Lawsuits alleging illegal and unethical insurance sales practices have received widespread publicity in recent years. Although many observers have argued that one source of ethical conflicts for insurance agents is the industry's reliance on straight commission compensation, there remains a paucity of empirical data to support the claim. Therefore, we tested whether different forms of compensation influence insurance agent recommendations of products. We obtained survey responses from 336 insurance agents. Respondents were presented with a composite sketch of a hypothetical client. (...) Following this description, they were asked to identify which one of eight specified life insurance products they would recommend to the client. A between-groups design was employed to manipulate differences in compensation associated with the eight products. Results indicated that neither amount of coverage nor type of coverage (term life versus cash value) recommended was associated with compensation. However, an unanticipated finding was that amount of coverage recommended was significantly higher when the insured was male than when the insured was female. (shrink)

Employment-at-will (EAW) is the legal presumption that employers and employees may terminate an employment relationship for any or no reason. Defenders of EAW have argued that it promotes autonomy and efficiency. Critics have argued that it allows for the domination, subordination, and arbitrary treatment of employees. We intervene in this debate by arguing that the case for EAW is contextual in a way that existing business ethics scholarship has not considered. In particular, we argue that the justifiability of EAW for (...) a given jurisdiction depends on existing complementarities among the institutions that constitute the jurisdiction’s political economy. Notably, our view takes seriously the ethical concerns EAW critics have raised by showing how these concerns can be mitigated through public policy measures that do not require eliminating EAW. (shrink)

This textbook brings the humanities to students in order to evoke the humanity of students. It helps to form individuals who take charge of their own minds, who are free from narrow and unreflective forms of thought, and who act compassionately in their public and professional worlds. Using concepts and methods of the humanities, the book addresses undergraduate and premed students, medical students, and students in other health professions, as well as physicians and other healthcare practitioners. It encourages them to (...) consider the ethical and existential issues related to the experience of disease, care of the dying, health policy, religion and health, and medical technology. Case studies, images, questions for discussion, and role-playing exercises help readers to engage in the practical, interpretive, and analytical aspects of the material, developing skills for critical thinking as well as compassionate care. (shrink)

Background Informed consent is an integral component of good medical practice. Many researchers have investigated measures to improve the quality of informed consent, but it is not clear which techniques work best and why. To address this problem, we propose developing a core outcome set to evaluate interventions designed to improve the consent process for surgery in adult patients with capacity. Part of this process involves reviewing existing research that has reported what is important to patients and doctors in the (...) informed consent process. Methods This qualitative synthesis comprises four phases: identification of published papers and determining their relevance; appraisal of the quality of the papers; identification and summary of the key findings from each paper while determining the definitiveness of each finding against the primary data; comparison of key themes between papers such that findings are linked across studies. Results Searches of bibliographic databases returned 11,073 titles. Of these, 16 studies met the inclusion criteria. Studies were published between 1996 and 2016 and included a total of 367 patients and 74 health care providers. Thirteen studies collected data using in-depth interviews and constant comparison was the most common means of qualitative analysis. A total of 94 findings were extracted from the primary papers and divided into 17 categories and ultimately 6 synthesised findings related to: patient characteristics, knowledge, communication, the model patient, trust and decision making. Conclusions This qualitative meta-aggregation is the first to examine the issue of informed consent for surgery. It has revealed several outcomes deemed important to capture by patients and clinicians when evaluating the quality of a consent process. Some of these outcomes have not been examined previously in research comparing methods for informed consent. This review is an important step in the development of a COS to evaluate interventions designed to improve the consent process for surgery. Registration The study protocol was registered on the international prospective register for systematic reviews. (shrink)

Papers presented at a symposium on philosophy and medicine at the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in 1974 were published in the inaugural volume of this series.

Careful reading of imaginative literature teaches an attentiveness fundamental to the care of the sick.

Teaching medical ethics by the case method may be enriched by adding to the principles-and-rules approach to practical reasoning modes of inquiry and interpretation that engage the moral imagination.

Charles Taylor's retrieval of an expressivist understanding of persons, and of language as constitutive of meaning, contains promising insights for restoring moral connectedness between patients and physicians.

