Violence and the Remaking of a Self Susan J. Brison. Political activism (including lobbying for new legislation, speaking out, educating others, helping survivors) can also help to undo the double bind of self-blame versus helplessness.

Rural landscapes are facing a loss of biodiversity. To deal with this challenge, landscape governance is seen as an alternative and addition to sectoral policies and a potential way of realizing transformative change for biodiversity. To study transformative change in the Bulb Region, the Netherlands, this study uses a discursive-institutional perspective. A mixed methods approach was used including 50 interviews, participant observation and document analysis. The structuration and institutionalization of three competing landscape discourses were analyzed: a hegemonic discourse rejecting any (...) changes in bulb farming; an emerging discourse aiming to enhance sustainability through innovation; and an unstructured discourse questioning the sustainability of bulb farming. The paper shows that the emerging sustainability discourse strengthens the hegemonic discourse by providing an action repertoire for farmers to deal with changing societal demands, while not questioning the hegemonic view on the landscape. Moreover, an institutionalized landscape discourse can be very stable if discursive (relation between naturalized landscape perspectives, identity and the articulated economic interests) and non-discursive factors (natural-spatial conditions, structure of agricultural sector, embeddedness in international trade) are strongly intertwined, leaving little room for alternative discourses. The sustainability discourse was induced by changes outside the Bulb Region (e.g., legislation), thus raising the question whether landscapes are the appropriate level to expect the initiation of transformative change. For rural transformations to come about, solely relying on policies on the landscape level is not sensible. A mix of policies at both the landscape and higher levels offers more perspective for transformative change. (shrink)

The phenomenon of multiple personality--Like the "split-Brain" phenomenon--Involves a disintegration of the normally unified self to the point where one must question whether there is one, Or more than one, Person associated with the body even at a single moment in time. Besides the traditional problem of determining identity over time, There is now a new problem of personal identity--Determining identity at a single moment in time. We need the conceptual apparatus to talk about this new problem and a test, (...) Like the one I propose, For determining the number of persons associated with a body at a single moment in time. (shrink)

Health care reform proposals threaten to exacerbate tensions physicians already face in trying to balance traditional duties to individual patients against increasing pressure to serve broader societal and institutional goals. To cope with reform, medical ethics must clarify physicians' moral obligations, change existing ethical codes, and develop an ethics of institutions.

This study investigates the effectiveness of pedagogical practices used to teach business ethics. The business community has greatly increased its demands for better ethics education in business programs. Educators have generally agreed that the ethical principles of business people have declined. It is important, then, to examine how common methods of instruction used in business ethics could contribute to the development of higher levels of moral judgment competence for students. To determine the effectiveness of these methods, moral judgment competence levels (...) for undergraduate and graduate students from three institutions were measured and compared based upon the pedagogical method used in a business class. Significant differences were found for moral reasoning and moral competence scores depending on the method used for ethics instruction. Students in classes with more highly integrated ethics coverage scored higher in moral reasoning and moral competence. (shrink)

Quine and Putnam argued for mathematical realism on the basis of the indispensability of mathematics to science. They claimed that the mathematics that is used in physical theories is confirmed along with those theories and that scientific realism entails mathematical realism. I argue here that current theories of confirmation suggest that mathematics does not receive empirical support simply in virtue of being a part of well confirmed scientific theories and that the reasons for adopting a realist view of scientific theories (...) do not support realism about mathematical entities, despite the use of mathematics in formulating scientific theory. (shrink)

The population of most non-dominant ethnic groups in the USA is growing dramatically. Faculty members are challenged to develop curricula that adequately prepare our future nurses. An increased focus on clinical ethics has resulted from the use of sophisticated technology, changes in health care financing, an increasing elderly population and the shift of care from inpatient to outpatient settings. Nurses frequently face situations demanding resolution of ethical dilemmas involving cultural differences. Nursing curricula must include content on both ethics and cultural (...) sensitivity. Active student participation is an important element providing a foundation for ethical practice. A proposed educational format was introduced with graduating baccalaureate students. In a pilot study, curricular content on cultural sensitivity and ethical practice was taught in separate modules. Students were then asked to identify and problem solve an ethical dilemma involving patients and professional caregivers from vastly different cultures. Course faculty members provided discussion questions to guide the students' thinking. (shrink)

