The massive growth in global health research in past decades has posed many challenges for its effective ethical oversight, not least of which is how best to provide effective protection of research participants. The extent of the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa in particular makes research into prevention technologies for HIV, including HIV vaccine research, a global priority. However, the need for vaccine research must be considered in conjunction with the individual's right to informed consent, which is based on the (...) principle of respect for autonomy. One of the primary human rights violations likely to occur in the context of HIV vaccine research is that potential research participants may not fully understand what participation in research studies entails. People who elect to enrol in HIV vaccine trials are required to understand both the potential negative effects of participation (eg, discrimination) as well as complex scientific concepts such as randomisation and prophylaxis in order to be ethically enrolled. In this study, two vignettes are presented to illustrate two core issues in conducting phase III HIV vaccine trials in low-income countries—namely, (1) from the perspective of participants, the extent to which understanding is a prerequisite for consenting to participate in a trial, and (2) from the perspective of trial investigators, whether it is appropriate to persuade eligible people to enrol in a trial, even though their initial reaction is to decline to participate. These vignettes are used to analyse these issues through the prisms of research ethics and human rights in order to identify helpful synergies. It is argued that the human rights perspective provides a helpful lens on ethical issues. (shrink)

In a diverse and complex world, the notion of ‘cultural competence’ is offered by some as an ethical solution to health care work which is culturally naïve or inappropriate. Notions of cultural competence, however, may obscure the fact that many clinicians, regardless of background, may feel ill equipped to deal with difference in their daily work. Drawing largely on South African examples, I suggest that issues of cultural incompetence, linked both to personal anxieties and to the ways in which health (...) care systems are structured, may be important to explore — personally, professionally, and politically. Through examining the difficulties of our own work and recognizing these, we may learn more only by learning a set of skills about the ‘other’. (shrink)

Hospital ehtics committees are often consulted when cmopeting patient interests blur an otherwise clear course of medical treatment. Nowhere is the potential for competing interests greater than in the field of abosterics, wherer obstetricians have traditionally viewed themselves as having two patients: the pregnant woman and the fetus.

International codes of ethics play an important role in guiding professional practice in developing countries. In the occupational health setting, codes developing by international agencies have substantial import on protecting working populations from harm. This is particularly so under globalisation which has transformed processes of production in fundamental ways across the globe. As part of the process of revising the Ethical Code of the International Commission on Occupational Health, an African Working Group addressed key challenges for the relevance and cogency (...) of an ethical code in occupational health for an African context through an iterative consultative process. (shrink)

Rooted in the field of cathedral studies, this paper draws into dialogue three bodies of knowledge: Edward Bailey’s notion of implicit religion that, among other things, highlights the continuing traction of the Christian tradition and Christian practice within secular societies; David Walker’s notion of the multiple ways through which in secular societies people may relate to the Christian tradition as embodied within the Anglican Church and John Fisher’s notion of spiritual wellbeing as conceptualised in relational terms. Against this conceptual background, (...) this paper draws on data provided by 1234 participants attending one of the Christmas Eve carol services in Liverpool Cathedral to explore the perceived impact of attendance on the spiritual health of people who do not believe in God and yet feel that Liverpool Cathedral is their cathedral, and it is this sense of belonging that brings them back at Christmas time.Contribution: Situated within the science of cathedral studies, this paper links in an original way three fields of discourse: Edward Bailey’s notion of implicit religion, David Walker’s notion of the four ways of belonging to God facilitated by the Anglican Church and John Fisher’s conceptualisation and operationalisation of the notion of spiritual wellbeing. The hypothesis developed from this original integration of theoretical perspectives is then tested empirically on data provided by 404 participants at carol services who do not believe in God. (shrink)

Objects of representation: Kant's Copernican revolution re-interpreted -- Synthetic unities of experience -- Three ways in which space and time might be said to be transcendentally ideal -- The given, the unconditioned, the transcendental object, and the reality of the past -- A theory of everything?: Kant speaks to Stephen Hawking -- Opinion, belief or faith, and knowledge -- Freedom of judgment in Descartes, Spinoza, Hume and Kant -- Six levels of mentality -- A Kantian defense of freewill.

