The sociological models of functionalism and conflict are introduced and utilized to analyze professionalism in the accounting profession as it is manifest in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant's Code of Conduct. Rule 203 of the Code and provisions of the Code related to the public interest are examined using semiotic analysis to determine if they are most consistent with the functionalist or conflict models. While the analysis does not address intent of the Code, it is determined that the (...) Code contains semantic defects which result in different interpretations of the Code to different readers. The defects found are most consistent with the conflict model of professionalism. This has implications for the public and for individuals within the profession, making the Code less useful to both groups. The defects are seen as a potential battleground for the self-interest vs the public interest orientation of the accounting profession. (shrink)

In his struggle against Weimar, Geneva, and Versailles, Carl Schmitt enlisted a number of political thinkers as confederates—Machiavelli, Hobbes, Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, Juan Donoso Cortés, Benjamin Constant, and Hegel. The legitimacy of this claim has gone unchallenged except in the case of Hegel. Many have felt that his liberal credentials, most clearly manifested in his conception of civil society and his allegiance to the reformist policies espoused in Prussia by H.F.K. von Stein, K.A. von Hardenberg, and Wilhelm (...) von Humboldt, were compromised by Schmitt, who appears to have opposed liberalism and contributed to the demise of the Weimar republic. Schmitt’s attempt to tie Hegel’s views to the political outlook of Hobbes and de Maistre also discredits his speculative stance. Jean-François Kervégan’s extraordinary book seeks to extricate Hegel from this troubling association and attempts both to defend Hegel’s liberalism and confirm the philosophical nature of his argument. Without diminishing Schmitt’s Hegelian debt, his exhaustive comparative study, supported by impeccable scholarship, attempts to show that Schmitt distorted Hegel’s liberalism by disregarding the dialectical intent of his philosophy. In the process, Kervégan aims to preserve the Hegelian legacy from any contamination that might accrue to it from association with Schmitt. (shrink)

In his struggle against Weimar, Geneva, and Versailles, Carl Schmitt enlisted a number of political thinkers as confederates—Machiavelli, Hobbes, Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, Juan Donoso Cortés, Benjamin Constant, and Hegel. The legitimacy of this claim has gone unchallenged except in the case of Hegel. Many have felt that his liberal credentials, most clearly manifested in his conception of civil society and his allegiance to the reformist policies espoused in Prussia by H.F.K. von Stein, K.A. von Hardenberg, and Wilhelm (...) von Humboldt, were compromised by Schmitt, who appears to have opposed liberalism and contributed to the demise of the Weimar republic. Schmitt’s attempt to tie Hegel’s views to the political outlook of Hobbes and de Maistre also discredits his speculative stance. Jean-François Kervégan’s extraordinary book seeks to extricate Hegel from this troubling association and attempts both to defend Hegel’s liberalism and confirm the philosophical nature of his argument. Without diminishing Schmitt’s Hegelian debt, his exhaustive comparative study, supported by impeccable scholarship, attempts to show that Schmitt distorted Hegel’s liberalism by disregarding the dialectical intent of his philosophy. In the process, Kervégan aims to preserve the Hegelian legacy from any contamination that might accrue to it from association with Schmitt. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 37-39.

Uterine transplantation could give women who suffer from uterine factor infertility the possibility of experiencing gestation. Much of the ethical discussion about uterine transplantation has focused on whether research on it should even be pursued, but researchers are nevertheless moving forward with several uterine transplant research protocols. Scholars should therefore already be identifying and engaging in an intimate examination of the ethical realities of offering uterine transplantation in a clinical setting. Given the potential for the procedure to expand reproductive options (...) for women, reproductive autonomy has been a primary principle underlying much of the ethical discourse about the hypothetical impact of uterine transplantation. Yet the factors that will affect whether uterine transplants promote or undermine a patients’ reproductive autonomy if the procedure is integrated into clinical practice have yet to be rigorously explored. Focusing on the clinical realities of patient autonomy, I argue that empirical data exploring prospective recipients’ motivations and their perceptions of the benefits of the procedure in the context of their lived experiences are critical to a robust analysis of the ethical dimensions of uterine transplantation. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

