Justification For Action Research Articles

Deliberative Democracy and Liberal Rights

Many liberals cannot help distrusting deliberative democracy theory. In their view, the theory offers no sufficient guarantee that the outcomes of democratic deliberation will be respectful of individual interests generating what they conceive as basic moral rights. The purpose of this text is to provide one argument showing that liberal rights are sufficiently protected within deliberative democracy theory. The argument does not rest on the idea of moral rights or material justice. It rests on the conditions of legitimate law deliberative democracy theory presupposes, namely, the conditions that make concrete the idea of legitimacy as “actual public justification.”

Guilt, context and the historian: debating the Schio massacre: A comment on Sarah Morgan's ‘The Schio killings’

In a recent issue of Modern Italy, Sarah Morgan has offered an analysis of the Schio killings (eccidio di Schio) of July 1945 by means of a ‘constructivist’ approach.1 She compares the narratives of events provided by the Communist party (PCI), the Allied Military Government (AMG), and partisans and partisan organizations, and shows how each narrative was related to different political interests and preoccupations. Thus, the PCI, which was primarily concerned with defending the image of the ‘Resistance’ on which its political legitimacy rested, maintained that those responsible for the killings of over. fty ‘Fascists’ held in the Schio prison were not real partisans but ‘agents provocateurs’. The AMG presented the killings as a brutal example of breakdown of law and order thus casting doubt on the viability of the model of grass-root governance provided by the Committees of National Liberation (CLN). Conservative political forces pushed the AMG narrative even further and chose to regard the Schio massacre as the beginning of a cycle of violence instigated by the Communist Left. Finally, partisans and partisan organizations argued that the killings were an act of popular justice within the context of a general sense of frustration for the lack of epurazione (purging of the Fascists) and the emotions generated by the news that all but one of the Schio anti-Fascists sent to the Mathausen concentration camp had died there.

El significado de la cláusula de los derechos no enumerados.

El autor hace referencia al significado de la cláusula de los derechos no enunciados en la Constitución Peruana y señala como antecedente histórico y político al Bill of Rights, que en 1791 se incorpora a la Constitución de los Estados Unidos a través de la IX Enmienda, y como antecedente ideológico la teoría del Contrato Social del racionalismo iusnaturalista con un presupuesto individualista. También analiza la Declaración Francesa de los Derechos del Hombre y del Ciudadano de 1789 que determina que los derechos naturales son anteriores y superiores a la creación del Estado, debiendo éste edificarse con la finalidad de preservar dichos derechos. Con estos antecedentes elabora su conclusión: en la Constitución Peruana los derechos no enumerados tienen su explicación en la concepción insnaturalista de la Constitución de los Estados Unidos, pero sin suponer un "Transplante normativo". Del principio de la dignidad humana establecido en la Constitución se derivará la propia justificación de aquel conjunto mínimo de derechos o atributos subjetivos con los que ha de contar el hombre, que pueden o no estar detallados en la Constitución, pero que es absolutamente necesario reconocer para que éste pueda desarrollar responsablemente su proyecto vital.

No Asylum: State Psychiatric Repression in the Former U.S.S.R.

