A novel Protocol Ethics Tool Kit (‘Ethics Tool Kit’) has been developed by a multi-stakeholder group of the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Brigham and Women9s Hospital and Harvard. The purpose of the Ethics Tool Kit is to facilitate effective recognition, consideration and deliberation of critical ethical issues in clinical trial protocols. The Ethics Tool Kit may be used by investigators and sponsors to develop a dedicated Ethics Section within a protocol to improve the consistency and transparency between clinical trial (...) protocols and research ethics committee reviews. It may also streamline ethics review and may facilitate and expedite the review process by anticipating the concerns of ethics committee reviewers. Specific attention was given to issues arising in multinational settings. With the use of this Tool Kit, researchers have the opportunity to address critical research ethics issues proactively, potentially speeding the time and easing the process to final protocol approval. (shrink)

This research on the ethics of meaningful work examined how types of job-related harm and their magnitude of consequences influenced components of ethical decision-making. The research also investigated the moderating effects of individual differences on the relation between the MOC and the ethical decision-making elements for each type of harm. Using a sample of 185 Chinese professionals, a between-subjects, fully crossed experimental scenario design revealed that physical and economic job-related harm were recognized as moral issues to a greater extent than (...) cognitive or emotional harm. Second, physical job-related harm stimulated a higher level of moral evaluations than economic and cognitive harm. Third, individuals intended to act ethically when MOC was high versus low. Finally, experience with layoffs and IMO helped explain the relations between MOC and moral evaluations for economic and cognitive job-related harm, respectively. Implications for research and management are discussed. (shrink)

As humanoid social robots are developed rapidly in recent years and experimented in social situations, comparing them to humans provides insights into practical as well as philosophical concerns. This study uses the theoretical framework of communication constraints, derived in human–human communication research, to compare whether people apply social-oriented constraints and task-oriented constraints differently to human targets versus humanoid social robot targets. A total of 230 students from the University of Hawaii at Manoa participated in the study. The participants completed a (...) questionnaire, which determined their concern for the five communication constraints (feelings, non-imposition, disapproval, clarity, and effectiveness) in situations involving humans or robots. The results show people were more concerned with avoiding hurting the human’s feelings, avoiding inconveniencing the human interactive partner, and avoiding being disliked by the human and less concerned with avoiding hurting the robot’s feelings, avoiding inconveniencing the robot partner, and avoiding being disliked by the robot. But people did not differ in their concerns of the two task-oriented constraints (clarity and effectiveness) in response to humans versus humanoid robots. The results of the research suggest that people are more likely to emphasize the social-oriented constraints in communication with humans. (shrink)

Building on theoretical and empirical insights and applying the thriving theory as the conceptual framework, the authors developed two new teacher-specific scales, namely the Teacher Stress Scale and the Teacher Thriving Scale. The goal of this investigation was to evaluate the psychometric properties of these two scales. Data were collected through an online questionnaire administered to a national sample of 122 participating early childhood teachers teaching in preschool through third grade in 26 states of the United States during the 2020–2021 (...) school year amidst COVID-19. This study revealed some important psychometric results. First, with respect to their internal structures, both the TSS and the TTS appeared to be best represented as bifactorial and trifactorial, respectively. Specifically, the TSS comprised two constructs: Inadequate School-based Support, and Teaching-related Demands; and the TTS encompassed three constructs: Adaptability and Flexibility, Personal Strengths and Professional Growth, and Positive Mindset. Second, the negative correlation between the TSS and the TTS provided discriminant evidence for each other’s construct validity, while the positive correlations between the TTS and six conceptually cognate constructs demonstrated convergent evidence for construct validity for the TTS. Third, both the overall TSS and the overall TTS as well as their subscales exhibited good internal consistency reliability. Fourth, both the overall TSS and the overall TTS also demonstrated test–retest reliability. (shrink)

