"The compiling of a bibliography requires both a thorough knowledge of the subject . . . and the ability to discriminate effectively. Success depends as much on the clear definition of focus as on the evaluation of the texts considered. Orr succeeds on each count, thereby rendering an invaluable service to students and scholars alike. . . . Particularly interesting is the inclusion of works devoted to the interrelatedness of existentialism and the political and social sciences. And extremely helpful are (...) the notations referring the researcher to sections of a work either of particular significance or pertinent to a specific point of view. An excellent introduction emphasizes the movement away from the fundamental (ontological) concerns of existential thought. . . . Orr's effort to resituate the research within the original dimensions of existentialism and phenomenology as exploratory processes, as opposed to intellectual systems, is most commendable."FRENCH REVIEW. (shrink)

It is possible to retrieve viable sperm from a dying man or from a recently dead body. This sperm can be frozen for later use by his wife or partner to produce his genetic offspring. But the technical feasibility alone does not morally justify such an endeavour. Posthumous semen retrieval raises questions about consent, the respectful treatment of the dead body, and the welfare of the child to be.We present two cases, discuss these three issues, and conclude that such requests (...) should generally not be honoured unless there is convincing evidence that the dead man would want his widow to carry and bear his child. Even with consent, the welfare of the potential child must be considered. (shrink)

Classic analysis of the subject and the development of personal probability; one of the greatest controversies in modern statistcal thought.

Clinical ethics is a relatively new discipline within medicine, generated not so much by the Can we . . . ? questions of fact and prognosis that physicians ...

Derrida wrote extensively on "the question of the animal." In particular, he challenged Heidegger's, Husserl's, and other philosophers' work on the subject, questioning their phenomenological criteria for distinguishing humans from animals. Examining a range of Derrida's writings, including his most recent _L'animal que donc je suis_, as well as _Aporias_, _Of Spirit_, _Rams_, and _Rogues_, Leonard Lawlor reconstructs a portrait of Derrida's views on animality and their intimate connection to his thinking on ethics, names and singularity, sovereignty, and the (...) notion of a common world. Derrida believed that humans and animals cannot be substantially separated, yet neither do they form a continuous species. Instead, in his "staggered analogy," Derrida asserts that all living beings are weak and therefore capable of suffering. This controversial claim both refuted the notion that humans and animals possess autonomy and contradicted the assumption that they possess the trait of machinery. However, it does offer the foundation for an argument-which Lawlor brilliantly and passionately defines in his book-in which humans are able to will this weakness into a kind of unconditional hospitality. Humans are not strong enough to keep themselves separate from animals. In other words, we are too weak to keep animals from entering into our sphere. Lawlor's argument is a bold approach to remedying "the problem of the worst," or the complete extermination of life, which is fast becoming a reality. (shrink)

Originally published: Berkeley, Calif. : Stone Bridge Press, 1994.

In the wake of ethical scandals and close ethical scrutiny throughout business and the accounting professional today, Brooks/Dunn's BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL ETHICS, 9E provides the ethical insights and strategies you need for corporate and professional success. Learn why ethical behavior is so important and how to recognize potential pitfalls that involve much more than memorizing rules. You master the skills to develop a corporate culture of integrity that maintains stakeholder support and enables directors and auditors to complete their jobs. You (...) also learn how to use ethical strategies to make decisions, as this edition examines the latest information on governance scandals, legal liability and professional accounting and auditing issues. More than 130 cases and readings highlight new and classic cases of fraud, bankruptcy and unprofessional practices to help you better understand appropriate codes of conduct and sound ethical reasoning while strengthening your persuasive and leadership skills for success. (shrink)

The term "third wave" within contemporary feminism presents some initial difficulties in scholarly investigation. Located in popular-press anthologies, zines, punk music, and cyberspace, many third wave discourses constitute themselves as a break with both second wave and academic feminisms; a break problematic for both generations of feminists. The emergence of third wave feminism offers academic feminists an opportunity to rethink the context of knowledge production and the mediums through which we disseminate our work.