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessNo Asylum: State Psychiatric Repression in the Former U.S.S.R.Richard S. Winslow, M.D.Richard S. WinslowSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Oct 1998https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.49.10.1372-aAboutSectionsView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail The story of the use of psychiatry for nonmedical purposes in the former Soviet Union is an important one. It can be in turn horrifying and inspiring, given the abuse of our humane profession, on the one hand, and the bravery of those who fought against the abuse, on the other.Unfortunately, this book makes the story seem a boring one. The authors are, respectively, a professor of international relations and a computer and information technology specialist. The book proves beyond a statistical shadow of a doubt that abuse of psychiatry did indeed occur in the former U.S.S.R. It also describes the chronology, estimated extent, and varied causes of this abuse and the demographic characteristics of those affected.The crucial omission is the human detail. In the midst of all the analyses of the abuse phenomenon, there is not a single personal story of a victim or a profile of a specific abuser. Reading this book is like reading statistics or a sociological tract about crime without any description of the individual victims, survivors, or perpetrators.Books like these can be useful for reference purposes, and the data the authors collected and analyzed are good to have on the permanent record. However, if any book is to be read widely enough to have an impact, it must be readable, and the lack of human detail in what is essentially a human story makes this book very difficult to read. As there is no dearth elsewhere of first-hand accounts by abuse victims, the authors' decision to leave out all human details is puzzling, because their important points could have been made so much more effectively.Contrast, for example, the difference in readability, to say nothing of impact, between the following two paragraphs, both of which deal with the ability of some individuals to exhibit extraordinary courage in the face of the most extreme threats. The first paragraph is from the book being reviewed."Would-be dissuaders may encounter undeterrable or uncompellable individuals whose political, religious, or ethical objectives are so highly valued that no conceivable threat is large enough to counterbalance pursuit of their cherished goals. Individuals holding such objectives cannot be dissuaded from seeking to achieve them. It follows that a class of undeterrable acts may exist, which has a prior probability of virtually 1.0 and therefore will not be prevented by application of any state penalty. Some dissident behavior in the Soviet period may fall into this class."The second paragraph, from a book by Bloch and Reddaway (1), is a quotation of Dr. Anatoly Koryagin, a Soviet psychiatrist, at the time of his trial for "anti-Soviet activities," which included protesting the abuse of psychiatry."My investigation and trial do not constitute an act of justice, but a means of suppressing me for my views. I know that the sentence will be harsh. I do not ask anything of this court. Regardless of the sentence imposed on me, I state that I will never accept the situation which exists in our country, where mentally healthy people are imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals for trying to think independently. I know that long years of physical imprisonment, humiliation, and mockery await me. Fully aware of this, I embark on it in the hope that it will increase the chances for others to live in freedom."Dr. Winslow, who has a master's degree in Russian literature and a special interest in psychiatry in the former U.S.S.R. and its successor states, practices community psychiatry in Seattle.by Theresa C. Smith and Thomas A. Oleszczuk; New York City, New York University Press, 1996, 289 pages, $45

An obligation to provide abortion services: what happens when physicians refuse?

Access to abortion services in the United States continues to decline. It does so not because of significant changes in legislation or court rulings but because fewer and fewer physicians wish to perform abortions and because most states now have "conscientious objection" legislation that makes it easy for physicians to refuse to do so. We argue in this paper that physicians have an obligation to perform all socially sanctioned medical services, including abortions, and thus that the burden of justification lies upon those who wish to be excused from that obligation. That is, such persons should have to show how requiring them to perform abortions would represent a serious threat to their fundamental moral or religious beliefs. We use current California law as an example of legislation that does not take physicians' obligations into account and thus allows them too easily to declare conscientious objection.

Indications for ambulatory surgery

Outpatient surgery demands a thorough evaluation of indication. It is of prime importance, influencing the entire problem of ambulatory operations. Although outpatient surgery is basically justified, the actual justification in any particular case is dependent upon the type and complexity of the operation as well as the anticipated postoperative situation. The decision to operate on an outpatient basis is an ongoing and dynamic process-it must take into consideration all the problems which might arise up to and even after discharge. An operation which is not specifically listed may still be performed on an outpatient basis if the individual circumstances justify this. The final decision will be determined by a number of factors, meaning that a strict list of indications is only of limited value.

Justice and Poverty: Two Views Contrasted

The Oxford Declaration on Christian Faith and Economics tells us, Biblical means impartially rendering to everyone their [sic] due in conformity with the standards of God's moral law (¶38, emphases added). While there is a sense in which is partial, for it special attention to the weak members of the community because of their greater vulnerability, the Declaration adds, Nevertheless, the civil arrangements in rendering are not to go beyond what is due to the poor or to the rich (Deuteronomy 1:17; Leviticus 19:15)[.] In this sense is ultimately impartial (¶39). Immediately following the first quotation above, the Declaration offers another view of justice: Paul uses (or righteousness) in its most comprehensive sense as a metaphor to describe God's creative and powerful redemptive love. Christ, solely in grace, brought us, [sic] into God's commonwealth, who were strangers to it and because of sin cut off from it. (Romans 1:17-18; 3:21-26; Ephesians 2:4-22) (¶38). Later, Justice requires conditions such that each person is able to participate in society in a way compatible with human dignity. Absolute poverty, where people lack even minimal food and housing, basic education, health care, and employment, denies people the basic economic resources necessary for just participation in the community. Corrective action with and on behalf of the poor is a necessary act of justice (¶40). The triple thesis of this article is that the two views are mutually inconsistent, that the former is Biblical, and that the latter is unbiblical.

Celso Furtado: Doctor Honoris Causa

This ceremony, at which Dr. Celso Furtado is being invested with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa, is above all an act of justice.

