A highly original work in history and theory, this survey considers major themes including identity, class and sexual difference, weaves them into debates on the nature and point of history, and arrives at new ways of doing history that – very unusually – consider non-Western history and feminist approaches. Using wide range of historical and cultural contexts, the study draws extensively on feminist scholarship, both feminist history and postcolonial feminism.
Engineering makes profound contributions to our health. Many of these contributions benefit whole populations, such as clean water and sewage treatment, buildings, dependable sources of energy, efficient harvesting and storage of food, and pharmaceutical manufacture. Thus, ethical assessment of these and other engineering activities has often emphasized benefits to communities. This is in contrast to medical ethics, which has tended to emphasize the individual patient affected by a doctor’s actions. However, technological innovation is leading to an entanglement of the activities, (...) and hence ethical responsibilities, of healthcare professionals and engineering professionals. The article outlines three categories of innovation: assistive technologies, telehealthcare and quasi-autonomous systems. Approaches to engineering ethics are described and applied to these innovations. Such innovations raise a number of ethical opportunities and challenges, especially as the complexity of the technology increases. In particular, the design and operation of the technologies require engineers to seek closer involvement with the persons benefiting from their work. Future innovation will require engineers to have a good knowledge of human biology and psychology. More particularly, healthcare engineers will need to prioritize each person’s wellbeing, agency, human relationships and ecological self rather than technology, in the same way that doctors prioritize the treatment of persons rather than their diseases . Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 204-221 DOI 10.1558/hrge.v17i2.204 Authors W. Richard Bowen, i-NewtonWales, 54 Llwyn y mor, Caswell, Swansea, SA3 4RD, UK Journal Human Reproduction & Genetic Ethics Online ISSN 2043-0469 Print ISSN 1028-7825 Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 2 / 2011. (shrink)
A PICTURE MAY BE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS-- BUT A FEW CHOICE WORDS CAN SPEAK VOLUMES! _ If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't More People Happy? Bottled Water Is for Suckers Clones Are People Too At Least the War on the Environment Is Going Well Don't Believe Everything You Think The Revolution Will Be Tweeted _ Long before blogs, tweets, and sound bites, people were telling the world how they felt in brief, blunt bursts of information plastered on the backs (...) of their cars. Whether they're political or religious, passionate or proud, controversial or corny, these brightly colored, boldly lettered mini manifestos are declarations of who we are, where we stand, and what we'd rather be doing. But as bestselling author and noted philosopher Jack Bowen reveals, there's much more to the pop-culture phenomenon of bumper stickers than rolling one-liners and drive-by propaganda--no less, in fact, than a wise, funny, poignant, contentious, and truthful discourse on the human condition. _ Mixing pop culture with the ideas of historically prominent philosophers and scientists, If You Can Read This exposes the deeper wisdom couched behind these slogans--or, as need be, exposes where they have gone wrong. If you brake for big ideas, now's the time. _. (shrink)
The last twenty-five years in education: a record and an evaluation, edited by L. Fernig.--Contemporary education theory: an analysis and assessment, edited by J. Bowen.