This report takes a broad approach to answering the overarching question, "How can the U.S. Air Force best improve the professionalism of its personnel?" The authors examine the definition of professionalism and what it means in the Air Force. They then look at past actions the Air Force, the U.S. Department of Defense, and other U.S. military services have taken dating back to the last substantial Air Force initiatives related to professionalism. In the absence of objective metrics specifically intended to (...) measure professionalism, the authors examined statistics of cases in which professionalism was lacking, as evidenced by documented violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. For subjective metrics, the authors looked at trends in attitudes related to professionalism from surveys of civilian federal employees and uniformed service members. They then examined a selection of courses and seminars to understand the Air Force learning opportunities currently being offered and how they relate to the Air Force strategic road map for professionalism and instructional practices more conducive to building Air Force professionalism. Finally, the authors examined the literature on organizational culture and change to identify how the Air Force might effect changes on this dimension. The report offers key findings and conclusions from these investigations and provides recommendations for further actions to support the effort to enhance professionalism across the Air Force."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

In 2018-2019, at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, we developed and piloted a narrative-based health systems science intervention for patients living with HIV and medical students in which medical students co-wrote patients’ life narratives for inclusion in the electronic health record. The pilot study aimed to assess the acceptability of the “life narrative protocol” from multiple stakeholder positions and characterize participants’ experiences of the clinical and pedagogical implications of the LNP. Students were recruited from (...) KSOM. Patients and staff were recruited from the Maternal, Child, and Adolescent/Adult Center for Infectious Disease and Virology at Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center. Ten patients, seventeen students, and ten MCA staff participated in the pilot study. Qualitative methods were used to gather data from students’, patients’, and staff’s perspectives. Three themes emerged from the thematic analysis: patients’ life narratives conveyed their unique life experiences and voices; the protocol could result in wide-ranging effects on HIV care; the LNP enabled students to contribute value to patients’ healthcare. Across groups, participants considered the LNP an acceptable intervention. The LNP, its limitations, and implications for HIV care, narrative medicine, and health information technology are presented. (shrink)

Recent arguments claim that behavioral science has focused – to its detriment – on the individual over the system when construing behavioral interventions. In this commentary, we argue that tackling economic inequality using both framings in tandem is invaluable. By studying individuals who have overcome inequality, “positive deviants,” and the system limitations they navigate, we offer potentially greater policy solutions.

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

This paper examines the market response to the events leading up to the passage of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to explore whether investors value mandatory human rights disclosures of conflict mineral usage. Using a sample of 3639 US registrants from January 1, 2008 to September 30, 2014, we document a significant negative stock market reaction to the passage of the Act. Using a sample of 1206 filers, we also find a negative market (...) reaction to conflict mineral disclosures under the Act. The market reaction is more negative and limited to companies that source their minerals from the DRC and adjoining countries, companies with prior records of human rights violations, and companies with ambiguous disclosures. However, the market appears to reward firms that use risk-mitigation strategies. This paper provides preliminary evidence that the mandatory disclosure of conflict mineral information on Form SD poses a threat to firms’ legitimacy, resulting in a net cost to investors. The results of this study provide economic justification for companies with poor records of conflict mineral sourcing to improve their practices for the purpose of avoiding the high costs that will arise if they are forced to disclose human rights abuses related to conflict mineral use. (shrink)

Ethics is frequently concerned with how to resolve clashes between competing claims from claimants of different kinds. The idea of moral status is crucial to understanding how (1) competing claims...

