Let Carolyn Jane Bohler inspire you to consider a wide range of images of God in order to refine how you imagine God to have and use power, and how God wills ...

An increase in the number of companies that publish corporate social responsibility (CSR) statements, and a rise in their ‘sustainability’ research, reflects a growing acceptance that broad ethical considerations are key for any type of company. However, little is known about how companies consider moral objectives for their research and development (R&D) activities, or the basis upon which these activities are chosen. This research involves qualitative investigation into Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry, (...) comprising 30 in-depth, pan-European interviews with key personnel in the industry, and focus groups with employees at 14 different companies. Through investigation of the ‘responsible’ activities these companies currently undertake, we shed light on the types of moral goals they set and their underlying ethical standpoints. By reviewing both the responsible innovation and sustainability discourses, and presenting phenomenological evidence, we demonstrate that companies have adopted some aspects of RRI, even though it might not be recognised as such. Our findings indicate that these innovators recognise some of the ethical and societal concerns associated with their activities but their approach is often piecemeal; primary focus is upon the most immediate issues and on legal compliance, to the detriment of broader societal issues and wider challenges. We recommend explicit mechanisms that draw upon established ethical thought and practical academic work to improve companies' abilities to carry out their sustainability activities, and incorporate them into a responsible business strategy. We conclude with recommendations for innovators, corporate research and development, and policy. (shrink)

This article considers the question ‘What makes hope rational?’ We take Adrienne Martin’s recent incorporation analysis of hope as representative of a tradition that views the rationality of hope as a matter of instrumental reasons. Against this tradition, we argue that an important subset of hope, ‘fundamental hope’, is not governed by instrumental rationality. Rather, people have reason to endorse or reject such hope in virtue of the contribution of the relevant attitudes to the integrity of their practical identity, which (...) makes the relevant hope not instrumentally but intrinsically valuable. This argument also allows for a new analysis of the reasons people have to abandon hope and for a better understanding of non-fundamental, ‘prosaic’ hopes. (shrink)

Now that stem cell scientists are clamouring for human eggs for cloning-based stem cell research, there is vigorous debate about the ethics of paying women for their eggs. Generally speaking, some claim that women should be paid a fair wage for their reproductive labour or tissues, while others argue against the further commodification of reproductive labour or tissues and worry about voluntariness among potential egg providers. Siding mainly with those who believe that women should be financially compensated for providing eggs (...) for research, the new stem cell guidelines of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) legitimise both reimbursement of direct expenses and financial compensation for many women who supply eggs for research. In this paper, the authors do not attempt to resolve the thorny issue of whether payment for eggs used in human embryonic stem cell research is ethically legitimate. Rather, they want to show specifically that the ISSCR recommended payment practices are deeply flawed and, more generally, that all payment schemes that aim to avoid undue inducement of women risk the global exploitation of economically disadvantaged women. (shrink)