The author offers perspectives that can assist healthcare managers in achieving the highest ethical standards as they face their roles as healthcare providers, employers, and community service organizations. He also examines how to comply with relevant laws and regulations, provide high quality patient care with limited resources, and more.

Abstract:There is a storied history of Native and Indigenous feminisms on Turtle Island (North America). We are fortunate that many of those stories birthed from an ancestral tradition of storytelling and survivance were captured in the canonical feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color. In celebration and commemoration of 40 years since This Bridge was first published we visit with three of the books original Native and Indigenous contributors–Chrystos, Max Wolf Valerio, and Jo Carrillo–to (...) recount old as well as new stories as they explore what Native and Indigenous feminisms mean to them and their continued work for Indigenous visibility. The conversation provides a unique intergenerational vision for conceptualizing contemporary Native and Indigenous feminisms all the while building upon the legacy and path set forth by amazing Native and Indigenous women trailblazers. (shrink)

Analyzes the meaning expressed in music, the social and psychological sources of meaning, and the methods of musical communication This is a book meant for ...

In the literature on conspiracy theories, the least contentious part of the academic discourse would appear to be what we mean by a “conspiracy”: a secretive plot between two or more people toward some end. Yet what, exactly, is the connection between something being a conspiracy and it being secret? Is it possible to conspire without also engaging in secretive behavior? To dissect the role of secrecy in con- spiracies – and thus contribute to the larger debate on the epistemology (...) of conspir- acy theories – we dene the concepts of “conspiracy,” “conspirator,” and “secret,” and argue that while conspirators might typically be thought to commit to keeping secrets once their conspiracy is underway, the idea that conspiracies are necessarily secretive to start with is not as obvious as previously thought. (shrink)

Thinking in Translation posits the Hebrew Bible as the fulcrum of the thought of Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), underpinning a unique synthesis between systematic thinking and biblical interpretation. Addressing a lacuna in Rosenzweig scholarship, the book offers a critical evaluation of his engagement with the Bible through a comparative study of The Star of Redemption and his Bible translation with Martin Buber. The book opens with Rosenzweig's rejection of German Idealism and fascination with the sources of Judaism. It then analyzes the (...) unique hermeneutic approach he developed to philosophy and scripture as a symbiosis of critique and cross-fertilization, facilitated by translation. An analysis of the Star exposes Rosenzweig's employment of translation in grafting biblical verses unto the philosophical discussion. It is followed by a reading that demonstrates how his Bible translation reflects an attempt to re-valorize the Tanakh as a distinctively Jewish scripture, over and against Christian appropriations. Thinking in Translation recasts Rosenzweig's life's work as a project of melding Judaism and modernity in an attempt to secure their spiritual and intellectual survival. (shrink)

Dr Brandwood's book presents a factual and critical account of the more important of the various attempts that have been made to establish the order of composition of Plato's dialogues by analysing his diction and prose style. Plato's literary activity covered fifty years and there is almost no direct evidence, either external or internal, to help in establishing the relative order of his writings. Until the middle of the nineteenth century people were dependent on personal interpretation of the probable line (...) of development of Plato's thought and doctrines, but then a less subjective method was discovered, which relied instead on the observation of changes in Plato's prose style. Dr Brandwood examines the investigations of each scholar individually, checking the correctness of the methodology and the accuracy of the statistics, before arriving at fairly definite conclusions of his own, at least as far as the works of Plato's middle and old age are concerned. (shrink)

Building on recent formal work by Aleks Knoks, we explore how the idea that certain epistemic norms may be indeterminate could be implemented in a default logic.

The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon is a reference tool that provides clear and incisive definitions and descriptions of all of Foucault's major terms and influences, including history, knowledge, language, philosophy and power. It also includes entries on philosophers about whom Foucault wrote and who influenced Foucault's thinking, such as Deleuze, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Canguilhem. The entries are written by scholars of Foucault from a variety of disciplines such as philosophy, gender studies, political science and history. Together, they shed light on concepts (...) key to Foucault and to ongoing discussions of his work today. (shrink)

