Informed consent in research among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities presents challenges for inclusive research—some particular to the IDD community, and some shared with other vulnerable populations. This essay uses my experiences with qualitative research among the IDD community to raise questions about our understanding of consent and about the principle of justice (given the deep-seated inequalities of power and privilege that may exist between a researcher and someone with IDD). I draw on Franklin Miller and Alan Wertheimer’s fair (...) transaction model of informed consent (a response to Ruth Faden and Tom Beauchamp’s autonomous authorization model) to reflect on how structural issues of injustice affect the possibility of fairness in consent transactions with people with IDD. The work of inclusive research requires identifying structural and organizational avenues that can improve fairness in informed consent and assent, as well as improve justice for the IDD community more broadly. (shrink)

Adults increase the certainty of their inductive inferences by observing more diverse instances. However, most young children fail to do so. The present study tested the hypothesis that children's sensitivity to instance diversity is determined by three variables: ability to discriminate among instances ( Discrimination ); an intuition that large numbers of instances increase the strength of conclusion ( Monotonicity ); ability to detect subcategories and evaluate numerical differences between the subcategories, or Extraction . A total of 219 Chinese children (...) aged 6 to 11 were tested for sensitivity to diversity by means of Discrimination, Monotonicity, and Extraction. The results indicated that children at all ages were able to discriminate instances and attend to set size. However, only 9- and 11-year-olds demonstrated Extraction and sensitivity to diversity. Furthermore, among all children diversity scores increased linearly with the level of Extraction. These results suggest that the law of large numbers plays a role in children's diversity-based reasoning. (shrink)

Around the world, the population is ageing in ways that pose new challenges for healthcare providers. To date these have mostly been formulated in terms of challenges created by increasing costs, and the focus has been squarely on life-prolonging treatments. However, this focus ignores the ways in which many older people require life-enhancing treatments to counteract the effects of physical and mental decline. This paper argues that in doing so it misses important aspects of what justice requires when it comes (...) to older people. (shrink)

Schyns, Goldstone & Thibaut's argument is evaluated from a developmental perspective. Theoretically, feature creation is not necessarily problematic; this view derives from the assumption of innate content (primitive feature sets). Alternative assumptions (e.g., Piaget's theory) are possible. Preschool children readily search for novel features in response to task demands. This is compatible with functionalist approaches, but not the rationalist ones criticized by the authors.

Public policy makers are calling for all university students to learn entrepreneurial competencies to prepare them to be productive citizens in an unpredictable future. Far more than simply starting up businesses, entrepreneurship is increasingly seen as a student-centric pedagogical technique (teaching through entrepreneurship) for helping students learn desperately needed foundational skills and attitudes such as curiosity, creativity, opportunity spotting, grit, resilience, proactivity, adaptability, empathy, self-efficacy, motivation, and tolerance for uncertainty and risk. This article describes generational trends that make this education (...) increasingly important and provides a Comprehensive Framework for Entrepreneurship Education (CFEE) to help implement best practices to achieve measurable Assurances of Learning (AoL) results at the institutional, degree program, and individual course levels. (shrink)

Since 1989, widely circulating statistics on gay teen suicide in the United States have acted as catalysts for institutional reforms, scientific research, and the creation of an identity category “gay youth.” While one figure has been replicated scientifically, these numbers originated not from a scientific research study but as risk estimates developed by a social worker and published in a government document. Many people within the public took up these original numbers, attributing their author the status of scientific researcher. In (...) effect, the numbers became “black boxed,” often traveling without citation. Drawing on Ian Hacking’s “dynamic nominalist” perspective, this article utilizes interviews with the author of these statistics and other key claimants, along with textual analysis, to trace the origins, uptake, and effects of these figures. While making vital policy contributions, the numbers have led to some ironic consequences including the fostering of gay youth identification with suicide as a potential correlate of their identity and the potential antigay redeployment of decontextualized numbers. They have also led to a reaction in the form of “resilience” narratives. (shrink)

This article concludes this special issue of the Journal of Business Ethics that focussed on the Global Survey of Business Ethics as field of Training, Teaching and Research. The article provides a comparative global analysis of the findings in the eight world regions that participated in this global survey viz. Central Asia, East Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, Oceania, South and South-East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The eight regions are compared with regard to their findings on the terminology used (...) to refer to Business and Economic Ethics, the prevalence of Business and Economic Ethics, themes covered in training and teaching programs on Business and Economic Ethics, themes covered in Business and Economic Ethics research, and major business ethical issues that are foreseen over the next 5 years. Broad patterns, continuities and discontinuities that emerged in a comparison across the eight regions are identified and discussed. Finally, the article is concluded by identifying some crucial issues for the further development of the field of Business Ethics. (shrink)

