Ethics and professionalism -- Ethical theory and philosophy -- Ethical principles and values -- Social responsibility -- Codes of ethics -- Ethical decision making in dental hygiene and dentistry -- Society and the State Dental Practice Act -- Dental hygienist/patient relationship -- Dental hygienist/dentist-employer relationship -- Risk management -- Case studies, activities, and testlets -- Appendix A : American Dental Association Principles of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct.

This book cuts through the complex writing style of the seminal philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce. It disentangles his ideas, explains them one by one, and then puts the pieces back together for application to educational issues. Accessible to a general readership, this study provides useful insights into Peirce's pragmatism for educators and philosophers.

Reason has regularly been portrayed and understood in terms of images and metaphors that involve the exclusion or denigration of some element-body, passion, nature, instinct-that is cast as "feminine." Drawing upon philosophical insight into metaphor, I examine the impact of this gendering of reason. I argue that our conceptions of mind, reason, unreason, female, and male have been distorted. The politics of "rational" discourse has been set up in ways that still subtly but powerfully inhibit the voice and agency of (...) women. (shrink)

After a decade of intense debate about mechanisms, there is still no consensus characterization. In this paper we argue for a characterization that applies widely to mechanisms across the sciences. We examine and defend our disagreements with the major current contenders for characterizations of mechanisms. Ultimately, we indicate that the major contenders can all sign up to our characterization.

Liberal democracy needs a clear-eyed, robust defense to deal with the increasingly complex challenges it faces in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately much of contemporary liberal theory has rejected this endeavor for fear of appearing culturally hegemonic. Instead, liberal theorists have sought to gut liberalism of its ethical substance in order to render it more tolerant of non-liberal ways of life. This theoretical effort is misguided, however, because successful liberal democracy is an ethically demanding political regime that requires its citizenry to (...) display certain virtues and habits of mind. Against the grain of contemporary theory, philosopher Richard Rorty blends American pragmatism and romanticism to produce a comprehensive vision of liberal modernity that features a virtue-based conception of liberal democracy. In doing so, Rorty defends his pragmatic liberalism against a host of notable interlocutors, including Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser, Hilary Putnam, Richard J. Bernstein, and Jean Bethke Elshtain. (shrink)

1. This book is a fascinating look at how early cinema and moving images inspired and were inspired by other more static forms of visual culture, such as painting, photography, and tableaux vivants. The contributors to this volume demonstrate how cinema responded to and was positioned within broader artistic and cultural frameworks. 2. This book is another strong contribution to the Proceedings of Domitor series, of which we are now the sole publishers. 3. It will benefit from our well established (...) reputation in early cinema studies. (shrink)

Scientific and philosophical literature on causality has become highly specialised. It is hard to find suitable access points for students, young researchers, or professionals outside this domain. This book provides a guide to the complex literature, explains the scientific problems of causality and the philosophical tools needed to address them.

Mechanisms have become much-discussed, yet there is still no consensus on how to characterise them. In this paper, we start with something everyone is agreed on – that mechanisms explain – and investigate what constraints this imposes on our metaphysics of mechanisms. We examine two widely shared premises about how to understand mechanistic explanation: (1) that mechanistic explanation offers a welcome alternative to traditional laws-based explanation and (2) that there are two senses of mechanistic explanation that we call ‘epistemic explanation’ (...) and ‘physical explanation’. We argue that mechanistic explanation requires that mechanisms are both real and local. We then go on to argue that real, local mechanisms require a broadly active metaphysics for mechanisms, such as a capacities metaphysics. (shrink)

Through essays, Mount Mary College professors from various disciplines analyze several pieces of literature from a variety of genres and authors to show how ...

Emphasizing the importance of etiquette and ethics in promoting success in American business, this helpful handbook describes how values reveal a company's relationships with customers, stockholders, and employees, covering such topics as listening skills, making a positive impression, dealing with allies and enemies, technology etiquette, presentation skills, and political skills.

