Can philosophy be socially relevant? Dating back to Socrates' Apology, and beyond Marx's argument that pure philosophical theory without practical application was unattainable, philosophers have had many diverse views about their work, including that it is indispensable, that it is socially irrelevant, and even that it is harmful. Tracing the controversy through history, this book examines eleven philosophers' arguments concerning the question of the social relevance of philosophy, placing each thinker in the appropriate cultural and historical context.

Neotraditional organizations are those that exist to sustain indigenous cultures, practices, and institutions as they compete in modern markets. This study examines how a single mechanism, leader transparency, influences change outcomes in neotraditional organizations. We predict that leader transparency will enhance employee cognition- and affect-based trust toward leadership during times of change, thereby supporting relational dynamics within the organization that enable a smooth transition. We also predict that leader transparency will elevate employee acceptance of new technology during change, thereby enhancing (...) desired functional adjustments within the organization. Finally, we predict that leaders who embrace the indigenous heritage of the firm while implementing change will benefit more from being transparent than leaders who ignore the indigenous heritage of the firm. We find overall support for our predictions. These results enhance our understanding of how leaders of neotraditional organizations can manage change successfully while preserving historical cultures, practices, and institutions. (shrink)

This book brings together scholars from a variety of epistemological perspectives to explore the multiple ways in which sexuality does indeed matter in the arena of public education.

Susanne K. Langer contributed an exhaustive account of aesthetics, Feeling and Form, in which she articulated her schema of the virtual and wove together the aesthetic elements of music, visual arts, dance, and literature/theater. This analysis of her work centers on two key concepts within her philosophy: the virtual as the aesthetic effect of the work and the perception of the work through intuition. In this paper, I re-read Langers philosophy through a perspective built on intersections between phenomenology, pragmatism, and (...) post-structuralist theory in order to reveal the relevance of her work to current understandings of how the dancing body produces and conveys meaning. I endeavor to show how her work provides a practical, conceptual system for understanding dance as an a-linguistic form of meaning-making, bodily experience, and knowledge. (shrink)

The purpose of __Aquinas's Ethics__ is to place Thomas Aquinas's moral theory in its full philosophical and theological context and to do so in a way that makes Aquinas readily accessible to students and interested general readers, including those encountering Aquinas for the first time. Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Colleen McCluskey, and Christina Van Dyke begin by explaining Aquinas's theories of the human person and human action, since these ground his moral theory. In their interpretation, Aquinas's theological commitments crucially shape (...) his account of the human person, human capacities for action, and human flourishing. The authors develop a comprehensive picture of Aquinas's thought, which is designed to help students understand how his concept of happiness and the good life are part of a coherent, theologically-informed worldview. Many studies of Aquinas naturally focus on certain areas of his thought and tend to assume a general knowledge of the whole. __Aquinas's Ethics_ _takes the opposite approach: it intentionally links his metaphysics and anthropology to his action theory and ethics to illuminate how the moral theory is built on foundations laid elsewhere. The authors emphasize the integration of concepts of virtue, natural law, and divine grace within Aquinas's ethics, rather than treating such topics in isolation or opposition. Their approach, presented in clear and deliberately non-specialist language, reveals the coherent nature of Aquinas's account of the moral life and of what fulfills us as human beings. The result is a rich and engaging framework for further investigation of Aquinas's thought and its applications. _"___Aquinas’s Ethics_ _is a perfect introduction to one of the most sophisticated and influential ethical systems in Western thought. DeYoung, McCluskey, and Van Dyke capture the brilliant clarity of Aquinas’s moral vision, offering an illuminating perspective true to both the theoretical depth and practical richness of Aquinas’s writings. Those new to Aquinas’s ideas will find this book eminently readable. Everyone—students and scholars alike—will appreciate its direct, distinctive voice and clear philosophical intelligence." —_Scott MacDonald, Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University_ "__Aquinas's Ethics_ _is an excellent contribution to the literature on Aquinas and ethics, providing an integrated and robust account of the relationship between a metaphysics of human nature, natural law theory, and virtue theory. Showing these inextricable connections, it is very much like the work of St. Thomas himself, and suggests why so many lesser theories of ethics are unsatisfying for their lack of depth and comprehensive reach." —_John Kavanaugh, S.J., Saint Louis University_ “DeYoung, McCluskey, and Van Dyke have written the ideal introduction to Aquinas’s ethics, situating it in the broader context of his thinking about human nature and action. Although Aquinas cared more about—and wrote more about—ethics than about any other philosophical topic, it remains the most unjustly neglected aspect of his thought. I know of no better guide to that territory than this book.” —_Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado at Boulder_. (shrink)