A long history of extractive industries and activities have shaped the societies of northern Mozambique, and the Cabo Delgado province in particular. For centuries, the growing international demand on local resources had a great impact on the northern micro-societies. The demand for cheap labour and natural resources, ranging from ivory and cotton, to timber, rubies, land, gas and more, involved thousands of local actors in its extraction, reproducing systems of local power. The persistence of poverty, inequality and conflicts, as well (...) as simmering and sometimes grand-scale violence, fits into a long-term trend of extractivism. Through a historical approach and field observations, we focus on the political economy of extracting natural resources. We point out the persisting basic patterns of extractivism that accompanied Mozambique's integration into global markets, and continued or even deepened, in the post-independence period. These activities are oriented towards foreign markets. They are instigated by foreign investment, but invariably carried out in collaboration with a chain of national gatekeepers. In a clientelist system, local elites resort to their proximity to the state to reproduce their power, often at the expense of state expropriation. Weak state institutions have the functional effect of reproducing the elites, also serving the interests of extractivist capital. It is, however, a system with many and profound contradictions, producing conflict and violence, which also recurrently put those interests at risk. (shrink)

According to a growing number of researchers, AI may pose catastrophic – or even existential – risks to humanity. Catastrophic risks may be taken to be risks of 100 million human deaths, or a similarly bad outcome. I argue that such risks – while contested – are sufficiently likely to demand rigorous discussion of potential societal responses. Subsequently, I propose four desiderata for approaches to the reduction of catastrophic risks from AI. The quality of such approaches can be assessed by (...) their chance of success, degree of beneficence, degree of non-maleficence, and beneficent side effects. Then, I employ these desiderata to evaluate the promises, limitations and risks of alignment research, timelines research, policy research, halting or slowing down AI research, and compute governance for tackling catastrophic AI risks. While more research is needed, this investigation shows that several approaches for dealing with catastrophic AI risks are available, and where their respective strengths and weaknesses lie. It turns out that many approaches are complementary and that the approaches have a nuanced relationship to approaches to present AI harms. While some approaches are similarly useful for addressing catastrophic risks and present harms, this is not always the case. (shrink)

This book educates whilst also challenging the contemporary schools of thought within philosophical and religious ethics. In addition, it underlines the fact that the substance of ethics in general and bioethics/healthcare ethics specifically, is much more expansive and inclusive than is usually thought. Bioethics is a relatively new academic discipline. However, ethics has existed informally since before the time of Hippocrates. The indigenous culture of African peoples has an ethical worldview which predates the western discourse. This indigenous ethical worldview has (...) been orally transmitted over centuries. The earliest known written African text containing some concepts and content of ethics is the “Declaration of Innocence” written in 1500 B.C., found in an Egyptian text. Ubuntu is an example of African culture that presents an ethical worldview. This work interprets the culture of Ubuntu to explain the contribution of a representative indigenous African ethics to global bioethics. Many modern scholars have written about the meaning of Ubuntu for African societies over centuries. Some scholars have viewed Ubuntu as the greatest contribution of African cultures to other world cultures. None of the scholars, however has explored the culture of Ubuntu as providing a representative indigenous ethics that can contribute to global bioethics as discussed in this book.​. (shrink)

Abstract“Force dynamics” refers to a previously neglected semantic category—how entities interact with respect to force. This category includes such concepts as: the exertion of force, resistance to such exertion and the overcoming of such resistance, blockage of a force and the removal of such blockage, and so forth. Force dynamics is a generalization over the traditional linguistic notion of “causative”: it analyzes “causing” into finer primitives and sets it naturally within a framework that also includes “letting,”“hindering,”“helping,” and still further notions. (...) Force dynamics, moreover, appears to be the semantic category that uniquely characterizes the grammatical category of modals, in both their basic and epistemic usages. In addition, on the basis of force dynamic parameters, numerous lexical items fall into systematic semantic patterns, and there exhibit parallelisms between physical and psychosocial reference. Further, from research on the relation of semantic structure to general cognitive structure, it appears that the concepts of force interaction that are encoded within language closely parallel concepts that appear both in early science and in naive physics and psychology. Overall, force dynamics thus emerges as a fundamental notional system that structures conceptual material pertaining to force interaction in a common way across a linguistic range: the physical, psychological, social, inferential, discourse, and mental-model domains of reference and conception. (shrink)

The majority of North American corporations awakened to the need for their own ethical guidelines during the late 1970s and early 1980s, even though modern corporations are subject to a surprising multiplicity of external codes of ethics or conduct. This paper provides an understanding of both internal and external codes through a discussion of the factors behind the development of the codes, an analysis of internal codes and an identification of problems with them.