Policy‐makers, bioethicists, and patient advocates have been engaged in a fierce battle about the merits and potential harms of a federal right‐to‐try law. This debate about access to investigational medical products has raised profound questions about the limits of patient autonomy, appropriate government regulation, medical paternalism, and political rhetoric. For example, do patients have a right to access investigational therapies, as the right‐to‐try movement asserts? What is government’s proper role in regulating and facilitating access to drugs that are still in (...) development? In this review, we analyze the history of the right‐to‐try movement, review the arguments put forth by supporters and opponents of the legislation, and consider the movement’s consequences. Two possible scenarios may emerge. One is that the right‐to‐try pathway may fail to meaningfully increase patient access to investigational products. Alternatively, certain companies may attempt to rely on the federal right‐to‐try legislation to sell investigational products, taking advantage of the provision that allows for direct costs, as there is currently no clear mechanism for enforcement or monitoring of cost calculations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Cultural Context of Post-traumatic Stress DisorderCarolyn Smith-Morris (bio)Keywordspost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), culture, medical anthropology, fight-or-flight responseIn his Clinical Anecdote, Dr. Christopher Bailey gamely imagines the evolutionary underpinnings of his patient's distressing lack of war wounds. As part of a careful and engaged discussion of care for his suffering patient, Dr. Bailey suggests that our evolved fight-or-flight response to the alarms of the African savannah may be at work (...) in Colin's distress. The fight-or-flight response is something of great interest to anthropologists, who rely on Darwin's theory of evolution to explain much in human experience. According to Dr. Bailey's application of the theory, Colin's visceral response to threat is protective in the presence of danger, but destructive (particularly to his mental health) in the absence of such challenges. So Dr. Bailey considers whether we may have an evolved “need” for threat, and that Colin's trauma is in part related to the lack of such threat in his wartime experience.According to Darwin's ideas, evolved traits may be adaptive but may also simply be random appearances that have not yet produced cause for evolutionary eradication. The fight-or-flight response, or any of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis events initiated under either acute or chronic stress, is therefore occurring in Colin's reactions to everyday frustrations, to wartime exposures, and even during the stressful nontrauma of feeling “wimpy.” Dr. Bailey's idea about an evolved need for threat is tautological. That need is not biological, but cultural.Although post-traumatic stress disorder is medically real, it is an event that develops in a particular place and time. Likewise, gender roles that demand scar battles and trophies of a certain form are culturally determined. Culture is central to this anecdote: a culture-specific occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder and culturally driven gender roles for men, especially warriors. Stress is indeed present in Colin's life: our postindustrial culture's separation from everyday death and violence make episodes like war and combat all the more shocking or traumatic; the lack of social recognition for his service also seems to be one of Colin's stressors. Both the shock of warfare and the trauma of his social invisibility are as vivid to his evolutionarily informed body as is the presence of a crouching lioness in the room. So it is the host of cultural expectations, and his inability to mobilize social and cognitive resources to respond to them, that is wounding Colin. Talk therapy should draw out these cultural details [End Page 235] and, as Dr. Bailey has already begun to do, emplot Colin into a more heroic (his)story of his service to our nation.Related ArticlesFeature Article: Clinical Anecdotes: A Painful Lack of WoundsCommentary: The Nature of Proof in PsychiatryCommentary: Truth and Healing a Veteran's DepressionCommentary: Inappropriate RegretCommentary: The Cultural Context of Post-traumatic Stress DisorderCommentary: Explication or Explanation?Commentary: The Importance of What Psychiatrists Care AboutCommentary: Mourning or MelancholiaResponse: A Painful Lack of ConnectionCarolyn Smith-Morris Carolyn Smith-Morris is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Her work focuses on chronic disease and the health impacts of culture change and acculturative stress in North America. She is engaged in several research programs among migrating Mexican workers, among poor African-Americans in Dallas, and for the Gila (pronounced Hee-la) River Indian Community of Southern Arizona, a tribe that suffers from the highest recorded rates of type 2 diabetes in the world. She also holds a research fellowship with the Foundation for Community Empowerment, serves on the Board of the Society for Medical Anthropology, and is a fellow in the Society for Applied Anthropology. She published Diabetes Among the Pima in 2006 and has several articles detailing her applied research on diabetes, reproduction, health care ethics, and end-of-life care. She can be contacted via e-mail at: [email protected], C. 2009. A painful lack of wounds. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 16, no. 3:223–224. [End Page... (shrink)

To aid neuroscientists in determining the ethical limits of their work and its applications, neuroethical problems need to be identified, catalogued, and analyzed from the standpoint of an ethical framework. Many hospitals have already established either autonomy or welfare-centered theories as their adopted ethical framework. Unfortunately, the choice of an ethical framework resists resolution: each of these two moral theories claims priority at the exclusion of the other, but for patients with neurological pathologies, concerns about the patient’s welfare are treated (...) as meaningless without consideration of the patient’s expressed wishes, and vice versa. Ethicists have long fought over whether suffering or autonomy should be our primary concern, but in neuroethics a resolution of this question is essential to determine the treatment of patients in medical and legal limbo. I propose a solution to this problem in the form of ethical dualism. This is a conservative measure in that it retains both sides of the debate: both happiness and autonomy have intrinsic value. However, this move is often met with resistance because of its more complex nature—it is more difficult to make a decision when there are two parallel sets of values that must be considered than when there is just one such set. The monist theories, though, do not provide enough explanatory power: namely, I will present two recently publicized cases where it is clear that neither ethical value on its own (neither welfare nor autonomy) can fully account for how a vegetative patient should be treated. From the neuroethical cases of Terri Schiavo and Lauren Richardson, I will argue that a dualist framework is superior to its monist predecessors, and I will describe the main features of such an account. (shrink)

