Bringing together ethnographic exposition with philosophical concepts and arguments and effectively transcending subdisciplinary boundaries between cultural and ...

The psychological study of ethical reasoning tends to concentrate on a few specific issues, with the bulk of the research going to the study of people's attitudes toward moral rules or the welfare of others. But people's ethical reasoning is also shaped by a wide range of other concerns. Here I focus on the importance that people attach to the ideal of being yourself. It is shown that certain experimental results - results that seemed anomalous and inexplicable to researchers who (...) focused on moral rules and concern for the welfare of others - can be explained quite elegantly as the product of people's attachment to the ideal of 'being yourself'. The success of this explanation then points to the need for a more general inquiry into the role that the ideal of 'being yourself ' plays in people's ethical reasoning. (shrink)

Technology is even more than our world, our form of life, our civilization. Technology interacts with the world to change it. Philosophers need to seriously address the fluidity of a smartphone interface, the efficiency of a Dyson vacuum cleaner, or the familiar noise of an antique vacuum cleaner. Beyond their phenomenological description, the emotional experience acquires moral significance and in some cases even supplies ethical resources for the self. If we leave this dimension of modern experience unaddressed, we may miss (...) something of value in contemporary life. Combining European humanism, Anglophone pragmatism, and Asian traditions, Michel Puech pleads for an "ethical turn" in the way we understand and address technological issues in modern day society. Puech argues that the question of "power" is what needs to be reconsidered today. In doing so, he provides a three-tier distinction of power: power to modify the outer world ; power over other humans ; power over oneself. (shrink)

: This paper explores vicarious responsibility and circumstantial luck from a first-person perspective, drawing on ethnographic research on parenting in Reform Era China. The paper focuses on how informants drew boundaries between what they could and could not control in raising a child who might thrive in a hypercompetitive society. In doing so, the paper engages the question, “What kind of moral agent do we want?” by proposing that we also ask, “What kind of moral agent do we find?” In (...) contrast to the hypothetical figure of a walled-off agent who must be convinced of the duty to take on responsibilities in a circumstance of moral luck, empirical research finds instead a vulnerable agent who has taken on ‘too much’. (shrink)

This article explores how the notion ofordinary aestheticscan stem, as well as the one ofordinary ethics, from thatrevolution of the ordinarystarted by Wittgenstein and further developed by philosophers like Cavell and Diamond. The idea ofordinary ethicsemphasizes the importance of everyday life and the particular details of our experiences. This concept can be extended to aesthetics, forming the basis of a modality of aesthetic appreciation that recognize values and importance in the details and nuances of everyday experience. One example of (...) suchordinary aestheticscan be found in thehaikupoetry of Bashō. Bashō’s poetry often focuses on the ordinary and mundane aspects of life, such as the changing of seasons, the sound of rain, or the sight of a bird in flight, but also on that lower world made of insects, rotten foliage, and excrements. Bashō conveys in poetry the core ofZenphilosophy, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things and the value of living in the present moment. This approach to aesthetics offers an alternative to more traditional modes of aesthetic appreciation, which tend to prioritize grandeur, spectacle, and formal perfection. Ultimately, the concept of ordinary aesthetics invites us to find the intrinsic importance in the simple things that surround us and to cultivate a deeper appreciation for the richness of our everyday lives. (shrink)