Thought-intrusions, automatic inferences, and other unintended thought are beginning to play an important role in the study of psychiatric disease as well as normal thought processes. We examine one method for study of task-unrelated imagery and thought . TUIT likelihood was shown to be reliably measured over a wide range of vigilance tasks, to have high short-term and long-term test-retest reliability, and to be sensitive to information processing demands. Likelihood of TUITs was shown to be different as a function of (...) aging, hyperactivity, time of day, and level of depression. Thus, we now can reliably measure the influence of endogenous and exogenous influences on TUITs. In addition, TUIT measurement was proposed as a minimally interfering and natural second task for determining resource utilization in a primary task. Finally, this method was offered as a reliable approach to quantification of such mental states as obsessions and drug craving and addiction. (shrink)

Len Bartlotti did his doctoral research on proverbs, Islam, and identity among Pashtuns, and serves as Research Tutor at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. He served fourteen years in Asia and is founder and former Executive Director of the InterLit Foundation Publishers and Educational Consultants.

This research investigates gender differences in employer-sponsored medical insurance coverage among full-time male and female workers in the United States and assesses the relevance of human capital theory and its compensating differentials corollary in predicting coverage. Data are analyzed from a subsample of the Quality of Employment Survey, a national probability sample of workers in the United States. Results indicate that men were more likely to have medical insurance coverage from their employers than were women; however, gender differences were minimized (...) in a multivariate context when human capital and structural variables were controlled. Furthermore, human capital variables are, overall, weak predictors of whether both women and men received coverage. More generally, the data suggest that structural conditions of the occupation, rather than individual human capital, may be most relevant for future research. (shrink)

A model of Zeno's dichotomy paradox is presented in Newtonian collision mechanics. One of several resolutions of the paradox illustrates the point that even in Newtonian ontology there is a spacetime weave. In a Newtonian system in which the base rules permit only spatial contact interactions, we find the mechanical emergence of action-at-a-distance effects.

Since Mueller’s 1958 article calling Hegelian dialectics a “legend,” it has been fashionable to deny that Hegel used thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics. But in truth, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit has 28 dialectics hidden on four outline levels, and The Philosophy of History has 10 more on three outline levels. In Phenomenology’s macrodialectic, Hegel’s nonsupernatural Spirit–all reality, everything in the universe, including man and artificial objects–advances from unconscious + union (thesis) to conscious + separation (antithesis) to a synthesis of conscious (from the antithesis) (...) + union (from the thesis). Previous interpretations of Phenomenology have missed this dialectic: they have assumed that Spirit’s journey begins with consciousness, whereas the journey actually begins in the primordial state of nature, before man arrives and provides Spirit with its Mind (the collective mind of man). Mind then misperceives itself as a multitude of separate alien “objects”–things other than itself. The macrodialectic and all other dialectics are based on Christianity’s Johannine separation-and-return mythology; all Hegelian dialectics separate from a concept in the thesis, going to that something’s opposite (antithesis), and then return to the thesis concept. Thus, in Hegel’s master-and-slave dialectic (God = master, man = slave), man advances from potential + freedom to actual + bondage (religiosity) to actual + freedom (atheism). Only Marx and Tillich understood Hegelian dialectics. Marx’s basic dialectic (one of four) saw history separating from and returning to Communism, going from communal ownership + poverty (primitive communism, or gens) to private ownership + wealth (slavery, feudalism, capitalism) to communal ownership + wealth (final communism). Tillich’s basic dialectic (one of many) separates from and returns to God, advancing from Yes to God + Yes to supernaturalism (theism) to No to God + No to supernaturalism (atheism) to Yes to God + No to supernaturalism (humanism: humanity is the nonsupernatural “God above the God of theism”). (shrink)