This article examines the sexist work experiences of a sample of women lawyers in a mediumsized midwestern city. Specifically, it focuses on reports of discrimination, gender disparagement, and sexual harassment as components of gendered systems that maintain and reinforce inequalities between men and women on the job. The relationships between these experiences, professional role orientation and structural work characteristics are explored. Respondents report lower levels of discrimination at the more visible and legally protected “front door” than on the job. For (...) the most part, private sector employees and those in token positions report higher levels of sexist behavior. Contrary to expectations, those with careerist orientations report more sexual harassment. The interrelations and implications of these findings for women's careers in the law are discussed. (shrink)

This new book integrates material drawn from a variety of sources – feminist theory, cultural and literary analysis, sociology and art history – in an original discussion of women′s relationship to modern and post–modern culture. The essays in the book challenge the continuing separation of sociological from textual analysis in cultural (and feminist) theory and enquiry. They address critically the question of women′s writing, exploring the idea that women may begin to define their own lives and construct their identities in (...) a patriarchal culture through the very process of writing. They also present a cogent defence of a feminist cultural politics, including a politics of the body. (shrink)

Feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and Marxism, among other critical approaches, have undermined traditional notions of aesthetics in recent decades. But questions of aesthetic judgment and pleasure persist, and many critics now seek a "return to aesthetics" or a "return to beauty." Janet Wolff advances a "postcritical" aesthetics grounded in shared values that are negotiated in the context of community. She relates this approach to contemporary debates about a committed politics similarly founded on the abandonment of certainty. Neither universalist nor relativist, (...) the "aesthetics of uncertainty" provides a discourse on beauty that contemporary critics can engage with and offers a basis for judgment that is committed to assigning value to works of art. Wolff explores her position through a range of topics: the question of beauty in relation to feminist critique; the problematic status of twentieth-century English art, visual representations of the Holocaust, Jewish identity as portrayed by the artist R. B. Kitaj, refugee artists and modernism in 1940s Britain, and the nature and appeal of imagistic thinking in sociology. She addresses the desire for certainty and the timeliness of doubt and concludes with a meditation on the intersection of aesthetics and ethics, arguing that ethical issues are very much implicated in aesthetic discourse. (shrink)

Feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and Marxism, among other critical approaches, have undermined traditional notions of aesthetics in recent decades. But questions of aesthetic judgment and pleasure persist, and many critics now seek a "return to aesthetics" or a "return to beauty." Janet Wolff advances a "postcritical" aesthetics grounded in shared values that are negotiated in the context of community. She relates this approach to contemporary debates about a committed politics similarly founded on the abandonment of certainty. Neither universalist nor relativist, (...) the "aesthetics of uncertainty" provides a discourse on beauty that contemporary critics can engage with and offers a basis for judgment that is committed to assigning value to works of art. Wolff explores her position through a range of topics: the question of beauty in relation to feminist critique; the problematic status of twentieth-century English art, visual representations of the Holocaust, Jewish identity as portrayed by the artist R. B. Kitaj, refugee artists and modernism in 1940s Britain, and the nature and appeal of imagistic thinking in sociology. She addresses the desire for certainty and the timeliness of doubt and concludes with a meditation on the intersection of aesthetics and ethics, arguing that ethical issues are very much implicated in aesthetic discourse. (shrink)

Originally presented as the author's thesis, University of Birmingham, 1972. Bibliography: p. 139-146. Includes index.

Crisis demands -- Crisis narratives -- Crisis: refrain!

Is life a purely physical process? What is human nature? Which of our traits is essential to us? In this volume, Daniel McShea and Alex Rosenberg – a biologist and a philosopher, respectively – join forces to create a new gateway to the philosophy of biology; making the major issues accessible and relevant to biologists and philosophers alike. Exploring concepts such as supervenience; the controversies about genocentrism and genetic determinism; and the debate about major transitions central to contemporary thinking (...) about macroevolution; the authors lay out the broad terms in which we should assess the impact of biology on human capacities, social institutions and ethical values. (shrink)

A feminist primer for philosophers of science -- The legacy of twentieth century philosophy of science -- What feminist science studies can offer -- Challenges from every direction -- The prospects of twenty-first century philosophy of science.

