Confessional modes of self-representation have become crucial in feminist epistemologies that broaden and contextualize the location and production of knowledge. In some versions of confessional feminism, the insertion of "I" is reflective, the product of an uncomplicated notion of experience that shuttles into academic discourse a personal truth. In contrast to reflective intrusions of the first person, reflexive confessing is primarily a questioning mode that imposes self-vigilance on the process of self positioning.

Confessional modes of self-representation have become crucial in feminist epistemologies that broaden and contextualize the location and production of knowledge. In some versions of confessional feminism, the insertion of “I” is reflective, the product of an uncomplicated notion of experience that shuttles into academic discourse apersonal truth. In contrast to reflective intrusions of the first person, reflexive confessing is primarily a questioning mode that imposes self-vigilance on the process of self positioning.

This study investigates the effectiveness of pedagogical practices used to teach business ethics. The business community has greatly increased its demands for better ethics education in business programs. Educators have generally agreed that the ethical principles of business people have declined. It is important, then, to examine how common methods of instruction used in business ethics could contribute to the development of higher levels of moral judgment competence for students. To determine the effectiveness of these methods, moral judgment competence levels (...) for undergraduate and graduate students from three institutions were measured and compared based upon the pedagogical method used in a business class. Significant differences were found for moral reasoning and moral competence scores depending on the method used for ethics instruction. Students in classes with more highly integrated ethics coverage scored higher in moral reasoning and moral competence. (shrink)

A growing body of literature has identified potential problems that can compromise the quality, fairness, and integrity of journal peer review, including inadequate review, inconsistent reviewer reports, reviewer biases, and ethical transgressions by reviewers. We examine the evidence concerning these problems and discuss proposed reforms, including double-blind and open review. Regardless of the outcome of additional research or attempts at reforming the system, it is clear that editors are the linchpin of peer review, since they make decisions that have a (...) significant impact on the process and its outcome. We consider some of the steps editors should take to promote quality, fairness and integrity in different stages of the peer review process and make some recommendations for editorial conduct and decision-making. (shrink)

This study uses theories of moral reasoning and moral competence to investigate how university codes of ethics, perceptions of ethical culture, academic pressure from significant others, and ethics pedagogy are related to the moral development of students. Results suggest that ethical codes and student perceptions of such codes affect their perceptions of the ethical nature of the cultures within these institutions. In addition, faculty and student discussion of ethics in business courses is significantly and positively related to moral competence among (...) students. Our results point to the need to further examine the connections among academic institutional structures, ethics pedagogy, and students’ moral development. (shrink)

By the late 1980s, Government and Binding Theory - which was central to almost all research in generative grammar - threatened to become as large and as intricate as the language it described. To counter this, Noam Chomsky introduced a minimalist program with the aim of making explanations of language as simple and general as possible. It has since gained widespread acceptance, to the extent that the most recent first-year textbook in syntax is based on it. One of the areas (...) subjected to this minimalist scrutiny has been phrase structure, the fundamental basis of grammar. This book focuses on the most controversial area of phrase structure, the notion of specifiera notion encompassing the traditional categories of subjects, possessors, determiners, auxiliaries, and adjuncts. It examines what place the notion has in the new theory and how the projection of specifiers is to be eliminated or extended. The contributors draw on empirical, theoretical research in cross-linguistic phenomena and first and second language acquisition. The substantial introductory chapter provides an up-to-date account of minimalist syntactic theory and a critical evaluation of the notion of specifier within it. (shrink)

