This research examines how the fit between employees moral development and the ethical work climate of their organization affects employee attitudes. Person-organization fit was assessed by matching individuals' level of cognitive moral development with the ethical climate of their organization. The influence of P-O fit on employee attitudes was assessed using a sample of 304 individuals from 73 organizations. In general, the findings support our predictions that fit between personal and organizational ethics is related to higher levels of commitment and (...) job satisfaction and lower levels of turnover intent. Ethical P-O fit was related to higher levels of affective commitment across all three ethical climate types. Job satisfaction was only associated with ethical P-O fit for one of the three P-O fit variables and turnover intentions were significantly associated with two of the ethical P-O fit variables. The most consistent effect was found for the Conventional - Caring fit variable, which was significantly related to all three attitudes assessed. The weakest effect was found for the Preconventional - Instrumental fit variable, which was only predictive of affective commitment. The pattern of findings and implications for practice and future research are discussed. (shrink)

We conducted focus groups to assess patient attitudes toward research on medical practices in the context of usual care. We found that patients focus on the implications of this research for their relationship with and trust in their physicians. Patients view research on medical practices as separate from usual care, demanding dissemination of information and in most cases, individual consent. Patients expect information about this research to come through their physician, whom they rely on to identify and filter associated risks. (...) In general, patients support this research, but worry that participation in research involving randomization may undermine individualized care that acknowledges their unique medical histories. These findings suggest the need for public education on variation in practice among physicians and the need for a collaborative approach to the governance of research on medical practices that addresses core values of trust, transparency, and partnership. (shrink)

Research on justice climate demonstrates a consistent effect on workgroup outcomes such as job satisfaction, commitment, and performance. However, little research considers how justice climate affects these outcomes and when the relationship is stronger or weaker. In an effort to extend the literature on justice climate, we draw on research on other types of organizational climate to suggest justice climate influences the fair behavior of coworkers. Specifically, we propose fair coworker behavior mediates the relationship between justice climate and outcomes. Further, (...) we examine the influence of workgroup structure on this mediated relationship. We examine these relationships in two studies and find support for the mediating effect of fair coworker behavior and the proposed moderated mediation model. Implications of these results for justice and climate research are considered. (shrink)

Human life is operationally defined by the onset and cessation of organismal function. At postnatal stages of life, organismal integration critically and uniquely requires a functioning brain. In this article, a distinction is drawn between integrated and coordinated biologic activities. While communication between cells can provide a coordinated biologic response to specific signals, it does not support the integrated function that is characteristic of a living human being. Determining the loss of integrated function can be complicated by medical interventions that (...) uncouple elements of the natural biologic hierarchy underlying our intuitive understanding of death. Such medical interventions can allow living human beings who are no longer able to function in an integrated manner to be maintained in a living state. In contrast, medical intervention can also allow the cells and tissues of an individual who has died to be maintained in a living state. To distinguish between a living human being and living human cells, two criteria are proposed: either the persistence of any form of brain function or the persistence of autonomous integration of vital functions. Either of these criteria is sufficient to determine a human being is alive. (shrink)

The medical profession and medical ethics currently place a greater emphasis on physician responsibility than patient responsibility. This imbalance is not due to accident or a mistake but, rather is motivated by strong moral reasons. As we debate the nature and extent of patient responsibility it is important to keep in mind the reasons for giving a relatively minimal role to patient responsibility in medical ethics. It is argued that the medical profession ought to be characterized by two moral asymmetries: (...) (1) Even if some degree of responsible behavior from patients is called for, placing the dominant emphasis on professional responsibility over patient responsibility is largely correct. The value of protecting the right to refuse treatment and arguments against paternalism block a more expansive account of patient responsibility and support a strong notion of professional responsibility. (2) Insofar as we do want to encourage an increase in patient responsibility, we have good reasons to emphasize prospective rather than retrospective notions of responsibility in clinical practice. Concerns about patient vulnerability along with the determined factors in disease leave little room for blame at the bedside. These two asymmetries generate normative limits on any positive account of patient responsibility. (shrink)

Healy, Maureen I am a member of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of Australia and Papua New Guinea. The question I ask myself now is: how did I get to be here at this stage in my life?