Is it time to take a break from feminism? In this pathbreaking book, Janet Halley reassesses the place of feminism in the law and politics of sexuality. She argues that sexuality involves deeply contested and clashing realities and interests, and that feminism helps us understand only some of them. To see crucial dimensions of sexuality that feminism does not reveal--the interests of gays and lesbians to be sure, but also those of men, and of constituencies and values beyond the (...) realm of sex and gender--we might need to take a break from feminism. Halley also invites feminism to abandon its uncritical relationship to its own power. Feminists are, in many areas of social and political life, partners in governance. To govern responsibly, even on behalf of women, Halley urges, feminists should try taking a break from their own presuppositions. Halley offers a genealogy of various feminisms and of gay, queer, and trans theories as they split from each other in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. All these incommensurate theories, she argues, enrich thinking on the left not despite their break from each other but because of it. She concludes by examining legal cases to show how taking a break from feminism can change your very perceptions of what's at stake in a decision and liberate you to decide it anew. (shrink)

In 1978, as the protests against the Shah of Iran reached their zenith, philosopher Michel Foucault was working as a special correspondent for _Corriere della Sera_ and _le Nouvel Observateur_. During his little-known stint as a journalist, Foucault traveled to Iran, met with leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini, and wrote a series of articles on the revolution. _Foucault and the Iranian Revolution _is the first book-length analysis of these essays on Iran, the majority of which have never before appeared in English. (...) Accompanying the analysis are annotated translations of the Iran writings in their entirety and the at times blistering responses from such contemporaneous critics as Middle East scholar Maxime Rodinson as well as comments on the revolution by feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. In this important and controversial account, Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson illuminate Foucault's support of the Islamist movement. They also show how Foucault's experiences in Iran contributed to a turning point in his thought, influencing his ideas on the Enlightenment, homosexuality, and his search for political spirituality. _Foucault and the Iranian Revolution_ informs current discussion on the divisions that have reemerged among Western intellectuals over the response to radical Islamism after September 11. Foucault's provocative writings are thus essential for understanding the history and the future of the West's relationship with Iran and, more generally, to political Islam. In their examination of these journalistic pieces, Afary and Anderson offer a surprising glimpse into the mind of a celebrated thinker. (shrink)

Martin E. Rosenberg -/- The Gift of Silence: Towards an Anthropology of Jazz Improvisation as Neuro-Resistance. -/- ABSTRACT: -/- This essay addresses how the complex processes that occur during jazz improvisation enact behaviors that resemble the logic of gift exchange first described by Marcel Mauss. It is possible to bring to bear structural, sociological, political economical, deconstructive or even ethical approaches to what constitutes gift exchange during the performance of jazz. Yet, I would like to shift from focusing this (...) analysis of jazz improvisation with reference to the language of music as symbolic action (which all of these approaches require), to grounding improvisation in embodied and distributed cognition, the performance of which begins with a ritual gift of silence. By silence, I refer to the embodied, yet shared pure duration as felt synchrony within an individual performer, that extends to the members of an ensemble. Thus, I refer to both aesthetic and micro-political implications of embodied, yet also distributed musical cognition in real time. -/- For jazz musicians, embodied silence becomes the initial condition for processes of cognitive bifurcation. For it is bifurcation that attracts us to jazz in the first place. Here I expand my previous work establishing similarities in the behavior of bifurcating systems in physical and cognitive sciences to the unfolding of ambiguity in real time during improvisation with respect to polyphony, polytonality and polyrhythms in the history of jazz from Charlie Parker to Ornette Coleman. We can therefore re-conceptualize jazz improvisation as a subversive antidote for processes of determination identified in a sub-discipline of cultural studies called “cognitive capitalism.” By examining silence from this anthropological perspective, we can conceive of jazz performance as a ritualized resistance to top-down cognitive control immanent with social and digital networks. The ritual enactment that is jazz improvisation points towards an aesthetics of bifurcation that is simultaneously a micro-politics of neuro-resistance. In other words, I argue that freedom of thought requires freedom from thought as an initial condition. -/- Yet, I emphasize the empirical rather than mystical grounds to this gift of silence. The valorization of silence by jazz musicians is not simply etiquette, an ethics of reciprocity for performers exchanging “riffs,” but an initial condition that jazz performers (and, I would argue, listeners) experience in their bodies, thus linking embodied cognition to a collective field of cultural production that emerges from each embodied individual, and yet also pervades the ensemble in ways reminiscent of feedback loops in complex systems. The recent and remarkable research on music and the brain has demonstrated that it is now possible to describe jazz improvisation as possessing both embodied and distributed cognitive properties. The emergent neuronal ensemble behavior within the individual that is visible in jazz improvisors, discovered by the neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins led by Charles Limb, bears striking resemblance to the interactive behaviors of the jazz ensemble itself. Thus, it is by recourse to recent research by myself and others into the cognitive neuroscience of music generally, and jazz improvisation specifically, that the empirical grounds for an anthropology of neuro-resistance become visible. (shrink)