The big issues of medical ethics are more in the news than ever before. And yet they remain as stubborn and often as incendiary as ever. This book claims that in an effort to deal with the issues, mainstream philosophers have arbitrarily omitted many ethically relevant features in order to reduce the central problems to more tractable technical puzzles. The most gratuitous omissions have been the patient's point of view on the problem; the patient's ordinary life, which provides (...) the wider context for his point of view; and the ordinary language and concepts by which the patient tries to make sense of the problem. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to the relationship between ordinary moral thought and ethical theory in Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics. I suggest that different contents of ordinary moral thought play different roles and are lent different philosophical weight in Sidgwick’s arguments. I start by showing how Sidgwick appeals to certain features of ordinary moral thought, deduced from moral language and experience, both in criticising rival metaethical positions and in establishing his own claims. I then turn to (...) the notion of common-sense morality. After clarifying what Sidgwick means by this expression, I argue that common-sense morality has neither probative value in Sidgwick’s argument for the utilitarian principle nor independent validity, and that its authority is ultimately motivated on utilitarian grounds. Pointing out how different contents of ordinary moral thought play different argumentative roles in the foundation and defence of Sidgwick’s utilitarianism enables to ac- count more comprehensively for Sidgwick’s arguments and moral methodology and provides with a more articulated account of the dialectic between his utilitarian theory and ordinary moral thought. (shrink)

Although statistically common, and legal since 1973, abortion still bears significant stigma--a proverbial scarlet A. Fear of this stigma leads most of the women and men who are part of the 21% of American pregnancies that end in abortion to remain silent. This book brings the story of ordinary abortion out of the shadows and invites a new conversation about its actual practice, ethics, politics, and law. Katie Watson lends her incisive legal and medical ethics expertise to (...) navigate wisely and respectfully one of the most divisive topics of contemporary life. (shrink)

Should we take into account an artist's personal moral failings when appreciating or evaluating the work? In this essay, I seek to expand Berys Gaut's account of ethicism by showing how moral judgment of an artist's private moral actions can figure in one's overall evaluation of their work. To expand Gaut's view, I argue that the artist's personal morality is relevant to our evaluation of their work because we may only come to understand the point of view of the work, (...) and therefore the work's prescribed attitude, by examining the values, attitudes, and behaviors of the artist. This view is defended against a rival account offered by Bernard Wills and Jason Holt, which holds that the artistic evaluation of an artist's work is independent from the moral evaluation of their life except in extreme cases. (shrink)

Philanthropic giving among leaders is often assumed to be an expression of ethical leadership in both academic and media discourses; however, this assumption can overlook the ways in which philanthropy produces and is underpinned by inequality. In order to extend current understandings of ethical leadership, this study employs a critical discourse analytic approach to examine how the link between philanthropy and ethical forms of leadership is verbally and visually constructed in the media. Based on the analysis, the article demonstrates how (...) the construction of Australian philanthropists as ethical leaders is achieved through their representation via three paradoxical identities: Aristocratic Battlers; Caring Controllers; and Publicity-Shy Celebrities. These discourses are mediated by Australian cultural norms and serve to conceal yet ultimately reinforce social and economic inequality. The article proposes that a critical discursive approach to understanding leadership ethics can help to explore the hidden or adverse effects of ostensibly ethical practices. (shrink)

What might we learn if the study of ethics focused less on hard cases and more on the practices of everyday life? In Everyday Ethics, Michael Lamb and Brian Williams gathered some of the world's leading scholars and practitioners of moral theology (including some Georgetown University Press authors) to explore that question in dialogue with anthropology and the social sciences. In a field largely begun by Michael Banner, contributors engage with and extend his ideas of ethics as (...) it is practiced in daily life. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, these scholars analyze the ethics of ordinary practices--from eating, learning, and loving the neighbor to borrowing and spending, using technology, and working in a flexible economy. Along the way, they consider the moral and methodological questions that emerge from this interdisciplinary dialogue and assess the implications for the future of moral theology. (shrink)

