Donation after cardiac death protocols are widely accepted, so arguments for them have apparently been persuasive. But this does not mean they are sound.

I distinguish between two styles of research that are both called . Neurocellular economics (NE) uses the modelling techniques and mathematics of economics to model relatively encapsulated functional parts of brains. This approach rests upon the fact that brains are, like markets, massively distributed information-processing networks over which executive systems can exert only limited and imperfect governance. Harrison's (2008) deepest criticisms of neuroeconomics do not apply to NE. However, the more famous style of neuroeconomics is behavioural economics in the scanner. (...) This is often motivated by complaints about conventional economics frequently heard from behavioural economists. It attempts to use neuroimaging data to justify arguments for replacing standard aspects of microeconomic theory by facts and conjectures about human psychology. Harrison's grounds for unease about neuroeconomics apply to most BES, or at least to its explicit methodology. This methodology is naively reductionist and illegitimately assumes that economics should not do what all successful science does, namely, model abstract aspects of its target phenomena instead of would-be complete and fully ecologically situated facsimiles of them. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the plausibility of the criticism against the thesis that external factors causally influence cognition and that they are, consequently, partly constitutive of cognition. The discussion should not be taken as implicitly proposing that the opposite theory is true, although the works of Adams and Aizawa suggest that they are defending internalism. This can be attributed to the fact that systems are, by definition, bounded; one must make assumptions about systems in developing cognitive models. This chapter defends the (...) position that metaphysical considerations should play no role in deciding how to model cognition. It further explains how there is no basis for a general fact of the matter about determining what is and what is not a cognitive system. (shrink)

The essays in this collection step back to ask: Do the complex components of Dennett's work on intentionality, consciousness, evolution, and ethics themselves ...

This paper is a criticism of full-information theories of welfare. Such theories unsuccessfully attempt to accommodate an internalist intuition (that one's good depends in some way on one's desires or hypothetical desire) with a rationalist intuition (that only fully-informed desires are relevant to one's good).

Opponents of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research claim that such research is incompatible with the moral principle that it is always wrong intentionally to end a human life. In this essay, I discuss how that principle might be revised so that it is subject to as few difficulties as possible. I then argue that even the most defensible version of the principle is compatible with the moral permissibility of hESC research.

Moral realism, the view that there are moral facts that are independent of our beliefs about them, has many defenders. But much less has been said about realism concerning other sorts of value. One of these, gastronomic realism is likely to seem implausible on its face. This paper argues, however, that much of the reasoning used to defend moral realism is about as well suited for defending gastronomic realism. Although these considerations do not directly undermine moral realism, they do suggest (...) that the two views should stand or fall together. And they rob moral realists of one ad hominem argument that often emerges in their debate with irrealists, that the irrealists cannot justify their widespread practice of taking their own moral values seriously. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Hume argues that respect for property (“justice”) is a convention-dependent (“artificial”) virtue. He does so by appeal to a principle, derived from his virtue-based approach to ethics, which requires that, for any kind of virtuous action, there be a “first virtuous motive” that is other than a sense of moral duty. It has been objected, however, that in the case of justice (and also in a parallel argument concerning promise-keeping) Hume (i) does not, (ii) should not, and (iii) cannot recognize (...) such a motive. This paper defends Hume’s argument against these three objections. (shrink)

Prior studies in business ethics highlight the role of philanthropy in shaping stakeholders’ perceptions of a firm’s underlying moral tendencies and values. Scholars argue that philanthropy-based character inferences influence whether and how stakeholders engage with firms. We extend this line of reasoning to examine the impact of philanthropy on firms’ contracting costs in the capital market. We posit that philanthropy-based character inferences reduce investors’ agency concerns, thereby reducing firms’ cost of capital. We also posit that the strength of the philanthropy–cost (...) of capital relationship is contingent on uncertainty regarding a firm’s character, visibility of a firm, and prevailing philanthropic norms. We test and find support for our arguments in a longitudinal study of philanthropy and the cost of capital. Our findings have implications for business ethics research on corporate philanthropy and corporate social performance and for organizational research on social judgment. (shrink)

Leading addiction researchers survey the latest findings in addiction science, countering the simplistic cultural stereotypes of the addict.

as the chief novelty in the quantum description of nature, Einstein for having found vindication in 3 relativity theory for either positivism or realism, depending upon whom one asks. Famous as is each in his own domain, they are famous also, together, for their decades-long disagreement over the future of fundamental physics, their respective embrace and rejection of quantum indeterminacy being only the most widely-known point of contention.