China’s business sector has been described as facing serious ethical challenges, including corruption and bribery, distributive injustice, environmental pollution, and misspending of public funds. Unethical decision-making in business represents a potentially destabilizing force for government, business, and society. Recent calls for research that is detailed, nuanced, contemporary, and context-specific on the effects of Asian national business systems on ethical business practices, according to Pereira et al. (2017), are particularly relevant for countries including China that possess the entanglement of a “multiplexity”-multiple (...) business systems co-existing within the same economy reliant on ethics and institutional trust for effective functioning, as discussed by Witt and Redding (2013). To this end, we conduct exploratory research investigating the relationship among Confucian values, Hofstede’s national culture, and ethical decision-making within a business context in China. Using data collected from 550 Chinese MBA students and business executives, results indicate that although both Confucian values and Hofstede’s national culture dimensions are associated with the use of egoism and justice in ethical decision-making scenarios, differential patterns emerged in these relationships. Confucian values were more predictive of outcomes. Of particular interest were the relationships between Confucian values and ethical criteria of yi and justice as well as li and zhi with egoism. Results suggest if the goal is enhancing institutional trust through an increased use of more principled justice-oriented ethics in business in China, an emphasis should be placed on yi (righteousness), coupled with a deemphasis on hierarchy and tradition in the form of li (ritual propriety) and zhi (wisdom). Including love of learning (haoxue), trust (xin), a long-term orientation, and individualistic messages oriented towards family and self-sufficiency may also strengthen overall ethical decision-making for SMEs, MNCs, and SOEs in navigating a multiplexity environment. (shrink)

Dispositionality is a modal notion of a certain sort. When an object is said to have a disposition, we typically understand this to mean that under certain circumstances, the object would behave in a certain way. For instance, a fragile object is disposed to break when dropped onto a concrete surface. It need not actually break - its being fragile has implications that, so to speak, point beyond the actual world. According to dispositionalism, all modal features of the world may (...) be accounted for in terms of its dispositional features. My aim in this paper is to assess the prospects for dispositionalism by examining the most promising theories. Sections 1 and 2 clarify the assumptions and desiderata of a successful dispositionalist theory of modality. Section 3 introduces the principles governing the dispositionalist theories that apparently meet the desiderata. Sections 4 through 6 show that dispositionalism nonetheless faces three problems: while dispositions help account for modal features of the world that are local, diachronic, or gradable, they cannot account for certain modal features of the world that are global, synchronic, or absolute. I end by discussing the costs of preserving dispositionalism. (shrink)

Many are reluctant to accept primitive modality into their fundamental picture of the world. The worry often traces to this thought: we shouldn't adopt any more primitive - that is, unexplained - notions than we need in order to explain all the features of the world, and primitive modal notions are not needed. I examine one prominent rival to modal primitivism, combinatorialism, and show that in order to account for all the modal features of the world the combinatorialist must adopt (...) two additional primitive notions. My own modal primitivist view takes as primitive the notion of incompatibility between properties or relations. I show how the non-modal notions that the combinatorialist must adopt as primitive may be analyzed using my notion. The upshot is that with respect to the number of primitive notions, my modal primitivist theory comes out ahead. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to trace the origin of the systematic cross-cultural variations in referential intuitions by investigating the effects of perspective taking on people’s responses in the Gödel-style probes through two novel experiments. Here is how we will proceed. In section 2, we first briefly introduce the MMNS (2004) study, and then critically review the two relevant studies conducted by Sytsma and colleagues (i.e., Sytsma and Livengood 2011; Sytsma et al. 2015). In section 3, we introduce the literature (...) on cross-cultural variation in perspective taking in cultural psychology, which together with the conjecture of perspectival ambiguity leads to the hypothesis of our current study. In sections 4 and 5, two new experiments on how perspective taking affects people’s responses in hypothetical stories modelled on the Gödel thought experiment will be reported. Based on the empirical findings, in section 6 we argue that the robust cross-cultural variations thus far observed in people’s responses to the Gödel cases are largely attributable to culturally specific perspective-taking strategies, which provides new support for the proposal previously made by Sytsma and Livengood (2011). The implications of the experimental results for the ongoing work of testing the theories of refence of names and for the current metaphilosophical debate on the robustness of philosopher’s intuitions are also drawn in this section. Finally, the major conclusions and contributions of the current study are highlighted in section 7. (shrink)

We study the Johansen–Ledoit–Sornette model of financial market crashes :219–255, 2000). On our view, the JLS model is a curious case from the perspective of the recent philosophy of science literature, as it is naturally construed as a “minimal model” in the sense of Batterman and Rice :349–376, 2014) that nonetheless provides a causal explanation of market crashes, in the sense of Woodward’s interventionist account of causation.