Although we all learn differently, we all need to be able to engage certain fundamental reasoning skills if we are to manoeuvre successfully through life—however we define success. Peirce's philosophy provides us with a framework for helping students develop and hone the ability for making deliberate and well‐considered choices. For, embedded within Peirce's complete body of work is a design for thinking that provides a sturdy foundation for the development of three important learning capabilities. These capabilities are 1) the ability (...) to identify, compare, and contrast qualities, 2) the ability to perform analyses, and 3) the ability to interpret the meaning of signs. Although these capabilities may seem like the sort of skills that only older and academically inclined students can master, even young children and the intellectually challenged can learn to use them as well. Once teachers learn to develop their own intellectual potential by expanding these capabilities within themselves, they will be able to begin bringing about the development of these capabilities in their students. Once identified, developed, and applied to the mastery of educational skills and subject matter, these three fundamental learning capabilities , can form the foundation of a common‐sense approach to educational reform. Peirce asserts that good reasoning must be informed by ethical considerations, which in turn has been informed by the highest of aesthetic impulses. From this, we can extrapolate the importance that an educational model based upon Peirce's philosophy must place upon aesthetic and ethical considerations, as well as logical ones. Once fully understood, the philosophy of education embedded within Peirce's epistemology can revolutionize educational practices at all levels of learning. (shrink)

Russo and Williamson claim that establishing causal claims requires mechanistic and difference-making evidence. In this article, I will argue that Russo and Williamson's formulation of their thesis is multiply ambiguous. I will make three distinctions: mechanistic evidence as type vs object of evidence; what mechanism or mechanisms we want evidence of; and how much evidence of a mechanism we require. I will feed these more precise meanings back into the Russo–Williamson thesis and argue that it is both true and false: (...) two weaker versions of the thesis are worth supporting, while the stronger versions are not. Further, my distinctions are of wider concern because they allow us to make more precise claims about what kinds of evidence are required in particular cases. (shrink)

Craver claims that mechanistic explanation is ontic, while Bechtel claims that it is epistemic. While this distinction between ontic and epistemic explanation originates with Salmon, the ideas have changed in the modern debate on mechanistic explanation, where the frame of the debate is changing. I will explore what Bechtel and Craver’s claims mean, and argue that good mechanistic explanations must satisfy both ontic and epistemic normative constraints on what is a good explanation. I will argue for ontic constraints by drawing (...) on Craver’s work in Sect. 2.1, and argue for epistemic constraints by drawing on Bechtel’s work in Sect. 2.2. Along the way, I will argue that Bechtel and Craver actually agree with this claim. I argue that we should not take either kind of constraints to be fundamental, in Sect. 3, and close in Sect. 4 by considering what remains at stake in making a distinction between ontic and epistemic constraints on mechanistic explanation. I suggest that we should not concentrate on either kind of constraint, to the neglect of the other, arguing for the importance of seeing the relationship as one of integration. (shrink)

Although we all learn differently, we all need to be able to engage certain fundamental reasoning skills if we are to manoeuvre successfully through life—however we define success. Peirce's philosophy provides us with a framework for helping students (and ourselves) develop and hone the ability for making deliberate and well‐considered choices. For, embedded within Peirce's complete body of work is a design for thinking that provides a sturdy foundation for the development of three important learning capabilities. These capabilities are 1) (...) the ability to identify, compare, and contrast qualities, 2) the ability to perform analyses, and 3) the ability to interpret the meaning of signs. Although these capabilities may seem like the sort of skills that only older and academically inclined students can master, even young children and the intellectually challenged can learn to use them as well. Once teachers learn to develop their own intellectual potential by expanding these capabilities within themselves, they will be able to begin bringing about the development of these capabilities in their students. Once identified, developed, and applied to the mastery of educational skills and subject matter, these three fundamental learning capabilities (qualification, analysis, and interpretation), can form the foundation of a common‐sense approach to educational reform. Peirce asserts that good reasoning must be informed by ethical considerations, which in turn has been informed by the highest of aesthetic impulses. From this, we can extrapolate the importance that an educational model based upon Peirce's philosophy must place upon aesthetic and ethical considerations, as well as logical ones. Once fully understood, the philosophy of education embedded within Peirce's epistemology can revolutionize educational practices at all levels of learning. (shrink)

A number of studies have tested the relationship between a corporation's social and ethical performance and its financial performance. In contrast, this is the first study to demonstrate a link between overall financial performance and an emphasis on ethics as an aspect of corporate governance. It identifies the 26.8 percent of the 500 largest U.S. public corporations that, in their annual report to shareholders, commit to ethical behavior toward their stakeholders or emphasize compliance with their code of conduct. The financial (...) performance of these corporations ranks higher than that of those who do not at a significance level of p = < 0.005, using the 1997 Business Week ranking which averages eight publicly-reported measures of historical financial performance. These findings should motivate more corporations to utilize the principles of Social and Ethical Accounting, Auditing and Reporting (SEAAR). (shrink)

