The world changes and we are encouraged to change with it, but is all change good? This book asks us to stop and consider whether the higher education we are providing, and engaging in, for ourselves and our societies is what we ought to have, or what commercial interests want us to have. In claiming that there is a place for a higher education of learning, such as the university, amongst our array of tertiary options the book attempts to explore (...) what this might be. Drawing from the existential literature and in particular Heidegger, the book investigates the case for such a form of higher education and settles on existential trust as the ground upon which the community of scholars that ought to be the university can flourish. This book is written for those who are concerned about the trends towards performativity and for those who are not yet so concerned! It offers a controversial and, some might say, idealistic view of what might be but makes no apology for that since the book proposes that higher education is becoming evermore unacceptable for those who value democracy, tolerance and learning. (shrink)

Dual-process models of cognition suggest that there are two types of thought: autonomous Type 1 processes and working memory dependent Type 2 processes that support hypothetical thinking. Models of creative thinking also distinguish between two sets of thinking processes: those involved in the generation of ideas and those involved with their refinement, evaluation, and/or selection. Here we review dual-process models in both these literatures and delineate the similarities and differences. Both generative creative processing and evaluative creative processing involve elements that (...) have been attributed to each of the dual processes of cognition. We explore the notion that creative thinking may rest upon the nature of a shifting process between Type 1 and Type 2 dual processes. We suggest that a synthesis of the evidence bases on dual-process models of cognition and of creative thinking, together with developing time-based approaches to explore the shifting process, could better inform the development of i.. (shrink)

Physician-assisted suicide laws in Oregon and Washington require the person's current competency and a prognosis of terminal illness. In The Netherlands voluntariness and unbearable suffering are required for euthanasia. Many people are more concerned about the loss of autonomy and independence in years of severe dementia than about pain and suffering in their last months. To address this concern, people could write advance directives for physician-assisted death in dementia. Should such directives be implemented even though, at the time, the person (...) is no longer competent and would not be either terminally ill or suffering unbearably? We argue that in many cases they should be, and that a sliding scale which considers both autonomy and the capacity for enjoyment provides the best justification for determining when: when written by a previously well-informed and competent person, such a directive gains in authority as the later person's capacities to generate new critical interests and to enjoy life decrease. Such an extension of legalized death assistance is grounded in the same central value of voluntariness that undergirds the current more limited legalization. (shrink)

Almost all jurisdictions where physician-assisted death is legal require that the requesting individual be competent to make medical decisions at time of assistance. The requirement of contemporary competence is intended to ensure that PAD is limited to people who really want to die and have the cognitive ability to make a final choice of such enormous import. Along with terminal illness, defined as prognosis of death within six months, contemporary competence is regarded as an important safeguard against mistake and abuse, (...) arguably the strongest objections to legalizing PAD.The insistence on contemporary competence is problematic. It means that someone who has dementia is ruled out as a candidate for PAD, even if she is terminally ill and suffering terrible and unrelievable pain. It also rules out individuals with strong and unwavering desires not to end their life in dementia. (shrink)

The book, Against Fairness, by philosopher Stephen T. Asma is reviewed. Concepts of favoritism and justice are explored.

In the United States, amid the fractious politics of attempting to achieve something close to universal access to basic health care, two impressions are likely to feed skepticism about the status of a right to universal access: the moral principles that underlie any right to universal access may seem incredibly "ideal," not well rooted in the society's actual fabric, and the necessary practical and political attempts to limit the scope of universally accessible care to make its achievement realistic may seem (...) marked less by moral rhyme and reason than by the pull of conflicting interests. I try to directly dispel the first of these impressions and to obliquely question the second. The immense political barriers to .. (shrink)

The case of Mrs A is a provocative example of euthanasia by advance directive to avoid increasingly severe dementia. It is also a ‘perfect storm’ of a disturbing case, revealing both the challenges that can arise with advance euthanasia directives generally and particular issues in the Dutch procedures. Kim, Miller and Dresser have done a distinct service to bioethics in detailing the case, in explaining the basis of the regional euthanasia review committee reprimand of the administering geriatrician and in highlighting (...) some significant deficiencies in Dutch procedures.1 Many readers, after encountering the case, may find themselves sceptical that AEDs can be an ethically viable vehicle for avoiding living into severe dementia. I will argue that caution and care, not resistance to AEDs for dementia, is in order. Real dilemmas of implementation are inherent in advance directives, to be sure, dilemmas that can be aggravated by a patient’s dementia. Yet much can be done in writing an AED to make its implementation in dementia less problematic, and the Dutch emphasis on intolerable suffering as a necessary condition for euthanasia is not the appropriate legal framework. The difficulties in the case begin with the directive itself. Any advance directive, whether for refusing lifesaving treatment or for physician-assisted death, needs to be clear about what is and is not to happen and when. At first Mrs A’s directive seems to provide a trigger point: ‘I want to make use of the legal right to … euthanasia when I am still at all mentally competent and am no longer able to live at home with my husband. I absolutely do not want to be placed in an institution for elderly dementia patients’. In a revision added a year before her death, the time had become ‘whenever I think the time …. (shrink)

