Socially and politically significant Muslim communities are posing a challenge to the public spheres of Western Europe: can public reason in a liberal democracy be so conceived as to accommodate the religious reasons of Muslims and other religiously motivated citizens? This question, often discussed from the perspective either of political philosophy or of particular religious traditions, is addressed here instead by drawing on the theory and practice of inter-religious dialogue. The dialogue movement known as ‘scriptural reasoning’ is analysed for its (...) potential to provide a way of conceptualising the nature of reasoning in the public sphere. ‘Reasoning with texts’, it is argued, is a way of describing much of the reasoning that takes place within the public sphere and not just religious reasoning. This approach to understanding public reasoning is established through a combination of example and theory. A model of communicative hermeneutics as public reason based on an textual rationality is proposed. As well as providing space for textually based religious arguments, this textual imagination can be situated alongside and complement postmodern developments of Jürgen Habermas’s conception of the public sphere. Whilst this approach to reasoning in the public sphere initially appears very different from the classic statement of the idea of public reason in John Rawls’s political liberalism, it is shown to have significant continuity with Rawls’s theory when this is viewed through the lens of the Supreme Court as exemplar of public reason. This highest level of public reason involving legislation is also a form of reasoning with texts. But in order for religious and more popular levels of public discourse and deliberation to impact on the political and legislative processes, these too must be conceived as modes of reasoning having some continuity with higher levels of public reasoning. It is such continuity that this thesis seeks to theorise. (shrink)

This article examines selected behavioral aspects of ethical decision making within a business context. Three categories of antecedents to ethical decision behaviors (individual differences, interpersonal variables, and organizational variables) are examined and propositions are offered. Moral development theory and expectancy theory are then explored as possible bases for a theory of ethical decision making. Finally, means of improving ethical decision making in firms are explored.

The role that personality plays in the justification of organizational sabotage behavior was examined. In a two phase study, 120 business students were first surveyed to create a list of 51 methods of sabotage. In the second phase, 274 other business students rated justifiability of the 51 methods and completed Machiavellian and hostility scales. A factor analysis of the justification ratings yielded four factors: (1) methods of sabotaging company profits and production, (2) informational sabotage, (3) violent and illegal methods, and (...) (4) traditional labor methods of sabotage. A 2 (high versus low Machiavellianism) ×2 (high versus low hostility) ANOVA upon factor scores for justifiability revealed significant main effects for hostility and significant interactive effects on Factors 1 and 2. Results were discussed in terms of differences in management and blue collar methods of sabotage and in terms of a self-presentational approach to justification of sabotage. (shrink)

If students are to understand ethical problems at work, practical applications are essential in translating classroom learning into real world knowledge. This article describes the ethical complaint letter as one pedagogical approach for MBA students to understanding real world ethical situations. Students write an objective, fact-filled complaint letter to an organization that has behaved in an unethical manner toward them. A specific assignment protocol is presented for the students and for discussing organizational responses in class. Finally, an examination of expected (...) outcomes, cautions, and learning opportunities is detailed. (shrink)

Profound and wide-ranging values shifts among industrialized nations, first noted following World War II and measured on an ongoing basis since, have affected individual decision making in political, social, and institutional settings across the globe. Consequently, the adoption of this set of expansive values is having pronounced and measurable effects on organizational missions, standards, and activities. This change is particularly notable in terms of accountability practices, moral responsibility, and the distinction between ethical and unethical decision making. This article documents this (...) change, the need for a recalibration of ethical standards, and the principalization of a new organizational values order. Future research on the implications of adopting expansive values in organizations is delineated. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

This book presents Robert S. Hartman’s formal theory of value and critically examines many other twentieth century value theorists in its light, including A.J. Ayer, Kurt Baier, Brand Blanshard, Paul Edwards, Albert Einstein, William K. Frankena, R.M. Hare, Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, G.E. Moore, P.H. Nowell-Smith, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Charles Stevenson, Paul W. Taylor, Stephen E. Toulmin, and J.O. Urmson.