In my essay, Why abortion is immoral, I criticised discussions of the morality of abortion in which the crucial issue is whether fetuses are human beings or whether fetuses are persons. Both argument strategies are inadequate because they rely on indefensible assumptions. Why should being a human being or being a person make a moral difference? I argued that the correct account of the morality of abortion should be based upon a defensible account of why killing children and adults is (...) wrong. I claimed that what makes killing us wrong is that our premature deaths deprive us of our futures of value, that is, the goods of life we would have experienced had we survived. This account of the wrongness of killing explains why killing is one of the worst of crimes and how killing greatly harms the victim. It coheres with the attitudes of those with cancer or HIV facing premature death. It explains why we believe it is wrong to kill infants. It does not entail that it wrongs a human being to end her life if she is in persistent vegetative state or if her future must consist only of unbearable physical suffering and she wants to die. This account of the wrongness of killing implies that abortion is immoral because we were fetuses once and we know those fetuses had futures of value. Mark Brown claims that this potential future of value account is unsound because it implies that we have welfare rights to what we need to stay alive that most people would reject. I argue that Brown is incorrect in two ways: a welfare right to what we need to stay alive is not directly implied by my account and, in addition, most of us do believe that dependent human beings have substantial welfare rights to what they need to stay alive. Brown argues that depriving us of a future of value of which we have mental representations both is a better explanation of the wrongness of killing and does not imply that abortion is immoral. I reply that if Brown's arguments against my view were sound, those arguments could be easily adapted to show that his view is unsound as well and Brown's view is both ambiguous and unsound on any interpretation. The most popular class of pro-choice argument strategies appeals to the view that some or all fetuses lack either a mental state or function or a capacity for a mental state or function necessary for possession of the right to life. Desires, interests, sentience, various concepts, moral agency, and rationality have all been suggested as candidates for this crucial mental role. Brown's analysis is one member of this class of strategies. I believe that it is possible to show that none of these strategies is reasonable. However, there are so many of these strategies that the required argument demands something more like a book and less like a short essay. The argument of the following essay is a piece of this larger argument. (shrink)

Gilbert Harman and Judith Thomson have argued that moral facts cannot explain our moral beliefs, claiming that such facts could not play a causal role in the formation of those beliefs. This paper shows these arguments to be misguided, for they would require that we abandon any number of intuitively plausible explanations in non-moral contexts as well. But abandoning the causal strand in the argument over moral explanations does not spell immediate victory for the moral realist, since it must still (...) be shown that moral facts do figure in our best global explanatory theory. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of mood on corporate philanthropic giving. Drawing on group emotions theory and affect-infused decision theory, we advance the argument that firms allocate greater resources to philanthropy when headquarters-based employees are in a more positive affective state. We also describe three boundary conditions in this relationship—executives’ embeddedness in the firm, executives’ latitude to engage in philanthropic giving, and the firm’s track record of corporate social irresponsibility. We test our arguments using a longitudinal dataset of philanthropic giving (...) by U.S. firms. Our study contributes to the literature by shedding light on the role of affect in shaping the decision to allocate resources to corporate philanthropy. (shrink)

Prior studies suggest that firms headquartered in areas with strong religious social norms have higher ethical standards. In this study, we examine whether the ethical standards associated with local religious norms influence the M&A announcement returns. We document that the M&A announcement returns of acquirer firms increase with the strength of religious social norms in the area surrounding firms’ headquarters. We also document that the relationship is attenuated when acquirer firms have strong corporate social responsibility credentials, is amplified when public (...) trust that firms act in the best interest of stakeholders suffers a negative shock and when the M&A deal has greater economic significance for the acquirer, and manifests predominantly in the lower tail of the distribution of M&A returns. Our findings are consistent with investor assessments of firms’ ethical standards driving the relationship between local religious social norms and M&A announcement returns. We find no evidence for the competing explanation—that investor assessments of firms’ risk preferences drive the documented relationship. (shrink)

Military Medical Ethics for the 21st Century is the first full length, broad-based treatment of this important subject. Written by an international team of practitioners and academics, this book provides interdisciplinary insights into the major issues facing military-medical decision makers and critically examines the tensions and dilemmas inherent in the military and medical professions. In this book the authors explore the practice of battlefield bioethics, medical neutrality and treatment of the wounded, enhancement technologies for war fighters, the potential risks of (...) dual-use biotechnologies, patient rights for active duty personnel, military medical research and military medical ethics education in the 21st Century. (shrink)

Human beings regularly work together to get things done. In particular, people frequently collaborate on the production and dissemination of knowledge. For example, scientists often work together in teams to make new discoveries. How such collaborations produce knowledge, and how well they produce knowledge, are important questions for epistemology. In fact, several epistemologists have addressed such questions regarding collaborative scientific research.