Sidgwick considered Kant as one of his masters. However, he never devoted any systematic attention to Kant’s ethical theory; moreover, in The Methods of Ethics he concluded that Kantian ethics is inadequate to guide moral life. I review Sidgwick’s references to Kant in order to show that – along with basic differences − there are significant similarities in the main project of the two philosophers; and I suggest that, should Sidgwick have deepened his understanding of Kant, he might (...) have realised that Kantian ethics offered a somewhat different way to accomplish the philosophical project he was interested in, that is, the systematisation of the morality of common sense through the establishment of certain moral axioms. I also suggest that Sidgwick’s misunderstanding of the “formula of humanity” is at the heart of his final dismissal of Kant’s ethics and that deepening his understanding of Kant might have led Sidgwick to revise his views on the rationality of egoism, thereby opening the possibility to solve the dualism of practical reason. Finally, I offer some speculations on the reasons why Sidgwick never attempted a thorough confrontation with Kant, suggesting that both his distaste for Kant’s metaphysics and his Millian utilitarian bias deterred him from it. (shrink)

Two issues in Cowley’s book Medical Ethics, Ordinary Concepts and Ordinary Lives are discussed. The first is methodological and it concerns the relation between the personal and the impersonal perspectives. An apparent problem is represented by some uncertainties in the interpretation of their relation in Cowley’s proposal. In some cases presented by Cowley, although the agents do not give up the requirements of the personal perspective, their actions correspond to the requirements of the impersonal perspective. The question (...) is how did the agent make the decision? The other issue is that the personal perspective, as described in some cases, seems to be concerned only by reasons relevant to the subject herself. The question is whether such a perspective may be properly called moral, or it rather deserves to be qualified as prudential, egocentric or egoistic.The second issue regards organ donation, where Cowley contrasts the cultural discourse endorsed by people personally involved because of their links to the dead person, and the bioethicists’ discourse. Some empirical data seem to challenge this distinction. (shrink)

Modern public relations practices have been dominated by appeals to impulses, desires, and images that affect publics defined predominantly in demographic terms. This paper argues that abandoning basic rhetorical assumptions about the ability of ordinary people to engage in practical reason has serious ethical implications for the marketplace as well as for society in general. The study applies recent rhetorical scholarship on issues of public discourse and rhetorical culture to public relations practices, considering how rhetoric can contribute to more (...) effective and ethical public discourse in our dominant modes of marketplace communication. (shrink)

The Role Ethics of Epictetus: Stoicism in Ordinary Life offers an original interpretation of Epictetus’s ethics and how he bases his ethics on an appeal to our roles in life. Epictetus's role theory is a complete ethical theory, one that has been both misunderstood and under-appreciated in the literature.

In 2015, the FDA revised its indefinite deferral policy towards MSM blood donors. I develop an empirical case for the revised policy and show why rights-based objections fail. I introduce and defend a distinction between “ordinary” and “exact” justification that accounts for the worries in the empirical case. I conclude that the FDA is committed to further revising the policy to let MSM donors with exact justification donate.

Our understanding of the impact of gender on refugee determination has evolved greatly over the last 60 years. Though many people initially believed that women could not be persecuted qua women, it is now frequently recognized that certain forms of gender-related persecution are sufficient to warrant asylum. Yet despite this conceptual progress, many states are still reluctant to consider certain forms of gender-related persecution to be sufficient to warrant asylum or refugee status. One reason for this continued bias is the (...) lack of a framework with which to understand gender-related persecution. I argue that we ought to understand gender-related persecution as resulting from the intersection of individual or state persecution and structural injustice. Structural injustice can be understood as the kind of everyday injustice, harm, and violence that women experience that makes possible the more extraordinary kinds of violence that women are likely to claim as the basis of asylum. Understanding gender-related persecution within the context of structural injustice will, I argue, help us to see it as a legitimate form of persecution and thus allow more just outcomes for women refugees. (shrink)

“This book isn’t a blueprint for a new conversation. It’s an explanation of why we need one, and an invitation to participate in moving that forward”, says Katie Watson in the introduction to her book Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law and Politics of Ordinary Abortion. She does herself a disservice with this; in many respects her text provides us with just that—a model for what a more productive discussion of how society responds to and organizes around the issue (...) of unwanted pregnancy might look like; a question that has remained contentious across the centuries and for which we may never have an ‘answer.’ It is precisely because perceptions of abortion are so hard to prise apart from our attitudes towards women... (shrink)