What factors in the organizational culture of an ethically exemplary corporation are responsible for encouraging ethical decision making? This question was analyzed through an exploratory case study of a top pharmaceutical company that is a global leader in ethics. The participating organization is renowned in public opinion polls of ethics, credibility, and trust. This research explored organizational culture, communication in issues management and public relations, management theory, and deontological or utilitarian moral philosophy as factors that might encourage ethical analysis. Our (...) understanding of organiza tional ethics is enhanced by elucidating factors the case revealed as encouraging ethical analysisan organizational culture that emphasizes the importance of ethics, Theory Y management, a symmetrical worldview valuing innovation and dialogue, a counseling role for issues management or public relations in the dominant coalition, rewarding ethical behavior, ethical analysis using moral philosophy, consistency between individual values and organizational philosophy, and ethics training. These factors, and perhaps others as yet unidentified, worked together to create an environment that encouraged ethical decision making at the exemplar organization. (shrink)
Preface -- Part I : Mastering the basics. The importance of public relations : Case: UPS faces losses in Teamster's union strike ; What is public relations? ; Models and approaches to public relations ; Public relations as a management function -- Part II : Organizations and processes. Organizational factors contributing to excellent public relations ; How public relations contributes to organizational effectiveness ; Identifying and prioritizing stakeholders and publics ; Public relations research: the key to strategy ; The public (...) relations process: RACE -- Part III : The practice and best practices. The practice of public relations ; Ethics, leadership and counseling roles, and moral analyses ; Best practices for excellence in public relations -- Notes -- References -- Index. (shrink)
: The Hellenistic reception of Babylonian horoscopic astrology gave rise to the question of what the planets really do and whether astrology is a science. This question in turn became one of defining the Greco-Latin science of astronomy, a project that took Aristotle's views as a starting-point. Thus, I concentrate on one aspect of the various definitions of astronomy proposed in Hellenistic times, their demarcation of astronomy and physical theory. I explicate the account offered by Geminus and its subordination of (...) astronomy to arguments made in physical theory about what really is the case. I then show how Ptolemy treats the same topic but maintains that this science is sufficient on its own to determine the realia it studies. In this way, I identify two moments in an obvious process of intellectual change that had profound consequences for the history of astronomy and cosmology over the next 1500 years. My hope is that this will advance our understanding of the reception of horoscopic astrology in Hellenistic times and also serve to locate Ptolemy more fully in his intellectual context. (shrink)
This paper compares two theories of the firm used to interpret firms’ corporate social strategies in order to derive new insights and questions in this research area. Researchers from many branches of strategic management agree that firms can strategically allocate resources in order to achieve both long-term social objectives and competitive advantage. However, despite some progress in investigating corporate social strategy, studies rely on fundamentally diverging theoretical approaches. This paper will identify, compare and begin to integrate two competing theories of (...) the firm implicit in corporate social strategy scholarship: the resource-based and behavioural theories of the firm. I discuss the implications of these two theories for both researchers and practitioners on key debates within corporate social strategy, and conclude by suggesting several fruitful avenues for future research based on the emerging integration of these two theories of the firm within the strategy literature. (shrink)
Offering a lively source of debate for professionals and academics, this volume provides a window on a topic that is frequently fraught with uncertainty.
Student-instructor relationships outside of the classroom have existed for hundreds of years and remain an important topic in the literature. Universities are increasingly concerned with legislating student-instructor relationships. Few empirical investigations of undergraduate student-instructor relationships are reported in the literature, and such relationships are often considered only in the context of sexual harassment or ethics policies. Most of the writings are opinion based or seated in anecdotal evidence, and seldom are students' opinions considered. In this study, 480 undergraduate students attending (...) a medium-sized Western university were surveyed for their opinions about a variety student-instructor relationships. Factor analysis revealed 5 types of student-faculty relationships: sexual, group activities, doing favors, spending time alone with a faculty member, and business relationships. The students' opinions about these relationships varied, with sexual relationships considered inappropriate, whereas group activities were considered very appropriate. These data suggest that university officials who are building policy regarding faculty-student relationships need to consider different types of relationships along with students' developing autonomy. (shrink)
: In earlier work, Bernard R. Goldstein and the present author have introduced a procedural rule for historical inquiry, which requires that one take pains to establish the credibility of any citation of ancient thought by later writers in antiquity through a process of verification. In this paper, I shall apply what I call the Rule of Ancient Citations to Simplicius' interpretation of Aristotle's remarks in Meta L. 8, which is the primary point of departure for the modern understanding of (...) Greek planetary theory. I first sketch several lines of argument that lead me to conclude that Simplicius' interpretation should not be accepted because it assumes a concern with planetary phenomena unknown to the Greeks before the late 2nd and early 1st centuries BC. Then, after showing that there is a fairly well defined range of readings of Aristotle's remarks more in keeping with what we actually know of astronomy in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, I conclude that neither Aristotle's report about the Eudoxan and Callippan accounts of the celestial motions nor Simplicius' interpretation of this report is a good starting point for our understanding of early Greek planetary theory. (shrink)
