Ecological sciences have informed environmental ethics from its inception as a scholarly pursuit in the 1970s-so much so that we now have ecological ethics, Deep Ecology, and ecofeminism. Throughout the 20th century, however, most ecologists remained enthralled by the myth that science is value-free. Closer study of science by philosophers reveals that metaphors are inescapable and cognitively indispensable to science, but that metaphors are value-laden. As we confront the enormous challenges of the 21st century-the prospect of a 6th mass extinction, (...) acidifying oceans, rising sea level, and global warming-ecologists can no longer remain aloof from public discourse about what actions to take to address these problems. And that means that 21st century ecologists understand that right action is guided by ethics. However, integration of ethical ideas into academic curricula and ecologists' research agendas is still meager. Aldo Leopold, 1947 President of the Ecological Society of America, keenly understood that latent in ecological sciences is an organizing worldview, with implications for reordering societal values and expanding ethics to embrace "soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land." Going beyond Leopold's land ethic, contemporary environmental ethics includes eco-social justice and the realization that as important as biodiversity is cultural diversity, inter-cultural, inter-institutional, and international collaboration requiring a novel approach known as biocultural conservation. Right action in confronting the challenges of the 21st century requires science and ethics to be seamlessly integrated. Contemporary science proposes the concept of the inclusive ecosystem that recognizes humans as components. In this book, this "inclusive conviction is endorsed, fortunately, by over forty contributors sharing their accounts, of living well in place, combining nature and culture, residing on landscapes: biocultural ethics" (Holmes Rolston, III). (shrink)

Data fraud and selective reporting both present serious threats to the credibility of science. However, there remains considerable disagreement among scientists about how best to sanction data fraud, and about the ethicality of selective reporting. The public is arguably the largest stakeholder in the reproducibility of science; research is primarily paid for with public funds, and flawed science threatens the public’s welfare. Members of the public are able to make meaningful judgments about the morality of different behaviors using moral intuitions. (...) Legal scholars emphasize that to maintain legitimacy, social control policies must be developed with some consideration given to the public’s moral intuitions. Although there is a large literature on popular attitudes toward science, there is no existing evidence about public opinion on data fraud or selective reporting. We conducted two studies—a survey experiment with a nationwide convenience sample, and a follow-up survey with a representative sample of US adults —to explore community members’ judgments about the morality of data fraud and selective reporting in science. The findings show that community members make a moral distinction between data fraud and selective reporting, but overwhelmingly judge both behaviors to be immoral and deserving of punishment. Community members believe that scientists who commit data fraud or selective reporting should be fired and banned from receiving funding. For data fraud, most Americans support criminal penalties. Results from an ordered logistic regression analysis reveal few demographic and no significant partisan differences in punitiveness toward data fraud. (shrink)

There is a long-standing debate in the literature on moral responsibility about the general idea that there is some sort of control condition on our assignment of blameworthiness to agents. In this paper, I try to defend the claims of a very ordinary, everyday locution to offer the best means of formulating a version of the control principle that stands some chance of fitting with our ethical intuitions. The locution whose merits I champion is the ‘can’t help it’ locution, as (...) used in the phrase ‘I can’t help it’, I couldn’t help it’, ‘I can’t help that’, etc.. Because the locution is in a certain sense colloquial, it tends to be avoided in philosophical discussion when getting down to precise details – though it often appears in initial, stage-setting statements of the philosophical problems surrounding the issue of control and blame. My claim here will be that none of the commonly utilised locutions with which it tends to be replaced is able properly to express the sorts of things we can express by saying, for example, ‘I couldn’t help it’. Being able to help it, I shall argue, is a distinctive and important power, and for a number of significant reasons, no other way of saying what kind of control is needed for blameworthiness will do as well. (shrink)

This article describes Chester Barnard, the author of The Functions of the Executive, one of the twentieth century’s most influential books on management and leadership. The book emphasizes competence, moral integrity, rational stewardship, professionalism, and a systems approach, and was written for posterity. Barnard emphasized the role of the manager as both a professional and as a steward of the corporation. His teachings drew on personal insights as a senior executive of AT&T, which saw good governance as the primary (...) means of winning public acceptance of its telecommunications monopoly. Barnard provided a conceptual scheme of the theory of organization based on the following structural concepts: the individual and bounded rationality, cooperation, formal organization, and informal organization. The principal dynamic concepts include communication, consent theory of authority, free will, the decision process, dynamic equilibrium and the inducement–contributions balance, and leadership, executive responsibility, and moral codes. (shrink)

