: Genetics researchers often work with distinct communities. To take moral account of how their research affects these communities, they need a richer conception of justice and they need to make those communities equal participants in decision-making about how the research is conducted and what is produced and published out of it.

The argument of this paper is part of a general defence of the claim that Bentham's moral theory embodies a utilitarian theory of distributive justice, which is developed in his Civil Law writings. Whereas it is a commonplace of recent revisionist scholarship to argue that J. S. Mill had a developed utilitarian theory of justice, few scholars regard Bentham as having a theory of justice, let alone one that rivals in sophistication that of Mill. Indeed, Gerald J. Postema in (...) his book Bentham and the Common Law Tradition, argues that Bentham had no substantial concern with the concept of justice, and that what analysis of the concept there is in Bentham's thought is unlike the utilitarian theory of justice to be found in chapter five of J. S. Mill's Utilitarianism Although Postema's interpretation is not the only one that will be addressed in this paper, it serves as an important starting point for any rival interpretation of Bentham's ethical theory for two reasons. Firstly, it is the most comprehensive and most penetrating discussion of Bentham's utilitarian theory, drawing as it does on a wide variety of published and unpublished materials written throughout Bentham's career. Secondly, it is interesting in this particular context because the contrast that Postema draws between Bentham's and Mill's theories of justice depends upon a particular reading of Mill's theory of justice and utility which is derived from recent scholarship and which is by no means uncontroversial. As part of the defence of the claim that Bentham had a sophisticated theory of distributive justice, it will be argued in this paper that the contrast drawn between Bentham and Mill does not stand up to careful scrutiny, for insofar as Mill's theory of justice can be consistently defended it is not significantly different from the utilitarian strategy that Bentham employed for incorporating considerations of distributive justice within his theory. This is not to claim that there are not significant differences between the theories of justice of Bentham and J. S. Mill, but it is to claim that whatever technical differences exist between their theories, both writers saw the need to incorporate the concept of justice within utilitarianism. Therefore, rather than showing that Mill is an interesting thinker to the extent that he abandons his early Benthamism, by demonstrating how close Mill's theory of utility and justice is to that of Bentham, it will be possible to argue that Bentham employed a sophisticated and subtle utilitarian theory that was responsive to the sort of problems which occupied Mill a generation later. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Patricia Kelly, Ressourcement Theology:A Review EssayMatthew K. MinerdIntroductionAlthough now over seventy years in the past, the theological and ecclesiastical events of the 1940s, most often styled under some banner akin to "the crisis over the nouvelle théologie," leading up to the promulgation of the encyclical Humani Generis, retain a currency and interest to this very day. No doubt, the later influence of many of the so-called nouveaux théologiens (...) leading up to, during, and following the Second Vatican Council has contributed to the continued currency of their thought and the debates connected to it. Numerous monographs continue to be written concerning themes of "ressourcement," theological reform, and engagement with the world, all of which were dear to many of those who were embroiled in the philosophical and theological controversies of the 1930s and 1940s. Moreover, increased interest in certain long-buried conservative Thomist thinkers from this same era has led to renewed consideration regarding the concerns that they expressed at the time. In fact, it would seem that today, in 2022, the evaluation expressed in Nineteenth Century Scholasticism: The Search for a Unitary Method by Fr. Gerald McCool (from a perspective rather different from my own) remains true, as the Church continues to live in the midst of an ongoing crisis of modernity that places us in tight continuity with so much of the past several centuries of European Christian intellectual history:In contemporary Catholic theology, the relationship between apologetics, or fundamental theology, and speculative theology is as much [End Page 353] an issue as it was in the nineteenth century.... And in contemporary Catholic theology, the relation between positive theology and speculative theology still remains a problem whose solution demands the use of a coherent system of epistemology and metaphysics.... The contemporary debate over theological method is simply another phase in the dialectical movement of Catholic theology's response to post-Enlightenment thought from the beginning of the nineteenth century through Vatican I, Aeterni Patris, the modernist crisis, between-the-wars Thomism, the New Theology controversy, and Vatican II up to the present.1The great crisis of the 1940s—whether we name it nouvelle théologie, after the reform-advocates of the era, or dialogue theologique, in honor of the Toulouse Dominicans' attempt to present a Scholastic position between, on the one hand, Fr. Chenu's and Congar's view of what the Saulchoir should be, and, on the other hand, the more-conservative Thomism of Frs. Garrigou-Lagrange, Gagnebet, and Gillon in Rome2—was and remains, in the words of Etienne Fouilloux, "the only theological debate of real [quelque] importance, at least in France, from the condemnation of Modernism to the time of the Second Vatican Council."3 And like any truly great event or crisis in intellectual-spiritual culture, it remains with us today in its fruits, both resolved and unresolved.Thus, when a new work is published dedicated to these events and the figures involved therein, the Catholic intellectual world should take heed, for our own self-understanding—whatever sui iuris Church in which we are ascribed—is at stake. Hence, the arrival of the collection of translations by Dr. Patricia Kelly of the University of St. Andrews is an event to be welcomed, even if elements of its publication also give rise to concern. This volume, Ressourcement Theology: A Sourcebook,4 gathering together essays by various parties involved on both sides of the specifically Francophone debates over theological method and truth that came to a head in the 1940s, provides the reading public with a dual "service": it presents in English a [End Page 354] number of texts not heretofore available, while also, unfortunately, bearing witness to the academic prejudices lingering against the authors writing from Rome and Toulouse concerning certain veins of thought in theological methodology during the inter-war and immediate post-war era. Although my review will be somewhat negative on certain points—both for technical textual reasons and because of the slanted narrative presented by Dr. Kelly—I wish only the best to her and her work, hoping that the concerns that I voice can serve as a springboard to dialogue, not retrenchment... (shrink)

