This two-part article summarizes the major arguments of Lynne Huffer’s 2010 book, Mad for Foucault: Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory. The second part of the piece is a dialogue between Huffer and feminist theorist Elizabeth Wilson about the implications of the book’s arguments about rethinking queer theory, interiority, psychic life, lived experience and received understandings of Michel Foucault’s work.

In December 1984 Angela Weir and Elizabeth Wilson, two founding members of Feminist Review, published an article assessing contemporary British feminism and its relationship to the left and to class struggle. They suggested that the women's movement in general, and socialist-feminism in particular, had lost its former political sharpness. The academic focus of socialist-feminism has proved more interested in theorizing the ideological basis of sexual difference than the economic contradictions of capitalism. Meanwhile the conditions of working-class and black women (...) have been deteriorating. In this situation, they argue, feminists can only serve the general interests of women through alliance with working-class movements and class struggle. Weir and Wilson represent a minority position within the British Communist Party (the CP), which argues that ‘feminism’ is now being used by sections of the left, in particular the dominant ‘Eurocommunist’ left in the CP, to justify their moves to the right, with an accompanying attack on traditional forms of trade union militancy. Beatrix Campbell, who is aligned to the dominant position within the CP, has been one target of Weir and Wilson's criticisms. In several articles from 1978 onwards, and in her book Wigan Pier Revisited, Beatrix Campbell has presented a very different analysis of women and the labour movement. She has criticized the trade union movement as a ‘men's movement’, in the sense that it has always represented the interests of men at the expense of women. And she has described the current split within the CP as one extending throughout the left between the politics of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’: traditional labour movement politics as against the politics of those who have rethought their socialism to take into account the analysis and importance of popular social movements – in particular feminism, the peace and anti-racist movements. In reply to this debate, Anne Phillips has argued that while women's position today must be analysed in the context of the capitalist crisis, it is not reducible to the dichotomy ‘class politics’ versus ‘popular alliance’. Michèle Barrett, in another reply to Weir and Wilson, has argued that they have presented a reductionist and economistic approach to women's oppression, which caricatures rather than clarifies much of the work in which socialist-feminists have been engaged. To air these differences between socialist-feminists over the question of feminism and class politics, and to see their implications for the women's movement and the left, Feminist Review has decided to bring together the main protagonists of this debate for a fuller, more open discussion. For this discussion Feminist Review drew up a number of questions which were put to the participants by Clara Connolly and Lynne Segal. (Michèle Barrett was present in a personal capacity.) They cover the recent background to socialist-feminist politics, the relationship of feminism to Marxism, the role of feminists in le ft political parties and the labour movement, the issue of racism and the prospects for the immediate future. The discussion was lengthy and what follows is an edited version of the transcript. (shrink)

It is a foundational prediction of evolutionary theory that human beliefs accurately approximate reality only insofar as accurate beliefs enhance fitness. Otherwise, adaptive misbeliefs will prevail. Unlike McKay & Dennett (M&D), we think that adaptive belief systems rely heavily upon misbeliefs. However, the case for positive illusions as an example of adaptive misbelief is weak.

J. S. Mill's role in the Indian education controversy is well known, but scarcely well understood. That he drafted, in 1836, a despatch sharply critical of Macaulay's infamous Minute on Indian Education, is general knowledge now. That in drafting the despatch Mill drew upon the ideas of H. H. Wilson, a noted Orientalist and sharp critic of Macaulay and the Anglicists, has been adequately demonstrated. That the despatch was never sent to India, because of the objections of the President (...) of the Board of Trade, John Hobhouse, a Whig with some utilitarian connections, has been common knowledge for several decades. (shrink)

