Italian priest, essayist, and intellectual of the twentieth century, Ernesto Balducci identified the crucial turning points of the new millennium by advancing original perspectives capable of opening unusual future scenarios. Sensitive to emergences of society (pollution, wars, ecological collapse), he retraces the causes in the more general ?crisis of modernity,? proposing a new paideia and a new model of thought. He theorizes the construction of a novel planetary horizon that presupposes not only the building of new organizational structures, but also (...) the achieving of an authentic ?anthropological mutation? capable of inverting the course of history. While the old ethics were anthropocentric, founded on the supremacy of humankind over the world and nature, the new ethics is planetary, meaning that humankind must no longer be used as the parameter, but instead, the global horizon over which the effects of his or her actions extend. (shrink)

This 1997 book was the first English translation of all of Kant's writings on moral and political philosophy collected in a single volume. No other collection competes with the comprehensiveness of this one. As well as Kant's most famous moral and political writings, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, and Toward Perpetual Peace, the volume includes shorter essays and reviews, some of which have never been translated before. The volume has (...) been furnished with a substantial editorial apparatus including translator's introductions and explanatory notes to each text by Mary Gregor, and a general introduction to Kant's moral and political philosophy by Allen Wood. There is also an English-German and German-English glossary of key terms. (shrink)

This book takes a new approach to ethics by focusing on the kinds of dilemmas that confront people almost daily on the job.

This paper responds to John Burgess's ‘Mathematics and _Bleak House_’. While Burgess's rejection of hermeneutic fictionalism is accepted, it is argued that his two main attacks on revolutionary fictionalism fail to meet their target. Firstly, ‘philosophical modesty’ should not prevent philosophers from questioning the truth of claims made within successful practices, provided that the utility of those practices as they stand can be explained. Secondly, Carnapian scepticism concerning the meaningfulness of _metaphysical_ existence claims has no force against a _naturalized_ version (...) of fictionalism, according to which our ordinary standards of scientific evidence may show that we have no reason to believe the mathematical existence claims made within the context of our mathematical and scientific theories. (shrink)

InWisdom, Information and Wonder, Mary Midgley tackles the question at the root of our civilization: What is knowledge for?

Crude materialism, reduction of mind to body, extreme individualism. All products of a 17th century scientific inheritance which looks at the parts of our existence at the expense of the whole. Cutting through myths of scientific omnipotence, Mary Midgley explores how this inheritance has so powerfully shaped the way we are, and the problems it has brought with it. She argues that poetry and the arts can help reconcile these problems, and counteract generations of 'one-eyed specialists', unable and unwilling (...) to look beyond their own scientific or literary sphere. Dawkins, Atkins, Bacon and Descartes all come under fire as Midgely sears through contemporary debate, from Gaia to memes, and organic food to greenhouse gases. After years of unquestioned imperialism, science is finally forced to take a step back and acknowledge the arts. (shrink)

Background: Clinical investigation is a growing field employing increasing numbers of nurses. This has created a new specialty practice defined by aspects unique to nursing in a clinical research context: the objectives (to implement research protocols and advance science), setting (research facilities), and nature of the nurse–participant relationship. The clinical research nurse role may give rise to feelings of ethical conflict between aspects of protocol implementation and the duty of patient advocacy, a primary nursing responsibility. Little is known about whether (...) research nurses experience unique ethical challenges distinct from those experienced by nurses in traditional patient-care settings. Research objectives: The purpose of the study was to describe the nature of ethical challenges experienced by clinical research nurses within the context of their practice. Research design: The study utilized a qualitative descriptive design with individual interviews. Participants and research context: Participating nurses (N = 12) self-identified as having experienced ethical challenges during screening. The majority were Caucasian (90%), female (83%), and worked in outpatient settings (67%). Approximately 50% had > 10 years of research experience. Ethical considerations: The human subjects review board approved the study. Written informed consent was obtained. Findings: Predominant themes were revealed: (1) the inability to provide a probable good, or/do no harm, and (2) dual obligations (identity as a nurse vs a research nurse). The following patterns and subthemes emerged: conflicted allegiances between protocol implementation, needs of the participant, desire to advance science, and tension between the nurse–patient therapeutic relationship versus the research relationship. Discussion: Participants described ethical challenges specific to the research role. The issues are central to the nurse–participant relationship, patient advocacy, the nurse’s role in implementing protocols, and/or advancing science. Conclusion: Ethical challenges related to the specialized role of clinical research nurses were identified. More research is warranted to fully understand their nature and frequency and to identify support systems for resolution. (shrink)

