Hospital administrators may lack familiarity with what clinical ethicists do (and do not do), and many clinical ethicists report receiving inadequate financial support for their clinical ethics consultation services (CECSs). Ethics consultation is distinct in that it is not reimbursable by third parties, and its financial benefit to the hospital may not be quantifiable. These peculiarities make it difficult for clinical ethicists to resort to tried-and-true outcome-centered evaluative strategies, like cost reduction or shortened length of stay for patients, to show (...) a “need” for ethics consultation. Likewise, it can be difficult for clinical ethicists to “speak the same language” as healthcare administrators and managers, which, in turn, means that CECSs run the risk of being unable to demonstrate value to those who pay for the service. The purpose of this descriptive article is to provide practical guidance to clinical ethicists and program directors on how to cultivate administrative support for a CECS. Specifically, we discuss two elements that clinical ethics leaders must critically appraise and successfully argue to meet the expectations of administrators— the value of a CECS and its fit in clinical workflow. (shrink)

How important is the concept of solidarity in our society's calculus of consent as regards the legitimacy and ethical and political support for public health, health policy, and health services? By the term “calculus of consent,” we refer to the answer that people give to rationalize and justify their obedience to laws, rules, and policies that benefit others. The calculus of consent answers questions such as, Why should I care? Why should I help? Why should I contribute to the public (...) provision of others? Consent here does not have to be a deliberate, explicit act of informed agreement. And a calculus does not have to be a quantifiable, quasimathematical operation; more often, such a calculus takes narrative form in stories that a society tells about itself and that individuals tell about their place in it. One vital function of bioethics is to inform and shape those stories. Bioethics has the potential to offer society a keener insight into and perception of what is ethically at stake in controversies concerning health, science, and society. This insight is what we shall refer to as a “moral imagination,” by which we do not mean make-believe or fantasy but, rather, the capacity to take a critical distance from the given, to think reality otherwise. The moral imagination enables one to see connections between factors at work in history, in large social and communal structures, and in the shape of one's own life, thoughts, and feelings. Here we are especially concerned with the contribution that the concept of solidarity can make to the moral imagination of bioethics. We contend that solidarity must become more widely active and explicit in bioethics analysis and argumentation as it endeavors to shape reasons for obeying norms and rules of common benefit in an open, diverse society. (shrink)

This article defends ‘relational theorizing’ in bioethics and public health ethics and describes its importance. It then offers an interpretation of solidarity and care understood as normatively patterned and psychologically and socially structured modes of relationality; in a word, solidarity and care understood as ‘practices.’ Solidarity is characterized as affirming the moral standing of others and their membership in a community of equal dignity and respect. Care is characterized as paying attention to the moral being of others and their needs, (...) suffering, and vulnerability. The wager of relational theorizing in health care and public health is that substantive ethical visions of solidarity and care will provide support for more just and egalitarian health care and public health policies. (shrink)

Many working in bioethics today are engaging in forms of normative interpretation concerning the meaningful contexts of relational agency and institutional structures of power. Using the framework of relational bioethics, this article focuses on two significant social practices that are significant for health policy and public health: the practices of solidarity and the practices of care. The main argument is that the affirming recognition of, and caring attention paid to, persons as moral subjects can politically motivate a society in three (...) respects. The recognition of solidarity and the attention of care can prompt progressive change toward a democratic willingness: (a) to provide for equal respect for rights and dignity; (b) to provide the social resources and services needed for just health and well‐being; and (c) to focus its creativity and wealth on the actualization of potential flourishing of each and all. Solidarity is discussed as a morally developmental stance that moves from standing up for another, standing up with another, and standing up as another. Care is discussed as a morally developmental stance that moves from the attentive rehabilitation of another, attentive companionship with and for another, and attentive commitment to another. (shrink)