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 , a federal law regulating private employer-sponsored employee benefit plans, was primarily designed for pension plans, but has had a profound impact on state health care reform efforts. ERISA's broad preemption language has been judicially interpreted to preclude states from most forms of regulation of employer health plans, including benefit design and incorporating employer expenditure requirements in state health reform financing. But since 1974, Congress has never seriously returned to reexamine several fundamental (...) questions: Should employers be required to offer or contribute to employee health coverage? Should ERISA preempt state efforts to take such actions? Or should ERISA incorporate more comprehensive regulation of health plans in these areas? Although the politics of ERISA preemption have thus far blocked federal reform, while allowing state reform activity to be simultaneously curtailed, new health reform efforts may force Congress to address these questions. (shrink)

Hrotsvit wrote stories, plays, and histories during the reign of Emperor Otto the Great. Twelve original essays survey her work, showing historical roots and contexts, Christian values, and a surprisingly modern grappling with questions of identity and female self-realization.

Why do ideas of how mechanisms relate to causality and probability differ so much across the sciences? Can progress in understanding the tools of causal inference in some sciences lead to progress in others? This book tackles these questions and others concerning the use of causality in the sciences.

In this paper, we compare the mechanisms of protein synthesis and natural selection. We identify three core elements of mechanistic explanation: functional individuation, hierarchical nestedness or decomposition, and organization. These are now well understood elements of mechanistic explanation in fields such as protein synthesis, and widely accepted in the mechanisms literature. But Skipper and Millstein have argued that natural selection is neither decomposable nor organized. This would mean that much of the current mechanisms literature does not apply to the mechanism (...) of natural selection.We take each element of mechanistic explanation in turn. Having appreciated the importance of functional individuation, we show how decomposition and organization should be better understood in these terms. We thereby show that mechanistic explanation by protein synthesis and natural selection are more closely analogous than they appear—both possess all three of these core elements of a mechanism widely recognized in the mechanisms literature. (shrink)

Philosophy’s adversarial argumentation style is often noted as a factor contributing to the low numbers of women in philosophy. I argue that there is a level of adversariality peculiar to philosophy that merits specific feminist examination, yet doesn’t assume controversial gender differences claims. The dominance of the argument-as-war metaphor is not warranted, since this metaphor misconstrues the epistemic role of good argument as a tool of rational persuasion. This metaphor is entangled with the persisting narrative of embattled reason, which, in (...) turn, is linked to the sexism-informed narrative of the “man of reason” continually warding off or battling “feminine” unreason. (shrink)

Most scholars think of David Hilbert's program as the most demanding and ideologically motivated attempt to provide a foundation for mathematics, and because they see technical obstacles in the way of realizing the program's goals, they regard it as a failure. Against this view, Curtis Franks argues that Hilbert's deepest and most central insight was that mathematical techniques and practices do not need grounding in any philosophical principles. He weaves together an original historical account, philosophical analysis, and his own development (...) of the meta-mathematics of weak systems of arithmetic to show that the true philosophical significance of Hilbert's program is that it makes the autonomy of mathematics evident. The result is a vision of the early history of modern logic that highlights the rich interaction between its conceptual problems and technical development. (shrink)

Called the “greatest philosophical essayist of his time,” Rorty is both famous and notorious in academic philosophy for his uniquely engaging writing style. While his fellow analytic philosophers look askance at his flamboyant prose, suspicious that it lacks the care and precision that their discipline demands, literary intellectuals who champion the essay genre can have their qualms about Rorty as well: his work is too professional and specialized to be properly called essays. I argue not only that Rorty's work fits (...) into the essay genre, but also that his use of the essay form is integral to his rhetorical project of advancing his ideal of pragmatic liberalism. Rorty writes essays because the essay is a pragmatic literary genre: it is anti‐essentialist, conversational, and experimentalist and provocatively aims at “breaking the crust of convention,” in Dewey's phrase. Using the essay, Rorty “joshes” us to becoming more pragmatic and, therefore, better liberals. (shrink)