Business ethics is often understood as a variety of professional ethics, and thus distinct from ordinary morality in an important way. This article seeks to challenge two ways of defending this claim: first, from the nature of business practice, and second, from the contribution of business. The former argument fails because it undermines our ability to rule out a professional-ethics approach to a number of disreputable practices. The latter argument fails because the contribution of business is (...) extrinsic to business in a way that distinguishes from the established professions. The article ultimately suggests we adopt a more aspirational approach to business ethics, which retains an appeal even in the face of charges of anti-capitalist irrelevance. (shrink)

I served as a medical student and resident in the 1960s. Science as a belief system had reached a pinnacle. Yet Not infrequently in those days, I found myself caring, with little available backup, for a hospital ward filled with sick and dying people. It was a lonely and often frightening responsibility. I began to encounter situations that were at odds with our collective certainty that science would provide the answers. Some of these memories I repressed for almost a decade. (...) I was unable to process them until I had personally experienced a more humanistic side of medicine. (shrink)

A leading ethicist offers a theological guide to thinking Christianly about the ordinary nature of everyday life.

Many writers assume one of the major functions (if not the major function) of ethical theory is to analyze the “ordinary language”; of moral discourse. This paper argues that different social groups develop quite different concepts of values; that there are many “ordinary languages.”; What analysts often in practice arc concerned with is middle-class ethical usage. In addition, it is argued that widely accepted moral usages may be incorrect because they are based on faulty empirical generalizations, pre-scientific opinions, (...) or socially-determined prejudices. “Ordinary language”; needs to be viewed critically, therefore, rather than to be assumed as correct. (shrink)

The impetus for this special issue comes less from conventional debates in philosophical aesthetics itself and instead from one area of recent work on ethics. More specifically, our turn to aesthetics has been inspired by a rich conversation that has emerged in recent years between anthropology and philosophy on the idea and importance of the ordinary. Oftentimes, the ordinary continues “to be treated as a residual category of routine and repetition punctuated by the disruptions of the event.” (...) Many similarly continue to think of ethics as principally concerned with rules and their infringement, as a domain constituted by judgements made some distance from the everyday.But this new body of work has powerfully questioned these assumptions. Veena Das explains that ordinary ethics by contrast examines “What is it that blocks our ability to see the everyday and hence to imagine the ethical as inhering in the quotidian rather than standing out and announcing its presence though dramatic enactments of moral breakdown or heroic achievement.” In this sense, she writes, it “allows us also to think of the unethical as growing within the forms of life that people inhabit – it is, thus, not a matter of eliciting opinions about what behavior is considered ethical or unethical, or of cataloguing cultural practices on which we can bring judgment from an objective, distant position but rather of seeing how forms of life grow particular dispositions.” As these debates continue to develop, we began to see a further need for thinking about the possibility of ordinary aesthetics, a field which though intimately tied up with ethics, merits its own inquiry. (shrink)

A dirty hands case is justified, obligatory or permissible, and morally wrong. It is argued that dirty hands are conceptually unproblematic and that they are instances of ordinary evaluative phenomena. Some ordinary cases of moral conflict are like dirty hands in that they are entirely justified, yet regrettable. The analysis shows that such cases involve double counting––the disvalue is counted once and overridden in the act‐guiding evaluation, and counted again later as the object of the moral emotions and (...) as being a disvalue. In addition, dirty hands are cases in which what is morally required is also immoral, and therefore regrettable. Shows that ethical theories can and should account for the existence of moral choices involving acts that are justified, even obligatory, yet nevertheless wrong, shameful, and regrettable. (shrink)

