One explanation that may be given for why nonprofit organizations pay lower wages than do other organizations is that nonprofits are more pleasant places to work. Indeed, some authors have proposed that nonprofit organizations should make an effort to promote a working environment that reflects the beliefs of the organization. This paper uses several proxies for whether an organization is a pleasant place in which to work, and tests for whether nonprofits are more likely to offer such pleasant working conditions. (...) Analysis shows that nonprofits are not more likely to offer these conditions in many instances. (shrink)
The American Medical Association enacted its Code of Ethics in 1847, the first such national codification. In this volume, a distinguished group of experts from the fields of medicine, bioethics, and history of medicine reflect on the development of medical ethics in the United States, using historical analyses as a springboard for discussions of the problems of the present, including what the editors call "a sense of moral crisis precipitated by the shift from a system of fee-for-service medicine to a (...) system of fee-for-system medicine, better known as 'managed care.'" The authors begin with a look at how the medical profession began to consider ethical issues in the 1800s and subsequent developments in the 1900s. They then address the sociological, historical, ethical, and legal aspects of the practice of medicine. Later chapters discuss current and future challenges to medical ethics and professional values. Appendixes display various versions of the AMA's Code of Ethics as it has evolved over time. Contributors: George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H., Arthur Isak Applbaum, Ph.D., Robert B. Baker, Ph.D., Chester R. Burns, M.D., Ph.D., Arthur L. Caplan, Ph.D., Alexander Morgan Capron, J.D., Christine K. Cassel, M.D., Linda L. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., Eliot L. Freidson, Ph.D., Albert R. Jonsen, Ph.D., Stephen R. Latham, J.D., Ph.D., Susan E. Lederer, Ph.D., Florencia Luna, Ph.D., Edmund D. Pellegrino, M.D., Charles E. Rosenberg, Ph.D., Mark Siegler, M.D., Rosemary A. Stevens, Ph.D., Robert M. Tenery, Jr., M.D., Robert M. Veatch, Ph.D., John Harley Warner, Ph.D., Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D. (shrink)
In 2004 Emanuel et al. published an influential account of exploitation in international research, which has become known as the 'fair benefits account'. In this paper I argue that the thin definition of fairness presented by Emanuel et al, and subsequently endorsed by Gbadegesin and Wendler, does not provide a notion of fairness that is adequately robust to support a fair benefits account of exploitation. The authors present a procedural notion of fairness – the fair distribution of the benefits of (...) research is to be determined on a case-by-case basis by the parties involved in each study. The fairness of the distribution of benefits is not assessed against an independent normative standard. Emanuel et al.'s account of fairness provides a framework for objecting only to transactions that occur without the fully informed consent of the weaker party. As a result, a debate about exploitation collapses into a debate about consent. This is problematic because, as the proponents of the fair benefits framework acknowledge, neither the trial participants' consent nor the host community's consent preclude exploitation. Attempts to stipulate normative standards of fairness to protect research subjects in developing countries have been controversial and divisive, and it is therefore understandable that bioethicists would be tempted to develop accounts of exploitation that are independent of such prescriptive principles. I conclude, however, that the utility of the fair benefits model of exploitation as a policy tool will ultimately depend on whether a substantive principle of fairness can be developed to underpin it. (shrink)
Goodman'snew riddle of induction can be characterized by the following questions: What is the difference between grue and green?; Why is the hypothesis that all emeralds are grue not lawlike?; Why is this hypothesis not confirmed by its positive instances?; and, Why is the predicate grue not projectible? I argue in favor of epistemological answers to Goodman's questions. The notions of lawlikeness, confirmation, and projectibility have to be relativized to (actual and counterfactual) epistemic situations that are determined by the available (...) background information. In order to defend this thesis, I discuss an example that is less strange than the grue example. From the general conclusions of this discussion, it follows that grue is not projectible in the actual epistemic situation, but it is projectible in certain counterfactual epistemic situations. (shrink)
: Although a wide variety of feminist approaches to bioethics presently share a common feminist methodology (sometimes referred to as "raising the woman question"), they do not all share the same feminist politics, ontology, epistemology, and ethics. As a result of their philosophical differences, feminist bioethicists do not always agree on which biomedical principles, practices, and policies are best suited to serving women's interests. In other words, some feminist bioethicists insist that so-called "assisted reproduction" enhances women's procreative liberty, while others (...) claim that it does nothing of the sort. Although such disagreement among feminist bioethicists reassures the general public that the feminist "program" for bioethics is not ideologically monolithic, it also confuses the public, especially women. In order to overcome this confusion, feminist bioethicists should work toward developing the kind of shared theoretical base that will foster frequent consensus on the biomedical principles, practices, and policies most likely to serve the interests of most women in the U.S. today. (shrink)
