No one likes to compromise, but we almost always do. Our politics and associations are built upon negotiation, respect for diversity, bargaining and elections. Compromise seems an awkward stepchild of morality and even dictionaries reflect its moral ambiguity.

In this groundbreaking book, J. Patrick Dobel describes and analyzes the elements that constitute integrity in public office. Drawing on case studies, memoirs, interviews, and fiction (e.g., John Le Carré), Dobel addresses such issues as when to resign and when to stay in office. He examines the temptations of power, the relation between private and public life, and the role of honor and prudence in making personal decisions. He applies not only moral theory but also the insights of history, (...) organizational theory, and psychology. Unlike most political ethics books, Public Integrity puts personal responsibility at the center of public morality, examining not just the responsibilities of office but also the role of personal moral commitments and promises. This timely book reminds us of the importance of public integrity as well as the demands and challenges that often threaten that integrity, especially in a liberal democracy such as the United States. (shrink)

Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society addresses the problems surrounding the concept of authenticity by offering its first sociological analysis. Compiled by a team of experts from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, it provides readers with a survey of original empirical studies focused on its experience, negotiation, and social relevance at the levels of self, culture, and specific social settings.

Single-neuron recordings may help resolve the issue of abstract number representation in the parietal lobes. Two manipulations in particular could provide important insights into the causal influence of activity. Taken together, these tests can significantly advance our understanding of number processing in the brain.

As the recent inaugural Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues 2.0 conference made clear, the effects of information communication technology are pervasive in biomedical research. Data initiatives are arising in all corners of biomedicine. Data sharing efforts already promised to surpass even the ambitious goals of the National Human Genome Research Institute, only 5 years after publication of its 10-year vision. ELSI research was established, in part, to address challenges of open data access and data sharing. However, by and large, ELSI (...) research projects address particular concerns of a given population, jurisdiction, type of research practice or type of data. This does not necessarily facilitate coherent data policy for sustainable data stewardship. Forward-looking, data friendly strategies need to be considered. Orchestration strategies are needed which overcome barriers to collective action. Here we present challenges policymakers face, and suggest three basics steps towards meeting them. First, policymakers must recognise the systematic change that occurs when ICT enables dataflow itself to become an organising principle of biomedical research. Second, methods for identifying and gathering types of metadata suitable for ELSI research ought to be developed and regulated. Third, policymakers need to organise in ways that mirror the new vision for data-enabled research that data technologies are making possible, as ELSI 2.0 encourages researchers to do. Taking these steps will help ensure research evolves in ways that warrants trust of the public while still supporting widespread ethical access to necessary data, research subjects, samples and findings. (shrink)

As identity and authenticity discourses increasingly saturate everyday life, so too have these concepts spread across the humanities and social sciences literatures. Many scholars may be interested in identity and authenticity, but lack knowledge of paradigmatic or disciplinary approaches to these concepts. This volume offers readers insight into social constructionist approaches to identity and authenticity. It focuses on the processes of identification and authentication, rather than on subjective experiences of selfhood. There are no attempts to settle what authentic identities are. (...) On the contrary, contributors demonstrate that neither identities nor their authenticity have a single or fixed meaning. Chapters provide exemplars of contemporary research on identity and authenticity, with significant diversity among them in terms of the identities, cultural milieu, geographic settings, disciplinary traditions, and methodological approaches considered. Contributors introduce readers to a number of established and emerging identity groups from sites around the world, from yogis and punks to fire dancers and social media influencers. Their conceptual work stretches from the micro-analytic to the ethno-national as authors employ a variety of qualitative methods including ethnographic fieldwork, interviewing, and the collection and analysis of naturally-occurring interactions. Several of the chapters look directly at identification and authentication, while others focus on the social and cultural backdrops that structure these practices-what unites them is the adoption of social constructionist sensibilities. This book will appeal to anyone interested in understanding identity and authenticity. (shrink)

