Four ethical values — maximizing benefits, treating equally, promoting and rewarding instrumental value, and giving priority to the worst off — yield six specific recommendations for allocating medical resources in the Covid-19 pandemic: maximize benefits; prioritize health workers; do not allocate on a first-come, first-served basis; be responsive to evidence; recognize research participation; and apply the same principles to all Covid-19 and non–Covid-19 patients.
The Protein Ontology (PRO) provides a formal, logically-based classification of specific protein classes including structured representations of protein isoforms, variants and modified forms. Initially focused on proteins found in human, mouse and Escherichia coli, PRO now includes representations of protein complexes. The PRO Consortium works in concert with the developers of other biomedical ontologies and protein knowledge bases to provide the ability to formally organize and integrate representations of precise protein forms so as to enhance accessibility to results of protein (...) research. PRO (http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro) is part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. (shrink)
Is calculation possible without language? Or is the human ability for arithmetic dependent on the language faculty? To clarify the relation between language and arithmetic, we studied numerical cognition in speakers of Mundurukú, an Amazonian language with a very small lexicon of number words. Although the Mundurukú lack words for numbers beyond 5, they are able to compare and add large approximate numbers that are far beyond their naming range. However, they fail in exact arithmetic with numbers larger than 4 (...) or 5. Our results imply a distinction between a nonverbal system of number approximation and a language-based counting system for exact number and arithmetic. (shrink)
In Religion in Secular Education Cathy Byrne explores the secular principle as a guiding compass for religions in state schools. Historical and contextual research and international comparisons explore the ideologies, policies, pedagogies and practices affecting national and individual religious identity.
This article furthers the argument for a stakeholder theory that integrates into managerial decision-making the relationship between business organizations and the natural environment. The authors review the literature on stakeholder theory and the debate over whom or what should count as a stakeholder. The authors also critique and expand the stakeholder identification and salience model developed by Mitchell and Wood (1997) by reconceptualizing the stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency, as well as by developing a fourth stakeholder attribute: proximity. (...) In this way, the authors provide a stronger basis for arguing for the salience of the natural environment as the primary and primordial stakeholder of the firm. (shrink)
Behavioral ethics research has focused predominantly on how the attributes of individuals influence their ethicality. Relatively neglected has been how macro-level factors such as the behavior of firms influence members’ ethicality. Researchers have noted specifically that we know little about how a firm’s CSR influences members’ behaviors. We seek to better merge these literatures and gain a deeper understanding of the role macro-level influences have on manager’s ethicality. Based on agency theory and social identity theory, we hypothesize that a company’s (...) commitment to CSR shifts managers’ focus away from self-interests toward the interests of the firm, bolstering resistance to temptation. We propose this occurs through self-categorization and collective identification processes. We conduct a 2 × 2 factorial experiment in which managers make expense decisions for a company with commitment to CSR either present or absent, and temptation either present or absent. Results indicate that under temptation, managers make decisions consistent with self-interest. More importantly, we find when commitment to CSR is present, managers are more likely to make ethical decisions in the presence of temptation. Overall, this research highlights the interactive role of two key contextual factors—temptation and firm CSR commitment—in influencing managers’ ethical decisions. While limited research has highlighted the positive effects that a firm’s CSR has on its employees’ attitudes, the current results demonstrate CSR’s effects on ethical behavior and imply that through conducting and communicating its CSR efforts internally, firms can in part limit the deleterious effects of temptation on managers’ decisions. (shrink)
Scientists normally earn less money than many other professions which require a similar amount of training and qualification. The economic theory of marginal utility and cost-benefit analysis can be applied to explain this phenomenon. Although scientists make less money than entertainment stars, the scientists do research work out of their interest and they also enjoy a much higher reputation and social status in some countries.
Sandra Field, Jeffrey Flynn, Stephen Macedo, Longxi Zhang, and Martin Powers discussed Powers’ book China and England: The Preindustrial Struggle for Social Justice in Word and Image at the American Philosophical Association’s 2020 Eastern Division meeting in Philadelphia. The panel was sponsored by the APA’s “Committee on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies” and organized by Brian Bruya.