Rowley and Berman (2000) are tackling the right questions in their article. Three critical questions, in essence, are asked: What is corporate social performance (CSP)? What does it mean (i.e., CSP measures)? And, where does the future lie with CSP? In answering these questions, they are creating a CSP research agenda for the 21st Century. While agreeing, to a large extent, with their new set of questions, this paper questions their rationale for what is currently wrong with CSP and focuses (...) on extending future research directions. Specifically, this paper suggests that existing research in related disciplines can help accelerate our understanding of CSP. Marketing (i.e., customer-organization relations) and human relations (i.e., employee-organization relations) literatures, for example, already critically examine the conditions under which various organizational practices, policies, and procedures flourish. These boundary spanning functions provide newinsights that can lead to a broader, richer, and more systematic understanding of the complex CSP construct. (shrink)

What virtues do good stewards typically have and can these virtues move people to be good stewards of nature? Why focus on the virtues of stewards rather than on trying to construct and defend morally obligatory rules to govern human behavior? I argue that benevolence and loyalty are crucial for good stewardship and these virtues can and do motivate people to act as good stewards of nature. Moreover,since it is a matter of dispute whether rational considerations can move us to (...) perform a given act in the absence of disposition to do so, I argue we should try to determine which moral dispositions (if any) will motivate people to be concerned for the environment so that the development of environmentally sensitive character may be encouraged. (shrink)

Aristotle is traditionally read as dividing animal souls into three parts, while dividing human souls into four parts (a rational part, with theoretical and pr...

This collection provides readings from five classic thinkers with importantly distinct approaches to virtue theory, along with five new essays from contemporary thinkers that apply virtue theories to the resolution of practical moral problems. Jennifer Welchman's Introduction discusses the history of virtue theory. A short introduction to each reading highlights the distinctive aspects of the view expressed.

In this study, we examine the relation between corporate environmental responsibility and risk in U.S. public firms. We develop and test the risk-reduction, resource-constraint, and cross-industry variation hypotheses. Using an extensive U.S. sample during the 1991–2012 period, we find that for U.S. industries as a whole, CER engagement inversely affects firm risk after controlling for various firm characteristics. The result remains robust when we use firm fixed effect or an alternative measure of CER using principal component analysis or downside risk (...) measures. To address the concern of endogeneity bias, we use a system equations approach and dynamic system generalized methods of moment regressions, and continue to find that environmentally responsible firms experience lower risk. These findings support the risk-reduction hypothesis, but not the resource-constraint hypothesis, along with the notion that the top management in U.S. firms is generally risk averse and that their CER engagement facilitates their risk management efforts. Our cross-industry analysis further reveals that the inverse CER-risk association mainly comes from the manufacturing sector, whereas in the service sector, CER tends to increase firm risk. (shrink)

Over the past four decades, stakeholder research has united a chorus of voices from different disciplines using different terminology for different audiences all related to a seemingly similar topic: those that affect and are affected by business. By juxtaposing a comprehensive review of the early years of stakeholder research against more recent stakeholder research, we identify areas of common convergence as well as emergent scholarship. We develop an organizing framework consisting of three stakeholder-related themes: who or what is a stakeholder; (...) mechanisms underlying stakeholder relationships; and outcomes-oriented stakeholder research. Future research opportunities include: simultaneously examining multiple stakeholders at multiple levels; multiplier effects along the value chain and across geographies; and net impacts. We conclude by identifying how stakeholder research can “move the needle” on important business issues such as: income inequality and CEO pay; human rights and building community inclusion; disease alleviation; and food security in firms’ continuous quest to create value. (shrink)