I examine some of the main philosophical, conceptual and normative issues in Colleen Murphy’s recent book The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice (2017). I am sceptical whether we need yet another theory of justice to fit particular ‘transitional circumstances’, as Murphy argues. Instead, before presenting an alternative normative, ‘moral’ theory, we need to re-examine the very concept of transitional justice. I examine particularly the following. Firstly, what we really mean by ‘transitional justice’ in various contexts; and I argue that (...) transitional justice is not, as Murphy argues, ‘a special kind of justice’ needed during certain periods of political and social change. Transitional justice is rather an escape route from difficult questions of justice that transitional societies must deal with to maintain the delicate balance between justice and peace. Currently, the concept of transitional justice refers most directly to the overarching and expanding ‘toolkit’ of various mechanisms and processes used in post-conflict reconstruction. It is not quite clear how this toolkit fits with current debates on global, international, regional and local justice. Indeed, I would have preferred that Murphy focus on the complex conceptual foundations of transitional justice, rather than build a theory that conceptually and foundationally remains complex and ambiguous. (shrink)

How should we think about synthetic biology—about the potential benefits and risks of these applications as well as the very idea of designed, extensively genetically modi­fied organisms? The lead article in this report sets out our thinking, but the article is rounded out with nine commentaries that sometimes expand on and sometimes argue with our perspective. Jonathan Wolff, a philosopher at the University College of London and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and Mark Bedau, a philosopher at (...) Reed College and a participant in several projects aimed at de­veloping artificial cells, discuss the potential consequences of synthetic biology and suggest some reasons for a precau­tionary approach to deliberating about the consequences. Jane Calvert, reader in science, technology, and innovation studies at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics working party on emerging biotechnologies, recommends, however, that deliberation about the governance of emerging technologies focus less on consequences than on aims and purposes.Gigi Gronvall, senior associate at the Center for Health Security in the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and David Relman, a microbiologist and immunologist at the Stanford School of Medicine, offer contrasting per­spectives about a question we raise concerning “the eth­ics of knowledge”—the values at stake in generating and disseminating potentially dangerous information. Gaymon Bennett offers some ruminations on the questions we raise about how synthetic biology might change the human re­lationship to nature in morally significant ways. He argues, too, that we can think about the ethics of synthetic biology more effectively by getting “upstream” in another way—by sitting next to the bioengineers doing the work and study­ing their “everyday practice” rather than by paying attention only to what is thought and said about their work. Colleen Grogan, professor at the University of Chicago's School of Social Administration and an expert on democratic partici­patory processes in governance, builds on our comments about the challenge of creating a meaningful public dialog about synthetic biology. Jim Thomas, a researcher with the ETC Group, challenges our view of how the public debate about synthetic biology is trending. And Sarah Carter, a policy analyst with the J. Craig Venter Institute, puts our discussion about synthetic biology in the context of debates about other new products and technologies. (shrink)

Research on moral distress has paid limited attention to nurses’ responses and actions. In a survey of nurses’ perceptions of moral distress and ethical climate, 292 nurses answered three open-ended questions about situations that they considered morally distressing. Participants identified a range of situations as morally distressing, including witnessing unnecessary suffering, being forced to provide care that compromised values, and negative judgments about patients. They linked these situations to contextual constraints such as workload and described responses, including feeling incompetent and (...) distancing themselves from patients. Participants described considerable effort to effect change, calling into question the utility of defining moral distress as an “inability to act due to institutional constraints” or a “failure to pursue a right course of action.” Various understandings of moral distress operated, and action was integral to their responses. The findings suggest further conceptual work on moral distress and effort to support system-level change. (shrink)