ABSTRACT‘expressionist’ accounts of applied mathematics seek to avoid the apparent Platonistic commitments of our scientific theories by holding that we ought only to believe their mathematics-free nominalistic content. The notion of ‘nominalistic content’ is, however, notoriously slippery. Yablo's account of non-catastrophic presupposition failure offers a way of pinning down this notion. However, I argue, its reliance on possible worlds machinery begs key questions against Platonism. I propose instead that abstract expressionists follow Geoffrey Hellman's lead in taking the assertoric content of (...) empirical science to be irreducibly modal, using the ‘non-interference’ of mathematical objects as justification for detaching nominalistic consequences. (shrink)

In the study of gender and society, science is a strategic analytic research site—because of the hierarchical nature of gendered relations, generally, and the hierarchy of science, particularly. Academic science, especially, is crucial to, and revealing of, status in science and society. This article focuses on three questions: What is the status of women in scientific careers and the role of graduate education in these careers? What are the implications for the analysis of gender? Where can we intervene, and how? (...) In addressing these questions, the arguments concentrate on the social and organizational context of science and its relationship to gender and status. (shrink)

This article addresses a telling issue in academic science: the clarity of criteria for tenure and promotion reported by women and men faculty in scientific fields. Data from faculty surveyed in nine US research universities point to ways that formal and informal organizational indicators predict the clarity of evaluation reported by women and men. Unexpected patterns occur by gender. Among men, both formal and informal organizational indicators, as well as field, predict their reported clarity of evaluation. Among women, however, only (...) informal organizational indicators, namely, frequency of speaking with faculty about research and departmental climate, are significant predictors. Further, overall, informal indicators are stronger predictors of clarity than are formal indicators, and some field differences occur. These findings have implications for national and regional science policies and for the practices and policies of universities. (shrink)

People judge that an individual who attempts to harm someone but fails should be blamed and punished more when they imagine how things could have turned out worse, compared to when they imagine how things could have turned out the same, or when they think only about what happened. This moral counterfactual amplification effect occurs when people believe the protagonist had no reason for the attempt to harm, and not when the protagonist had a reason, as Experiment 1 shows. It (...) occurs for intentional failed attempts to harm and also for accidental near-misses, as Experiment 2 shows, but not for failed attempts in which the harm occurs anyway by another cause, for both general judgments about the event and specific judgments about the individual's actions, as Experiments 3 and 4 show. The implications for understanding the role of counterfactual thoughts in moral judgement are discussed. (shrink)

Apparent clashes of interest between 'deep ecologists' and 'animal liberationists' can be understood as differences in emphasis rather than conflicts of principle, although it is only too easy for campaigners to regard as rivals good causes other than their own. Moral principles are part of a larger whole, within which they can be related, rather than absolute all-purpose rules of right conduct. This is illustrated using the practical dilemma which often occurs in conservation management, of whether or not to cull (...) animals that are damaging their habitat by overgrazing. Here, and in general, when we are faced with a choice between two evils, the need for scrupulous discrimination and honesty cannot be overstated; but it is not a worthy option to retreat behind moral principles of limited application. (shrink)

