This paper focuses on Confucian formulations of personhood and the implications they may have for bioethics and medical practice. We discuss how an appreciation of the Confucian concept of personhood can provide insights into the practice of informed consent and, in particular, the role of family members and physicians in medical decision-making in societies influenced by Confucian culture. We suggest that Western notions of informed consent appear ethically misguided when viewed from a Confucian perspective.

ABSTRACT:The profound influence of Thomas Donaldson and Thomas Dunfee’s integrative social contracts theory on the field of business ethics has been challenged by Andreas Scherer and Guido Palazzo’s Habermasian approach, which has achieved prominence of late with articles that expressly question the defensibility of ISCT’s hypernorms. This article builds on recent efforts by Donaldson and Scherer to bridge their accounts by providing discursive foundations to the hypernorms at the heart of the ISCT framework. Extending prior literature, we propose an ISCT* (...) framework designed to retain ISCT’s practical virtue of managerial guidance while answering the demands of Scherer and Palazzo’s discursive account. By subscribing to a suitable portfolio of discursively justified hypernorms, we argue, companies unlock the valuable moral guidance of ISCT*, which says to treat these hypernorms as unequivocal outer bounds to the pursuit of business and as a starting point to tailor local norms through discursive stakeholder engagement. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir offers one of the most interesting philosophical accounts of childhood, and, as numerous scholars have argued, it is one of the most important contributions that she made to existentialism. Beauvoir stressed the importance of childhood on one's ability to assume one's freedom. This radically changed how freedom was construed for existentialism. Rather than positing an adult subjectivity that tries to flee freedom through bad faith, Beauvoir's account forces a recognition of a situated freedom that itself is also (...) developmentally achieved. In this article, I explore the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Beauvoir's discussion of childhood. By reading Beauvoir through Rousseau — who was one of her favorite authors — we see not just one but two accounts of childhood in Beauvoir's philosophical work. On the one hand is the idealistic childhood wherein the child is an apprentice to freedom. On the other is the constrained childhood whose product is apprenticed to the serious. I begin with a brief summary of Rousseau's Emile. Next, I offer some justification for reading Beauvoir alongside Rousseau before offering an account of Beauvoir's discussion of childhood. I end by exploring some of the implications of my reading for freedom. (shrink)

Sex and sensibility: The role of social selection Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9464-6 Authors Erika L. Milam, Department of History, University of Maryland, 2115 Francis Scott Key Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA Roberta L. Millstein, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA Angela Potochnik, Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, P.O. Box 210374, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA Joan E. Roughgarden, Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020, USA Journal Metascience (...) Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796. (shrink)

Previous research has established that the success of strikes, and social movements more broadly, depends on their ability to garner support from the public. However, there is scant published research investigating the response of the public to strike action by healthcare workers. In this study, we address this gap through a study of public responses to UK nursing strikes in 2022–2023, using a data set drawn from Twitter of more than 2300 publicly available tweets. We focus on negative tweets, investigating (...) which societal discourses social media users draw on to oppose strike action by nurses. Using a combination of corpus‐based approaches and discourse analysis, we identified five categories of opposition: (i) discourse discrediting nurses; (ii) discourse discrediting strikes by nurses; (iii) discourse on the National Health System; (iv) discourse about the fairness of strikers' demands and (v) discourse about potential harmful impact. Our findings show how social media users operationalise wider societal discourses about the nursing profession (e.g., associations with care, gender, vocation and sacrifice) as well as recent crises such as the Covid‐19 pandemic to justify their opposition. The results also provide valuable insights into misconceptions about nursing, strike action and patient harm, which can inform strategies for public communication. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 1-2, Page 164-188, June 2022.

Women and men are biologically and reproductively dissimilar. This sexual distinctiveness gives rise to a “sexual asymmetry”—the fundamental reality that the potential consequences of sexual intercourse are far more immediate and serious for women than for men. Advocates of contraception and abortion sought to cure sexual asymmetry by decoupling sex from procreation, relieving women from the consequences of sex, and thus equalizing the sexual experiences of men and women. But efforts to suppress or reject biological difference have not relieved women (...) of the consequences of sex and the vulnerabilities of pregnancy, even as they have further relieved men. Although secular feminist responses to biological difference have served to exacerbate sexual asymmetry, Catholic teaching on abortion, sex, and marriage—even contraception—provides an authentically pro-woman cultural response. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic’s disproportionate harm to racialized communities and increased public attention to the deaths of Black people at the hands of police (Elijah McClain, Breonna Taylor, George F...

