Neuroimaging evidence suggests that the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) supports temporary storage of linguistic material during linguistic tasks rather than computing a syntactic representation. The LIFG is not activated by simple sentences but by complex sentences and maintenance of word lists. Under this hypothesis, agrammatism should only disturb comprehension for constructions in which storage is essential.

I argue for a property mereology and for mereological bundle theory. I then apply this theory to the one over many problem (universals) and puzzles concerning persistence and material constitution.

This study considers two problems: the extent to which feminist opinions are distinct from feminist identity and the generalizability of these separate constructs across gender and time. Using pooled cross-sectional data from the six National Election Study surveys conducted from 1972 through 1992, the author employs a series of measurement and structural equation models to evaluate the validity and reliability of various feminist orientations and to estimate the relationships among feminist identity, feminist opinion, and individual characteristics associated with feminism. The (...) results indicate that identity and opinion are separate but related constructs. This configuration generalizes across women and men and two decades of American electoral history. (shrink)

Examines acts of showing--from dog shows to striptease--to understand and theorize instances of heightened performance in everyday life as well as on the stage.

Many women professionals traverse settings beyond the office in their work, but research on women professionals rarely follows them out of the office. Using a large, archived data set of focus groups with sales professionals, the authors ask how work in out-of-the-office settings affects women’s careers. The authors distinguish between two types of settings. In “heterosocial” settings, interaction rules are traditionally and normatively gendered; women and men are understood by others as heterosexually linked pairs, women become targets of gossip, and (...) some women report sexual advances and sexual harassment. In “homosocial” settings such as golf courses and strip clubs, women’s disadvantage takes the form of exclusion. (shrink)

Disneyland is work disguised as play; school disguised as vacation. While Walt Disney’s curriculum deploys across all of its products, it literally engulfs the approximately 50 million ‘guests’ who visit the Disney Parks each year. Drawing on Sarah Ahmed’s phenomenological reading of orientation in Queer phenomenology, this article investigates the ways in which Disney’s didacticism is made material through practices and procedures designed to orient the park’s visitors, to ensure that those visitors always know where they are and who they (...) are, as a means of educating ‘good’ citizens. The argument focuses not on Disneyland’s narrative curriculum but on its corporeal one: visitors are enticed to make affective investments, to construct or reconstruct their identities to comply with the Disney version of the ideal American worker and consumer, as the park attempts to reorient those who resist those roles. (shrink)

Structured interviews were held with 149 registered nurses in seven countries in America, Asia, Australia and Europe concerning the feeding of severely demented patients who do not accept food. The most common reasons for nurses being willing to change their decision to feed or not to feed were an order from the medical head, a request from the patient's husband and/or the staff meeting. There was a connection between the willingness to feed and the ranking of ethical principles. Nurses who (...) were most prone to feed the patient most often gave a high rank to the ethical principle of sanctity of life, while those who primarily chose not to feed the patient gave a high rank to the ethical principle of autonomy. All nurses stressed the ethical principle of beneficence. Des interviews structurés ont eu lieu avec 149 infirmiers/ères dans sept pays en Amérique, Asie, Australie et Europe concernant l'alimentation des malades gravement dément qui refusent de manger. La raison la plus générale pour des infirmiers/ères d'être prêt à changer leures décisions de donner à manger ou non sont: un ordre du médecin, la demande du mari de la malade ou de la réunion du personnel. Il y avait un lien entre la volonté de nourir et le rang des principes éthiques. Les infirmiers/ères les plus enclins de nourir la malade le plus souvent donnaient un rang supérieur au principe éthique de la sainteté de vie, pendant que ceux et celles qui choisissaient de ne pas nourrir la malade donnaient un rang supérieur au principe éthique de l'autonomie. Tous insistaient sur l'importance du principe éthique de la bienfaisance. Konstruktive Interviews wurden mit 149 ausgebildeten Krankenschwestern und Pfleger in sieben Ländern in Amerika, Asien, Australien und Europa gehalten über die Ernährung von schwer von Dementia praecox leidenden Patienten, die das Essen verweigern. Die gewöhnlichsten Gründe des Pflegepersonals für die Bereitwilligkeit, ihre Entscheidung, zu ernähren oder nicht, zu ändern, waren Anordnungen vom medizinischen Chef, Anfragen vom Ehemann der Patientin und/oder einer Personalsitzung. Es bestand ein Zusammenhang zwischen der Bereitwilligkeit zur Ernährung und dem Rang der ethischen Prinzipien. Die Pflegenden, die sich am meisten neigten, die Patientin zu ernähren, gaben dem ethischen Prinzip der Heiligkeit des Lebens einen hohen Rang, während die, die meistens vorzogen, die Patientin nicht zu ernähren, gaben dem ethischen Prinzip der Autonomie einen hohen Rang. Alle Pflegenden legten grossen Wert auf das ethische Prinzip der Wohltätigkeit. (shrink)