Objectives—To evaluate a departmental computer system.Design—a. Direct comparison of the time taken to use a manual system with the time taken to use a computer system for lung function evaluation, loan of equipment and production of correspondence. b. Analysis of the accuracy of data capture before and after the introduction of the computer system. c. Analysis of the comparative running costs of the manual and computer systems.Setting—Within a department of respiratory medicine serving a hospital of 1323 beds.Main Outcome Measures—a. Time (...) taken to perform functions with the assistance of computerised methods, in comparison to the manual method used alone. b. Accuracy of data capture. c. Relative running costs.Results—a. The computer system was significantly faster than the manual system for lung function evaluation, loan of equipment, and checking for overdue equipment. The production of correspondence was slightly slower with the computer. b. All outpatient episodes, but only 43 of 65 of inpatient episodes, were captured. Lung function and managerial report data were accurate using both manual and computerised methods. The manual system for equipment loans was inefficient, and use of the computer resulted in the recovery of 221 nebulisers. c. Development costs for 1988–1990 were high. Only £1200 to £1845 per year was recovered directly from staff time saved by the computer but larger savings resulted from changes in work practice. After 10 years the projected deficit is £10 000 per annum in running costs.Conclusions—In comparison with the manual methods, the computer system has shown significant advantages which provide accurate information, with significant favourable effects on working practices. In evaluating computer systems used in clinical practice it is essential to ensure that the projected work practice benefits are achieved without unacceptable costs in staff time, inaccurate data and high financial outlay. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Happiness is the definitive text for researchers and practitioners interested in human happiness. Its editors and chapter contributors are world leaders in the investigation of happiness across the fields of psychology, organizational behaviour, education, philosophy, social policy and economics.

The Physician Payments Sunshine Act requires health care product manufacturers to report to the federal government payments more than $10 to physicians. Bringing unprecedented transparency to medicine, PPSA holds great potential for enabling medical stakeholders to manage conflicts of interest and build patient trust—crucial responsibilities of medical professionalism. The authors conducted six focus groups with 42 physicians in Chicago, IL, San Francisco, CA, and Washington, DC, to explore attitudes and experiences around PPSA. Participants valued the concept of transparency but were (...) wary of the law's design and consequences. They downplayed PPSA's potential and felt it undermined public trust. Showing broad unawareness of COI, they dismissed the notion of industry influence and welcomed company “perks.” Misapprehensions may leave physicians unprepared to advance the opportunities PPSA holds for professionalism. The authors offer recommendations for government and medicine to improve physicians' and other stakeholders' understandings and use of the data. (shrink)

Pragmatism and Justice is an interdisciplinary volume of new and seminal essays by political philosophers, social theorists, and scholars of pragmatism which provides a comprehensive introduction and lasting resource for scholars of pragmatist thought and questions of justice.

Training in ethics and professionalism is a fundamental component of residency education, yet there is little empirical information to guide curricula. The objective of this study is to describe empirically derived ethics objectives for ethics and professionalism training for multiple specialties. Study design is a thematic analysis of documents, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups conducted in a setting of an academic medical center, Veterans Administration, and community hospital training more than 1000 residents. Participants were 84 informants in 13 specialties including (...) residents, program directors, faculty, practicing physicians, and ethics committees. Thematic analysis identified commonalities across informants and specialties. Resident and nonresident informants identified consent, interprofessional relationships, family interactions, communication skills, and end-of-life care as essential components of training. Nonresidents also emphasized formal ethics instruction, resource allocation, and self-monitoring, whereas residents emphasized the learning environment and resident-attending interactions. Conclusions are that empirically derived learning needs for ethics and professionalism included many topics, such as informed consent and resource allocation, relevant for most specialties, providing opportunities for shared curricula and resources. (shrink)

Fifteen leading philosophers explore a set of themes from the pioneering work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin in the history of philosophy. They discuss knowledge, rhetoric, freedom and practical reason, virtue and the good life, ethics and politics in Plato and Aristotle and beyond.

In 2004, the United States Sentencing Commission amended the Federal Sentencing Guidelines to allow firms that create “effective compliance and ethics programs” to receive better treatment if prosecuted for fraud. Effective compliance and ethics, however, appear to be limited to activities focused on complying with the firms’ internal legal and ethical standards. We explored a potential connection between the firms’ external corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors and internal compliance: Is there an organizationally valid relationship between these two firm activities? That (...) is, when organizations demonstrate CSR with behaviors external to the firm, such as employee volunteerism, are their employees more likely to demonstrate uncompromised legal and ethical compliance behavior internally? We collected data from 164 working professionals enrolled in a top-tier MBA program in the southeastern United States regarding their employer-sponsored volunteer activities and their intentions to comply in various organizational compliance vignettes. We found that employer-sponsored volunteerism is associated with uncompromised compliance choices in one of the three vignettes. This finding indicates preliminary support for further inquiry into the relationship within the firm between external CSR behaviors and policies regarding organizational compliance. Post hoc analyses suggest that employer-sponsored volunteerism is strongly associated with a positive organizational identity, but organizational identity is not associated with the significant compliance vignette. This evidence suggests that the underlying mechanism that connects external CSR behaviors and internal compliance intentions is complex and requires future study. (shrink)