This study investigated effects of codes of ethics on perceptions of ethical behavior. Respondents from companies with codes of ethics (n = 465) rated role set members (top management, supervisors, peers, subordinates, self) as more ethical and felt more encouraged and supported for ethical behavior than respondents from companies without codes (n = 301). Key aspects of the organizational climate, such as supportiveness for ethical behavior, freedom to act ethically, and satisfaction with the outcome of ethical problems were impacted by (...) the presence of an ethics code. The mere presence of a code of ethics appears to have a positive impact on perceptions of ethical behavior in organizations, even when respondents cannot recall specific content of the code. (shrink)

This collection of contributions from both linguists and lawyers brings a pragmatic perspective to the linguistic basis for legal meaning and for finding a norm by which to decide a case. That is, it turns from notions of linguistic meaning as residing in the text, as literal meaning waiting to be dug out, to focus instead on how readers infer pragmatic meaning, and on the kinds of inferencing that characterise legal discourse.

This study investigated effects of codes of ethics on perceptions of ethical behavior. Respondents from companies with codes of ethics (n = 465) rated role set members (top management, supervisors, peers, subordinates, self) as more ethical and felt more encouraged and supported for ethical behavior than respondents from companies without codes (n = 301). Key aspects of the organizational climate, such as supportiveness for ethical behavior, freedom to act ethically, and satisfaction with the outcome of ethical problems were impacted by (...) the presence of an ethics code. The mere presence of a code of ethics appears to have a positive impact on perceptions of ethical behavior in organizations, even when respondents cannot recall specific content of the code. (shrink)

This article reports the results of an exploratory investigation of a particular area of moral tension experienced by MBA students in a graduate school of business. During the first phase of the study, MBA students'' own perceptions about the moral climate and culture of the business school were examined. The data gathered in this first part of the study indicate that the students recognize that a central part of this culture is constituted by a shared familiarity with a set of (...) institutionally reinforced premises about human behavior and motivation including the ideas that: 1) people are self-interested utility-maximizers, 2) individuals should be unimpeded in their pursuit of their own self-interest through economic transactions, and 3) virtually all human interactionsare economic transactions. The data further indicated that the business students experience a degree of tension between this ethic of self-maximizing and the everyday ethics prevalent in our broader culture, in which altruism and selflessness are central elements. The final section of the study was an effort to see whether and how these institutionally sanctioned premises were integrated into the students'' arguments about the relationship between self-interest and social responsibility. (shrink)

Social and behavioral scientists — that is, students of human nature — nowadays hardly ever use the term ‘human nature’. This reticence reflects both a becoming modesty about the aims of their disciplines and a healthy skepticism about whether there is any one thing really worthy of the label ‘human nature’. For some feature of humankind to be identified as accounting for our ‘nature’, it would have to reflect some property both distinctive of our species and systematically influential enough to (...) explain some very important aspect of our behavior. Compare: molecular structure gives the essence or the nature of water just because it explains most of its salient properties. Few students of the human sciences currently hold that there is just one or a small number of such features that can explain our actions and/or our institutions. And even among those who do, there is reluctance to label their theories as claims about ‘human nature’. Among anthropologists and sociologists, the label seems too universal and indiscriminant to be useful. The idea that there is a single underlying character that might explain similarities threatens the differences among people and cultures that these social scientists seek to uncover. Even economists, who have explicitly attempted to parlay rational choice theory into an account of all human behavior, do not claim that the maximization of transitive preferences is ‘human nature’. I think part of the reason that social scientists are reluctant to use ‘human nature’ is that the term has traditionally labeled a theory with normative implications as well as descriptive ones. (shrink)

This paper proposes communities of practice (CoP) as a process to build moral resilience in healthcare settings. We introduce the starting point of moral distress that arises from ethical challenges when actions of the healthcare professional are constrained. We examine how situations such as the current COVID-19 pandemic can exponentially increase moral distress in healthcare professionals. Then, we explore how moral resilience can help cope with moral distress. We propose the term collective moral resilience to capture the shared capacity arising (...) from mutual engagement and dialogue in group settings, towards responding to individual moral distress and towards building an ethical practice environment. Finally, we look at CoPs in healthcare and explore how these group experiences can be used to build collective moral resilience. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of information overload have important precedents during the years 1550-1750. An examination of the early modern period in Europe, including work of humanism, science, theology, and popular encyclopedias demonstrates that perceptions of information overload have as much to do with the ways in which knowledge is represented as with any quantitative measurers in the production of new texts, ideas, or facts. Key figures in this account include Francis Bacon, Conrard Gesner, Francesco Sacchini, Johann Heinrich Alsted, Casoar Bauhin, Rempert (...) Dodeones, Samuel Bochrt, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, John Wilkins, Jonathan Swift, Ephraim Chambers, Smauel Johnson, Denis Diderot, and Louis-Sébastian Mercier. (shrink)