Within this paper, we discuss Moral Distress Reflective Debriefs as a promising approach to address and mitigate moral distress experienced by healthcare professionals. We briefly review the empirical and theoretical literature on critical incident stress debriefing and psychological debriefing to highlight the potential benefits of this modality. We then describe the approach that we take to facilitating reflective group discussions in response to morally distressing patient cases (“Moral Distress Reflective Debriefs”). We discuss how the debriefing literature and other clinical ethics (...) activities influenced the development of our approach. In particular, we focus on the role of the clinical ethicist as a facilitator with particular emphasis on encouraging perspective-taking and nurturing ethical attunement in a supportive manner. We suggest that this approach reduces the narrowing effects of frustration and anger that are often reported when individuals experience moral-constraint distress. Finally, we provide an example of Moral Distress Reflective Debriefs, elucidating how this supportive process complements ethics consultation and can mitigate the negative effects of moral distress. (shrink)

Within Germany, Carl Schmitt's status as a political thinker is on a par with Machiavelli and Hobbes. With the rise in neo-conservatism and authoritarian liberalism in less developed countries such as Chile and Singapore, Renato Christi believes Schmitt's theories will become of considerable importance. Nazi Third Reich. His political theories provide an insight into the nature of Conservatism. well as extrapolate possibilities for the future.

This paper attributes to Nietzsche a theory of cultural development according to which pyramid societies—steeply hierarchical societies following a unified morality—systematically alternate with motley societies, which emerge when pyramid societies encounter other cultures or allow their strict mores to relax. Motley societies contain multiple value systems due to individual innovation or intercultural contact, and are less stringent in dictating individuals' roles. Consequently, many people are torn between incompatible values and lack direction, so they are drawn to a morality of mediocrity, (...) which offers the modest goals of comfort and conformity. However, the need to mediate between conflicting values also tends to yield exceptional individuals who create new values, and can reshape the society into a new pyramid society governed by those values. I argue that Nietzsche favors neither type of society at the expense of the other, but believes the alternation itself is valuable: a pyramid society develops a value system to its full potential; then, when it encounters alternative values, the extraordinary individuals in the resulting motley society synthesize the competing systems into a fuller vision of human flourishing. (shrink)

This paper explores an analogy between two approaches to teleology in nature and two theories of authorship. I argue that Spinoza’s attempt (as Kant criticizes it in the Third Critique) to explain all natural unity, and explain away apparent teleological unity, in terms of inhering in the same subject (God) or proceeding causally from God’s essence mirrors the view Proust lays out in the essay “Gustave Moreau” that the features of a work of art are unified in virtue of occurring (...) together in, and proceeding from the laws of, the artist’s inner soul. Meanwhile, the strategy Kant favors for understanding interdependent natural systems like organisms—provisionally considering them as purposively designed—resembles the one Alexander Nehamas recommends in “The Postulated Author” (1981) for interpreting a work of art: imagining the agent who could have intended all its features. I propose that this analogy sheds light on the unity of the two parts of the Third Critique by pointing to the similarity between interpreting beautiful objects and interpreting nature. (shrink)

Robert Pippin has recently raised what he calls ‘the Montaigne problem’ for Nietzsche's philosophy: although Nietzsche advocates a ‘cheerful’ mode of philosophizing for which Montaigne is an exemplar, he signally fails to write with the obvious cheerfulness attained by Montaigne. We explore the moral psychological structure of the cheerfulness Nietzsche values, revealing unexpected complexity in his conception of the attitude. For him, the right kind of cheerfulness is radically non-naïve; it expresses the overcoming of justified revulsion at calamitous aspects of (...) life through a reflective, higher-order affirmative attitude. This complex notion of cheerfulness turns out to have roots in Montaigne himself, and it must be thought of as a kind of second nature cultivated through practice, as a kind of second nature. Understanding the meaning of cheerfulness thereby sheds light on the conception of philosophy as a way of life in both Nietzsche and Montaigne. (shrink)