This research aimed to analyse inclusive practice in academic integrity in the teaching, support, policies and procedures involved at one UK HE institution. Data was collected through two sets of stakeholder interviews: three students from disadvantaged groups who had experienced academic conduct investigations; eleven staff with key roles in academic integrity. A third set of data comprised four institutional academic integrity documents which were analysed in terms of meeting Universal Design for Learning principles for inclusion. The four main findings emerging (...) from the study are: academic conduct processes create high levels of anxiety among students, particularly related to perceived judgement; students experience difficulty understanding academic integrity documents which lack consistency and do not meet inclusive criteria; students from certain backgrounds including widening participation, students with a disability and international non-native speakers need more institutional support in order to follow academic conduct processes and assimilate expected practice; there is a willingness among staff to try to develop more inclusive practice. The research findings led to a revised, more inclusive and educative institutional academic conduct procedure. The implication for practice is that attention is urgently needed to improve inclusive approaches to academic integrity. (shrink)

This Philosophy Compass article continues the comparison between Confucian and mainstream Western views of personhood and their connection with ethics begun in Confucianism and Ethics in the Western Philosophical Tradition I: Fundamental Concepts , by focusing on the Western self conceived as an independent agent with moral and political rights. More specifically, the present article briefly accounts for how the more strictly and explicitly individualistic notion of self dominating Western philosophy has developed, leading up to a recent debate in modern (...) Western rights theory between Herbert Fingarette and Henry Rosemont, Jr., two contemporary Western philosophers who are both steeped in Confucian thought as well as moral and political philosophy. This discussion elucidates how Confucianism can be compared to, and even contrasted with some basic principles of modern Western rights theory and the more individualistic view of self they entail. In the end, a new view of personhood and "free will"? is offered that synthesizes insights from the Confucian treatment of persons as being essentially interdependent with the Western treatment of persons as being essentially independent. (shrink)

Debunking arguments against both moral and mathematical realism have been pressed, based on the claim that our moral and mathematical beliefs are insensitive to the moral/mathematical facts. In the mathematical case, I argue that the role of Hume’s Principle as a conceptual truth speaks against the debunkers’ claim that it is intelligible to imagine the facts about numbers being otherwise while our evolved responses remain the same. Analogously, I argue, the conceptual supervenience of the moral on the natural speaks presents (...) a difficulty for the debunker’s claim that, had the moral facts been otherwise, our evolved moral beliefs would have remained the same. (shrink)

Based on ethnographic fieldwork with panhandlers who provide services while asking for money, informal interviews with pedestrians who have interacted with them, and formal interviews with twenty people who regularly interact with panhandlers, this article unpacks the relationship between temporality and ambiguity of meaning in exchange. In line with previous research, I find that providing a service while asking for money allows panhandlers to manage stigma by recasting their relationship with pedestrians who give as a market exchange. More surprisingly, I (...) find that this kind of recasting makes giving less compelling for the pedestrians in fleeting encounters with panhandlers: they resist service provision in fleeting encounters with panhandlers on the grounds that the exchange is experienced as a coldly rational quid pro quo. In contrast, pedestrians who have long-term relationships with panhandlers experience the interaction as a gift exchange and the service as an expression of gratitude and subservience. The development of an open-ended temporal horizon and of a cycle of exchange, I argue, allows the service and the money given to operate as boundary objects, enabling panhandlers and pedestrians to attach different meanings to the exchange of money for services. This emergent ambiguity allows them to carry out interaction and exchange successfully. Contrary to models of interaction and everyday economic transactions that frame shared definitions of the situation as necessary for successful and repeated interactions, I find that ambiguity and polysemy may be productive and sustaining in interactions between participants from distinct social worlds. (shrink)

From the title, Interpreting Duns Scotus, one would expect to find in this volume a type of meta-study. By this I mean that each article would reveal as much about the author as about the subject,...

