The AAR-SBL Women’s Caucus session on ‘Beyond Down and Dirty: From Good to Great Sex’ revisited the Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World’s Religions project and book with the participation of two of its co-editors, Mary E. Hunt and Patricia Beattie Jung, and co-author and collaborator, Wanda Defeilt. Scholar colleagues, Brandy Daniels, Fitri Junoes, and Alicia Besa Panganiban, presented intriguing papers on feminist religious and ethical reflections on what constitutes great sex as they examined the issues discussed by feminist (...) scholars and activist authors of Good Sex. Moreover, the session was an exhilarating dialogue of international, interreligious, and intergenerational perspectives on what women think is great sex. It was an exciting starting ground for intergenerational discussion with senior scholars, associated with the Good Sex book, providing generous, constructive, and well-considered responses to the presentations of their colleagues. The diverse international audience of masters, doctoral and senior scholars – male and female – was included in the complex, fun, and challenging discussion of sex. Amidst various issues raised, there was a consensus that discussions on great sex must address issues of safety, justice, and pleasure. Overall the session was a success as the platform for the presentations modelled a feminist method that was intentionally designed to give more time for discussion, not only among panelists but also with the audience. (shrink)

Free will can be understood as a novel form of action control that evolved to meet the escalating demands of human social life, including moral action and pursuit of enlightened self-interest in a cultural context. That understanding is conducive to scientific research, which is reviewed here in support of four hypotheses. First, laypersons tend to believe in free will. Second, that belief has behavioral consequences, including increases in socially and culturally desirable acts. Third, laypersons can reliably distinguish free actions from (...) less free ones. Fourth, actions judged as free emerge from a distinctive set of inner processes, all of which share a common psychological and physiological signature. These inner processes include self-control, rational choice, planning, and initiative. (shrink)

The question of whether free will exists has been debated extensively for centuries. Instead of debating this complex issue, recent work in psychology has sought to understand the consequences of beliefs in free will. That is, how are people’s behaviors influenced when they either believe or do not believe in free will? Amongst many outcomes, research has identified free will beliefs to influence achievement, perseverance, and aggressiveness. We believe that beliefs in free will could also exert influence on health behaviors. (...) Health promotion from a psychological perspective has typically adopted social cognitive models to understand and predict health behaviors. We contend that free will beliefs could be included in these models to understand and change health behavior. We provide examples of how a popular social cognition theory, the theory of planned behavior, could be aligned with beliefs in free will. We suggest that the relationship between free will beliefs and theory constructs (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, intention) could be positive in health enhancing behaviors and negative in health risk behaviors. Experimentally testing these relationships is needed in future research. This may provide further insights into the consequences of free will and contribute to the explanation of health behavior. (shrink)

PurposeGiven the seeming lack of research on the influence of stakeholder activities on organisations such as political parties in the online environment, the purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate how political parties use their web sites to serve and manage their relationships with stakeholders.Design/methodology/approachThis is a qualitative paper, in which a cross‐national comparative analysis has been conducted on four illustrative cases. Personal interviews and web site observations were used as the main data collection methods. Three concurrent flows of (...) activities, i.e. data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing, have been applied in the data analysis.FindingsThe paper indicate that the stakeholders served by political parties on the web sites studied can be grouped into two categories: internal and external. This paper also revealed that another very important internal stakeholder group overlooked by previous studies is that of core party members.Originality/valueThe paper provides insights and new interesting empirical material which may help to strengthen the theoretical understanding stakeholder management in cyber politics. (shrink)

Further Thoughts on Counterfactuals, Compatibilism, Conceptual Mismatches, and Choices: Response to Commentaries Content Type Journal Article Pages 31-34 DOI 10.1007/s12152-010-9067-3 Authors Roy F. Baumeister, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL USA A. William Crescioni, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL USA Jessica L. Alquist, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL USA Journal Neuroethics Online ISSN 1874-5504 Print ISSN 1874-5490 Journal Volume Volume 4 Journal Issue Volume 4, Number 1.