Subjective Justification

I wish to discuss in this paper some of the problems involved in determining whether subjects on particular occasions are justified in coming to believe a proposition. I will argue that in attributing actual justification to a particular subject–subjective justification–we have to take into account factual-psychological questions and that these are the source of fundamental difficulties. These factual-psychological questions concern the beliefs someone uses in the process of acquiring another belief and the actual connections she makes among her beliefs.But why should epistemologists be interested in making attributions of actual justification to particular subjects? After all, if the central goal of epistemology is to guide us in choosing rational strategies for supporting our beliefs, or to assess whether theories are well grounded or acceptable, epistemologists should be concerned with the justification a theory or proposition might have independently of anyone actually coming to believe it. This may be so, but it has to be shown that it is so. Moreover, the consideration of the factual-psychological questions involved in attributions of subjective justification seems to be necessary in some recent hybrid forms of naturalized epistemology. I call them ‘hybrid’ because, unlike Quine’s naturalized epistemology, they include in the epistemological task more than naturalistic explanations of how we acquire our language and beliefs. Besides taking into consideration the actual processes of our coming to believe or accept sentences, they also make use of epistemic notions like justification, warrant, relevant or right connection among beliefs, and so forth.

Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life by Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 291 who had claimed more than his due. The mistake was compounded and the truth concealed. Bedini tells us how, after many years of frustrating research, he came to think that something was wrong with the available indications. While extending his investigations on the life of Facini, he unearthed the truth, and the distinction between the Sferologio and the Planisferologio came clearly to light. Clockwork Cosmos is also rich in little-known and often new historical information. Life in Piacenza, particularly at court, is a fascinating story in itself. The vicissitudes of the Planisferologio follow those of the Farnese family and of the Bourbon kings of Naples and Sicily, reflecting political and military events, generally of an international nature, that were taking place on the Italian scene. It is indeed most fortunate that the clock has survived and found at last a safe and honorable place in the Vatican Library. The documents that form the book’s appendixes are a valuable addition. Among them appear for the first time an inventory of the tools found in Facini’s shop at his death and the list, with identification, of thirty books among the fifty in his library. The summarized translation of Ferrari’s booklet is of particular importance. How Bedini managed to trace all the evidence scattered in so many places remains his secret. It would have been a remarkable achieve­ ment even for a scholar permanently resident in Italy. His book is not only a valuable example of historical and bibliographical work in con­ nection with a scientific and technological development, it is also a long overdue act of justice in restoring Facini to the high status he fully deserves in the history of horology. Giuseppe Brusa Mr. Brusa is Honorary Keeper of the Horological Collection at the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan. Currently he is cataloging the clocks of the Savoia family in the royal residences in Turin and Piedmont, and, with Charles Allix and John Leopold, writing a history of horology, Mechanical Timekeeping in Europe. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life. By Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni­ versity Press, 1985. Pp. xiv + 440; illustrations, bibliography, ap­ pendix, index. $60.00. A quarter of a century ago a brilliant young historian of science liberated his discipline from the philosophy of science. Few of his readers appreciated what T. S. Kuhn had wrought in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. His text appeared on the surface to provide a general covering theory for those pedagogical paradigms that J. B. Conant proffered as curricular cures for the malaise of the two cul­ tures afflicting American higher education after World War II. These were case studies of major conceptual changes in the history of the 292 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE sciences—the so-called scientific revolutions. The effect of Kuhn’s work was to send philosophers of science scurrying to closet quickly the twin specters of subjectivism and historical relativism that the new theory of scientific change seemed to let loose. Philosophers, like his­ torians, had a stake in the promise of this educational renewal and were, perhaps, more sensitive to the power and patronage of science that lay behind it. But the intellectual rewards went to the minority of historians who seized the moment of their liberation and exploited it. They recognized that the important part of Kuhn’s book was not his theory of revolutions but his depiction of the practice of what he called normal science. This revealed science to be not the work of heroic genius combating the ignorance and authority of the epoch (Copernicus vs. the Middle Ages) but the activity of communities with controlled access who operated within well-defined disciplinary boundaries solving clearly articulated problems with agreed-upon in­ tellectual and instrumental tools. This was both a credible and a pliable model for historians to use. Leviathan and the Air-Pump is a rich and rewarding fruit of the Kuhnian revolution. Its authors take us back to the origins of science as a communal experimental activity in the 17th century, which they substantively and emblematically identify with the air pump...

Kant's Groundwork Justification of Freedom

Kant's aim in Section III of the Groundwork is to establish the supreme principle of morality. To accomplish his aim he finds it necessary to present a justification of freedom. Commentators generally regard Kant's overall argument as a failure, because they regard his justification of freedom as a failure. In this paper I shall present three arguments. First, I shall argue that commentators, for the most part, look to the wrong text for Kant's Groundwork justification of freedom. They look to pars. 10–16 for an argument for freedom, but the collection of propositions, which Kant presents there, is aimed at showing something other than freedom. Second, I shall argue that to the extent that they look to the correct text, namely, par. 4, they misinterpret Kant. Third, I shall set out and evaluate the actual justification of freedom which Kant presents in par. 4.

