Ethical becoming represents a novel framework for teaching engineering ethics. This framework insists on the complementarity of pragmatism, care, and virtue. The dispositional nature of the self is a central concern, as are relational considerations. However, unlike previous conceptual work, this paper introduces additional lenses for exploring ethical relationality by focusing on indebtedness, harmony, potency, and reflective thought. This paper first reviews relevant contributions in the engineering ethics literature. Then, the relational process ontology of Alfred North Whitehead is described and (...) identified as the foundation of the ethical becoming concept. Following this, ethical becoming is imagined as comprising five components: relationality and indebtedness, harmony and potency (i.e., beauty), care, freedom and reflective thought, and ethical inquiry. Each component will be unpacked and knit together to argue that (1) becoming in all its forms is relational and, therefore, whatever becomes is indebted to all to which it relates; (2) one’s ethical engagement must be directed toward the creation of harmony and potency; (3) care practices are necessary to ensure that multiplicity is valued and safeguarded in the meeting of needs; (4) the capacity for reflective thought is necessary to fashion one’s self and others in the direction of harmony, potency, and care; and (5) ethical thought and action must operate through a cycle of ethical inquiry. This paper will close with a brief exploration of how ethical becoming could be utilized in engineering education contexts. (shrink)

This study examines the outcomes of a four-year faculty learning community (FLC) that aimed to transform departmental ethics curriculum by supporting Earth Sciences faculty members as they ethically inquired into their teaching of ethics and refined existing courses in alignment with an Integrated Community-Engaged Learning and Ethical Reflection (ICELER) framework. We present ethnographic case studies that unpack processes through which three faculty members transformed undergraduate courses. We assembled case studies by triangulating interview data, course artifacts, and faculty reflections. We examine (...) how faculty (1) built awareness around teaching ethics, (2) took responsibility for and made judgments about teaching ethics, (3) experimented by designing and implementing ICELER-inspired courses, and (4) interrogated the outcomes of their ethics teaching, utilizing findings to enhance awareness and revise courses. The paper closes by introducing a model detailing how instructors inquire into ethics teaching and how model components might inspire future educational practice and research. (shrink)

Promoting the ethical formation of engineering students through the cultivation of their discipline-specific knowledge, sensitivity, imagination, and reasoning skills has become a goal for many engineering education programs throughout the United States. However, there is neither a consensus throughout the engineering education community regarding which strategies are most effective towards which ends, nor which ends are most important. This study provides an overview of engineering ethics interventions within the U.S. through the systematic analysis of articles that featured ethical interventions in (...) engineering, published in select peer-reviewed journals, and published between 2000 and 2015. As a core criterion, each journal article reviewed must have provided an overview of the course as well as how the authors evaluated course-learning goals. In sum, 26 articles were analyzed with a coding scheme that included 56 binary items. The results indicate that the most common methods for integrating ethics into engineering involved exposing students to codes/standards, utilizing case studies, and discussion activities. Nearly half of the articles had students engage with ethical heuristics or philosophical ethics. Following the presentation of the results, this study describes in detail four articles to highlight less common but intriguing pedagogical methods and evaluation techniques. The findings indicate that there is limited empirical work on ethics education within engineering across the United States. Furthermore, due to the large variation in goals, approaches, and evaluation methods described across interventions, this study does not detail “best” practices for integrating ethics into engineering. The science and engineering education community should continue exploring the relative merits of different approaches to ethics education in engineering. (shrink)

Ethics is central to scientific and engineering research and practice, but a key challenge for promoting students’ ethical formation involves enhancing faculty members’ ability and confidence in embedding positive ethical learning experiences into their curriculums. To this end, this paper explores changes in faculty members’ approaches to and perceptions of ethics education following their participation in a multi-year interdisciplinary faculty learning community (FLC). We conducted and thematically analyzed semi-structured interviews with 11 participants following the second year of the FLC. Qualitative (...) themes suggested that, following two years of FLC participation, faculty members (1) were better able to articulate their conceptualizations of ethics; (2) became cognizant of how personal experiences, views, and beliefs informed how they introduced ethics into their curriculum; and (3) developed and lived instructional principles that guided their ethics teaching. Results thus suggested that faculty members benefitted from exploring, discussing, and teaching ethics, which (in turn) enabled them to see new opportunities and become confident in integrating ethics into their courses in meaningful ways that aligned with their scholarly identities. Taken together, these data suggest faculty became agents of change for designing, implementing, and refining ethics-related instructional efforts in STEM. This work can guide others interested in designing faculty learning communities to promote instructional skill development, faculty members’ awareness of their ethical values, and their ability and agency to design and integrate ethics learning activities alongside departmental peers in an intentional and continuous manner. (shrink)

