BackgroundDespite five decades of increasingly elegant studies aimed at advancing the pathophysiology and treatment of mental illness, the results have not met expectations. Diagnoses are still based on observation, the clinical history, and an outmoded diagnostic system that stresses the historic goal of disease specificity. Psychotropic drugs are still based on molecular targets developed decades ago, with no increase in efficacy. Numerous biomarkers have been proposed, but none have the requisite degree of sensitivity and specificity, and therefore have no usefulness (...) in the clinic. The obvious lack of progress in psychiatry needs exploration.MethodsThe historical goals of psychiatry are reviewed, including parity with medicine, a focus on diagnostic reliability rather than validity, and an emphasis on reductionism at the expense of socioeconomic issues. Data are used from Thomas Picketty and others to argue that our failure to advance clinical care may rest in part on the rise in social and economic inequality that began in the 1970s, and in part on our inability to move beyond the medical model of specificity of disease and treatment.ResultsIt is demonstrated herein that the historical goal of specificity of disease and treatment has not only impeded the advance of diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, but, in combination with a rapid increase in socioeconomic inequality, has led to poorer outcomes and rising mortality rates in a number of disorders, including schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression.ConclusionsIt is proposed that Psychiatry should recognize the fact of socioeconomic inequality and its effects on mental disorders. The medical model, with its emphasis on diagnostic and treatment specificity, may not be appropriate for investigation of the brain, given its complexity. The rise of scientific inequality, with billions allocated to connectomics and genetics, may shift attention away from the need for improvements in clinical care. Unfortunately, the future prospects of those suffering from mental illness appear dim. (shrink)

We address how the leaders of a Catholic business school can articulate and assess how well their schools implement the following six principles drawn from Catholic social teaching : produce goods and services that are authentically good; foster solidarity with the poor by serving deprived and marginalized populations; advance the dignity of human work as a calling; exercise subsidiarity; promote responsible stewardship over resources; and acquire and allocate resources justly. We first discuss how the CST principles give substantive content and (...) meaning to the Good Goods, Good Work, and Good Wealth framework in The Vocation of the Business Leader and then discuss their congruencies and tensions with the UNGC and UNPRME principles. Next, we describe the Catholic Identity Matrix, an assessment tool that provides a quantitative and qualitative portrait of how well a Catholic business school integrates, within the scope of its mission and capacities, the three goods and related CST principles in its strategies, policies, activities, and processes. The concluding section discusses implications for ongoing UNGC and UNPRME assessment, reporting, and development efforts, and addresses the generalizability of our approach to business schools who draw their inspiration and moral principles from other faith-based or secular traditions. (shrink)

Human trafficking is increasingly recognized as an outcome of economic insecurity, gender inequality, and conflict, all significant factors in the region of southern Africa. This paper examines policy responses to human trafficking in southern Africa and finds that there has been a diffusion of international norms to the regional and domestic levels. This paper finds that policy change is most notable in the strategies and approaches that differ at each level: international and regional agreements emphasize prevention measures and survivor assistance, (...) but national policies emphasize prosecution measures. Leaders across the region have adapted these policy norms to fit regionally specific conditions, including HIV/AIDS, conflict, traditional leaders, and prostitution. Yet, national policies often fail to incorporate preventative solutions to address gender inequality, human rights, and economic development. Until appropriate funding and preventative measures are introduced, the underlying issues that foster human trafficking will continue. (shrink)