Effectiveness is a key criterion in assessing the justification of antibiotic resistance interventions. Depending on an intervention’s effectiveness, burdens and costs will be more or less justified, which is especially important for large scale population-level interventions with high running costs and pronounced risks to individuals in terms of wellbeing, integrity and autonomy. In this paper, we assess the case of routine hospital screening for multi-drug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (MDRGN) from this perspective. Utilizing a comparison to screening programs for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (...) (MRSA) we argue that current screening programmes for MDRGN in low endemic settings should be reconsidered, as its effectiveness is in doubt, while general downsides to screening programs remain. To accomplish justifiable antibiotic stewardship, MDRGN screening should not be viewed as a separate measure, but rather as part of a comprehensive approach. The program should be redesigned to focus on those at risk of developing symptomatic infections with MDRGN rather than merely detecting those colonised. (shrink)

How should scarce healthcare resources be distributed? This is a contentious issue that became especially pressing during the pandemic. It is often emphasised that studies exploring public views about this question provide valuable input to the issue of healthcare priority setting. While there has been a vast number of such studies it is rarely articulated, more specifically, what the results from these studies would mean for the justification of principles for priority setting. On the one hand, it seems unreasonable that (...) public values would straightforwardly decide the ethical question of how resources should be distributed. On the other hand, in a democratic society, it seems equally unreasonable that they would be considered irrelevant for this question. In this paper we draw on the notion of reflective equilibrium and discuss the relevance and roles that empirical studies may plausibly have for justification in priority setting ethics. We develop a framework for analysing how different kinds of empirical results may have different kinds of implications for justification. (shrink)

In the second of the UM, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life", Nietzsche delivers a rare and lengthy encomium to the traditional Platonic-Aristotelian virtue of justice. "In truth," he says, "no one has a greater claim to our veneration than he who possesses the drive to and strength for justice. For the highest and rarest virtues are united and concealed in justice as in an unfathomable ocean that receives streams and rivers from all sides and takes them (...) into itself".1 This claim seems to echo, or at least allude to, the thesis of Plato's Republic that justice is the virtue in which the other virtues are united, each in its proper place in the... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article, invited for presentation to the North American Nietzsche Society at the 2020 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, is a commentary on Mark Alfano's 2019 monograph, Nietzsche's Moral Psychology. I commend Alfano's productive, innovative use of digital humanities methods as well as his more traditional textual interpretation. But I raise some doubts about Alfano's proposed criterion of “external integration” for a drive to qualify as a Nietzschean virtue: the claim that if a drive systematically and (...) reliably meets with condemnation from an agent's community, it cannot be a virtue. I suggest that the criterion be amended either so that it is disapproval from the agent's true community, which for a solitary moral innovator may be an imagined community of past and future peers, that disqualifies a drive from virtue status; or so that community disapproval is disqualifying only if the agent internalizes it. (shrink)

Kant claims in the third Critique that one can make about wine the merely subjective judgment that it is agreeable but never the universally valid judgment that it is beautiful. This follows from his views that judgments of beauty can be made only about the formal (spatiotemporal) features of a representation and that aromas and flavors consist of formless sensory matter. However, I argue that Kant's theory permits judgments of beauty about wine because the experience displays a temporal structure: the (...) aromas and flavors evolve over the course of a tasting from the bouquet through the palate to the finish. An analogy with music, which Kant describes as 'a play of sensations in time', illuminates how wine qualifies as an object of pure judgments of taste: the 'structure' of a wine can be compared to harmonic structure, and its development throughout the taste can be compared to the unfolding of melody and harmonic progression. (shrink)

Nedelsky and Kelsen criticize the notion of subjective rights. While Nedelsky does so on the basis of a relational theory of rights founded on the Hegelian intersubjective recognition, Kelsen rejects Hegel’s theory of rights because property, the paradigmatic subjective right, appears to be constituted prior to intersubjectve recognition. This paper probes into Hegel’s conception of property to elucidate the root of the divergence between Nedelsky and Kelsen. Pierson v. Post is examined as an illustration of that divergence.