If mourning is a proof of value, how could it be appropriate to move on when one has truly loved and valued someone? Assuming that it is appropriate to value others extremely highly – perhaps even infinitely – how could it ever make sense for one’s grief to abate? Do loss and proper mourning thus present us with a choice between living well and loving well? This paper aims to vindicate the pressing nature of these questions while arguing that we (...) do not need to choose between living well and loving well. It discusses how these questions become pressing, some empirical research seeming to imply that humans do not tend to love well at all, and finally, offers an explanation of why ceasing to mourn need not be a failure of love. In particular, we offer an account of how ceasing to mourn can be a fitting response to the object of love, as well as compatible with living well. (shrink)
Duncan Pritchard recently proposed a Wittgensteinian solution to closure-based skepticism. According to Wittgenstein, all epistemic systems assume certain truths. The notions that we are not disembodied brains, that the Earth has existed for a long time and that one’s name is such-and-such all function as “hinge commitments.” Pritchard views a hinge commitment as a positive propositional attitude that is not a belief. Because closure principles concern only knowledge-apt beliefs, they do not apply to hinge commitments. Thus, from the fact that (...) a subject knows that he is sitting in a room, and the fact that the subject’s sitting in a room entails his bodily existence, it does not follow that the subject also knows that he is not an envatted brain. This paper rejects Pritchard’s non-belief reading of hinge commitments. I start by showing that the non-belief reading fails to solve the skeptical paradox because the reasons that Pritchard uses to support the non-belief reading do not exempt hinge propositions from closure principles. I then proceed to argue that the non-belief reading is false as it claims that hinge commitments, unlike ordinary beliefs, are rationally unresponsive—with the help of a scenario in which a subject’s experience is internally chaotic, we can safely conclude that the hinge commitment that one is not systematically mistaken about the world is equally responsive to one’s evidential situations. (shrink)
Background: One of the barriers to interprofessional ethics education is a lack of resources that actively engage students in reflection on living an ethical professional life. This project implemented and evaluated an innovative resource for interprofessional ethics education. Objectives: The objective of this project was to create and evaluate an interprofessional learning activity on professionalism, clinical ethics, and research ethics. Design: The Brewsters is a choose-your-own-adventure novel that addresses professionalism, clinical ethics, and research ethics. For the pilot of the book, (...) a pre-test/post-test design was used. Once implemented across campus, a post-test was used to evaluate student learning in addition to a student satisfaction survey. Participants and research context: A total of 755 students in six academic schools in a health science center completed the activity as part of orientation or in coursework. Ethical considerations: The project was approved as exempt by the university’s Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. Findings: The pilot study with 112 students demonstrated a significant increase in student knowledge. The 755 students who participated in the project had relatively high knowledge scores on the post-test and evaluated the activity positively. Discussion: Students who read The Brewsters scored well on the post-test and had the highest scores on clinical ethics. Clinical ethics scores may indicate issues encountered in mass media. Conclusion: The Brewsters is an innovative resource for teaching interprofessional ethics and professionalism. Further work is needed to determine whether actual and long-term behavior is affected by the activity. (shrink)
A review of the literature on Corporate Codes of Ethics suggests that whilst there exists an informative body of literature concerning the prevalence of such codes, their design, implementation and promulgation, it is also evident that there is a relative lack of consideration of their impact upon members' everyday organizational behaviour. By drawing upon organizational sociology and psychology this paper constructs a contextualist and interpretive model which seeks to enable an analysis and evaluation of their effects upon individual, group and (...) organizational behaviour. (shrink)