Much bioethical literature and policy guidances for big data analytics in biomedical research emphasize the importance of trust. It is essential that potential participants trust so they will allow their data to be used to further research. However, comparatively, little guidance is offered as to what trustworthy oversight mechanisms are, or how policy should support them, as data are collected, shared, and used. Generally, “trust” is not characterized well enough, or meaningfully enough, for the term to be systematically applied in (...) policy development. Yet points made in the philosophical literature on trust can help. They allow us, not only to better distinguish the different ways the term “trust” may be interpreted, but also to better determine how different approaches to trust can align with policy and governance—in what ways they may relate to key bioethical concepts and related laws, and in what ways they can help to balance individual and group interests in data sharing. This article draws from the philosophical literature on trust to identify a relationship among consent, trust, and justice. Specifically, parallels are drawn between “character-trustworthiness” and “natural justice,” a set of widely held legal safeguards intended to ensure decision-makers follow a pattern of procedural fairness which protects the rights of the individual and thereby maintains public confidence in the decision-making process. Relevance to traditional bioethical principles, established laws, and consent procedures are addressed throughout. In conclusion, policy actions are suggested. (shrink)

The language of “participant-driven research,” “crowdsourcing” and “citizen science” is increasingly being used to encourage the public to become involved in research ventures as both subjects and scientists....

The contributors to The Moral of the Story, all preeminent political theorists, are unified by their concern with the instructive power of great literature. This thought-provoking combination of essays explores the polyvalent moral and political impact of classic world literatures on public ethics through the study of some of its major figures-including Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Jane Austen, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Robert Penn Warren, and Dostoevsky. Positing the uniqueness of literature's ability to promote dialogue on salient moral and intellectual virtues, (...) editor Henry T. Edmonson III has culled together a wide-ranging exploration of such fundamental concerns as the abuse of authority, the nature of good leadership, the significance of "middle class virtues" and the needs of adolescents. This collection reinvigorates the study of classic literature as an endeavor that is not only personally intellectually satisfying, but also an inimitable and unique way to enrich public discourse. (shrink)

In a recent Inquiry article Louis Pascal argues that the problem of massive starvation in the modern world is the result of a genetically-based human propensity to produce as many offspring as possible, regardless of ecological conditions. In this paper biological and anthropological objections to Pascal's thesis are discussed as well as the conclusions he draws from it. It is suggested that natural selection has produced humans who are flexible in their reproductive behavior in order to cope with rapidly changing (...) environments. The implications of both arguments for the population movement and the attempt to eliminate starvation are discussed. (shrink)

Gordon Kaufman's “constructive theology” can easily be taken out of context and misunderstood or misrepresented as a denial of God. It is too easily overlooked that in his approach everything is an imaginary construct given no immediate ontological status—the self, the world, and God are “products of the imagination.” This reflects an influence, not only of theories on linguistic and cultural relativism, but also of Kant's “ideas of pure reason.” Kaufman is explicit about this debt to Kant. But I argue (...) there are other aspects of Kant's legacy implicit in his method. These center around Kaufman's engagement with “observed patterns” in nature. With Paul Tillich's aid, I bring this neglected issue to the fore and argue that addressing it allows one to more readily capitalize upon the Kantian influence in Kaufman's method. This, in turn, encourages one to tap more deeply into the epistemic underpinnings of Kaufman's approach to the science–religion dialogue. (shrink)

In this companion volume to the national public television documentary of the same name, interviews of philosophy luminaries expose the relevance of philosophy to everyday life.

Plagiarism may distress universities in the US, but there is little agreement as to exactly what constitutes plagiarism. While there is ample research on plagiarism, there is scant literature on the content of university policies regarding it. Using a systematic sample, we qualitatively analyzed 20 Carnegie-classified universities that are “Very High in Research.” This included 15 public state universities and five high-profile private universities. We uncovered highly varied and even contradictory policies at these institutions. Notable policy variations existed for verbatim (...) plagiarism, intentional plagiarism and unauthorized student collaboration at the studied institutions. We conclude by advising that the American Association of University Professors and other overarching academic bodies confer and come to accord on the disposition of these issues. (shrink)

The life of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, lord chancellor of England from 1515 to 1529, has inspired no small number of literary, historical, and dramatic retellings. A comprehensive study of these texts remains to be written, but this article seeks to make a start by examining how Tudor writers portrayed the cardinal's response to his deposition and subsequent disgrace. For some authors, Wolsey's fall only made him more proud, and he began to act erratically and disloyally, confirming the wisdom of the (...) king's decision to relieve him of office. For others, deposition moved Wolsey to become philosophical and penitent, and some such writers depict a cardinal who at the end of his life underwent nothing short of a conversion. This article traces both of these historiographical trajectories from their origins in writings of the late 1540s and 1550s through a range of late Tudor chronicle accounts. Elements of both narratives about the cardinal appear, prominently if not always congruously, in one of the best-known theatrical works about the events of the reign of Henry VIII, the play King Henry VIII by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Understanding the interrelationships between the Tudor texts presented here is essential to grasping later portrayals of Wolsey and his contemporaries. (shrink)