"Cover " -- "Title Page " -- "Copyright " -- "Dedication" -- "Contents" -- "Introduction: Moral Globalization and Its Discontents" -- "1. Jackson Heights, New York: Diversity Plaza" -- "2. Los Angeles: The Moral Operating Systems of Global Cities" -- "3. Rio de Janeiro: Order, Corruption, and Public Trust" -- "4. Bosnia: War and Reconciliation" -- "5. Myanmar: The Politics of Moral Narrative" -- "6. Fukushima: Resilience and the Unimaginable" -- "7. South Africa: After the Rainbow" -- "Conclusion: Human Rights, (...) Global Ethics, and the Ordinary Virtues" -- "Notes" -- "Acknowledgments. (shrink)

The gaps, fissures, and lapses of attention in a life—what I call “ordinary oblivions”—are fertile fragilities that present a compelling source for ethics. Plato, not Aristotle, is the ancient philosopher specially poised to speak to this feature of human life. Drawing upon poet C. K. Williams's idea that forgetting is a “looking away” that makes possible “beginning again,” I present a Platonic approach to ethics as an alternative to Aristotelian or virtue ethics. Plato's Phaedrus is a (...) key source text for this alternate picture; from it I suggest how we might construe Iris Murdoch's “task of seeing” in terms of the engagement with written form. Poetry is a central locale for such engagement, and thus suggests a kind of ethical praxis that arises from the theoretical emphases of my examination of forgetting, the unmoored self, remade other-regard, and sacred sources. (shrink)

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is currently reserved predominantly for bridging patients to a different destination therapy, but the use of ECMO as a destination therapy itself (ECMO-DT...

A look at political ethics covers cruelty, hypocrisy, snobbery, betrayal and misanthropy, and is accompanied by a description of modern public opinion about ...

The goal of this dissertation is to provide a critique of Jurgen Habermas's communication-theoretic proposal for a discourse ethics. In doing so, I confront the theory of communicative rationality with the pronounced intention of letting discourse ethics take, as Habermas puts it, its orientation for an intersubjective interpretation of the categorical imperative from Hegel's theory of recognition. My objections to this attempt to provide a critical theory with normative grounds generally relate to what I see as a too (...) excessive formalism, and a tendential repression of the dimension of ethical ontology. ;Although Habermas insists that agents always bring their lifewordly conditions of existence--their particular identities and histories--with them when they engage argumentatively to redeem validity claims, the discourse model has throughout its effective history been notoriously helpless when engaging with the internally related issues of motivation and the cognitive problems of judgment and context-sensitive application. In analyzing the principle of universalizability , I show why it is necessary to construct a dialectical relationship between morality and issues of the good life, and to introduce a notion of reflective judgment. Moreover, I argue for a detachment of moral theory from the quasi-transcendental grounding in formal structures of rationality. ;In the course of my successive interpretative confrontations with discourse ethics, I formulate a hermeneutic approach. One important upshot of this is that discourse ethics will be situated closer to Habermas's early suggestions towards a critical hermeneutics. This is a conception which emphatically promotes an internal link between judgment, action and argumentation. Another consequence relates to the need for a realist realignment of discourse ethics. I suggest that reflection and moral discourse, starting from the particularity of concrete cases but ultimately aiming towards universality , should be involved, not in a process of further disintegration of ethical life , but in a process of healing, in which universality serves a memorial, imaginative and communicative function: it creates a conceptual reservoir for interpreting our complex moral experiences, and ultimately for gaining knowledge of the self and its intricate bonds and attachments to others. (shrink)

Textures of the Ordinary shows how anthropology finds a companionship with philosophy in the exploration of everyday life. Based on two decades of ethnographic work among low-income urban families in India, Das shows how the notion of texture aligns ethnography with the anthropological tone in Wittgenstein and Cavell, as well as in literary texts. The book shows different routes of return to the everyday as it is corroded not only by catastrophic events but also by repetitive and routine violence (...) within everyday life itself. As an alternative to normative ethics, this book develops ordinary ethics as attentiveness to the other and as the ability of small acts of care to stand up to horrific violence. Textures of the Ordinary offers a model of thinking in which concepts and experience are shown to be mutually vulnerable. The book is an intellectually intimate invitation into the ordinary, that which is most simple yet most difficult to perceive in our lives. (shrink)