© Copyright 2015, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc..Signal transducer and activator of transcription factor 3 is hyperactivated in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas. Cumulative evidence indicates that IL-6 production by HNSCC cells and/or stromal cells in the tumor microenvironment activates STAT3 and contributes to tumor progression and drug resistance. A library of 94,491 compounds from the Molecular Library Screening Center Network was screened for the ability to inhibit interleukin-6 -induced pSTAT3 activation. For contractual reasons, the primary high-content screening campaign was (...) conducted over several months in 3 distinct phases; 1,068 primary HCS actives remained after cytotoxic or fluorescent outliers were eliminated. One thousand one hundred eighty-seven compounds were cherry-picked for confirmation; actives identified in the primary HCS and compounds selected by a structural similarity search of the remaining MLSCN library using hits identified in phases I and II of the screen. Actives were confirmed in pSTAT3 IC50 assays, and an IFNγ-induced pSTAT1 activation assay was used to prioritize selective inhibitors of STAT3 activation that would not inhibit STAT1 tumor suppressor functions. Two hundred three concentration-dependent inhibitors of IL-6-induced pSTAT3 activation were identified and 89 of these also produced IC50s against IFN-γ-induced pSTAT1 activation. Forty-nine compounds met our hit criteria: they reproducibly inhibited IL-6-induced pSTAT3 activation by ≥70% at 20 μM; their pSTAT3 activation IC50s were ≤25 μM; they were ≥2-fold selective for pSTAT3 inhibition over pSTAT1 inhibition; a cross target query of PubChem indicated that they were not biologically promiscuous; and they were ≥90% pure. Twenty-six chemically tractable hits that passed filters for nuisance compounds and had acceptable drug-like and ADME-Tox properties by computational evaluation were purchased for characterization. The hit structures were distributed among 5 clusters and 8 singletons. Twenty-four compounds inhibited IL-6-induced pSTAT3 activation with IC50s ≤20 μM and 13 were ≥3-fold selective versus inhibition of pSTAT1 activation. Eighteen hits inhibited the growth of HNSCC cell lines with average IC50s ≤ 20 μM. Four chemical series were progressed into lead optimization: the guanidinoquinazolines, the triazolothiadiazines, the amino alcohols, and an oxazole-piperazine singleton. (shrink)

According to the Constitution View of persons, a human person is wholly constituted by (but not identical to) a human organism. This view does justice both to our similarities to other animals and to our uniqueness. As a proponent of the Constitution View, I defend the thesis that the coming-into-existence of a human person is not simply a matter of the coming-into-existence of an organism, even if that organism ultimately comes to constitute a person. Marshalling some support from developmental psychology, (...) I give a broadly materialistic account of the coming-into-existence of a human person. I argue for the metaphysical superiority of the Constitution View to Biological Animalism, Thomistic Animalism, and other forms of Substance Dualism. I conclude by discussing the single implication of the Constitution View for thinking about abortion. Footnotesa Thanks to Gareth Matthews and Catherine E. Rudder for comments. I am also grateful to other contributors to this volume, especially Robert A. Wilson, Marya Schechtman, David Oderberg, Stephen Braude, and John Finnis. (shrink)

In her recent book Persons and Bodies1, Lynne Rudder Baker has defended what she calls the constitution view of persons. On this view, persons are constituted by their bodies, where “constitution” is a ubiquitous, general metaphysical relation distinct from more familiar relations, such as identity and part-whole composition.

Recent experimental work by T.D. Wilson et al. indicates that a consequence of asking subjects to reflect on their attitudes is that they not only reduce the consistency between their attitudes and behavior, but they perform actions which they come to regret. Wilson interprets this work via intra-psychic concepts, and arrives at the conclusion that it is rational to avoid deliberating about a wide range of attitudes and behaviors. This consequence has objectionable implications for philosophical theories of deliberative (...) practical rationality. I respond to this challenge by reinterpreting the experimental results in a way which is not only consistent with a certain theory of deliberative practical rationality but in which the results lend support to that theory. My interpretive focus is on attending closely to the social circumstances of subjects in the experiments[1]. (shrink)

