"In Applied Ethics and SocialProblems Tony Fitzpatrick presents introductions to the three most influential moral philosophies: consequentialism, Kantianism ...
The recent work of Frances Chaput Waksler—The New Orleans Sniper: A Phenomenological Case Study of Constituting the Other—demonstrates, by close examination of the case of the New Orleans Sniper of 1973, how people constitute and unconstitute an “Other” in certain situations. This paper explores the process by which people constituted the Other in Japan in February of 2011 through the course of an incident that surprised Japanese people: university entrance exam cheating by use of the Internet question-and-answer bulletin board. I (...) will further examine how the incident can be constructed as a social problem with the construction of a victim and a villain. For data, I use reports from newspapers with nationwide circulation and reports from news agencies present at the time of the event. I also cite additional data from Internet news sites. Although my research here is small and elementary and my analysis is sociological rather than phenomenological, it is inspired by Waksler’s work. I will show how peoples’ commonsense knowledge frames their understanding and construction of an event. This paper will show that Waksler’s ideas about the New Orleans Sniper and her analysis of this case are applicable to another event in a different time at a different place: contemporary Japanese society. (shrink)
What is a social rule? This paper first notes three important problems for H.L.A. Hart's famous answer in the Concept of Law. An alternative account that avoids the problems is then sketched. It is less individualistic than Hart's and related accounts. This alternative account can explain a phenomenon observed but downplayed by Hart: the parties to a social rule feel that they are in some sense 'bound' to conform to it.
This paper investigates the possibilities and problems of benchmarking Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). After a methodological analysis of the advantages and problems of benchmarking, we develop a benchmark method that includes economic, social and environmental aspects as well as national and international aspects of CSR. The overall benchmark is based on a weighted average of these aspects. The weights are based on the opinions of companies and NGO's. Using different methods of weighting, we find that the (...) outcome of the benchmark is rather robust for a sample of more than 50 large Dutch companies. (shrink)
In this paper we deal with the extension of Nash bargaining theory to nonconvex problems. By focussing on the Social Welfare Ordering associated with a bargaining solution, we characterize the symmetric Nash Bargaining Solution (NBS). Moreover, we obtain a unified method of proof of recent characterization results for the asymmetric single-valued NBS and the symmetric multivalued NBS, as well as their extensions to different domains.
" The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that center round possession." This book, originally entitled Why Men Fight, is generally seen as the fullest expression of Bertrand Russell's political philosophy. Russell argues that after the experience of the Great War the individualistic approach of traditional liberalism had reached its limits. Political theory must be based on the motivated forces of creativity (...) and impulse rather than on competition. The ideas expressed in Principles of Social Reconstruction have greatly contributed to Russell's fame as a social critic and anti-war activist. The introduction by Richard Rempel locates them in the context of Russell's other writings and show that neither his ideas nor his language have lost their force and topicality over the years. (shrink)
Leading contemporary Jewish thinker David Novak has here compiled ten of his essays on a variety of issues in Jewish ethics. Drawing constantly on classical Jewish tradition, Novak also looks at a wide range of modern critical scholarship on the ancient sources. He aims to point out certain common features of Jewish and Christian ethics and the normative implications of this overlapping of traditions; he assumes the reality of a "Judeo-Christian ethic," while refusing to minimize the doctrinal differences between the (...) two traditions. The essays address such major normative issues in social justice as ecology, war and peace, the treatment of minorities, and the approach to AIDS patients. This combination of theoretical reflection and practical application, along with careful and detailed analysis of classical Jewish texts, makes the book a welcome contribution to contemporary ethical theory and normative ethics as well as a work of original Jewish theology. (shrink)