Although researchers have paid much attention to the widespread cheating by students during their college careers and the possible sources behind such unethical behaviors, there has been less attention given to the unethical behaviors of faculty. Research on the types of unethical behaviors of faculty has pointed out the unique nature of higher education and the particular pressures placed on faculty as potential drivers of such behavior. In this paper, we examine the factors and underlying cognitive processes that may drive (...) faculty to engage in such behaviors. Specifically, we identify potential drivers of faculty unethical behavior, the cognitive processes activated by these drivers, and the types of behaviors that are considered most ethically questionable among faculty as they carry out their professional roles. We conclude with research considerations and implications of faculty misconduct on the profession. (shrink)

Many bilingual speakers believe they engage in different forms of thinking when they shift languages. This experience of entering different thought worlds can be explained with the hypothesis that languages induce different forms of `thinking-for-speaking'-- thinking generated, as Slobin (1987) says, because of the requirements of a linguistic code. "`Thinking for speaking' involves picking those characteristics that (a) fit some conceptualization of the event, and (b) are readily encodable in the language"[2] (p. 435). That languages differ in their thinking-for-speaking demands (...) is a version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, the proposition that language influences thought and that different languages influence thought in different ways. (shrink)

Fifteen leading philosophers explore a set of themes from the pioneering work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin, in ancient philosophy but also in later periods and in systematic philosophy. The contributors discuss knowledge, rhetoric, freedom and practical reason, virtue and the good life, ethics and politics in Plato and Aristotle and beyond. The editors offer an introduction charting the scholarly contributions of Fine and Irwin and assessing their individual and joint impact, together with a complete bibliography of their writings.

In this article we attempt to situate nursing within the interprofessional care team with respect to processes of ethical practice and ethical decision making. After briefly reviewing the concept of interprofessionalism, the idea of a nursing ethic as ‘unique’ within the context of an interprofessional team will be explored. We suggest that nursing’s distinct perspective on the moral matters of health care stem not from any privileged vantage point but rather from knowledge developed through the daily activities of nursing practice. (...) Because of their position vis-à-vis patients and families in everyday clinical care, nurses cultivate ethical knowledge of at least two forms: (1) relational knowledge; and (2) embodied knowledge. Through the integration of these forms of knowledge, nurses develop a unique moral perspective and can make a meaningful contribution to the realm of ethics in interprofessional care. (shrink)

Although research has found that long-term mindfulness meditation practice promotes executive functioning and the ability to sustain attention, the effects of brief mindfulness meditation training have not been fully explored. We examined whether brief meditation training affects cognition and mood when compared to an active control group. After four sessions of either meditation training or listening to a recorded book, participants with no prior meditation experience were assessed with measures of mood, verbal fluency, visual coding, and working memory. Both interventions (...) were effective at improving mood but only brief meditation training reduced fatigue, anxiety, and increased mindfulness. Moreover, brief mindfulness training significantly improved visuo-spatial processing, working memory, and executive functioning. Our findings suggest that 4 days of meditation training can enhance the ability to sustain attention; benefits that have previously been reported with long-term meditators. (shrink)

This article examines the historical construction of depression over about a hundred years, employing the social life of methods as an explanatory framework. Specifically, it considers how emerging methodologies in the measurement of psychological constructs contributed to changes in epistemological approaches to mental illness and created the conditions of possibility for major shifts in the construction of depression. While depression was once seen as a feature of psychotic personality, measurement technologies made it possible for it to be reconstructed as changeable (...) and treatable. Different types of scaling techniques (Likert versus dichotomous scales) enabled the separation of depressive personality from reactive depression, paving the way for measuring the severity and intensity of emotions. Techniques to test sensitivity to change provided a means of demonstrating the efficacy of new psychoactive drug treatments. Later, more advanced techniques of precision scaling enabled the management of a new measurement problem, clinician unreliability, associated with the growing number of professionals involved in mental health care. Through statistical management of unreliability, the construct of depression has dramatically reduced over this period from hundreds of questionnaire items to potentially just two. Exploring the history of depression through this lens produces an alternative narrative to those that have emerged as a result of medicalisation and the actions of individuals and pressure groups. (shrink)

