Assent, currently defined as “a child’s affirmative agreement”, is a way in which some children are included in the decision-making process regarding their participation in clinical research. Current guidelines for paediatric research do not provide clear directions for how assent should be handled, resulting in confusion among researchers. The goal of this research project was two-fold: to examine the ethical arguments for assent with a view to developing concrete moral justification for its being required, and to develop a framework of significant issues for an investigator to consider when deciding whether to gain assent from an individual child. After an in-depth analysis, it was determined that the ethical justification for assent arises from the researcher’s dual obligations to the child and his parents. A child’s parents are responsible for determining when and how he will develop his decision-making ability. The researcher has an obligation to engage with the child in a manner that complements their pedagogical style, while also treating the child as a being of moral worth. As a child’s family context has an influence on his participation in medical decision-making, further research on children’s daily decision-making within their families is needed. To this end, a three-phase research agenda was designed: a qualitative focus group study, a quantitative questionnaire study, and a discussion panel with paediatric experts. The children in these studies clearly desired to make decisions but did not express an interest in having complete control. They expected their parents to provide them with decision-making guidance in most aspects of their lives. Data collected from parents illustrated that they often tried to involve their children in decisions by providing them with limited options from which to choose and encouraging family discussion. Participants in the discussion panel stated that they did not expect children to make an independent decision regarding medical care, but they might attempt to give children smaller decisions, such as the arm used to provide a blood sample. These results indicate that the definition of assent should be revised, emphasising the child’s involvement in the overall decision making process, without an expectation of an “affirmative agreement”, likely mimicking a familiar decision-making setting from his family context. This could then be documented in the child’s clinical notes through a brief description of all relevant interactions and/or discussions with the child, resulting in an accurate portrayal of the entire assent process.

Despite its prominence as a pejorative term in moral and political philosophy, the phenomenon of ethnocentrism has escaped the focused attention of moral and political philosophers. Little sustained effort has been devoted to its in-depth analysis. This thesis attempts to fill in that gap in the philosophical literature, with a particular focus on the analysis of ethnocentrism as a problem, or rather a set of problems, facing the theory and practice of human rights. The thesis begins by drawing a core distinction between ethnocentrism as a moral phenomenon (i.e., a form of moral partiality), on the one hand, and as an epistemological phenomenon (i.e., a mode of judgment), on the other. After singling out the epistemological aspect of ethnocentrism as its main focus, the thesis argues for four interlocking claims. The first claim is that ethnocentrism represents an unwarranted mode of judgment, and thus an epistemic hazard that ought to be avoided if at all possible (Chapter One, §3). This claim is defended at length against the version of political constructivism advanced by John Rawls, which, by grounding political argument exclusively in ideas and values embedded in a common public culture, implicitly justifies a form of ethnocentrism (Chapter Two). The second claim is that moral argument cannot avoid ethnocentrism by grounding itself, as some have thought, in judgments upon which there is broad moral consensus, or rather by avoiding any appeal to judgments that are the subject of marked dissensus (Chapter Three and Chapter Four). Thirdly, the thesis argues that ethnocentrism is, if avoidable, only so to a limited extent (Chapter Six, §2). And fourthly, it offers an outline of how this limited form of avoidance might work (Chapter Five and Chapter Six, §3).

This thesis explores the normative propriety of immigration detention in liberal states. In the first part of the thesis, I explore the development, current practice, and popular justifications for immigration detention in the United Kingdom. I argue that a crucial but unacknowledged role for immigration detention is to function as a political spectacle of the centralisation of power in liberal states. I find that the key motivation for detaining non-citizens is that they could abscond before their removals. I conclude that this basis for detention is normatively acceptable in only very limited cases and, even then, alternatives are often available and ethically preferable. Based on the fact that there is a normatively acceptable rationale, albeit circumscribed, for detention practices, I then propose a framework of minimum standards of treatment in detention that I advise all liberal states to follow. After outlining my proposal, I turn in the second part of the thesis to an examination of the normative theories of immigration control and how they take account of detention. Normative theorists differ in how they balance their commitments to individual and state rights, yet I find the majority concedes the need for some degree of immigration admissions control. Such theories face a moral dilemma: there can be no immigration control without detention, and so detention becomes an implicit assumption for these normative theories to be coherent. A potential solution for combating the practical problems associated with the growing, worsening detention estates as well as the moral dilemma of incarcerating a non-citizen based on fear of absconding would be to open borders and eliminate immigration control. Given the reality of the sovereign right to control immigration, however, I argue that the more feasible normative answer is lobby liberal states to adopt my framework of minimum standards of treatment while simultaneously pressing for open borders as the long-term ethical goal.