Mere physical experiences of warmth, distance, hardness, and roughness are found to activate the more abstract psychological concepts that are analogically related to them, such as interpersonal warmth and emotional distance, thereby influencing social judgments and interpersonal behavior without the individual's awareness. These findings further support the principle of neural reuse in the development and operation of higher mental processes.

This essay explores the ways in which a broadly pluralist outlook can help illuminate longstanding issues of constitutional theory and practice. It begins with a common-sense understanding of pluralism as the diversity of observed practices within a general category (section 2). It turns out that many assumptions Americans and others often make about constitutional essentials are valid only locally but not generically. The essay then turns to pluralism in a more technical and philosophical sense—specifically, the account of value pluralism adumbrated (...) by Isaiah Berlin and developed by his followers. Section 3 sketches this version of pluralism, and section 4 brings it to bear on a range of familiar constitutional issues. In the process, a distinction emerges between, on the one hand, areas of variation among constitutions and, on the other, some general truths about political life that define core constitutional functions. The essay concludes (section 5) with some brief reflections on the normative thrust of pluralist constitutional theory—in particular, a presumption in favor of the maximum accommodation of individual and group differences consistent with the maintenance of constitutional unity and civic order. (shrink)

In 2004, the United States Sentencing Commission amended the Federal Sentencing Guidelines to allow firms that create “effective compliance and ethics programs” to receive better treatment if prosecuted for fraud. Effective compliance and ethics, however, appear to be limited to activities focused on complying with the firms’ internal legal and ethical standards. We explored a potential connection between the firms’ external corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors and internal compliance: Is there an organizationally valid relationship between these two firm activities? That (...) is, when organizations demonstrate CSR with behaviors external to the firm, such as employee volunteerism, are their employees more likely to demonstrate uncompromised legal and ethical compliance behavior internally? We collected data from 164 working professionals enrolled in a top-tier MBA program in the southeastern United States regarding their employer-sponsored volunteer activities and their intentions to comply in various organizational compliance vignettes. We found that employer-sponsored volunteerism is associated with uncompromised compliance choices in one of the three vignettes. This finding indicates preliminary support for further inquiry into the relationship within the firm between external CSR behaviors and policies regarding organizational compliance. Post hoc analyses suggest that employer-sponsored volunteerism is strongly associated with a positive organizational identity, but organizational identity is not associated with the significant compliance vignette. This evidence suggests that the underlying mechanism that connects external CSR behaviors and internal compliance intentions is complex and requires future study. (shrink)

Ethics & Behavior, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 261-262, May-June 2011.

A book chapter for the volume Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope: Experiencing the Twin Disasters of COVID-19 and Climate Change using Nietzsche's philosophy and primarily based on archival research done by William A. B. Parkhurst.

Star Trek is fundamentally about the triumph of the human spirit. Star Trek envisions a future in which humans have put away their petty differences to explore the cosmos, supported by an egalitarian society founded on the dignity of individuals and the loftiness of the human spirit, all the while boldly moralizing through progressive ideas. While exploring a hypergiant star, the Enterprise encounters the ship of an unknown species: the Vissians, which has a third gender, called a cogenitor. Philosophers such (...) as Immanuel Kant and Plato imagine morality as timeless and changeless, something that any rational being can understand. Vice and virtue may be compared to sounds, colors, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. Hume believes that facts and values are always separate things. (shrink)

This chapter opens with a discussion on the Luke Skywalker's role in Return of the Jedi. At the end of the film Skywalker must make a decision whether to ignore the utilitarian principle that he must kill his father to save the galaxy, or violate the ethical principle against dishonoring and murdering his own father and risk being turned to the dark side by the Emperor. Both are unacceptable to Luke. So he will have to turn a Sith to the (...) light side of the Force. Such a maneuver requires a leap of faith, and for that this chapter turns to a man who knew just how hard it was: the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Luke realizes that killing Darth Vader will not bring balance to the Force. Luke defeats Vader in the duel, but saves him in not ending it the way everyone has been telling him to. (shrink)