: The main contribution of this paper to current philosophical and sociological studies on modeling is to analyze modeling as an object-oriented interdisciplinary activity and thus to bring new insights into the wide, heterogeneous discourse on tools, forms and organization of interdisciplinary research. A detailed analysis of interdisciplinarity in the making of models is presented, focusing on long-standing interdisciplinary collaboration between specialists in infectious diseases, mathematicians and computer scientists. The analysis introduces a novel way of studying the elements of the (...) models as carriers of interdisciplinarity. These elements, being functionally interdependent building blocks, evolve during the modeling work and carry the disciplinary tensions in the process. This shows how the long and challenging process of defining and reformulating the object of research is crucial for understanding the dynamics of interdisciplinarity in the making. (shrink)

This article examines the particular moral obligations of solidarity focusing on the solidary commitment against injustice or oppression. I argue that political solidarity entails three relationships—to other participants in action, to a cause or goal, and to those outside the unity of political solidarity. These relationships inform certain obligations. Activism is one of those obligations and I argue that violent activism is incompatible with the other relations and duties of solidarity. Activists may find themselves confronted with a difficult choice between (...) respecting the relationships of political solidarity or employing physical violence in resistant self-defense against oppressive practices. -/- . (shrink)

How is metaphysics related to the empirical sciences? Should metaphysics in general be guided by the sources, methods and results of the sciences? And what about the special case of the metaphysics of the social world: should it likewise be guided by the sources, methods and results of the social sciences? In her paper “Social Science as a Guide to Social Metaphysics?”, K. Hawley raises the question: If we are sympathetic to the project of naturalising metaphysics, how should we approach (...) the metaphysics of the social world? She proceeds by discussing three approaches to social metaphysics: inference to the best explanation from current social science, descriptive conceptual analysis, and normative, especially ‘ameliorative’ projects. At the end of her discussion, she reaches a rather pessimistic conclusion, especially as regards the IBE approach: “a number of phenomena indicate that the prospects for securely basing social metaphysics via inference to the best explanation from social science are currently faint. […] We need to look elsewhere if we are to develop a metaphysics of the social world.” In my comments on her paper, I try to re-animate the program of an inductive metaphysics by defending the idea that the method of inference to the best explanation should be the central method of justification for metaphysics in general and for social metaphysics in particular. (shrink)

Current advances in assisted reproductive technologies aim to promote the health and well-being of future children. They offer the possibility to select embryos with the greatest potential of being born healthy (eg, preimplantation genetic testing) and may someday correct faulty genes responsible for heritable diseases in the embryo (eg, human germline genome modification (HGGM)). Most laws and policy statements surrounding HGGM refer to the notion of ‘serious’ as a core criterion in determining what genetic diseases should be targeted by these (...) technologies. Yet, this notion remains vague and poorly defined, rendering its application challenging and decision making subjective and arbitrary. By way of background, we begin by briefly presenting two conceptual approaches to ‘health’ and ‘disease’: objectivism (ie, based on biological facts) and constructivism (ie, based on human values). The basic challenge under both is sorting out whether and to what extent social and environmental factors have a role in helping to define what qualifies as a ‘serious’ disease beyond the medical criteria. We then focus on how a human rights framework (eg, right to science and right to the highest attainable health) could integrate the concepts of objectivism and constructivism so as to provide guidance for a more actionable consideration of ‘serious’. Ultimately, it could be argued that a human rights framework, by way of its legally binding nature and its globally accepted norms and values, provides a more universal foundation for discussions of the ethical, legal and social implications of emerging or disruptive technologies. (shrink)

Existing whistle-blowing models rely on “cold” economic calculations and cost-benefit analyses to explain the judgments and actions of potential whistle-blowers. I argue that “hot” cognitions – value conflict and emotions – should be added to these models. I propose a model of the whistle-blowing decision process that highlights the reciprocal influence of “hot” and “cold” cognitions and advocate research that explores how value conflict and emotions inform reporting decisions. I draw on the cognitive appraisal approach to emotions and on the (...) social-functional value pluralism model to generate propositions. (shrink)

An absolute decline in US life expectancy in low education whites has alarmed policy makers and attracted media attention. Depending on which studies are correct, low education white women have lost between 3 and 5 years of lifespan; men, between 6 months and 3 years. Although absolute declines in life expectancy are relatively rare, some commentators see the public alarm as reflecting a racist concern for white lives over black ones. How ought we ethically to evaluate this lifespan contraction in (...) low education whites? Should we care, or is it racist to care? Does it constitute an injustice or reflect justice being done? I argue that the lifespan contraction in low education whites violates key normative criteria used to make determinations of health justice, and that these judgments do not vitiate concerns about racism. I conclude with reflections on US population health policy and building an inclusive health equity movement. (shrink)