Introduction, by D. J. Silver.--The issues: Some current trends in ethical theory, by A. Edel. Contemporary problems in ethics from a Jewish perspective, by H. Jonas. What is the contemporary problematic of ethics in Christianity? By J. M. Gustafson. Modern images of man, by J. N. Hartt. Is there a common Judaeo-Christian ethical tradition? By I. M. Blank. Problematics of Jewish ethics, by M. A. Meyer. Revealed morality and modern thought, by N. Samuelson.--The Jewish background: Does Torah mean law? (...) By J. Neusner. Confrontation of Greek and Jewish ethics: Philo: De Decalogo, by S. Sandmel. Reprobation, prohibition, invalidity: an examination of the Halakhic development concerning intermarriage, by L. Silberman. Death and burial in the Jewish tradition, by S. B. Freehof. God and the ethical impulse, by W. G. Plaut.--Social action: Civil disobedience and the Jewish tradition, by S. G. Broude. Religious responsibility for the social order: A Jewish view, by E. L. Fackenheim. Toward a theology for social action, by R. G. Hirsch. The mission of Israel and social action, by E. Lipman. Some cautionary remarks, by J. Kravetz.--The mission of Israel: On the theology of Jewish survival, by S. S. Schwarzchild. Meaning and purpose of Jewish survival, by A. Gilbert. Beyond the apologetics of mission, by D. J. Silver. (shrink)
Universities today betray both reason and humanity. They are still dominated by the idea, inherited from the past, that the best way the academic enterprise can help promote human welfare is, in the first instance, to pursue the intellectual aim of acquiring knowledge. First, knowledge and technological know-how are to be acquired; then, secondarily, they can be applied to help solve socialproblems. But academic inquiry conducted in this way – knowledge-inquiry as it may be called – violates (...) the most elementary rules of reason that one can think of and, as a result, betrays the interests of humanity. We need a revolution in academia, one which puts problems of living at the heart of academic inquiry, and takes the basic aim to be to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge, but much else besides. (shrink)
This paper discusses the prospect of the "new social history" guided by the recent work of Charles Tilly on the methodology of social and historical explanation. Tilly advocates explanation by mechanisms as the alternative to the covering law explanation. Tilly's proposals are considered to be the attempt to reshape the practices of social and historical explanation following the example set by the explanatory practices of molecular biology, neurobiology, and other recent "success stories" in the life sciences. Recent (...) work in the philosophy of science on these practices by Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, Carl Craver and others is used as the foil to disclose the difficulties of Tilly's project. Most important among them is the dilemma of specification: if diagrams (standard forms of the representation of mechanisms) are intended as representations of robust causal processes, they cannot be specific enough to provide complete mechanism schemata, and are bound to remain mechanism sketches. If mechanism sketches are elaborated in detail by tracing particular causal processes, they provide representations of fragile causal processes, which cannot be considered as mechanisms comparable to those in advanced life and other special sciences. Tilly's work on the explanation of mechanisms can be considered as symptomatic for the recent trend to visualize the forms of historical representation. As far as diagrams seem to be able to communicate stories in a direct way (without narrative discourse), this trend is a challenge for the theory of historical representation. The new theories of scientific explanation focusing on the explanatory practices of the life sciences can provide examples and be the source of inspiration for the work on the theory of historical and social explanation, going beyond the confines of the received framework of the covering law model of explanation. (shrink)
This paper discusses various problems of explanations by mechanisms. Two positions are distinguished: the narrow position claims that only explanations by mechanisms are acceptable. It is argued that this position leads to an infinite regress because the discovery of a mechanism must entail the search for other mechanisms etc. Another paradoxical consequence of this postulate is that every successful explanation by mechanisms is unsatisfactory because it generates new ``black box'' explanations. The second â liberal â position that is advanced (...) in this paper regards, besides explanations by mechanisms, also the discovery of bivariate correlations as a first step of an explanation by mechanisms as meaningful. It is further argued that there is no contradiction between causal analysis and the explanation by mechanisms. Instead, explanations by mechanisms always presuppose the analysis of causal structures (but not vice versa). The final point is that an explanation by mechanisms is not inconsistent with the Hempel-Oppenheim scheme of explanation. (shrink)
INTRODUCTION Human knowledge has two central aspects that demand attention: On one hand, it is a social construct and on the other it aspires to be ...