Life saving or life sustaining treatment may not be instigated in the clinical setting when such treatment is deemed to be futile and therefore not in the patient’s best interests. The concept of futility, however, is related to many assumptions about quality and quantity of life, and may be relied upon in a manner that is ethically unjustifiable. It is argued that the concept of futility will remain of limited practical use in making decisions based on the best interests principle (...) because it places such high demands on the individual responsible for decision making. This article provides a critical analysis of futility (in the context of the best interests decision-making principle), and proposes an ethically defensible notion of futility. (shrink)

Successful preimplantation genetic diagnosis to avoid creating a child affected by a genetically-based disorder was reported in 1989. Since then PGD has been used to biopsy and analyze embryos created through in viuo fertilization to avoid transferring to the mother’s uterus an embryo affected by a mutation or chromosomal abnormality associated with serious illness. PGD to avoid serious and early-onset illness in the child-to-be is widely accepted. PGD prevents gestation of an affected embryo and reduces the chance that the parents (...) will be faced with a difficult decision of whether to terminate the pregnancy. More controversial have been PGD to select the sex of the child-to-be for “family balancing”, PGD for mere susceptibility to disease and for late-onset disorders such as Alzheimer diseas, and most controversially, PGD to create a donor child who is Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA-matched with a preexisting sibling in need of stem cell transplant. (shrink)

Sixty-five computer science and computer information systems students were surveyed to ascertain their ethical beliefs on seven scenarios and nineteen ethical problems. All seven scenarios incorporated computer-related problems facing programmers and managers in the high tech world. Hypotheses were tested for significant differences between the students'' beliefs and the beliefs of experts in the field who responded to the same scenarios. The first two hypothesis tested whether female and male high tech students have the same ethical beliefs as the experts (...) who first examined these scenarios. The female students did not agree with the experts in seven of the nineteen problems while the male students did not agree with the experts in eight of the nineteen problems. Both computer information systems and computer science majors disagreed with the experts in ten cases. The last three hypotheses tested whether students from different income levels agreed with the experts. All three groups disagreed significantly with the experts on eight problems. (shrink)

This article examines the actions and testimonies of 14 nurses who killed psychiatric patients at the state hospital of Meseritz-Obrawalde in the Nazi 'euthanasia' program. The nurses provided various reasons for their decisions to participate in the killings. An ethical analysis of the testimonies demonstrates that a belief in the relief of suffering, the notion that the patients would 'benefit' from death, their selection by physicians for the 'treatment' of 'euthanasia', and a perceived duty to obey unquestioningly the orders of (...) physicians were the primary ethical reasons that were stated for their behavior. However, 20 years had elapsed between the killings and the trial, thus giving ample opportunity for the defendants to develop comfortable rationales for their actions and for their attorneys to have observed successful defenses of others accused of euthanasia. (shrink)

Transhumanists and their fellow travelers urge humanity to prioritize the development of biotechnologies that would eliminate aging, delivering ‘an endless summer of literally perpetual youth.’ Aspiring not to age instantiates what philosopher Martha Nussbaum calls the yearning for ‘external transcendence,’ or the fundamental surpassing of human bounds due to confidence that life without them would be better. Based on Immanuel Kant’s account of the parameters of human understanding, I argue that engineering agelessness could not be a rational priority for humanity (...) on the level of public policy. This stance is complemented by an argument focused on individual decision-making in liberal-democratic milieus, where no governing conception of the good is presumed and the first-personal level matters greatly. Here, drawing on philosopher and cognitive scientist Laurie Ann Paul’s concept of ‘transformative experience,’ I maintain that individuals could not ‘rationally,’ meaning, here, ‘prudentially,’ say ‘yes’ to agelessness. Absorbing the irrationality of human zeal to eliminate aging, based on assurance that an ageless existence would be better, should spur a redoubled dedication to human flourishing. (shrink)