This article uses music and the discourse about music to understand the practice of tolerance in Prague during the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War. Drawing on Las ensaladas, a collection of vernacular polyphony compiled by the Spanish composer Mateo Flecha the Younger, and Harmoniae morales, comprising musical settings of Latin texts by the Slovenian composer Jacobus Handl, the article argues that such music offered Prague's diverse citizens a medium for reflecting on how to live morally (...) and peaceably. Ultimately, this article challenges the commonplace that musical harmony offered an effective model for social harmony, arguing that the practice of singing together exposed the limits of tolerance even as it illuminated how difference might be accommodated. (shrink)

La domanda fondamentale della ricerca si muove attorno alla relazione tra arte, verità e essere, segnalando la natura metafisica del discorso. Questo fatto è sottolineato in quanto l’arte, in ambito filosofico, è di solito trattata in un contesto estetico, ma i due autori scelti vedono nell’arte un legame intrinseco al problema dell’essere, riconoscendo il suo valore anche nell’orizzonte metafisico. Heidegger e Merleau-Ponty avvertono la necessità di superare l’estetica e di svelare le possibilità ontologiche dell’arte, compiendo così una sua «riabilitazione ontologica», (...) mostrando la sua intima correlatività alla questione dell’Essere e con quella della verità. Il vero senso dell’arte non nasce al di fuori di questo contesto ontologico, ed è proprio questo il motivo per cui la riabilitazione ontologica è diventata necessaria: al punto che si potrebbe affermare che l’estetica conduce l’arte fuori della sua vera essenza. L’arte è, di natura sua, ontologica. Si tratta quindi di un tema assai speciale, che già a prima vista dà luogo a diverse domande. Accettando la sfida della crisi della metafisica nell’età contemporanea, è possibile salvaguardare la questione dell’Essere a partire dall’ambito non-filosofico dell’arte? Cosa offre l’arte alla filosofia a proposito della questione dell’Essere? Quale verità si esprime in essa? Cosa giustifica il mettere insieme i tre concetti fondamentali della dissertazione e due autori così diversi, anche se di eredità fenomenologica comune? L’obiettivo della ricerca è di vedere se la riabilitazione ontologica dell’arte potesse in qualche modo salvaguardare la metafisica dell’Essere; e se a partire da ciò che la filosofia può imparare dall’arte, sia possibile arrivare ad una formulazione filosofica della verità vivente, in dialogo con la concezione dei due autori scelti. (shrink)

In the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), much empirical research has investigated learner and teacher autonomy, agency, and identity. Yet, little prior research has...

Separation-based accounts of privacy define privacy as being left alone and unaccessed. Pyrrho et al. propose a more control-based account where privacy is about having the age...

Volume 20, Issue 5, June 2020, Page 75-77.

Childhood obesity may have severe long-term consequences for health—indeed, for the overall course of a person's life. Do these harms amount to a problem of social justice? And if so, what should be done about it? Parents are usually granted considerable leeway to make decisions that affect their children's health. Social and moral theory has often overlooked the family, however, leaving us with an inadequate understanding of parental autonomy and of how social policy may influence it.

Background This paper describes the design, implementation, and process outcomes from three public deliberations held in three tribal communities. Although increasingly used around the globe to address collective challenges, our study is among the first to adapt public deliberation for use with exclusively Indigenous populations. In question was how to design deliberations for tribal communities and whether this adapted model would achieve key deliberative goals and be well received.Methods We adapted democratic deliberation, an approach to stakeholder engagement, for use with (...) three tribal communities to respect tribal values and customs. Public deliberation convenes people from diverse backgrounds in reasoned reflection and dialogue in search of collective solutions. The deliberation planning process and design were informed by frameworks of enclave deliberation and community-based participatory research, which share key egalitarian values. The deliberations were collaboratively designed with tribal leadership and extensive partner input and involvement in the deliberations. Each deliberation posed different, locally relevant questions about genomic research, but used the same deliberation structure and measures to gauge the quality and experience of deliberation.Results A total of 52 individuals participated in the deliberations across all three sites. Deliberants were balanced in gender, spanned decades in age, and were diverse in educational attainment and exposure to health research. Overall, the deliberations were positively evaluated. Participant perceptions and external observer datasets depict three deliberations that offered intensive conversation experiences in which participants learned from one another, reported feeling respected and connected to one another, and endorsed this intensive form of engagement.Conclusion The adapted deliberations achieved key deliberative goals and were generally well received. Limitations of the study are described. (shrink)