We understand from the oldest sources that have reached us that according to their status, racial characteristics, culture, religion etc. people called their adressees with many different names besides their own names. The Arabic nicknames and titles, which are the main subject of our research result of this necessity. Before the formation of Islamic culture and civilization, different titles were used in all civilizations, especially in the Byzantine and Sassanid empires, for the members of the group, which were considered as (...) the elite class, apart from their names. Of course, the Arab society of jahiliyyah was also greatly influenced by his. In the political and bureaucratic structure created by the rapid spread of Islam and the interaction from different civilizations, a new naming, or rather nicknames, were made by using religious figures. This happened to such extend that the original names of many rulers remained in the shadows. The strict centralist structure of the Umayyad state required an authoritarian state administration that would not need excessive credit or definition. Therefore, the caliph did not need an extra nickname or title to define himself. At the same time, it would be appropriate to say that they never had any thoughts of praising the politicians and bureaucrats affiliated with them. The radical change in the political understanding with the Abbasid revolution also led to a great change in naming strategies. In fact, it is possible to explain the differentiation in this management approach through titles in the shortest way. The famous names of the Abbasid caliphs are nothing but nicknames. These names, which are adorned with the words of Allah, are actually an effort to show religious sensitivity to the subjects. The sensitivity in the language of diplomacy has come to the fore even more with the special divans established. The language of religion and the language of politics have been intertwined, and the caliph, who is the representative of the creator on earth, has been giving nicknames/titles around him. We see the actual situation of this practice as concrete in relation to the vassal states. During the Abbasid period, the level of relations between the states, which first emerged as semi-independent and later independent, and the caliphate differed according to time and conditions. In proportion to the political power of the Abbasid state, these heads of state were given different ranks. In this research, we try to reveal the background of the ranks given to the heads of vassal state established in the Khorasan and Transoxiana region and carrying out very important activities in the political sense. Additionally, we aim reveal to find out the political, religious and social structure of Tahirids, Saffarids, and Samanids, who are also very important in terms of Turkish history and serve as a bridge between the region and the center of the caliphate, Baghdad. We think that the subject discussed is important in order to discover the unknown aspects of the historical process in the political and bureaucratic formation of the Turkish empires established after the collapse of these three vassal states. In fact, it can be said that even today, the historical anatomy of the ranks used in terms of status determination and the arrangement of the political field in different Islamic geographies is being explored. Most importantly, in this study, we try discover the cornerstones of the communication dimension of the mawali with the Arab power. The location of the Transoxiana and Khorasan geographies before the Islamic conquests and the population fluidity accelerated by the Turkish migrations were an important factor in the political formation of the region during the Abbasid period. The historical background was taken into consideration in the titles given to the vassal state rulers. It is remarkable that the caliph gave the old Turkish title “ıhsid” to a Turkish leader of a state established in Egypt. There are many other examles such as this with regard to the vassal states in the East. The conclusion we have obtained from our study is that titles play a decisive role in the political connection between the center of the caliphate and the affiliated states. On the one hand, this regulates the balance between the center and local administrators, on the other hand, it determines the moral as well as the material rank of the sultans in the eyes of the people. In fact, the successes in the conquests led the caliphs to rank the vassal sultans with titles. This situation is a kind of password that determines the balance between the religious authority, the caliphate, and the worldly authority. (shrink)

Previously proposed strategies for preventing hermeneutical injustices mostly take for granted the interests people have in various things about themselves being intelligible, and aim only to enable them to satisfy these interests. Historically, the pursuit of such strategies has been somewhat successful in preventing trans people from suffering hermeneutical injustices in their interactions with cis people. Yet the widespread anti-trans backlash of recent years has brought to the fore a number of limitations and previously unacknowledged downsides to trans people’s (...) pursuit of such strategies. Thankfully, the pursuit of such strategies is not the only way to go about preventing trans people from suffering hermeneutical injustices in their interactions with cis people. At least some such injustices can be prevented by instead doing away with some of the interests trans people have in certain things about themselves being intelligible to certain cis people, and thus with the possibility of those interests going unfairly unsatisfied. In particular, trans people can do away with some of those interests by meeting the needs which underly them for themselves. Such strategies are infrapolitical in the sense that because they largely play out within a marginalized group rather than between a marginalized group and a dominant group, they tend not to register on the radar of the dominant group. I argue that especially in the context of a backlash against a marginalized group by members of a dominant group, this is an important advantage to strategies of this previously untheorized sort. (shrink)

Trust, as a philosophical concept in education, seems largely taken for granted, either because it is embedded in other discourses, or is self-evidently assumed to be one on which there is general agreement and understanding. Its associated notions, such as confidence and belief, have counters in such concepts as disappointment and betrayal. These various notions come to the fore in interpersonal relations that require openness and self-critique. Critically reflective practice in professional teaching contexts is one such example, where openness (...) means that people involved may experience vulnerability. I will argue that the development of critically reflective practice is impossible in the absence of trust, and will take the position that trust requires the trustor to be vulnerable to betrayal. I draw on some findings of an ongoing research study in a selection of New Zealand schools, during which I have found that many participants attempt to connect reflective practice to appraisal, a move which, in light of what I present in relation to trust, I argue should be resisted. (shrink)