Traditionally, constitutionalists have offered just one notion of constitution to analyse the relation that an object, such as a statue or a chain, bears to the object/s from which it is made: let us say, a piece of marble in the first case or a piece of metal in the second. Robert Wilson proposes to differentiate two notions of constitution and, in this way, to offer constitutionalists a more varied range of metaphysical tools. To justify the introduction of the (...) difference, he presents several phenomena and problems, the explanation of which would justify the distinction he makes. In this paper I argue that Wilson’s proposal would not increase the explanatory power of a theory of constitution as it has traditionally been understood, only its complexity. Increasing the complexity without increasing the explanatory power of a theory, I defend, goes against one, at least prima facie, basic theoretical virtue: parsimony. In my argumentation I crucially use, for the case of Wilson’s first three arguments, the existence of principles of existence−persistence, which constitutionalists, Wilson among them, usually accept. In arguing against Wilson’s fourth argument I use a slightly modified version of Lynne Rudder Baker’s theory of constitution. (shrink)

Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it? Drawing on converging evidence from neuroscience, social science, biology, law, and philosophy, Moral Markets makes the case that modern market exchange works only because most people, most of the time, act virtuously. Competition and greed are certainly part of economics, but Moral Markets shows how the rules of market exchange have evolved to promote moral behavior and how exchange itself may make us more (...) virtuous. Examining the biological basis of economic morality, tracing the connections between morality and markets, and exploring the profound implications of both, Moral Markets provides a surprising and fundamentally new view of economics--one that also reconnects the field to Adam Smith's position that morality has a biological basis. Moral Markets, the result of an extensive collaboration between leading social and natural scientists, includes contributions by neuroeconomist Paul Zak; economists Robert H. Frank, Herbert Gintis, Vernon Smith, and Bart Wilson; law professors Oliver Goodenough, Erin O'Hara, and Lynn Stout; philosophers William Casebeer and Robert Solomon; primatologists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal; biologists Carl Bergstrom, Ben Kerr, and Peter Richerson; anthropologists Robert Boyd and Michael Lachmann; political scientists Elinor Ostrom and David Schwab; management professor Rakesh Khurana; computational science and informatics doctoral candidate Erik Kimbrough; and business writer Charles Handy. (shrink)

The first new translation of this work to appear in more than twenty-five years, the Columbia I Ching presents the classic book of changes for the world of today.

What methodology should philosophers follow? Should they rely on methods that can be conducted from the armchair? Or should they leave the armchair and turn to the methods of the natural sciences, such as experiments in the laboratory? Or is this opposition itself a false one? Arguments about philosophical methodology are raging in the wake of a number of often conflicting currents, such as the growth of experimental philosophy, the resurgence of interest in metaphysical questions, and the use of formal (...) methods. This outstanding collection of specially-commissioned chapters by leading international philosophers discusses these questions and many more. It provides a comprehensive survey of philosophical methodology in the most important philosophical subjects: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, philosophy of science, ethics, and aesthetics. A key feature of the collection is that philosophers discuss and evaluate contrasting approaches in each subject, offering a superb overview of the variety of methodological approaches - both naturalistic and non-naturalistic - in each of these areas. They examine important topics at the heart of methodological argument, including the role of intuitions and conceptual analysis, thought experiments, introspection, and the place that results from the natural sciences should have in philosophical theorizing. The collection begins with a fascinating exchange about philosophical naturalism between Timothy Williamson and Alexander Rosenberg, and also includes contributions from the following philosophers: Lynne Rudder Baker, Matt Bedke, Greg Currie, Michael Devitt, Matthew C. Haug, Jenann Ismael, Hilary Kornblith, Neil Levy, E.J. Lowe, Kirk Ludwig, Marie McGinn, David Papineau, Matthew Ratcliffe, Georges Rey, Jeffrey W. Roland, Barry C. Smith, Amie L. Thomasson, Valerie Tiberius, Jessica Wilson, and David W. Smith. (shrink)

When entering an environment, animals – including humans – tend to consult their memories to determine what they know about the place. This information is useful to determine: is this place safe? And what happens next? In this chapter, we argue on both empirical and conceptual grounds that memory is largely organized by space. Spatial relations determine what is recalled and which experiences are combined in generalizations. Time does not play an analogous role. We show that space and time in (...) memory are thus deeply asymmetrical. We conclude with a consequence of our view: spatial organization entails a basic form of abstraction in a way temporal organization does not, and so the spatial organization of memory reveals that memory involves generalization from the very beginning. (shrink)