One of the first books to address what has come to be known as the philosophy of cosmology, Universes asks, "Why does the universe exist?", arguing that the universe is "fine tuned for producing life." For example, if the universe's early expansion speed had been smaller by one part in a million, then it would have recollapsed rapidly; with an equivalently tiny speed increase, no galaxies would have formed. Either way, this universe would have been lifeless.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This article provides an ecological theory of face perception that elucidates the basis of the various perceptions. It then reviews research on first impressions elicited by facial qualities that are associated with fitness, emotion, race, age, and sex, in each case making links to ecological theory. It aims to identify facial qualities that inform social perceptions and reflect the zeitgeist at the time in social psychology. The emphasis is on understanding the cognitive mechanisms engaged in social perception, and this is (...) typically accomplished by providing information about social qualities in lists of trait words. The article demonstrates face perception research pertinent to the detection of socially relevant qualities in faces—attractiveness, emotions, race, age, and sex—as well as associated behavioral affordances, which have typically been assessed by trait ratings. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This research addresses the question of whether men and women in sales differ in their ethical attitudes and decision making. The study asked 209 subjects to respond to 20 ethical scenarios, half of which were "relational" and half "non-relational." The study concludes (1) that there are significant ethical differences between the sexes in situations that involve relational issues, but not in non-relational situations, and (2) that gender-based ethical differences change with age and years of experience. The implications of these finding (...) for sales organizations are discussed. (shrink)

Leslie Stephen was an English biographer, and a writer on philosophy, ethics and literature. He was educated at Eton, King's College, London, and then Trinity College in Cambridge, where he remained as a fellow and a tutor for his entire career. He was also a keen mountaineer, taking part in first ascents of nine peaks in the Alps. He served as the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and in 1871 he became editor of the Cornhill Magazine. (...) During his eleven-year tenure he wrote two successful books on ethics, of which this work, published in 1882, was one. It was widely adopted as a standard textbook on moral philosophy, and became one of the most influential publications on the ideas of evolutionary ethics that had been inspired by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. (shrink)

Scholars have shown renewed interest in the construct of courage. Recent studies have explored its theoretical underpinnings and measurement. Yet courage is generally discussed in its broad form to include physical, psychological, and moral features. To understand a more practical form of moral courage, research is needed to uncover how ethical challenges are effectively managed in organizational settings. We argue that professional moral courage (PMC) is a managerial competency. To describe it and derive items for scale development, we studied managers (...) in the U.S. military and examined prior work on moral courage. Two methods were used to measure PMC producing a five dimensional scale that organized under a single second-order factor, which we termed overall PMC. The five dimensions are moral agency, multiple values, endurance of threats, going beyond compliance, and moral goals. Convergent and discriminant validity are analyzed by use of confirmatory factor analysis procedures. We conclude by presenting a framework for proactive organizational ethics, which reflects how to support PMC as a management practice. (shrink)

This book marks a total departure from previous studies of the Boxer War. It evaluates the way the war was perceived and portrayed at the time by the mass media. As such the book offers insights to a wider audience than that of sinologists or Chinese historians. The important distinction made by the author is between image makers and eyewitnesses. Whole categories of powerful image makers, both Chinese and foreign, never saw anything of the Boxer War but were responsible for (...) disseminating images of that war to millions of people in China and throughout the world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, we first document the virtually complete absence of infectious disease examples and concerns at the time bioethics emerged as a field. We then argue that this oversight was not benign by considering two central issues in the field, informed consent and distributive justice, and showing how they might have been framed differently had infectiousness been at the forefront of concern. The solution to this omission might be to apply standard approaches in liberal bioethics, such as autonomy (...) and the harm principle, to infectious examples. We argue that this is insufficient, however. Taking infectious disease into account requires understanding the patient as victim and as vector. Infectiousness reminds us that as autonomous agents we are both embodied and vulnerable in our relationships with others. We conclude by applying this reunderstanding of agency to the examples of informed consent and distributive justice in health care. (shrink)