How to characterize the relationship between science and technology has been a sensitive issue for historians of technology. This essay uses a recent and controversial piece by Paul Forman as a springboard for reexamining the concept of applied science and asks whether “applied science” remains a useful term. Scholars have often taken “applied science” to mean the subordination of technological knowledge to scientific knowledge—and thus the subordination of history of technology to history of science. This essay argues that the historical (...) moment for sensitivity on the subject of applied science has passed, that even in instances where technology can accurately be described as subordinate to science it need not follow that its history is subordinate, and that the concept can be useful in addressing issues in the history and contemporary practice of engineering education. (shrink)

Background: The concept of dignity is recognised as a fundamental right in many countries. It is embedded into law, human rights legislation and is often visible in organisations’ philosophy of care, particularly in aged care. Yet, many authors describe difficulties in defining dignity and how it can be preserved for people living in long term care. Objectives: In this article, Nordenfelt’s ‘four notions of dignity’ are considered, drawing on research literature addressing the different perspectives of those who receive, observe or (...) deliver care in the context of the long-term care environment. Methods: A review of the literature was undertaken using the terms ‘nursing homes’, ‘residential care’ or ‘long-term care’. The terms were combined and the term ‘human dignity’ was added. A total of 29 articles met the inclusion criteria from the United Kingdom (14), United States (2), Australia (1), Sweden (3), Hong Kong (2), Norway (3), Nordic (1), Taiwan (1), Netherlands (1). Ethical Considerations: Every effort has been made to ensure an unbiased search of the literature with the intention of an accurate interpretation of findings. Discussion: The four notions of dignity outlined by Nordenfelt provide a comprehensive description of the concept of dignity which can be linked to the experiences of people living in long-term care today and provide a useful means of contextualising the experiences of older people, their families and significant others and also of staff in long-term care facilities. Of particular interest are the similarities of perspectives of dignity between these groups. The preservation of dignity implies that dignity is a quality inherent in us all. This links directly to the exploration and conclusions drawn from the literature review. Conversely, promoting dignity implies that dignity is something that can be influenced by others and external factors. Hence, there are a number of implications for practice. Conclusion: We suggest that two of Nordenfelt’s notions, ‘dignity of identity’ and ‘dignity of Menschenwüde’, are a common thread for residents, family members and staff when conceptualising dignity within long-term care environments. (shrink)

This paper takes up Kant's argument that infanticides - specifically unwed women who kill their illegitimate children at birth - should not be tried for murder or receive the death penalty. Kant suggests that their actions are committed in a 'state of nature' outside the law's jurisdiction. I aim here both to defend Kant's reasoning against charges that it is cruel , as well as to understand what Kant was thinking in introducing such a 'temporary' state of nature. I claim (...) that such a state of nature arises in Kant's thinking when powerful social norms conflict with legal requirements, rendering legal sanctions and protections moot for the actor. Kant's thinking here shows him struggling with the fact of powerful social norms, something his practical theory rarely does, focused as it is on practical laws that come from pure reason, or from self-interest, and not from the hybrid of rational and natural, moral and 'sensuous,' that is social life. Kant ultimately rejects 'temporary state of nature' exemptions from law, and instead urges legal reforms aimed at averting conflicts between social and legal norms. (shrink)

It is well established that language production and comprehension are influenced by information status, for example, whether information is given, new, topical, or predictable, and many scholars suggest that an important component of information status is keeping track of what information is in common ground, and what is not. Information status affects both speakers' choices and how listeners interpret the speaker's meaning. Although there is a wealth of scholarly work on information status, there is no consensus on the mechanisms by (...) which it is used, and in fact relatively little discussion of the underlying representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms. Moreover, a major challenge to understanding information status is that its effects are notoriously variable. This study considers existing proposals about information status, focusing on two questions: how is it represented; and by what mechanisms is it used? I propose that it is important to consider whether representations and mechanisms can be classified as either explicit or emergent. Based on a review of existing evidence, I argue that information status representations are most likely emergent, but the mechanisms by which they are used are both explicit and emergent. This review provides one of the first considerations of information status processing across multiple domains. (shrink)

The Federal Trade Commission has an important role to play in the governmental oversight of mobile health apps, ensuring consumer protections from unfair and deceptive trade practices and curtailing anti-competitive methods. The FTC’s consumer protection structure and authority is outlined before reviewing the recent FTC enforcement activities taken on behalf of consumers and against developers of mhealth apps. The article concludes with identification of some challenges for the FTC and modest recommendations for strengthening the consumer protections it provides.