Robin Le Poidevin (2007) claims that we do form perceptual beliefs regarding order and duration based on our perception of events, but neither order nor duration are by themselves objects of perception. Temporal properties are discernible only when one first perceives their bearers, and temporal relations are discernible only when one first perceives their relata. The epistemic issue remains as to whether or not our perceptual beliefs about order and duration are formed on the causal basis of an event’s objective (...) order and duration. Le Poidevin raises this issue in the form of an epistemological puzzle of time perception, from which he derives the claim that the order and duration of events do not causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them. Since his view is motivated by a causal truthmaker principle for grounding knowledge, it also holds that perceptual beliefs about temporal features must be caused by the features themselves in order to count as knowledge. Given these theoretical commitments, there is a puzzle concerning how such perceptual beliefs could constitute knowledge of temporal properties. In response to Le Poidevin, I argue for an account according to which order and duration are objects of perception, causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them, and such beliefs are capable of counting as knowledge. I conclude by showing that, on my alternative account, the epistemological puzzle dissolves and his own solution to it fails. (shrink)
For many, the case of the Exxon Valdez oil spill has become a symbol of unethical corporate behavior. Had Exxon’s managers not callously pursued their own interests at the expense of the environment and other parties, the accident would not have happened. In this paper, we (1) present a short case study of the Valdez incident; (2) argue that many analyses of the case either ignore or fail to give sufficient weight to the uncertainties managers often face when they make (...) decisions; and (3) propose a framework for moral management grounded in principles of communicative ethics, moral dialogue, and in the non-traditional ideas of many current management and behavioral decision theorists. From this view, the moral manager is not expected to know the “correct” answer to every ethical issue, but rather to participate responsibly in an open dialogue with other interested parties. (shrink)
The increasing demand for horticultural products for nutritional and economic purposes by lesser developed countries (LDC's) is well-documented. Technological demands of the LDC's producing horticultural products is also increasing. Pesticide use is an integral component of most agricultural production, yet chemicals are often supplied without supplemental information vital for their safe and efficient implementation. Illiteracy rates in developing countries are high, making pesticide education even more challenging. For women, who perform a significant share of agricultural tasks, illiteracy rates are even (...) higher than for men. The dilemma exists of how a developing country can improve its nutritional and economic situation without giving consideration to social and environmental consequences. (shrink)
Model-theoretic methods are used to extend Craig's Interpolation Theorem to the loop-free portion of Pratt's dynamic logic of programs with simple assignments.
In May 1933 the historian of chemistry Hélène Metzger addressed a letter to the renowned historian and philosopher of science Émile Meyerson, a cri de coeur against Meyerson's patronizing attitude toward her. This recently discovered letter is published and translated here because it is an exceptional human document reflecting the gender power structure of our discipline in interwar France. At the age of forty-three, and with five books to her credit, Metzger was still a junior scholar in the exclusively male (...) community of French historians and philosophers of science. We sketch the institutional setting of higher learning in France at the time, noting the limited openings it offered to would-be femmes savantes, and situate Metzger in this context. We also describe the philosophical differences between Metzger and Meyerson. Though Metzger never managed to obtain a post of her own, in her letter to Meyerson she forcefully lays claim, at least, to a mind of her own. (shrink)
In this article, I examine the historiographical ideas of the historian of chemistry Helene Metzger (1886-1944) against the background of the ideas of the members of the groups and institutions in which she worked, including Alexandre Koyre, Gaston Bachelard, Abel Rey, Henri Berr and Lucien Febrve. This article is on two interdependent levels: that of particular institutions and groups in which she worked (the Centre de Synthese, the International Committee for History of Science, the Institut d'Histoire des Sciences et (...) Techniques (Sorbonne) and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes) and that of historiographical ideas. I individuate two particular theoretical aspirations pursued by the historians in Metzger's milieu: the ideal of total history and the study of the human mind. These two objectives were seen by Metzger and many others as implicating each other. Moreover, Metzger and other historians wanted to integrate the practice of commentary of texts in the realisations of those ideals. I argue, however, that these objectives proved very difficult to realise at the same time. One tradition which stemmed out of these discussions, exemplified by Bachelard, Canguilhem and Foucault, focused on the mind and knowledge, and renounced commentary of texts and total history as it was understood by the historians of the Centre de Synthese. The latter, however, did not really pursue the study of the mind. Moreover, historians like Metzger and Koyre who practised an attentive analysis of texts could not realise total history. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: -- PART I: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND INTRODUCTION * Introduction * PART II: ANALYSIS OF LITERARY TEXTS * Pygmalion as allegory for transformational adult learning: Ovid, Shaw and Hughes * Educating Rita and Oleanna * The Winter's Tale * PART III: BIOGRAPHICAL DATA * Interview with Joe * Interview with Jane * Interview with Sarah * SECTION IV: AUTO/BIOGRAPHICAL DATA * Interview with Lilian * Autobiographical Writing * Final thoughts.