The author takes the reader on a tour that covers such topics as computers, evolution, Descartes, Schrodinger, and the nature of perception, language, and invididuality. He argues that biology provides the key to understanding the brain. Underlying his argument is the evolutionary view that the mind arose at a definite time in history. This book ponders connections between psychology and physics, medicine, philosophy, and more. Frequently contentious, Edelman attacks cognitive and behavioral approaches, which leave biology out of the picture, as (...) well as the currently fashionable view of the brain as a computer. (shrink)

Theoretical Computer Science, 383: 270-289, 2007.

The moral/conventional task has been widely used to study the emergence of moral understanding in children and to explore the deficits in moral understanding in clinical populations. Previous studies have indicated that moral transgressions, particularly those in which a victim is harmed, evoke a signature pattern of responses in the moral/conventional task: they are judged to be serious, generalizable and not authority dependent. Moreover, this signature pattern is held to be pan‐cultural and to emerge early in development. However, almost all (...) the evidence for these claims comes from studies using harmful transgressions of the sort that primary school children might commit in the schoolyard. In a study conducted on the Internet, we used a much wider range of harm transgressions, and found that they do not evoke the signature pattern of responses found in studies using only schoolyard transgressions. Paralleling other recent work, our study provides preliminary grounds for skepticism regarding many conclusions drawn from earlier research using the moral/conventional task. (shrink)

In this book Gerald Holton takes an opposing view, illuminating the ways in which the imagination of the scientist functions early in the formation of a new ...

Roger’s official statement of the thesis that he defends reads as follows: Uniqueness : If an agent whose total evidence is E is fully rational in taking doxastic attitude D to P, then necessarily, any subject with total evidence E who takes a different attitude to P is less than fully rational. Following Roger, I’ll call someone who denies Uniqueness a Permissivist . In what follows, I’ll argue against Uniqueness and defend Permissivism.

This important new book explores the contemporary refugee crisis and the untold realities and experiences of refugees themselves. A team of top scholars offer a critical and necessary diagnosis of the challenges, complexities, and contradictions impacting our philosophical approaches to the contemporary figure of the refugee.

ABSTRACT:Despite widespread attention to corruption and organizational change in the literature, to our knowledge, no research has attempted to understand the linkages between these two powerful organizational phenomena. Accordingly, we draw on major theories in ethics, sociology, and management to develop a theoretical framework for understanding how organizational change can sometimes generate corruption. We extend anomie theory and ethical climate theory to articulate the deinstitutionalization of the normative control system and argue that, through this deinstitutionalization, organizations have the potential to (...) become incubators for corruption. We qualify this process by proposing conditions more ripe for anomie and under which this deinstitutionalization is more likely to occur, propounding moderating relationships that influence organizational reconfiguration. Examples of turbulence in the contemporary business environment that can trigger change highlight our discussion. We conclude with managerial implications, offering means by which the deleterious effects of corruption may be arrested or controlled. (shrink)

This reflective article details the evolution of Gerald Nosich’s view of what critical thinking involves. Nosich recounts three major stages in the development of his views: (1) starting a course on Reasoning that strongly engaged students in the actual practices of argument analysis and evaluation, (2) then teaching a course Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum which called into graphic prominence other aspects of critical thinking beyond arguments, for example, observing thoughtfully and reflectively, raising key questions with respect to an (...) issue, and discerning a common structure underlying different phenomena, and, finally, (3) realizing the power of Richard Paul’s emphasis on common elements and standards involved in critical thinking. (shrink)