Experiences of solidarity have figured prominently in the politics of the modern era, from the rallying cry of liberation theology for solidarity with the poor and oppressed, through feminist calls for sisterhood, to such political movements as Solidarity in Poland. Yet very little academic writing has focused on solidarity in conceptual rather than empirical terms. Sally Scholz takes on this critical task here. She lays the groundwork for a theory of political solidarity, asking what solidarity means and how it (...) differs fundamentally from other social and political concepts like camaraderie, association, or community. Scholz distinguishes a variety of types and levels of solidarity by their social ontologies, moral relations, and corresponding obligations. Political solidarity, in contrast to social solidarity and civic solidarity, aims to bring about social change by uniting individuals in their response to particular situations of injustice, oppression, or tyranny. The book explores the moral relation of political solidarity in detail, with chapters on the nature of the solidary group, obligations within solidarity, the “paradox of the privileged,” the goals of solidarity movements, and the prospects for global solidarity. ��. (shrink)

It is essential for the strategy of open access self-archiving that scientific authors are given comprehensive information on publisher copyright policies. DINI, the German Initiative for Networked Information, has developed a German (and potentially multilingual) interface to the English SHERPA/RoMEO service to provide additional information on German publishers' open access policies. As a next step, this interface was enhanced to an integration layer combining different sources on publisher copyright policies. This integration layer can be used in many different contexts. Together (...) with the SHERPA/RoMEO team, DINI aims to build an international support structure for open access information. (shrink)

Although blame for systemic sexual abuse in the Catholic church primarily rests with the perpetrators and institutional actors who engaged in cover-up, regular people also failed in their duties, both their secular or civil duties and their moral and religious duties. Using the language of social sin, this article examines responsibility for social sin and the structures of sin that contributed to the abuse of children within the church community. Using the tools of Catholic social teaching—especially the framework of “conversion, (...) communion, and solidarity”—the article articulates some tenets of social morality in the wake of sexual abuse and cover-up. A conversion experience is needed to see how ordinary actions unintentionally contribute to injustice and social sin, and how structures of sin lead to intentional decisions that would not otherwise be pursued. Catholic social teaching helps to provide a framework for thinking through some of the obligations of ordinary folks in the aftermath of the collective failure to protect children from abuse and the structural injustices that encouraged it to continue. (shrink)

The study focused on university students' understanding and conceptions of ethical issues in research. Domain-specific and domain-transcending measures were developed to gauge the students' awareness of ethical issues. Responses were obtained from 269 undergraduate and graduate students at a U.S. regional university. Participant withdrawal, the debriefing of research participants, the dissemination of findings, and giving credit to co-contributors were the most challenging ethical issues for the students. Ethical awareness was predicted by professional and organizational socialization, and perspective taking. Contextualization greatly (...) improved the students' ability to recognize ethical issues. Simulations and role-taking are suggested as the means with which to teach students about the ethical issues perceived as challenging. (shrink)

Kym Maclaren, in her article, “Emotional Metamorphoses: The Role of Others in Becoming a Subject,” explores a phenomenological view on emotion as being-in-the-world as well as the ethical implications of understanding emotion in opposition to the moralistic view. In the first part of this paper, I provide an exegetical assessment of Maclaren’s thesis; in the second I introduce a critique of Maclaren’s argument and argue a claim of my own which explores perception and autonomy in the human body along with (...) its implications in the context of Maclaren’s phenomenological account of emotion. I discuss the necessity of both emotion and reason in morality and argue that the traditional definition of autonomy is not plausible when considered through Maclaren’s phenomenological view of emotion. Finally, I work to creatively explore a new definition of autonomy that does cohere with this view. (shrink)

Our aim was to identify the ethical issues faced by students in the behavioral and natural sciences during their doctoral programmes. The participants were 28 PhD students who were interviewed about their doctoral study and supervision experiences. We identified a total of 102 ethical issues compromising the principles of nonmaleficence, beneficence, autonomy, justice, or fidelity. There were some differences in emphases, with the students in the behavioral sciences displaying a broader range of ethical compromises than the students in the natural (...) sciences. Ethical problems emerged in the individual supervisor–student relationships, but often problems involving the scholarly community appeared in the background. (shrink)

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently upheld United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York Judge's denial of petitioner's application for a writ of habeas corpus. The Court held that it was not objectively unreasonable for the Appellate Division to conclude, in light of clearly established federal law as expressed by the Supreme Court of the United States, that a New York statute providing for the recommitment of specific defendants who plead not (...) responsible by reason of mental disease or defect under a mere “preponderance of the evidence” standard does not violate either due process or the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (shrink)