Riordan, Marcia This article gives the reader an overview of a DVD 'God So Loved the World: A Pastoral Series on Life Issues.' This DVD was produced by the Australian Catholic Life Council, a group established by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference under the ACBC Commission for Pastoral Life. This article discusses the life issues covered in the DVD, which are abortion, euthanasia, and the reproductive technologies. Above all, it explains why it is necessary to de-velop a more (...) positive pastoral response to these issues. (shrink)

Riordan, Marcia Recent advances in genetic technology may mean that the brave new world really is almost here. Non-invasive prenatal genetic diagnosis could finally allow hundreds of thousands of genetic traits to be determined with just one maternal blood test. This could bring genetic screening of the unborn child to a whole new level and mean that as a society we face a new set of challenges in areas such as disability rights, abortion and informed consent.

Riordan, Marcia Some advocates of embryonic stem cell research want women to be paid for donating their eggs. This article details reasons why this would be bad public policy that would harm women.

Riordan, Marcia Abortion providers and advocates want Australian women who face an unexpected pregnancy to have the option of choosing a chemical RU-486 abortion, instead of a surgical abortion. This article looks at this proposal, and discusses its possible repercussions. There is considerable controversy over this method of abortion, with promoters saying that it is safer, easier and private, whereas opponents call it DIY abortion or home-alone abortion and question its safety.

Riordan, Marcia This report on the Victorian Abortion Law Reform Bill 2008 particularly considers the fact that it has denied health care professionals any right of conscientious objection. It sees this as part of an international attempt to deny conscientious objection against abortion, and to enforce abortion as an international human right.

Riordan, Marcia This article argues against the Victorian Medical Treatment (Physician Assisted Dying) Bill and the Federal Rights of the Terminally Ill (Euthanasia Laws Repeal) Bill. True compassion leads to sharing another's pain; it does not kill them.

The emphasis on duly in Kant's ethics is widely held to constitute a defect. Marcia W. Baron develops and assesses the criticism, which she sees as comprising two objections: that duty plays too large a role, leaving no room for the supererogatory, and that Kant places too much value on acting from duty. Clearly written and cogently argued, Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology takes on the most philosophically intriguing objections to Kant's ethics and subjects them to a rigorous yet (...) sympathetic assessment. (shrink)

Gideon Rosen (2014) has drawn our attention to cases of duress of a particularly interesting sort: the person's ‘mind is not flooded with pain or fear’, she knows exactly what she is doing, and she makes a clear-headed choice to act in, as Rosen says, ‘awful ways’. The explanation of why we excuse such actions cannot be that the action was not voluntary. In addition, although some duress cases could also be viewed as necessity cases and thus as justified, Rosen (...) wisely sets aside that complicating factor by zeroing in on those cases where the action clearly is not justified. So why do we excuse in these cases, where the action is not justified and the agent acted voluntarily?Rosen thinks the key lies in the ‘ill will’ condition, ‘the idea that an act is blameworthy only if it manifests insufficient concern or regard for those affected’. He says this is relatively uncontroversial; much of my paper is taken up with calling the ‘ill will’ condition into question. I also take issue with Rosen on just how justifications and excuses differ. I argue in favour of understanding justifications (in a context where we are asking how justifications and excuses differ) as not requiring truth, but only reasonable belief. (shrink)

1. Stoicism in classical Latin literature -- 2. Stoicism in Christian Latin thought through the sixth century.

Friends as well as foes of Kant have long been uneasy over his emphasis on duty, but lately the view that there is something morally repugnant about acting from duty seems to be gaining in popularity. More and more philosophers indicate their readiness to jettison duty and the moral 'ought' and to conceive of the perfectly moral person as someone who has all the right desires and acts accordingly without any notion that (s)he ought to act in this way. Elsewhere' (...) I have argued that such a picture of the perfectly moral person is flawed. In this paper I examine the claim that acting from duty is morally repugnant. There is some truth to this charge, but, I argue, the repugnance attaches not to acting from duty as such, but only to certain ways of acting from duty. In isolating the objectionable elements of acting from duty, I hope not only to vindicate the skeletal concept but also to offer illumination on the question of just how we should understand morally good conduct. (shrink)

During the past decade ethical theory has been in a lively state of development, and three basic approaches to ethics - Kantian ethics, consequentialism, and virtue ethics - have assumed positions of particular prominence.

American doctors in the 1990s are being asked to serve as "double agents," weighing competing allegiances to patients' medical needs against the monetary costs to society. This situation is a reaction to rapid cost increases for medical services, themselves the result of the haphazard development since the 1920s of an inherently inflationary, open-ended system for funding and delivering health care. The answer to an inefficient system, however, is not to stint on care, but rather to restructure the system to remove (...) the inflationary pressures. As long as we are spending enormous resources on an inherently inefficient and inflationary system we cannot justify asking doctors to withhold beneficial care to save money for third-party payers. Doing so serves a largely political agenda and endangers the patient-centered ethic that is central to medicine. (shrink)

The human subjects researchmodel is increasingly invoked in discussions ofethics for Internet research. Here we seek toquestion the widespread application of thismodel, critiquing it through the two themes ofspace and textual form. Drawing on ourexperience of a previous piece ofresearch, we highlightthe implications of re-considering thetextuality of the Internet in addition to thespatial metaphors that are more commonlydeployed to describe Internet activity. Weargue that the use of spatial metaphors indescriptions of the Internet has shaped theadoption of the human subjects research (...) model.Whilst this model is appropriate in some areasof Internet research such as emailcommunication, we feel that researchers, whennavigating the complex terrain of Internetresearch ethics, need also to consider theInternet as cultural production of texts. (shrink)

This valuable and interesting book attempts to discern the essential Freudian theses about the mind and to give them a cogent philosophical defense. Like many philosophers Gardner sees psychoanalytic explanation as continuous with folk psychology, though he holds that the latter needs considerable expansion in order to accommodate irrationality of the “Freudian” sorts.