Within the Euro-American community of philosophers relating hermeneutics to science there is a considerable disagreement about where hermeneutics may be located. The older traditions hold that hermeneutics apply to and are limited to the social, cultural, and historical dimensions of science. But newer approaches claim that hermeneutics applies to the very praxis of science and to the constitution of scientific objects. This paper sides with the latter perspective and argues that a tendency to retain vestigial positivist interpretations of science keeps (...) the older tradition from seeing hermeneutics as deeply embedded in science praxis. After arguing this point historically, I turn to a hermeneutic recuperation of science, first by drawing from the hermeneutic approach of Joseph Rouse, and then by the hermeneutic constructionism of Bruno Latour. I finally turn to what I term technoconstruction in science, particularly in imaging processes, to show concrete cases of the hermeneutic preparation of scientific objects. I conclude that contemporary science has exceeded its earlier modernist framework and now operates in a constructionist-hermeneutic framework. (shrink)

We need to reconsider and reconceive the path that will take us from innate perceptual saliencies to basic colour language. There is a space between the perceptual and the linguistic levels that needs to be filled by an account of the rules that people use to generate relatively stable reference classes in a social context.

This article is a critical discussion of David Owen's book, _Hume's Reason. Owen rightly emphasizes (i) that an understanding of Hume's theory of reasoning is essential to understanding his philosophy and (ii) that an understanding of early modern antiformalism in logic is crucial to understanding Hume's theory of reasoning. Against most commentators, Owen and I agree that Hume's famous conclusion about inductive inferences, i.e., that they are "not determin'd by reason"--is a causal rather a normative claim; however, I dispute Owen's (...) particular interpretation of this conclusion, arguing instead for an interpretation that allows Hume to use the term 'reason' univocally to mean "the inferential faculty." While agreeing with Owen that Hume regards the "wise" use of reason as a moral virtue, I argue that Hume's _endorsement of the use of reason is not entirely dependent on this fact. (shrink)

Hermeneutics and Deconstruction provides an assessment of two dominant modes of thinking and writing in continental philosophy today. It addresses central issues in the theory of interpretation and in the strategies of textual reading. Placed in the context of contemporary philosophical practice, this volume raises the question of the “end” of philosophy and offers different ways of understanding how the question of “closure” in philosophy can itself open up a whole range of philosophical activities. Special attention is given to the (...) practice of interpretation in the areas of science, perception, and literature, and to the dimensions of hermeneutic understanding with respect to being, life, and the world. An investigation of how history is interpreted and read as a text provides access to one of the significant differences between hermeneutic understanding and deconstructionist practice. A section is devoted to the controversy concerning the value and the achievement of deconstruction. The writings of Heidegger and Derrida are juxtaposed and examined. And the volume concludes with several indications of new directions in continental philosophy and various versions of what a post-Derridean reading might entail. (shrink)

This article seeks to draw out the links between systems thinking and the philosophy of John Macmurray. In fact, while systems theory is a growing trend in a number of disciplines, including counselling and psychotherapy, the narrative describes its ancient roots. Macmurray’s insistence that humans exist as interdependent rather than independent beings is supported by systems theory. Moreover, Macmurray’s critique of institutionalized religion and his favouring of inclusive religious community is akin to a model of spirituality that, in positive psychology, (...) is conceived of as an open system. (shrink)

This book aims to recast the way we think about ethics by defending an alternative to more conventional approaches and illustrating its plausibility through detailed discussions of several important cases. The book is styled as an attack on “Plato’s Thesis”.

In this article I apply the insights of hermeneutic realism to a practical-theological ethics that addresses the international crisis of families and women’s rights. Hermeneutic realism affirms the hermeneutic philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer but enriches it with the dialectic of participation and distanciation developed by Paul Ricoeur. This approach finds a place for sciences such as evolutionary psychology within a hermeneutically informed ethic. It also points to a multidimensional model of practical reason that views it as implicitly or explicitly involving (...) five levels---background metaphysical visions, some principle of obligation, assumptions about pervasive human tendencies and needs, assumptions about constraining social and natural environments, and assumed acceptable rules of conduct. The fruitfulness of this multidimensional view of practical reason is then demonstrated by applying it to practical-theological ethics and the analysis of four theorists of women’s rights---Martha Nussbaum, Susan Moller Okin, Lisa Cahill, and Mary Ann Glendon. Finally, I illustrate the importance and limits of the visional dimension of practical reason by discussing the concept of “Africanity‘ in relation to the family and AIDS crisis of Eastern Africa. (shrink)

A critical review essay of The Child's Theory of Mind, Henry M. Wellman, 1992, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, xiii + 358 pp, $16.95; and Young Children's Understanding of Pretense, Paul L. Harris, Robert D. Kavanaugh, 1993, with Commentary by Henry M. Wellman, Anne K. Hickling and a Reply by the authors. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Serial No. 231, Vol. 58, No. 1. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, v + 110 pp.

(STARS Conference, Cancún, January 2007).