We examine the processes involved in the escalation of a plant closure from a local concern to a perceived organizational moral failure that commands national attention. Our empirical case covers the controversy over the decision of telecommunications giant Nokia to close a plant in Germany, despite having received significant state subsidies, and the relocation of production to Hungary and Romania. We conducted an inductive study that utilizes a semiotic analysis to identify how various actors framed the controversial plant closure and (...) sought to cast it as moral failure. Our analysis uncovered two distinctive moral framings of the plant closure and revealed how key actors used evocative labels to frame these events in moral terms. These moral framings drew in additional stakeholders, generated more widespread media coverage, and turned the case into an organizational moral failure in the eyes of the national public. We contribute to the literature on organizational moral failure by theorizing its escalating process and elaborating why and how local events may become moral issues of interest to broader stakeholder groups. (shrink)

Backround Education in ethics and professionalism should reflect the realities medical students encounter in the hospital and clinic. Method We performed content analyses on Case Observation and Assessments (COAs) written by third-year medical students about ethical and professional issues encountered during their internal medicine and paediatrics clinical clerkships. Results A cohort of 141 third-year medical students wrote 272 COAs. Content analyses identified 35 subcategories of ethical and professional issues within 7 major domains: decisions regarding treatment (31.4%), communication (21.4%), professional duties (...) (18.4%), justice (9.8%), student-specific issues (5.4%), quality of care (3.8%), and miscellaneous (9.8%). Conclusions Students encountered a wide variety of ethical and professional issues that can be used to guide pre-clinical and clinical education. Comparison of our findings with results from similar studies suggests that the wording of an assignment (specifying “ethical” issues, “professional” issues, or both) may influence the kinds of issues students identify in their experience-based clinical narratives. (shrink)

In an adaptive clinical trial , key trial characteristics may be altered during the course of the trial according to predefined rules in response to information that accumulates within the trial itself. In addition to having distinguishing scientific features, adaptive trials also may involve ethical considerations that differ from more traditional randomized trials. Better understanding of clinical trial experts’ views about the ethical aspects of adaptive designs could assist those planning ACTs. Our aim was to elucidate the opinions of clinical (...) trial experts regarding their beliefs about ethical aspects of ACTs. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 2, Page 32-40, March‐April 2022.

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

How should we make choices when we know so little about our futures? L. A. Paul argues that we must view life decisions as choices to make discoveries about the nature of experience. Her account of transformative experience holds that part of the value of living authentically is to experience our lives and preferences in whatever ways they evolve.

The sport industry is an extremely diverse industry, including segments such as professional sport, intercollegiate athletics, health and fitness, recreational sport and facility management. The industry is currently experiencing rapid growth and development, and as it grows, sport managers in the different segments encounter ethical issues which are often unique to each segment. This article examines the professional sport, intercollegiate athletics, health and fitness, recreational sport and facility management segments of the sport industry and discusses the various ethical issues facing (...) managers in each of these segments. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societallevel analyses. At the individual- level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub- dimensions and two sets of values dimensions. At the societal- level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each (...) society, we report the Cronbach' s? statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency as well as report interrater agreement analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country span sp. (shrink)

The use of high hypothetical payoffs has been justified by the realism and relevance of large monetary consequences and by the impracticality of making high cash payments. We argue that subjects may not be able to imagine how they would behave in high payoff situations.

The use of high hypothetical payoffs has been justified by the realism and relevance of large monetary consequences and by the impracticality of making high cash payments. We argue that subjects may not be able to imagine how they would behave in high payoff situations.

