In Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale, philosopher Debra Satz takes a penetrating look at those commodity exchanges that strike most of us as problematic. What considerations, she asks, ought to guide the debates about such markets? What is it about a market involving prostitution or the sale of kidneys that makes it morally objectionable? How is a market in weapons or pollution different than a market in soybeans or automobiles? Are laws and social policies banning the (...) more noxious markets necessarily the best responses to them? Satz contends that categories previously used by philosophers and economists are of limited utility in addressing such questions because they have assumed markets to be homogenous. Accordingly, she offers a broader and more nuanced view of markets--one that goes beyond the usual discussions of efficiency and distributional equality--to show how markets shape our culture, foster or thwart human development, and create and support structures of power. (shrink)

While the bioethics literature demonstrates that the field has spent substantial time and thought over the last four decades on the goals, methods, and desired outcomes for service and training in bioethics, there has been less progress defining the nature and goals of bioethics research and scholarship. This gap makes it difficult both to describe the breadth and depth of these areas of bioethics and, importantly, to gauge their success. However, the gap also presents us with an opportunity to define (...) this scope of work for ourselves and to help shape the broader conversation about the impact of academic research. Because of growing constraints on academic funding, researchers and scholars in many fields are being asked to demonstrate and also forecast the value and impact of their work. To do that, and also to satisfy ourselves that our work has meaningful effect, we must understand how our work can motivate change and how that change can be meaningfully measured. In a field as diverse as bioethics, the pathways to and metrics of change will likewise be diverse. It is therefore critical that any assessment of the impact of bioethics research and scholarship be informed by an understanding of the nature of the work, its goals, and how those goals can and ought to be furthered. In this paper, we propose a conceptual model that connects individual bioethics projects to the broader goals of scholarship, describing the translation of research and scholarly output into changes in thinking, practice, and policy. One of the key implications of the model is that impact in bioethics is generally the result of a collection of projects rather than of any single piece of research or scholarship. Our goal is to lay the groundwork for a thoroughgoing conversation about bioethics research and scholarship that will advance and shape the important conversation about their impact. (shrink)

Contemporary social policy toward low-income women in the United States, as evidenced both by Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) and by the AFDC programme that preceded it, is in part an artefact of long-standing conceptions of the nature of citizenship. This view sees citizenship as resting primarily on civil and political rights, not on rights with respect to economic, social, and cultural matters. Drawing on scholarly literature on the development of international human rights regimes, the feminist literature (...) that analyses social policy both comparatively and in terms of US domestic policy, and literature regarding contemporary movements among low-income persons, this paper analyses the efforts of one organization, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), to challenge US policy via international human rights law and international enforcement mechanisms. We will suggest that, despite some of the flaws of the KWRU, their approach is a promising one for low-income women. In particular, we wish to suggest that a broader conception of citizenship that takes into account economic, cultural, and social rights is necessary to create a more equitable and democratic polity for women. (shrink)

Lucid, non-intimidating presentation of propositional logic, propositional calculus and predicate logic by Russian scholar. Topics of concern in a variety of fields, including computer science, systems analysis, linguistics, etc. Accessible to high school students; valuable review of fundamentals for professionals. Exercises (no solutions). Preface. Three appendices. Indices. Bibliogaphy. 14 figures.

In the debate over clinicians’ conscience, there is a greater ethical, legal, and scholarly focus on negative, rather than positive, claims of conscience. This asymmetry produces a seemingly unjustified double standard with respect to clinicians’ conscience under the law. For example, a Roman Catholic physician working at a secular institution may refuse to provide physician-aid-in-dying on the basis of conscience, but a secular physician working at a Roman Catholic institution may not insist on providing physician-aid-in-dying on the basis of conscience. (...) This article outlines arguments against this asymmetry and critiques them for failing to distinguish between positive claims of conscience as positive or negative rights. I suggest the asymmetry debate should be focused on whether positive claims of conscience as positive rights ought to enjoy the same protections as negative claims of conscience. Clarifying the debate in this way helps elucidate some of the best reasons for the asymmetry, which these arguments have not addressed. This article does not take a definitive position on whether the asymmetry is justified, but attempts to bring some focus to the debate by directing arguments against the asymmetry to address the significant differences between positive claims of conscience as positive rights and negative claims of conscience. (shrink)

I take issue with several themes in Ted Toadvine’s lively paper, “Limits of the Flesh,” suggesting that he has significantly misread many of the arguments in The Spell of the Sensuous. I first engage his contention that I disparage reflection and denigrate the written word. Then I take up the assertion that I exclude the symbolic dimension of experience from my account, and indeed that I seek to eliminate the symbolic from our interactions with others. Finally, I refute his claim (...) that my ecophenomenological stance leaves no room for resistance, contradiction, and alterity—elements that are, in fact, central to my understanding of ethics. My reply leads directly into a discussion of one of the crucial concerns of my work: the manner in which the very style of our discourse—our way of wielding words—tacitly works to either enhance, or to stifle, the solidarity between the human community and the more-than-human earth. (shrink)