Some libertarians argue that informed consent alone makes transactions in the labour market morally justified. In contrast, some of their critics claim that such an act of consent is no guarantee against coercion. To know whether agreements are voluntary, we need to assess the quality of the offers or the prevailing background conditions. ISCT theorists argue that it is imperative to take social norms into account when evaluating the labour market. We present a novel framework for moral assessment in the (...) labour market, which takes consent, background conditions and norms into account, but which mainly focuses on the offers and demands made. Consent renders a transaction legitimate in the same way we regard a fair election legitimate even if we object to its outcome. For offers to be substantially justified, exploitation must be avoided and offers must give expression to the value of community. Only then they are morally justified. (shrink)

The main issue addressed in this paper is to provide a reassessment of the role and relevance of the body in social cognition from a radical embodied cognitive science perspective. Initially, I provide a historical introduction of the traditional account of the body in cognitive science, which I here call the cognitivist view. I then present several lines of criticism raised against the cognitivist view advanced by more embodied, enacted and situated approaches in cognitive science, and related disciplines. Next, I (...) analyze several approaches under the umbrella of embodied social cognition. My line of argument is that some of these approaches, although pointing toward the right direction of conceiving that the social mind is not merely contained inside the head, still fail to fully acknowledge the radically embodied social mind. I argue that the failure of these accounts of embodied social cognition could be associated with so-called ‘simple embodiment’. The third part of this paper focuses on elaborating an alternative characterization of the radically embodied social mind that also tries to reduce the remaining problems with ‘simple embodiment’. I draw upon two turns in radically embodied cognitive science, the enactive turn, and the social turn. On the one hand, there is the risk of focusing too much on the individual level in social cognition that may result in new kinds of methodological individualism that partly neglect the social dimension. On the other hand, socially distributed and socially extended approaches that pay more attention to the dynamics within social interaction may encounter the risk of ignoring the individual during social interaction dynamics and simultaneously not emphasizing the role of embodiment. The approach taken is to consider several ways of describing and incorporating the (individual) social mind at the social level that also includes language. I outline some ideas and motivations for how to study and expand the field of radical embodied social cognition in the future, as well as pose the ubiquitous hazard of falling back into a cognitivism view in several ways. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article provides a normative justification for unions. It discusses three arguments. The argument from consent justifies unions in some circumstances, but if the employer prefers to not bargain with unions, it may provide very little justification. The argument from contestability takes as its starting point the fact that employment contracts are incomplete contracts, where authority takes the place of complete contractual terms. This theory of contracts implies that consent to authority has been given under ignorance, and, therefore, that authority (...) cannot be justified by consent. Contestability is a mechanism that can handle this problem for consent theory. It demands transparency, channels for voice, and a forum where contestations can be evaluated. This idea can be implemented in firms in different ways, but the argument from the separation of powers implies that unions are uniquely suited to implement contestability, since they are organized outside of the employer’s domain of authority. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s attitude toward science is ambivalent: he remarks approvingly on its rigorous methodology and adventurous spirit, but also points out its limitations and rebukes scientists for encroaching onto philosophers’ territory. What does Nietzsche think is science’s proper role and relationship with philosophy? I argue that, according to Nietzsche, philosophy should set goals for science. Philosophers’ distinctive task is to ‘create values’, which involves two steps: (1) envisaging ideals for human life, and (2) turning those ideals into prescriptions for behaviour and (...) societal organization. To accomplish step (2), philosophers should delegate scientists to investigate what moral rules and social arrangements have best advanced this ideal in the past or might in the future. (shrink)