Objectives—To evaluate a departmental computer system.Design—a. Direct comparison of the time taken to use a manual system with the time taken to use a computer system for lung function evaluation, loan of equipment and production of correspondence. b. Analysis of the accuracy of data capture before and after the introduction of the computer system. c. Analysis of the comparative running costs of the manual and computer systems.Setting—Within a department of respiratory medicine serving a hospital of 1323 beds.Main Outcome Measures—a. Time (...) taken to perform functions with the assistance of computerised methods, in comparison to the manual method used alone. b. Accuracy of data capture. c. Relative running costs.Results—a. The computer system (CS) was significantly faster than the manual system (MS) for lung function evaluation (CS=7.63 min/test, MS=12.25 min/test), loan of equipment (CS=0.40 min/loan, MS=2.07 min/loan), and checking for overdue equipment (CS=0.49 s/record, MS=9 s/record). The production of correspondence was slightly slower with the computer (CS=9.30 min/letter, MS=8.54 min/letter). b. All outpatient episodes, but only 43 of 65 (66%) of inpatient episodes, were captured. Lung function and managerial report data were accurate using both manual and computerised methods. The manual system for equipment loans was inefficient, and use of the computer resulted in the recovery of 221 nebulisers. c. Development costs for 1988–1990 were high (£72 178). Only £1200 to £1845 per year was recovered directly from staff time saved by the computer but larger savings resulted from changes in work practice (£4049–4765). After 10 years the projected deficit is £10 000 per annum in running costs.Conclusions—In comparison with the manual methods, the computer system has shown significant advantages which provide accurate information, with significant favourable effects on working practices. In evaluating computer systems used in clinical practice it is essential to ensure that the projected work practice benefits are achieved without unacceptable costs in staff time, inaccurate data and high financial outlay. (shrink)

This book contains diverse and critical reflections on Richard Rorty’s contributions to ethics, an aspect of his thought that has been relatively neglected. Together, they demonstrate that Rorty offers a compelling and coherent ethical vision. The book's chapters, grouped thematically, explore Rorty’s emphasis on the importance of moral imagination, social relations, language, and literature as instrumental for ethical self-transformation, as well as for strengthening what Rorty called "social hope," which entails constant work toward a more democratic, inclusive, and cosmopolitan society (...) and world. -/- Several contributors address the ethical implications of Rorty’s commitment to a vision of political liberalism without philosophical foundations. Others offer critical examinations of Rorty’s claim that our private or individual projects of self-creation can or should be held apart from our public goals of ameliorating social conditions and reducing cruelty and suffering. Some contributors explore hurdles that impede the practical applications of certain of Rorty's ideas. -/- The Ethics of Richard Rorty will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in American philosophy and ethics. (shrink)

This paper examines faculty perceptions regarding ethical behavior among colleagues and students, and faculty practices with regard to teaching ethics in three institutions over a 4-year period. Faculty reported an uneven pattern of unethical behavior among colleagues over the period. A majority of business courses included ethics, however as both a specific topic on the syllabus and within course discussions. The percentage of courses with ethics discussions increased in 2006, however, the time allocated to these discussions decreased. These results suggest (...) that faculty are approaching ethics instruction less formally, raising concerns over the success of curriculum integration. (shrink)

Is toleration a requirement of morality or a dictate of prudence? What limits are there to toleration? What is required of us if we are to promote a truly tolerant society? These themes--the grounds, limits, and requirements of toleration--are central to this book, which presents the W.B. Morrell Memorial Lectures on Toleration, given in 1986 at the University of York. Covering a wide range of practical and theoretical issues, the contributors--including F.A. Hayek, Maurice Cranston, and Karl Popper--consider the philosophical difficulties (...) inherent in the concept as well as the practical problems of implementing a policy of toleration. Although the contributors differ in their conclusions about the grounds of toleration, they all share a belief in the importance of the concept both historically and in modern society. (shrink)