Hegels Begriff der Freiheit, zugleich Fundament und Schlussstein des Gebaudes einer Philosophie, wird oft als Signatur der problematischen Konstellation "Moderne" gelesen, die Hegel nach eigenem Anspruch mit seiner Philosophie "in Begriffe fassen" wollte. Hegels Werk ist durchzogen von "falschen" oder irrtumlichen Vorstellungen, die sich Subjekte und Kollektive von Freiheit machen konnen, so dass man sagen kann, Hegel habe mehr Zeit und Muhe in die Kritik zu kurz greifender Freiheitsbegriffe als auf die Ausarbeitung eines positiven Begriffs moderner Freiheit verwandt. Dies nicht (...) einfach nur deshalb, weil Kritik eine wesentliche Aufgabe der Arbeit des Negativen und damit des Begriffs darstellt, sondern weil diese Irrtumer auch wesentliche Momente der modernen Idee der Freiheit sind. Die in diesem Band versammelten Beitrage diskutieren zentrale Formen der in Hegels Augen unvollstandigen Momente der modernen Freiheit in Recht, Moral, Kunst und Religion und werfen die Frage nach den Bedingungen und Grenzen von Hegels Freiheitsbegriff auf. (shrink)

A research project currently underway at the Mexico City campus of the Instituto de Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterey (ITESM) was presentedfor discussion. A number of constructive suggestions from participants have been incorporated into the paper.

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag behandelt strukturelle und kontextuelle Spezifika von selbstorganisierten Migrantensportvereinen auf statistischer Grundlage. Er beruht auf einer Sonderauswertung des für den Sportentwicklungsbericht 2009/2010 durch eine Befragung von Sportvereinen in ganz Deutschland gewonnenen Datensatzes (N=19.345). Durch univariate Varianzanalysen abgesicherte Mittelwertvergleiche zwischen den anhand ihrer Mitglieder- und Vorstandszusammensetzung als solche kategorisierten Migrantensportvereinen und den restlichen Vereinen der Stichprobe werden ergänzt durch eine Matched-Pairs- Analyse und eine Regressionsanalyse. Die dafür herangezogenen Vergleichsvariablen liegen in den Bereichen Mitgliederstruktur, Vereinstätigkeit, Standort und Problembelastung. Unter anderem (...) haben Migrantensportvereine im Durchschnitt weniger Mitglieder und einen höheren Männeranteil, öfter Fußball im Angebot und häufiger existenzbedrohende Probleme als andere Sportvereine. (shrink)

First published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is the co-authored--with Carolyn Korsmeyer--Introduction to the first published feminist scholarship in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (Volume 48, Number 4, Fall 1990). Contributors included Hilde Hein, Paul Mattick, Jr., Timothy Gould, Joanne B. Waugh, Joseph Margolis, Mary Devereaux, Noel Carroll, Flo Leibowitz, Anita Silvers, Elizabeth Ann Dobie, Renee Cox, and Ellen Handler Spitz. All essays were subsequently published in an expanded book version entitled, Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics by Penn State Press (1995).

Keller & Miller's (K&M's) conclusion appears to be correct; namely, that common, harmful, heritable mental disorders are largely maintained at present frequencies by mutation-selection balance at many different loci. However, their “paradox” is questionable. (Published Online November 9 2006).

The growing literature on corporate responsibility (CR) has drawn attention to how different CR practices complement each other and interact in the form of configurations. This study investigated CR patterns associated with high financial performance for 466 firms in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. We applied a set-theoretic approach using qualitative comparative analysis to identify similarities and differences across these three societies in configurations of CR practices relating to customer, employee, investor, community, and environmental stakeholder groups. The extent to (...) which the financial benefits of various configurations of CR practices are attributable to institutional factors is examined. (shrink)

A summary of the philosophical literature on trust.