Refusal of lifesaving treatment, and such refusal by advance directive, are widely recognized as ethically and legally permissible. Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking is not. Ethically and legally, how does VSED compare with these two more established ways for patients to control the end of life? Is it more questionable because with VSED the patient intends to cause her death, or because those who assist it with palliative care could be assisting a suicide?In fact the ethical and legal basis for (...) VSED is virtually as strong as for refusing lifesaving treatment and less problematic than the basis for refusing treatment by advance directive. VSED should take its proper place among the accepted, permissible ways by which people can control the time and manner of death. (shrink)

The case for U.S. health system reform aimed at achieving wider insurance coverage in the population and disciplining the growth of costs is fundamentally a moral case, grounded in two principles: (1) a principle of social justice, the Just Sharing of the costs of illness, and (2) a related principle of fairness, the Prevention of Free‐Riding. These principles generate an argument for universal access to basic care when applied to two existing facts: the phenomenon of “market failure” in health insurance (...) and, in the U.S., the existing legal guarantee of access to emergency care. The principles are widely shared in U.S. moral culture by conservatives and liberals alike. Similarly, across the political spectrum, the fact of market failure is not contested (though it is sometimes ignored), and the guarantee of access to emergency care is rarely challenged. The conclusion generated by the principles is not only that insurance for a basic minimum of care should be mandatory but that the scope of that care should be lean, efficient, and constrained in its cost. -/- . (shrink)

The case for U.S. health system reform aimed at achieving wider insurance coverage in the population and disciplining the growth of costs is fundamentally a moral case, grounded in two principles: a principle of social justice, the Just Sharing of the costs of illness, and a related principle of fairness, the Prevention of Free-Riding. These principles generate an argument for universal access to basic care when applied to two existing facts: the phenomenon of “market failure” in health insurance and, in (...) the U.S., the existing legal guarantee of access to emergency care. The principles are widely shared in U.S. moral culture by conservatives and liberals alike. Similarly, across the political spectrum, the fact of market failure is not contested , and the guarantee of access to emergency care is rarely challenged. The conclusion generated by the principles is not only that insurance for a basic minimum of care should be mandatory but that the scope of that care should be lean, efficient, and constrained in its cost. (shrink)

Militaries that take a character development approach in their moral education programs but rely heavily on authority figures as subject matter experts to teach soldiers face two serious problems. First, soldiers improperly defer to their instructors and, as a result, do not understand the moral virtues taught in class. Second, instructors are in a poor position to motivate soldiers to develop character through the goal-oriented, measurable and supervised practice of specific virtues. These problems threaten character-based moral education programs because people (...) must understand and practice the moral virtues to form good character. Building on the work of several prominent moral philosophers, I propose that militaries can mitigate the problems of authority in moral education and enhance soldiers’ character development by incorporating an apprenticeship model which leverages the mutual trust that soldiers share with leaders and peers. (shrink)

In recent years, researchers have observed the process of mainstreaming Fair Trade and the emergence of alternative sustainability standards in the coffee industry. The underlying market dynamics that have contributed to these developments are, however, under-researched. Insight into these dynamics is important to understand how markets can develop to favor sustainability. This study examines the major developments in the market for certified coffee in the Netherlands. It finds that, in the creation of a market for sustainable coffee, decisions that significantly (...) influence market creation are made in the lead companies (retailers and coffee roasters). These decisions are made possible by the availability of multiple systems of sustainability standards and by the existence of a small segment of loyal Fair Trade customers that ensured that sustainability remained an issue on the coffee market in the years before the market creation took-off. Fair Trade did not become the new rule in this process, but it became the benchmark against which companies could compare themselves and the basis upon which they built in adopting or developing new standards that would be more feasible in their business models. (shrink)

“The thing about life is that one day you’ll be dead.” Indeed. But even total and honest acceptance of this brute fact about our relationship to death does not diminish the value we see in short remaining life at the end of life. Few just “give in” and no more fight for life because death is seen as an inherent part of life. They still invest small amounts of additional life with huge value. How high may that value plausibly be? (...) What is the value of a relatively short extension of life when death is inevitably near? (shrink)

Low opportunity cost, weak influence of quality of life in the face of death, the social value of life extension to others, shifting psychological reference points, and hope have been proposed as factors to explain why people apparently perceive marginal life extension at the end of life to have disproportionately greater value than its length. Such value may help to explain why medical spending to extend life at the end of life is as high as it is, and the various (...) factors behind this value might provide normative rationale for that spending. Upon critical analysis, however, most of these factors turn out to be questionable or incompletely conceived; this includes hope, which is examined here in special detail. These factors help to explain complexity and nuance in the normative issues, but they do not provide adequate justification for spending as high as it often is. In any case, two additional factors must be added to the descriptive explanation of high spending, and they throw its normative justification into further doubt: the “insurance effect” and provider-created demand. Overall, the perception of especially high value of life at the end of life provides some normative justification for high spending, but seldom strong justification, and not for spending as high as it often is. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 80-82.

The abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib had far-reaching consequences, leading many people around the world to question the legitimacy of U.S. goals and activities in Iraq. Drawing on extensive unclassified reports from multiple investigations that followed Abu Ghraib, this article considers both psychological and social-situational factors that contributed to ethical failures there. This analysis suggests that leaders need to be more attuned to the developmental stage of subordinates and take appropriate steps to reinforce ethical behaviors. From (...) a psychological standpoint, young adults especially are strongly inclined to behave in accord with social conventions and pressures around them. Particularly in ambiguous circumstances, it is important that standards of behavior be clear and explicit throughout all phases of an operation and that leaders at all levels represent and reinforce those standards. (shrink)

In the world of research, compliance with research regulations is not the same as ethics, but it is closely related. One could say that compliance is how most societies with advanced research programs operationalize many ethical obligations. This paper reports on the development of the How I Think about Research questionnaire, which is an adaptation of the How I Think questionnaire that examines the use of cognitive distortions to justify antisocial behaviors. Such an adaptation was justified based on a review (...) of the literature on mechanisms of moral disengagement and self-serving biases, which are used by individuals with normal personalities in a variety of contexts, including research. The HIT-Res adapts all items to refer to matters of research compliance and integrity rather than antisocial behaviors. The HIT-Res was administered as part of a battery of tests to 300 researchers and trainees funded by the US National Institutes of Health. The HIT-Res demonstrated excellent reliability. Construct validity was established by the correlation of the HIT-Res with measures of moral disengagement, cynicism, and professional decision-making in research. The HIT-Res will enrich the set of assessment tools available to instructors in the responsible conduct of research and to researchers who seek to understand the factors that influence research integrity. (shrink)

An assumed core of normative ethical principles may constitute a philosophically proper framework within which public policy should be formulated, but it seldom provides any substantive solutions. To generate public policy on bioethical issues, participants still need to confront underlying philosophical controversies. Professional philosophers' proper role in that process is to clarify major philosophical options, to press wider-ranging concistency questions, and to bring more parties into the philosophical debate itself by arguing for particular substantive claims. Though questions of fact that (...) mediate final policy conclusions frequently fall outside philosophical competence, one sort of fact, lack of political support, should seldom cause philosophers to stand aside; philosophers still have an important role as critics of culture, politics, and profession. They have no authority, however, on even the philosophical presuppositions of public policy. Keywords: bioethics, philosophy, public policy CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Universal access to health care has historically faced strident opposition from political conservatives in the United States, although it has long been accepted by most conservatives in the rest of the industrialized world. Now, in a global economy where American business is crippled by the rising cost of market-based health care, the time may be ripe for change. The key to fostering a new mindset among American conservatives is to show why universal access fulfills many of the basic values that (...) all conservatives hold. (shrink)

Durbin, history and philosophy of science scholar and writer, has created a volume that includes about 100 terms from the natural and social sciences. For each term there is an extended definition and discussion of related philosophic issues. Each entry, about three and one-half pages, also provides a bibliography of some six to a dozen sources. A thorough index includes all terms and people discussed in the entries. This is an excellent source for an entree to the scholarly literature on (...) basic topics such as chance, gender, history, indeterminism, instrumentalism, paradigm, scientific method, and vitalism. Choice This new reference, designed for both students and general readers, provides concise essays on more than one hundred basic core ideas or concepts in the natural and social sciences, supplemented by carefully selected bibliographic listings. Written with a minimum of technical jargon, the essays explore such issues as what it means to be scientific, how theories related to facts in science, and how science compares with other intellectual disciplines. After presenting a clear explanation of the concept, each entry discusses the historical and intellectual context that gave rise to theoretical controversy and assesses the significance of the idea for both the particular discipline and science as a whole. The individual bibliographies will guide the student in tracing the historical development of each subject and investigating its scientific and philosophical aspects in greater detail. Cross referencing and subject indexing are supplied. (shrink)

Summary Methodological disputes in economics have been with us since Mill and Senior fought over the nature of economic science in the first half of the 19th Century. Progress has been extremely slow, and there is good reason for this as the present essay hopes to show.

A number of themes have been on my mind in recent months, and I have made them centerpieces of a number of things I have written lately. In a Ubiquity essay Durbin (ACM Ubiquity 8(45):26, 2007a), I said that I am happy that there are computer professionals who are activists, joining with others to solve the technosocial problems that vex our society, including problems of the computer and information professions. I here moved beyond that to make a new claim about (...) needed changes. (shrink)