This report explores the relationship between philosophy and medicine in the U.K. We note that medical training involves very little formal instruction in philosophy and ethics, and that, with few exceptions, philosophers in the U.K. do not contribute to the instruction of physicians or the philosophy of medicine. However, reviewing the problems arising out of recent developments within scientific medicine we find a pressing need for future philosophical analysis in the following areas: psychiatry, organ transplantation, abortion, euthanasia, experiments on living (...) subjects, consent, confidentiality, the relationship between medicine and political authority, and the provisions for social justice in medicine. (shrink)

David Bostock has produced a translation that admirably fulfills the Clarendon Aristotle Series’ goal of making Aristotle’s texts accessible to the Greekless philosophical reader. It is accurate without being overly literal and is probably the best available in English. Despite Bostock’s inelegant rendering of to ti en einai as "a what-being-is", and to ti esti as "a what-it-is", the translation is, on the whole, highly readable and brings out perspicuously the structure of Aristotle’s arguments.

Did protolanguage users use discrete words that referred to objects, actions, locations, etc., and then, at some point, combine them; or on the contrary did they have words that globally indexed whole semantic complexes, and then come to divide them? Our answer is: early humans were forming language units consisting of global and discrete dimensions of semiosis in dynamic opposition. These units of thinking-for-speaking, or ‘growth points’ (GPs) were, jointly, analog imagery (visuo-spatio-motoric) and categorically-contrastive (-emic) linguistic encodings. This discrete-global duality (...) was a new mode of embodied cognition that enabled thinking and acting in new ways: the dawn of protolanguage. Where did this mode of cognition come from? We have some suggestions based on the hypothesis that gestures gained the power to orchestrate actions, manual and vocal, with significances other than those of the actions themselves, giving rise to cognition framed in the proposed dual terms. Note, however, our proposal is not one of the ‘gesture-first’ theories of language origins. Such theories predict what did not evolve: a language of pantomime; rather than what did evolve: an integrated system of synchronized gestures and spoken forms. GP theory is an account of the cognition underlying such an integrated system. A scenario for the evolutionary selection of this cognitive mode is ‘Mead’s Loop’, a model in which one’s cognition is enriched by one’s own gestures, insofar as they are objects in social interactions. (shrink)

Early humans formed language units consisting of global and discrete dimensions of semiosis in dynamic opposition, or ‘growth points.’ At some point, gestures gained the power to orchestrate actions, manual and vocal, with significances other than those of the actions themselves, giving rise to cognition framed in dual terms. However, our proposal emphasizes natural selection of joint gesture-speech, not ‘gesture-first’ in language origin.

Early embryogenesis of Caenorhabditis elegans provides a striking example of the generation of polarity and the partitioning of cytoplasmic factors according to this polarity. Microfilaments (MFs) appear to play a critical role in these processes. By visualizing the distribution of MFs and by studying the consequences of disrupting MFs for short, defined periods during zygote development, we have generated some new ideas about when and how microfilaments function in the zygote.

In museum settings, caregivers support children's learning as they explore and interact with exhibits. Museums have developed exhibit design and facilitation strategies for promoting families' exploration and inquiry, but these strategies have rarely been contrasted. The goal of the current study was to investigate how prompts offered through staff facilitation vs. labels printed on exhibit components affected how family groups explored a circuit blocks exhibit, particularly whether children set and worked toward their own goals, and how caregivers were involved in (...) children's play. We compared whether children, their caregivers, or both set goals as they played together, and the actions they each took to connect the circuits. We found little difference in how families set goals between the two conditions, but did find significant differences in caregivers' actions, with caregivers in the facilitation condition making fewer actions to connect circuits while using the exhibit, compared to caregivers in the exhibit labels condition. The findings suggest that facilitated and written prompts shape the quality of caregiver-child interactions in distinct ways. (shrink)

How do educators better reach their students, better capture their attention and imagination without sacrificing scholarship? Teachable Moments: Essays on Experiential Education examines the pedagogy of Prescott College, a school that has embraced experiential education and been finding success with it for over thirty years. These essays—from scholars in fields as wide ranging as religious studies, environmental science, psychology, dance, literature, adventure education, and peace studies—examine the challenges and, ultimately, the rewards of student-centered education.

Grodzinsky examines Broca's aphasia in terms of some specific grammatical deficits. However, his grammatical models offer no way to characterize the distinctions he observes. Rather than grammatical deficits, his patients seem to have intact grammars but defective modules of parsing and production.