The present discussion contribution argues that O. Müller not only suppresses Goethe’s declared intentions with regard to the latter’s Theory of Colors and ignores his place in what in any case is a different scientific culture than his own or Newton’s, namely a premodern culture of “narrative knowledge” in the sense specified by Lyotard. Moreover, Müller entangles himself in the paradox of wanting on the one hand to back up Goethe on the level of fact when the latter opposes the (...) militant selfrighteousness of the Newtonian school, but doing so on the other hand by constructing an epic-heroic narrative of Newtonian militance, not to say eristic belligerence contradictory to Goethe’s own “tolerant enlightenment” in Lakatos’ sense. Thus, we are confronted with one of those cases where, as Paul de Man puts it, a multidimensional critical reading on the semiological as well as rhetorical levels shows “that the text does not practice what it preaches”. (shrink)

The power of new medical technologies, the cultural authority of physicians, and the gendered power dynamics of many patient-physician relationships can all inhibit women's reproductive freedom. Often these factors interfere with women's ability to trust themselves to choose and act in ways that are consistent with their own goals and values. In this book Carolyn McLeod introduces to the reproductive ethics literature the idea that in reproductive health care women's self-trust can be undermined in ways that threaten their autonomy. (...) Understanding the importance of self-trust for autonomy, McLeod argues, is crucial to understanding the limits on women's reproductive freedom. -/- McLeod brings feminist insights in philosophical moral psychology to reproductive ethics, and to health-care ethics more broadly. She identifies the social environments in which self-trust is formed and encouraged. She also shows how women's experiences of reproductive health care can enrich our understanding of self-trust and autonomy as philosophical concepts. The book's theoretical components are grounded in women's concrete experiences. The cases discussed, which involve miscarriage, infertility treatment, and prenatal diagnosis, show that what many women feel toward themselves in reproductive contexts is analogous to what we feel toward others when we trust or distrust them. -/- McLeod also discusses what health-care providers can do to minimize the barriers to women's self-trust in reproductive health care, and why they have a duty to do so as part of their larger duty to respect patient autonomy. (shrink)

In this adventurous contribution to the project of combining philosophy and biology to understand the mind, Carolyn Price investigates what it means to say that mental states--like thoughts, wishes, and perceptual experiences--are about things in the natural world. Her insight into this deep philosophical problem offers a novel teleological account of intentional content, grounded in and shaped by a carefully constructed theory of functions. Along the way she defends her view from recent objections to teleological theories and indicates how (...) it might be applied to notable problems in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This book discusses the concept of immanent critique, i. e. whether there is a form of critique which neither just applies empirically accepted standards nor independently justified norms but rather reconstructs norms which are immanent to social practices. -/- It surveys both political theories of criticism (Walzer, Taylor, MacIntyre) and contemporary critical theories (Habermas, Honneth) for how they describe such forms of critique and develops a new model of immanent critique. For this purpose, it takes up both contemporary social ontology (...) theories and the discussion about rule-following. The book argues that we can speak of immanent rules as far as persons can practically recognize each other as members of rule-governed practices if they attribute each other defeasible normative authority. -/- Finally, it describes the consequences of the adoption of such a model for our description of a practice of critique and analyzes both first-order immanent critique and the second-order critique of reification. (shrink)

Recent disclosures suggest that many governments apply indiscriminate mass surveillance technologies that allow them to capture and store a massive amount of communications data belonging to citizens and non-citizens alike. This article argues that traditional liberal critiques of government surveillance that center on an individual right to privacy cannot completely capture the harm that is caused by such surveillance because they ignore its distinctive political dimension. As a complement to standard liberal approaches to privacy, the article develops a critique of (...) surveillance that focuses on the question of political power in the public sphere. (shrink)

When we criticize social institutions and practices, what kinds of reasons can we offer for such criticism? Political philosophers often assume that we must rely on universal moral principles that are not necessarily connected to the particular social practices of our communities. Traditionally,continental critical theory has rejected this claim through its endorsement of the method of immanent critique. Immanent critique is a critique of social practices that draws on norms already present within these practices to demand social change, rather than (...) merely conservatively reproducing them. This book defends the claim that such a critique is not only possible, but also has politically powerful potential. Taking up recent developments in analytic collective intentionality theory and in the philosophy of language, the book argues that all social practices rest on structures of mutual recognition between persons that allow social theorists to reconstruct hidden norms present within these practices. Starting from a comprehensive critique of contemporary critical theory, the book also spells out the consequences of this line of thought for the practice of social critique, for the social sciences and for political philosophy. (shrink)

Carolyn M Stone; Autonomy, Emotions and Desires: some problems concerning R. F. Dearden's account of autonomy, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Is.