This article draws on the qualitative research component of a mixed-methods project exploring the Australian news media’s representation of violence against women. This critical discourse analysis is on print and online news reporting of the case of ‘Kings Cross Nightclub Rapist Luke Lazarus’, who in March 2015 was tried and convicted of raping a female club-goer in a laneway behind his father’s nightclub in Sydney, Australia. We explore the journalism discursive practices employed in the production of the news reports about (...) the Lazarus trial. Our analysis shows how some lexical features, quoting strategies and structuring elements serve to minimise the victim’s experience while emphasising the adverse effects of the trial on the accused. Furthermore, we demonstrate how such practices allow for the graphic representation of the attack in a salacious manner while minimising the impact of the crime on the victim by selectively referencing her victim impact statement. We found some differences between print and online news stories about this case, some of which may be attributable to the greater space available to the telling of news stories online. We conclude that in news reporting of the Lazarus case, routine journalism discursive practices, such as the inverted pyramid news-writing structure and decisions about who and what to quote, serve simultaneously to diminish the victim’s experience while objectifying her. These results build on international findings about media reporting practices in relation to violence against women and add substantially to what we know about these practices in Australia. (shrink)
In this paper, we outline some of the connections between the literatures of organizational storytelling, spirituality in the workplace, organizational culture, and authentic leadership. We suggest that leader storytelling that integrates a moral and spiritual component can transform an organizational culture so members of the organization begin to feel connected to a larger community and a higher purpose. We specifically discuss how leader role modeling in authentic storytelling is essential in developing an ethically and spiritually based organizational culture. However, we (...) also acknowledge a potential dark side to leader storytelling. Implications for authentic storytelling research and practice are discussed. (shrink)
In the spring of 1900, British archaeologist Arthur Evans began to excavate the palace of Knossos on Crete, bringing ancient Greek legends to life just as a new century dawned amid far-reaching questions about human history, art, and culture. With _Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism_, Cathy Gere relates the fascinating story of Evans’s excavation and its long-term effects on Western culture. After the World War I left the Enlightenment dream in tatters, the lost paradise that Evans offered in (...) the concrete labyrinth—pacifist and matriarchal, pagan and cosmic—seemed to offer a new way forward for writers, artists, and thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Graves, and Hilda Doolittle. Assembling a brilliant, talented, and eccentric cast at a moment of tremendous intellectual vitality and wrenching change, Cathy Gere paints an unforgettable portrait of the age of concrete and the birth of modernism. (shrink)
In February 2015 the UK became the first country to legalise high-profile mitochondrial replacement techniques, which involve the creation of offspring using genetic material from three individuals. The aim of these new cell reconstruction techniques is to prevent the transmission of maternally inherited mitochondrial disorders to biological offspring. During the UK debates, MRTs were often positioned as a straightforward and unique solution for the ‘eradication’ of mitochondrial disorders, enabling hundreds of women to have a healthy, biologically-related child. However, many questions (...) regarding future applications and potential users remain. Drawing on a current qualitative study on reproductive choices in the context of mitochondrial disorders, this article illustrates how the potential limitations of MRTs have been obscured in public debates by contrasting the claims made about the future beneficiaries with insights from families affected by mitochondrial disorders and medical experts. The analysis illuminates the complex choices with which families and individuals affected by mitochondrial disorders are faced, which have thus far remained invisible. An argument is presented for improved information for the public as well as an intensification of critical empirical research around the complex and specific needs of future beneficiaries of new reproductive biotechnologies. (shrink)
Many recent philosophers have been tempted by epistemic partialism. They hold that epistemic norms and those of friendship constitutively conflict. In this paper, I suggest that underpinning this claim is the assumption that friendship is not an epistemically rich state, an assumption that even opponents of epistemic partiality have not questioned. I argue that there is good reason to question this assumption, and instead regard friendship as essentially involving knowledge of the other. If we accept this account of friendship, the (...) possibility of epistemic partialism does not arise. (shrink)
The authors propose a framework to integrate virtue ethics into marketing theory and apply it to the development of marketing strategies. Virtue ethics, a philosophy that focuses on an individual's moral character, has received limited attention from marketing scholars and researchers. The authors argue that without consideration of virtue ethics a comprehensive analysis of the ethical character of marketing decision makers and their strategies cannot be achieved. They provide an overview of virtue ethics supplemented by a case study of The (...) Body Shop, International to demonstrate how evaluation of the ethics of corporate executives and their marketing strategies is completed by virtue ethics. (shrink)