In this paper I seek to distinguish a feminist virtue ethics of care from (1) justice ethics, (2) narrative ethics, (3) care ethics and (4) virtue ethics. I also connect this contemporary discussion of what makes a virtue ethics of care feminist to eighteenth and nineteenth century debates about male, female, and human virtue. I conclude that by focusing on issues related to gender - primarily those related to the systems, structures, and ideologies that create and sustain patterns of male (...) domination and female subordination - we can begin to appreciate that true care and bona-fide virtue can flourish only in societies that treat all persons with equal respect and consideration. (shrink)
Technology moves us to a better world. We contend that through technology people can simplify and solve moral tasks when they are in presence of incomplete information and possess a diminished capacity to act morally. Many external things, usually inert from the moral point of view, can be transformed into the so-called moral mediators. Hence, not all of the moral tools are inside the head, many of them are shared and distributed in “external” objects and structures which function as ethical (...) devices. (shrink)
This paper aims to contribute to the present debate about business ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that the Journal of Business Ethics is hosting. Numerous contributions argued theoretical frameworks and taxonomies of CSR practices. The authors want to ground in this knowledge and provide further evidence about how companies adopt CSR practices to address stakeholders’ claims and consolidate their trust. Evidence was provided by a longitudinal case study about an Italian food company that is one of the largest producers (...) of baby food. This company reshaped its corporate strategy along three decades through the adoption of CSR practices in order to win stakeholders’ trust about food safety and supply chain behaviour. The empirical exercise was informed by a literature review of the relevant contributions in terms of CSR business practices and levels of efforts to adopt them. In light of this review, the authors adopted for the research framework the taxonomy of business practices proposed by Spiller (2000, “Ethical Business and Investment: A Model for Business and Society”, Journal of Business Ethics 27, 149-160) and the levels of commitment towards CSR proposed by Stahl and Grigsby (1997, Strategic Management; Total Quality & Global Competition (Blackwell, Oxford)). The main findings are discussed in order to argue theoretical implications and identify further areas of research and debate. (shrink)
When is clinical research ethical? The difficulty in answering this question lies in the dual nature of research on human subjects, which yields two somewhat conflicting sets of obligations. On the one hand, there is the traditional view of science that includes the idea of an obligation to learn about the world. On the other hand, there is the obligation of care on the part of researchers towards individual participants in the research ...
In this paper I discuss Frege's distinction between objects and concepts and suggest a solution of Frege's paradox of the concept horse. The expression ''the concept horse'' is not eliminated and the concept is not identified with its extension, but the concept is identified with the sense of the corresponding predicate. This solution fits better into a fregean ontology and philosophy of language than alternative solutions and allows for a general answer to the question why Frege's system is infected with (...) Russell's paradox. Russell's paradox is caused by the reification of a concept. Certain problems of modern set theory seem to have a similar cause.Eine weithin sichtbare Warnungstafel muss aufgerichtet. (shrink)
For a long time, emotions have been ignored in the attempt to model intelligent behavior. However, within the last years, evidence has come from neuroscience that emotions are an important facet of intelligent behavior being involved into cognitive problem solving, decision making, the establishment of social behavior, and even conscious experience. Also in research communities like software agents and robotics, an increasing number of researchers start to believe that computational models of emotions will be needed to design intelligent systems. Nevertheless, (...) modeling emotions in technical terms poses many difficulties and has often been accounted as just not feasible. In this article, there are identified the main problems, which occur when attempting to implement emotions into machines. By pointing out these problems, it is aimed to avoid repeating mistakes committed when modeling computational models of emotions in order to speed up future development in this area. The identified issues are not derived from abstract reflections about this topic but from the actual attempt to implement emotions into a technical system based on neuroscientific research findings. It is argued that besides focusing on the cognitive aspects of emotions, a consideration of the bodily aspects of emotions—their grounding into a visceral body—is of crucial importance, especially when a system shall be able to learn correlations between environmental objects and events and their “emotional meaning”. (shrink)
This paper investigates the determinants of regulatory compliance in corporate organizations. Exploiting a unique enforcement and reporting framework for insider trading in Italy, we present three main findings. First, board governance, such as chief executive–chairman duality and the proportion of non-executive directors, does not increase the propensity of firms to comply with regulation. Second, family firms and firms with a high degree of separation of ownership from control are most likely to comply with regulation. Third, corporate ethos is more important (...) in predicting regulatory compliance than explicit corporate governance structures. (shrink)