The publication of Political Liberalismhas allowed John Rawls to bring to the fore issues that remained in the background of A Theory of Justice. His explicit attention to the concept of ‘the reasonable’ is a welcome development. In a more recent publication, he affirms the importance of this concept, ‘while [granting] that the idea of the reasonable needs a more thorough examination than Political Liberalism offers.’ In this paper, I will present a critical exposition of the senses of the (...) reasonable on which justice as fairness relies. Rawls employs the term in four main contexts. I will outline these various senses and argue that in each case, a controversy in the secondary literature can be resolved by close attention to the concept of the reasonable. In three of these contexts, Rawls relies on what I will call a ‘strong’ sense of the reasonable, while in one he sometimes seems to rely on a ‘weak’ sense. I argue that justice as fairness is best served by relying on a strong sense throughout. (shrink)

The philosophy presented in this book is the philosophy of the age of the collapse of the Wall: of the Stone Wall of recent political history and of the many Walls of prejudice in the intellectual history from our century. Bernstein is considered, with Rorty and MacIntyre, one of the three emblematic figures of post-analytical philosophy. He shared with Rorty both the 'rediscovery' of European philosophy and the revival of pragmatism. Unlike From Rorty and the neophytes of deconstructionism, however, Bernstein (...) has made a different choice of partners in European philosophy and of mentors in the pragmatic tradition, and a different assessment of the legacy left by analytic philosophy. Among European philosophers, he is close to Gadamer and his dialogical ideal, to Habermas and his defence of the ethical-political ideals of modernity; in authors like Derrida and Foucault he discovers ethical-political instances complementary to those of Habermas; in recent developments of analytic philosophy he finds the same intuitions he recognizes in hermeneutics; and he wants to rescue the legacy left by Peirce, that is, the most rationalist among pragmatists. His previous books granted him a reputation of great "translator and interpreter" between currents of thought: critical theory, phenomenology, postempiricism, hermeneutics and neo-Aristotelianism. This book deals with 'postmodern' authors in the same ecumenical spirit: Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Heidegger, Rorty. To the postmodernists, he acknowledges the merit of having brought the ethical-political issues back to the fore by detecting the source of the malaise of our "modern/postmodern" moment, discomforts which have been given a name by such movements as feminism, resistance to apartheid, left-wing opposition in Eastern societies. Against Habermas, he proposes not to oppose the postmodern, but to overturn their self-destructive results from within. Essays: Philosophy, History, and Critique • The Rage Against Reason • Incommensurability and Otherness Revisited • Heidegger's Silence? Ethos and Technology • Foucault: Critique as a Philosophic Ethos • Serious Play: The Ethical-Political Horizon of Derrida • An Allegory of Modernity/Postmodernity: Habermas and Derrida • One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward: Rorty on Liberal Democracy • Rorty's Liberal Utopia, Reconciliation/Rupture . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:72 Reviews RUSSELL VERSUS THE HAPPINESS INDUSTRY Chad Trainer 1006 Davids Run Phoenixville, pa 19460, usa stratoflampsacus@aol.com Tim Phillips. Bertrand Russell’sThe Conquest of Happiness; a Modern-Day Interpretation of a Self-Help Classic. Oxford: Infinite Ideas, 2010. Pp. 118. 978-1906821 -27-2 (pb). us$11.95. German translation as Bertrand Russells Eroberung des Glücks in a “Business Classics” series (gabal Verlag, 2012). he popular writing Bertrand Russell undertook to make money has long roused (...) the indignation of those interested in his more technical specialized work, and his 1930 The Conquest of Happiness ranks among the more extreme examples of this pot-boiling genre. Ludwig Wittgenstein denounced Russell’s Conquest of Happiness as a “vomitive.” And the best ways of understanding Russell’s own assessments of his book are unclear, owing to the various sentiments his biographers report. According to Ronald Clark, he said: “… The Conquest of Happiness … I am not very proud of”;1 whereas Caroline Moorehead reports “he was later to say that, of all his books, he felt this had done the most good”.2 In his autobiography, Russell allows us how he wrote The Conquest of Happiness at a stage in his life “when I needed much self-command and much that I had learned by painful experience if I was to maintain any endurable level of happiness.”The emotional challenges to which he was subjected at the time he wrote the book “introduced an intolerable tension into every moment of daily life.” Beacon Hill School, which Russell had started with his second wife, Dora, in 1927, was in such dire straits financially by 1930 that Russell was compelled to resort to much popular writing and lecturing in order to remain solvent. In 1930, Dora gave birth to a daughter fathered by the American journalist Grif- fin Barry.This marked the beginning of the end to Russell’s marriage to Dora. Add to the foregoing Russell’s strained relations with Wittgenstein, when the ______ 1 The Life of Bertrand Russell, p. 448. 2 Bertrand Russell, p. 383. q= Reviews 73 former was asked to be one of the examiners for Wittgenstein’s phd at Cambridge. Although the phd was awarded and Wittgenstein secured a grant to conduct research at Trinity College, Cambridge for five years, Russell and Wittgenstein’s interaction at the time resulted in an end to their friendship. In general, however much control Russell may have had over matters at earlier points in his life, 1930 was a time he was largely at the mercy of unstable circumstances.The repose and leisure on which he had depended for his philosophic activity were not then available to him. Personal problems came to the fore and he was more prone to depression than usual. About The Conquest of Happiness, written primarily with the American market in mind, he remarked to the publisher Stanley Unwin: “I think they [Americans] mostly share Al Capone’s ideas of happiness, which are in a somewhat different vein from mine.”The book became a bestseller in America. Tim Phillips writes on business, technology, social change and innovation, and he has published more than a dozen expositions of other famous authors’ works. His book Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness is a faithful tour through this Russell classic. Phillips provides a readable account of the original ’s lucid points. The treatment is certainly not pretentious or obfuscatory, as it abounds with examples of Russell’s points from contemporary pop culture. It features corroborating quotations from other authors and is salted with some results of modern surveys. Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness has good reminders of the differences between the nature of Russell’s times and lifestyle and that of our own, the most notable being the absence during Russell’s day of a happiness industry. Nowadays, we are bombarded with “self-help” books “encouraging us to obsess about ourselves or manipulate others” (p. 9). Moreover, when Russell wrote The Conquest of Happiness, “the idea of an antidepressant pill was as likely as someone walking on the moon and the idea that people could ‘suffer from stress’ was thirty years into the future. For all... (shrink)