Forces including extreme economic inequality, cultural polarization, and the monetizing and privatizing of persons as commodities are undermining the forms of moral recognition and mutuality upon which democratic practices and institutions depend. These underlying factors, together with more direct modes of political corruption, manipulation, and authoritarian nationalism, are undoing Western democracies. This essay identifies and explores some vital underpinnings of democratic citizenship and civic learning that remain open to revitalization and repair. Building care structures and practices from the ground up (...) and developing inclusive and egalitarian modes of solidarity in a pluralistic society are the focus of discussion. The essay argues that solidarity and care are essential relationships and practices of moral recognition upon which democratic political agency and freedom rest. The social‐relational lifeworld and the democratic lifeworld are interdependent. Democratic citizenship is itself a relational practice that supports other practices. Democratic governance properly carried out fosters an underlying social solidarity and care and in turn draws moral and political legitimacy upward from them. (shrink)

I argue that "obligation" is a referential notion, flowing from actual or potential relationships. Applied to future persons, our relationship with them is established by virtue of the significant effects that our acts will have on them, and this in turn provides the basis of our obligation to them. Referential problems arise particularly in the types of cases where alternative acts bring different people into existence, for here there is no clear referent of the obligation. In such cases a theistic (...) model has an advantage by delineating lines of obligation through God. (shrink)

No single concept has been more important in the contemporary development of bioethics, and the revival of medical ethics, than the concept of autonomy, and none better reflects both the philosophical and the political currents shaping the field. This article proposes to consider autonomy in three of its facets and functions: first, as a concept in ethical theory; second, as a concept in applied ethics; and finally, as what might be called an ideological concept — that is, one that both (...) draws from and reinforces non-philosophical interests at work in the profession of medicine, biomedical science and technology, and the broader liberal individualistic culture of Anglophone countries, particularly the United States, where a bioethical discourse centred on autonomy has flourished. (shrink)

What exactly are Peirce’s views about the a priori?1Though the term “a priori” and others derived from it do not occur in Peirce’s writings very frequently, they occur often enough to motivate the above question. Their best known appearance is in his “The Fixation of Belief ”, in which he famously rejects the “a priori method” in favor of the “scientific method”. Of course, we cannot take this rejection alone as sufficient evidence that his philosophy is incompatible with any claim (...) to a priori knowledge or justification, since what he opposes as the a priori method is not necessarily representative of all theories having a positive role for the a.. (shrink)

The spectacular “attack upon Christendom” with which Kierkegaard concluded his career (and his life) was not an aberration. It was the culmination of an anticlerical---and, indeed, antiecclesial---tendency that had developed over a considerable period. This development can be followed quite clearly in Kierkegaard’s journals and papers, where we can observe Kierkegaard’s stance as it evolved through his often polemical engagement with the leading ecclesiastical figures of his time, and in particular with Bishop J. P. Mynster, Primate of the Danish Church. (...) Of even greater importance, we can observe Kierkegaard’s increasing appreciation of the significance of the modernizing Revolution of 1848, particularly the ecclesiastical and political consequences of that revolution. But Kierkegaard’s critique also worked its way backward in time from 1848, and in the end it is doubtful whether he viewed any form of earthly congregation as compatible with what he believed to be “the Christianity of the New Testament.”. (shrink)

Background:Moral distress can be broadly described as the psychological distress that can develop in response to a morally challenging event. In the context of healthcare, its effects are well documented in the nursing profession, but there is a paucity of research exploring its relevance to healthcare assistants.Objective:This article aims to examine the existing research on moral distress in healthcare assistants, identity the important factors that are likely to contribute to moral distress, and propose preventative measures.Research Design:This is a survey of (...) the existing literature on moral distress in healthcare assistants. It uses insights from moral distress in nursing to argue that healthcare assistants are also likely to experience moral distress in certain contexts.Participants and Research Context:No research participants were part of this analysis.Ethical Considerations:This article offers a conceptual analysis and recommendations only.Findings:The analysis identifies certain factors that may be particularly applicable to healthcare assistants such as powerlessness and a lack of ethical knowledge. We demonstrate that these factors contribute to moral distress.Discussion:Recommendations include various preventative measures such as regular reflective debriefing sessions involving healthcare assistants, nurses and other clinicians, joint workplace ethical training, and modifications to the Care Certificate. Implementation of these measures should be monitored carefully and the results published to augment our existing knowledge of moral distress in healthcare assistants.Conclusion:This analysis establishes the need for more research and discussion on this topic. Future research should focus on evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed recommendations. (shrink)