While the dominant approaches to the current study of political philosophy are various, with some friendlier to religious belief than others, almost all place constraints on the philosophic and political role of revelation. Mainstream secular political theorists do not entirely disregard religion. But to the extent that they pay attention, their treatment of religious belief is seen more as a political or philosophic problem to be addressed rather than as a positive body of thought from which we might derive important (...) insights about the nature of politics and the truth of the human condition. In a one-of-a-kind collection, DeHart and Holloway bring together leading scholars from various fields, including political science, philosophy, and theology, to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy and to demonstrate the role that religion can and does play in political life. Contributing authors include such important thinkers as Peter Augustine Lawler, Robert C. Koons, J. Budziszewski, Francis J. Beckwith, and James Stoner. (shrink)

It is well established that retrieval of names is harder than the retrieval of other identity specific information. This paper offers a review of the more influential accounts put forward as explanations of why names are so difficult to retrieve. A series of five experiments tests a number of these accounts.Experiments One to Three examine the claims that names are hard to recall because they are typically meaningless, or unique. Participants are shown photographs of unfamiliar people or familiar people and (...) given three pieces of information about each: a name, a unique piece of information, and a shared piece of information. Learning follows an incidental procedure, and participants are given a surprise recall test. In each experiment shared information is recalled most often, followed by unique information, followed by name. Experiment Four tests both the `uniqueness' account and an account based on the specificity of the naming response. Participants are presented with famous faces and asked to categorise them by semantic group. Results indicate that less time is needed to perform this task when the group is a subset of a larger semantic category. A final experiment examines the claim that names might take longer to access because they are less often retrieved than other classes of information. Latencies show that participants remain more efficient when categorising faces by their occupation than by their name even when they have received extra practice of naming the faces.We conclude that the explanation best able to account for the data is that names are stored separately from other semantic information and can only be accessed after other identity specific information has been retrieved. However, we also argue that the demands we make of these explanations make it likely that no single theory will be able to account for all existing data. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:is There a White Gift?: A Pragmatist Response to the Problem of Whiteness Terrance A. MacMullan Introduction Lucius Outlaw and Shannon SuUivan are prominent contemporary philosophers of race who follow in the footsteps of W.E.B. Du Bois as they search for a theoretical understanding of race and a political solution to the problem of racism. They agree that the solution to racism is not found in the elimination (...) of the idea of race from our discourses as suggested by Naomi Zack and Anthony Appiah, but in a critical conservation of race that is nonhierarchical and committed to addressing the suffering of non-white racial groups.1 This moral and critical conservation of race makes Sullivan and Outlaw standard bearers for Du Bois's idea of the racial gift, which John Shuford writes is rooted in the conviction that, "'race' and race-consciousness are not the causes of racism and racial injustice, [and] that 'race' may be employed toward collective and mutual liberation."2 However, despite their inteUectual kinship regarding their broad approach to race, Outlaw and SuUivan come to a significant and iUuminating disagreement over the issue of whiteness. In Du Boisian terms, they disagree about whether white people, qua white, have a racial gift worth conserving. Outlaw recognizes the illegitimacy of the hierarchical racial taxonomies established during the Enlightenment era but accepts race as a real and meaningful feature of our social landscape. Revealing a strong affinity for Du Bois' approach to race, Outlaw imagines his work as, an inquiry into raciality and ethnicity via a treacherous "third path" between racism and invidious ethnocentrism, on the one side, and anti-racism and antiinvidious ethnocentrism, on the other. What I propose can help us to recognize and nurture races and ethnies as we reconsider raciation and ethnicization as processes by which we humans produce TRANSACTIONS OFTHE CHARLES S. PEIRCE SOCIETY Vol. 41, No. 4 ©2005 Hi and reproduce ourselves as crucial aspects of our "social construction of ET1 realities."3 H tr* Q η He further argues for "the need to conserve 'race' and 'ethnie' (and 'ethnic- ¡» ity') as vital components of a philosophical anthropology."4 Outlaw there- 5j fore contends that the challenge facing liberatory race theorists is not the «' elimination of race, but instead, "the challenge is to find ways to conserve a Ç) sense of raciality that is both socially useful and consistent with democratic justice." Outlaw clearly wants to avoid invidious ethnocentrism, but what is more significant is that he also rejects the idea that we should purge racial ^j ideas and practices as a means to achieve democratic justice. He, like Du τ> Bois, is fully aware of the evils of racism, but is nonetheless committed to > the belief that human existence is inevitably colored by race as a salient fea- g ture of our social reality. Outlaw's commitment to the conservation of race ;> is so deep that he would preserve race-based communities of meaning, "even ^ if, in the very next instant, racism and perverted, invidious ethnocentrism in every form or > manifestation would disappearforever'. '6 ^ The key to this balancing act is to look at race and ethnicity through the r lens of "philosophical anthropology" instead of through the materialism of > biology. Outlaw argues that when we look at race this way we glean, an understanding and appreciation of senses of belonging and of shared destiny by which individuals are intimately connected to other individuals in ways that make for the constitution of particular kinds of social collectivities, what I term social-natural kinds. Races and ethnies are such "kinds."8 Outlaw thus uses an idea of race that is fully transactional, to use a term coined by Dewey and rewardingly reclaimed by Sullivan. Race is created in the confluence of culture and biology, to the extent that certain biologicaUy determined traits, primarily morphological features, are the tags that play important symbolic roles in terms of how social groups are formed. The goal, therefore, is not to eliminate race, because people long have and likely always will use appearance as one of the many determinants of how they form groups. The goal is, instead, to form groups in ways that encourage human flourishing "consistent... (shrink)