In 1970, Stewart advocated disenfranchising everyone reaching retirement age or age 70, whichever was earlier. The question of whether senior citizens should be disenfranchised has recently come to the fore due to votes on issues such as Brexit and climate change. Indeed, there is a growing literature which argues that we should increase the voting power of non-senior citizens relative to senior citizens, for reasons having to do with intergenerational justice. Thus, it seems that there are reasons of justice (...) to disenfranchise senior citizens, or at least to grant them a lower voting weight than non-senior citizens. In this paper, we investigate whether there are democratic reasons to do so. To answer this question, we turn to the boundary problem in democratic theory, i.e., the question of who should be included in democratic decision-making. Two prominent solutions, and a more recent one, are particularly relevant: the all-affected principle, the all-subjected principle, and the relational egalitarian principle. When it comes to the all-affected principle and the all-subjected principle, we argue that there is reason to grant most senior citizens a lower voting weight than most non-senior citizens in most decisions. Whether that is the case on the relational egalitarian principle depends on how people relate to each other in society. Indeed, it is sometimes in accordance with the relational egalitarian view to grant senior citizens a greater voting weight than non-senior citizens. (shrink)

The world's aging populations face novel health challenges never experienced before in human history. The moral landscape thus needs to adapt to reflect this novel empirical reality. In this paper I take for granted one basic moral principle advanced by Peter Singer and explore the implications that empirical considerations from demography, evolutionary biology, and biogerontology have for the way we conceive of fulfilling this principle at the operational level. After bringing to the fore a number of considerations that Singer (...) ignores, such as the probability that nonintervention will result in harm and the likelihood that different kinds of extrinsic and intrinsic harms can be prevented, I argue that the aspiration to extend the human biological warranty period (by retarding the rate of aging) is a pressing moral imperative for the twenty-first century. In the final sections I briefly address some standard objections raised against life extension and conclude that, while there may be some legitimate concerns worth addressing, they are not compelling enough to provide a rational basis for forfeiting the potential health and economic benefits that could be realized by extending the biological warranty period. (shrink)

The propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF) is commonly taken to be subject to a set of simple counterexamples. We argue that three of the most important of these are not counterexamples to the PIF itself, but only to the traditional mathematical model of this propensity: fitness as expected number of offspring. They fail to demonstrate that a new mathematical model of the PIF could not succeed where this older model fails. We then propose a new formalization of the PIF that (...) avoids these (and other) counterexamples. By producing a counterexample-free model of the PIF, we call into question one of the primary motivations for adopting the statisticalist interpretation of fitness. In addition, this new model has the benefit of being more closely allied with contemporary mathematical biology than the traditional model of the PIF. (shrink)

Representing organizational reality in conceptual models is an important part of IS practice. In this paper we expose and challenge the taken-for-granted ontological and epistemological assumptions that underpin common accounts of conceptual modeling, using process modeling as an example. We argue that, due to an implicit commitment to a dualist ontology and representationalist epistemology, much literature regards the elicitation and representation of reality in the course of modeling as largely unproblematic. We draw on Martin Heidegger's holistic philosophy to give an (...) alternative analysis that brings to the fore challenges in 1) eliciting knowledge of routine activities, 2) capturing knowledge from domain experts and 3) representing organizational reality in authentic ways. As a result we come to see modeling as a practice that performs particular realities rather than simply representing a given reality. We hope to initiate a critical discussion on the implications of the current philosophical grounding of conceptual modeling. (shrink)