One might suppose that Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) is inhospitable to metaphysial indeterminacy (MI), given that, as A. Wilson (2020) puts it, "the central idea of EQM is to replace indeterminacy with multiplicity" (77). But as Wilson goes on to suggest, the popular decoherence-based understanding of EQM (henceforth: DEQM) appears to admit of indeterminacy in both world number and world nature, where the latter indeterminacy---our focus here---is plausibly metaphysical. After a brief presentation of DEQM (S1), we bolster the (...) case for there being MI in world nature in DEQM (S2). The remainder of the paper is devoted to a comparative assessment of the two main approaches to MI for purposes of accommodating this MI---namely, a metaphysical supervaluationist approach (as per Barnes and Williams 2011) and a determinable-based approach (as per Wilson 2013 and Calosi and Wilson 2018 and 2021). We briefly describe each approach (S3), then offer arguments in favour of a determinable-based approach to world nature MI in DEQM (S4). (shrink)

This article examines overpopulation as a basis for historical interpretation. Drawing on the ideas of T.R. Malthus, Elizabeth Kolbert, John Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, and Edward O. Wilson, I make the case that the only concept of ‘progress’ that accurately describes the human enterprise is the uncontrolled growth of population. I explain why a Malthusian/Gaia interpretation is not a historicist or eschatological narrative, like Hegelian idealism, Marxism, fundamentalist religion, or ‘end of history’ neoliberalism. My article also includes a discussion (...) of the ideas and prescriptions of contemporary commentators like physicist, Adam Frank, and the philosophers, John Gray, and Roy Scranton. What makes my article distinctive is bringing together ideas of population theory through a lens of sociobiology and post-humanist philosophy. Through this interpretive synthesis, I form a basis for recasting history as the record of the growing imbalance of our species in light of the unprecedented crises of the environment that are its byproduct. I conclude with the idea that regardless of whether the world is dying or simply going through a fundamental chaotic transformation, the role of the critical-rational historian remains the same: to tell the truth as best as she or he can know it. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the risks that can be involved in healthcare work. In this paper, we explore the issue of staff safety in clinical work using the example of personal protective equipment in the COVID-19 crisis. We articulate some of the specific ethical challenges around PPE currently being faced by front-line clinicians, and develop an approach to staff safety that involves balancing duty to care and personal well-being. We describe each of these values, and present a decision-making framework (...) that integrates the two. The aim of the framework is to guide the process of balancing these two values when staff safety is at stake, by facilitating ethical reflection and/or decision-making that is systematic, specific and transparent. It provides a structure for individual reflection, collaborative staff discussion, and decision-making by those responsible for teams, departments and other groups of healthcare staff. Overall the framework guides the decision maker to characterise the degree of risk to staff, articulate feasible options for staff protection in that specific setting and identify the option that ensures any decrease in patient care is proportionate to the increase in staff well-being. It applies specifically to issues of PPE in COVID-19, and also has potential to assist decision makers in other situations involving protection of healthcare staff. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Democracy establishes relationships of political equality, ones in which citizens equally share authority over what they do together and respect one another as equals. But in today's divided public square, democracy is challenged by political thinkers who disagree about how democratic institutions should be organized, and by antidemocratic politicians who exploit uncertainties about what democracy requires and why it matters. Democratic Equality mounts a bold and persuasive defense of democracy as a way of making collective decisions, showing how equality of (...) authority is essential to relating equally as citizens. James Lindley Wilson explains why the US Senate and Electoral College are urgently in need of reform, why proportional representation is not a universal requirement of democracy, how to identify racial vote dilution and gerrymandering in electoral districting, how to respond to threats to democracy posed by wealth inequality, and how judicial review could be more compatible with the democratic ideal. What emerges is an emphatic call to action to reinvigorate our ailing democracies, and a road map for widespread institutional reform. Democratic Equality highlights the importance of diverse forms of authority in democratic deliberation and electoral and representative processes—and demonstrates how that authority rests equally with each citizen in a democracy. (shrink)

SummaryA sample of 104 British parents with criminal convictions had an average fertility of 3·91 children as compared with 2·21 for the general population. The result suggests that fertility for criminal behaviour is dysgenic involving an increase in the genes underlying criminal behaviour in the population.