Many countries have attempted to transition to democracy following conflict or repression, but the basic meaning of transitional justice remains hotly contested. In this book, Colleen Murphy analyses transitional justice - showing how it is distinguished from retributive, corrective, and distributive justice - and outlines the ethical standards which societies attempting to democratize should follow. She argues that transitional justice involves the just pursuit of societal transformation. Such transformation requires political reconciliation, which in turn has a complex set of (...) institutional and interpersonal requirements including the rule of law. She shows how societal transformation is also influenced by the moral claims of victims and the demands of perpetrators, and how justice processes can fail to be just by failing to foster this transformation or by not treating victims and perpetrators fairly. Her book will be accessible and enlightening for philosophers, political and social scientists, policy analysts, and legal and human rights scholars and activists. (shrink)

The category of jus post bellum is a welcome addition to discussions of the justice of war. But, despite its handy Latin label, we will argue that it cannot be properly understood merely as a set of corollaries from jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Instead, an acceptable theory of justice in the postwar period will have to draw on a broader set of normative ideas than those that have been the focus of the just war tradition. In this (...) paper, we will argue that norms of political reconciliation provide some of the resources we need to address postwar justice. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to assess student perceptions of self-plagiarism. Students at three university campuses offering graduate and undergraduate classes in a residential and online format were queried; 284 students responded. Overwhelmingly, students perceived they owned their own previous published works and over half reported they believed self-plagiarism should not be considered an academic honesty offense. Most faculty members did not provide information about self-plagiarism to their students. Only about one-fourth of the students reported recycling parts of an (...) assignment in the past. Students who took online courses were more likely to have been educated about self-plagiarism than those who took residential courses. Understanding students’ perceptions about academic honesty offenses such as plagiarism can help institutions develop effective policies and interventions. (shrink)

This edited collection recalls the events that led up to the Fitzgerald Inquiry and examines the extraordinary influence the ‘watershed' inquiry has had on police and public sector reform at the state, national and international levels.

In evidence-based medicine (EBM), methodology has become the central means of determining the quality of the evidence base. The “gold standard” method, the randomised, controlled trial (RCT), imbues medical research with an ethos of disinterestedness; yet, as this essay argues, the RCT is itself a rhetorically interested construct essential to medical-professional boundary work. Using the example of debates about methodology in EBM-oriented research on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), practices not easily tested by RCTs, I frame the problem of method (...) as a fundamentally rhetorical problem, situated within a boundary drama, and deeply rooted in the discursive practices of science and medicine. The genre of the RCT report, for example, idealises the research process and can tilt the course of arguments about CAM, while the notion of efficacy can function as a rhetorically mobile boundary object that can redefine the very terms of debate. I suggest herein that arguments about method in CAM debates can productively be read, metonymically, as expressions of more general anxieties in medicine about knowledge and evidence, community values, and professional boundaries; as such, these debates can illuminate some of the rhetorical dimensions of EBM. (shrink)

In an effort to think through possible impossibilities, and enfold current problems within Catholicism into the luminous darkness of the cloud of the im/possible, this response to Catherine Keller's Cloud of the Impossible considers what might happen should Keller's cloud of mindful unknowing and nonseparable difference billow over and through one particular Catholic conundrum: how to respond to the terrifying reality of domestic violence in the context of a marriage defined as indissoluble, imperishable—inescapable.