I develop a new version of the ordinary language response to skepticism. My version is based on premises about the practical functions served by our epistemic words. I end by exploring how my argument against skepticism is interestingly non-circular and philosophically valuable.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics CommentaryNeil Pickering, Senior LecturerA doctor whose practice may threaten the well-being of his patients must surely be reported to the proper authorities. But the case of Dr. G opens up some deeper issues. Dr. G can legitimately be understood as a clear case of mental illness, but there is another possible view of what is going on, that he has had a religious experience. With respect to (...) Dr. G’s fitness to practice, psychiatrists will have rather different responsibilities depending on which of these views of his experiences they take. A difficulty that has to be faced in cases like that of Dr. G is how to make the distinction between mental illness and religious experience, and beyond that, to what extent society can make room for both.It is understandable that the psychiatrist and other health workers who come into contact with this patient would think he has a psychosis and would want him to take anti-psychotic medication. What else are they to think of this man who hears voices (one of the possible diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia), which have become more frequent and insistent over time, and now seem to be exercising control over his actions (another of the possible diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia) — commanding him to walk along the expressway and telling him that he will one day be a saint? This pattern of behaviour must surely be very familiar to them, from their textbooks and to some extent in their day-to-day practice, though no doubt the details vary from patient to patient.In Dr. G’s case, much about what has happened — and perhaps ought to happen — fits in with the practices of major societal institutions such as the police and the health authorities, and fits well with patterns [End Page 245] of behaviour witnessed before and which professionals have been trained to recognise and to respond to. Moreover, the “mental health” response is a well-practised one, and one which, I would venture to say, has done much good in the lives of many, and may perhaps do much good in the life of Dr. G, for example by enabling him to return to his usual life and practise as a doctor.But are these the only possible reactions in Dr. G’s case — and are they the right ones? One need not subscribe to any kind of scepticism in general about mental illness to raise questions about the standard reactions of police and health services in a case such as this. To understand Dr. G’s actions, one could appeal, instead, to another familiar enough pattern — though it is perhaps rather weakly represented in more secular forms of modern thinking — into which Dr. G’s sort of behaviour may also fit. The idea of someone receiving a revelation from God and altering their whole life is a common enough trope of religious teaching. In the Christian tradition, Jesus’ disciples were plucked, as it were, from their various ordinary lives — fishermen becoming fishers of men — and seemingly overnight they took on a new life. There was something in the voice of Jesus which called to them, and which convinced them of its authority.An interesting case, with some parallels to that of Dr. G, is reported by Maurice O’Connor Drury. From 1947, Drury practised as a psychiatrist (Danger of Words: xxviii),1 but had earlier been a philosophy student of Wittgenstein, and retained a strong relationship with him up until the philosopher’s death in 1951. Here is the case as he introduces it:Mr. D was sixty-seven years of age, a retired civil servant, a man of great piety who devoted his retirement to prayer and works of charity. His wife had no sympathy for what she regarded as a morbid religiousness. One morning at Mass he heard the words of the Gospel: ‘Go and sell all that thou hast and give to the poor and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me.’ These words spoke to him like a command. And straightaway he left the church, putting all the money that was on him into the poor-box at the... (shrink)

A recent solution to the Body-Minus problem, which is a problem of material constitution, claims that ordinary proper parts (such as left feet) exist, but the complements of these objects (such as left-foot complements) do not exist. In this paper, I examine a defense of this solution from the worry of arbitrariness and from its ineffectiveness against a revised version of the problem that focuses on the head, and I show that this defense fails.