What makes a biological entity an individual? Jack Wilson shows that past philosophers have failed to explicate the conditions an entity must satisfy to be a living individual. He explores the reason for this failure and explains why we should limit ourselves to examples involving real organisms rather than thought experiments. This book explores and resolves paradoxes that arise when one applies past notions of individuality to biological examples beyond the conventional range and presents an analysis of identity and (...) persistence. The book's main purpose is to bring together two lines of research, theoretical biology and metaphysics, which have dealt with the same subject in isolation from one another. Wilson explains an alternative theory about biological individuality which solves problems which cannot be addressed by either field alone. He presents a more fine-grained vocabulary of individuation based on diverse kinds of living things, allowing him to clarify previously muddled disputes about individuality in biology. (shrink)

The Plant Ontology (PO) is a community resource consisting of standardized terms, definitions, and logical relations describing plant structures and development stages, augmented by a large database of annotations from genomic and phenomic studies. This paper describes the structure of the ontology and the design principles we used in constructing PO terms for plant development stages. It also provides details of the methodology and rationale behind our revision and expansion of the PO to cover development stages for all plants, particularly (...) the land plants (bryophytes through angiosperms). As a case study to illustrate the general approach, we examine variation in gene expression across embryo development stages in Arabidopsis and maize, demonstrating how the PO can be used to compare patterns of expression across stages and in developmentally different species. Although many genes appear to be active throughout embryo development, we identified a small set of uniquely expressed genes for each stage of embryo development and also between the two species. Evaluating the different sets of genes expressed during embryo development in Arabidopsis or maize may inform future studies of the divergent developmental pathways observed in monocotyledonous versus dicotyledonous species. The PO and its annotation databasemake plant data for any species more discoverable and accessible through common formats, thus providing support for applications in plant pathology, image analysis, and comparative development and evolution. (shrink)

There is a debate about whether particular properties are for Aristotle non-recurrent and trope-like individuals or recurrent universals. I argue that Physics I.7 provides evidence that he took non-substantial particulars to be neither; they are instead non-recurrent modes. Physics I.7 also helps show why this matters. Particular properties must be individual modes in order for Aristotle to preserve three key philosophical commitments: that objects of ordinary experience are primary substances, that primary substances undergo genuine change, and that primary substances are (...) ontologically fundamental. (shrink)

Wilson et al. focus on one class of AGL tasks: the cognitively demanding task of detecting non‐adjacent dependencies (NADs) among items. They provide a typology of the different types of NADs in natural languages and in AGL tasks. A range of cues affect NAD learning, ranging from the variability and number of intervening elements to the presence of shared prosodic cues between the dependent items. These cues, important for humans to discover non‐adjacent dependencies, are also found to facilitate NAD (...) learning in several nonhuman animal species. (shrink)

"Mark Wilson aims to reconnect analytic philosophy with the evolving practicalities within science from which many of its grander concerns originally sprang. He offers an alternative history of how the subject might have developed had the insights of its philosopher/scientist forebears not been cast aside in the vain pursuit of 'ersatz rigor'"--.