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, lord chancellor of England from 1515 to 1529, has played no small part in the many literary, historical and dramatic retellings of the reign of King Henry VIII. This article presents the first extended analysis of the way in which Wolsey has been represented by playwrights and, later, film and television writers during the years from his death in 1530 through the present. The article demonstrates that by the middle of the 16th century, two competing narratives about (...) Wolsey had become entrenched historiographically, and nearly all subsequent accounts borrow substantially from the narratives of either Edward Hall or George Cavendish. How successive playwrights and screenwriters balanced the cardinal's two archetypal personae has often depended, in no small part, on the concerns of their own day. In the 21st century, readings of the cardinal as crafty rather than callous, unlucky rather than unprincipled, have become more common, and with them have come more sympathetic portrayals of a traditional Tudor villain. (shrink)

_"One of the most important political books of 2018."—Rod Dreher, ___American Conservative__ Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it _is _an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its (...) legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure. (shrink)

Five years in the making and including over 250 concise entries written by leaders in the field, the volume covers both fundamental knowledge as well as more recent advances in this rapidly changing domain.

This article explores the tension between the antithetical philosophies of empiricism and innatism underlying Chomskyan linguistics. It first follows the trail of empiricism in North American linguistics, starting from the work of Leonard Bloomfield at the beginning of the Twentieth century, and its influence on the Chomskyan paradigm, after which the Kantian trail of innatism initiated by Chomsky himself is reconnoitered. It is argued that the Chomskyan approach to natural language represents a paradigmatic example of the unsavory consequences of the (...) divorce between mind and matter instituted by Kant, in particular because human language involves an intimate relation between both types of reality. In Chomsky’s Generative Grammar, on the other hand, the material side of language is treated as completely autonomous from its mental correlate and analyzed in terms of a priori conceptual structures and computational operations; for its part, the mental side of language is treated as innate; the relation between the two is thus made utterly obscure and incomprehensible. The conclusion of the article argues in favour of a more balanced approach inspired by Aristotelianism and Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics. (shrink)

Gerrit Lindeboom’s biography, Herman Boerhaave: The Man and His Work, presents a heroic account of Herman Boerhaave’s life and his many contributions to medicine and medical education. He is portrayed as an outstanding eighteenth century educator who introduced into Leiden’s Medical School a novel method of clinical teaching that was to be widely adopted and today remains at the centre of medical student instruction. Lindeboom’s historiography induced a resurgence of interest in Boerhaave, a renewal of the myth concerning Boerhaave’s innovative (...) teaching and the publication of many acclamatory articles and false epithets, and several critical analyses. Such varying responses prompted this critical examination of the extant Boerhaavian literature, an appraisal of Lindeboom’s objectivity and an assessment of his representations of Boerhaave’s clinical teaching. In doing so, the moral nature of his historiography and that of those who were to sustain his assertions will be established, and the myth that surrounds the novelty and excellence of Boerhaave’s clinical teaching will be evident. (shrink)

In response to demand from investors and other stakeholders, companies have increased voluntary disclosure of climate change-related policies and performance. Information intermediaries have correspondingly emerged to provide needed credibility and commensurability of climate disclosures. However, the provision of performance ratings and lax audit capabilities creates opportunities for firms to manipulate those ratings for impression management. This article explains how firms may attain an intermediary’s favorable assessment of climate performance using varied methods of strategic disclosure. Using data from a prominent climate (...) intermediary (CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), I find that strategic disclosure is widespread and effective in attaining higher ratings, particularly through disclosure of forward-looking factors, suggesting that ratings may not be an accurate indicator of a firm’s true underlying performance. This article contributes to commensuration and impression management literatures, offers guidance for mechanism design to improve the reliability of intermediated voluntary disclosure, and highlights important areas for future research. (shrink)

This article explores a previously neglected manuscript essay in which Thomas White offers an account of the metaphysics underpinning transubstantiation. White’s views are of particular interest because his explanation employs a broadly mechanist framework, rather than the hylomorphism traditionally associated with Roman Catholic discussions of the Eucharist. The manuscript helps to shed light on a number of topics of importance to early modern philosophy including the reception of Descartes’ views, the relationship between theology and natural philosophy, and mechanist accounts of (...) identity and individuation. (shrink)

