that emerging emphases on interracial working-class cooperation downplayed the persistence of racial divisions even during the most promising episodes of labor unity. In significant ways, the Hill−Gutman debate fueled the florescence of whiteness studies and the myriad ways that both capital and labor benefitted from a racially stratified workforce. Based upon this rapidly expanding historiography of coalminers in America, this essay explores how the overlapping experiences of black and white miners established the foundation for modes of cooperation as well as conflict, but the persistence of white supremacist ideology and social practices repeatedly undermined sometimes heroic movements to bridge the chasm between black and white workers.

This article surveys ten years of Asian involvement with Arctic research, from 2004 to 2013. The Asian countries have consolidated their Arctic research efforts, with publication output, funding and infrastructure showing a marked increase from 2008. Most of this research is in the natural sciences and relates to climate change, but there is also an emerging branch of social science studies. National polar institutes play important roles as links between the science communities and governments. Asian polar research still focuses more on Antarctica than the Arctic. As to the relationship between research and policies, there is little evidence that the Asian governments have aspirations of gaining political influence through their Arctic research.

In 1966, Henry K. Beecher published an article entitled “Ethics and Clinical Research” in the New England Journal of Medicine, which cited examples of ethically problematic human research. His influential paper drew attention to common moral problems such as inadequate attention to informed consent, risks, and efforts to provide ethical justification. Beecher’s paper provoked significant advancements in human research policies and practices. In this paper, we use an approach modeled after Beecher’s 1966 paper to show that moral problems with animal research are similar to the problems Beecher described for human research. We describe cases that illustrate ethical deficiencies in the conduct of animal research, including inattention to the issue of consent or assent, incomplete surveys of the harms caused by specific protocols, inequitable burdens on research subjects in the absence of benefits to them, and insufficient efforts to provide ethical justification. We provide a set of recommendations to begin to address these deficits.

We provide a comprehensive list of microorganisms (algae, Archaea, bacteria,cyanobacteria, fungi, and Protista) inhabiting cryoconite holes on glaciersthroughout the world, giving an updated taxonomy accompanied by geographiccoordinates and localities. The list consists of 370 taxa reported fromcryoconite holes (mostly from Arctic and Antarctic regions and European Alps).However, most of the taxa were not identified to the species level. Until nowonly 39 identified species or subspecies of bacteria and Archaea, 11 fungi, 17cyanobacteria, 62 algae, and 13 Protista are known from cryoconite holes, whichare only about 38% of total number of taxa reported from these ephemeralenvironments. Almost 62% of the taxa were marked as cf.(confer) or were identified only to the genera or even tothe higher taxonomic units (such as families or orders). This wide and detailedreview assists other scientists to identify the gaps in our knowledge aboutcryobionts and indicates directions for further zoogeographical and taxonomicalstudies in this unique freshwater habitat.

Current regulations and widely accepted principles for animal research focus on minimizing the burdens and harms of research on animals. However, these regulations and principles do not consider a possible role for assent or dissent in animal research. Should investigators solicit the assent or respect the dissent of animals who are used in research, and, if so, under what circumstances? In this article we pursue this question and outline the relevant issues that bear on the answer. We distinguish two general reasons for respecting the preferences of research participants regarding whether they participate in research—welfare-based reasons and agency-based reasons. We argue that there are welfare-based reasons for researchers to consider, and in some cases respect, the dissent of all animals used in research. After providing a brief account of the nature of agency-based reasons, we argue that there is good reason to think that these reasons apply to at least chimpanzees. We argue that there is an additional reason for researchers to respect the dissent—and, when possible, solicit the assent—of any animal to whom agency-based reasons apply.

In this article, we present three necessary conditions for morally responsible animal research that we believe people on both sides of this debate can accept. Specifically, we argue that, even if human beings have higher moral status than nonhuman animals, animal research is morally permissible only if it satisfies (1) an expectation of sufficient net benefit, (2) a worthwhile-life condition, and (3) a no-unnecessary-harm/qualified-basic-needs condition. We then claim that, whether or not these necessary conditions are jointly sufficient for justified animal research, they are relatively demanding, with the consequence that many animal experiments may fail to satisfy them.