In fields such as medicine, geography, and mechanics, spatial reasoning involves reasoning about entities that may coincide without overlapping. Some examples are: cavities and invading particles, passageways and valves, geographic regions and tropical storms. The purpose of this paper is to develop a formal theory of spatial relations for domains that include coincident entities. The core of the theory is a clear distinction between mereotopological relations, such as parthood and connection, and relative location relations, such as coincidence. To guide the (...) development of the formal theory, I construct mathematical models in which nontrivial relative location relations are defined. (shrink)

Existing research has shown that norm violations influence causal judgments, and a number of different models have been developed to explain these effects. One such model, the necessity/sufficiency model, predicts an interac- tion pattern in people’s judgments. Specifically, it predicts that when people are judging the degree to which a particular factor is a cause, there should be an interaction between (a) the degree to which that factor violates a norm and (b) the degree to which another factor in the (...) situation violates norms. A study of moral norms (N = 1000) and norms of proper functioning (N = 3000) revealed robust evidence for the predicted interaction effect. The implications of these patterns for existing theories of causal judgments is discussed. (shrink)

Attachment is an emotional bond between two people where one seeks care from the other. In the prototypical case, the child attaches to their mother. The most recent theoretical developments point out that attachment is multidimensional – meaning that the phenomenon pertains to multiple domains related to the relationship with the caregiver. However, researchers have so far modeled attachment computationally by mostly adopting a classical categorical (as opposed to dimensional) standpoint that sees the system as controlling caregiver proximity. In contrast, (...) we adopt here adimensional perspective(DP) and consider dimensions to be the system’s set-goals. We hypothesize that the resulting multidimensional controller should lead to valid (or even better) models of the phenomenon. To start testing this hypothesis, we built a DP-informed agent-based model of attachment inspired by the widely-studied Strange Situation Procedure. In this context, child and mother show the nature of attachment bonds through their behavioral and emotional expressions. By modeling them as point-agents moving in a two-dimensional arena, we simulated child-mother interactions for the avoidant and ambivalent attachment dimensions. The generated dynamical patterns – characterized by the alternation between approach and exploration – matched those described in the attachment literature, thereby confirming the implementability and validity of the DP. (shrink)

A review of the literature and ethnographic data from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom on the research ethics review process suggest that moral panics can become triggers for punctuated equilibrium in the review process at both the macro and microlevel, albeit with significantly different levels of magnitude and impact. These data suggest that neither the development of the ethics review process nor the process itself proceeds gradually, but both are characterized by periodic major shifts (...) evoked by particular events or situations that result in varying levels of moral panic. One way to deal with this moral panic is to increase the regulation of research and the depth or intensity of the scrutiny of applications under ethics review. Moral panics at the macrolevel influence those at the microlevel and, if the moral panic evoked at the local or microlevel is not satisfactorily resolved, it will evoke action at a higher level. Understanding the evolution of research ethics review processes from this perspective might help make actions by ethics committees and policy makers more understandable and help explain why attention to research ethics are heightened at particular points in time. It may also provide a basis for developing recommendations for adaptations to the ethics review process and policy at both the local and macrolevel. (shrink)

McPhate, Maureen Review of: The stories that changed Australia: 50 years of Four Corners, edited by Sally Neighbour, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2012. $32.99.

Recent empirical research results in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences on the “adaptive unconscious” show that conscious control and deliberative awareness are not all-pervasive aspects of our everyday dealings with one another. Moral philosophers and other scientists have used these insights to put our moral agency to the test. The results of these tests are intriguing: apparently we are not always (or ever?) the moral agents we take ourselves to be. This paper argues in favor of a refinement of our (...) common perception of moral agency that can accommodate these results; however, it also argues against the suggestion that this refined concept is the result of a radical new understanding of our everyday moral practices. (shrink)

Maureen Whitebrook argues that literature, through both its form and its content, can expose and criticize liberal theory and point beyond it to a new political theory. She describes how 'literary political criticism' might be done, and demonstrates such criticism in four essays that expose the connections between specific political and literary texts. Fiction, Whitebrook concludes, does a better job than liberal political theory of examining the relationship between the individual and the State.

