In this paper, I argue that we ought not to punish those who have undergone significant mental transformation as a result of conditions like Alzheimer’s or dementia. While there are those who defend this position on the basis of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, I argue that we ought not to punish in these cases because the person being punished is not the same person as the one who committed the crime. On my account, the relevant sense of “sameness” is not “metaphysical”—rather, it looks at whether the past and present persons are the same practical agents. This account also enjoys some support in the legal context and can be found in laws about corporations, juvenile records, and treatment of dementia patients. Finally, focusing on sameness of persons rather than Eighth Amendment grounds has interesting implications for other policies regarding punishment.

Single and childless women over the age of 35 constitute an expanding demographic in North America and many parts of the world, yet our society continues to place importance on marriage and family as markers of life success. This study explored how eight single (never-married) and childless women experience themselves during early midlife (ages 35–45) utilizing the Listening Guide method of analysis. Three categories of participant voices were uncovered in this research: voices which conveyed the positivity of living a single and childless identity (i.e. the voices of hope, faith, gratitude, nurturance, freedom, and resilience), voices which conveyed the struggles of living a single and childless identity (i.e. the voices of invisibility, shame, confusion, loneliness, guilt, longing, and uncertain waiting), and the voice of ambivalence. Implications for clinical practice and research are discussed.

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Appealing to self-interest is a common way of justifying the rationality of religious faith. For instance, Pascal's wager relies upon the expected value of choosing the life of faith being infinite. Similarly, many contemporary arguments for the rationality of faith turn on whether it is better for an agent to have faith rather than lack it. In this paper, I argue, contra Pascal, that considerations of self-interest do not make choosing faith rational because they fail to take into account the way the self is transformed by faith. 1 I take "standard decision procedures" to include procedures such as "maximize expected value," dominance, and Rawl's maximin. I also take it that maximizing expected value is the most common of these procedures, and is the one that is most relevant to the Pascalian