Our aim in this article is to bring some clarity to the clinical ethics expertise debate by critiquing and replacing the taxonomy offered by the Core Competencies report. The orienting question for our taxonomy is: Can clinical ethicists offer justified, normative recommendations for active patient cases? Views that answer “no” are characterized as a “negative” view of clinical ethics expertise and are further differentiated based on (a) why they think ethicists cannot give justified normative recommendations and (b) what they think (...) ethicists can offer, if they cannot offer recommendations. Views that answer “yes” to the orienting question are characterized as a “positive” view of clinical ethics expertise. Positive views are distinguished according to four additional questions. First (P1), how are those recommendations generated? Second (P2), what is the nature of the recommendations? Third (P3), we ask, how are the recommendations justified? And finally (P4), how are the recommendations communicated? (shrink)

We present an instrument developed to explain to students the concept of the personal ethical threshold (PET). The PET represents an individual’s susceptibility to situational pressure in his or her organization that makes moral behavior more personally difficult. Further, the PET varies according to the moral intensity of the issue at hand, such that individuals are less vulnerable to situational pressure for issues of high moral intensity, i.e., those with greater consequences for others. A higher PET reflects an individual’s greater (...) likelihood of adhering to the morally correct path, even in the face of high situational pressures (personal costs) and low moral intensity (collective importance). PET questionnaires were completed by 506 students representing eight business schools throughout the United States. Relationships between respondents’ PET and their gender, age, and major field of study, as well as the geographical location of their school, are explored. Results indicate that older students have higher PETs and that students attending schools in the northeastern part of the United States have lower PETs. These findings are discussed. It is argued that the PET instrument can be used to help students identify organizational pressures and intrapersonal processes that can impede their moral behavior in organizations. (shrink)

Dissecting Bioethics, edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Hayry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics. The department is dedicated to the idea that words defined by bioethicists and others should not be allowed to imprison people’s actual concerns, emotions, and thoughts. Papers that expose the many meanings of a concept, describe the different readings of a moral doctrine, or provide an alternative angle to seemingly self-evident issues are particularly appreciated. To submit a paper or to discuss (...) a suitable topic, contact Tuija Takala [email protected].:This article examines some of the assumptions and implications associated with the Belmont era context in which the concept of therapeutic misconception was forged. We argue that the justification of therapeutic misconception should be reconsidered based on less paternalistic and more participatory models of research. Finally, we identify conceptual and practical approaches that might better reflect contemporary research practice. (shrink)

A growing number of research misconduct cases handled by the Office of Research Integrity involve image manipulations. Manipulations may include simple image enhancements, misrepresenting an image as something different from what it is, and altering specific features of an image. Through a study of specific cases, the misconduct findings associated with image manipulation, detection methods and those likely to identify such manipulations, are discussed. This article explores sanctions imposed against guilty researchers and the factors that resulted in no misconduct finding (...) although relevant images clearly were flawed. Although new detection tools are available for universities and journals to detect questionable images, this article explores why these tools have not been embraced. (shrink)

We present an instrument developed to explain to students the concept of the personal ethical threshold. The PET represents an individual's susceptibility to situational pressure in his or her organization that makes moral behavior more personally difficult. Further, the PET varies according to the moral intensity of the issue at hand, such that individuals are less vulnerable to situational pressure for issues of high moral intensity, i.e., those with greater consequences for others. A higher PET reflects an individual's greater likelihood (...) of adhering to the morally correct path, even in the face of high situational pressures and low moral intensity. PET questionnaires were completed by 506 students representing eight business schools throughout the United States. Relationships between respondents' PET and their gender, age, and major field of study, as well as the geographical location of their school, are explored. Results indicate that older students have higher PETs and that students attending schools in the northeastern part of the United States have lower PETs. These findings are discussed. It is argued that the PET instrument can be used to help students identify organizational pressures and intrapersonal processes that can impede their moral behavior in organizations. (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents (...) in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

The RWJF public health law faculty fellowship provided an opportunity for legal and public health scholars to come together to develop innovative approaches for teaching public health law in schools of law, public health, medicine, and social work nationally. The fellowship program emphasized the importance of integrating individual change with organizational change as twin pillars of the core competencies necessary for advancing public health law education. This article describes the curriculum and learning formats used throughout the fellowship to guide the (...) fellows' development in the areas of leading change, managing conflict, building collaborative partnerships, and maintaining personal resilience. (shrink)

This paper examines the problem of vituperative feedback from peer reviewers. We argue that such feedback is morally unacceptable, insofar as it humiliates authors and damages their dignity. We draw from social-psychological research to explore those aspects of the peer-review process in general and the anonymity of blind reviewing in particular that contribute to reviewers’ humiliating comments. We then apply Iris Murdoch's ideas about a virtuous consciousness and humility to make the case that peer referees have a moral obligation not (...) to humiliate the authors whose work they review. (shrink)

This book brings together some of the best minds in neurology and philosophy to discuss the concept of personal identity and the moral dimensions of treating ...