This paper uses an innovative way to screen stocks and analyzes the relationship between corporate environmental responsibility and long-run stock returns. By our definition, an environmentally responsible (green) company gives no environmental concern and shows environmental strength(s). Using 20 years’ data of 1992–2011, we find evidence that environmentally responsible company outperforms, in the 4th to 7th year after the screening year. An equal-weighted environmentally responsible portfolio earned an annual four-factor alpha of 4.06 % in the 4th year, 3.00 % above (...) industry benchmarks, and 3.87 % above characteristic benchmarks. The results are robust to alternative portfolio weighting methodologies, controlling for firm characteristics, and the removal of outliers. Testing using industry-adjusted Tobin’s Q, we find consistent evidence that environmental strength creates firm value. We argue that environmental responsibility is an intangible asset, likely to be undervalued by the market, especially in the long horizon, thereby causing environmentally responsible companies to exhibit long-horizon excess returns. (shrink)

In the first book on the development of John Dewey's ethical thought, Jennifer Welchman revises the prevalent interpretation of his ethics. Her clear and engaging account traces the history of Dewey's distinctive moral philosophy from its roots in idealism during the 1890s through the pragmatist approach of his 1922 work, Human Nature and Conduct. Central to the development of Dewey's ethics was his lifelong conviction that the realms of science and morals, facts and values were reconcilable. This conviction, Welchman (...) demonstrates, drove Dewey to reject the orthodox ethics of his day in favor of radical alternatives?first absolute idealism and later pragmatism. She reveals how Dewey came to adopt and subsequently to modify idealist ethics of self-realization. Welchman then explores the transformations in Dewey's conception of science that exploded the fragile truce between fact and value that he had negotiated as an idealist. Finally, she examines how Dewey developed his own instrumentalist accounts of moral value, conduct, and character that culminated in his best-known work of ethics, Human Nature and Conduct. (shrink)

One of the ethical issues that has been raised recently regarding emerging neurotherapies is that people will be coerced explicitly or implicitly in the workplace or in schools to take cognitive enhancing drugs. This article builds on this discussion by showing how the law may pressure people to adopt emerging neurotherapies. It focuses on a range of private law doctrines that, unlike the criminal law, do not come up very often in neuroethical discussions. Three doctrines—the doctrine of mitigation, the standard (...) of care in negligence, and child custody determinations in family law—are addressed to show how the law may pressure people to consent to treatment by offering a choice between accepting medical treatment and suffering a legal disadvantage. The doctrines considered in this article apply indirect pressure to submit to treatment, unlike court-ordered medical treatment, which applies direct pressure and is not addressed here. The outcome of this discussion is to show that there is a greater range of social pressures that may encourage the uptake of novel neurotherapies than one might initially think. Once treatments that were developed and offered with therapeutic benefits in mind become available, their existence gives rise to unintended legal consequences. This certainly does not mean we should cease developing new therapies that may be of tremendous benefit to patients, but it does raise some questions for physicians and for legal policy-makers. How should physicians, who are required by medical ethical principles to obtain valid consent to treatment, react to a patient’s reluctant consent that is driven by legal pressure? From the legal policy perspective, are our legal doctrines satisfactory or should they be changed because, for example, they unduly promote the collective interest over individual freedom to reject medical treatment or because they channel us toward economically efficient treatments to the detriment of more costly but potentially superior approaches of dealing with behavioural problems? (shrink)