The further development of public health ethics will be assisted by a more direct engagement with political theory. In this way, the moral vocabulary of the liberal tradition should be supplemented—but not supplanted—by different conceptual and normative resources available from other traditions of political and social thought. This article discusses four lines of further development that the normative conceptual discourse of public health ethics might take. The relational turn. The implications for public health ethics of the new ‘ecological’ or ‘relational’ (...) interpretation that is emerging for concepts such as agency, self-identity, autonomy, liberty and justice. Governing the health commons. The framework of collective action problems is giving way to notions of democratic governance and management of common resources. The concept of membership. Membership is specified by the notions of equal respect and parity of voice and agency. The concept of mutuality. Mutuality is specified by the notions of interdependent concern and care. (shrink)

Physicists and historians of science have always held that Isaac Newton should receive credit for the first proof that inverse-square orbits must be conics. This conviction derives from a brief argument, regarded as essentially correct, given by Newton in the Principia. Recently, however, it has been contended that this outline or sketch contains irreparable logical flaws. Here, the logical structure of this outline of Newton's, as well as the details that this outline omits, are carefully examined. We find that whilst (...) his argument does indeed contain a flaw, it is a minor omission rather than a serious logical error. Having rectified this omission, we show how Newton's outline expands into a convincing proof that inverse-square orbits must be conics. (shrink)

Certainly one of the key German philosophers of the twentieth century, Hans-Georg Gadamer also influenced the study of literature, art, music, sacred and legal texts, and medicine. Indeed, while much attention has been focused on Gadamer's writings about ancient Greek and modern German philosophy, the relevance of his work for other disciplines is only now beginning to be properly considered and understood. In an effort to address this slant, this volume brings together many prominent scholars to assess, re-evaluate, and question (...) Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, as well as his place in intellectual history. The book includes a recent essay by Gadamer on "the task of hermeneutics," as well as essays by distinguished contributors including Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Gerald Bruns, Georgia Warnke, and many others. The contributors situate Gadamer's views in surprising ways and show that his writings speak to a range of contemporary debates—from constitutional questions to issues of modern art. A controversial final section attempts to uncover and clarify Gadamer's history in relation to National Socialism. More an investigation and questioning than a celebration of this venerable and profoundly influential philosopher, this collection will become a catalyst for any future rethinking of philosophical hermeneutics, as well as a significant starting place for rereading and reviewing Hans-Georg Gadamer. (shrink)

We are living in what is widely considered the sixth major extinction. Most ecologists believe that biodiversity is disappearing at an alarming rate, with up to 150 species going extinct per day according to scientists working with the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. Part of the reason the loss signified by biological extinction feels painful is that it seems irremediable. These creatures are gone, and there's nothing to be done about it. In recent years, however, the possibility has been (...) broached that, just possibly, something can be done, in at least some cases. Human ingenuity, a contributing factor in the extinction crisis, might achieve their “de‐extinction”—in at least some cases, and with sometimes significant qualifications about whether the original species had been “recreated” and whether it could resume its original place in the environment. De‐extinction is an entry point into a larger set of questions about how biotechnological tools can support, coexist with, or undermine the goals of conservation and about the very meaning of conservation. Are we beings in control of the world or beings who prosper by accommodating ourselves to webs of symbiotic interdependencies? Are we creators or creatures, or both—and if both, then how can we achieve the balance between them that might be called humility? The interplay of perfecting and accommodating is not unique to human beings—perhaps it characterizes all forms of life on Earth—but with humans, these modes of being are distinctive, and our technology greatly expands their scale and effects. It is such questions that the ten essays in this special report explore. (shrink)

This article reports pretest and posttest results of the infusion of engineering principles and design into an existing ninth-grade integrated science class. The results indicated that more knowledge of engineering makes attitudes of high school students more favorable toward engineering. The results of infusing engineering topics into an existing science curriculum were also compared with an earlier study of a formal 3-week engineering unit taught to ninth-grade students in another high school. The results of that comparison indicated that a formal (...) unit on engineering was more successful in improving student attitudes toward engineering than the infusion of engineering topics into an existing science unit. The article also presents information on a capstone engineering course for preservice and in-service science and mathematics teachers. That course was designed with collaboration from the colleges of engineering and education with the goal of increasing the interest of high school students in careers in engineering. (shrink)