Qualitative research poses ethical issues and challenges unique to the study of human beings. In developing the interpersonal relationship that is critical to qualitative research, investigator and participant engage in a dialogic process that often evokes stories and memories that are remembered and reconstituted in ways that otherwise would not occur. Ethical issues are raised when this relationship not only provides qualitative research data, but also leads to some degree of therapeutic interaction for the participant. The purpose of this article (...) is to examine some of the controversies inherent in the researcher's dilemma when this occurs, set within the context of a nursing caring theory (Swanson), and the International Council of Nurses Code of ethics for nurses, which provides guidance on global nursing practice. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine what is to be said in defence of Machamer, Darden and Craver’s (MDC) controversial dualism about activities and entities (Machamer, Darden and Craver’s in Philos Sci 67:1–25, 2000). We explain why we believe the notion of an activity to be a novel, valuable one, and set about clearing away some initial objections that can lead to its being brushed aside unexamined. We argue that substantive debate about ontology can only be effective when desiderata for an (...) ontology are explicitly articulated. We distinguish three such desiderata. The first is a more permissive descriptive ontology of science, the second a more reductive ontology prioritising understanding, and the third a more reductive ontology prioritising minimalism. We compare MDC’s entities-activities ontology to its closest rival, the entities-capacities ontology, and argue that the entities-activities ontology does better on all three desiderata. (shrink)

Women are underrepresented in managerial positions and company international assignments, in part due to gender discrimination. There is a lack of fair and just treatment of women in selection, assignment and promotion processes, as well as a lack of virtue shown by business leaders in not upholding the principle of assigning comparable women and men equally to positions in management and postings abroad. Female professionals, however, initiate their own expatriation more often than they are assigned abroad by their company, and (...) usually as often as men self-expatriate. What causes women to self-initiate expatriation? Women's proactivity, in part an attempt to redress the disadvantage they face in managerial career advancement, appears influential, as are career and family motivations. Indeed, during expatriation, women fare well in their career and they repatriate only at the same rate as men. Compared with men, however, women repatriate less often for career than for family reasons. On their return, despite their international experience, women do not gain as much of a financial return on their investment in self-expatriation as do men, suggesting that women may suffer unfair, non-meritorious treatment at home. Overall, self-initiated expatriation provides a new, gendered, social context for researching women's career advancement. The ethical issues associated with women's self-expatriation — a lack of fairness and justice in selection, assignment and promotion decisions, and a lack of virtue shown by business leaders in upholding fair and just human resource decisions by gender -suggest practical avenues to resolve these issues. (shrink)

Women are underrepresented in managerial positions and company international assignments, in part due to gender discrimination. There is a lack of fair and just treatment of women in selection, assignment and promotion processes, as well as a lack of virtue shown by business leaders in not upholding the principle of assigning comparable women and men equally to positions in management and postings abroad. Female professionals, however, initiate their own expatriation more often than they are assigned abroad by their company, and (...) usually as often as men self-expatriate. What causes women to self-initiate expatriation? Women’s proactivity, in part an attempt to redress the disadvantage they face in managerial career advancement, appears influential, as are career and family motivations. Indeed, during expatriation, women fare well in their career and they repatriate only at the same rate as men. Compared with men, however, women repatriate less often for career than for family reasons. On their return, despite their international experience, women do not gain as much of a financial return on their investment in self-expatriation as do men, suggesting that women may suffer unfair, non-meritorious treatment at home. Overall, self-initiated expatriation provides a new, gendered, social context for researching women’s career advancement. The ethical issues associated with women’s self-expatriation – a lack of fairness and justice in selection, assignment and promotion decisions, and a lack of virtue shown by business leaders in upholding fair and just human resource decisions by gender – suggest practical avenues to resolve these issues. (shrink)

Human interaction and communication involve space in multiple ways. This paper examines the spatial and interactional order of a covertly video-taped police interrogation. When the participants enter the interrogation room and become engaged in the interrogation process, the room itself is a constraint and a resource for interaction. While interacting within a built environment, the participants appropriate their material surroundings in ways that constitute a spatial order and make possible certain arguments. This paper examines how the physical structure of the (...) interrogation room is differentially appropriated, used, and filled in by the participants''; territorial and postural manoeuvers over the course of their interaction; and how the spatial structures thus created by the bodily appropriation of the physical locale are subsequently formulated by talk and thereby used as a metaphorical resource to frame the participants'' situated experience. Through this embedded process, the interrogators move the suspect toward confession. (shrink)

The debate about the rational and the social in science has sometimes been developed in the context of a distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values. Paying particular attention to two important discussion in the last decade, by Longino and by McMullin, I argue that a fuller understanding of values in science ultimately requires abandoning the distinction itself. This is argued directly in terms of an analysis of the lack of clarity concerning what epistemic values are. I also argue that the (...) philosophical import of much of the feminist work in philosophy of science is restricted by any kind of strict adherence to the distinction. (shrink)

Beginning with a Cuban Catholic ritual in Miami, this book takes readers on a momentous theoretical journey toward a new understanding of religion.