Contractualism conceives of firm-stakeholder relations as cooperative schemes for mutual benefit. In essence, contractualism holds that these schemes, as well as the normative principles that guide and constrain them, are ultimately ratified by the consent and endorsement of those subject to them. This paper explores the empirical validity of a contractualist perspective on firm-stakeholder relations. It first develops a typology of firm-stakeholder contracting problems. It subsequently confronts this typology with empirical data collected in an interview study of concrete stakeholder (...) management practices, involving in-depth research interviews with forty-four managers working in the Dutch financial services industry. The findings of this theory-building study suggest that there are limits to the applicability of the contract model in the context of stakeholder management, and that disregarding either the model or its limitations may lead to highly ineffective firm-stakeholder relations. (shrink)
The paper examines the issue of corporate social responsibility (CSR) against the backdrop of its self-regulatory posture. Using the African experience as a case study, the paper observes that the activities of multinationals show very clearly that they are grossly irresponsible despite their professed self-regulation. Instead, the multinationals have created an image of terror due to their deep-rooted involvements in human rights abuses, environmental degradation, tax evasion, bribery, market manipulation, and other forms of unethical practices, notwithstanding their so-called self-regulation. (...) The paper concludes by advocating the establishment of a broad-based United Nations Global Business Regulatory Agency to fully take charge of corporate regulation in the global business terrain. (shrink)
In The Poverty of Historicism, Karl Popper attacked a number of anti?naturalistic doctrines while advocating a program of piecemeal social reform. However, recent work in social science, and especially in the evaluation of social programs and social reforms, has exposed difficulties that have led many scientists to fall back on one or other of these same anti?naturalistic positions. It is suggested that Popper's strategy for dealing with anti?naturalism is no longer efficacious, although the difficulties in contemporary (...)social science do not warrant the abandonment of naturalism. (shrink)
Confront the most pressing issues of twenty-first-century America in this fascinating book, which brings together classical Jewish sources, contemporary policy ...
I support several of President Bush’s economic proposals: tort reform for medical malpractice suits, and in principle increased free international trade, increased use of market mechanisms for environmental protection, and tax simplification. However, President Bush’s proposal for social security reform is unnecessary and dangerous to the economic health of our country. The system is not broke and does not need to be “fixed.”.
This paper offers a realist critique of socialresearch on health inequalities. A conspectus of thefield of health inequalities research identifies twomain research approaches: the positivist quantitativesurvey and the interpretivist qualitative `casestudy'. We argue that both approaches suffer fromserious philosophical limitations. We suggest that aturn to realism offers a productive `third way' bothfor the development of health inequality research inparticular and for the social scientific understandingof the complexities of the social world in general.
The paper examines the issue of corporate social responsibility (CSR) against the backdrop of its self-regulatory posture. Using the African experience as a case study, the paper observes that the activities of multinationals show very clearly that they are grossly irresponsible despite their professed self-regulation. Instead, the multinationals have created an image of terror due to their deep-rooted involvements in human rights abuses, environmental degradation, tax evasion, bribery, market manipulation, and other forms of unethical practices, notwithstanding their so-called self-regulation. (...) The paper concludes by advocating the establishment of a broad-based United Nations Global Business Regulatory Agency to fully take charge of corporate regulation in the global business terrain. (shrink)
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been a subject of broad public and academic discussion in Russia for several years now. The author argues that the key criterion for CSR is direct (non-market-based) cooperation among all stakeholders, cooperation that to a large extent shapes the behavior of the firm and therefore includes ethical and social concerns in the decision-making process. On the basis of this criterion, three levels of CSR are distinguished. The main factors that are gradually shaping the (...) Russian model of CSR are emphasized. It is shown that lack of state social expenditure and a coherent system of benefits for socially responsible firms, coupled with the persistence of paternalistic relations, hinder and bias the development of socially responsible behavior at all levels.The author argues that CSR practices can be effectively realized only if accompanied by a coherent state social policy. (shrink)
How can what is of value associated with our human world exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? Or, as we may put it, how can the God-of-Cosmic-Value exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the God-of-Cosmic-Power? This, I argue, is our fundamental problem – fundamental in both intellectual and practical terms. Here, I tackle the practical aspect of the problem. I consider briefly five global problems – climate change, war, population growth, (...) world poverty, habitat destruction and extinction of species – and argue that, in order to solve them it is essential to bring about a revolution in universities round the world so that the basic aim becomes wisdom and not just knowledge. I conclude by indicating recent developments which suggest the revolution may already be underway. (shrink)