This paper is an examination of the concept of recognition and its connection with identity and respect. This is related to the question of how women are or are not adequately recognised or respected for their achievements in sport and whether eliminating sex segregation in sport is a solution. This will require an analysis of the concept of excellence in sport, as well as the relationship between fairness and inclusion in an activity that is fundamentally about bodily movement. I argue (...) that attempts to address the problem of women’s recognition in sport need to do so in ways that neither eliminate sport as a fairness regulated system for developing individual excellence in bodily movement nor that prevent women’s achievement of sporting excellence, with the regard that belongs to them. Doing this requires us to decide whether sport is about champions or about individual excellence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, we first document the virtually complete absence of infectious disease examples and concerns at the time bioethics emerged as a field. We then argue that this oversight was not benign by considering two central issues in the field, informed consent and distributive justice, and showing how they might have been framed differently had infectiousness been at the forefront of concern. The solution to this omission might be to apply standard approaches in liberal bioethics, such as autonomy (...) and the harm principle, to infectious examples. We argue that this is insufficient, however. Taking infectious disease into account requires understanding the patient as victim and as vector. Infectiousness reminds us that as autonomous agents we are both embodied and vulnerable in our relationships with others. We conclude by applying this reunderstanding of agency to the examples of informed consent and distributive justice in health care. (shrink)

A psychiatrist who has received international recognition for her research on the neural basis of primate social cognition, Leslie Brothers, M.D., offers here a major argument about the social dimension of the human brain, drawing on both her own work and a wealth of information from research laboratories, neurosurgical clinics, and psychiatric wards. Brothers offers the tale of Robinson Crusoe as a metaphor for neuroscience's classic notion of the brain: a starkly isolated figure, working, praying, writing alone. But the (...) famous castaway of literature, she notes, came from society and returned to society. So too with our brains: they have evolved a specialized capacity for exchanging signals with other brains--they are designed to be social. This can be seen in the brain's sensitive attunement to the meanings of facial expressions and physical gestures and the way it assigns mental lives to physical bodies--a feat we too often take for granted. Brothers describes fascinating case studies that show that certain kinds of brain damage can destroy a patient's ability to interpret faces, leaving him or her with the sense that they are surrounded by zombies. She takes us down to the level of the individual neuron, exploring the response of brain cells to social events. Perhaps most important, she connects neuroscience, psychiatry, and sociology as never before, showing how our daily interaction creates an organized social world--a network of brains that generates meaningful behavior and thought. Our emotions and our sense of self have no existence outside of a social context. Brothers conducts her argument with grace and style. By broadening our approach to the brain, this groundbreaking book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the human mind. (shrink)

The modern state claims supreme authority over the lives of all its citizens. Drawing together political philosophy, jurisprudence, and public choice theory, this book forces the reader to reconsider some basic assumptions about the authority of the state. Various popular and influential theories - conventionalism, contractarianism, and communitarianism - are assessed by the author and found to fail. Leslie Green argues that only the consent of the governed can justify the state's claims to authority. While he denies that there (...) is a general obligation to obey the law, he nonetheless rejects philosophical anarchism and defends civility - the willingness to tolerate some imperfection in institutions - as a political virtue. (shrink)

Two prevalent assumptions in the philosophy of sport literature are that all sports are games and that all games are contests, meant to determine who is the better at the skills definitive of the sport. If these are correct, it would follow that all sports are contests and that a range of sporting activities, including nature sports, are not in fact sports at all. This paper first confronts the notion that sport and games must seek to resolve skill superiority through (...) consideration of sport activities that have no such aim. The reduction of sport to game is also shown to be untenable and due to misunderstanding the point of sport activities, specifically, why people engage in them. This leads to reconsideration of the dominance of an instrumental conception of sport and the pursuit of excellence as anthropomaximising efficiency. The Norwegian tradition of frilutsliv is explored as a counterpoint to both conventional and nature sport. (shrink)