During his period of exile in Scandinavia, Bertolt Brecht wrote “I don’t think the traditional form of theatre means anything any longer. Its significance is purely historic; it can illuminate the way in which earlier ages regarded human relationships […] [but] a modern spectator can’t learn anything from them”. To create a modern theatre fit for a modern audience, Brecht holds that not only would the content of plays have to change, but the experience of theatrical spectatorship itself. To fully (...) capture how Brecht’s work differs from that of previous playwrights, a close analysis of spectatorial experience and perception is required. In this paper, I compare the aesthetic techniques used in Brecht’s epic theatre to the genetic phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Reading Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt through a Husserlian lens, I argue that Brecht mobilizes phenomenological methodology in order to suspend the audience’s preconceived notions of theatre and to cultivate self-conscious, critically aware, and socially motivated spectatorship. Just as Husserl describes phenomenology as a presuppositionless science, so too does Brecht offer epic theatre as a way to free “[…] socially-conditioned phenomena from the stamp of familiarity”. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the availability of financial bounties and anonymous reporting channels impact individuals’ general reporting intentions of questionable acts and whether the availability of financial bounties will prompt people to reveal their identities. The recent passage of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 creates a financial bounty for whistle-blowers. In addition, SOX requires companies to provide employees with an anonymous reporting channel option. It is unclear of the effect (...) of these provisions as they relate to whistle-blowing. Our results indicate that a financial bounty has the potential to increase participants’ propensity to report questionable acts and their willingness to reveal their identities when reporting, but the availability of an anonymous reporting channel does not affect participants’ propensity to report questionable acts. These findings could potentially help corporate management, government policy makers and accounting researchers to assess the effectiveness of their internal compliance programs and help determine if financial bounties in the private sector could encourage whistle-blowing. (shrink)

In general, offers a good discussion of Dworkin's theory of interpretation. Postema is critically concerned with whether Dworkin commits himself to individualistic and privatistic sense of interpretation and how Dworkin articulates the logical independency of pre-interpretive paradigm instances or social facts which form the object of interpretation and the end which is interpretively posited in the act of interpretation. Criticisms, for the most part, appear to be compatible with Dworkin's overall theory and may simply be additional explication of the character (...) of interpretation. "There is nothing in Dworkin's meta-theory of interpretation of social practices that requires attention to the interpretive activities of fellow participants. Herein lies the strong "protestantism" of Dworkin's theory. Not only is each participant encouraged to take up the interpretive enterprise...but each individual participant also has access to the truth, as it were, about what the practice is and requires, though private interpretation of the practice-text. While Dworkin seems to recognize that the practice is common, he counsels participants to live as if each had a private understanding of his own." "It is problematic because it makes interpretation of social practices insufficiently practical, insufficiently intersubjective, and thus insufficiently political." Notes that the interpretive attitude when acting in a practice is relatively rare, usually becoming part of a practice is more like learning a discipline or technique. "[I]t may not be possible intelligibly to separate that point from the activies and rules in which it is expressed. The same meaning may, conceivably, be expressed in some other way, but this does not imply that the meaning is logically independent of the medium of expression." "That is, the behavior is logically separable from its interpretation only on pain of denying that the practice is common activity yielding common principles." "Often an agent may only come to understand his actions long after he has performed them, or may later come to see his actions in a very different light...First, on this view meaningful action is a primitive. Action is expressive of its meaning or purpose, but not resolvable into distinct behavior and purpose. But, since this purpose or meaning may not be fully or clearly articulated, interpretation can be seen as the activity of re-formulating and articulating it. Second, the 'meaning' of an action cannot be regarded as a private matter for the agent alone.". (shrink)

Modern medicine emphasizes treatment of the sick. It is often said that the widespread genetic testing soon to follow the completion of the Human Genome Project will usher in a new era of preventive medicine. Such changes require new ways of thinking, however. For example, there may be nothing clinically wrong with a healthy patient who requests genetic testing, even if the tests reveal disease genes. Since all individuals have genetic skeletons in their closets, it is important to be careful (...) not to confuse having disease genes with having the diseases that they cause. Unfortunately, many in the public have adopted a kind of genetic determinism that sees genes as destiny: for example, having the gene associated with colon cancer means they will develop colon cancer. Physicians tend to be more careful, yet even they are not immune to subtle versions of genetic determinism. One example of this is the uncritical categorization of certain diseases as “genetic”. In fact, an adequate concept of genetic disease is extremely difficult to come by. The simplest notion would require a 1:1 correspondence between a disease and its genes, but this is the exception rather than the rule. For example, cystic fibrosis (CF) is often put forward as a good example of a genetic disease, since it seems to result from mutations in a single gene, CFTR. Even in this case, however, the exact relationship between CFTR mutations and disease is not clear, as virtually every possible combination of sweat chloride test results, genetic test results, and symptoms has been observed.[1] If a patient presents with the classic symptoms of CF and is found to have a mutation in the CFTR gene, the physician might understandably infer that the mutation caused the disease. But if an asymptomatic patient is tested and it is discovered that he or she has a CFTR mutation, it is unclear what this means. The doctor might tell the patient the gene is abnormal and that he or she is likely to develop pulmonary problems, etc., but it’s not really known whether even this qualified prognosis is true.. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 2, Page 49-57, March‐April 2022.

The idea of ‘moral responsibility’ is typically linked with praise and blame, and with the notion of ‘the voluntary’. It is often thought that if we are free, in the relevant sense, we may “deserve” praise or blame; otherwise, we do not. But when we look at whether and why we need the notions of praise and blame, we find that they are not as intimately connected with desert as many philosophers have thought. In particular, this paper challenges the idea (...) that forms of evaluation and behavior tied to our “reactive attitudes” (especially resentment) best further morality’s aims, properly understood. (shrink)