Over the past few years, the business world has been wracked by corporate scandals. With news of a new scandal an almost weekly occurrence, one cannot help but wonder: “Is business success synonymous with a lack of morality?” With a resounding “no,” Bowen H. “Buzz” McCoy, former partner at Morgan Stanley, shows that ethical business leadership is possible and, moreover, desirable. Seeking inspiration from an eclectic range of sources, such as Dante, Kant, and Peter Drucker, and drawing from his (...) own career as a successful investment banker, the author examines how business leaders—and those who aspire to be business leaders—can flourish in a corporate environment without shedding personal values or compromising integrity. Living Into Leadership: A Journey in Ethics is based on the author’s actual life experiences, personal ethical dilemmas, and concerns. This groundbreaking work incorporates classroom materials developed by the author for ethics programs at various business schools, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, the University of Southern California, UCLA, and Notre Dame. The central question this book considers is how to pursue an engaged business career while living a balanced life and continuing to grow as an integrated person. McCoy acts as a “mentor” for readers, providing personal and professional guidance on the development of a personal business plan for life. The book presents the case for creating a moral compass that allows one to make decisions under uncertainty, lead a life of integrity, establish the practice of ethics both personally and in society, and know when to embrace change and when to hold one’s ground. It includes an abbreviated version of the author’s acclaimed work, the seminal Harvard Business Review article, “The Parable of the Sadhu,” and shows readers how to prepare in advance for dilemmas they may face, both in their private and professional lives. (shrink)
A computer can come to understand natural language the same way Helen Keller did: by using “syntactic semantics”—a theory of how syntax can suffice for semantics, i.e., how semantics for natural language can be provided by means of computational symbol manipulation. This essay considers real-life approximations of Chinese Rooms, focusing on Helen Keller’s experiences growing up deaf and blind, locked in a sort of Chinese Room yet learning how to communicate with the outside world. Using the SNePS computational (...) knowledge-representation system, the essay analyzes Keller’s belief that learning that “everything has a name” was the key to her success, enabling her to “partition” her mental concepts into mental representations of: words, objects, and the naming relations between them. It next looks at Herbert Terrace’s theory of naming, which is akin to Keller’s, and which only humans are supposed to be capable of. The essay suggests that computers at least, and perhaps non-human primates, are also capable of this kind of naming. (shrink)
Ford’s <span class='Hi'>Helen</span> <span class='Hi'>Keller</span> Was Never in a Chinese Room claims that my argument in How <span class='Hi'>Helen</span> <span class='Hi'>Keller</span> Used Syntactic Semantics to Escape from a Chinese Room fails because Searle and I use the terms ‘syntax’ and ‘semantics’ differently, hence are at cross purposes. Ford has misunderstood me; this reply clarifies my theory.