Although typically invisible, neoliberal policies and ideologies are often at the root of why farmers markets struggle to offer affordable prices for consumers, sufficient income for farmers, and expand socially and environmentally sustainable food systems. Argentinian ferias francas, a variation on farmers markets, offer a unique case to examine how they may be designed to alleviate these issues by challenging neoliberalism through legislative mechanisms. Ferias francas emerged as an explicitly anti-neoliberal, grassroots response to Argentina’s expansion of neoliberal agricultural policies that (...) stimulated global agribusiness and displaced small-scale farmers. Organizers partnered with municipal, provincial, and national governments to develop legislation to support small-scale farmers and to make the network of ferias competitive with global agribusiness. I ask, how can organizers expand farmers markets’ potential to fulfill the social and environmental goals of agri-food movements, given neoliberal capitalism’s constraints and contradictions? I analyze feria legislation by situating it in its social and historical context, and comparing legislative mechanisms to core elements of neoliberalism in the economy and in the everyday mentalities of agri-food activists. I find that mechanisms such as setting prices lower than neighboring supermarkets and establishing uniform prices for feria goods contest some aspects of neoliberalism. However, the ferias also reproduce neoliberalism, and are still subject to the price standards set under the global neoliberal agroeconomy, raising questions about their prospects for sustainability under neoliberal capitalism. This analysis of feria legislation makes neoliberalism’s influence on farmers markets visible and highlights legislative mechanisms that address some of its harmful effects. (shrink)

Joseph Agassi is known primarily among fellow academics as an exemplary historian and philosopher of science; an ardent critic and disciple of Karl Popper; a critical admirer of the work of Michael Polanyi; and a Socratic fly with the “sting of a bee” for all those who wear the intellectual fashions of the day. To most of Agassi’s students he is known primarily as an exemplary model of the Socratic teacher. The question of most urgency for educators today who care (...) about the intellectual development of students is: How do we make ready our educational institutions for more Socratic teachers? The philosophical or theoretical question is: Why do we want Socratic teachers? In outline, of the many of Agassi’s educational essays selected for this book, Agassi answers those questions: authoritarianism (or anti-democracy) blocks the democratic reform of educational institutions where Socratic teachers and students could find a safe haven; and, Socratic teaching is the main anti-dote to authoritarianism. The removal of authoritarianism from education also removes the hazard that education has become to students; to their happiness, creativity, and dignity as autonomous individuals. See Less Copyright Year: 2014 E-Book (PDF) Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-626-4 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Hardback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-624-0 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Paperback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-623-3 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Login via Institution Prices from (excl. shipping): -/- $56.00 -/- ​ Available formats Add to Cart View PDF Flyer Get Permissions. (shrink)

A readable, well illustrated, and often entertaining book surveying the main issues in the controversy over "time-dilation" and the "clock paradox" in Einstein's theory of relativity.

Excellence in sport performance is normally taken to be a matter of superior performance of physical movements or quantitative outcomes of movements. This paper considers whether a wider conception can be afforded by certain kinds of nature based sport. The interplay between technical skill and aesthetic experience in nature based sports is explored, and the extent to which it contributes to a distinction between different sport-based approaches to natural environments. The potential for aesthetic appreciation of environmental engagement is found to (...) be strongly dependent on whether or not environmental engagement is exploited for the end of producing a quantifiable result or enhancing technical skill. It is also argued that an existential rather than spectatorial attitude to aesthetic experience is offered by specifically nature oriented sport. Aesthetic experience achieved in this way is therefore neither passive nor detached, but extends Berleant's concept of participatory environmental aesthetics and underpins both an alternate (wide) conception of excellence in sport activity and a richer experience of aesthetic engagement than more objectivised standpoints. (shrink)

This paper responds to Kevin Krein’s claim in that the particular value of nature sports over traditional ones is that they offer intensity of sport experience in dynamic interaction between an athlete and natural features. He denies that this intensity is derived from competitive conflict of individuals and denies that nature sport derives its value from internal conflict within the athlete who carries out the activity. This paper responds directly to Krein by analysing ‘intensity’ in sport in terms of the (...) relationship between attention and reflection and the interaction between self and environment. I reply directly to Krein’s rejection of self-competition as based on a mischaracterisation of internal struggle and argue that the weighing of incompatible desires does not involve a fragmented self. I argue that the unique intensity to which Krein refers is strongly comparable to the Kantian conception of the sublime and explore how sublime experience fits Krein’s account and outline some serious problems that such an ideal of experience poses for nature sport. (shrink)