Interpretation and politics merge in one the famous story of Joseph's power of dream interpretation in the Hebrew Bible. Rome's College of Augurs reinforces the entwinement of interpretation, power, religion, and folklore that one can also find in the earlier context of the Delphic Oracle. Augury reminds us that understanding happens in the context of an event, a context that presupposes one is missing something, lacking the necessary vision or foresight, and help is called for. Most of the contemporary scholars (...) who write about philosophical hermeneutics, the tradition which includes Martin Heidegger and Hans‐Georg Gadamer, are allergic to politics in the proletarian sense of that word. Party politics and parliamentarian procedures receive almost no attention in the secondary literature on contemporary hermeneutics. Assertion about the political incompetence of philosophy opens the door to an esoteric tradition in philosophy that includes Plato's “secret doctrine”, and stretches back to Pythagoras and Heraclitus. (shrink)

The Greek god Hermes, the messenger and god of thieves, the giver of laws and the alphabet, is a key figure for thinking about the relationship between hermeneutics and rhetoric. The philosophers have been able to cloak their distaste for people in general, evident most tellingly in Plato's allegory of the cave. On more familiar rhetorical territory, Nancy Worman in Abusive Mouths in Classical Athens reminds Aristotle's distaste for audiences. The ancient rhetoricians recognized the importance of appearances, and for obvious (...) reasons emphasized in their treatises that they wanted orators to be virtuous and morally upright people. In most kinds of legal and scriptural interpretation, authors build cases from precedent. As a way to capture the salient features of this intersection of hermeneutics and rhetoric, the reader could conjure up the differences in biblical hermeneutics between Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) and Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677). (shrink)

Mi preocupación en este trabajo, siguiendo las directrices de Verene, es cambiar la dirección de la lectura habitual de la Vita, la autobiografía de Vico. En lugar de usar la Vita con el fin de clarificar algunos oscuros pasajes de la Scienza nuova, me gustaría usar la Scienza nuova como si fuera una clave interpretativa de la Vita. Lo que me propongo es elegir algunos temas de cierta significación filosófica de la Scienza nuova que Vico elabora en la Vita y (...) que, discutiblemente, arrojan alguna luz sobre la significación filosófica de la autobiografía como género literario.My concern in this paper, following Verene, is to reverse the usual reading of the Vita, Vico’s autobiography. Instead of using the Vita to clarify obscure passages in the Scienza nuova, I want to use the Scienza nuova as an interpretative key to the Vita. What I want to do instead is to pick out central philosophical themes from the Scienza nuova which Vico works into the Vita and which, arguably, shed some light on the philosophical signficance of autobiography as a genere. (shrink)

Defeasible rules are said to allow for the following two-staged sequence, viz., that p → q and yet p & r → not-q. This is puzzling because in the logic of conditionals the sufficiency of p for q cannot normally be undermined if one adds to the antecedent a further proposition r. Critics argue that the better approach to comprehending defeasibility is explicitly to represent the limiting factor r in a single-stage articulation of the rule, viz., as p & not-r (...) → q. This is a more complete statement of the rule; where the old rule announced, confidently and without qualification, that in circumstances or class of cases p consequence q follows, the new rule admits from the outset that q only follows if we add the qualifier that limits the antecedent circumstances to the smaller class of cases p & not-r. This is not only more complete, the critics argue, it is also a more accurate or truthful statement of the rule. The rule p → q, articulated at the first stage of the defeasible process, is only a pretender encountered along the way to this more complete truth. In this paper I show how, and why, contrary to the critics, the process of private law adjudication supports the multi-staged structure and representation of defeasible legal rules. What matters when one party makes a claim against another party is not so much that the claim is true (or even that it is advanced as a legitimate claim under the rule that is most likely to be true), but rather that the claim is of the sort that the party can justifiably say is true. The latter, at least, is what carries the plaintiff past the initial burden of proof, and what calls for the defendant to reply if the plaintiff is not to carry the day. I illustrate the argument by way of the court’s reluctance in a tort case to entertain a purely statistical basis for a plaintiff’s claim that the defendant has caused her injury. Rather, the court will insist on direct evidence that appears to arise out of the particular circumstances of the case as the plaintiff alleges them to be, and even if, as a purely statistical matter, the latter sort of claim is less likely to be true than the claim grounded in pure statistical likelihood. I relate this argument for defeasible rules (and against rules that are more truthful) to some important arguments offered by the philosopher Stephen Darwall in his recent book The Second Person Viewpoint. Private law’s defeasible rules, I argue, capture the special respect (and interpersonal accountability) that attaches only to rights arising out of “second personal” claiming (and counterclaiming) and which are not realizable merely as a matter of “third personal” (moral) truth. (shrink)