Politik und Moral, von A. Rüstow.--Die Staatsverfassung als moralische Anstalt betrachtet, von A. Rüstow.--Macht und Moral, von M. J. Hillenbrand.--Ethik und Aussenpolitik, von F. A. Hermens.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 28.1 (2004) 220-223 [Access article in PDF] Doing Our Own Thing. The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like Care, by John McWhorter; xiv & 279 pp. New York: Gotham Books, 2003, $26.00. In 2002, the first anniversary of the September 11th attacks was marked in New York City by the reading of the Gettysburg Address. It was, as many commentators noted, an (...) odd choice of eulogy, comparing as it did the unwitting and innocent victims of a terrorist attack to the willing and active [End Page 220] participants in a bloody civil war. In Doing Our Own Thing, the Berkeley linguist John McWhorter asserts that this strange choice was the result of a decline in American public discourse. A "particular kind of artful English, formerly taken for granted as crucial to legitimate expression on the civic stage has" he argues, "virtually disappeared" (p. xiv). For McWhorter, this lack of contemporary public oratory is merely part of a broader linguistic decline that has affected all aspects of American life and culture.There has, he suggests, been a dumbing-down of the language. Whereas Americans once took care to craft their language, public and private, McWhorter argues, there is now a casualness to their speech and writing which affects all aspects of their existence. The nature of this decline is best captured by McWhorter's anecdote about his research into Gullah, an obscure Creole dialect. In response to his inquiries about local speech patterns, an elderly black woman in Greenwood, Mississippi responded: "Well, seems like most folks, they speak pretty good English, but some people, it seems like they just talk" (p. 2). Whereas Americans once spoke pretty good English, McWhorter believes, now, for the most part, they just talk. In Doing Our Own Thing, he seeks to identify not only evidence for his thesis, but also the causes and consequences of this decline.Evidence of linguistic decline is, McWhorter believes, to be found in our public discourse (as evidenced by the contemporary use of the Gettysburg Address), and in the rise of rap music and popular lyrics at the expense of poetry—he notes that as late as the 1960s, the poet Marianne Moore was a guest on The Tonight Show twice. Less intuitively perhaps, he identifies the same decline in the decreased popularity of piano bars, and the rising popularity of cell-phones. What all these examples of have in common, McWhorter suggests, is a turn towards an oral as opposed to a written culture. Speech has, he says, become something of a "dress-down affair" (p. 49), and this has infected both our written word and public oratory. The "modern American speech writer" he notes, "tends strongly to operate under a guiding imperative not to sound too high a note" (p. 47). McWhorter contrasts this with examples from the nineteenth-century—with letters from ordinary soldiers to their sweethearts, and with Edward Everett's two-hour plus address at Gettysburg—which show that "we live in an America with a distinctly different relationship to the English language than an America still within living memory" (p. 167).For McWhorter, the causes of this decline are clear. The 1960s counterculture, in its efforts to "Speak Truth to Power, abandoned the formal conventions of previous generations' speech, and adopted its own more casual approach to public discourse. Indeed, McWhorter feels confident enough to identify "a single year when America lost its love for its language": 1965 (p. 183). The consequences of this decline are, for McWhorter, similarly obvious. Among them, the shift to an oral culture is held to be responsible for: the election of George W. Bush—Al Gore's "studied articulateness is certainly one of the major [End Page 221] factors that blocked him from winning the presidency" (p. xxi); the decline of contemporary political debate—more formal written language is, says McWhorter, "a better vehicle for objective argument than speech" (p. 35); and the increasingly obtuse nature of academic language. Indeed, McWhorter asserts that Judith Butler... (shrink)