This paper provides evidence for the following novel insights: (1) People’s economic decisions depend on their psychological motives, which are shaped predictably by the social context. (2) In particular, the social context influences people’s other-regarding preferences, their beliefs and their perceptions. (3) The influence of the social context on psychological motives can be measured experimentally by priming two antagonistic motives—care and anger—in one player towards another by means of an observance or a violation of a fairness norm. Using a mediation (...) approach, we find that the care motive leads to higher levels of cooperation which are driven by more optimistic beliefs, a different perception of the game as well as by a shift towards more pro-social preferences. (shrink)

Tens of thousands of students have learned to be more discerning at constructing and evaluating arguments with the help of Patrick J. Hurley. Hurley’s lucid, friendly, yet thorough presentation has made A CONCISE INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC the most widely used logic text in North America. In addition, the book’s accompanying technological resources, such as CengageNOW and Learning Logic, include interactive exercises as well as video and audio clips to reinforce what you read in the book and hear in class. (...) In short, you’ll have all the assistance you need to become a more logical thinker and communicator. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

The central claim of this book is that the dichotomy between economic dependence and economic independence is completely inadequate for describing the political challenges faced by contemporary capitalist welfare states. The simplistic contrast between markets and states as sources of income renders invisible the relations of dependence established in our basic economic institutions such as the family, property, and money. This book is a work of political theory that attacks narrow conceptions of dependence and identifies distinct senses of dependence that (...) might allow political communities to make clearer decisions about the justice of our economic institutions and practices. Inheritance, for example, is as much a form of dependence as support by a welfare state, but these are never compared in debates about economic justice. This book begins the work of comparing forms of economic dependence, and argues that economic dependence is always an issue of both vulnerability and parasitism. It builds bridges between political theory and social science, and is of relevance to those concerned with social and economic justice in and beyond contemporary capitalist welfare states. (shrink)

This paper critiques John Noonan’s recent attempt to show the compatibility of Humanae Vitae and contraception. Although Noonan’s arguments are rejected, an alternate approach for showing that sort of compatibility is explored.

Wilfrid Sellars, Idealism, and Realism is the first study of its kind to address a range of realist and idealist views inspired by psychological nominalism. Bringing together premier analytic realists and distinguished defenders of German idealism, it reveals why psychological nominalism is one of the most important theories of the mind to come out the 20th century. The theory, first put forward by Wilfrid Sellars, argues that language is the only means by which humans can learn the types of socially (...) shared practices that permit rationality. Although wedded to important aspects of German idealism, Sellars' theory is couched in bold realist terms of the analytic tradition. Those who are sympathetic to German idealism find this realist's appropriation of German idealism problematic. Wilfrid Sellars, Idealism and Realism thus creates a rare venue for realists and idealists to debate the epistemic outcome of the mental processes they both claim are essential to experience. Their resulting discussion bridges the gap between analytic and continental philosophy. In providing original and accessible chapters on psychological nominalism, this volume raises themes that intersect with numerous disciplines: the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics. It also provides clarity on arguably the best available account of why humans can reason, be self-aware, know, and act as agents. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for an association between impurity and explanatory power in contemporary mathematics. This proposal is defended against the ancient and influential idea that purity and explanation go hand-in-hand (Aristotle, Bolzano) and recent suggestions that purity/impurity ascriptions and explanatory power are more or less distinct (Section 1). This is done by analyzing a central and deep result of additive number theory, Szemerédi’s theorem, and various of its proofs (Section 2). In particular, I focus upon the radically impure (...) (ergodic) proof due to Furstenberg (Section 3). Furstenberg’s ergodic proof is striking because it utilizes intuitively foreign and infinitary resources to prove a finitary combinatorial result and does so in a perspicuous fashion. I claim that Furstenberg’s proof is explanatory in light of its clear expression of a crucial structural result, which provides the “reason why” Szemerédi’s theorem is true. This is, however, rather surprising: how can such intuitively different conceptual resources “get a grip on” the theorem to be proved? I account for this phenomenon by articulating a new construal of the content of a mathematical statement, which I call structural content (Section 4). I argue that the availability of structural content saves intuitive epistemic distinctions made in mathematical practice and simultaneously explicates the intervention of surprising and explanatorily rich conceptual resources. Structural content also disarms general arguments for thinking that impurity and explanatory power might come apart. Finally, I sketch a proposal that, once structural content is in hand, impure resources lead to explanatory proofs via suitably understood varieties of simplification and unification (Section 5). (shrink)