Business and society scholars have analyzed the citizenship activities of private firms, but what of their own institutions? This article introduces the concept of business school citizenship (BSC), examining it as a response to the legitimacy pressures created by competing corporate and university interests in the U.S. management-education context. Theories of corporate and of university social responsibility are used to explain BSC, and these theories form the basis of the argument that such activities can be justified and should be increased.

This article explains how li 禮 or ‘ritual propriety’ is the ‘body language’ of ren 仁 or the authentic expression of our humanity. Li and ren are interdependent aspects of a larger creative human way (rendao 仁道) that can be conceptually distinguished as follows: li refers to the ritualized social form of appropriate conduct and ren to the more general, authentically human spirit this expresses. Li is the social instrument for self-cultivation and the vehicle of harmonious human interaction. More, li (...) must mean something that is effectively communicated to others for an authentic, human (ren) interaction to occur. Li is the body language of ren in being the ritual vehicle for its’ expression; however, li is underdetermined by ren and so must be distinguished from it in on further grounds: authentic human activity must not just be equivocated with social convention because conclusively establishing whether a particular action is li (or is a truly ren action) is impossible. As a result, li is often confused with social power and privilege that is easier to empirically identify than ren conduct is, but this is a mistake since li has to express ren or it is not li at all. The inescapable ambiguity of li – an ambiguity that attaches to any language – can be critiqued by the Western view that sees something ‘essential’ to the ‘self,’ and that makes one a ‘self’ in and of oneself and not in a way that depends on others. I show that such Western individualism – while resting on a fundamentally different way of thinking of being a person and living a good life – does not reduce Confucian ritual to being an instrument for social discrimination and subordination. My argument is indebted to twentieth-century philosophy of language in the West that offered the idea that some words are actions. (shrink)

Clerical frames for nursing practice: missionary nurses at Rehoboth This paper presents a discourse analysis of publications of the Christian Reformed Church regarding its Rehoboth Mission near Gallup, New Mexico, among the Navajo. All issues of The Banner, Acts of Synod of the Christian Reformed Church, the Rehoboth Hospital Bulletin, and the Annual Report of the Rehoboth Mission from 1880 to the present were reviewed for references to health‐care at Rehoboth from 1903 to 1943. Four religiously framed discourses were identified: (...) discourses justifying provision of health‐care at the mission, discourses of the Navajos as immature and potentially dangerous, needing to be civilized, discourses of cleanliness, and discourses of calling. This paper adds to a growing body of knowledge about religious frames within which nurses have practiced in North America. (shrink)

In _A Relational Moral Theory: African ethics in and beyond the continent_ ( 2022 ), Thaddeus Metz proposes an African moral theory according to which we ought to respect and honour the capacity of individuals to be party to harmonious relationship. He aims to present a moral theory that should ‘be weighed up against at least contemporary Western moral theories’ (p. 2). As Metz intends his theory to be a serious contender with other moral theories, I assess how his moral (...) theory can be applied and contribute to contemporary moral discussions _‘beyond the continent’_, as the subtitle of the book puts it. In particular, as Metz’s relational moral theory is grounded on the value of harmony, an important question is how well his theory handles _disharmony_ especially if his theory is to have application in our non-ideal world in which disharmony is rife. And here, I hold up Metz’s account to one area of disharmony, disruptive emotions and affective injustice. By first establishing how disruptive emotions and affective injustice pose a challenge to similar relational moral theories grounded in harmony, I argue that Metz’s theory has distinct advantages in the way in which it can indeed engage with such phenomena. I close the paper by considering the objection that Metz’s account is limited in making sense of a common form of disruptive emotion in response to structural injustices where affective injustice can arise, but ultimately conclude that such a limitation is superficial. (shrink)