No one before Platter and Kepler proposed retinal reception of an inverted visual image. The dominant tradition in visual theory, especially that of Alhazen and his Western followers, subordinated the intra-ocular geometry of visual rays to the requirement for an upright image and to preconceptions about the precise nature of the visual spirit and its part in vision. Henry of Langenstein and an anonymous glossator in the late Middle Ages proposed alternatives to Alhazen, including the suggestion of double inversion of (...) the image. Leonardo da Vinci was aware of both Alhazen's theory and Henry's contradiction, but perhaps not of the anonymous hypothesis of double inversion. Leonardo's visual ‘theory’ has more the character of a critique than of a theoretical alternative, and he did not transcend the medieval concept of visual spirit. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Bioethics in a New Key Relationship and Recognition in Dementia Care Quality of Life and Agency References.

"The Bush administration and Congress are in concert on the goal of developing a fleet of unmanned aircraft that can reduce both defense costs and aircrew losses in combat by taking on at least the most dangerous combat missions. Unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) will be neither inexpensive enough to be readily expendable nor-- at least in early development-- capable of performing every combat mission alongside or in lieu of manned sorties. Yet the tremendous potential of such systems is widely (...) recognized, and allies as well as potential adversaries are moving quickly to mount their own research and development programs. The United States is committed to fielding UCAV capabilities by 2010, principally for the missions of suppression of enemy air defense and deep strike, which are among the highest risk tasks for the Air Force and naval aviation."--Overview. (shrink)

Do the rich descriptions and narrative shapings of literature provide a valuable resource for readers, writers, philosophers, and everyday people to imagine and confront the ultimate questions of life? Do the human activities of storytelling and complex moral decision-making have a deep connection? What are the moral responsibilities of the artist, critic, and reader? What can religious perspectives—from Catholic to Protestant to Mormon—contribute to literary criticism? Thirty well known contributors reflect on these questions, including iterary theorists Marshall Gregory, James Phelan, (...) and Wayne Booth; philosophers Martha Nussbaum, Richard Hart, and Nina Rosenstand; and authors John Updike, Charles Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, and Bernard Malamud. Divided into four sections, with introductory matter and questions for discussion, this accessible anthology represents the most crucial work today exploring the interdisciplinary connections between literature, religion and philosophy. (shrink)

I hope to persuade Charles Fried to think again about his developing views on distributive justice. Since I live at a certain remove from Cambridge, the best I can offer is a hypothetical dialogue with an imaginary person whose views seem, to me at least, of a Friedian inspiration. My central question deals with the way Fried establishes his rights to things he candidly concedes he does not deserve. To present my problems, I shall begin with a simpler case than (...) those – involving kidneys and talents – that Fried makes central to his discussion. Rather than starting with these rather special goods, I find it clarifying to focus first on more garden variety commodities – which, to emphasize their character, I shall call apples. (shrink)

The importance of this collection of writings of William James lies in the fact that it has been arranged to provide a systematic introduction to his major philosophical discoveries, and precisely to those doctrines and theories that are of most burning current interest. William James: The Essential Writings is a series of philosophical arguments on some of the most "obscure and head-cracking problems" in contemporary philosophy; the relation of thought to its object; the interrelationships between meaning and truth; the levels (...) and structures of experience; the degrees of reality; the nature of the embodied self; the relation of ethics, aesthetics, and religious experience to man's strenuously and "heroically" active nature; and, above all, the structurization of the experienced life-world as the validating ground and origin of all theory; Bruce Wilshire has provided an introduction to William James's thought on these and other related points which is at once both substantial and subtle. (shrink)