“I demote practical reason from the conductor’s podium on which it is traditionally pictured, leading the performance. I picture practical reason less as an orchestral conductor than as a theatrical prompter — out of sight, following the action in case it needs to be nudged back into an intelligible course.” (David Velleman 2009, p. 4)IntroductionIn this paper I discuss our practice of exchanging explanatory and justifying reasons with one another, that is, reasons with which we explain or justify our actions, (...) choices, and decisions. I argue that the general aim and importance of this practice—as well as the associated ideas of responsibility and free will—is compatible with the finding that we are often, or even most of the time, not deliberatively aware of the reasons for which we act, prior to our acting so. That is, in many cases there are no explicit reasons, considerations we have reflected on and are aware of, that precede our actions. It is in this sense, I argue, that human ag. (shrink)

Mereological principles are sometimes used to support general claims about the structure and arrangement of objects in the world. I focus initially on one such mereological principle, the weak supplementation principle (WSP). It is not obvious that (WSP) is prescribed by ordinary thinking about parthood. Further, (WSP) is not needed for a fairly strong formal characterization of the part–whole relation. For these reasons, some arguments relying on (WSP) might be countered by simply denying (WSP). I argue more generally that there (...) is no reason to assume that one core mereology functions as a common basis for all plausible metaphysical theories. (shrink)

The debate on whether insurance companies should be allowed to use results of individuals’ genetic tests for underwriting purposes has been both lively and increasingly relevant over the past two decades. Yet there appears to be no widely agreed upon resolution regarding appropriate and effective regulation. There exists today a gamut of recommendations and actual practices addressing this phenomenon ranging from laissez-faire to voluntary industry moratoria to strict legal prohibition. One obvious reason for such a variance in views and approaches (...) is that there are competing bases for evaluating the outcomes of restricting insurers’ use of such information. For example, an outright ban on the use of genetic test results may seem the best method for protecting against unfair discrimination, while allowing their use may seem to be the best way to foster efficiency in the market for insurance. However, there is also a lack of understanding about how restricting the use of genetic information would play out in the market through the so-called phenomenon of adverse selection. Using economic analysis, we discuss how the type of adverse selection that occurs in insurance markets affects various arguments both in favour and against an outright ban on insurers’ use of genetic tests for pricing insurance. We review arguments based on moral principles . Practical concerns from the insurance industry based on actuarial principles and economic efficiency are also compared. Each perspective is shown to lead to a range of conflicting recommendations about how genetic information should be regulated and these conclusions depend critically on whether one conducts the analysis from the ex ante temporal perspective , from the interim temporal perspective , or from the ex post temporal perspective. (shrink)

Raoul Moati intervenes in the critical debate that divided two prominent philosophers in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1950s, the British philosopher J. L. Austin advanced a theory of speech acts, or the "performative," that Jacques Derrida and John R. Searle interpreted in fundamentally different ways. Their disagreement centered on the issue of intentionality, which Derrida understood phenomenologically and Searle read pragmatically. The controversy had profound implications for the development of contemporary philosophy, which, Moati argues, can profit greatly by returning (...) to this classic debate. In this book, Moati systematically replays the historical encounter between Austin, Derrida, and Searle and the disruption that caused the lasting break between Anglo-American language philosophy and continental traditions of phenomenology and its deconstruction. The key issue, Moati argues, is not whether "intentionality," a concept derived from Husserl's phenomenology, can or cannot be linked to Austin's speech-acts as defined in his groundbreaking _How to Do Things with Words_, but rather the emphasis Searle placed on the performativity and determined pragmatic values of Austin's speech-acts, whereas Derrida insisted on the trace of writing behind every act of speech and the iterability of signs in different contexts. (shrink)