Este ensayo analiza la conjunción libertad/autoridad defendida por el republicanismo clásico. Como pensador moderno, Maquiavelo recupera esta síntesis clásica y define la autoridad como la condición de posibilidad de la libertad. Pero, como muestra Eric Nelson, el republicanismo de Maquiavelo es más ateniense que romano. El republicanismo de Michael Sandel tiene una orientación similar. Basado en la ontología social desarrollada por Arendt y Taylor, Sandel postula el valor intrínseco de las nociones de participación y soberanía popular. De este modo, él (...) puede refutar la objeción de Rorty y su interpretación idiosincrática de Dewey. Según Sandel, Dewey critica el rechazo liberal de la autoridad y es capaz de articular orgánicamente la autoridad democrática y la libertad. This essay analyzes the conjunction freedom/authority defended by classical republicanism. As a modern thinker, Machiavelli retrieves this classical synthesis and defines the authority of law as the condition of possibility for freedom. But, as Eric Neson shows, Machiavelli's republicanism is more Athenian than Roman. Michael Sandel's democratic republicanism has a similar orientation. Besed on the social ontology developed by Arendt and Taylor, Sandel postulates the intrinsic value of the notions of participation and popular sovereignty. In this way he can refute Rorty's objections and his idiosyncratic interpretation of Dewey. According to Sandel, Dewey criticizes liberalism's rejection of authority and is able organically to articulate democratic authority and freedom. (shrink)

A critical examination of Kymlicka's conception of republicanism as a mediation between liberalism and communitarianism. The difficulties encountered by Kymlicka's view are traced to the holistic ontology republicanism shares with communitarianism. Mediation with liberalism is better attained by expanding the range of participation beyond the political sphere and a recognition of the value of representation.

Putative counterexamples to the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (PII) are notoriously inconclusive. I establish ground rules for debate in this area, offer a new response to such counterexamples for friends of the PII, but then argue that no response is entirely satisfactory. Finally, I undermine some positive arguments for PII.

The ethical debate on whistleblowing concerns centrally the conflict between the right to political free speech and the duty of loyalty to the organization where one works. This is the moral dilemma of whistleblowing. Political free speech is justified because it is a central part of liberal democracy, whereas loyalty can be motivated as a way of showing consideration for one’s associates. The political philosophy of John Rawls is applied to this dilemma, and it is shown that the requirement of (...) loyalty, in the sense that is needed to create the moral dilemma of whistleblowing, is inconsistent with that theory. In this sense, there is no moral dilemma of whistleblowing. This position has been labelled extreme in that it says that whistleblowing is always morally permitted. In a discussion and rejection of Richard De George’s criteria on permissible whistleblowing, it is pointed out that the mere rejection of loyalty will not lead to an extreme position; harms can still be taken into account. Furthermore, it is argued that the best way is, in this as in most other political circumstances, to weigh harms is provided by the free speech argument from democracy. (shrink)

This article outlines the structure of a Rawlsian theory of justice in the employment relationship. A focus on this theory is motivated by the role it plays in debates in business ethics. The Rawlsian theory answers three central questions about justice and the workplace. What is the relationship between social justice and justice at work? How should we conceive of the problem of justice in the economic sphere? And, what is justice in the workplace? To see fully what demands justice (...) makes on the workplace, we should first spell out the implications that domestic justice has for working conditions. When this is done, we can develop a conception of workplace justice and investigate what content such local justice should have. John Rawls’s political liberalism was constructed for the specific problem of a just basic structure; in order to apply it to another problem the key theoretical concepts must be revised. Reasons for a specific construction of a local original position are given and arguments are presented in support of a principle of local justice, which takes the form of a choice egalitarian local difference principle. (shrink)