Norman Wirzba, Bruce Ellis Benson, and an international group of philosophers and theologians describe how various expressions of philosophy are transformed by the discipline of love. What is at stake is how philosophy colors and shapes the way we receive and engage each other, our world, and God. Focusing primarily on the Continental tradition of philosophy of religion, the work presented in this volume engages thinkers such as St. Paul, Meister Eckhart, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Derrida, Marion, Zizek, Irigaray, (...) and Michele Le Doeuff. Emerging from the book is a complex definition of the wisdom of love which challenges how we think about nature, social justice, faith, gender, creation, medicine, politics, and ethics. (shrink)

The belief that damaging an object may harm the individual to which the object relates is common among adults. We explored whether arousal following the destruction of a photograph of a loved partner is greater than that following the destruction of a photograph of a stranger, and whether this response is greater than when a photograph representing a non-person sentimental attachment is destroyed, using a measure of skin conductance response. Long-term supporters of a football team, who were also in a (...) long-term relationship, showed increased arousal when asked to destroy a photograph of their partner, but not a photograph of their team, even though both elicited equivalent ratings of emotional attachment. This may be because football teams are conceptualized differently from individuals. Future studies should address whether destruction of symbols that represent the enduring nature of the team elicit more emotional distress than photograph. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the notion of “care” as a supporting ethical rationale for policies and efforts to mitigate and adapt to global climate change. A conception of care as paying attention to the moral dignity, standing, and needs of others is presented. It then asks how care, so understood, can contribute to a new understanding of the appropriate relationship between humans and nature. How can ecological care and recognition avoid the pitfalls of a human-centered (anthropocentric) understanding of that relationship and (...) provide instead an understanding based on the symbiosis and interdependence of humanity and the broader web of all life and the planetary systems on which it relies? Philosophical, ethical, and political challenges posed by climate governance and climate action are discussed. Using a relational mode of normative theorizing, the chapter identifies what may be emerging as a new worldview or political morality centering around social practices of right recognition. Two examples of recognitive and relational practices are discussed from the point of view of bridging social ethics and ecological ethics: care and solidarity. (shrink)

Did Dan Callahan know the calling he was displaying in his own work and offering to others in the special intellectual garden of The Hastings Center, which he cocreated, with Will Gaylin, and went on to prune and tend for nearly four decades? I would say, yes, he knew what he was about. Successful people usually have self‐confidence and drive in abundance, but in Dan's case, there was something more profound and interesting at work. Having gone through the endnotes of (...) his latest book one day, I asked him how he found time to read so widely. He said he had learned to be an efficient skimmer who could pull out the nuggets he valued from another's work because he had a few magnetic ideas from which he would brook no distraction. (shrink)

Aging brings about the ordeal of coping. Younger people also cope, but for those in old age, the ordeal is so often elegiac, forced upon the self by changing functions within the body and by the outside social world, with its many impediments to the continuity of former roles, pursuits, and self‐identities. Coping with change can be affirming, but when what is being forgone seems more valuable than what lies ahead, it is travail. For most, the coping is managed more (...) moderately by a sense of resignation. This is especially true for those who survive into profound old age, when one is viewed as if being old is one’s essential identity and nature. We must recognize and affirm difference and change without stigmatizing or losing sight of the specific capabilities and circumstances of the individual. This is what I think the often‐used, but less often clearly defined, notion of a “person‐centered” orientation should signify.Individuals age, but so do societies, not simply because they have a large population over age sixty‐five, but in the sense that societies as a whole are also buffeted by significant disruption in orders of meaning. Aging has a public as well as a private manifestation, a social as well as a personal embodiment, and how it is paid attention to in culture, politics, and policy makes a great difference to how aging is concretely experienced in human lives. In this essay, I explore how the moral imagination nurtured by the practices of solidarity and care—and nurturing them in turn—can come of age—and how these practices can take their rightful place in an ethically mature political culture. (shrink)

A goal of most interpretations of quantum mechanics is to avoid the apparent intrusion of the observer into the measurement process. Such intrusion is usually seen to arise because observation somehow selects a single actuality from among the many possibilities represented by the wavefunction. The issue is typically treated in terms of the mathematical formulation of the quantum theory. We attempt to address a different manifestation of the quantum measurement problem in a theory-neutral manner. With a version of the two-slit (...) experiment, we demonstrate that an enigma arises directly from the results of experiments. Assuming that no observable physical phenomena exist beyond those predicted by the theory, we argue that no interpretation of the quantum theory can avoid a measurement problem involving the observer. (shrink)