The European refugee crisis is an important topic on media, political, and public agendas. Due to its scope and impact, its continuing prevalence on the media-agenda and the divisiveness of public debate, new research is needed to understand the media’s framing of the issue. This study inductively analyzes framing of the refugee crisis of 2015–2016 by two Dutch newspapers. Portrayal of the refugee crisis consists of ten different frames and counter frames. The frames are communicated on the level of the (...) refugee, on the level of the crisis as an event, and on a societal level. Results show that recent reporting on the refugee crisis is relatively nuanced and portrays the crisis from a variety of perspectives. Framing changes following certain transitory events, but only slight differences were found between popular and quality papers. (shrink)

I argue that Kotzee’s model of meta- debate succeeds in identifying illegitimate or fallacious charges of bias but has the unintended consequence of classifying some legitimate and non-fallacious charges as fallacious. This makes the model, in some important cases, counter-productive. In particular, cases where the call for a meta- debate is prompted by the participant with epistemic privilege and a charge of bias is denied by the participant with social advantage, the impasse will put the epistemically advantaged at far greater (...) risk. Therefore, I propose treating epistemic privilege as a variety of expert opinion specifically in cases where meta- debate participants come to an impasse in deliberation. My proposal exposes the problem of interpreting debate contexts as both adversarial and free from social power differentials. (shrink)

The comparison between Prop. 2, 34, 91-92 and Virg. ecl. 10, 18 allows to argue that Gallus treated Adonis in his love elegy and that he used this character as an exemplum, in the same way of his future followers, in particular Propertius and Ovid. It is possible that he imitated Euphor. fr. 43 Pow., and for this reason we can try to reconstruct his relationship with the models and his freedom in in adapting them to the new elegiac poetry.

This paper arises out of research on the New Zealand designer fashion industry. An unexpected success story, this export-oriented industry is dominated by women as designers, employees, wholesale and public relations agents, industry officials, fashion writers and editors, in addition to women holding more traditionally gendered roles as garment workers, tastemakers and consumers. Our analysis of the gendered globalization of the New Zealand fashion industry exposes a number of disconnections between women's positions in this industry and the literatures on globalization, (...) clothing and fashion. We argue that the New Zealand designer fashion industry not only embodies new ways of working associated with the movement of first world women into the labour force, but its very success is underpinned by these changes. Our conclusion is that more work is needed to explicate links between globalization and first world women's entry into the labour force. (shrink)

Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purport to challenge our ideas of free will and responsibility. The reason for this is that the challenge is often framed as a denial of the idea that we are able to act differently than we do. However, most philosophers think that the ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to responsibility and free will. Rather it is our ability to act for reasons that is crucial. We argue that the (...) scientific findings indicate that it is not so obvious that our views of free will and responsibility can be grounded in the ability to act for reasons without introducing metaphysical obscurities. This poses a challenge to philosophers. We draw the conclusion that philosophers are wrong not to address the recent scientific developments and that scientists are mistaken in formulating their challenge in terms of the freedom to do otherwise. (shrink)

The paper by Magill and Neaves in this issue of the Journal attempts to rebut the "natural potency" position, based on recent advances in direct reprogramming of somatic cells to yield "induced pluripotent stem" (iPS) cells. As stated by the authors, the natural potency position holds that because "a human embryo directs its own integral organismic function from its beginning . . . there is a whole, albeit immature, and distinct human organism that is intrinsically valuable with the status of (...) inviolability and deserving full moral respect" (p. 26). The authors boldly assert that "The recent production of iPS . . . highlights a prima facie absurdity for the natural potentiality argument" (p. 29). Yet the argument against natural potency is both logically flawed and based on a characterization of the scientific evidence that is factually inaccurate. (shrink)

Linda Alcoff, Real Knowing (reviewed by Maureen Linker).