This article offers the critical concept misfit in an effort to further think through the lived identity and experience of disability as it is situated in place and time. The idea of a misfit and the situation of misfitting that I offer here elaborate a materialist feminist understanding of disability by extending a consideration of how the particularities of embodiment interact with the environment in its broadest sense, to include both its spatial and temporal aspects. The interrelated dynamics of fitting (...) and misfitting constitute a particular aspect of world-making involved in material-discursive becoming. The essay makes three arguments: the concept of misfit emphasizes the particularity of varying lived embodiments and avoids a theoretical generic disabled body; the concept of misfit clarifies the current feminist critical conversation about universal vulnerability and dependence; the concept of misfitting as a shifting spatial and perpetually temporal relationship confers agency and value on disabled subjects. (shrink)
In this paper I argue that a global bioethicsis possible. Specifically, I present the viewthat there are within feminist approaches tobioethics some conceptual and methodologicaltools necessary to forge a bioethics thatembraces the health-related concerns of bothdeveloping and developed nations equally. Tosupport my argument I discuss some of thechallenges that have historically confrontedfeminists. If feminists accept the idea thatwomen are entirely the same, then feministspresent as fact the fiction of the essential``Woman.'' Not only does ``Woman'' not exist,``she'' obscures important racial, ethnic,cultural, (...) and class differences among women. However, if feminists stress women'sdifferences too much, feminists lose the powerto speak coherently and cogently about genderjustice, women's rights, and sexual equality ingeneral. Analyzing the ways in which the ideaof difference as well as the idea of samenesshave led feminists astray, I ask whether it ispossible to avoid the Scylla of absolutism(imperialism, colonialism, hegemony) on the onehand and the Charybdis of relativism(postmodernism, fragmentation, Balkanization)on the other. Finally, after reflecting uponthe work of Uma Narayan, Susan Muller Okin, andMartha Nussbaum, I conclude that there is a wayout of this ethical bind. By focusing onwomen's, children's, and men's common humanneeds, it is possible to lay thefoundation for a just and caring globalbioethics. (shrink)
This essay discusses the history of the "futility debate" and the motives that sometimes prompt health care professionals, health care providers, patients, and surrogates to take different sides in it. Changes in the health care system, financial responsibility shifts, technical medical advances, and medical care rationing are analyzed as contributors to the futility debate. So too are variations in the definition of futility examined as part of the current controversy. The respective attitudes of professionals, providers, patients, and surrogates in accepting (...) the goals, capabilities, and limits of medicine are also explored. In particular, the lack of honest communication between health care professionals/health care providers on the one hand and patients/surrogates on the other is acknowledged as a major roadblock in the building of care-focused futility policies. Finally, various initial attempts of hospitals to create futility guidelines are evaluated in order to detect problem areas and to suggest lines of improvement. Keywords: medical futility, medical decision-making, virtues, resource allocation CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)
The purpose of this commentary on James Nelson's article [1] is to advocate introducing the ethics of care into the arena of gestational conflict. Too often the debate gets stalled in a maternal versus fetal rights headlock. Interventionists stress fetal over maternal rights: they believe education, post-birth prosecution or pre-birth seizure of pregnant women may be permissible. In contrast to interventionists, other philosophers stress that favoring fetal rights treats women like fetal containers. I question whether we should really consider issues (...) of moral/parental obligations to children in terms of rights. Rather, the language of care should guide moral conduct vis-a-vis children/fetuses. The particularity of each woman's story — the particulars of her human relationships — inform her story. An individual's ability to care is largely a function of whether community cares for her. We must care for others to enable them to care for themselves and their loved ones — born or unborn. (shrink)
Mechanism is the thesis that men can be considered as machines, that there is no essential difference between minds and machines.John Lucas has argued that it is a consequence of Gödel's theorem that mechanism is false. Men cannot be considered as machines, because the intellectual capacities of men are superior to that of any machine. Lucas claims that we can do something that no machine can do-namely to produce as true the Gödel-formula of any given machine. But no machine can (...) prove its own Gödel-formula. (shrink)
This article offers a detailed review of Filosofi italiani contemporanei, a book that presents overviews of seven contemporary Italian philosophers and philosopher/theologians—Luigi Pareyson, Emanuele Severino, Italo Mancini, Gianni Vattimo, Vincenzo Vitiello, Massimo Cacciari, and theologian Bruno Forte. Not intended as a comprehensive survey of the contemporary Italian philosophical scene, the book presents thinkers influential during the last three decades who have focused on tradition, post-metaphysical conceptions of being, origin, and principle, and the openness of philosophy to religion. Although eccentric (...) by Anglo-American standards, the selection does not misrepresent recent Italian philosophizing, which has been more thoroughgoingly shaped by neo-scholasticism, idealism, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and nihilism than most English-language work. Open to international philosophy as well as to its own traditions, Italian thinkers work within a complex ethos that has produced significant recent philosophizing and holds great promise for the future. (shrink)