This study provides an evaluation of ethical business perception of busIness students from three countries: Australia, Taiwan and the United States. Although statistically significant differences do exist there is significant agreement with the way students perceive ethical/unethical practices in business. The findings of this paper indicate a universality of business ethical perceptions.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Future of Sexual Difference: An Interview with Judith Butler and Drucilla Cornell*Pheng Cheah (bio) and Elizabeth Grrosz (bio)EG:Luce Irigaray’s writings have always figured strongly in your works, probably more than in the work of other American feminist theorists. Out of all the feminist theorists you both interrogate, she seems to emerge as a kind of touchstone of the feminist ethical, political, and intellectual concerns to which you (...) seem to aspire. Could each of you briefly outline how she figures in your work, whether your relations to her have changed, and if so, how?JB:I think that probably early on, when I started working on French feminism as a graduate student in the early ‘80s, I was not interested in her at all because she seemed to me to be an essentialist and that was a term we used quite easily then, when we thought we knew what it meant. In the late ‘80s, I started to rethink my objections to her on that basis and found that she was, among the feminist theorists I had read, perhaps the most versed in philosophy and that her engagement with philosophy was a curious mixture of both loyalty and aggression. And it became very interesting to me when I started thinking about her whole practice of critical mimesis—what she was doing when she was reading Freud, what was she doing when she was reading Plato—and I read Speculum again and again, frightened by its anger, compelled by the closeness of the reading, confused by the mimetism of the text. Was she enslaved to these texts, was she displacing them radically, was she perhaps in the bind of being in both positions at the same time? And I realized that whatever the feminine was for her, it was not a substance, not a spiritual reality that might be isolated, but it had something to do with this strange practice of reading, one in which she was reading texts that she was not authorized to read, texts from which she was as a woman explicitly excluded or explicitly demeaned, and that she would read them anyway. And then the question is: what would it mean to read from a position of radical deauthorization in order to expose the contingent authority of the text? That struck me as a feminist critical practice, a critical reading practice that I could learn from, and from that point on, highly influenced by both Drucilla’s work and Naomi Schor’s work [see Schor], I started to read her quite thoroughly.PC:Is this kind of relationship that she has with the philosophers she reads a sexual relationship? I am thinking of some of the sexualized terms you just used: loyalty and aggression.JB:Yes, there is no doubt that there is an eros of a certain kind, usually the kind that frightens me, quite frankly. I think Carolyn Burke has made this argument that Irigaray [End Page 19] has a romance with the philosophers [see Burke]. I think she has a certain masochistic-sadistic erotic engagement with the philosophers.EG:Do you think it is sado-masochistic?JB:Well, I think it was much more aggressive in Speculum of the Other Woman than it became in An Ethics of Sexual Difference. There, I think there is an engagement that is still very difficult, but at least there is evidence of a more loving engagement.PC:I hope that we can return to the question of love at the end. Is this the kind of relationship that you have to her texts?JB:No, I’m probably too frightened. [Everybody laughs.] And I don’t engage them that closely, probably because I find it frightening to be in that particular knot. She doesn’t actually have a chapter in any of my books. I think I can’t quite devote a chapter to her....EG:No, but you devote large sections of chapters....JB:That’s true, but I can’t stay there for a prolonged period of time [laughs], whatever that’s worth.EG:I’d like to come back to this later, because I think it is a really interesting... (shrink)

Philosophical Pragmatism and International Relations bridges the gap between philosophical pragmatism and international relations, two disciplinary perspectives that together shed light on how to advance the study and conduct of foreign affairs. Authors in this collection discuss a broad range of issues, from policy relevance to peacekeeping operations, with an eye to understanding how this distinctly American philosophy, pragmatism, can improve both international relations research and foreign policy practice.

This volume focuses on democratic experimentalism, gathering a collection of original and previously unpublished essays focusing upon its major outlines, as well as specific aspects ¿ both promising and troublesome - of this theoretical approach. Together these essays offer conceptions of democracy and democratic governance that emphasize and highlight experimentalist aspects of pragmatic thought, particularly Deweyan pragmatism, and its relationship to instantiation in concrete social and political institutions. Issues of democratic governance, political organization and the relationship of law to democracy (...) are analyzed. (shrink)