Over the last two decades, the international community has taken on the task of rebuilding societies in the aftermath of mass-atrocities. Through a combination of trial and error and vigorous academic research, a relatively clear (and semi-malleable) blueprint of post-atrocity peacebuilding has developed. This includes setting up a temporary international transitional authority, establishing democracy, facilitating economic development, and holding war crime trials. Though there are volumes of studies which address the pragmatic strengths and weaknesses of these key elements of peacebuilding, to date political theorists have not critically analyzed the moral legitimacy of these policies. My thesis aims to fill this gap. The overarching question of this thesis is this: What moral duties does the international community have to post-atrocity societies? To answer this question, I critically examine the normative issues involved in the four key aspects of peacebuilding (identified above). Using the framework of just war theory and a cosmopolitan theory of fundamental human rights, I argue that, in most post-atrocity cases, the international community has duties to remove atrocity-committing regimes from power, occupy the target-state and act as a transitional authority, help facilitate the creation of democracy and economic development, and hold war crimes trials. These duties, of course, are extremely complicated and limited and these qualifications are examined and developed throughout. Running through the construction of my theory of post-atrocity duties is a clear message: we – the international community – have obligations to the victims and survivors of atrocities. In other words, providing assistance in the wake of mass-atrocities is not a supererogatory act of charity, rather, it is a duty which we owe to the victims of these horrible crimes.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of a little documented indigenous group, the Warekena people, who live on the Xié River in north-western Amazonia. Examining the mythic histories of the animate riverscape, my work offers an overview of the emergence of riverside dwelling: starting with a macro view of Xié river lifestyles, I explain how seasonal and distinguishing historic-mythic narratives tie in to wider idioms, and to experiences of social reproduction. I focus on reproductive processes and the perinatal period, highlighting methods used by Xié dwellers to nurture healthy, quality-conscious lifestyles, and I examine Xié aetiologies and pathologies. Mindfulness, or awareness, is viewed as a key component of good health. In this context, healthy childbirth is for the birthing mother an art form, a practice for which her total life experience has prepared her. Childbirth is ranked with such other painful experiences as snakebite, and both childbirth and snakebite are opportunities for personal growth. Infant care is seen through the lens of specific, hands-on techniques that promote mindful states in both the carer and the cared for. Mindfulness emerges as a heuristic device that allows us to scrutinize the Amerindian soul and body, also elucidating soul-loss in the ‘animist’ lived world. I argue that mindfulness is a core characteristic of the ‘cool’ hydrocentric and status-conscious lifestyles of Xié river dwellers, and that it defines what it means to be a person, the Xié way.

This thesis is an interdisciplinary project in experimental social psychology, psychopharmacology, neuroscience, and neuroethics. The role of emotion in higher order psychological processes – social and moral judgments – was investigated. Specifically the role of noradrenergic mediated emotional arousal was researched. Behavioural studies demonstrated that acute beta adrenergic blockade with propranolol led to a reduction in negative implicit racial associations and also a modification of moral decision making. These findings suggest that basic affective processes might be causally relevant for higher order evaluations. However, enhancement with the noradrenergic potentiating agent reboxetine did not show effects opposite to those of propranolol on racial attitudes or moral judgments, which might indicate that emotional arousal, specific to beta-adrenoceptors might be involved in the effects of propranolol. Further a pharmacological fMRI study demonstrated that the activation pattern in brain regions commonly associated with intergroup bias -- such as the amygdala, insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and fusiform gyrus -- was affected by propranolol, and that the effect in the amygdala was correlated with implicit racial bias. Taken together the research suggests that automatic emotional arousal plays a role in higher order psychological processes, such as moral and social judgments, which aids the understanding of the underlying neurobiology of such processes. Finally, the ethical implications – such as the prospect of pharmacological moral enhancement – are discussed. The findings also suggest that the moral and social effects of already widely used psychotropic medications should be subject to further empirical and ethical investigation.

Can contemporary liberalism justify antidiscrimination law? The question seems impertinent until we consider contemporary liberalism’s commitment to limited government. Once we do, we realize that contemporary liberals may not complacently assume that their theories justify antidiscrimination law simply because discrimination based on race or sex is so obviously wrongful. Rather, they must scrutinize antidiscrimination law just as they do other regulation of individual conduct. Providing such scrutiny, this thesis argues that three of the most prominent contemporary liberal doctrines of political legitimacy—John Rawls’s “political liberalism,” an antiperfectionist version of the “harm principle,” and Joseph Raz’s “liberal perfectionism”—all fail to justify core applications of antidiscrimination law, applications that we intuitively consider perfectly legitimate. In light of this failure, contemporary liberalism faces a dilemma: it must jettison either its commitment to comprehensive, uniform antidiscrimination regimes or its antiperfectionism and overriding commitment to personal autonomy. This thesis argues for the latter course by providing an account of the wrongfulness of discrimination based on race or sex that condemns all instances of the conduct. According to this account, discrimination is wrong because acting on discriminatory intentions is wrong. More specifically, by taking another person’s race or sex as a reason to treat her less favorably than one would treat people of other races or the other sex, one fails to respect her as a person, to regard her as a being of ultimate value. Unlike contemporary liberal accounts, this account is fully perfectionist, since it defines discrimination in terms of the intentions of discriminators, and the intentions of discriminators in terms of their attitudes, which partly constitute their moral characters. So long as we remain committed to antidiscrimination law in its current form, we must attend to discriminators’ characters. And to attend to discriminators’ characters, we must be willing to espouse perfectionism.