The article provides an overview of the Sub-Sahara African region and the four sub-regions in which the 44 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa were divided for the purpose of the Sub-Saharan survey of Business Ethics as field of teaching, training and research. A brief overview of existing literature that reflects on training, teaching and research in the field of Business Ethics in the Sub-Sahara African region is given, after which the research process and methods that were used in the survey are (...) introduced. Then a comparative summary of the findings across the four sub-regions (Western Africa, Southern Africa, Eastern Africa and Francophone Africa) in the region is presented. The discussion of the findings commences with a discussion on the terminology that is used to refer to Business and Economic Ethics in Sub-Saharan Africa. It then provides an overview of the prevalence and distribution of Business Ethics as field of teaching, training and research in Sub-Saharan Africa that demonstrates the substantial growth in the field of Business Ethics since 2000 when an earlier survey was conducted. The focus areas in the field of Business Ethics are identified as well as the major themes that were found with regard to teaching, training and research in Business Ethics. Also the major challenges that are foreseen in the field of Business Ethics over the next 5 year are discussed. Finally, a number of concluding remarks are made that highlight unique features and challenges in the current state of Business Ethics in Sub-Saharan Africa. (shrink)

How wrong is it to deceive someone into sex by lying, say, about one's profession? The answer is seriously wrong when the liar's actual profession would be a deal breaker for the victim of the deception: this deception vitiates the victim's sexual consent, and it is seriously wrong to have sex with someone while lacking his or her consent.

Children show a remarkable degree of consistency in learning some words earlier than others. What patterns of word usage predict variations among words in age of acquisition? We use distributional analysis of a naturalistic corpus of child‐directed speech to create quantitative features representing natural variability in word contexts. We evaluate two sets of features: One set is generated from the distribution of words into frames defined by the two adjacent words. These features primarily encode syntactic aspects of word usage. The (...) other set is generated from non‐adjacent co‐occurrences between words. These features encode complementary thematic aspects of word usage. Regression models using these distributional features to predict age of acquisition of 656 early‐acquired English words indicate that both types of features improve predictions over simpler models based on frequency and appearance in salient or simple utterance contexts. Syntactic features were stronger predictors of children's production than comprehension, whereas thematic features were stronger predictors of comprehension. Overall, earlier acquisition was predicted by features representing frames that select for nouns and verbs, and by thematic content related to food and face‐to‐face play topics; later acquisition was predicted by features representing frames that select for pronouns and question words, and by content related to narratives and object play. (shrink)

Scientists are seekers of truth; but where science breaks into the everyday world should they be held accountable for the outcome of their actions? The contributors to this volume believe that scientists are more than mere cogs in a machine - science, technology and politics are inseparable. Part 1 describes current scientific practice from three personal perspectives; part 2 looks at the ways in which science, society and the environment could interact given the chance; and part 3 examines the more (...) general aspects of Western science and their relevance to our relationship with the environment, society and all global issues. (shrink)

Healthcare ethics has to date had very little to say about the treatment of chronic illness. That is problematic. Chronic illness differs from other illnesses in that: 1. in most cases it cannot be cured; 2. patients can live with it for many years; and 3. its day to day management is typically carried out, not by healthcare professionals, but by the patient and/or members of their family. These features problematise key distinctions that underlie much existing work in healthcare ethics (...) — including those between beneficence and autonomy, between treatment and prevention, and between the recipient and provider of treatment. They also raise ethical questions that have not to date been addressed in any detail — including what healthcare professionals should do when patients are managing their illness poorly, or when changes occur that affect their patients. For these reasons chronic illness provides a lens through which to challenge the adequacy of existing approaches to healthcare ethics, exposing the gaps and false assumptions built into them. In doing so it also provides the materials to build a more philosophically adequate account of healthcare professionals’ moral obligations than exists to date. Providing such an account is the aim of this monograph. (shrink)

Unbundling -- or the breaking up of conglomerates into smaller independent companies -- normally has very little to do with morality, because decisions to unbundle are usually taken on pure strategic business grounds. However, the way unbundling was introduced into the debate about the restructuring of the South African economy by the African National Congress (ANC), gave unbundling some very distinct moral undertones. In this paper the moral arguments in support of and in opposition to unbundling within the South African (...) context are identified. It is then argued that these rival sets of arguments can be related back to two different sets of moral convictions about redistributive justice. The author argues that the impact of the prevailing moral dissensus on moral decision-making should be given due consideration when dealing with moral disputes such as unbundling. In the final part of the paper an illustration is given of how the moral dispute about unbundling should be approached amidst the mentioned moral dissensus. (shrink)

Due to its multi-disciplinary nature, there are a variety of conceptions about the scope of Business Ethics as an academic field. Confusion about the scope of business ethics can impact detrimentally upon the further development of this field of study. The purpose of this article is to distinguish between various notions of the scope of business ethics and then to determine whether these notions are reconcilable or not. In order to achieve this purpose a definition of the term 'scope' is (...) first provided. In this definition two distinct meanings of the term emerges. It can either refer to the field that is being studied, or it can refer to the purpose of studying a specific field. The field of business ethics is then explored in terms of both these meanings of the concept 'scope'. In this process some tensions within the field of business ethics is exposed. The article concludes with an attempt to reconcile these tensions. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.20(3) 2001: 22-34. (shrink)

Nearly everyone prefers pain to be in the past rather than the future. This seems like a rationally permissible preference. But I argue that appearances are misleading, and that future-biased preferences are in fact irrational. My argument appeals to trade-offs between hedonic experiences and other goods. I argue that we are rationally required to adopt an exchange rate between a hedonic experience and another type of good that stays fixed, regardless of whether the hedonic experience is in the past or (...) future. (shrink)