...believe that his theory asks too much, demanding total devotion to morality and treating everything worth doing (and perhaps more) as a duty. But, despite their differences, the two sets of...

It is widely agreed that the top three Model Penal Code culpability levels suffice for criminal liability, but the fourth is controversial. And it isn’t just the particular MPC wording; that negligence should be on the list at all is controversial. My question is: What makes negligence so different? What is it about negligence that gives rise to the view that it should not suffice for criminal liability? In addressing it, I draw attention to how we conduct the debate, and (...) how our framing of the issues is shaping it. My hope is to prompt thought and discussion on just what we want the element of mens rea to provide, and to draw attention to background assumptions that shape our views of what it should take for negligence to count as a species of mens rea. (shrink)

The distinction between justifications and excuses is a familiar one to most of us who work either in moral philosophy or legal philosophy. But exactly how it should be understood is a matter of considerable disagreement. My aim in this paper is, first, to sort out the differences and try to figure out what underlying disagreements account for them. I give particular attention to the following question: Does a person who acts on a reasonable but mistaken belief have a justification, (...) or only an excuse? One disagreement I highlight concerns the extent to which justification is primarily about agents rather than about actions. Those who think, as I do, of “His action, X, was justified” as “He was justified in doing X” are far more likely to allow that justification requires reasonable belief and does not require truth, than are those who think of “His action, X, was justified” as “Although actions of this type usually are prohibited, X is in these circumstances in fact permissible.” In addition to sorting out the differences and tracing them to some underlying disagreements, I defend the reasonable belief view of justification against some objections, and argue that, whether or not we continue to use the term “justified” in a way that does not require truth, we need the concept. Contrary to the claims of some who reject the reasonable belief view of justification, justification thus understood does not reduce to excuse. (shrink)

What is the relation between shame and shamelessness? It may seem obvious: shamelessness is simply the absence of shame. But on reflection, it becomes clear that the story is considerably more complicated. Michelle Mason's intriguing "On Shamelessness" prompts such reflection. Mason argues that we should be mindful of the "moral importance of shame" and "unapologetic in its defense", and she does so via an examination of shamelessness and an argument to the effect that shamelessness is a moral fault. The tacit (...) assumption is that insofar as shamelessness is a moral fault, the value of shame is vindicated. I challenge that assumption. (shrink)

Pretende-se discutir a produção da história especializada, da história midiatizada e da história ensinada na interlocução com a matriz disciplinar de Jörn Rüsen. Defende-se que deve haver a fundamentação científica também na construção do conhecimento histórico escolar, para que o senso comum se torne senso crítico. Contrapõe-se aos revisionismos que negam, silenciam, deturpam a história considerada “sobrecarregada” em relação aos indígenas, ao escravismo e à Ditadura Civil-Militar brasileira. Toma como exemplo de história midiática/pública os Guias Politicamente Incorretos, principalmente da História (...) do Brasil, escrito por Leandro Narloch. Conclui que apenas a história construída com base científica pode refletir sobre o presente vivido para interpretar o passado com vistas ao futuro transformado no sentido de afirmar uma sociedade democrática. (shrink)

When successful and ethical managers are alerted to possible organizational wrongdoing, they take corrective action before the problems become crises. However, recent research [e.g., Rynes et al. (2007, Academy of Management Journal50(5), 987–1008)] indicates that many organizations fail to implement evidence-based practices (i.e., practices that are consistent with research findings), in many aspects of human resource management. In this paper, we draw from years of research on whistle-blowing by social scientists and legal scholars and offer concrete suggestions to managers who (...) are interested in encouraging internal reporting of problems requiring attention, and to observers of questionable activity who are considering reporting it. We also identify ways that research suggests policy-makers can have a more positive influence. We hope that these suggestions will help foster evidence-based practice regarding whistle-blowing. (shrink)

The pharmaceutical sector, an industry already facing stiff challenges in the form of intensified competition and strategic consolidation, has increasingly become subject to a range of pressures. Crucially, in common with other large-scale businesses, pharmaceutical firms find themselves ‹invited’ to respond positively to the corporate ‹social’ responsibility (CSR) expectations of their stakeholders. Consequently, individual managers will almost certainly be obliged to engage in some form of stakeholder dialogue and this, in turn, means that they will have to make difficult choices (...) about which practices to adopt. This real-world management predicament runs parallel to an academic interest in CSR stakeholder dialogue theory and models. Accordingly, the approach of this paper is to focus primarily on the academic debate surrounding stakeholder dialogue, by reviewing past attempts to research and theorise the subject, by identifying gaps and weaknesses in the literature, and by proposing a new analytical model. The central aim of the proposed new model is to offer a unified, structured, systematic, and comprehensive approach to CSR decision making whilst simultaneously providing a practical framework for CSR executives who face the challenge of responding in an effective manner to stakeholders. The model outlined here is currently being employed to conduct international comparative empirical research into stakeholder dialogue practices amongst UK and German pharmaceutical firms. In the longer term the intention is to use the model to undertake international comparative research encompassing a broader range of countries and industries. (shrink)