Families play an essential role in deceased organ procurement. As the person cannot directly communicate his or her wishes regarding donation, the family is often the only source of information regarding consent or refusal. We provide a systematic description and analysis of the different roles the family can play, and actions the family can take, in the organ procurement process across different jurisdictions and consent systems. First, families can inform or update healthcare professionals about a person’s donation wishes. Second, families (...) can authorize organ procurement in the absence of deceased’s preferences and the default is not to remove organs, and oppose donation where there is no evidence of preference but the default is to presume consent; in both cases, the decision could be based on their own wishes or what they think the deceased would have wanted. Finally, families can overrule the known wishes of the deceased, which can mean preventing donation, or permitting donation when the deceased refused it. We propose a schema of 4 levels on which to map these possible family roles: no role, witness, surrogate, and full decisional authority. We conclude by mapping different jurisdictions onto this schema to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the consent system for organ donation and some important nuances about the role of families. This classificatory model aims to account for the majority of the world’s consent systems. It provides conceptual and methodological guidance that can be useful to researchers, professionals, and policymakers involved in organ procurement. (shrink)

Aunque a primera vista lo cómico y lo sagrado parecen categorías excluyentes y, por qué no, opuestas, a lo largo de la historia encontramos ejemplos en los que tales manifestaciones humanas se entrelazan de manera directa y contundente. En este artículo analizaremos la relación entre estas dos categorías a la luz del uso del sarcasmo, la ironía y la hilaridad presentes en la obra de Issa Kobayashi, uno de los grandes exponentes del haikai zen. Comenzaremos con una delimitación de los (...) rasgos esenciales de lo cómico. Luego nos concentraremos en la convivencia del humor y la tradición religiosa del zen, y finalmente rastrearemos la comicidad sagrada en la obra del poeta japonés. (shrink)

Posthuman affirmative ethics relies upon a fluid, nomadic conception of the ethical subject who develops affective, material and immaterial connections to multiple others. Our purpose in this paper is to consider what posthuman affirmative business ethics would look like, and to reflect on the shift in thinking and practice this would involve. The need for a revised understanding of human–animal relations in business ethics is amplified by crises such as climate change and pandemics that are related to ecologically destructive business (...) practices such as factory farming. In this analysis, we use feminist speculative fiction as a resource for reimagination and posthuman ethical thinking. By focusing on three ethical movements experienced by a central character named Toby in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, we show how she is continually becoming through affective, embodied encounters with human and nonhuman others. In the discussion, we consider the vulnerability that arises from openness to affect which engenders heightened response-ability to and with, rather than for, multiple others. This expanded concept of subjectivity enables a more relational understanding of equality that is urgently needed in order to respond affirmatively to posthuman futures. (shrink)

To analyze which ethically relevant biases have been identified by academic literature in artificial intelligence algorithms developed either for patient risk prediction and triage, or for contact tracing to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, to specifically investigate whether the role of social determinants of health have been considered in these AI developments or not. We conducted a scoping review of the literature, which covered publications from March 2020 to April 2021. ​Studies mentioning biases on AI algorithms developed for contact (...) tracing and medical triage or risk prediction regarding COVID-19 were included. From 1054 identified articles, 20 studies were finally included. We propose a typology of biases identified in the literature based on bias, limitations and other ethical issues in both areas of analysis. Results on health disparities and SDOH were classified into five categories: racial disparities, biased data, socio-economic disparities, unequal accessibility and workforce, and information communication. SDOH needs to be considered in the clinical context, where they still seem underestimated. Epidemiological conditions depend on geographic location, so the use of local data in studies to develop international solutions may increase some biases. Gender bias was not specifically addressed in the articles included. The main biases are related to data collection and management. Ethical problems related to privacy, consent, and lack of regulation have been identified in contact tracing while some bias-related health inequalities have been highlighted. There is a need for further research focusing on SDOH and these specific AI apps. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Previous research has consistently highlighted the importance of stakeholder engagement in identifying and developing solutions to ethical challenges in genomic research, especially in Africa where such research is relatively new. In this paper, we examine what constitutes good ethical practice in research, from the perspectives of genomic research participants in Uganda. Our study was part of a multi-site qualitative study exploring these issues in Uganda, Ghana and Zambia. We purposively sampled various stakeholders including genomic research participants, researchers, research ethics (...) committee members, policy makers and community members. This paper presents the findings from in-depth interviews with 27 people with diabetes who had participated in a diabetes genomic study. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews. Manual thematic content analysis was conducted using a framework approach. Findings indicate three key requirements that research participants see as vital for genomic research to be more responsive to research participants’ needs and contextual realities: (1) de-emphasising the role of experts and institutions in the consenting process, (2) clarity about the timing and nature of feedback both of findings relevant to the health of individuals and about the broad progress of the study, and (3) more effective support for research participants during and after the study. (shrink)