Using resource dependency and institutional theories, we create and test a model examining the relationships among senior management commitment, resource allocations, and the structure of public affairs departments. Using a large sample of U.S.-based firms, we find a positive relationship between senior management commitment to the public affairs function and the level of human and monetary resources allocated to the public affairs department. Furthermore, firms structure their public affairs responsibilities into three common activity sets: communications, collaborations, and local activities. These (...) common activities are, in turn, positively associated with senior management commitment and resources allocated to the public affairs department. (shrink)

Outlines and evaluates the political, legal, and ethical objections to humanitarian intervention. In so doing, it questions not only whether the doctrine of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ has taken hold in international society, but also whether it should – particularly in the form suggested by Western states. The author argues that the ethical position of pluralism – as articulated by non-Western states – represents the most compelling case against humanitarian intervention, by emphasizing the impact on international society of relaxing the norm (...) of non-intervention. Despite these pluralist objections, military intervention in cases of supreme humanitarian emergency can be defended on moral grounds, provided the intervention meets certain tests of legitimacy. Given the unintended consequences of military action, the author also suggests that more attention should be paid to the non-military means of operationalizing ‘sovereignty as responsibility’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTResearchers have suggested that religious individuals engage primarily in intuitive over analytic processing. We investigated a connection between specific aspects of religiosity and the attribution of causation to social and physical events. College undergraduates completed measures of religiosity online and were asked to determine the causes of events that varied in type, outcome, and likelihood, as well as the personality characteristics of the protagonist. Individuals with greater intrinsic religious orientation, fundamentalism, who viewed God as loving, who were more dogmatic, and (...) had an external locus of control were more likely to attribute supernatural phenomena to events compared to those lower in those traits. Supernatural causation was invoked more often when the character of the protagonist and the outcome of social event matched in valence than when they did not match. Individuals low and high in religiosity.. (shrink)

<P>Experimental philosophy is one of the most active and exciting areas in philosophy today. In <EM>Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy</EM>, Elizabeth O’Neill and Edouard Machery have brought together twelve leading philosophers to debate four topics central to recent research in experimental philosophy. The result is an important and enticing contribution to contemporary philosophy which thoroughly reframes traditional philosophical questions in light of experimental philosophers’ use of empirical research methods, and brings to light the lively debates within experimental philosophers’ intellectual community. (...) Two papers are dedicated to the following four topics:</P> <P></P> <UL> <LI>Language (Edouard Machery & Genoveva Martí)</LI> <LI>Consciousness (Brian Fala, Adam Arico, and Shaun Nicols & Justin Sytsma)</LI> <LI>Free Will and Responsibility (Joshua Knobe & Eddy Nahmias and Morgan Thompson)</LI> <LI>Epistemology and the Reliability of Intuitions (Kenneth Boyd and Jennifer Nagel & Joshua Alexander and Jonathan Weinberg).</LI></UL> <P></P> <P>Preliminary descriptions of each chapter, annotated bibliographies for each controversy, and a supplemental guide to further controversies in experimental philosophy (with bibliographies) help provide clearer and richer views of these live controversies for all readers.</P> <P></P> <P> </P>. (shrink)

This paper examines the tools used to mediate intersubjectivity as a central element in Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological theory of ensembles. It first presents a brief account of ordinary individuals acting in and through violent groups from the viewpoints of psychology and phenomenology. Next, using Sartre’s ontology of consciousness, the paper establishes the phenomenological structure of consciousness and intersubjectivity to explain, with recent psychological findings, how individual agents in violent groups come to deny their moral responsibility for the group’s ideology and (...) action. Finally, through Sartre’s theory of ensembles, the paper shows how collectives of individuals evolve into groups. In violent groups, instruments of terror are used to mediate intersubjective relationships, and this explains how individual perpetrators and those complicit may sense a lack of control and perceive that they have diminished moral responsibility even though they are responsible for collective violence. (shrink)