Congdon (2017), Giladi (2018), and McConkey (2004) challenge feminist epistemologists and recognition theorists to come together to analyze epistemic injustice. I take up this challenge by highlighting the failure of recognition in cases of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice experienced by victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault. I offer the #MeToo movement as a case study to demonstrate how the process of mutual recognition makes visible and helps overcome the epistemic injustice suffered by victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault. (...) I argue that in declaring “me too,” the epistemic subject emerges in the context of a polyphonic symphony of victims claiming their status as agents who are able to make sense of their own social experiences and able to convey their knowledge to others. (shrink)

The People of Plato is the first study since 1823 devoted exclusively to the identification of, and relationships among, the individuals represented in the complete Platonic corpus. It provides details of their lives, and it enables one to consider the persons of Plato's works, and those of other Socratics, within a nexus of important political, social, and familial relationships. Debra Nails makes a broad spectrum of scholarship accessible to the non-specialist. She distinguishes what can be stated confidently from what (...) remains controversial and--with full references to ancient and contemporary sources--advances our knowledge of the men and women of the Socratic milieu. Bringing the results of modern epigraphical and papyrological research to bear on long-standing questions, The People of Plato is a fascinating resource and valuable research tool for the field of ancient Greek philosophy and for literary, political, and historical studies more generally. In discrete sections, Nails discusses systems of Athenian affiliation, significant historical episodes that link lives and careers of the late fifth century, and their implications for the dramatic dates of the dialogues. The volume includes a rich array of maps, stemmata, and diagrams, plus a glossary, chronology, plan of the agora in 399 B.C.E., bibliography, and indices. (shrink)

This essay argues that the ambiguities of the just war tradition, sifted through a feminist critique, provides the best framework currently available for translating the ethical entitlement to human dignity into concrete feminist political practices. It offers a gendered critique of war that pursues the just war distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets of wartime violence and provides a gendered analysis of the peace which the just war tradition obliges us to preserve and pursue.

This essay examines what it means to be embodied members of the Body of Christ, exploring the metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12:12–27 in terms of gender, race/ethnicity, variant embodiment, abused bodies, and sexual bodies.

In a recent paper in Psychological Science, Kouider and Dupoux reported obtaining unconscious Stroop priming only when subjects had partial awareness of the masked distractor words . Kouider and Dupoux conjectured that semantic priming occurs only when such partial awareness is present. The present experiments tested this conjecture in an affective categorization priming task that differed from Kouider and Dupoux’s in using masked distractors that subjects had practiced earlier as visible words. Experiment 1 showed priming from practiced words when subjects (...) had no partial awareness of those words. Experiment 2 showed that, in the absence of partial awareness, practiced words yielded priming but not-practiced words did not. Experiment 3 corroborated Experiment 1 and 2s results using a different test of partial awareness. These results suggest that unconscious processing of subword elements drives masked semantic priming by practiced words. (shrink)

This paper is divided into three sections. The first presents some examples of the killing/letting die distinction. The second draws a further distinction between what I call negative and positive cases of acting or refraining. Here I argue that the moral significance of the acting/refraining distinction is different for positive and for negative cases. In the third section I apply the above distinction to euthanasia, and argue that mercy killing should be regarded as analogous to positive rather than negative cases. (...) On the basis of this, I then support active rather than passive euthanasia. (shrink)

Challenges Beauvoir's self-portrait and argues that she was a philosopher in her own right.

Having a self is associated with important advantages for an organism.These advantages have been suggested to include mechanisms supporting elaborate capacities for planning, decision-making, and behavioral control. Acknowledging such functionality offers possibilities for obtaining traction on investigation of neural correlates of selfhood. A method that has potential for investigating some of the brain-based properties of self arising in behavioral contexts varying in requirements for such behavioral guidance and control is functional brain imaging. Data obtained with this method are beginning to (...) converge on a set of brain areas that appear to play a significant role in permitting conscious access to representational content having reference to self as an embodied and independent experiencer and agent. These areas have been identified in a variety of imaging contexts ranging from passive state conditions in which they appear to manifest ongoing activity associated with spontaneous and typically ‘self-related’ cognition, to tasks targeting explicitly experienced properties of self, to demanding task conditions where activity within them is attenuated in apparent redirection of cognitive resources in the service of task guidance and control. In this paper, these data will be reviewed and a hypothesis presented regarding a significant role for these areas in enabling degrees of self-awareness and participating in the management of such behavioral control. (shrink)

Jean Pierre Boulé's Sartre, Self Formation and Masculinities argues that we cannot adequately understand Sartre without taking account of the unique ways in which he negotiated the gender mandates of patriarchy. Taking Boulé's cue, I call on Lacan, Cixous and Beauvoir to interrogate Sartre's relationship to women, to his body and to writing. I argue for Boulé's approach but against several of his conclusions. Further, I credit Boulé with providing ammunition for challenging Lacan's universal account of the mirror stage, and (...) for pushing me to read Beauvoir's "Must we Burn Sade?" as a critique of Sartre's betrayal of the erotic's ethical demands. (shrink)