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.

Johnson and Stricker published an opinion piece in the Journal of Medical Ethics presenting their perspective on the 2008 agreement between the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the Connecticut Attorney General with regard to the 2006 IDSA treatment guideline for Lyme disease. Their writings indicate that these authors hold unconventional views of a relatively common tick-transmitted bacterial infection caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that their opinions would clash with the IDSA's (...) evidence-based guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease. Their allegations of conflict of interest against the IDSA resemble those made against the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2000, which were found to be baseless. It is the responsibility of all physicians and medical scientists to stand up to antiscientific, baseless and unethical attacks on those who support an evidence-based approach to caring for patients. (shrink)

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better if we were immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Life, Death, and Meaning brings together key readings, primarily by English-speaking philosophers, on such 'big questions.'.

Robert Pippin's impressive new book examines Hegel's claim in his Science of Logic that "logic coincides with metaphysics". Part 1 contains chapters on logic and metaphysics, self-consciousness in the Logic, and negation, and part 2 then considers what Pippin takes to be the central topics of the three books of the Logic. Throughout, there are also important discussions of Aristotle, Kant, and Brandom. Pippin's book is well-written and immensely thought-provoking, and will be essential reading for anyone studying Hegel's Logic.In Pippin's (...) view, Hegel follows Kant in claiming that concepts determine what counts as an... (shrink)

_ Consequentialism_ collects, for the first time, both the main classical sources and the central contemporary expressions of this important position. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, these readings are essential for anyone interested in normative ethics. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, examines key topics in the consequentialist branch of moral theory. Includes seven essays which respond to the classic sources. Includes an insightful discussion of central topics in consequentialism by John Rawls and Amartya Sen. Includes classic (...) articles by key figures such Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick and G. E. Moore; and recent reactions to this work by philosophers including Philip Pettit, Derek Parfit, Samuel Scheffler, Peter Railton, R. B. Brandt, J. C. Harsanyi, and Robert Adams. (shrink)

This volume focuses on Hegel's philosophy of action in connection to current concerns. Including key papers by Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John McDowell, as well as eleven especially commissioned contributions by leading scholars in the field, it aims to readdress the dialogue between Hegel and contemporary philosophy of action. Topics include: the nature of action, reasons and causes; explanation and justification of action; social and narrative aspects of agency; the inner and the outer; the relation between intention, planning, and (...) purposeful behaviour; freedom and responsibility; and self-actualisation. This book will appeal alike to Hegel scholars and philosophers of action. List of Contributors: Katerina Deligiorgi, Stephen Houlgate, Dudley Knowles, Arto Laitinen, Alasdair Macintyre, John Mcdowell, Francesca Menegoni, Dean Moyar, Terry Pinkard, Robert B. Pippin, Michael Quante, Constantine Sandis, Hans-Christoph Schmidt Am Busch, Allen Speight, Charles Taylor, Allen W. Wood. (shrink)

The American Medical Association enacted its Code of Ethics in 1847, the first such national codification. In this volume, a distinguished group of experts from the fields of medicine, bioethics, and history of medicine reflect on the development of medical ethics in the United States, using historical analyses as a springboard for discussions of the problems of the present, including what the editors call "a sense of moral crisis precipitated by the shift from a system of fee-for-service medicine to a (...) system of fee-for-system medicine, better known as 'managed care.'" The authors begin with a look at how the medical profession began to consider ethical issues in the 1800s and subsequent developments in the 1900s. They then address the sociological, historical, ethical, and legal aspects of the practice of medicine. Later chapters discuss current and future challenges to medical ethics and professional values. Appendixes display various versions of the AMA's Code of Ethics as it has evolved over time. Contributors: George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H., Arthur Isak Applbaum, Ph.D., Robert B. Baker, Ph.D., Chester R. Burns, M.D., Ph.D., Arthur L. Caplan, Ph.D., Alexander Morgan Capron, J.D., Christine K. Cassel, M.D., Linda L. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., Eliot L. Freidson, Ph.D., Albert R. Jonsen, Ph.D., Stephen R. Latham, J.D., Ph.D., Susan E. Lederer, Ph.D., Florencia Luna, Ph.D., Edmund D. Pellegrino, M.D., Charles E. Rosenberg, Ph.D., Mark Siegler, M.D., Rosemary A. Stevens, Ph.D., Robert M. Tenery, Jr., M.D., Robert M. Veatch, Ph.D., John Harley Warner, Ph.D., Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D. (shrink)