While Hegel’s political philosophy has been attacked on the left by republican democrats and on the right by feudalist reactionaries, his apologists see him as a liberal reformer, a moderate who theorized about the development of a free-market society within the bounds of a stabilizing constitutional state. This centrist view has gained ascendancy since the end of the Second World War, enshrining Hegel within the liberal tradition. In this book, Renato Cristi argues that, like the Prussian liberal reformers of (...) his time, Hegel was committed to expand the scope of a free economy and concurrently to ensure that the social practice of subjective freedom did not endanger political stability and order. Aware that a system of mutual advantage failed to integrate the members of civil society and that profound social disharmonies were ineradicable, Hegel adopted the views of the French liberal _doctrinaires_, who sought to realize the principles of the French Revolution by supporting Louis XVIII’s sovereign assertion of the monarchical principle. Not surprisingly, Hegel hailed the French _Charte_ of June 1814 as a beacon of freedom. Endorsement of the monarchical principle was meant to prevent the atomized individuals of civil society from gaining control of the state through appeals to popular sovereignty. This challenges most conventional interpretations of Hegel’s theory of the state and draws it closer to the conservative-authoritarian end of the political spectrum than is usual. (shrink)

Standard tools used in societal risk management such as probabilistic risk analysis or cost–benefit analysis typically define risks in terms of only probabilities and consequences and assume a utilitarian approach to ethics that aims to maximize expected utility. The philosopher Carl F. Cranor has argued against this view by devising a list of plausible aspects of the acceptability of risks that points towards a non-consequentialist ethical theory of societal risk management. This paper revisits Cranor’s list to argue that the alternative (...) ethical theory responsibility-catering prioritarianism can accommodate the aspects identified by Cranor and that the elements in the list can be used to inform the details of how to view risks within this theory. An approach towards operationalizing the theory is proposed based on a prioritarian social welfare function that operates on responsibility-adjusted utilities. A responsibility-catering prioritarian ethical approach towards managing risks is a promising alternative to standard tools such as cost–benefit analysis. (shrink)

Standard tools used in societal risk management such as probabilistic risk analysis or cost–benefit analysis typically define risks in terms of only probabilities and consequences and assume a utilitarian approach to ethics that aims to maximize expected utility. The philosopher Carl F. Cranor has argued against this view by devising a list of plausible aspects of the acceptability of risks that points towards a non-consequentialist ethical theory of societal risk management. This paper revisits Cranor’s list to argue that the alternative (...) ethical theory responsibility-catering prioritarianism can accommodate the aspects identified by Cranor and that the elements in the list can be used to inform the details of how to view risks within this theory. An approach towards operationalizing the theory is proposed based on a prioritarian social welfare function that operates on responsibility-adjusted utilities. A responsibility-catering prioritarian ethical approach towards managing risks is a promising alternative to standard tools such as cost–benefit analysis. (shrink)

This article presents the promising framework for educational decision makers developed by Brighouse, Ladd, Loeb, and Swift. The framework consists of an account of the educational goods, distributional principles and independent values at stake in education, and a method for making policy decisions on the basis of these and solid social science. I present three criticisms of this approach. The first says that the derivation of educational goods proceeds on the basis of a too narrow conception of values. I suggest (...) that this foundation should consist of an overlapping consensus, rather than flourishing. The second criticism has to do with the way that the distributive principles are characterized. I argue that BLLS’s characterization of distributive principles should be complemented with accounts of what domains of social life these principles regulate and a specification of whether the distributive principles should be understood as applying over time or at specific instances. The final criticism is that BLLS’s conception of independent values focuses solely on values that constrain the pursuit of educational goods. I claim that this part of the framework should be revised to include aspects of values that also support this pursuit. I conclude arguing that the BLLS frameworks should be further developed rather than rejected. (shrink)

Richard Arneson argues that Fair Equality of Opportunity should be rejected, since it is not only too weak and too strong, but also problematically meritocratic. The paper aims to defend FEO, and argues that it is not too weak, since, pace Arneson, it does apply to the problem of stunted ambition. The argument from meritocracy is shown to be based on a conflation of different senses of meritocracy. Finally, it is shown that FEO, correctly interpreted, gives intuitive answers to the (...) examples put forward to bolster the too strong charge. It is concluded that Arneson’s refutation of FEO fails. (shrink)