In the following essay, I will discuss D.Johnson's argument in her ETHICOMP99 KeynoteSpeech (Johnson 1999) regarding the possiblefuture disappearance of computer ethics as anautonomous discipline, and I will analyze somelikely objections to Johnson's view.In the future, there are two ways in whichcomputer ethics might disappear: (1) therejection of computer ethics as an aspect ofapplied ethics, or (2) the rejection ofcomputer ethics as an autonomous discipline.The first path, it seems to me, would lead tothe death of (...) the entire field of appliedethics, while the second path would lead onlyto the death of computer ethics as a separatesubject. Computer technology is becoming very pervasive,and each scientific field includes somediscipline-specific computing. For the likelyforeseeable future, disciplines such asbioethics and engineering ethics will have todeal with ethical issues involving the role ofcomputers. I will argue that computer ethics inthis sense is unlikely to disappear, even ifcomputer ethics ceases to be considered as aseparate discipline.In order to understand which path will befollowed by computer ethics, I will compareJohnson's argument with ideas of earlierthinkers like N. Wiener (1950) and B. Russell(1932). Although Russell did not specificallyconsider computer technology, he had somegood intuitions about the development ofsocieties by means of technology.My conclusion will be two-fold: (1) thatapplied ethics will not die, but it may make nosense in the future to talk about computerethics as a separate field; and (2) thatcomputer ethics will not simply become``ordinary ethics'', contrary to Johnson's view. (shrink)

Our commonsense thinking about the virtues has certain advantages over Kantian ethics and commonsense morality narrowly conceived. The latter two are committed to a self‐other asymmetry with respect to moral goodness and rightness: what harms the agent is not treated as morally criticizable in the way that what harms other people is. By contrast, our ordinary understanding of virtues allows for both self‐benefiting and other‐benefiting virtues, and what harms or is likely to harm the agent counts against his (...) or her possession of the virtue of prudence as much as what is likely to harm others counts against his or her having the virtue of benevolence or kindness. But to treat what harms the agent as irrelevant to our deepest or most important ethical evaluations downgrades or devalues the agent himself or herself, and this criticism, while not applying to our ordinary thought about the virtues, does hold against both Kantianism and commonsense morality. (shrink)

We explore success drivers of reward-based crowdfunding for poverty alleviation in China. The results from our econometric modeling using data from 4375 reward-based crowdfunding campaigns suggest that poverty alleviation campaigns, as compared to ordinary ones, benefit from higher funded amounts, larger backer numbers, and greater success rates. The results also suggest that poverty alleviation campaigns perform better when the products sold originate from poorer (as compared to wealthier) regions and when price premiums are lower (as compared to higher). We (...) corroborate important findings from the field study with an experimental study, showing that the consumer’s feeling of warm glow accounts for the positive effects of poverty alleviation campaigns (as compared to ordinary) campaigns. We expand the applications of warm-glow theory into the context of reward-based crowdfunding campaigns for poverty alleviation and offer new insights into success drivers of such campaigns. (shrink)

Educators and policy makers confront challenging questions of ethics, justice, and equity on a regular basis. Should teachers retain a struggling student if it means she will most certainly drop out? Should an assignment plan favor middle-class families if it means strengthening the school system for all? These everyday dilemmas are both utterly ordinary and immensely challenging, yet there are few opportunities and resources to help educators think through the ethical issues at stake. Drawing on research and methods (...) developed in the Justice in Schools project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,_ Dilemmas of Educational Ethics_ introduces a new interdisciplinary approach to achieving practical wisdom in education, one that honors the complexities inherent in educational decision making and encourages open discussion of the values and principles we should collectively be trying to realize in educational policy and practice. At the heart of the book are six richly described, realistic accounts of ethical dilemmas that have arisen in education in recent years, paired with responses written by noted philosophers, empirical researchers, policy makers, and practitioners, including Pedro Noguera, Howard Gardner, Mary Pattillo, Andres A. Alonso, Jamie Ahlberg, Toby N. Romer, and Michael J. Petrilli. The editors illustrate how readers can use and adapt these cases and commentaries in schools and other settings in order to reach a difficult decision, deepen their own understanding, or to build teams around shared values. (shrink)