Following David Hitchcock and Stephen Toulmin, this paper takes warrants to be material inference rules. It offers an account of the form such rules should take that is designed (a) to implement the idea that an argument/inference is valid only if it is entitlement preserving and (b) to support a qualitative version of evidence proportionalism. It attempts to capture what gives warrants their normative force by elaborating a concept of reliability tailored to its account of the form such rules (...) should take. (shrink)

_ _ _Consequentialism_ collects, for the first time, both the main classical sources and the central contemporary expressions of this important position. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, these readings are essential for anyone interested in normative ethics. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, examines key topics in the consequentialist branch of moral theory. Includes seven essays which respond to the classic sources. Includes an insightful discussion of central topics in consequentialism by John Rawls and Amartya Sen. Includes (...) classic articles by key figures such Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick and G. E. Moore; and recent reactions to this work by philosophers including Philip Pettit, Derek Parfit, Samuel Scheffler, Peter Railton, R. B. Brandt, J. C. Harsanyi, and Robert Adams. (shrink)

"Provides an extremely valuable introduction to the work of Michel Serres for an English-speaking audience, as well as offering useful critical approaches for those already familiar with its outlines." ---Robert Harrison, Stanford University [blurb from review pending permission] The work of Michel Serres---including the books Hermes, The Parasite, The Natural Contract, Genesis, The Troubadour of Knowledge, and Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time---has stimulated readers for years, as it challenges the boundaries of science, literature, culture, language, and epistemology. The essays (...) in Mapping Michel Serres, written by the leading interpreters of his work, offer perspectives from a range of disciplinary positions, including literature, language studies, and cultural theory. Contributors include Maria Assad, Hanjo Berressem, Stephen Clucas, Steven Connor, Andrew Gibson, René Girard, Paul Harris, Marcel Hé naff, William Johnsen, William Paulson, Marjorie Perloff, Philipp Schweighauser, Isabella Winkler, and Julian Yates. (shrink)

The target articles in this issue advance our understanding of bioethical considerations in pragmatic trials (Garland, Morain, and Sugarman 2023; Morain and Largent 2023). Both articles appreciate...

This article critically examines the positions taken by Stephen E. Toulmin, Robert C. Coburn, and and Gordon D. Kaufman on existential experience and limiting questions and answers.

Gold Stripe on a Jackass is a conceptually rich description of one naval officer's career journey. Author Stephen B. Sloane began his career in Annapolis, where the commandment of obedience holds sway, and finished in Berkeley, a place where questioning authority is woven deeply into the cultural fabric.

A comparison of the engineering schools at UC Berkeley and Stanford during the 1940s and 1950s shows that having an excellent academic program is necessary but not sufficient to make a university entrepreneurial. Key factors that made Stanford more entrepreneurial than Cal during this period were superior leadership and a focused strategy. The broader institutional context mattered as well. Stanford did not have the same access to state funding as public universities and some private universities. Therefore, in order to gather (...) resources, Stanford was forced to become entrepreneurial first, developing business skills at the same time Cal was developing political skills. Stanford ’s early development of entrepreneurial business skills played a crucial role in the development of Silicon Valley. (shrink)