This paper will suggest a mapping for human dynamics to see where emerging digital technology currently and could further affect the dynamics of the human, technological and natural, and the cultural forms that define them. Emerging technology will be seen to reveal and surpass the limitations of human measures built on human abilities and perception. and the social structures that are derived from them. The formation of this conceptual mapping is based on the premise that digital technology has the ability (...) to better relay and hence refine dynamics working at points where culture is created and necessitated in our perception of a shared reality. Technology thus alleviates the layering, representation, labelling, and reification notions of culture that are based in human perceptual limitations. Information as referential will be seen against the tendency of technology to offer succinct mediation and direct actions as a format for any change and application with refined cultural constructions. The mapping presents a notion of homeostasis or more bereft of balance at the point where the proximal dynamics of the unit, that is, the individual, is closely supported by the technology with a changing orientation to the dynamics of a natural environment. The notion of a person as an individual is also reconsidered in terms of technology and how this changing definition is part of how we conceptualize a balanced world. Nonlinear mapping rendered in a complex will be introduced to align these mixed dynamics. Complex is here defined as a concurrence of dynamics evident in shifts of change that act as a whole and where each action affects the whole. As measures are revealed so, too, will be the source of notions of linearity and nonlinearity; mapping; point of view as a basis of complexity; and evolutionary theory as a function of a labeling of cultural dynamics. (shrink)

Haack's topic here is the terms "pragmatism" and "pragmaticism," why Peirce felt the need for the new term, which was "ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers," and why he thought its ugliness was actually a good thing. What was the origin of pragmatism as a philosophical movement? When, where, and how did the word "pragmatism" get into philosophical circulation? Why does Peirce conclude, only a few years after he had taken his bows as the founder of the movement, that (...) he needed a new word for the original idea? Who were the kidnappers he worried about? Why did he think the ugliness of this new word a good thing? How does this relate to his distaste for "studying in a literary spirit"? And, as always, what can we learn from all this?—a good deal, Haack discovers, about the state of philosophy today. (shrink)

The more than fifty years of dialogue since Vatican II launched the Catholic Church into the ecumenical movement have resulted in significant convergence, but reception of these results remains slow and inconclusive despite the stunning success of the Joint Declaration on Justification signed in 1999. This presentation explores some of the challenges for reception within the ecclesial and social context of ecumenical relationships today and discusses why the ecumenical imperative is even more critical at this point in time. It also (...) suggests a model of ecclesiology for the reception of relationships of full communion. (shrink)

Traditional empiricism, although largely abandoned, has marked the social studies of science through the persistent division between macrolevel analysis of the institutions promoting and regulating science and microlevel analysis of the laboratory, theories, and experiments. Further traces appear in the largely separate methodologies used in social studies of science, which do not draw from political theory, and studies in political theory, which are silent with respect to the expression of power in the development of science. Poststructuralist conceptions of science have (...) reinforced this divcsion by encour aging a turn away from explanations that assume human agency and accountability. This article attempts to bridge the present methodological gulf between political theory and the social studies of science through methods that are sensitive to the nature and operation of power and to its expression in discourse. The application of these methods in the study of genetic engineering policy m the United States and the United Kingdom is outlined. (shrink)

This paper proceeds from a sense of dissatisfaction with much of current moral argument about defence policy, in particular the role of nuclear weapons. Discussions of the moral issues tend to divide into two distinct kinds of writing: on the one hand, impassioned calls to action based on and allied with equally impassioned moral exhortations; and on the other hand, usually in academic contexts, meticulous analyses and comparisons of aspects of nuclear policy with paradigm cases of acknowledged moral categories or (...) requirements, with the object of showing by analogy with these that the particular aspect of policy under discussion is or is not morally wrong. My unease is caused by the fact that, while it is difficult not to respond to the impassioned style of argument, as one recognizes in it a practical and moral urgency which our situation seems to demand, nevertheless it plainly appeals only to those already convinced of its conclusions. The unconverted tend to regard it with suspicion or disdain, for in contrast to the analytical style, which manifestly seeks to compel the intellect, the impassioned style seems to make its effect by stirring the emotions as much as if not instead of by compelling the intellect. On the other hand the analytical style can seem curiously irrelevant, even trivial, in relation to the issue. For instance, it has been argued that since: nuclear war is a moral disaster; deterrence is threatening or intending to wage nuclear war; it is wrong to threaten or intend to do something wrong; therefore: deterrence is wrong, and should be abandoned. It is hard to believe that defenders of deterrence as the cornerstone of defence policy are going to be persuaded by such an argument to abandon their advocation of it, if only because the argument totally ignores the object of deterrence. (shrink)