Ganglion cell death in glaucoma is caused by a variety of insults that include ischemia, insufficient neurotrophic support and oxidative stress. Experimental studies were therefore conducted on cell cultures to determine how serum deprivation (to mimic insufficient neurotrophic support) or oxidative glutamate toxicity (GB), cause oxidative stress and induce retinal cell death. Moreover, studies were carried out to deduce whether selected sulphur containing compounds can blunt any negative influences to cells in culture and/or a defined ischaemic insult to the rat retina in situ, as this might suggest their use for the treatment of glaucoma. Serum deprivation and GB caused generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and apoptosis-like death to transformed retinal ganglion cells (RGC-5 cells). RGC-5 cells were more susceptible to the detrimental effects of GB than serum deprivation. RGC-5 cells subjected to serum deprivation appear to die by mechanisms that resemble classical apoptosis more closely than that caused by GB and the phase between the maximal generation of ROS and cell death were different. Cell death caused by serum deprivation was caspase-dependent but this was not the case for GB. Moreover, of the two sulphur compounds sulbutiamine and N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), sulbutiamine blunts the effect of serum deprivation more effectively. In addition, the pan caspase inhibitor z-VAD-fmk attenuated the negative effect of serum deprivation to RGC-5 cells while the necroptosis inhibitor (necrostsatin-1) counteracted solely the insult of GB. The sulphur containing compounds, ACS1 and ACS 67 which release hydrogen sulphide (H2S) slowly and NAC (a pro-cysteine GSH precursor) attenuated GB-induced cell death of RGC-5 cells. In contrast, sulbutiamine (a lipophilic thiolic thiamine derivative) was particularly effective in protecting RGC-5 cells from an insult of serum deprivation. Moreover, all of the sulphur compounds directly sequestered different types of ROS but with varying efficiency. Common features by which all tested sulphur containing agents seem to elicit a mode of action include the stimulation of GSH and the antioxidant enzyme glutathione-S-transferase (GST) as well as to scavenge excess free radicals. Moreover, the slow release of H₂S from the ACS compounds appears to protect cells from oxidative stress through increasing the level of GSH, modulation of the cystine uptake transporter xCT, stimulation of the oxidative stress related transcription factor Nrf2 and the stimulation of pro-survival signalling pathways. The slow releasing H₂S sulphur compound ACS67 also counteracts a number of detrimental influences to the rat retina in situ because of ischemia/reperfusion that includes damage to their ganglion cells. This suggests that such sulphur compounds might find a use in the treatment of glaucoma where ischemia probably plays a part in the disease process.

Combatants in war inflict untold devastation. They lay waste the environment, destroy cultural heritage, wound, maim, and kill. Most importantly, they kill. These deeds would be, in any other context, paradigmatically unjust. This thesis asks whether they can be justi-fied. There are two possible approaches: first, deny that killing in war is in fact unjust; sec-ond, argue that the injustice is overridden by weightier moral reasons. In Part I, I reject the view that principles of self-defence can render killing in war just. I argue that the most plausible theories of self-defence are hardest to apply in the cha-otic context of war, while the most practicable theories are least philosophically defensible. Moreover, none of them encompasses the inevitable noncombatant deaths that all wars bring. If killing in war is almost always unjust, perhaps we should advocate pacifism. In Part II, I propose an alternative, arguing that these injustices might be all things con-sidered justified. Combatants have morally important relationships: they have deep personal relationships with friends and family, and comrades-in-arms; if they are citizens of just communities, then that relationship is valuable too. I argue that they have associative duties to protect these relationships against the threat posed by war, and that these duties may override the injustices they must commit to avert that threat. After defending a conception of associative duties, I support this conclusion with the following argument. As well as our general duties not to harm, we have general duties to protect. Our general duties to protect sometimes override our general duties not to harm, in particular, in cases of justified humanitarian intervention. Our associative duties to protect, however, are stronger than our general duties to protect. If our associative duties to protect are stronger than our general duties to protect, and our general duties to protect can override our general duties not to harm, then our associative duties to protect should also be able to override our general duties not to harm.

The presented work is an empirical study offering an insight into the providing of addictology care in the everyday practice. In a selected Organization, I ethnographically examine how the good addictology practice is done and what, according to the participants, makes it good. That means how the Organization comes to what is good and what is not, when and in which situation is it good. Through analyses of Organization's everyday life taking place in various facilities helping people at risk of dependents and their loved ones, through documents analyses and through the way the Organization presents itself, I offer proved a support for the good practice. These are the organization's spirit, that is cultivated from the long-term care for the organization's culture and also an awareness of the constant formation of one's own path towards good and even better care. However, neither the path nor the spirit has the same face and final form. Although it stands on solid foundations, which are the organizational values (respect, openness, responsibility, relationship and cooperation) and is based on a long history and traditions, it is shaped by what every day brings to the Organization. Despite its functional support, the Organization is not free from mistakes, errors. However, it seeks to ensure that its...