We have conducted a retrospective study of deaths on a paediatric medical intensive care unit over a two-year period and reviewed similar series from outside the UK. There were 89 deaths out of 651 admission (13.7% mortality). In almost two-thirds of the cases death occurred with a decision to limit medical treatment or withdraw mechanical ventilation, implying that additional or further therapy was considered futile. We highlight this as a crucially important issue in the practice of intensive care. More comprehensive (...) studies are needed to help clinicians derive consensus on what constitutes a futile intervention, and therefore when such an intervention should be withheld. This will help families and society better understand the limitations of intensive care. (shrink)

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) "Policy for the Management of Terminally Ill Patients Who May Become Organ Donors after Death" proposes to take organs from certain patients as soon as possible after expected cardiopulmonary death. This policy requires clear understanding of the descriptive state of the donor's critical cardiopulmonary and neurologic functional capacity at the time interventions to sustain or harvest organs are undertaken. It also requires strong consensus about the moral and legal status of the donor during (...) dying and confirmation of death. There has been no need for the clarity and precision that this policy relies upon, and thus the needed research and conceptual work has not previously been generated. The empiric base and societal consensus are both too frail to provide justification for this policy at this time. (shrink)

More than 1.5 billion students experienced disruption to education as a result of COVID-19, representing the most substantial interruption to global education in modern history. Many educational institutions transitioned to emergency remote teaching (ERT) overnight, which has presented an array of distinct challenges for educators. Using virtual interviews and an experiential approach to thematic analysis, the study examined Scottish primary teachers’ (n = 10) lived experiences of adapting to ERT practice. Findings demonstrated three main themes; ‘Meeting Learners’ Needs,’ ‘Influencing Engagement’, (...) and ‘The Impact of ERT on Teachers’. Key findings suggested that differentiating learning, engaging, and communicating with learners is more difficult during ERT than face-to-face teaching. Parental engagement is vital, however, is influenced by several mitigating factors. Finally, ERT is likely to have substantial effects on the wellbeing of those involved. Implications of these findings are considered and discussed. (shrink)

Alderson critiques our recent book on the basis that it overlooks children’s own views about their medical treatment. In this response, we discuss the complexity of the paediatric clinical context and the value of diverse approaches to investigating paediatric ethics. Our book focuses on a specific problem: entrenched disagreements between doctors and parents about a child’s medical treatment in the context of a paediatric hospital. As clinical ethicists, our research question arose from clinicians’ concerns in practice: What should a clinician (...) do when he or she thinks that parents are choosing a treatment pathway that does not serve the child’s best interests? Alderson’s work, in contrast, focuses on the much broader issue of children’s role in decision-making about treatment and research. We argue that these different types of work are zooming in on different aspects of paediatric ethics, with its complex mix of agents, issues and relationships. Paediatric ethics overall needs a rich mix of approaches,... (shrink)

If people sometimes participate in research because of altruism—because they want to help in the search for treatments—should we revise our views about what kinds of experiments are ethical? If participants act out of altruism, we might let them accept greater risks than we would if they are motivated only by a desire for personal gain. But how can we know when participants are genuinely altruistic?

Wilson et al. focus on one class of AGL tasks: the cognitively demanding task of detecting non‐adjacent dependencies (NADs) among items. They provide a typology of the different types of NADs in natural languages and in AGL tasks. A range of cues affect NAD learning, ranging from the variability and number of intervening elements to the presence of shared prosodic cues between the dependent items. These cues, important for humans to discover non‐adjacent dependencies, are also found to facilitate NAD (...) learning in several nonhuman animal species. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed a growing concern that terminally illpatients are needlessly suffering in the dying process. This has ledto demands that physicians become more attentive in the assessment ofsuffering and that they treat their patients as `whole persons.'' Forthe most part, these demands have not fallen on deaf ears. It is nowwidely accepted that the relief of suffering is one of the fundamentalgoals of medicine. Without question this is a positive development.However, while the importance of treating suffering has generally (...) beenacknowledged, insufficient attention has been paid to the question ofwhether different types of terminal suffering require differnt responsesfrom health care professionals. In this paper we introduce a distinctionbetween two types of suffering likely to be present at the end of life,and we argue that physicians must distinguish between these types if theyare to respond appropriately to the suffering of their terminally illpatients. After introducing this distinction and explaining its basis,we further argue that the distinction informs a (novel) principle ofproportionality, one that should guide physicians in balancing theircompeting obligations in responding to terminal suffering. As weexplain, this principle is justified by reference to the intereststerminally ill patients have in restoration, as well as in therelief of suffering, at the end of life. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend the ethics of clinical research against the charge of paternalism. We do so not by denying that the ethics of clinical research is paternalistic, but rather by defending the legitimacy of paternalism in this context. Our aim is not to defend any particular set of paternalistic restrictions, but rather to make a general case for the permissibility of paternalistic restrictions in this context. Specifically, we argue that there is no basic liberty-right to participate in clinical (...) research and that considerations of distributive fairness justify some paternalistic protections of research subjects. (shrink)

