The cause of ethical failure in organisations often can be traced to their organisational culture and the failure on the part of the leadership to actively promote ethical ideals and practices. This is true of all types of organisations, including the professions, which in recent years have experienced ongoing ethical problems. The questions naturally arise: what sort of professional culture promotes ethical behaviour? How can it be implemented by a profession and engendered in the individual professional? The answers to these (...) questions are of interest to business ethicists since the causes of ethical problems in business are often the same and the professions, as ethically challenged organisations, make useful and informative analogues for the measures to be adopted or avoided when the attempt is made to raise the ethical standards of business.Given this focus on the professions, it will be argued that the usual, direct attempts to control unethical behaviour by using codes of ethics, legislation and self-regulatory regimes, are not successful. (shrink)

If stem cell-based therapies are developed, we will likely confront a difficult problem of justice: for biological reasons alone, the new therapies might benefit only a limited range of patients. In fact, they might benefit primarily white Americans, thereby exacerbating long-standing differences in health and health care.

We report on the deliberations of an interdisciplinary group of experts in science, law, and philosophy who convened to discuss novel ethical and policy challenges in stem cell research. In this report we discuss the ethical and policy implications of safety concerns in the transition from basic laboratory research to clinical applications of cell-based therapies derived from stem cells. Although many features of this transition from lab to clinic are common to other therapies, three aspects of stem cell biology pose (...) unique challenges. First, tension regarding the use of human embryos may complicate the scientific development of safe and effective cell lines. Second, because human stem cells were not developed in the laboratory until 1998, few safety questions relating to human applications have been addressed in animal research. Third, preclinical and clinical testing of biologic agents, particularly those as inherently complex as mammalian cells, present formidable challenges, such as the need to develop suitable standardized assays and the difficulty of selecting appropriate patient populations for early phase trials. We recommend that scientists, policy makers, and the public discuss these issues responsibly, and further, that a national advisory committee to oversee human trials of cell therapies be established. **NB we did not reccommend a NAC, we think it might be appropriate**. (shrink)

Abstract:This article examines unrecognized points of conceptual and stylistic convergence between the work of Flann O'Brien and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Though operating in quite different generic and discursive modes, both writers critique impulses to metaphysical systems, idealized models of language, and skepticism. O'Brien and Wittgenstein adopt as correctives to these tendencies techniques to train their readers' attention on the zones of overlap in linguistic usage where points of confusion tend to arise. Finally, this comparison with O'Brien casts new (...) light on Wittgenstein's later work as it illuminates satirical and ironizing styles that have often been overlooked. (shrink)

O'Brien, Odhran Review of: Aapologia pro Beata Maria Virgine: John Henry Newman's defence of the Virgin Mary in Catholic doctrine and piety, by Robert M. Andrews, Palo Alto, CA: Academica, 2017, pp. 164, hardback, US$76.95.

Cet article s’intéresse à la masculinité dans deux romans historiques du vingtième siècle, dont l’intrigue se déroule au dix-huitième : Ingenious Pain d’Andrew Miller (1997) et The Giant, O’Brien d’Hilary Mantel (1998). Les deux romanciers inventent des protagonistes qui incarnent des attributs considérés comme typiquement masculins, tels que la résistance à la douleur, la force physique et la masse corporelle, ces attributs étant par ailleurs liés à la possibilité de gagner de l’argent. Dans ces textes, cependant, l’exagération des (...) caractéristiques masculines stéréotypées complexifie le portrait des deux personnages, les faisant paraître à différents moments comme des non-hommes ou des hommes inférieurs : ils ressemblent tantôt à des monstres, tantôt à des victimes pitoyablement faibles – comparés à des enfants, voire à des femmes. Paradoxalement, les qualités associées à la virilité dans ces récits dépouillent les hommes de leur autonomie plutôt que de la leur conférer, de sorte qu’ils se trouvent dépossédés de l’idéal masculin et deviennent la propriété d’autres hommes. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question “what connection is there between our answer to the question of what we are, and the question, what our actions are?” Suppose that actions are reflexive changes of agents. On that supposition, there would be a direct connection between the answers to those two questions. An action of mine will be a reflexive change of me, and what I am will fix the nature of those changes. I hold that supposition to be true and consider (...) reasons in favor of believing it. However, the paper is not primarily aimed at defense of that thesis. It rather concerned with exploring what consequences accepting it has for the competing notions of what we are, given what we ordinarily think actions are, and bringing to light a tension between thinking of actions as reflexive changes of agents in this way, and a kind of causal understanding of actions that is prevalent. What emerges is that we should shift where we start our theorizing: we cannot assume that action theory primarily involves the task of characterizing the relation between an agent and changes caused, rather than a characterization of a particular kind of relation between the agent and herself. (shrink)

The domain of children's social understanding, including understanding of one's own and others’ minds and emotions, has been the topic of much research over the past few decades. Social understandi...