T. A. Cavanaugh defends double-effect reasoning (DER), also known as the principle of double effect. DER plays a role in anti-consequentialist ethics (such as deontology), in hard cases in which one cannot realize a good without also causing a foreseen, but not intended, bad effect (for example, killing non-combatants when bombing a military target). This study is the first book-length account of the history and issues surrounding this controversial approach to hard cases. It will be indispensable in theoretical ethics, applied (...) ethics (especially medical and military), and moral theology. It will also interest legal and public policy scholars. (shrink)

Ghazzālī, 1058-1111; views on behaviorism ; religious aspects; Islam.

Sanskrit text with Hindi verse translation of Aṣṭāvakragītā, work on Vedanta philosophy.

In early major works, Cassirer and Schlick differently recast traditional doctrines of the concept and of the relation of concept to intuitive content along the lines of recent epistemological discussions within the exact sciences. In this, they attempted to refashion epistemology by incorporating as its basic principle the notion of functional coordination, the theoretical sciences' own methodological tool for dispensing with the imprecise and unreliable guide of intuitive evidence. Examining their respective reconstructions of the theory of knowledge provides an axis (...) of comparison along which to locate Cassirer's Neo-Kantianism and Schlick's pre-positivist empiricism, and an immediate background of contrast to the subsequent rise of logical empiricism. For in the absence of intuition all our knowledge is without objects and therefore remains entirely empty. (Kant A62/B87) And how awkward is the human mind in diving the nature of things when forsaken by the analogy of what we see and touch directly? (Boltzmann 1895). (shrink)

Classical text on Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika philosophy; with Āloka Sanskrit commentary.

T. A. Cavanaugh's Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession articulates the Oath as establishing the medical profession's unique internal medical ethic - in its most basic and least controvertible form, this ethic mandates that physicians help and not harm the sick. Relying on Greek myth, drama, and medical experience (e.g., homeopathy), the book shows how this medical ethic arose from reflection on the most vexing medical-ethical problem -- injury caused by a physician -- and argues (...) that deliberate iatrogenic harm, especially the harm of a doctor choosing to kill (physician assisted suicide, euthanasia, abortion, and involvement in capital punishment), amounts to an abandonment of medicine as an exclusively therapeutic profession. The book argues that medicine as a profession necessarily involves stating before others what one stands for: the good one seeks and the bad one seeks to avoid on behalf of the sick, and rejects the view that medicine is purely a technique lacking its own unique internal ethic. It concludes noting that medical promising (as found in the White Coat Ceremony through which U. S. medical students matriculate) implicates medical autonomy which in turn merits respect, including honoring professional conscientious objections. (shrink)

Exgesis on Mīmāṃsābhāṣya, Śabarasvāmi's commentary on Jaiminī's Mīmāṃsāsūtra, basic aphoristic work of the Mīmāṃsā school in Hindu philosophy; includes supercommentaries.

Jaina interpretation of Tarkasaṅgraha of Annambhaṭṭa, work on Hindu logic ; includes Sanskrit commentary.

The author, a cardiac surgeon specialising in heart transplantation, argues that excellence in medicine must always be pursued and confronts the problems of specialties and super-specialties with widely varying costs and benefit in which the pursuit of excellence results. He advocates that decisions on resource allocation should be the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Security, acting on the advice of the public's elected representatives on the one hand and the medical profession on the other. The profession has (...) an ever-increasing responsibility to ensure that its advice is soundly based on rigorous self-audit, which should include considering the costs and benefit of its work. His commentator, Lady McCarthy, until recently chairman of an area health authority, responds by arguing that the tripartite system for resource allocation does not work. Doctors resent the imposition of any priorities other than their own. Their two-dimensional medical ethics, concerning doctors' obligations to individual patients, must be supplemented by concern for society as a whole. Both papers are based on contributions to the 1982 annual conference of the London Medical Group on Appropriate Medicine. (shrink)

Supercommentary on portion of Tattvacintāmaṇi of Gaṅgeśa, dealing with an argument liable to a valid objection (satpratipakṣa), one of the five forms of fallacious middle term hetvābhāsa.

Critical edition with eight commentaries, on Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika philosophy.