The fact that debunkers can turn to the argument from disagreement for help is ofcourse not a surprise. After all, both types of challenge basically pursue the same,skeptical conclusion. What I have tried to show, however, is that they are related in amore intimate way.

In a world of limited resources, it could be argued that companies that aspire to be good corporate citizens need to focus on making best use of resources. User value and environmental harm are created in supply chains and it could therefore be argued that company business ethics should be extended from the company to the entire value chain from the first supplier to the last customer. Starting with a delineation of the linkages between business ethics, corporate sustainability, and the (...) stakeholder concept, this article argues that supply chains generally have a great innovation potential for sustainable development. This potential could be highlighted with system thinking and the use of change management knowledge, promoting not only innovations within technology but also within organizational improvement. We propose process models and performance indicators as means of highlighting improvement potential and thus breaking down normative business ethics' requirements to an opertionalizable corporate level: Good business ethics should focus on maximizing stakeholder value in relation to harm done. Our results indicate that focusing on supply chains reveals previously unknown innovation potential that seems to be related to limited system understanding. The assumption is that increased visibility of opportunities will act as a driver for change. Results also highlight the importance of focusing on sustainability effects of the core business and clearly relating value created to harm done. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility has become of great interest to both researchers and practitioners alike with much discussion on whether the costs outweigh the performance implications. CSR has become a firm strategic tool as firms recognize that the customer value proposition and CSR is integrated with the focus on how to differentiate the firm from the view of the customer. We utilized market orientation theory as our foundation for our research as it explains how organizations adapt to their customer environment to (...) develop competitive advantages. With the current customer focus on CSR, MO assists the field in identifying a possible firm differentiation. Our research found that firms that ranked high on CSR correlated positively to performance. We also found our theoretically developed constructs of firm customer orientation and firm market orientation correlated with the firm adopting CSR. The results also indicated that CSR positively mediates CO and MO to firm performance. As past research had mixed results over the direct relation of MO to performance, our research suggests that CSR may be the missing variable to explain the MO/performance relationship. (shrink)

In a recent article, Hayakawa and Keysar (2018) propose that mental imagery is less vivid when evoked in a foreign than in a native language. The authors argue that reduced mental imagery could even account for moral foreign language effects, whereby moral choices become more utilitarian when made in a foreign language. Here we demonstrate that Hayakawa and Keysar's (2018) key results are better explained by reduced language comprehension in a foreign language than by less vivid imagery. We argue that (...) the paradigm used in Hayakawa and Keysar (2018) does not provide a satisfactory test of reduced imagery and we discuss an alternative paradigm based on recent experimental developments. (shrink)

Background We present and discuss the results of a Norwegian survey of medical doctors' views on potential ethical dilemmas in professional practice. Methods The study was conducted in 2015 as a postal questionnaire to a representative sample of 1612 doctors, among which 1261 responded. We provided a list of 41 potential ethical dilemmas and asked whether each was considered a dilemma, and whether the doctor would perform the task, if in a position to do so. Conceptually, dilemmas arise because of (...) tensions between two or more of four doctor roles: the patient’s advocate, a steward of societal interests, a member of a profession and a private individual. Results 27 of the potential dilemmas were considered dilemmas by at least 50% of the respondents. For more than half of the dilemmas, the anticipated course of action varied substantially within the professional group, with at least 20% choosing a different course than their colleagues, indicating low consensus in the profession. Conclusions Doctors experience a large range of ethical dilemmas, of which many have been given little attention by academic medical ethics. The less-discussed dilemmas are characterised by a low degree of consensus in the profession about how to handle them. There is a need for medical ethicists, medical education, postgraduate courses and clinical ethics support to address common dilemmas in clinical practice. Viewing dilemmas as role conflicts can be a fruitful approach to these discussions. (shrink)

Sustainability discourse offers a plethora of perspectives on the type of change needed to ensure a just development within planetary boundaries, and how that change could come about. Calls for radical transformations nonetheless underline the need to examine prevalent discursive structures in society, including challenging the 'ideology of growth', in order to formulate new and transformative policy approaches. Based on empirical insights as to how different actors - including grassroots, planners, officials and politicians - in Sweden perceive the transformations needed (...) to reach sustainability goals, this paper explores how narratives of change reproduce, make use of or show cracks in the eco-modern sustainability paradigm. (shrink)

BackgroundMoral distress is a problem and negative experience among health-care professionals. Various instruments have been developed to measure the level and underlying reasons for experienced moral distress. The moral distress thermometer (MDT) is a single-tool instrument to capture the level of moral distress experienced in real-time.AimThe aim of this study was to translate the MDT and adapt it to the Swedish cultural context.Research designThe first part of this study concerns the translation of MDT to the Swedish context, and the second (...) part the psychometric testing of the Swedish version.Participants and research context89 healthcare professionals working at a hospital in northern Sweden participated. Convergent validity was tested between MDT and Measure of Moral Distress-Healthcare Professionals (MMD-HP), and construct validity was tested by comparing MDT scores among healthcare professionals. MDT was compared with responses to the final questions in MMD-HP. One-way ANOVA, Welch’s ANOVA, Games–Howell post-hoc test and Pearson’s correlation analysis were done.Ethical considerationsThe study was approved by the Swedish Ethics Review Authority (dnr 2020-04120) in accordance with Helsinki Declaration.ResultsThe translated Swedish version of MDT was described as relevant to capture the experience of moral distress. The mean value for MDT was 2.26, with a median of 2 and a mode value of 0. The result showed moderate correlations between the MDT and MMD-HP total scores. There was a significant difference when comparing MDT and healthcare professionals who had never considered leaving their present position with those who had left and those who had considered leaving but had not done so, with the latter assessing significantly higher moral distress.ConclusionThe MDT is an easily available instrument useful as an extension to MMD-HP to measure the real-time experience of moral distress among healthcare professionals in a Swedish context. (shrink)