As today's battles rage between those who march under the banner of liberty and those who unfurl the flag of equality, even an engaged partisan might be forgiven for occasionally wondering whether the game is, after all, worth the candle. For one thing, neither party simply rejects the other's principle – properly understood. Egalitarians routinely emphasize that their concern for equality is, also, a concern for true liberty; thus Michael Walzer, writing “In Defense of Equality,” finds it “worth stressing that (...) equality as I have described it does not stand alone, but is closely related to the idea of liberty.” 1 Libertarians tend to be less enthusiastic in their embrace of equality, but almost all endorse some form of equality or other – for example, equality of political rights or equality before the law. It would seem, then, that the differences between egalitarians and libertarians are really over the meaning and scope of equality and liberty, and that putting the issue as one of equality vs. liberty may be misleading. More important, one can wonder whether either the egalitarian or the libertarian combination of the principles of liberty and equality is worthy of support. What society has exalted personal liberty, has taken rights more seriously, than ours? Yet who can easily dismiss Solzhenitsyn's charge that our worship of freedom has resulted in “destructive and irresponsible freedom” being granted “boundless scope,” leaving us defenseless against “the corrosion of evil”? 2 The cause of liberty against tyranny surely continues to command our support; but what conclusion ought we to draw from the facts that liberty in absentia seems so markedly more attractive than liberty in practice, and that the qualities manifested in the struggle for liberty seem so superior to those that come to the fore once liberty is secured? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.1 (2000) 94-96 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition. Janet M. Atwill. London: Cornell University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi + 235. $35.00 hard cover. Much like Weimar, Germany, American civil society has been buffeted for a half-century by both the lunatic right, hiding behind the mask of religious freedom, and (...) the lunatic left, sporting "pomo" (postmodern) tribal colors in the garb of academic freedom. In an earlier age, both might be burned at the stake; today, they are granted tax-exempt status. Readers seeking contributions to the life of the mind find their harangues both unpleasant and unrewarding. This book is unfortunately no exception.Atwill's title is deceptive. Her work is only marginally about either Aristotle or his rhetoric. She is more concerned to "reclaim" the liberal arts held hostage by the received tradition of Athenian democratic ideals. Vide: At issue are the character of the social identities of gender, race, and class and the nature of the social ties by which we are bound.... (3) Challenges to the... humanist paradigm... became the subject of... debates over cultural diversity, political correctness, and revisionist literary canons and historical accounts. Just what is at stake... is the type of subjectivity produced by the paideia of a multicultural curriculum (that subjects values, views of reality, and relationships to cultural and political authority. (12-13) So we are in for another salvo of pomo evangelism, with the usual suspects trotted out (Stanley Fish, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Edward Said) all with a view to rectifying the hegemonic white male biases of E. M. Cope, and rhetoric's four B's (Baldwin, Burnet, Burkhardt, and Hans Baron).Were Atwill offering a New Age update of Cope's commentary, her project might hold promise. Embers of such potential glow throughout the [End Page 94] book. Thus, her passing remarks on the relation of techne and theoria to Greek medicine (74-79) and to the cultural demands of what amounts to a plantation society (107-8) bear consideration. And her deconstruction of Cope's work as a managerial art grounded in associationist psychology (192-200) is especially insightful.Where the book disappoints is its clumsiness: it is simultaneously pedantic and superficial. On the first count, the author shows wide acquaintance with the standard commentaries on classical culture, but she seems often to be adrift in an ocean of secondary sources. For example, she is more likely to discuss Kennedy's treatment of Aristotle than Aristotle himself (58). And so it goes: Wright on Empedocles (90), Crane on Cicero (31), Woods on Cope (200). Indeed, it is difficult to tell from the book if the author's command of classical Greek extends much beyond Liddell and Scott.In addition to her overdependency on secondary sources, Atwill disregards historical contexts in pushing her quirky pomo readings to the fore. To cite only a few of these: For Plato, expertise is equivalent to function, and function determines one's place in the hierarchical order of the state. (30)... Physis (nature) or faculty equals function equals place in the social order. (141) [For Aristotle,] private property is the means of both self-expression and self-knowledge; knowledge of the self would be impossible without the procurement of private property. The subject and object distinction, usually made in the context of epistemology, is relocated at the center of the notion of private property. (184-85) If Protagoras, Isocrates, and Cicero were appointed deans... today, I doubt that they would institute a curriculum based on principles of radical democracy. (209) Perhaps Atwill would prefer to pick her dean from among Che, Mao, Pol Pot, or Lenin. While such eccentric inferences may fit the bill for cultural studies, they flunk the test of impartiality. This is a commodification of pedantry--recycling fragments of academic publications to advocate a partisan position. But advocacy resting on innuendo, resentment, and polite sneering can never meet the standards of serious scholarship... (shrink)