The F-twist is giving way to the methodology of scientific research programs. Milton Friedman's “Methodology for Economics” is being supplanted as the orthodox rationale for neoclassical economics by Imre Lakatos' account of scientific respectability. Friedman's instrumentalist thesis that theories are to be judged by the confirmation of their consequences and not the realism of their assumptions has long been widely endorsed by economists, under Paul Samuelson's catchy rubric “the F-twist.” It retains its popularity among economists who want no truck with (...) methodology, but among the increasing number of able economists who are writing on methodology the F-twist has been surrendered, not so much because these writers have decided it is false, as because something better has finally come along. (shrink)

We suggest that policies will be less popular when individuals personally have to pay for them rather than when others have to pay (i.e., a Not Out of My Bank Account or NOMBA effect). Dual process models of persuasion suggest that personally having to pay would motivate scrutiny of persuasive messages making it essential to use effective science communication tactics when using climate science to support climate change policies. A pilot experiment (N = 186) and main study (N = 758) (...) support a NOMBA effect with less policy support (Pilot study) and lower recommended fees (Main study) for a policy that would require participants, rather than another group, to pay a fee for community solar panels. Consistent with dual process models and suggesting systematic processing, only when participants would have to pay the fee, messages using strong (vs. weak) science communication tactics increased support for policies (Pilot study), increased the favorability of thoughts about the policy (Main study) and these thoughts subsequently predicted policy support (Main study). Inconsistent with propositions that information about expert sources would be a heuristic or bolster science messages, expert consensus information did not influence thoughts or policy support in any study condition. Efforts to understand climate change policy support would benefit from attending to research on dual process models of persuasion, including understanding how different types and degree of outcome relevance can alter how people process science information used to bolster support for climate change policies. (shrink)

Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is the doctrine that what makes something a mental state of a particular type does not depend on its internal constitution, but rather on the way it functions, or the role it plays, in the system of which it is a part. This doctrine is rooted in Aristotle's conception of the soul, and has antecedents in Hobbes's conception of the mind as a “calculating machine”, but it has become fully articulated (and popularly endorsed) only (...) in the last third of the 20th century. Though the term ‘functionalism’ is used to designate a variety of positions in a variety of other disciplines, including psychology, sociology, economics, and architecture, this entry focuses exclusively on functionalism as a philosophical thesis about the nature of mental states. (shrink)

This book attempts to understand regret, an emotion that bridges the actual and the possible, the past and present. Through a wealth of sources it takes up questions of the meaning of regret and how it differs from similar experiences such as remorse and guilt; what sorts of things people most often regret; and the roots of regret in circumstances and in who we are. It takes issue with the view common both in this culture and in leading theories of (...) decision that regret is irrational and dysfunctional - specifying the surprising benefits of regret, its great and good sense. (shrink)

Background In the wake of mandates for biomedical research to increase participation by members of historically underrepresented populations, community engagement (CE) has emerged as a key intervention to help achieve this goal.Methods Using interviews, observations, and document analysis, we examine how stakeholders in precision medicine research understand and seek to put into practice ideas about who to engage, how engagement should be conducted, and what engagement is for.Results We find that ad hoc, opportunistic, and instrumental approaches to CE exacted significant (...) consequences for the time and resources devoted to engagement and the ultimate impacts it has on research. Critical differences emerged when engagement and research decisionmaking were integrated with each other versus occurring in parallel, separate parts of the study organization, and whether community members had the ability to determine which issues would be brought to them for consideration or to revise or even veto proposals made upstream based on criteria that mattered to them. CE was understood to have a range of purposes, from instrumentally facilitating recruitment and data collection, to advancing community priorities and concerns, to furthering long-term investments in relationships with and changes in communities. These choices about who to engage, what engagement activities to support, how to solicit and integrate community input into the workflow of the study, and what CE was for were often conditioned upon preexisting perceptions and upstream decisions about study goals, competing priorities, and resource availability.Conclusions Upstream choices about CE and constraints of time and resources cascade into tradeoffs that often culminated in “pantomime community engagement.” This approach can create downstream costs when engagement is experienced as improvised and sporadic. Transformations are needed for CE to be seen as a necessary scientific investment and part of the scientific process. (shrink)