Online research in philosophy

This article is an attempt to develop a measure of ethical sensitivity to racial and gender intolerance that occurs in schools. Acts of intolerance that indicate ethically insensitive behaviors in American schools were identified and tied to existing professional ethical codes developed by school-based professional organizations. The Racial Ethical Sensitivity Test (REST) consists of 5 scenarios that portray acts of racial intolerance and ethical insensitivity. Participants viewed 2 videotaped scenarios and then responded to a semistructured interview protocol adapted from Bebeau (...) and Rest (1982). After a 2-week interval, this procedure was repeated. Stability of the REST across time was determined by using the overall test-retest coefficient. Internal as well as interrater consistency was also calculated for each scenario. Overall findings indicate promise for the REST as a reliable measure to assess racial and ethnic sensitivity. (shrink)

This article describes the development of a computerized version of a measure of ethical sensitivity to racial and gender intolerance, the Racial Ethical Sensitivity Test (REST; Brabeck et al., 2000). The REST was based on James Rest's (1983) 4-component model of moral development and the professional codes of ethics from school-based professions. The new version, Racial and Ethical Sensitivity Test-Compact Disk (REST-CD), consists of 5 videotaped scenarios (used in the original REST) followed by an interactive "interview" presented on compact discs. (...) Data from a study with 58 students provides initial validation of the REST-CD. Ethical sensitivity to racial and gender intolerance in schools, as measured by the REST-CD, was moderately related to attitudes toward racial and gender equity issues in society as measured by the Quick Discrimination Index (Ponterotto et al., 1995). The results provide evidence for both interrater and internal reliability of the REST-CD scores. This study also tests the hypothesized relationship between REST-CD scores and previous multicultural and ethics course work. Students with multicultural and ethics course experience have scored significantly higher on the REST-CD than students without course work. The paper-and-pencil tests are not significantly related to previous ethics/multicultural course work. In this article, we discuss the implications of the results and directions for future research. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explore the influence of religious beliefs on the work-related attitudes of Turkish SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) owner-managers. In this research, the emergence of pious or devout business people is considered as a phenomenon, and special attention is paid to religious transformation and secularism in Turkey. Both concepts, religion and secularism, are considered within the Turkish context. For the research, in-depth interviews were conducted with 32 Turkish business people from religious and secular backgrounds, (...) respectively. The study investigates the so-called “Islamic work ethic” values and Islamic business principles from a critical perspective and argues that they do not seem to be as significant factors as predicted in the emergence of pious or devout business people in Turkey. (shrink)

Summing up the ideas expressed in the most influential articles on the semantic halo of the Russian trochaic pentameter, scholars tend to avoid one particularly tricky question: how many units – and what kind of units – are needed to detect extra layers of meaning in a particular text? While the article of Kiril Taranovsky “О взаимоотношении стихотворного ритма и тематики” had implied that the source of these meanings (e.g. the dynamic theme of the journey) should be sought in a (...) line starting from the 3- to 4-syllable structure, incorporating a verb of motion and an anapestic anacrusis (Выхожу [verb of motion, last syllable stressed] один я на дорогу), later research objected to this principle as an oversimplification. At the same time two later contributions on the subject (Kirill Vishnevsky’s “Экспрессивный ореол пятистопного хорея” and Mikhail Gasparov’s “The semantic halo of the Russian trochaic pentameter: Thirty years of the problem”) proposed the idea of operating with whole texts as potential sources of meanings, thus calling into question a micro-level approach to the origin of the phenomenon. In my article I propose an empirical model that makes it possible to evaluate some limitations of both practices: I concentrate on some quasi-trochaic pentameters culled from the prose text of Подвиг (Glory) by Vladimir Nabokov (Sirin), and examine these quasi-verse incidents in the framework of both approaches. (shrink)

Current strategies to address global inequities in access to life-saving vaccines use averaged national income data to determine eligibility. While largely successful in the lowest income countries, we argue that this approach could lead to significant inefficiencies from the standpoint of justice if applied to middle-income countries, where income inequalities are large and lead to national averages that obscure truly needy populations. Instead, we suggest alternative indicators more sensitive to social justice concerns that merit consideration by policy-makers developing new initiatives (...) to redress health inequities in middle-income countries. (shrink)