In a recent paper, Strabbing (2020) argues that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation relative to a relationship level. In this paper, we argue that the openness-to-reconciliation account of forgiveness does not constitute an improvement on the forswearing-resentment account. We argue that it does not fit well with our ordinary practices of forgiving and cannot allow for plausible cases of forgiveness without reconciliation. We also argue that the features Strabbing identifies as distinct advantages of her account are features of the forswearing-resentment (...) account as well. (shrink)
Murdoch makes some ambitious claims about love’s epistemic significance which can initially seem puzzling in the light of its heterogeneous and messy everyday manifestations. I provide an interpretation of Murdochian love such that Murdoch’s claims about its epistemic significance can be understood. I argue that Murdoch conceives of love as a virtue, and as belonging at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of the virtues, and that this makes sense of the epistemic role Murdochian love fulfills. Moreover, I suggest that there (...) is good reason to think that Murdochian love is not as far from everyday conceptions of love as it can initially appear. (shrink)
Retention and continuation are key challenges for educators in higher education; understanding the issues that make either a positive or negative impact on student success and drop‐out is therefore pivotal. Previous studies have concentrated around the issues contributing to students' decisions not to continue with their course of study. In contrast, this study used a questionnaire approach in a university in the North West of England with a group of students who have successfully progressed between levels of study. Two hundred (...) and forty‐eight students took part in the study in the first week of the new academic year; they were asked about the support services that they had accessed generically, and then specifically related to academic and pastoral issues during the previous year of study. Students reported that their preferred support mechanisms for academic issues were, unsurprisingly, academic tutors and peers on their course; pastoral issues were more frequently referred to friends and family outside the university‐central services although academic tutors were also consulted by some students. These ‘front‐line’ support mechanisms were supported by a second tier of more specialist, but applied support including careers services and student finance. Student welfare, health, chaplaincy and counselling services provided a third tier of support accessed by individual students in particular circumstances. We argue that the sign‐posting role played by academics requires that they have a complete knowledge of the support services available at their institution and for the greater integration of these services. (shrink)
Recent discussions of moral testimony have focused on the acceptability of forming beliefs on the basis of moral testimony, but there has been little acknowledgement of the limits to testimony's capacity to convey moral knowledge. In this paper I outline one such limit, drawing on Iris Murdoch's conception of private moral concepts. Such concepts, I suggest, plausibly play an important role in moral thought, and yet moral knowledge expressed in them cannot be testimonially acquired.
Music education has historically had a tense relationship with social justice. One the one hand, educators concerned with music practices have long preoccupied themselves with ideas of open participation and the potentially transformative capacity that musical interaction fosters. On the other hand, they have often done so while promoting and privileging a particular set of musical practices, traditions, and forms of musical knowledge, which has in turn alienated and even excluded many children from music education opportunities. The Oxford Handbook of (...) Social Justice in Music Education provides a comprehensive overview and scholarly analyses of the major themes and issues relating to social justice in musical and educational practice worldwide.The first section of the handbook conceptualizes social justice while framing its pursuit within broader contexts and concerns. Authors in the succeeding sections of the handbook fill out what social justice entails for music teaching and learning in the home, school, university, and wider community as they grapple with cycles of injustice that might be perpetuated by music pedagogy. The concluding section of the handbook offers specific practical examples of social justice in action through a variety of educational and social projects and pedagogical practices that will inspire and guide those wishing to confront and attempt to ameliorate musical or other inequity and injustice. Consisting of 42 chapters by authors from across the globe, the handbook will be of interest to anyone who wishes to better understand what social justice is and why its pursuit in and through music education matters.Music education has historically had a tense relationship with social justice. One the one hand, educators concerned with music practices have long preoccupied themselves with ideas of open participation and the potentially transformative capacity that musical interaction fosters. On the other hand, they have often done so while promoting and privileging a particular set of musical practices, traditions, and forms of musical knowledge, which has in turn alienated and even excluded many children from music education opportunities. The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education