In times of stress, trauma and crisis—whether on a personal or global scale—it can be all too easy for us to externalize a larger-than-life figure who can assuage our suffering, a Hero who comes to the fore even as we recede into the background. In taking on our collective burden, however, such an omnipotent Hero can actually undermine us, representing as it does the very same characteristics we fail to note in one another. By granting the Hero to power (...) to set things right, we seem to deny it to ourselves, leaving us temporarily lightened but ultimately helpless. In response, Sue Grand deconstructs the myth of the Heroic and argues for the "ordinary hero," a more realistic figure with the same limitations, concerns and fears as the rest of us, but who nonetheless stands up for the greater good in the face of danger, despair and villainy. From the foundation of relational psychoanalysis, Grand incorporates cultural and ethical considerations in her examination of what this ordinary hero might look like, a trip that takes us from the consulting room to right outside our front doors, from the heart of a "civilized" nation to the myriad war-torn regions dappling the globe, both past and present. Along the way we meet individuals whose encounters with adversity range from the mundane to the catastrophic, and learn how they struggle against the dubious concept of the Hero looming large in their lives. Recounting this journey in finely-tuned yet imminently accessible and enjoyable prose, Grand demonstrates that the best place to ultimately find the ordinary hero is within each other: The hero is us. (shrink)

The particular design of any technology may have profound social implications. Computing technologies are deeply intermeshed with the activities of daily life, playing an ever more central role in how we work, learn, communicate, socialize, and participate in government. Despite the many ways they have improved life, they cannot be regarded as unambiguously beneficial or even value-neutral. Recent experience shows they can lead to unintended but harmful consequences. Some technologies are thought to threaten democracy through the spread of propaganda on (...) online social networks, or to threaten privacy through the aggregation of datasets that include increasingly personal information, or to threaten justice when machine learning is used in such high-stakes, decision-making contexts as loan application reviews, employment procedures, or parole hearings. It is insufficient to ethically assess technology after it has produced negative social impacts, as has happened, for example, with facial recognition software that discriminates against people of color and with self-driving cars that are unable to cope with pedestrians who jay-walk. Developers of new technologies should aim to identify potential harmful consequences early in the design process and take steps to eliminate or mitigate them. This task is not easy. Designers will often have to negotiate among competing values—for instance, between efficiency and accessibility for a diverse user population, or between maximizing benefits and avoiding harm. There is no simple recipe for identifying and solving ethical problems. -/- Computer science education can help meet these challenges by making ethical reasoning about computing technologies a central element in the curriculum. Students can learn to think not only about what technology they could create, but also whether they should create that technology. Learning to reason this way requires courses unlike those currently standard in computer science curricula. A range of university courses on topics in areas of computing, ethics, society and public policy are emerging to meet this need. Some cover computer science broadly, while others focus on specific problems like privacy and security; typically, these classes exist as stand-alone courses in the computer science curriculum. Others have integrated ethics into the teaching of introductory courses on programming, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. (shrink)

Little attention has been paid to the importance of social media in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. This deficit is redressed in the present paper through utilizing the notion of ‘citizenship arenas’ to identify three dynamics in social media-augmented corporate–society relations. First, we note that social media-augmented ‘corporate arenas of citizenship’ are constructed by individual corporations in an effort to address CSR issues of specific importance thereto, and are populated by individual citizens as well as (functional/formally organized) stakeholders. Second, (...) we highlight that, within social media-augmented ‘public arenas of citizenship’, individual citizens are empowered, relative to corporations and their (functional/formally organized) stakeholders, when it comes to creating, debating, and publicizing, CSR-relevant issues. Third, we posit that information and communication technology corporations possess specific, and potentially very important, capacities, when it comes to creating, or helping construct, public arenas of citizenship from within which individual citizens can influence their broader political–economic environment. Following this, we discuss how social media can contribute to ‘dysfunctions’ as well as ‘progressions’ in corporate–society relations, and conclude with a number of suggestions for future research. (shrink)

The validity and utility of the proximate-ultimate distinction in biology have recently been under debate. Opponents of the distinction argue that it rules out individual-level organismic processes from evolutionary explanations, thereby leading to an unfounded separation between organismic causation and evolutionary causation. Proponents of the proximate-ultimate distinction, on the other hand, argue that it serves an important epistemological role in forming different kinds of explanation-seeking questions in biology. In this paper we offer an interpretation the proximate-ultimate distinction not only as (...) a means of forming explanation-seeking questions, but also as a distinction that can help highlight the way in which individual-level organismic processes can be evolutionary causes. We do this by interpreting the distinction between proximate and ultimate causes as a distinction between structuring and triggering causes. (shrink)

Are hierarchical arrangements in the workplace, including the employer-employee relationship, consistent with the ideal of relating to one another as moral equals? With this question at its core, this volume of essays by leading moral and political philosophers explores ideas about justice in the workplace, contributing to both political philosophy and business ethics. Relational egalitarians propose that the ideal of equality is primarily an ideal of social relationships and view the equality of social relationships as having priority over the distributive (...) arrangements. Yet contemporary workplaces are characterized by hierarchical employer-employee relationships. The essays push discussions of the relational egalitarian tradition in new directions, helping to show its promise and its limits. They address pressing concerns at a time of widening inequality and rapid changes in the nature of work. (shrink)