Hayek on Justice and the Market: A Rejoinder to Cragg and Mack

(1) Professor Cragg objects to my contention that when judgments about the justice of actions can be paired with judgments about the justice of the states of affairs in which they eventuate it is the latter and not the former which are logically fundamental. He concedes that the justice of actions cannot, in these circumstances, be determined wholly independently of the justice of the states of affairs they help bring about — ‘ … how could an action be evaluated as Just or unjust in the absence of an evaluation of the situation which it was designed to bring about?’ — yet he takes issue with my claim that judgments about the justice of states of affairs can be made ‘without any detour’ through questions about the justice of the actions which bring them about. According to the intermediate position he prefers, judgments about the justice of actions and judgments about the justice of situations are ‘inextricably intertwined.’

Hayek, Justice and the Market

It is Alistair Macleod's view that what he calls Justice Judgments are at root Judgments abput states of affair and only derivatively about actions. His interest in Fredrick Hayek's book, The Mirage of Social Justice, derives at least in part from the fact that assessing the Justice of actions is logically prior to assessing the Justice of situations or states of affairs. Thus evaluating Hayek's views offers a way in which Macleod can test his own position.In responding to Professor Macleod's interesting and provocative paper, I shall begin by criticising his own position with respect to the relation of Judgments about situations to Judgments about actions. I shall argue that contrary to what Macleod asserts Judgments about the Justice of actions and Judgments about the Justice of situations are inextricably intertwined. Second, I shall argue that Macleod's criticism of the view that Judgments about the Justice of actions are more basic than Judgments about the Justice of situations is a sound one. However, Hayek's attack on social Justice is not rooted in this position.

Concerning Acquittal Because of Lack of Evidence of a Defendant's Participation in the Commission of a Crime

I. In a Soviet criminal trial, an acquittal carries just as much weight, and is an act of socialist justice with just as much political, ethical, and juridical significance, as a conviction. Whereas a conviction condemns the criminal for the crime he has committed and punishes him according to the degree of his guilt, an acquittal repudiates the unfounded indictment of a citizen and restores his good name, honor, and dignity.

Justification in memory knowledge

The definition of memory knowledge that p put forward in this paper is nontraditional in that the justification for the belief that p which constitutes that knowledge is not located in any memory-impression or other present state of the subject. Rather it is the subject's actual past justification for p, or a proper part thereof, that justifies this present belief that p. It is argued (1) that the notion under definition is that of knowing straight from memory, (2) that an adequate definition here must take into account a difference, as to conflicting evidence one does not possess, between evidence one has forgotten and evidence one has never had, (3) that compared to Ginet's traditional definition (1975), the definition has several advantages, and (4) that the definition handles at least one type of situation where there can be memory knowledge that p without previous knowledge that p.

Harman's Paradox

Gettier's examples show that someone can believe a truth, have good reasons for believing it, and yet lack knowledge.1 How can this be? One explanation is that a man's good reasons can depend upon or include false beliefs. Another possibility is that a justified true belief can fail to stand in an appropriate causal relation to the fact which makes the belief true. Both explanations fit Gettier's examples, but perhaps neither is sufficiently general: each assumes, as indeed Gettier's exposition does, that someone is adequately justified or not in virtue of evidence he actually has for a truth. Might not a man's good reasons be said to be defeated, undermined, or rendered inadequate, by further evidence he would, but happens not to, take into account? This is the possibility adverted to by certain defeasibilist analyses of knowledge and nonknowledge. Such analyses grant that Gettier's subjects are justified in believing a truth, but they explain in a distinctively general way the fact that those subjects lack knowledge. The lack ensues from incomplete justification. If someone's actual justification for a true belief admits of supplementation or correction that would disclose evidence against the belief, then one's actual basis for believing is incomplete. Conversely, if correction or supplementation were not to detract from one's reasons, one is actually completely justified, and one's true belief is knowledge-ranking. In Gettier's cases, conditions of complete justification fail to be met. But complete justification might be absent, too, where one's reasons involved no falsehoods, and where one's true belief was non-deviantly caused. In those circumstances it could still turn out that exposure to further evidence would warrant the retraction of some actually held true belief. Defeasibilism thus seems to alert us to, and to account for, cases of non-knowledge that Gettier did not prepare us for.