Richard Rorty believes that the combination of ironism and poetic impulse when attached to the public/private distinction, creates an opening for a type of liberalism that satisfies both the urge for individuality and the urge for solidarity. Rorty's antirealistic pragmatism leads to a society functioning very much like our own. This Dissertation dredges out some of the very contentious underlying assumptions of what Rorty feels is a philosophy-less vision. The ironic poet is Rorty's paradigm of correct modern character. Portraying this (...) poet clearly will bring out what a powerful and radical, yet paradoxically rigidly conservative, outlook he would have us adopt. ;The journey for the outlines of the poet's personality takes me through an investigation of Rorty's interest in Heidegger. While Heidegger's poet can be described in some way as a discoverer , Rorty's poet cannot. From these differing conceptions of the poet I jump to the is/ought distinction as characterized by Hume and reversed by Rorty. I argue that Rorty believes that a fact can only be found within an 'ought.' Utopianism becomes then the only legitimate hope for change. The poet becomes the ultimate option-creator. ;Next is examined Rorty's distinction between the private and public realms. The poet, in Rorty's conception, must speak and create within these two vastly divergent realms. Liberalism and its attendant base upon the isolated and transcendent individual becomes clearly to the forefront here as a grounding point . Habermas and Feyerabend are used to further characterize possible aspects of the poet. I characterize the ironist poet as a reluctant dadaist because of the limits the strong attachment to liberalism places upon him/her. ;Ultimately Rorty's central assumption that the public and private realms absolutely cannot be harmonized in one complete 'overlying' vision that does justice to both is critiqued and questioned. All of this leads to a portrait of a severely circumscribed poet. (shrink)

This study evaluates responses to the Real Estate Ethical Code. Voice Stress Analysis (VSA) is used to evaluate the responses of real estate sales people to ethically-based questions. The process and the responses given enabled the authors to gain insight into pressure-causing ethical situations and to explore new uses of VSA. Some respondents were stressed while following the ethical code guidelines. Others showed no stress about breaking the formal code. The study reaffirms that the presence of formal ethical guidelines does (...) not assure that the rules will be willingly followed. (shrink)

Quality and service improvement (QSI) research employs a broad range of methods to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery. QSI research differs from traditional healthcare research and poses unique ethical questions. Since QSI research aims to generate knowledge to enhance quality improvement efforts, should it be considered research for regulatory purposes? Is review by a research ethics committee required? Should healthcare providers be considered research participants? If participation in QSI research entails no more than minimal risk, is consent required? The (...) lack of consensus on answers to these questions highlights the need for ethical guidance. Three distinct approaches to classifying QSI research in accordance with existing ethical principles and regulations can be found in the literature. In the first approach, QSI research is viewed as distinct from other types of healthcare research and does not require regulation. In the second approach, QSI research falls within regulatory guidelines but is exempt from research ethics committee review. In the third approach, QSI research is deemed to be part of the learning healthcare system and, as such, is subject to a different set of ethical principles entirely. In this paper, we critically assess each of these views. While none of these approaches is entirely satisfactory, we argue that use of the ethical principles governing research provides the best means of addressing the numerous questions posed by QSI research. (shrink)

Psychology training programs emphasize competencies like professional behavior, interpersonal skills, and emotional intelligence. Some students, known as students with problems of professional competence (SPPC), struggle in these areas. This study explored SPPC characteristics and educator experiences in managing them through semi-structured interviews with twelve Australian psychology educators. Thematic analysis revealed that SPPC often struggle with professional attitudes, feedback integration, reflective skills, and mental health, placing demands on resources and contributing to educator stress. The role of educators as gatekeepers, assessors, and (...) evaluators also raises concerns about maintaining ethical standards. Findings highlight the need for better understanding, support, and strategies for managing SPPC to uphold ethical standards. (shrink)

Lochner represents a crucial case in American constitutional law. An investigation of the decision highlights important philosophical aspects of the place of law in a democratic society. Analysis of contemporary stances on Lochner, the actual Lochner opinion (including the dissents by Harlan and Holmes) and how judges following the legal philosophies of John Dewey, Ronald Dworkin and Richard Posner (“Dews,” “Dworks,” and “Poses”) would have decided the case shows that Dewey’s theory of law and democracy emerges as the most attractive (...) alternative. (shrink)