Confucianism conceives of persons as being necessarily interdependent, defining personhood in terms of the various roles one embodies and that are established by the relationships basic to one's life. By way of contrast, the Western philosophical tradition has predominantly defined persons in terms of intrinsic characteristics not thought to depend on others. This more strictly and explicitly individualistic concept of personhood contrasts with the Confucian idea that one becomes a person because of others; where one is never a person independently (...) or in and of oneself but develops into one only in community. This article surveys some differences between Confucian and Western ideas of self and their connection to ethics mainly in light of the relational self of the Confucian Analects and Mencius . A Philosophy Compass article called Confucianism and Ethics in the Western Philosophical Tradition II: A Comparative Analysis of Personhood will follow, that examines how the more individualistic way of conceiving of personhood in the West has had moral and political implications that differ, and even conflict, with those of Confucianism. (shrink)

This volume explores, from a variety of perspectives, the political theory of the man who is arguably the greatest English political thinker. It is the first substantial collection of new, critical essays on Thomas Hobbes by leading scholars in over a decade. Hobbes’s writings stirred debate in his own lifetime, for two centuries thereafter, and continue to do so in ours. They emerged in a period of intense political turmoil—a time of civil war and regicide, of puritanical rule and royal (...) restoration. “They were motivated,” Dietz argues, “by concrete political problems and a practical concern, namely, to secure political order, absolute sovereignty, and civil peace.” The contributors emphasize and answer a series of expressly political questions that, to date, have not been fully addressed in the Hobbes literature. They contend that Hobbes’s writings are not mere static artifacts of a particular historical milieu, but rather rich sources of a variety of interpretations and criticisms that spur discussion and debate in their turn. (shrink)

When one addresses boycotts, the efforts of the Montgomery bus boycotts to end segregation likely come to mind. However, the moral merits of a boycott are not always so clearly determined and how a company reacts to a boycott can have long lasting repercussions for its public image. In this article, I will examine a number of boycotts including boycotts by the American Family Association of both Ford and Proctor & Gamble based on their advertising venue choices. In a politically (...) and morally charged atmosphere, it can be difficult for companies to determine where their moral obligations lie while at the same time being mindful of the bottom line. I suggest a number of guidelines to aid in corporate moral decision making when faced with a boycott. (shrink)

The French botanist Michel Adanson spent five years in precolonial Senegal in the 1750s, under the auspices of the Compagnie des Indes. This essay follows the archival traces of Adanson’s engagement with African indigo, including experiments conducted in an ad hoc “laboratory” near the French fort of Saint Louis. A reconstruction of these experiments exposes the multifarious connections to and from the island garden-laboratory, mediated by materials and different kinds of indigo knowledge, including that of local Wolof informants. A microhistory (...) of encounters in and around a tiny island off the West African coast merges with a transatlantic story connecting Senegal to Paris and to French colonies in the Caribbean (Saint-Domingue and Guyana). The essay explores geographies of knowledge and French imperial ambitions through close attention to the material properties of indigo, the practices associated with its cultivation and transformation from plant to dye, and the material remnants of Adanson’s engagement with it in Africa. These remnants—herbarium sheets, experimental notes, color samples on paper strips, dyed fabric swatches, sketched maps, correspondence, collection catalogues, and plant taxonomies—put various kinds of African knowledge and Caribbean plantation experience into dialogue with European botany and dye chemistry. (shrink)

Assuming that moral enhancement is morally permissible, I contend that a more careful theoretical treatment of emotion and the affective landscape is needed to advance both our understanding and the prospects of interventions aimed at moral enhancement. Using Douglas’ proposal for the direct modulation of counter‐moral emotions as a foil for discussion, I argue that the direct modulation of emotion fails to address underlying aspects of an agent’s psychology that will give rise to a range of counter‐moral motives beyond the (...) emotion that is targeted. This is because the direct modulation of emotion does not accommodate the fact that an emotional episode or emotional disposition is part of a network of other dispositions and responses, against a backdrop of our having cares and goals, as well as other cognitive content that can mediate how we apprehend a situation. By focusing on emotion rather than on moral capacity as other critiques have done, I thus argue that direct modulation is likely to be ineffective, and, more positively, by drawing out patterns of connections across the affective landscape, we can better tease out what it is that we should really be targeting if we are to achieve robust and meaningful moral change. (shrink)