The dominant social scientific approach to studying judicial behavior treats judges as strategic actors pursuing their political preferences under institutional constraint. The intellectual roots of this rational choice approach are in American law’s long but sporadic engagement with pragmatist ideas. This article challenges that approach: a fully pragmatist account of judicial action provides a better description of the intellectual and social work of judging, and better explains how judges reach a decision in difficult cases that most affect the development of (...) law and its relationship to society. The article argues that the foundational intellectual problem for appellate judges is how to define the legal questions presented in a case. Definitions of legal questions arise from the interplay of habitual and creative action in the local social context of an appeals court. Professional and local interpretive habits and legal forms ordinarily do a great deal to define the key questions, which are not strictly determined when a case comes before a court. Unscripted small group interactions at oral arguments also figure in question definition; oral arguments are most important in the rare but legally important cases where habitual practices alone are insufficient to delimit the legal question judges must answer. Supported by extensive interviews with federal appeals judges and clerks, the article illustrates judges’ creative, interactional efforts to define an answerable question in a major asylum case decided in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Building from this case, the article describes the factors that shape judicial question definition, and describes the conditions when creative judicial action is likely to be most prominent. (shrink)

The Foundations of Justice: Why the Retarded and the Rest of Us Have Claims to Equality. By Robert M. Veatch.

A number of important decision domains, including decisions about hiring, global warming, and weather hazards, are characterized by a global–local incompatibility. These domains involve variables that cannot be observed by a single decision maker (DM) and require the integration of observations from locally available information cues. This paper presents a new bifocal lens model that describes how the structure of the environment can lead to a unique form of overconfidence when generalizing the reliability of the local environment to a global (...) scale. When the local environment does not reliably reflect the global environment, they are incompatible. While local perspectives vary across DMs, global–local incompatibility can be understood using the structure of classical test theory as the difference between (a) perceived estimates of the reliability derived from the local environment and (b) the true reliability of the local environment. I model global–local incompatibility as the difference between the true and estimated reliability when the assumptions of classical test theory are violated. Using a series of case studies and an empirical study, I demonstrate the widespread utility of this framework, and I conclude by discussing implications for cognitive–ecological theory, risk communication, and overconfidence. (shrink)

If people have stringent moral rights, then the doctrine of double effect is false or unimportant, at least when it comes to making acts permissible or wrong. There are strong and weak versions of the doctrine of double effect. The strong version asserts that an act is morally right if and only if the agent does not intentionally infringe a moral norm and the act brings about a desirable result (perhaps the best state of affairs available to the agent or (...) a promotion of the common good). The weak version asserts that, other things being equal, it is deontically worse to intentionally infringe a norm than to foreseeably do so. A person’s intention or mere foresight might still be relevant to his or her blameworthiness or virtue, but this is a separate issue. (shrink)

Many important decisions depend on unknown states of the world. Society is increasingly relying on statistical predictive models to make decisions in these cases. While predictive models are useful, previous research has documented that (a) individual decision makers distrust models and (b) people’s predictions are often worse than those of models. These findings indicate a lack of awareness of how to evaluate predictions generally. This includes concepts like the loss function used to aggregate errors or whether error is training error (...) or generalisation error. To address this gap, we present three studies testing how lay people visually evaluate the predictive accuracy of models. We found that (a) participant judgements of prediction errors were more similar to absolute error than squared error (Study 1), (b) we did not detect a difference in participant reactions to training error versus generalisation error (Study 2), and (c) participants rated complex models as more accurate when comparing two models, but rated simple models as more accurate when shown single models in isolation (Study 3). When communicating about models, researchers should be aware that the public’s visual evaluation of models may disagree with their method of measuring errors and that many may fail to recognise overfitting. (shrink)

Social scientists have investigated many facets of popular music over the last 25 years. The vast majority of their efforts have focused on men and their contributions to the creation and performance of popular music. As a result, we know little about women and their experiences as musicians in a traditionally male-centered and male-dominated activity. In this study, the authors used in-depth interviews with 15 local-level female rock and roll musicians in two U.S. cities to explore audiences' reactions and responses (...) to them as performers and their interactions with other band members. (shrink)

Currently the focus of a heated debate among indigenous peoples, human rights advocates, crop breeders, pharmaceutical companies, conservationists, social scientists, and lawyers, the proposal would allow impoverished people in biologically rich areas to realize an economic return from resources under their care. Monetary compensation could both validate their knowledge and provide them with an equitable reward for sharing it, thereby compensating biological stewardship and encouraging conservation.