Our successful engagement with the world is plausibly underwritten by our sensitivity to affordances in our immediate environment. The considerable literature on affordances focuses almost exclusively on affordances for bodily actions such as gripping, walking or eating. I propose that we are also sensitive to affordances for mental actions such as attending, imagining and counting. My case for this ‘Mental Affordance Hypothesis’ is motivated by a series of examples in which our sensitivity to mental affordances mirrors our sensitivity to bodily (...) affordances. Specifically, subjects perceive opportunities to perform a mental action and their doing so leads, under the right conditions, to the automatic preparation of that action. I conclude by sketching a mental affordance research program that would reinforce my case for the Mental Affordance Hypothesis and establish its ramifications for a number of debates across philosophy and psychology. (shrink)

The scope of someone's consent is the range of actions that they permit by giving consent. The Scope of Consent investigates the under-explored question of which normative principle governs the scope of consent. To answer this question, the book's investigation involves taking a stance on what constitutes consent. By appealing to the idea that someone can justify their behaviour by appealing to another person's consent, Dougherty defends the view that consent consists in behaviour that expresses a consent-giver's will for how (...) a consent-receiver behaves. The ultimate conclusion of the book is that the scope of consent is determined by certain evidence that bears on the appropriate interpretation of the consent. (shrink)

You are morally permitted to save your friend at the expense of a few strangers, but not at the expense of very many. However, there seems no number of strangers that marks a precise upper bound here. Consequently, there are borderline cases of groups at the expense of which you are permitted to save your friend. This essay discusses the question of what explains ethical vagueness like this, arguing that there are interesting metaethical consequences of various explanations.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The anglophone philosophy profession has a well-known problem with gender equity. A sig-nificant aspect of the problem is the fact that there are simply so many more male philoso-phers than female philosophers among students and faculty alike. The problem is at its stark-est at the faculty level, where only 22% - 24% of philosophers are female in the United States (Van Camp 2014), the United Kingdom (Beebee & Saul 2011) and Australia (Goddard 2008).<1> While this is a result of the (...) percentage of women declining at each point through-out the standard career trajectory, recent large-scale studies in the United States (Paxton et al. 2012) and Australia (Goddard et al. 2008) have identified a key drop-off point as the transi-tion between taking introductory classes and majoring in philosophy. So why do dispropor-tionately few female students choose to major in philosophy? (shrink)

The paper starts by giving a historical and philosophical explanation for the current separation between theology and economics. It is then argued that postmodern culture offers the church and theology an opportunity to get reinvolved in the world of business, and especially in Business Ethics. Before opportunities for involvement is discussed, the question on the unique nature of Christians ethics is posed. The notion of Christian ethics as essentially an understanding of reality is proposed and defended against rival interpretations of (...) Christians ethics. Finally the role that the church and theology can play in developing business morality on the marco-, meso-, and micro-economic levels are discussed. (shrink)

To develop a theoretical framework for drawing moral distinctions between instances of sexual misconduct, I defend the “Ameliorative View” of consent, according to which there are three possibilities for what effect, if any, consent has: “fully valid consent” eliminates a wronging, “fully invalid consent” has no normative effect, and “partially valid consent” has an ameliorative effect on a wronging in the respect that it makes the wronging less grave. I motivate the view by proposing a solution to the problem of (...) characterizing the moral effect of consent that is given in response to minor coercion. (shrink)

In this essay, I discuss why consent is invalidated by duress that involves attaching penalties to someone's refusal to give consent. At the heart of my explanation is the Complaint Principle. This principle specifies that consent is defeasibly invalid when the consent results from someone conditionally imposing a penalty on the consent‐giver's refusal to give the consent, such that the consent‐giver has a legitimate complaint against this imposition focused on how it is affects their incentives for consenting. The Complaint Principle (...) says that this consent is defeasibly invalid to make room for the Authorization Principle, which allows sincere authorizations to constitute valid consent, even when these are issued by an agent acting under duress. The Authorization Principle has application only in cases of third‐party duress because when the consent‐receiver is the source of the duress, the consent‐giver is not sincerely authorizing the action. (shrink)

In the middle of the last century, it was common to explain the notion of necessity in linguistic terms. A necessary truth, it was said, is a sentence whose truth is guaranteed by linguistic rules. Quine famously argued that, on this view, de re modal claims do not make sense. “Porcupettes are porcupines” is necessarily true, but it would be a mistake to say of a particular porcupette that it is necessarily a porcupine, or that it is possibly purple. Linguistic (...) theories of necessity fell out of favour with the publication of Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, and Quine’s arguments were put aside. In her recent book, Norms and Necessity, Amie Thomasson presents her modal normativism, which is an updated version of the mid-century theories just described. Quine’s arguments are thus relevant once again. We recapitulate Quine’s central argument, in the context of modal normativism. We then criticise Amie Thomasson’s discussion of de re modality. We finish by briefly presenting an alternative account of de re modal statements, which is compatible with modal normativism. (shrink)