provides a comprehensive overview and scholarly analyses of the major themes and issues relating to social justice in musical and educational practice worldwide.The first section of the handbook conceptualizes social justice while framing its pursuit within broader contexts and concerns. Authors in the succeeding sections of the handbook fill out what social justice entails for music teaching and learning in the home, school, university, and wider community as they grapple with cycles of injustice that might be perpetuated by music pedagogy. The concluding section of the handbook offers specific practical examples of social justice in action through a variety of educational and social projects and pedagogical practices that will inspire and guide those wishing to confront and attempt to ameliorate musical or other inequity and injustice. Consisting of 42 chapters by authors from across the globe, the handbook will be of interest to anyone who wishes to better understand what social justice is and why its pursuit in and through music education matters. (shrink)
In the spring of 1900, British archaeologist Arthur Evans began to excavate the palace of Knossos on Crete, bringing ancient Greek legends to life just as a new century dawned amid far-reaching questions about human history, art, and culture. With _Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism_, Cathy Gere relates the fascinating story of Evans’s excavation and its long-term effects on Western culture. After the World War I left the Enlightenment dream in tatters, the lost paradise that Evans offered in (...) the concrete labyrinth—pacifist and matriarchal, pagan and cosmic—seemed to offer a new way forward for writers, artists, and thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Graves, and Hilda Doolittle. Assembling a brilliant, talented, and eccentric cast at a moment of tremendous intellectual vitality and wrenching change, Cathy Gere paints an unforgettable portrait of the age of concrete and the birth of modernism. (shrink)
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, reminders of death are particularly salient. Although much terror management theory research demonstrates that people engage in defensive tactics to manage mortality awareness, other work shows that existential concerns can motivate growth-oriented actions to improve health. The present study explored the associative link between coronavirus anxieties, fear of death, and participants' well-being. Results, using structural equation modeling, found that increased mortality concerns stemming from COVID-19 were associated with heightened benefit finding from the pandemic. Increased benefit (...) finding, in turn, was related to higher life satisfaction, meaning in life, self-esteem, resilience, and vitality while also correlating negatively with depression and stress scores. There was no evidence for reverse mediation in that fear of mortality did not predict well-being through coronavirus worries. Overall, although many persons have experienced mental health concerns as a function of the COVID-19 pandemic, our findings demonstrate positive benefits that paradoxically follow in terms of an increased appreciation of life, improved relationships, and better health. (shrink)
This article describes a representation-based framework of distributed cognition. This framework considers distributed cognition as a cognitive system whose structures and processes are distributed between internal and external representations, across a group of individuals, and across space and time. The major issue for distributed research, under this framework, are the distribution, transformation, and propagation of information across the components of the distributed cognitive system and how they affect the performance of the system as a whole. To demonstrate the value of (...) this representation-based approach, the framework was used to describe and explain an important, challenging, and controversial issue — the concept of affordance. (shrink)
In this paper, we examine the interactive effects of positive affect and perspective-taking on workplace incivility and family incivility, through moral disengagement. We draw from broaden-and-build and moral disengagement theories to suggest a potential negative consequence of positive affect. Specifically, we argue that positive affect increases incivility toward coworkers and spouses through moral disengagement among employees with low, but not high perspective-taking. Data from two time-lagged field studies and one online experiment provide support for our hypotheses. These findings suggest that (...) the beneficial effects of positive feelings are not universal, and the fostering of positive feelings at work might have unintended negative consequences, namely moral disengagement, and increased incivility at work and at home. Implications for theory and research are discussed. (shrink)
Ben shu tong guo yin ru xi fang xian dai yu yan zhe xue, mei xue de fang fa yu Zhongguo chuan tong wen hua zhi si zhan dui hua yu jiao liu, shi jie, wen xue de ben zhi guan lian ru shou, jie shi chu xing cheng yan yu yi zhi jian mao dun yu zhang li de ben yuan: cun zai ben shen zi xing xian xian bing zi xing yin ni de te xing, shi ta (...) zai xian xiang shang yong yuan cheng xian chu you yu wu de dong tai yun dong, er zhe zhong yun dong ben shen qia qia you gou cheng le yan yu yi de yong heng dong neng he zhang li. (shrink)