What is the proper role for Theory in literary study? An aid to reading? Or source of insight into the world beyond the text? Half-heartedly apologizing for the political-theoretical excesses of the past two decades, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Jean-Michel Rabaté offer up more of the same, with Spivak in particular recycling the ideas of others so as to revive literature as a source of political "Othering." Noting the ways in which Theory silences the sounds of "Others," I argue Valentine (...) Cunningham's placing of Theory permits both texts and others to speak, and in so doing, teaches us to listen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 459-461 [Access article in PDF] The Heart of What Matters. The Role for Literature in Moral Philosophy,by Anthony Cunningham; x & 296 pp. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, $60.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. Despite Socrates's rejection of the written word as a source of insight in the Phaedrus, a number of theorists have in recent years sought to find a role for literature in (...) critical thought. Anthony Cunningham's The Heart of What Matters joins a list of works that includes Richard Rorty's Contingency, irony and solidarity, Richard Posner's Law and Literature, and Martha Nussbaum's Poetic Justice. Whereas a number of these previous books have sought to articulate a public role for literature, Cunningham is more concerned with private philosophical reflection, specifically with the ways in which literature might help us reflect upon Socrates's dual questions "How should I live?" and "What sort of person should I be?" (p. 9). It is, nevertheless, appropriate to mention Cunningham's work in conjunction with these other texts because The Heart of What Matters faces a number of similar problems arising from what it means to read literature with an eye towards generating critical thought.The first part of the book consists of three chapters in which Cunningham sets out his conception of ethics, the role of a convincing ethical theory, and his account of what it means to "read for life." This last chapter is, by his own admission "fairly sketchy and theoretical" (p. 69), but he attempts to compensate for this in the second part where he offers—as a means, perhaps, of "showing by doing"—detailed, philosophically motivated readings of literary works by three authors: Kazuo Ishiguro, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston. Like many of those who write about literature and ethics—including Wayne Booth and Martha Nussbaum—Cunningham's conception of ethics is "Aristotelian in spirit" (p. 5), as such it is no surprise to find that his "primary targets" in ethical theory are "Kant and Kantian ethics" (p. 4). Kant's theory of morality and indeed its various modern formulations—formulations Cunningham critques in some detail—are, he says, simply insufficient for capturing the nuances of our lived experience. Theories that focus on some underlying principle of morality are, he suggests, too abstract to help us answer Socrates's questions about the best way to live. By contrast, literature can, Cunningham argues, provide us with insight into the complexities of modern living. In a passage that is strongly reminiscent of Poetic Justice, Cunningham asserts that literature can "filter moral experience by heightening our attention to what should be morally salient and by directing us away from less crucial elements that can distract us from more important things" (p. 84). Similarly, in a passage that further echoes Nussbaum, Cunningham suggests that "literature can help us diagnose by taking us places that are difficult and even impossible to visit, much less understand in actual experience" (p. 85). Central to his overall argument is the suggestion, also common to Nussbaum and Rorty, that the [End Page 459] "right kind of novel" can "help us refine our moral vision by giving us a studied opportunity to practice seeing and appreciating diverse ethical lores" (pp. 84-85). It is, however, this suggestion that reading is some sort of moral exercise that proves problematic for almost all work on literature and philosophy.If literature is indeed a way for us to practice exercising our moral powers, then it is not clear why philosophers such as Cunningham, Nussbaum, and Rorty lavish so much attention on their own reading of texts. Reading about reading is not, I wish to suggest, the best way to exercise this moral capacity: it is rather like expecting to benefit from watching somebody else exercise. Instead of offering us a theory of reading which might allow us to engage in this exercise ourselves, Cunningham simply gives an account of his own experience. In this way, the subtitle of Cunningham's book, "The Role for Literature in... (shrink)

Figuring prominently in their decisions regarding which theories to pursue are scientists' appeals to the promise or lack of promise of those theories. Yet philosophy of science has had little to say about how one is to assess theory promise. This essay identifies several indices that might be consulted to determine whether or not a theory is promising and worthy of pursuit. Various historical examples of appeals to such indices are introduced.

Drawing on diverse historical cases, this paper describes and examines various aspects of a modality of scientific appraisal which has remained largely unexplored, theory pursuit. Specifically, it addresses the following issues: the epistemic and pragmatic commitments involved in theory pursuit, including how these differ from those characteristic of theory acceptance; how the research interests of scientists enter into their pursuit decisions; some of the strategies for the refinement and extension of a theory's empirical abilities which typify theory pursuit; and the (...) need to distinguish between individual and community rationality in contexts of pursuit. (shrink)

‘Shared’ decision-making is heralded as the gold standard of how medical decisions should be reached, yet how does one ‘share’ a decision when any attempt to do so will undermine _autonomous_ decision-making? And what exactly is being shared? While some authors have described parallels in literature, philosophical examination of shared agency remains largely uninvestigated as an explanation in bioethics. In the following, shared decision-making will be explained as occurring when a group, generally comprised of a patient and or their family, (...) and the medical team become a genuine intentional subject which acts as a collective agent. Collective agency can better explain how some medical decisions are reached, contrary to the traditional understanding and operationalization of ‘autonomy’ in bioethics. Paradoxically, this often occurs in the setting of high-stakes moral decision-making, where conventional wisdom would suggest individuals would _most_ want to exercise autonomous action according to their personally held values and beliefs. This explication of shared decision-making suggests a social ontology ought to inform or displace significant aspects of autonomy as construed in bioethics. It will be argued that joint commitments are a fundamental part of human life, informing and explaining much human behavior, and thus suggesting that autonomy - conceived of as discrete, individuated moral reasoning of a singular moral agent - is not an unalloyed ‘good.’. (shrink)