THIS article concerning Mr. Marshall's open letter to Governor Smith does not pretend to be an answer. It suggests some philosophical considerations on the point at issue. The Editor.

How was the world generated and how does matter continue to be ordered so that the world can continue functioning? Questions like these have existed as long as humanity has been capable of rational thought. In antiquity, Plato's Timaeus introduced the concept of the Demiurge, or Craftsman-god, to answer them. This lucid and wide-ranging book argues that the concept of the Demiurge was highly influential on the many discussions operating in Middle Platonist, Gnostic, Hermetic and Christian contexts in the first (...) three centuries AD. It explores key metaphysical problems such as the origin of evil, the relationship between matter and the First Principle and the deployment of ever-increasing numbers of secondary deities to insulate the First Principle from the sensible world. It also focuses on the decreasing importance of demiurgy in Neoplatonism, with its postulation of procession and return. (shrink)

This paper examines the idea of objective phenomenology, or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are (...) objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. (shrink)

Spirituality in Nursing: Standing On Holy Ground, Sixth Edition explores the relationship between spirituality and the practice of nursing.

Animal rights activists all around the world are working to end animal suffering. They campaign for laws to protect animal welfare. They work to stop the use of animals in tests for medicines and cosmetics, factory farming, and the use of fur. Many stop eating meat and using animal products. All agree that animals deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. Could you be one of them? Read this book to find out how to be an animal rights activist"--Provided (...) by publisher. (shrink)

I am working on a substantially revised second edition of this. It is due to be published by Palgrave in 2024.

Some accounts of moral responsibility hold that an agent's responsibility is completely determined by some aspect of the agent's mental life at the time of action. For example, some hold that an agent is responsible if and only if there is an appropriate mesh among the agent's particular psychological elements. It is often objected that the particular features of the agent's mental life to which these theorists appeal (such as a particular structure or mesh) are not necessary for responsibility. This (...) is because there appear to be cases in which an agent acts at an earlier time which causes her to lack the appropriate psychological features at some later time and yet, intuitively, she is responsible at that later .. (shrink)

Perception is riddled with cases of reliable misperception. These are cases in which a perceptual state is tokened inaccurately any time it is tokened under normal conditions. On the face of it, this fact causes trouble for theories that provide an analysis of perceptual content in non-semantic, non-intentional, and non-phenomenal terms, such as those found in Millikan (1984), Fodor (1990), Neander (2017), and Schellenberg (2018). I show how such theories can be extended so that they cover such cases without giving (...) up their core commitments. (shrink)

We are all familiar with the phenomenon of a proposition seeming true. Many think that these seeming states can yield justified beliefs. Very few have seriously explored what these seeming states are. I argue that seeming states are not plausibly analyzed in terms of beliefs, partial beliefs, attractions to believe, or inclinations to believe. Given that the main candidates for analyzing seeming states are unsatisfactory, I argue for a brute view of seemings that treats seeming states as irreducible propositional attitudes.

This chapter contains sections titled: Candide Hume and Common Life Gardens and Tranquility Notes.

In this paper I describe the imaginary community of Gullible. Gulliblians are led by moral pressures to believe whatever they are told and, in the scenario that I sketch, this leads to them having widespread contradictory beliefs. This community is nevertheless intelligible to us given what we know about their situation and their moral code. Davidson, however, holds there to be what I call a logicist constraint on interpretation: thinkers can only be interpreted if a good proportion of their beliefs (...) are rational and, for Davidson, rationality entails logical consistency. The possibility of Gullible therefore forces us to reject this logicist aspect of Davidson’s account of interpretation and intelligibility. (shrink)

This is a discussion of the state of discussion on pragmatic reasons for belief.

This book brings together an international group of scholars to discuss the ramifications of Heidegger's Black Notebooks for philosophy and the humanities. In contrast to both those who seek to exonerate Heidegger and those who simply condemn him, they urge careful reading and rereading of his work to turn Heideggerian thought against itself.