Along with the notion of being a person (zuo ren 做人), the notion of doing business (zuo shi 做事) in ordinary Chinese is basically an over-all notion of the norms in the practical and associative activities, carrying typically obscure meanings on practice and association affairs in some external world. Ordinary Chinese not only distinguishes these two notions but also defines a dictionary order of them, with the affairs of the internal world prior to those of the external. The (...) fact that the notion of doing business refers to business (shi 事) rather than person (ren 人) makes this order clear at a deeper level. It shows that this notion regards the practical affairs of the external world less important to the person itself than those of the internal. Except for these qualities, the notion of doing business holds some normative meanings, although contains no definite rules. These meanings indirectly relate to the notion of person that people form in their private associations and emerge as some mixture with a tactical attitude out of the need of earning a life. The notion of person gives birth to some obscure requirements, for instance, the requirement of 'doing business in accordance with your conscience' and that of 'doing business seriously'. The core world of family is marginalized in the public transition of associations. There are reasons to anticipate that in this process the notion of doing business will undergo more radical changes than that of being a person. (shrink)

Debate about the responsibilities of affluent people to act to lessen global poverty has dominated ethics and political philosophy for forty years. But the controversy has reached an impasse, with the main approaches either demanding too much of ordinary mortals or else letting them off the hook. In Distant Strangers I show how a preoccupation with standard moral theories and with the concepts of duty and obligation have led philosophers astray. I argue that there are serious limits to (...) what can be demanded of ordinary human beings, but that this does not mean we must abandon the moral imperative to reduce poverty. Drawing on findings from behavioral economics and psychology, I show how we can motivate better-off people to lessen poverty without excessively taxing their moral virtue. And I argue that this approach is not just pragmatically but morally appropriate. (shrink)

This ethnography explores the aesthetic dimension of religion and the sensational ways in which it contributes to shaping ordinary ethics on Long Street in Cape Town, South Africa. In the context of everyday social life on Long Street, homeless peoples’ claim of an ethical character is denied recognition. Long Street is a public space of conviviality and differences, a hybrid social reality marked with growing urbanization, globalization, and neoliberalism, and overseen by a continuous presence of security units. It (...) is a street saturated with ever‐increasing social problems resulting from a revival of class differences. Ordinary ethics on Long Street is complex, unpredictable, dynamic, and vulnerable, and stands the risk of potential breakdown. Against this backdrop, this ethnography recounts the ways in which aesthetic formations of religion stimulate technologies of imaginations that offer homeless people sensory experiences of refuge, recognition, being, and belonging amidst social exclusion and a harsh lived experience. Aesthetics of religion are ethics made visible in public life. (shrink)

What significance does "ethics" have for the men and women serving in the military forces of nations around the world? What core values and moral principles collectively guide the members of this "military profession?" This book explains these essential moral foundations, along with "just war theory," international relations, and international law. The ethical foundations that define the "Profession of Arms" have developed over millennia from the shared moral values, unique role responsibilities, and occasional reflection by individual members the profession (...) on their own practices - eventually coming to serve as the basis for the "Law of Armed Conflict" itself.This book focuses upon the ordinary men and women around the world who wear a military uniform and are committed to the defense of their countries and their fellow citizens. It is about what they do, how they do it, what they think about it, how they behave when carrying out their activities, and how they are expected to behave, both on and off the battlefield - and what everyone needs to know about this. The book also examines how military personnel are treated and regarded by those whom they have sworn to defend and protect, as well as how they treat and regard one another within their respective services and organizational settings. Finally, the book discusses the transformations in military professionalism occasioned by new developments in armed conflict, ranging counterinsurgency warfare and humanitarian military intervention, to cyber conflict, military robotics, and private military contracting. From China to Russia, author George Lucas effectively sheds light on today's military ethics in existence throughout the world. What Everyone Needs to Know® is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. (shrink)