We identify two aspects of the problem of maintaining perceptual stability despite an observer's eye movements. The first, visual direction constancy, is the (egocentric) stability of apparent positions of objects in the visual world relative to the perceiver. The second, visual position constancy, is the (exocentric) stability of positions of objects relative to each other. We analyze the constancy of visual direction despite saccadic eye movements.Three information sources have been proposed to enable the visual system to achieve stability: the structure (...) of the visual field, proprioceptive inflow, and a copy of neural efference or outflow to the extraocular muscles. None of these sources by itself provides adequate information to achieve visual direction constancy; present evidence indicates that all three are used.Our final question concerns how information processing operations result in a stable world. The three traditionally suggested means have been elimination, translation, or evaluation. All are rejected. From a review of the physiological and psychological evidence we conclude that no subtraction, compensation, or evaluation need take place. The problem for which these solutions were developed turns out to be a false one. We propose a “calibration” solution: correct spatiotopic positions are calculated anew for each fixation. Inflow, outflow, and retinal sources are used in this calculation: saccadic suppression of displacement bridges the errors between these sources and the actual extent of movement. (shrink)

In three parts, this volume in the AP-LS series explores the phenomena of captivity and risk management, guided and informed by the theory, method, and policy of psychological jurisprudence. The authors present a controversial thesis that demonstrates how the forces of captivity and risk management are sustained by several interdependent "conditions of control." These conditions impose barriers to justice and set limits on citizenship for one and all. Situated at the nexus of political/social theory, mental health law and jurisprudential ethics, (...) the book examines and critiques constructs such as offenders and victims; self and society; therapeutic and restorative; health; harm; and community. So, too, are three "total confinement" case law data sets on which this analysis is based. The volume stands alone in its efforts to systematically "diagnose" the moral reasoning lodged within prevailing judicial opinions that sustain captivity and risk management practices impacting: (1) the rights of juveniles found competent to stand criminal trial, the mentally ill placed in long-term disciplinary isolation, and sex offenders subjected to civil detention and community re-entry monitoring; (2) the often unmet needs of victims; and (3) the demands of an ordered society. Carefully balancing sophisticated insights with concrete and cutting-edge applications, the book concludes with a series of provocative, yet practical, recommendations for future research and meaningful reform within institutional practice, programming, and policy. (shrink)

This study investigates financial correlates of corporate philanthropy in Fortune 1000 companies using structural equation modeling. The results suggest that cash flow (one of the most discretionary types of organizational slack) has a significant impact on a firm’s cash donations to charitable causes, but monetary donations do not affect firm financial performance. These findings support the accepted view of corporate philanthropy as a discretionary social responsibility and the traditional thinking about firm giving in the business and society literature—that doing well (...) enables doing good. Contrary to some contemporary thinking, the findings imply no significant effect on profits from corporate generosity. (shrink)

The world's leading authorities in the sciences and humanities—dozens of top scholars, including three Nobel laureates—join a cultural and intellectual battle that leaves no human life untouched. Is the universe self-existent, self-sufficient, and self-organizing, or is it grounded instead in a reality that transcends space, time, matter, and energy?

The question whether the study of education and teacher education belong at a liberal arts college deserves careful consideration. In this essay Bruce Kimball analyzes and finds unpersuasive the three principled rationales that are most often advanced on behalf of excluding educational studies, teacher education, or both from a liberal arts college. Specifically, Kimball argues that no principled definition of the conventional liberal arts disciplines excludes the study of education without barring other fields now regarded as legitimate, and consistency (...) demands that all such fields be excluded if any are. In addition, teacher education, even if considered as merely “craft know-how” or as professional training, cannot be excluded from liberal arts colleges without arbitrarily classifying it as suspect and subjecting it to strict scrutiny. But the question of whether educational studies or teacher education fit any asserted definition of liberal education does not finally resolve the question of whether they belong in a liberal arts college. Kimball concludes by suggesting that there are moral and prudential reasons for liberal arts colleges to offer teacher education and, concomitantly, the study of education, even apart from the unpersuasive objections that they do not fit a definition of liberal education. (shrink)