Abstract Medical futility is commonly understood as treatment that would not provide for any meaningful benefit for the patient. While the medical facts will help to determine what is medically appropriate, it is often difficult for patients, families, surrogate decision-makers and healthcare providers to navigate these difficult situations. Often communication breaks down between those involved or reaches an impasse. This paper presents a set of practical strategies for dealing with cases of perceived medical futility at a major cancer center. Content (...) Type Journal Article Pages 1-8 DOI 10.1007/s10730-011-9168-3 Authors Colleen M. Gallagher, Section for Integrated Ethics in Cancer Care, Unit 1430, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, P.O. Box 301402, Houston, TX 77230-1402, USA Ryan F. Holmes, St. Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA Journal HEC Forum Online ISSN 1572-8498 Print ISSN 0956-2737. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a Capabilities -based Approach to the acceptability and the tolerability of risks posed by natural and man-made hazards. We argue that judgments about the acceptability and/or tolerability of such risks should be based on an evaluation of the likely societal impact of potential hazards, defined in terms of the expected changes in the capabilities of individuals. Capabilities refer to the functionings, or valuable doings and beings, individuals are able to achieve given available personal, material, and (...) social resources. The likely impact of a hazard on individuals’ capabilities should, we argue, be compared against two separate thresholds. The first threshold specifies the minimum level of capabilities attainment that is acceptable in principle for individuals to have in the aftermath of a hazard over any period of time. This threshold captures the level that individuals’ capabilities ideally should not fall below. A risk is acceptable if the probability that the attained capabilities will be less than the acceptable level is sufficiently small. In practice, it can be tolerable for some individuals to temporarily fall below the acceptable threshold, provided this situation of lower capabilities attainment is temporary, reversible, and the probability that capabilities will fall below a tolerability threshold is sufficiently small. This second, tolerable threshold delimits an absolute minimum level of capabilities attainment below which no individual in a society should ever fall, regardless of whether that level of capabilities attainment is temporary or reversible. In this paper, we describe and justify this Capabilities -based Approach to the acceptability and tolerability of risks. We argue that the proposed theoretical framework avoids the limitations in current approaches to acceptable risk. The proposed approach focuses the attention of risk analysts directly on what should be our primary concern when judging the acceptability and the tolerability of risks, namely, how risks impact the well-being of individuals in a society. Also, our Capabilities -based Approach offers a transparent, easily communicable way for determining the acceptability and the tolerability of risks. (shrink)

In their article “Racial Justice Requires Ending the War on Drugs,” Earp, Lewis, and Hart argue for the end of our War on Drugs in order to alleviate our reliance on mass incarceration, harm...

In welchem Verhaltnis steht die Seelenlehre zur Kosmologie in Platons Phaidon?

Hegemonic masculinity, a framework where stereotypically masculine traits are over-emphasized, plays a central role in sport, partly due to an excessive focus on winning. This type of masculinity marginalizes those that do not possess specific traits, including many women and men. I argue sport reform focused on mitigating hypercompetitive attitudes can reduce this harmful and marginalizing hegemonic masculinity in sport. I make this argument first by challenging the dichotomous nature of sport, especially in recognizing that all outcomes are a blend (...) of winning and losing, that ties are relevant and informative outcomes to contests, and that winning and losing do not always tell accurate stories of the outcome. Secondly, I contend that expanding the potential outcomes in sport can help broaden the emphasis of competitive sport to take into account playing well and improving, in terms of both the test and the contest. I conclude that these reforms decrease hegemonic masculinity, making sport better for all. (shrink)

Since the Supreme Court upheld the partial birth abortion ban in 2007, more U.S. abortion providers have begun performing intraamniotic digoxin injections prior to uterine dilation and evacuations. These injections can cause medical harm to abortion patients. Our objective is to perform an in-depth bioethical analysis of this procedure, which is performed mainly for the provider’s legal benefit despite potential medical consequences for the patient.