_Filosofi og etikk har fått en stadig større plass i det offentlige rom i Norge. 2017 ble et år der filosofer sørget for overskrifter i en rekke norske medier. En av sakene som fikk størst oppmerksomhet, var debatten om sorteringssamfunnet og Aksel Braanen Sterris påstand om at personer med Downs syndrom ikke kan leve fullverdige liv. Utsagnet skapte en voldsom debatt og kraftige reaksjoner. Temaet for debatten er interessant i seg selv, men den reiser også spørsmål om hvordan slike debatter (...) endrer filosofiens anseelse og rolle i det offentlige ordskiftet i Norge. I denne artikkelen stiller vi derfor spørsmålet: På hvilken måte har debatten om sorteringssamfunnet i 2017 påvirket forholdet mellom filosofi og samfunn? Som perspektiv for analysen anvender vi tradisjonelle kvalitetskriterier innen filosofi, slik som konsistens, klare premisser og evnen til å klargjøre begreper, fremstille motargumenter og begrunne grenser. Vi finner at debatten om sorteringssamfunnet utvilsomt har gitt filosofien mer oppmerksomhet i det offentlige ordskiftet, og at filosofisk argumentasjon kan bidra til å løfte frem skjulte problemstillinger og sette ord på uuttalte intuisjoner, samt å stimulere til bedre argumentasjon. Dette bør hilses velkommen. Samtidig finner vi at filosofiens tilpasning til mediediskursen fører til at akademiske forbehold tradisjonelle kvalitetskrav og nyansering forsvinner. Dersom skjulte premisser, manglende konsistens, begrepslige og vurderingsmessige uklarheter, samt ignorering av empiriske premisser, motargumenter og viktige implikasjoner blir utbredt, vil resultatet kunne bli en fattigere offentlig debatt, et dårligere samfunn og et svekket omdømme for filosofien. Løsningen må være at vi som fagpersoner er villige til å gjøre klart og grundig rede for våre påstander, perspektiver, premisser, argumenter og konklusjoner, og at vi bør revidere eller trekke dem tilbake dersom vi ikke makter å gjøre dette. Ellers står vi i fare for å gjøre filosofien til en form for «villedningskunst» – en ny form for sofisme – og et lett bytte for platonsk fordømmelse._ __Nøkkelord:_ Filosofisk argumentasjon, offentlig debatt, sorteringssamfunnet, Downs syndrom, konsekvensetikk_ _English summary:_ The role of philosophy in public debate - A content analysis of the debate on the "sorting society" in Norway in 2017 Philosophy and ethics has recently gained increased attention in Norway. During 2017 philosophers hit the headlines in Norwegian media. One of the issues that gained most attention was the debate on “the differentiation/sorting society”. The debate was sparked by Aksel Braanen Sterri’s statement that persons with Downs’s syndrome cannot live full lives related to the issue of introducing non-invasive prenatal screening. While the debate is interesting in terms of its content, we will in this article focus on in what way the debate in 2017 has affected the relationship between philosophy and society, in particular the role and reputation of philosophy in public debates. To analyse the debate we apply traditional quality criteria within philosophy such as consistency, clear premises and the ability to clarify concepts, present counter-arguments and limitations. We find that the debate about “the sorting society” undoubtedly has given philosophy more public attention, and that philosophers can help raise covert or forgotten issues and explicate unspoken intuitions, as well as stimulate improved argumentation. This should be welcomed. At the same time, we find that philosophy's adaptation to the media discourse eliminates academic reservations and nuances. If hidden assumptions, lack of consistency, conceptual and evaluative uncertainties, as well as ignorance of empirical premises, counter-arguments, and important implications become widespread, the result could be a poorer public debate, an impoverished society, and a weakened reputation for philosophy. One solution is that we as professionals are willing to make our claims, perspectives, arguments, and conclusions clear and comprehensible, and that we are willing to revise or withdraw them if we are not able to do so. Otherwise, philosophy may become a form of "art of deception" - a new form of sophism - and an easy target for Platonic criticism. _Keywords:_ Philosophical argumentation, public debate, discrimination, Down's syndrome, consequentialism. (shrink)