En el presente ensayo se analiza la crítica que hace Aristóteles a la teoría de las ideas de Platón; comenzaremos por saber cómo y por qué Aristóteles critica la teoría de las ideas, después nos enfocaremos en el libro de la Metafísica de Aristóteles, de donde obtendremos las críticas que hace a esta teoría y, para finalizar, veremos qué respuestas da Aristóteles a varios de los problemas que existen en la teoría de las ideas de Platón. Al final llegaremos a (...) unas conclusiones muy interesantes, porque notaremos que Aristóteles no estaba en contra de su maestro, sólo quería perfeccionar varias de sus ideas en su búsqueda de la verdad.¿Cómo y por qué Aristóteles. (shrink)

This article examines the case of institutional inertia in Japanese financial regulation, focusing on the reasons why institutions centered on informal modes of organization and interaction proved particularly The Japanese case serves as a particularly tough test for theories of institutional adaptation and change because even crisis failed to produce timely institutional change. The paper argues that informal, exclusionary and opaque relational ties served as a functional substitute for formal regulation and promoted cooperative government-bank relationships in an earlier period. Yet, (...) when the informal attributes of the system began to impede the sound functioning of the financial system, the very opacity of these ties and the informational dynamics underlying them meant that the Diet and the general public were less than fully aware of the extent of dysfunction present as time went on. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Animadversions:Tekhne After Capital/Life After WorkJennifer Bajorek (bio)The consumption of food by a beast of burden does not become any less a necessary moment of the production process because the beast enjoys what it eats.—Karl Marx, Capital1For a long time we have been used to thinking the relation, on the one hand, between language and tekhne and, on the other, between capital and the technical or technological. And yet, for (...) all the parallels that might be drawn between these two projects, it seems to me quite clear that they remain to be articulated in a way that does justice to either one. It is, moreover, entirely symptomatic of the failure of this articulation that almost all the parallels that have been drawn, in decades past, between capital and language—in the name of "political economies of the sign," for example, or of "symbolic economies"2—have been drawn without regard, precisely, to technical implications, and thus to the implication of capital and of language in and by the technical.What we might call, for purposes of exposition, the missing link—the term that would make this articulation possible—is, I will argue, labor and therefore, by extension, life. That this extension can be made with reference to Marx is by now axiomatic. Wasn't the point of all the charges of "economic determinism" and "class reductionism" that there is, in the end, "more to life" than work? That this extension must be made with reference to Marx is, however, a very different proposition and one that deserves a closer look. How does the notion that, for Marx, labor and life are coextensive stand up to close reading of his text?I shall begin with a fairly programmatic exposition of what I call Marx's two codefinitions of labor in Capital, the first being his definition of labor as a function of the human, the second being his definition of labor as a function of the living body. Each definition is a codefinition insofar as its converse is also true—insofar as, for Marx, the humanity of man and the life of his body are each, in turn, a function of work. [End Page 42] We will be surprised to find that these codefinitions are not equivalent, nor even necessarily consistent, and that the trajectory described by Marx's text is actually that of a radical divergence of humanity and life, whose consequences are serious, I will suggest, not only for any alleged "humanism" of Marx, but for the assumption that can be found almost everywhere—still, today—of an essential humanism of politics. At the same time, a more precise understanding of the labor-life relation we find in Marx, and of the concept of productivity that underwrites it, will give us some first indications as to why politics must of necessity pass through technics, as well as, therefore, through an essentially capitalist—or, at the very least, capitalizing—moment.1Codefinition (the Original Human Instrument)For the Marx of Capital, what distinguishes "man" from animal and, at the same time, defines labor is at least in part what we might call ideation. The essence of man is not simply that he effects a change of form in the materials of nature with the aim of fulfilling his needs—for animals do this, and some apparently more effectively than man—but rather that he is able to form an idea of those needs, and so to project or imagine their fulfillment. Thus Marx writes:A spider conducts operations which resemble those of the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his head before he builds it in wax. At the end of every labor process emerges a result which had already been conceived by the worker at the beginning, and so already existed in ideal form.[Capital 1: 284]3Conversely, the essence of labor is that it is something human: the mediation, by way of an exertion of force, of the "material... (shrink)