Following extended periods of conflict or repression, political reconciliation is indispensable to the establishment or restoration of democratic relationships and critical to the pursuit of peacemaking globally. In this book, Colleen Murphy offers an innovative analysis of the moral problems plaguing political relationships under the strain of civil conflict and repression. Focusing on the unique moral damage that attends the deterioration of political relationships, Murphy identifies the precise kinds of repair and transformation that processes of political reconciliation ought to (...) promote. Building on this analysis, she proposes a normative model of political relationships. A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation delivers an original account of the failure and restoration of political relationships, which will be of interest to philosophers, social scientists, legal scholars, policy analysts, and all those who are interested in transitional justice, global politics, and democracy. (shrink)

The development of the curriculum for engineering education should be based on a comprehensive understanding of engineers’ responsibilities. The responsibilities that are constitutive of being an engineer include striving to fulfill the standards of excellence set by technical codes; to improve the idealized models that engineers use to predict, for example, the behavior of alternative designs; and to achieve the internal goods such as safety and sustainability as they are reflected in the design codes. Globalization has implications for these responsibilities (...) and, in turn, for engineering education, by, for example, modifying the collection of possible solutions recognized for existing problems. In addition, international internships can play an important role in fostering the requisite moral imagination of engineering students. (shrink)

The Flint water crisis demonstrates the importance of adequate legal preparedness in dealing with complicated legal arrangements and multiple statutory responsibilities. It also demonstrates the need for alternative accountability measures when public officials fail to protect the public's health and explores mechanisms for restoring community trust in governmental public health.

In the previous four papers in this series, individual versus structural or contextual factors have informed various understandings of moral distress. In this final paper, we summarize some of the key tensions raised in previous papers and use these tensions as springboards to identify directions for action among practitioners, educators, researchers, policymakers and others. In particular, we recognize the need to more explicitly politicize the concept of moral distress in order to understand how such distress arises from competing values within (...) power dynamics across multiple interrelated contexts from interpersonal to international. We propose that the same socio-political values that tend to individualize and blame people for poor health without regard for social conditions in which health inequities proliferate, hold responsible, individualize and even blame health care providers for the problem of moral distress. Grounded in a critical theoretical perspective of context, definitions of moral distress are re-examined and refined. Finally, recommendations for action that emerge from a re-conceptualized understanding of moral distress are provided. (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 608-614, July 2022. In The Shifting Border, Ayelet Shachar argues that the exercise of sovereign power through border regimes no longer tracks territorial boundaries. In my commentary, I first argue that Shachar’s analysis implicitly calls into question the legitimacy of the international order. I then raise the worry that the logic which severs the link between the exercise of sovereignty and territory is the same logic that can be used to (...) justify injustice and atrocity such as ethnic cleansing. Shachar’s normative proposals do not sufficiently recognize or guard against this risk. (shrink)

It is easy to call for public engagement (or dialogue) around difficult, morally fraught policy topics such as synthetic biology, but it is quite another thing to make sure that the deliberation is meaningful, as Kaebnick, Gusmano, and Murray aptly insist it should be. The surveys, focus groups, and public dialogues that have been held about synthetic biology to date show a very low level of public knowledge about it. Focus group findings also suggest that the in­herent uncertainty and complexity (...) surrounding synthetic biology give rise to greater ambivalence moving forward. The Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Hart Research Associates presented respondents with a “balanced description” of synthetic biology in nation­wide phone surveys and eight sessions of focus groups and found that, after respondents received information, the percentage saying that the risks outweighed the ben­efits consistently increased.In my view, the Hart research suggests three very im­portant conclusions about how best to structure public deliberation. First, information about uncertainty may not inform the public in any meaningful way. Second, the purpose of assessing public opinion and conduct­ing public deliberation is crucially important. Third, as Kaebnick, Gusmano, and Murray point out, the type and framing of the information given and the timing of the discussion matters a great deal for shaping the content. (shrink)

This purpose of this qualitative study was to gather detailed information about student perceptions of self-plagiarism and the perceived effectiveness of a brief self-plagiarism video tutorial. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and health sciences doctoral students were queried regarding their knowledge and perceptions of self- plagiarism. The population for this study was new doctoral students, as well as students who had committed self-plagiarism during the semester. Overall, participants reported a specific self-plagiarism intervention was more helpful in preventing self- plagiarism than a (...) traditional plagiarism intervention and that the intervention should be included in initial program orientation. Overwhelmingly, students did not believe self- plagiarism was a serious academic offense and think they own their intellectual property and unpublished works. (shrink)