After introducing the new field of cultural evolution, we review a growing body of empirical evidence suggesting that culture shapes what people attend to, perceive and remember as well as how they think, feel and reason. Focusing on perception, spatial navigation, mentalizing, thinking styles, reasoning (epistemic norms) and language, we discuss not only important variation in these domains, but emphasize that most researchers (including philosophers) and research participants are psychologically peculiar within a global and historical context. This rising tide of (...) evidence recommends caution in relying on one’s intuitions or even in generalizing from reliable psychological findings to the species, Homo sapiens. Our evolutionary approach suggests that humans have evolved a suite of reliably developing cognitive abilities that adapt our minds, information-processing abilities and emotions ontogenetically to the diverse culturally-constructed worlds we confront. (shrink)

For over three decades, clinical ethicists in the United States have recorded their consulting activities to supplement documentation in the medical record, often using locally developed instrument...

Argument that Lewis and others are wrong that physicalism is if true then contingently true.

Personal stories and concrete advice for how to make the transition from an academic career to the larger marketplace of careers from those who have successfully done it.

Our capabilities in space are growing almost as fast as our ambitions. Many nations, companies, and private actors are currently vying to secure historic “firsts” in space, raising complex social and ethical questions. There is surprisingly little serious analysis of these issues, however, and they are rarely discussed in undergraduate class discussions, despite their popularity with students. To help correct this deficit, a student research team designed 11 case studies to help instructors across the curriculum introduce space into their classes. (...) These are designed for ease of use, with self-contained background information, suggested readings/movies, and a series of juicy questions. (shrink)

Scheduling surgical procedures among operating rooms is mistakenly regarded as merely a tedious administrative task. However, the growing demand for surgical care and finite hours in a day qualify OR time as a limited resource. Accordingly, the objective of this manuscript is to reframe the process of OR scheduling as an ethical dilemma of allocating scarce medical resources. Recommendations for ethical allocation of OR time—based on both familiar and novel ethical values—are provided for healthcare institutions and individual surgeons.

Much has been written recently about both the urgency and efficacy of teaching business ethics. The results of our survey of AACSB member schools confirm prior reports of similar surveys: The teaching of business ethics is indiscriminate, unorganized, and undisciplined in most North American schools of business. If universities are to be taken seriously in their efforts to create more ethical awareness and better moral decision-making skills among their graduates, they must provide a rigorous and well-developed system in which students (...) can "live ethics" instead of merely learn ethics. A system must be devised to allow students to discover and refine their own values rather than simply learning ethical theories from an intellectual point of view. After reviewing the literature on business ethics in undergraduate curricula, we make a series of recommendations to deliver experiential ethical education for business students. The recommendations include student and faculty written codes of ethics, emphasis on ethical theory within the existing required legal environment course, applied ethics in the functional area capstones using alternative learning, a discussion of employee rights and responsibilities during the curriculum capstone course, and a public service requirement for graduation. These recommendations may be implemented without substantive additional cost or programming requirements. (shrink)

Drawing extensively on Bentham's unpublished civil and distributive law writings, classical and recent Bentham scholarship, and contemporary work in moral and political philosophy, Kelly here presents the first full-length exposition and sympathetic defense of Bentham's unique utilitarian theory of justice. Kelly shows how Bentham developed a moderate welfare-state liberal theory of justice with egalitarian leanings, the aim of which was to secure the material and political conditions of each citizen's pursuit of the good life in cooperation with each (...) other. A striking and original addition to the growing literature on Bentham's legal and political thought, this incisive study also makes a valuable contribution to contemporary political philosophy. (shrink)

Evolving practice requires peer review of clinical ethics (CE) consultation for quality assessment and improvement. Many institutions have identified the chart note as the basis for this process, but to our knowledge, electronic health record (EHR) systems are not necessarily designed to easily include CE consultation notes. This article provides a framework for the inclusion of CE consultation notes into the formal EHR, describing a developed system in the Epic EHR that allows for the elaborated electronic notation of the CE (...) chart note. The implementation of the “meaningful use” criteria for EHR, mandated by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009, requires that health professionals meet certain standards for quality, efficiency, and safety, all of which overlap with the goals of standardization, peer review, and quality improvement within CE consultation. (shrink)

Now in its second edition, this comprehensive introduction to the history of Western political thought includes two new chapters on Cicero and Kant.

The anticipated social capabilities of robots may allow them to serve in authority roles as part of human-machine teams. To date, it is unclear if, and to what extent, human team members will comply with requests from their robotic teammates, and how such compliance compares to requests from human teammates. This research examined how the human-likeness and physical embodiment of a robot affect compliance to a robot's request to perseverate utilizing a novel task paradigm. Across a set of two studies, (...) participants performed a visual search task while receiving ambiguous performance feedback. Compliance was evaluated when the participant requested to stop the task and the coach urged the participant to keep practicing multiple times. In the first study, the coach was either physically co-located with the participant or located remotely via a live-video. Coach type varied in human-likeness and included either a real human, a Nao robot, or a modified Roomba robot. The second study expanded on the first by including a Baxter robot as a coach and replicated the findings in a different sample population with a strict chain of command culture. Results from both studies showed that participants comply with the requests of a robot for up to 11 min. Compliance is less than to a human and embodiment and human-likeness on had weak effects on compliance. (shrink)