Alcestis: A Paradox in Dying

Euripides' Alcestis presents its audience with a curious problem. Why is a blatant coward rewarded? The answer has usually been discovered in Admetus' scrupulous observance of the law of hospitality (10), that is, in a personal trait. The significance of this solution is important because the ostensible morality of the play, one characterized by its peculiar blend of fairy-tale and harsh reality, is now dependent upon the single redeeming quality of one individual. Conversely, the less attractive features of Admetus, and they exist in varying degrees of unpleasantness, become defensible solely as progressive steps in the testing of his mettle. Impropriety, therefore, functions as the necessary adjunct of anagnorisis and reparation. By contrast, the sacrifice of Alcestis assumes an even more notable proportion; her rescue from the dead appears more an absolute act of justice than a miracle. Nonetheless, by the end of the play doubt still persists concerning the extent to which Admetus has revised his perception of right and wrong, his virtue notwithstanding.Verrall, at the turn of the century, protested vigorously against just such a pragmatic acceptance of Admetus' philoxenia as a facile explanation. Ironically enough, he inadvertently predicted a trend which was not only to grow, but to become more entrenched. Admetus' saving grace has indeed carried the day. A husband's untoward submission to a wife's substitution; a son's disgraceful argument with his father before the rites of interment; a host's inner crisis as he juggles the respective merits of hospitality versus bereavement; a man's shallow repentance for living at another's expense — in short, each vital turning point in Admetus' private dilemma has received thorough and shrewd analysis, but always through the special refraction of the host motif.

Black and White Perceptions of Justice in the City

Justice is universally considered an important public value. Its equitable distribution is often used to assess the desirability of a political system. But justice is difficult to measure. The justice of actions may be weighed by the intentions of the actors; it is equally convincing, however, to assess justice by the perceptions of the recipients of actions. In this view, justice lies in the eyes of the beholder. Justice depends on the expectations of the consumers, their perceptions of what treatment others receive, and the interpretation of their own experiences in terms of their personal values. Official actions contribute to perceptions of justice and injustice but they do not determine them. While official actions may be considered an output of the political system, the distribution of justice is an outcome which is partly determined by outputs and partly determined by the interaction of citizens with their own values, perceptions, and expectations with these outputs. This is a study of injustice as an outcome. It is concerned with the distribution of perceptions of injustice in an American city. It focuses on the correlates of these perceptions. Justice is not something to which ordinary people give much thought; it is not a subject on which many are articulate. I measure justice indirectly as the congruence between expectations about key officials in the justice system and perceptions of their actual behavior.1 Injustice is operationalized as incongruence, or a gap between expectations and

Complexities of morality.

This letter is sharply critical of an article by Dr. Holmes (Annals of Iternal Medicine 72: 123-127, 1970). The dilemma of 18 to 21-year-olds requesting birth control pills is not simply a question of "aesthetic bias." The pressures on these young women to have sexual relations is intense and the author has found these women grateful to hear an adult decidely opposed to premarital intercourse. The author is amazed at Dr. Holmes' characterization of a marriage between gentile and Jew as an act of morality. "Intermarriage as an act of agression against the parents is in my opinion as likely as intermarriage an an act of social justice," he writes. Finally, he feels that in talking with young patients, adults in general and psychiatrists in particular should not feel guilty because the world is not perfect. Children have a right to "enough healthy cynicism to avoid exploitation by those who would deceive them in the name of morality."

The Place of the American Republics and Canada in the New World Order

In the terrible flames of World War II, the Good Neighbor policy, as conceived by its architect, Sumner Welles, and promulgated by its popularizer, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, met the supreme test of “blood, sweat and tears.” Tried in the crucible of worldwide conflict, inter-American friendship met the challenge of totalitarian Nazi-Fascism triumphantly. As our Good Neighbors themselves often proclaimed in the course of the last five years, “Las Américas unidas, unidas vencerán.” “The united Americas will find victory in their united front.”To emphasize the contribution of the other American Republics and Canada to our recent victory is a simple act of justice. The historical record discloses that, almost immediately after the Japanese sneak-attack at Pearl Harbor, the tiny Republic of Costa Rica, democratic to the core, hours before the Congress of the United States of America swung into action, had declared war upon the warlords of Tokyo. Although only Canada and the United States of Brazil actually despatched complete army divisions to fight on the battlefields of Europe, the other peoples in this Hemisphere, in overwhelming numbers, sympathized effectively with our cause, while their Governments, one by one, broke diplomatic relations with the Axis powers. In a most critical hour for the peoples of the Western Hemisphere, the spiritual unity of the American Republics and Canada established itself as a precious, sacred reality. Our enemies were regarded as the enemies of America; our friends the faithful allies of humanity, liberty and democracy.