William Rapaport, in How Helen Keller used syntactic semantics to escape from a Chinese Room, (Rapaport 2006), argues that Helen Keller was in a sort of Chinese Room, and that her subsequent development of natural language fluency illustrates the flaws in Searle’s famous Chinese Room Argument and provides a method for developing computers that have genuine semantics (and intentionality). I contend that his argument fails. In setting the problem, Rapaport uses his own preferred definitions of semantics and syntax, but he (...) does not translate Searle’s Chinese Room argument into that idiom before attacking it. Once the Chinese Room is translated into Rapaport’s idiom (in a manner that preserves the distinction between meaningful representations and uninterpreted symbols), I demonstrate how Rapaport’s argument fails to defeat the CRA. This failure brings a crucial element of the Chinese Room Argument to the fore: the person in the Chinese Room is prevented from connecting the Chinese symbols to his/her own meaningful experiences and memories. This issue must be addressed before any victory over the CRA is announced. (shrink)
Plato, in his dialog Charmides, presents the question of how society can determine whether a person who claims superior expertise in a particular field of knowledge does, in fact, possess superior expertise. In the modern era, society tends to answer this question by funding institutions (universities) that award credentials to certain individuals, asserting that those individuals possess a particular expertise; and then other institutions (the journalistic media and government) are expected to defer to the credentials. When, however, the sequential reasoning (...) and theorizing and conclusion-stating of generation after generation of credential-bearing experts (i.e., scientists) leads to the assertion of the truth of statements that large segments of society find to be in conflict with the statements of persons who have earned credentials of expertise bestowed by an alternative institutional structure (i.e., religious teachers), representatives of the people are put to a choice. And when the conflicting statements present substantial implications for the moral and sexual behavior of people in the society, addressing the conflict brings into play not only the highest intellectual speculations and analyses, but also the most animal emotions and motivations. This paper, taking the form of a dialog, presents a scientist (Avram Codosia) named after an ancient Jewish patriarch and makes him a supplicant to a U.S. Senator (Helen Astartian) named after a pagan goddess. The stakes turn out to be not merely financial and intellectual, but personal and moral, involving the scientist's son (Isaac), an art student, and the senator's niece (Halia), a philosophy student. In a four-phase encounter, the paper hopes to offer some innovative observations on age-old issues and to stimulate productive new thinking on questions that too often seem to be debated by means of repetitions of the same old points. (shrink)
Nature's experiments in isolation—the wild boy of Aveyron, Genie, their name is hardly legion—are by their nature illusive. Helen Keller, blind and deaf from her 18th month and isolated from language until well into her sixth year, presents a unique case in that every stage in her development was carefully recorded and she herself, graduate of Radcliffe College and author of 14 books, gave several careful and insightful accounts of her linguistic development and her cognitive and sensory situation. Perhaps (...) because she is masked, and enshrined, in William Gibson's mythic and false Miracle worker , cognitive scientists have yet to come to terms with this richly enlightening, albeit anecdotal, resource. (shrink)
In this paper, I examine a new line of response to Frankfurt’s challenge to the traditional association of moral responsibility with the ability to do otherwise. According to this response, Frankfurt’s counterexample strategy fails, not in light of the conditions for moral responsibility per se, but in view of the conditions for action. Specifically, it is claimed, a piece of behavior counts as an action only if it is within the agent’s power to avoid performing it. In so far as (...) Frankfurt’s challenge presupposes that actions can be unavoidable, this view of action seems to bring his challenge up short. Helen Steward and Maria Alvarez have independently proposed versions of this response. Here I argue that this response is unavailable to Frankfurt’s incompatibilist opponents. This becomes evident when we put this question to its proponents: “Are actions that originate deterministically ipso facto unavoidable?” If they answer “yes,” they encounter one horn of a dilemma. If they answer “no,” they encounter the other horn. Since no one has a clearer stake in meeting Frankfurt’s challenge than these theorists do, it is significant that the Steward-Alvarez response is unavailable to them. (shrink)
This article is another unapologetic contribution to ‘the gentle art of rational choice bashing’. The debate over rational choice theory (RCT) may appear to have tired out; yet RCT is as dominant in political sciences as ever. The reason is that critics typically take aim at the symptoms of RCT’s failings, rather than their root cause: RCT’s very ambition of being the ‘science of choice’. In this article I argue that RCT fails twice, first as a science of choice and (...) then as a science of choice. Both failures suggest that political sciences need an epistemologic (re)conversion away from the Platonic ideal of a deductive and universal science of choice toward a more inductive and pluralist paradigm. While advocates of RCT rightly insist that ‘you can’t beat something with nothing’, I take their advice, with a grain of salt: in order for alternatives to appear, the frame of references needs to be modified. I draw a few perspectives for the political sciences. (shrink)
Helen Beebee has recently argued that David Lewis’s account of compatibilism, so-called local miracle compatibilism (LMC), allows for the possibility that agents in deterministic worlds have the ability to break or cause the breaking of a law of nature. Because Lewis’s LMC allows for this consequence, Beebee claims that LMC is untenable and subsequently that Lewis’s criticism of van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument for incompatibilism is substantially weakened. I review Beebee’s argument against Lewis’s thesis and argue that Beebee has not (...) refuted LMC and concomitantly has not demonstrated that Lewis’s criticism of the Consequence Argument fails. (shrink)
