Bioethics education in residency helps trainees achieve many of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education milestones and gives them resources to respond to bioethical dilemmas. For this purpose, The Providence Center for Health Care Ethics has offered a robust clinical ethics rotation since 2000. The importance of bioethics for residents was highlighted as the COVID-19 pandemic raised significant bioethical concerns and moral distress for residents. This, combined with significant COVID-19-related practical stressors on residents led us to develop a virtual ethics rotation. A virtual rotation allowed residents flexibility as they were called to help respond to the unprecedented demands of a pandemic without compromising high quality education. This virtual rotation prioritized flexibility to support resident wellbeing and ethical analysis of resident experiences. This article describes how this rotation was able to serve residents without overstraining limited bandwidth, and address the loci of resident pandemic distress. As pandemic pressures lessened, The Providence Center for Health Care Ethics transitioned to a hybrid rotation which continues to prioritize resident wellbeing and analysis of ongoing stressors while incorporating in-person elements where they can improve learning. This article provides a description of the rotation in its final form and resident feedback on its effectiveness.

When archaeologists discuss ‘ancestor cults’ or ‘ancestor veneration’, what this might entail in practice usually remains vague, leading to charges that the concept of ‘ancestors’ is often applied generically. In this article, the authors combine bioarchaeological, taphonomic, radiocarbon, and isotopic studies to explore the ritual practice of the selective retention, curation, and deposition of a group of human crania and mandibles. Between 5500–5400 bc, Neolithic people at Masseria Candelaro (Puglia, Italy) deposited broken crania and mandibles from about fifteen individuals in a heap in the centre of the village. These individuals were mostly probable males, collected over the course of two centuries and actively used, with their deposition marking the final disposal of a ritual collection. The motivations for the curation of cranial bone are investigated through comparison with archaeological and ethnographic examples, advancing an interpretation of ritual practice directed towards ancestors.

Although the earliest political text from early China, namely the Canon of Documents, comprises speeches attributed to ancient kings, for most of the Eastern Zhou period (770–255 BCE) monarchs remained conspicuously silent. This article surveys the instances of the rulers’ speeches in major historical collections and a sample of philosophical texts from the Warring States period. I demonstrate that the rulers’ voice in these texts is overwhelmingly confined to short questions, approval of proposed policies, or other insignificant uttering. I argue that this silence was deliberately built into the texts by their composers, so as to preserve the intellectual authority in the hands of the educated elite. It was only with the imperial unification of 221 BCE and the dramatic change in the balance of power between the emperors and the intellectuals that the royal speech regained its prominence and political importance.

This response engages critically with Harzheim’s review of Thomas Fuchs’ In Defense of the Human Being: Foundational Questions of an Embodied Anthropology. Fuchs’ work offers a profound exploration of embodied cognition, arguing that human cognition and existence are deeply shaped by our physical interactions. Harzheim’s critique highlights significant aspects of Fuchs’ framework, including his critique of functionalist models, the impact of transhumanist technologies, and ethical concerns in healthcare technology. This paper extends Harzheim’s review by proposing an integration of functionalist and embodied cognitive models, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive evaluation of technological impacts, and advocating for a more robust ethical framework that considers social equity. Additionally, it addresses the is-ought distinction and explores the implications of technological advancements on human identity and mental health. Doede’s critique is also discussed, underscoring the importance of integrating diverse cognitive models and addressing technological determinism. Overall, this response calls for a more nuanced and inclusive approach to the discourse on embodied cognition, aiming to enrich the scholarly conversation and address the complexities and implications of Fuchs’ analysis.

This article considers John Harris’ work on autonomy, specifically reproductive autonomy, outlined in The Value of Life and developed throughout his career. Harris often used the concept of reproductive autonomy to make the case for liberal approaches to developments in reproductive and genetic technologies. Harris argued that reproductive autonomy should be highly valued, and therefore we need compelling arguments to justify limiting it in anyway. When discussing reproductive autonomy, Harris focused mainly on restrictions on the potential users of reproductive technologies autonomy, that is, prospective parents. This article extends the discussion of autonomy and the appropriate limits to individuals exercising their autonomy to medical professionals working in this area. Given reproductive technologies have become part of routine medical practice, this article considers whether the current restrictions on both patients and clinicians, as imposed by regulators and professional guidelines, remain ethically justified.

From 1860 to 1900, a modern system of property rights emerged in the International Settlement in Shanghai. This paper examines the largely overlooked process by which the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) brought about a system of well-functioning property rights through land surveys, mapping, and assessments. These methods worked hand-in-hand with road planning and construction in facilitating the expansion of the International Settlement to the Chinese-controlled area. Colonial officials, merchants, and Chinese intellectuals worked collectively and sometimes separately to generate knowledge about land and property by translating terms in the Chinese tradition. It argues that the efforts in institution-building and translation helped normalize the definition of property rights as things exclusively owned, strengthening the SMC's control over the land in Shanghai. These processes illuminate the relationship between empire-making and property rights by showing how property rights emerged and functioned in a semi-colonial context where multiple foreign authorities coexisted with the local government. The relatively secure system of property rights, which both foreign and Chinese merchants exploited, formed the foundation of a prosperous Shanghai in the twentieth century.

Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby (2024) has called for bioethics to end talk about personhood, asserting that such talk has the tendency to confuse and offend. It will be argued that this has only limited application for (largely) private settings. However, in other settings, theorizing about personhood leaves a gap in which there is the risk that the offending concept will get uptake elsewhere, and so the problem Blumenthal-Barby nominates may not be completely avoided. In response to this risk, an argument is presented in support of the idea that the role of philosophers and bioethicists, far from ending talk of personhood, ought to be to clarify the concept, and to do so in nuanced ways, given its application for specific kinds of impairments. The case of dementia is used to illustrate this in the context of person-centered care. Ironically, given the stigma attached to dementia, far from the need to end talk of personhood, bioethicists are needed to rescue the concept and clarify its role.

Of all the principles in classical Jewish law that stand out from a comparative legal perspective perhaps none is more notable than the ban on self-incrimination in criminal procedures. Contrary to the most basic evidentiary assumptions of other ancient legal systems, this principle differs fundamentally from the right to remain silent that is part of both early modern and modern legal systems. Only rabbinic jurisprudence incorporates an outright exclusion of criminal confessions. Despite receiving much scholarly attention over the centuries, this principle’s fundamental justification relating to the rule of law and the public pursuit of justice has gone unnoticed. This article explores this salient jurisprudential perspective, and sheds new light on this principle by contrasting the Jewish legal approach with the primary modes of criminal adjudication that were adopted in the West. What emerges from this comparative analysis is that this seemingly anomalous principle actually reveals much about the core commitments and values of Jewish law. These, in turn, have substantial implications for certain contemporary legal practices and dilemmas.

This article examines the business strategies employed by early twentieth-century Bombay mill owners in work organization and wage differentiation. The traditionally highly segmented and fluctuating domestic textile markets in India were further complicated by colonial free trade policies, making them highly competitive. This prompted Bombay mills to adopt various strategies, including maintaining a flexible workforce, product diversification, tailoring sales strategies to the Indian market, and increasing labour inputs, related to their heavy reliance on short-stapled Indian raw cotton. Using detailed and disaggregated data reported by textile mills in Bombay during the 1920s and 1930s, this article investigates how employers adopted these strategies in tandem with distinct wage-setting systems as management tools to depress the wage bill. By analysing the motivations behind the adoption of or resistance to these tools across different operations within the production process – such as weaving, spinning, reeling, and winding – the article reveals how gendered and social-class stratifications shaped these strategies and led to wage disparities across the industry. Ultimately, these labour-intensive strategies, conditioned by the broader colonial context in which India's textile industry developed, were at the root of the lower productivity of Indian workers, with long-run adverse consequences for India's general industrial development.

The procreation asymmetry is a widely held view in ethics, claiming that one should make existing people happy but has no reason to make happy people. Here, I shall present a new objection demonstrating from modest premises that one has a reason to take a sequence of actions that simply creates a happy person; yet this judgment in combination with plausible principles about sequences of actions entails that one has some reason to simply create a happy person. Additionally, I will argue that one's reasons to create a happy person are quite strong.

During the ill-fated 1897 Andrée balloon expedition, Nils Strindberg allegedly dropped a small tin containing a last message for his fiancée onto the island Fuglesongen in northwestern Svalbard, as the expedition crew passed over it in their hydrogen balloon, Örnen. Despite at least one lengthy search on Fuglesongen, the tin has never been found. This paper investigates the hypothesis that the tin was accidentally dropped onto Klovningen, a neighbouring island similar in size and shape, situated approximately 2.4 km east of Fuglesongen. A re-analysis of Strindberg’s original handwritten notes from the balloon flight, along with other primary sources and meteorological analyses, suggests that a targeted search for the tin on Klovningen could be a promising next step in solving this enduring mystery.

During the French Revolution, thousands of revolutionaries and royalists fled the turmoil in French islands. Many went to nearby islands, from which they could observe events. Situated between Martinique and Guadeloupe, Dominica had a majority French population and a long history of connection with its French neighbors. This article uses the case of Dominica to explore the effects of the French Revolution on a non-French island in the Eastern Caribbean. From the start, its proximity to the French islands led to its entanglement in revolutionary politics. It was the first British island to receive refugees, and the influx of people of all racial, social, and political backgrounds into Dominica posed challenges for island officials. Officials had to determine on what terms to admit emigrants, whether they posed a threat to the colony, and how to feed and house them. They also worried about the influences of foreigners and revolutionary ideas on their own disaffected free and enslaved populations. This article argues that Dominica's location, heterogeneous population, and internal instability allowed it to become a node for regional migration and information networks that embroiled it in the turmoil that engulfed its neighbors and ultimately threatened British control of the island.

I formulate a compatibilism that is distinctively responsive to skeptical worries about the justification of punishment and other moral responsibility practices. I begin with an evolutionary story explaining why backward-looking reactive attitudes are “given” in human society. Cooperative society plausibly could not be sustained without such practices. The necessary accountability practices have complex internal standards. These internal standards may fully ground the appropriateness of reactive attitudes. Following a recent analogy, we can similarly hold that there are no external standards for what is funny; the norms of comedy are complex, but funny is funny. However, this is compatible with moral reasons to change the practices themselves, and therefore change what is fitting within them: in the first instance, a moralistic “that's not funny” is ill-fitting, but “that shouldn't be funny” can be apt. The analogous reformist position prescribes practices constituting the minimal responsibility norms necessary for cooperative society.