R. M. Hare's Nora/ Thinking is surely one of the most compelling defenses of utilitarianism to appear in many years. Hare defends utilitarianism at some length against the objection that it has consequences that are inconsistent with our common-sense or intuitive moral judgments. Hare also offers a positive argument for utiTitarianism. In this paper I shall only concern myself with the latter argument. In the first part of the paper, I shall set out Hare's argument in some detail. In the (...) second part of the paper, I shall suggest criticisms of Hare's argument. I shall argue that two of the assumptions upon.. (shrink)

InMoral Thinking R. M. Hare offers a very influential defense of utilitarianism against intuitive objections. Hare's argument is roughly that utilitarianism conflicts with defensible moral intuitions only in unusual cases and that, in such cases, even defensible moral intuitions are unreliable. This paper reconstructs Hare's arguments and argues that they presuppose the success of his problematic proof of utilitarianism. Contrary to what many have thought, Hare's negative defense of utilitarianism against intuitive objections is not separable from his proof. In the (...) second part of the paper I argue that Hare does not succeed in defending utilitarianism against the objection that it is too demanding. The final section of the paper sketches a substantially revised version of Hare's reply to intuitive objections. So revised, the argument is independent of Hare's proof and affords a plausible answer to the objection that utilitarianism is too demanding. (shrink)

Leslie Graves, Barbara Horan and Alex Rosenberg (1999) have argued that the process of evolution is really deterministic, so we should be instrumentalists about our probabilistic evolutionary theory. I criticize the consistency of their view. I argue that because they are realists towards multiple theories (quantum mechanics and macrophysics) their arguments against realism for another scientific theory fail. The main point of this paper is critical, but in order to set up this criticism I explore the ramifications of realism for (...) multiple theories. Finally, I offer a brief metaphysical justification for realism about multiple theories. This view justifies realism for evolutionary theory, which has been defended by Robert Brandon and Scott Carson (1996). (shrink)

Utilitarianism has recently been criticised on two counts in a recent number of Ratio. According to Terrance C. McConnell, it represents many of the acts which are ordinarily regarded as supererogatory as obligatory, and some of the others as actually wrong. In support of the latter criticism, he gives two kinds of examples: cases of self-sacrifice, and cases of trivial favours. Acts of self-sacrifice performed for the sake of others’ good, but which result in a greater balance of harm (...) over benefits than alternative acts would produce, would, he claims, normally be regarded as heroic, but are forbidden as wrong by the utilitarian: and of two alternative trivial favours, either of which would ordinarily count as supererogatory the utilitarian must treat the more beneficial as an obligation, and the less beneficial alternative as unallowable. These departures from ordinary responses are considered grounds for seriously doubting the adequacy of utilitarianism. (shrink)