Background Medical research so flawed as to be retracted may put patients at risk by influencing treatments. Objective To explore hypotheses that more patients are put at risk if a retracted paper appears in a journal with a high impact factor (IF) so that the paper is widely read; is written by a ‘repeat offender’ author who has produced other retracted research; or is a clinical trial. Methods English language papers (n=788) retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 (...) were evaluated. Only those papers retracting research with humans or freshly derived human material were included; 180 retracted primary papers (22.8%) met inclusion criteria. Subjects enrolled and patients treated were tallied, both in the retracted primary studies and in 851 secondary studies that cited a retracted primary paper. Results Retracted papers published in high-IF journals were cited more often (p=0.0004) than those in low-IF journals, but there was no difference between high- and low-IF papers in subjects enrolled or patients treated. Retracted papers published by ‘repeat offender’ authors did not enrol more subjects or treat more patients than papers by one-time offenders, nor was there a difference in number of citations. However, retracted clinical trials treated more patients (p=0.0002) and inspired secondary studies that put more patients at risk (p=0.0019) than did other kinds of medical research. Conclusions If the goal is to minimise risk to patients, the appropriate focus is on clinical trials. Clinical trials form the foundation of evidence-based medicine; hence, the integrity of clinical trials must be protected. (shrink)

Social relations are predominantly influenced by an exchange paradigm whereby the logic of reciprocity shapes behaviour. If the notion of exchange instrumentalism is common across different business disciplines, this does not deny attempts – such as through gift exchange theory – to present different conceptions of traditional exchange-based relations. Gift exchange theory appears promising as it seeks to establish more meaning and significance to the nature and context of exchange relations between human actors or parties. The underlying processes may be (...) different for gift exchange and more traditional economic-based exchanges, but the general outcome remains the same – the obligation of reciprocity between actors. In this article, we develop an alternative conception of social and business experience that transcends the dominant logic of exchange: the existential gift. Firmly embedded in the idea of giving for its own sake, the existential gift suggests that for some individuals the expectations of reciprocity are neither sought nor established. Generosity that is expressed in both tangible and intangible ways need not depend on the response of intended receivers or recipients to precipitate future acts of giving. Based on the logic of unconditionality, the existential gift provides human actors with greater freedom in their choices and relationships. It may well be that this freedom, in turn, creates a new ‘ethic of generosity’ whereby significant progress can be made towards developing more human models and practices in business. (shrink)

This chapter advances a contextual view of evidence, through a reconsideration of Hempel's paradox of confirmation. The initial view regarding Hempel's paradox is that a non-black non-raven does confirm ‘All ravens are black’, but only in certain contexts. The chapter begins by reformulating the paradox as a puzzle about how the same entity can have variable evidential values for a given proposition. It then offers a three-stage solution to the reformulated paradox. The situation makes better sense when we reach a (...) deeper propositional understanding of evidence, recognising that each entity can be represented in multiple observational propositions. Some anti-contextualist intuitions can be defused by distinguishing two different senses of the word ‘evidence’, one applying to objects or events and the other applying to propositions; only the latter is relevant to inference. A fuller understanding comes from analysing the constitution and use of evidence in terms of epistemic action. These reflections on the ravens paradox suggest a general philosophical framework more suitable for understanding the function of evidence in scientific and everyday practices. (shrink)

This article examines how private equity returns in Asia are related to levels of legal protection and corruption. We utilize a unique data set comprising over 750 returns to private equity transactions across 20 developing and developed countries in Asia. The data indicate that legal protections are an important determinant of private equity returns in Asia, but also that private equity managers are able to mitigate the potential for corruption. The quality of legal system (including legal protections) is positively related (...) to returns. Inefficient legal protections negatively impact transaction structures and economic certainty when exiting investments. We also find that private equity managers, irrespective of the quality of legal system they are operating within, can mitigate the potential impact of corruption. Private equity returns are higher in countries with higher levels of corruption, controlling for legal systems. This finding is consistent with the view that private equity managers bring about organizational change to alleviate the costs of corruption. Our findings are robust to inclusion of controls for Hofstede cultural variables, economic conditions, and transaction specific characteristics, as well as consideration of econometric sample selection methods for unexited investments. (shrink)

This study examines whether corporate social responsibility performance is associated with corporate tax avoidance. Employing a matched sample of 434 firm-year observations from the Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini database over the period 2003–2009, our logit regression results show that the higher the level of CSR performance of a firm, the lower the likelihood of tax avoidance. Our results indicate that more socially responsible firms are likely to display less tax avoidance. Finally, the results from our additional analysis show that the (...) CSR categories community relations and diversity represent particularly important elements of CSR performance that reduce tax avoidance. (shrink)