Among the deleted scenes from the theatrical version of Aliens is a short sequence in which the authors learn about Ellen Ripley's daughter, Amanda. This explains why Ripley feels so connected and responsible to the only surviving colonist of Hadley's Hope, second‐grader Rebecca Jorden, known as “Newt”. Ripley's exceptional treatment of Newt shows that the virtues of care and compassion should sometimes override universal rules of justice and fairness. Ripley has made a promise to never leave Newt, and intends to (...) take it seriously. Knowing Newt, caring about Newt, Ripley would rather die than let anything bad happen to her. The powerful point of Aliens is that this is not a moral failing or lack of consideration, but a deep commitment and serious decision. Ripley's oath to rescue Newt is specific, and it is partial. (shrink)

Burning fossil fuel in the North American continent contributes more to the CO2 global warming problem than in any other continent. The resulting climate changes are expected to alter food production. The overall changes in temperature, moisture, carbon dioxide, insect pests, plant pathogens, and weeds associated with global warming are projected to reduce food production in North America. However, in Africa, the projected slight rise in rainfall is encouraging, especially since Africa already suffers from severe shortages of rainfall. For all (...) regions, a reduction in fossil fuel burning is vital. Adoption of sound ecological resource management, especially soil and water conservation and the prevention of deforestation, is important. Together, these steps will benefit agriculture, the environment, farmers, and society as a whole. (shrink)

William C. Olsen, Walter E. A. van Beek, and the contributors to this volume seek to understand how Africans have confronted evil around them. Grouped around notions of evil as a cognitive or experiential problem, evil as malevolent process, and evil as an inversion of justice, these essays investigate what can be accepted and what must be condemned in order to evaluate being and morality in African cultural and social contexts. These studies of evil entanglements take local and national histories (...) and identities into account, including state politics and civil war, religious practices, Islam, gender, and modernity. (shrink)

How can we determine what are just boundaries or just criteria for inclusion or exclusion in contemporary states, nations, peoples, or other 'communities of justice'? As Barbieri demonstrates, recent theories of justice have failed to grapple squarely with this fundamental problem, either wholly ignoring it, or approaching it, inadequately, in terms of distributive or commutative justice, or simply declaring the problem insoluble. Developing a clear understanding of the peculiarities of constitutive justice, Barbieri contends, is a task that has important implications (...) for political philosophy as it bears on topics such as citizenship, migration, multiculturalism, self-determination, and the drafting of new constitutions. To this end, Constitutive Justice critically discusses some present approaches that promise to shed light on constitutive questions involving inclusion and the ethics of boundaries; provides an analysis of some of the central topics that plausible normative theories of constitutive justice will need to address; and develops the author's own constructive account. (shrink)

We inhabit a world not only full of natural dispositions independent of human design, but also artificial dispositions created by our technological prowess. How do these dispositions, found in automation, computation, and artificial intelligence applications, differ metaphysically from their natural counterparts? This collection investigates artificial dispositions: what they are, the roles they play in artificial systems, and how they impact our understanding of the nature of reality, the structure of minds, and the ethics of emerging technologies. It is divided into (...) four parts covering the following interconnected themes: (i) Metaphysics and Artificial Dispositions, (ii) Artificial Systems and Artificial Dispositions, (iii) Agency, Mind, and Artificial Dispositions, and (iv) Artificial Moral Dispositions. This is a groundbreaking and thought-provoking resource for any student or scholar of philosophy of science, contemporary metaphysics, applied ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of technology. (shrink)

The study of the Second Sophistic is a relative newcomer to the Anglophone field of classics, and much of what characterizes it temporally and culturally remains a matter of legitimate contestation. This Handbook offers a diversity of scholarly voices that attempt to define the state of this developing field. Included are chapters that offer practical guidance on the wide range of valuable textual materials that survive, many of which are useful or even core to inquiries of particularly current interest (e.g., (...) gender studies, cultural history of the body, sociology of literary culture, history of education and intellectualism, history of religion, political theory, history of medicine, cultural linguistics, intersection of the classical traditions and early Christianity). (shrink)

This book focuses on the question, what is the relationship between Christianity and politics? The author argues that the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas offers an answer; discusses Aquinas's themes in the history of Christian political thought.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)