Utilitarianism has recently been criticised on two counts in a recent number of Ratio. According to Terrance C. McConnell, it represents many of the acts which are ordinarily regarded as supererogatory as obligatory, and some of the others as actually wrong. In support of the latter criticism, he gives two kinds of examples: cases of self-sacrifice, and cases of trivial favours. Acts of self-sacrifice performed for the sake of others’ good, but which result in a greater balance of harm (...) over benefits than alternative acts would produce, would, he claims, normally be regarded as heroic, but are forbidden as wrong by the utilitarian: and of two alternative trivial favours, either of which would ordinarily count as supererogatory the utilitarian must treat the more beneficial as an obligation, and the less beneficial alternative as unallowable. These departures from ordinary responses are considered grounds for seriously doubting the adequacy of utilitarianism. (shrink)

A founder event occurs when a new population is established from a small number of individuals drawn from a large ancestral population. Mayr proposed that genetic drift in an isolated founder population could alter the selective forces in an epistatic system, an observation supported by recent studies. Carson argued that a period of relaxed selection could occur when a founder population is in an open ecological niche, allowing rapid population growth after the founder event. Selectable genetic variation can actually (...) increase during this founder‐flush phase due to recombination, enhanced survival of advantageous mutations, and the conversion of non‐additive genetic variance into additive variance in an epistatic system, another empirically confirmed prediction. Templeton combined the theories of Mayr and Carson with population genetic models to predict the conditions under which founder events can contribute to speciation, and these predictions are strongly confirmed by the empirical literature. Much of the criticism of founder speciation is based upon equating founder speciation to an adaptive peak shift opposed by selection. However, Mayr, Carson and Templeton all modeled a positive interaction of selection and drift, and Templeton showed that founder speciation is incompatible with peak‐shift conditions. Although rare, founder speciation can have a disproportionate importance in adaptive innovation and radiation, and examples are given to show that “rare” does not mean “unimportant” in evolution. Founder speciation also interacts with other speciation mechanisms such that a speciation event is not a one‐dimensional process due to either selection alone or drift alone. BioEssays 30:470–479, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Combating Hatred provides several practical case studies of teachers, administrators, and school board members who have successfully combated intolerance, prejudice, and hatred in their schools. Furin details innovative ways used in the case studies to create communities that sought the highest social justice values of respect and equality for everyone.

This commentary provides a brief overview of the methods and results presented by Jennifer Kuzma, Pouya Najmaie, and Joel Larson in “Evaluating Oversight Systems for Emerging Technologies: A Case Study of Genetically Engineered Organisms.” It offers suggestions regarding how supplemental information might be used to gain additional insights into the authors' results and how future research could further enhance our understanding of the attributes and outcomes of regulatory oversight for genetically engineered organisms.

Thomas Carson offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date investigation of moral and conceptual questions about lying and deception. Part I addresses conceptual questions and offers definitions of lying, deception, and related concepts such as withholding information, "keeping someone in the dark," and "half truths." Part II deals with questions in ethical theory. Carson argues that standard debates about lying and deception between act-utilitarians and their critics are inconclusive because they rest on appeals to disputed moral intuitions. He defends (...) a version of the golden rule and a theory of moral reasoning. His theory implies that there is a moral presumption against lying and deception that causes harm — a presumption at least as strong as that endorsed by act-utilitarianism. He uses this theory to justify his claims about the issues he addresses in Part III: deception and withholding information in sales, deception in advertising, bluffing in negotiations, the duties of professionals to inform clients, lying and deception by leaders as a pretext for fighting wars, and lying and deception about history, and cases of distorting the historical record by telling half-truths. The book concludes with a qualified defence of the view that honesty is a virtue.Readership: Scholars and advanced students of philosophy, as well as historians and students of history. (shrink)

Although the relations between second formant (F2) onset and F2 vowel are extremely regular and contain important information about place of articulation of the voiced stops, they are not sufficient for its identification. Using quadratic discriminant analysis of a new data set, it is shown that F3 onset and F3 vowel can also contribute substantial additional information to help identify the consonants.