There has been much debate whether computers can be responsible. This question is usually discussed in terms of personhood and personal characteristics, which a computer may or may not possess. If a computer fulfils the conditions required for agency or personhood, then it can be responsible; otherwise not. This paper suggests a different approach. An analysis of the concept of responsibility shows that it is a social construct of ascription which is only viable in certain social contexts and which serves (...) particular social aims. If this is the main aspect of responsibility then the question whether computers can be responsible no longer hinges on the difficult problem of agency but on the possibly simpler question whether responsibility ascriptions to computers can fulfil social goals. The suggested solution to the question whether computers can be subjects of responsibility is the introduction of a new concept, called “quasi-responsibility” which will emphasise the social aim of responsibility ascription and which can be applied to computers. (shrink)

Taste, perhaps the most intimate of the five senses, has traditionally been considered beneath the concern of philosophy, too bound to the body, too personal and idiosyncratic. Yet, in addition to providing physical pleasure, eating and drinking bear symbolic and aesthetic value in human experience, and they continually inspire writers and artists. In Making Sense of Taste, Carolyn Korsmeyer explains how taste came to occupy so low a place in the hierarchy of senses and why it is deserving of (...) greater philosophical respect and attention. Korsmeyer begins with the Greek thinkers who classified taste as an inferior, bodily sense; she then traces the parallels between notions of aesthetic and gustatory taste that were explored in the formation of modern aesthetic theories. She presents scientific views of how taste actually works and identifies multiple components of taste experiences. Turning to taste's objects—food and drink—she looks at the different meanings they convey in art and literature as well as in ordinary human life and proposes an approach to the aesthetic value of taste that recognizes the representational and expressive roles of food. Korsmeyer's consideration of art encompasses works that employ food in contexts sacred and profane, that seek to whet the appetite and to keep it at bay; her selection of literary vignettes ranges from narratives of macabre devouring to stories of communities forged by shared eating. (shrink)

Lukács is widely recognized as being the first critical theorist to have explicitly developed the idea of a “standpoint theory”. According to such a theory, members of oppressed groups enjoy an epistemic privilege regarding the nature of their oppression. However, there is no agreement regarding what precise argument Lukács offers for his claims regarding the alleged epistemic privilege of the working class. Additionally, it remains unclear whether later feminist standpoint theories share any continuity with Lukács’s argument. In this analysis, I (...) identify four arguments for the epistemic privilege of oppressed groups that could be attributed to Lukács. I argue that, although Lukács does not consistently endorse any specific argument, the most promising interpretation suggests that epistemic privilege arises from a contradiction between the norms that guide the self-understanding of such groups and the effects of the social practices they are socially obligated to engage in. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that ideal theories in political philosophy are a form of ideology. This article examines arguments building on the work of Charles Mills and Raymond Geuss for the claim that ideal theories are cognitively distorting belief systems that have the effect of stabilizing unjust social arrangements. I argue that Mills and Geuss neither succeed in establishing that the content of ideal theories is necessarily cognitively defective in the way characteristic for ideologies, nor can they make plausible which (...) mechanisms ensure the alleged negative effects of the widespread acceptance of ideal theorizing. This does not mean that all hope is lost for the ideology objection, however. By turning to a second Marxian model of ideology, I argue that the ideological character of ideal theories is not so much a matter of their content, but rather of their form. Ideal theories falsely present the normative concepts that they use as semantically practice-independent and thereby block potential challenges from subordinate groups to dominant ideologies. It is therefore not the normative content of ideal theories which proves to be objectionable, but the particular role their concepts play in wider political discourse. (shrink)