Doctors have an ethical and legal duty to respect patient confidentiality. We consider the basis for this duty, looking particularly at the meaning and value of autonomy in health care. Enabling patients to decide how information about them is disclosed is an important element in autonomy and helps patients engage as active partners in their care.Good quality data is, however, essential for research, education, public health monitoring, and for many other activities essential to provision of health care. We discuss whether (...) it is necessary to choose between individual rights and the wider public interest and conclude that this should only rarely be necessary. The paper makes some recommendations on practical steps which could help ensure that good quality information is available for work which benefits society and the public health, while still enabling patients’ autonomy to be respected. (shrink)

For Kant, knowledge involves certainty. If “certainty” requires that the grounds for a given propositional attitude guarantee its truth, then this is an infallibilist view of epistemic justification. Such a view says you can’t have epistemic justification for an attitude unless the attitude is also true. Here I want to defend an alternative fallibilist interpretation. Even if a subject has grounds that would be sufficient for knowledge if the proposition were true, the proposition might not be true. And so there (...) is sometimes still rational room for doubt. The goal of this paper is to present four different models of what “certainty” amounts to, for Kant, each of which is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

In his 1978 paper “Mathematical Explanation”, Mark Steiner attempts to modernize the Aristotelian idea that to explain a mathematical statement is to deduce it from the essence of entities figuring in the statement, by replacing talk of essences with talk of “characterizing properties”. The language Steiner uses is reminiscent of language used for proofs deemed “pure”, such as Selberg and Erdős’ elementary proofs of the prime number theorem avoiding the complex analysis of earlier proofs. Hilbert characterized pure proofs as those (...) that use only “means that are suggested by the content of the theorem”, a characterization we have elsewhere called “topical purity”. In this paper we will examine the connection between Steiner’s account of mathematical explanation and topical purity. Are Steiner-explanatory proofs necessarily topically pure? Are topically pure proofs necessarily Steiner-explanatory? Answers to these questions will shed light on the general question of the relation between purity and explanatory power. (shrink)

Spirituality in Nursing: Standing on Holy Ground addresses the relationship between spirituality and nursing practice across a variety of settings and broad perspectives related to caring for the ill and infirm, from care of special population like children, families and older adults to spiritual care during disaster situations. The current edition examines both historical and contemporary issues pertaining to the spiritual needs and care of the sick and includes topical discussions of areas such as the nurse's role in spiritual care, (...) the nurse-patient relationship, spiritual needs of special populations, and spiritual needs in areas such as mass casualty disasters and parish leadership. The author brings her considerable experience as a parish nurse to each discussion, lending a unique perspective to each of the issues addressed in this text. (shrink)

The aim of the Analytic of Concepts is to derive and deduce a set of pure concepts of the understanding, the categories, which play a central role in Kant’s explanation of the possibility of synthetic a priori cognition and judgment. This chapter is structured around two questions. First, what is a pure concept of the understanding? Second, what is involved in a deduction of a pure concept of the understanding? In answering the first, we focus on how the categories differ (...) from the pure forms of sensibility and examine whether they are known only to be the pure forms of human thinking or rather the forms of discursive cognition as such. In answering the second, we draw a distinction between the application and the exemplification of the categories and use it to identify different ways of understanding Kant’s project in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. These questions connect because the answer to the first determines how we should understand the kind of entitlement which is to be established in the Deduction. (shrink)

While many aspects of cognition have been shown to be shared between humans and non-human animals, there remains controversy regarding whether the capacity to mentally time travel is a uniquely human one. In this paper, we argue that there are four ways of representing when some event happened: four kinds of temporal representation. Distinguishing these four kinds of temporal representation has five benefits. First, it puts us in a position to determine the particular benefits these distinct temporal representations afford an (...) organism. Second, it provides the conceptual resources to foster a discussion about which of these representations is necessary for an organism to count as having the capacity to mentally time travel. Third, it enables us to distinguish stricter from more liberal views of mental time travel that differ regarding which kind(s) of temporal representation is taken to be necessary for mental time travel. Fourth, it allows us to determine the benefits of taking a stricter or more liberal view of mental time travel. Finally, it ensures that disagreement about whether some species can mentally time travel is not merely the product of unrecognised disagreement about which temporal representation is necessary for mental time travel. We argue for a more liberal view, on the grounds that it allows us to view mental time travel as an evolutionarily continuous phenomenon, and to recognise that differences in the ways that organisms mentally time travel might reflect different temporal representations, or combinations thereof, that they employ. Our ultimate aim, however, is to create the conceptual framework for further discussion regarding what sorts of temporal representations are required for mental time travel. (shrink)

Public reason in practice and theory -- False starts: unsuccessful justifications of public reason -- Respect for persons as a constraint on coercion -- Higher-order unanimity escape clause -- Civic friendship as a constraint on reasons for decision -- Public reason and (same-sex) marriage.