The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore students’ reactions to a case involving peer rating. We asked undergraduate and graduate students at a Midwestern liberal arts university to rate the performance of a close friend. To explore how role might impact the students’ decisions, we randomly assigned participants to one of two rating scenarios. In the first scenario, students rated a fellow student who had not completed his or her fair share of a group project. In the second (...) scenario, students were asked to play the role of a professor who had to rate a peer. We found significant differences in the overall quantitative ratings assigned by participants in the two scenarios. Participants’ answers also involved more justice considerations in the professor scenario than in the student scenario. The results suggest that students may have difficulty in being honest during peer evaluation processes. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that to adequately capture the complicated relationship between Descartes' work and late medieval thought, philosophers need to think not only about his ideas but also about his presentation and choice of genre. Reading the Meditations as a mere discursive treatise containing a progressive and consistent set of arguments intended to establish a particular philosophical position fails to appreciate the eponymous genre that Descartes explicitly chose to employ in writing them. Instead, we argue that reading the (...) text in light of the long tradition of contemplative meditative literature opens up a radically new way of interpreting the Meditations as a “mystagogical” project of spiritual edification and epistemic and volitional transformation. During such a transformation, the meditator undergoes a series of revelatory experiences structurally similar to those we find in various so-called “mystical” or “mystagogical”literature, in the Christian West. We show how paying attention to these mystagogical aspects of the Meditations can open up new avenues for understanding the connection between the theoretical, practical, and theological aspects of Descartes' thought. Such a reading resolves a number of seemingly glaring problems and peculiarities in the Meditations including the Cartesian circle, and the tension in the Cartesian notion of the freedom of the will. We also argue that the odd detours the meditator takes in the Sixth Meditation through physiology are not mere digressions but rather mark an often overlooked aspect of the mystagogical story – the return to embodiment as a transformed self. Indeed, the overly intellectualist emphasis of contemporary scholars on both the contemplative aspects of mystagogical literature and the epistemological focus of Descartes' project in the Meditations have caused them to largely overlook the ways in which the aim of both medieval and Cartesian meditation involves a transformative re-orientation of the whole person and their understanding of the world – one which has practical, moral, and social consequences that have gone underexplored in discussions of these texts. (shrink)

This paper is a critical study of Kant’s antinomy of saving faith. In the first section, I sketch aspects of Kant’s philosophical account of sin and atonement that help explain why he finds saving faith problematic from the moral point of view. I proceed in the next section to give a detailed exposition of Kant’s remarkable antinomy and of his proposal for resolving it theoretically. In the third and final section, I argue that alternative ways of resolving the antimony both (...) respond to the deepest of Kant’s moral concerns and comport better with the traditional Christian conviction that saving faith can have for its object the historical individual Jesus Christ. (shrink)

This paper is a critical study of Christians among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches. It has four parts. First, I consider several possible responses to G. E. M. Anscombe’s famous challenge to modern moral philosophy in order to provide a framework in which the project of Hauerwas and Pinches can be located. Next I criticize their attempt to eliminate the realm of obligation from morality. Then I examine their treatment of (...) Martha Nussbaum’s work onAristotle in order to explore differences between secular and Christian appropriations of Aristotle. Finally, I discuss their views on the virtue of obedience and criticize their arguments against rival Kantian and divine command views. (shrink)

I have appropriated the terms ‘descriptive’ and ‘revisionary’ metaphysics from P.F. Strawson's Individuals . In the Introduction to that work he draws a broad general distinction between two types of metaphysics. Descriptive metaphysics is concerned to ‘describe the actual structure of our thought about the world’ while revisionary metaphysics is ‘concerned to produce a better structure’. They also differ in that revisionary metaphysics requires justification of some sort whereas descriptive metaphysics does not. Strawson makes this point when he says, ‘Revisionary (...) metaphysics is at the service of descriptive metaphysics’. Thus, the descriptivist has the sober, scientific task of elucidating our extant conceptual schema while the revisionist has the speculative, slightly literary job of inventing a new conceptual schema. (shrink)

Phillips suggests ways to reaffirm the rule of law and the commitment to social justice and to build such values into Western foreign policy, rather than use them as public relations tinsel.

Dawson's provocative comment makes three connected points: (1) to be falsifiable, theories that assume flexible features must constrain their feature creation and mechanisms, (2) the explanatory power of such functional theories is rooted in the properties of their underlying physical mechanisms, and (3) to derive the relevant constraints of feature creation from these mechanisms, it is critical to avoid the scope slip. We will argue here that even though we agree with (1) and (2), (3) confuses two different levels of (...) analysis of computational systems: the functional identification and the physical implementation of relevant constraints. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAn estimated 1.5 million people died in 2007 from waterborne illness. While this number is unacceptably high, it represents a 16 percent improvement over the previous three years. This paper discusses the challenges and solutions to delivering clean water in the developing world. It then discusses safe water projects for a children's dormitory in Mae Nam Khun, Thailand, and for a community in Chirundu, Zambia. Both projects were designed and implemented by the Seattle University student chapter of Engineers Without Borders (...) . These projects had technical challenges that are relatively easy to resolve in the developed world, but were particularly challenging in their contexts. This paper examines how these challenges were met through collaboration with several organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control in the United States and small businesses within the host countries. (shrink)

How far does a researcher’s responsibility extend when an incidental finding is identified? Balancing pertinent ethical principles such as beneficence, respect for persons, and duty to rescue is not always straightforward, particularly in neuroimaging research where empirical data that might help guide decision making are lacking. We conducted a systematic survey of perceptions and preferences of 396 investigators, research participants, and Institutional Review Board members at our institution. Using the partial entrustment model as described by Richardson, we argue that our (...) data supports universal reading by a neuroradiologist of all research MRI scans for incidental findings and providing full disclosure to all participants. (shrink)

Will stakeholder theory continue to transform how we think about business and society? On the occasion of this journal’s 60th anniversary, this review article examines the journal’s role in shaping stakeholder theory to date and suggests that it still has transformative potential. We conducted a bibliometric analysis of co-citations in the literature from 1984 to 2020. Reporting these results, we examine the field’s evolving structure. Contextualized theoretically as an accomplishment of institutional work—the creation of a meaningful and innovative field ideology—this (...) structure is remarkable for how it integrates ethical and behavioral arguments, invites engagement from adjacent domains, and arrives at important insights for business and society. We advance a research agenda consistent with this larger institutional project. (shrink)