Human Nature offers a wide-ranging and holistic view of human nature from all perspectives: scientific, historical, and sociological. Mary Clark takes the most recent data from a dozen or more fields, and works it together with clarifying anecdotes and thought-provoking images to challenge conventional Western beliefs with hopeful new insights. Balancing the theories of cutting-edge neuroscience with the insights of primitive mythologies, Mary Clark provides down-to-earth suggestions for peacefully resolving global problems. Human Nature builds up a coherent, and (...) above all positive, picture of who we really are. (shrink)

Medical practice is animated by the intention to cure; it aims to relieve the immense variety of sufferings to which human beings are subject in virtue of the conditions of their embodied existence. My purpose here is to demonstrate how a philosophical analysis of the formal structures and kinds of human suffering provides an essential foundation for determining certain ethical dimensions of the physician's relation to his suffering patient. Can paternalism in medical practice be justified by the aim of relieving (...) suffering? What are the scope and limits of the patient's responsibility for his suffering, and what difference does this make in the physician's response to it? How is the suffering that medical treatment itself exacts in the name of cure to be justified? Such questions can be answered only by an analysis of the sense or value of suffering in human life. Keywords: suffering, sin, autonomy, paternalism, patient values CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Organizations are not only gendered; they are also classed—that is, they articulate ideas and presentations of gender that are mediated by class position. This article pursues the idea of organizations as gendered and classed by means of a comparative ethnographic analysis of the performance of sexuality in four exotic dance clubs in the Southwestern United States. Strip clubs construct sexuality to be consistent with client class norms and assumptions and with how the clubs and dancers think working-class or middle-class sexuality (...) should be expressed. Class differences are represented as sexual differences in very concrete ways: the appearance of dancers and other staff, dancing and performance styles, and interactions that take place between dancers and customers. (shrink)

I argue for an interpretation of the connection between Descartes’ early mathematics and metaphysics that centers on the standard of geometrical intelligibility that characterizes Descartes’ mathematical work during the period 1619 to 1637. This approach remains sensitive to the innovations of Descartes’ system of geometry and, I claim, sheds important light on the relationship between his landmark Geometry and his first metaphysics of nature, which is presented in Le monde. In particular, I argue that the same standard of clear and (...) distinct motions for construction that allows Descartes to distinguish ‘geometric’ from ‘imaginary’ curves in the domain of mathematics is adopted in Le monde as Descartes details God’s construction of nature. I also show how, on this interpretation, the metaphysics of Le monde can fruitfully be brought to bear on Descartes’ attempted solution to the Pappus problem, which he presents in Book I of the Geometry. My general goal is to show that attention to the standard of intelligibility Descartes invokes in these different areas of inquiry grants us a richer view of the connection between his early mathematics and philosophy than an approach that assumes a common method is what binds his work in these domains together.Keywords: René Descartes; Geometry; Mathematics; Intelligibility; Metaphysics. (shrink)

With a new introduction by the author. It is a book of superb spirit and style, more entertaining than a work of philosophy has any right to be.’ – Times Literary Supplement. Throughout our lives we are making moral choices. Some decisions simply direct our everyday comings and goings; others affect our individual destinies. How do we make those choices? Where does our sense of right and wrong come from, and how can we make more informed decisions? In clear, entertaining (...) prose Mary Midgley takes us to the heart of the matter: the human experience that is central to all decision-making. First published: 1983. (shrink)

This book articulates a new approach to medieval aesthetic values, emphasizing the sensory and emotional basis of all medieval arts, their love of play and fine craftsmanship, of puzzles, and of strong contrasts.It offers an understanding of medieval literature and art that is rooted in the perceptions and feelings of ordinary life.