Scholars in the early seventeenth century who studied ancient Greek scientific theories often drew upon philology and history to reconstruct a more general picture of the Greek past. Gassendi's training as a humanist historiographer enabled him to formulate a conception of the history of philosophy in which the rationality of scientific and philosophical inquiry depended on the historical justifications which he developed for his beliefs. Professor Joy examines this conception and analyzes the nature of Gassendi's historical training, especially its relationship (...) to his career as a physicist and astronomer. She shows how he rehabilitated Epicurean atomism by bringing together the arguments of the Greek atomists and those of his contemporaries. In doing so, he produced an account of the natural world which made it an object of empirical study and mechanical explanation. (shrink)

Although establishing gender equality in board and managerial positions has recently become more important for organizations, companies with low levels of gender diversity seem to perceive an ethical dilemma regarding the ways, in which they attempt to attain it. One way that organizations try to move toward gender equality is through the use of their corporate websites to manage potential applicants’ impressions of their current levels of, and actions to improve, gender diversity. The dilemma is whether to truthfully communicate their (...) low level of gender diversity, conceal it, or exaggerate it. On the one hand, organizations that are truthful may find it difficult to achieve equality because women are less attracted to companies that lack diversity. On the other hand, organizations that are untruthful risk their moral legitimacy. The present work investigates gender diversity-related communication on the corporate websites of 99 major German companies. Based on theoretical work on minority attraction, we apply an organizational impression management taxonomy to guide our in-depth content analysis. With this approach, we hope to advance the understanding of how the issue of gender diversity is presented on corporate websites, which is useful for both organizational decision makers as well as diversity researchers. We found that although gender diversity-related communications on corporate websites contain both assertive and defensive organizational impression management tactics, as well as a third type of tactic we refer to as “acknowledgement,” assertive tactics were used more frequently. We argue the existence of a paradox whereby organizations use assertive impression management tactics to maintain pragmatic legitimacy but compromise their moral legitimacy by doing so. Furthermore, we argue that moral legitimacy can be maintained or restored through the sincere use of defensive impression management tactics and acknowledgement. (shrink)

This study examines the cognitive resources underlying the attribution of stigma in substance use and misuse. A cultural model of substance misuse risk was elicited from students at a major U.S. state university. We found a contested cultural model, with some respondents adopting a model of medical risk while others adopted a model of moral failure; agreeing that moral failure primarily defined risk led to greater attribution of stigma. Here we incorporate general beliefs about moral decision-making, assessed through Moral Foundations (...) Theory. Specifically, we examined commitment to each moral foundation in relation to stigma attribution while controlling for the specific model of substance misuse risk. We found an interaction between the purity moral foundation and the cultural model of risk. This suggests that broad moral orientations, along with more specific understandings of substance misuse risk, combine to orient an individual with respect to stigma attribution. (shrink)

Although ethical guidelines for doing Internet research are available, most prominently those of the Association of Internet Researchers, ethical decision-making for research on publ...

: "Clinical pragmatism" is an important new method of moral problem solving in clinical practice. This method draws on the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey and recommends an experimental approach to solving moral problems in clinical practice. Although the method may shed some light on how clinicians and their patients ought to interact when moral problems are at hand, it nonetheless is deficient in a number of respects. Clinical pragmatism fails to explain adequately how moral problems can be solved experimentally, (...) it underestimates the relevance and importance of judgment in clinical ethics, and it presents a questionable account of the role that moral principles should play in moral problem solving. (shrink)