A supertask is a task that consists in infinitely many component steps, but which in some sense is completed in a finite amount of time. Supertasks were studied by the pre-Socratics and continue to be objects of interest to modern philosophers, logicians and physicists. The term “super-task” itself was coined by J.F. Thomson (1954). Here we begin with an overview of the analysis of supertasks and their mechanics. We then discuss the possibility of supertasks from the perspective of general relativity.

Public health care interventions—regarding vaccination, obesity, and HIV, for example—standardly take the form of information dissemination across a community. But information networks can vary importantly between different ethnic communities, as can levels of trust in information from different sources. We use data from the Greater Pittsburgh Random Household Health Survey to construct models of information networks for White and Black communities--models which reflect the degree of information contact between individuals, with degrees of trust in information from various sources correlated with (...) positions in that social network. With simple assumptions regarding belief change and social reinforcement, we use those modeled networks to build dynamic agent-based models of how information can be expected to flow and how beliefs can be expected to change across each community. With contrasting information from governmental and religious sources, the results show importantly different dynamic patterns of belief polarization within the two communities. (shrink)

Peirce was greatly influenced by Aristotle, particularly on the topic of final cause. Commentators are therefore right to draw on Aristotle in the interpretation of Peirce's teleology. But these commentators sometimes fail to distinguish clearly between formal cause and final cause in Aristotle's philosophy. Unless form and end are clearly distinguished, no sense can be made of Peirce's important claim that 'desires create classes.' Understood in the context of his teleology, this claim may be considered Peirce's answer to nominalists and (...) sceptics on the possibility and status of scientific knowledge. On the basis of an improved view of Peirce's teleology, the objection that inorganic physical events do not admit of teleological explanation can be answered. I argue that the non-teleological alternative leaves the laws of nature and the actions of inorganic matter unexplained. (shrink)

This chapter examines Soren Kierkegaard's thoughts about ethics and his use of ‘the ethical’ his works, suggesting that the ethical is the most used concept in his works and his views about it are complex. It evaluates his treatment of the ethical in his Fear and Trembling and his opinion about the significance of the divine authority in The Book on Adler, and also considers his account of ethical obligations towards others in his Works of Love.

This true account provides a summary of a firm and its CEO caught up in the housing market frenzy that occurred in the mid to late 2000s. Although confronted with a number of economic, strategic management, human resource, ethical, and legal challenges, the owners make decisions that cause the firm to grow at an exponential rate. The case documents the eventual results of many of those decisions. Readers are challenged to identify ethics issues involved and the business decisions that precipitated (...) those ethical issues. Some issues include working with business partners who have different ethical stances from your own, whistle blowing for illegal actions, the impact of problem employees on ethical and legal issues, and being transparent and honest when informing the board of directors about business conditions. Teaching notes include lessons learned by the CEO. Ways to avoid similar mistakes in the future are provided. (shrink)

MMA fighting in a competition is not necessarily wrong and is often, as far as we can tell, permissible. Our argument has two premises. First, if an act does not infringe on anyone’s moral right or violate another side-constraint, then it is morally permissible. Second, MMA-violence does not infringe on anyone’s moral right or violate another side-constraint. The first premise rested on two assumptions. First, if a person does a wrong act, then he wrongs someone. Second, if one person wrongs (...) a second, then the first infringes on the second’s right. We then looked at Nicholas Dixon’s powerful Kantian argument that MMA fighting is wrong. (shrink)