BackgroundThe Netherlands is one of the few countries where euthanasia is legal under strict conditions. This study investigates whether Dutch newspaper articles use the term ‘euthanasia’ according to the legal definition and determines what arguments for and against euthanasia they contain.MethodsWe did an electronic search of seven Dutch national newspapers between January 2009 and May 2010 and conducted a content analysis.ResultsOf the 284 articles containing the term ‘euthanasia’, 24% referred to practices outside the scope of the law, mostly relating to (...) the forgoing of life-prolonging treatments and assistance in suicide by others than physicians. Of the articles with euthanasia as the main topic, 36% described euthanasia in the context of a terminally ill patient, 24% for older persons, 16% for persons with dementia, and 9% for persons with a psychiatric disorder. The most frequent arguments for euthanasia included the importance of self-determination and the fact that euthanasia contributes to a good death. The most frequent arguments opposing euthanasia were that suffering should instead be alleviated by better care, that providing euthanasia can be disturbing, and that society should protect the vulnerable.ConclusionsOf the newspaper articles, 24% uses the term ‘euthanasia’ for practices that are outside the scope of the euthanasia law. Typically, the more unusual cases are discussed. This might lead to misunderstandings between citizens and physicians. Despite the Dutch legalisation of euthanasia, the debate about its acceptability and boundaries is ongoing and both sides of the debate are clearly represented. (shrink)
In this commentary on Eva Feder Kittay's Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency, I focus on Kittay's dependency theory. I apply this theory to an analysis of women's inadequate access to high-quality, cost-effective healthcare. I conclude that while quandaries remain unresolved, including getting men to do their share of dependency work, Kittay's book is an important and original contribution to feminist healthcare ethics and the development of a normative feminist ethic of care.
Teaching bioethics in the new millennium requires its practitioners to confront a wide area of methodological alternatives. This essay chronicles the author's journey from the principlism of Beauchamp and Childress, through narrative and postmodern bioethics, to a complex feminist critique of postmodern bioethics that emphasizes functional human capabilities and the creation of structures that can facilitate free discussion of those capabilities and how best to realize them. Teaching bioethics concerns not only the acknowledgement of differences but also reminding ourselves of (...) our samenesses. Sustained Habermasian democratic conversations might help us to escape the narrow confines of a postmodern bioethics of moral strangers for a richer world of moral friends. (shrink)
This article addresses the issue of women as primary caregivers to children and the concept of "maternal practice." The idea of maternal practice guides mothers as they learn (1) how to meet their child's physical, psychological, and spiritual needs, and (2) how to make their child socially acceptable. Hindrances to maternal practice include severe poverty and disabilities of the mother. The relationship between maternal practice and the quest for health care in the U.S. is discussed. Maintaining adequate health care is (...) more difficult when parents are poorly educated and/or impoverished. Without proper health care, poor children are less likely to be able to compete with rich children in society. Dental care is also a concern, because proper dental care is fundamental in the maintenance of overall health. Dental care is not a "luxury" but medically necessary care. Solutions include increasing the awareness of such programs as CHIP and WIC, extending Medicaid benefits to more children, and compensating health care practitioners for working with Medicaid recipients. In addition, society must think more maternally and increase health and dental care accessibility, particularly to the poor in rural areas. The article concludes with the thought that if society expects mothers to care for their children, then society must care for mothers. (shrink)
This article revisits the question of ectogenesis (out-of-body gestation) as our neonatal care and biogenetic technologies bring us closer to the possibility. In 1923, J.B.S. Haldane wrote approvingly of ectogenesis as a eugenic technique, using a science fiction format. In the 1970s and 1980s, feminists debated whether ectogenesis, if possible, would be liberating or oppressive for women. Given current legal and bioethical issues, we must now take seriously the possible costs of ectogenesis: the possibility of growing bodies for use as (...) spare parts, the erosion of the autonomy of women in the reproductive process, the denigration of the body through the loss of the physicality of pregnancy and childbirth. (Abstract prepared by Aaron Lee.). (shrink)
In this paper I examine the epistemology and ethics of consensus, focusing on the ways in which decision makers use/misuse ethical expertise. The major questions I raise and tentative answers I give are the following: First, are the ‘experts’ really experts? My tentative answer is that they are bona fide experts who often represent specific interest groups. Second, is the experts' authority merely epistemological or is it also ethical? My tentative answer is that the experts' authority consists not only in (...) their command over specific matters of fact and/or value, but also in their ability to achieve ‘consensus’ about what is ‘true’/‘false’, or ‘right’/‘wrong’. Third, should the authority of expertise be limited? My tentative answer is that it should be limited in the area of facts but especially in the area of values. Persons who are ethics ‘experts’ must be particularly careful to practice an ethics of persuasion rather than an ethics of compulsion . Their role is not to force their group consensus upon decision makers' individual moral perceptions and deliberations; rather it is to help decision makers come to their own conclusions about what they ought to do. Keywords: authority of expertise, consensus, ethics committees, ethics of persuasion, NIH consensus development conferences CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)