The psychopathic personality disorder historically has been thought to include an insensitivity to morality. Some have thought that the psychopath's insensitivity indicates that he does not understand morality, but the relationship between the psychopath's defects and moral understanding has been unclear. We attempt to clarify this relationship, first by arguing that moral understanding is incomplete without concern for morality, and second, by showing that the psychopath demonstrates defects in frontal lobe activity which indicate impaired attention and adaptation to environmental conditions (...) which are relevant to the formation of complex intentions. We argue that these frontal lobe defects can help to explain both the psychopath's apparent insensitivity to morality and his characteristic imprudence. (shrink)

There is an extensive body of work that has previously examined the teaching of ethics in business schools whereby it is hoped that the values and behaviours of students might be provoked to show positive and enduring change. Rather than dealing with the content issues of particular business ethics courses per se, this article explores the philosophical foundations and the structural conditions for developing ethical training programs in business schools. It is informed by historical analysis, specifically, an examination of Platonic (...) and Aristotelian philosophies that inspires virtue ethics, and together provides four conditions for consideration: respect for law, dialectics, imitation and deliberation. We outline the necessary structural conditions for implementing these requirements as well as suggesting the necessary pedagogical protocol applicable to all courses. It is argued that reference to our two ancient Greek philosophers provide many valuable and insightful lessons for the implementation of ethical training today including choice of theoretical content and the approach towards learning. Further, the enactment of a pedagogical protocol requires a policy of recruiting and managing business school teachers-instructors that takes into account, and consciously encourages, intellectual, relational and spiritual pedagogical qualities. (shrink)

In all fields of clinical medicine, there is an increasing awareness that outcome must be assessed in terms of quality of life and cost effectiveness, rather than merely length of survival. This is especially the case when considering decompressive craniectomy for severe traumatic brain injury. The procedure itself is technically straightforward and involves temporarily removing a large section of the skull vault in order to provide extra space into which the injured brain can expand. A number of studies have demonstrated (...) many patients going on to make a good long-term functional recovery, however, this is not always the case and a significant number survive but are left with severe neurocognitive impairment. Unfortunately, many of these patients are young adults who were previously fit and well and are, therefore, likely to spend many years in a condition that they may feel to be unacceptable, and this raises a number of ethical issues regarding consent and resource allocation. In an attempt to address these issues, we have used the analytical framework proposed by Jonsen, that requires systematic consideration of medical indications, patient preferences, quality of life and contextual features. (shrink)

The White Coats for Black Lives and #ShutDownSTEM movements have galvanised biomedical practitioners and researchers to eliminate institutional and systematic racism, including barriers faced by Black researchers in biomedicine and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In our study on Black–White funding gaps for National Institutes of Health Research Project grants, we found that the overall award rate for Black applicants is 55% of that for white applicants. How can systems for allocating research grant funding be made more fair while (...) improving their efficiency? (shrink)

Previous research has found that funding disparities are driven by applications’ final impact scores and that only a portion of the black/white funding gap can be explained by bibliometrics and topic choice. Using National Institutes of Health R01 applications for council years 2014–2016, we examine assigned reviewers’ preliminary overall impact and criterion scores to evaluate whether racial disparities in impact scores can be explained by application and applicant characteristics. We hypothesize that differences in commensuration—the process of combining criterion scores into (...) overall impact scores—disadvantage black applicants. Using multilevel models and matching on key variables including career stage, gender, and area of science, we find little evidence for racial disparities emerging in the process of combining preliminary criterion scores into preliminary overall impact scores. Instead, preliminary criterion scores fully account for racial disparities—yet do not explain all of the variability—in preliminary overall impact scores. (shrink)

John organized a state lottery and his wife won the main prize. You may feel that the event of her winning wasn’t particularly random, but how would you argue that in a fair court of law? Traditional probability theory does not even have the notion of random events. Algorithmic information theory does, but it is not applicable to real-world scenarios like the lottery one. We attempt to rectify that.

Abstract: The State of Nature, Prehistory, and Mythmaking Karl Widerquist This chapter provide an overview of two books, in which Grant S. McCall and I name, define, and debunk the following false claims that still play important roles in contemporary political theories although they are not always defined and defended explicitly: 1. The Hobbesian hypothesis: sovereign states and/or the liberal private property rights system benefits everyone (or at least harms no one) relative to how well they could reasonably expect (...) to live in the state of nature—i.e. a society lacking one or both of these institutions. 2. The appropriation hypothesis: private property in the form of liberal ownership rights develops naturally while collective, communal, common, or government-held property rights systems do not. 3. The natural inequality hypothesis: inequality is natural and inevitable, i.e. economic, social, and/or political equality cannot exist and/or cannot be created without a significant loss in negative freedom. 4. The market-freedom hypothesis: a market economy (and/or capitalism) is more consistent with negative freedom than any other economic system. The third and fourth of these claims are not obviously claims about prehistoric or small-scale societies, but they are universal claims about all societies and so they include claims about even the most remote and distant societies from contemporary thinking. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.