Folke Tersman explores what we can learn about the nature of moral thinking by examining moral disagreement. He explains how diversity of opinion on moral issues undermines the idea that moral convictions can be objectively valued. Arguments on moral thinking are often criticized for not being able to explain why there is a contrast between ethics and other areas in which there is disagreement, but where one does not give up the idea of an objective truth, as in the (...) natural sciences. Tersman shows that the contrast has to do with facts about when, and on what basis, moral convictions can be correctly attributed to an agent or speaker. (shrink)

The idea of reflective equilibrium remains the most popular approach to questions about method in ethics, despite the masses of criticism it has been faced with over the years. Is this due to the availability of compelling responses to the criticisms or rather to factors that are independent of its reasonableness? The aim of this paper is to provide support for the first answer. I particularly focus on the recent discussion. Some recent objections are related to general arguments against the (...) possibility of moral knowledge, such as so-called “evolutionary debunking arguments.” I argue that nothing that has come to light in that debate, or in the recent discussion about IRE more generally, decisively strengthens the case against it. If anything, the recent developments show that IRE deserves its present status. (shrink)

A recent study of moral intuitions, performed by Joshua Greene and a group of researchers at Princeton University, has recently received a lot of attention. Greene and his collaborators designed a set of experiments in which subjects were undergoing brain scanning as they were asked to respond to various practical dilemmas. They found that contemplation of some of these cases (cases where the subjects had to imagine that they must use some direct form of violence) elicited greater activity in certain (...) areas of the brain associated with emotions compared with the other cases. It has been argued (e.g., by Peter Singer) that these results undermine the reliability of our moral intuitions, and therefore provide an objection to methods of moral reasoning that presuppose that they carry an evidential weight (such as the idea of reflective equilibrium). I distinguish between two ways in which Greene's findings lend support for a sceptical attitude towards intuitions. I argue that, given the first version of the challenge, the method of reflective equilibrium can easily accommodate the findings. As for the second version of the challenge, I argue that it does not so much pose a threat specifically to the method of reflective equilibrium but to the idea that moral claims can be justified through rational argumentation in general. (shrink)

Dovring explores some of the limits of science, the scientific method, and our approaches to conceptualizing problems.

A common anti-realist strategy is to argue that moral realism (or at least the non-naturalist form of it) should be abandoned because it cannot adequately make room for moral knowledge and justified moral belief, for example in view of an evolutionary account of the origins of moral beliefs or of the existence of radical moral disagreement. Why is that (alleged) fact supposed to undermine realism? I examine and discuss three possible answers to this question. According to the answer that I (...) think holds most promise, it undermines realism because it renders realism “epistemically incoherent” (in a sense explicated in the paper), and a central aim of the paper is to elaborate and defend that suggestion against certain objections. I end by briefly commenting on the more general significance of the discussion, by considering some other areas (epistemology and vagueness) where similar questions might be raised. (shrink)

Crispin Wright holds that moral realism is implausible since it is not a priori that every moral disagreement involves cognitive shortcomings. I develop two responses to this argument. First, a realist may argue that it holds for at least one of the parties to any disagreement that he holds false background beliefs (moral or otherwise) or that his verdict to the disputed judgment fails to cohere with his system. Second, he may argue that if none of the verdicts involves shortcomings, (...) the appropriate conclusion is that the disagreement is not genuine, since we must otherwise attribute an inexplicable error. (shrink)

Background Whether patients' life-style should involve lower priority for treatment is a controversial question in bioethics. Less is known about clinicians' views. Aim To study how clinical doctors' attitudes to questions of patient responsibility and priority vary over time. Method Surveys of doctors in Norway in 2008, 2014, 2021. Questionnaires included statements about patients' lifestyle's significance for priority to care, and vignettes of priority cases (only in 2014). Results Attitudes were fairly stable between 2008 and 2021. 17%/14% agreed that patients' (...) lifestyle should count, while 19%/22% agreed that it should involve lower priority to scarce organs. 42/44% agreed that smokers should have lower priority. Substantially more agreed in 2014. Regression analyses showed that being male, working in hospital, and younger age increased the likelihood of agreeing. Conclusion A substantial minority of doctors agreed that lifestyle should be a priority criterion, possibly contrary to Norwegian legislation and professional ethics. The finding might be explained by the unspecified meaning of priority, increased scarcity-awareness, or socio-cultural trends towards individualism. The 2014 results indicate a framing effect; the vignettes may have primed the respondents towards accepting lifestyle as a criterion. We conclude that attitudes to normative questions are unstable and depend on context. A substantial minority of doctors seems to be positive to deprioritizing patients allegedly responsible for their illness. However, what deprioritization implies in practice is not clear. (shrink)

This book takes a stand against the narrowing focus of (German) jurisprudence on state law, rooted in the history of the territorially organised nation state. In the shadow of this tradition, state( -hood) law was only conceived of as state law. However, a gradual decoupling of state and law is observable - not least because of globalisation - which inevitably entails a pluralisation of legal regulations. Jurisprudence has to react to this, if it wants to remain relevant.

Some think that recent empirical research has shown that peoples' moral intuitions vary in a way that is hard to reconcile with the supposition that they are even modestly reliable. This is in turn supposed to generate skeptical conclusions regarding the claims and theories advanced by ethicists because of the crucial role intuitions have in the arguments offered in support of those claims. I begin by trying to articulate the most compelling version of this challenge. On that version, the main (...) problem is the absence of a believable positive account of the reliability of the intuitions . I then consider the response to this challenge that, in my view, holds most promise. It differs from others by invoking substantive moral assumptions. Such a strategy may appear problematically circular, in that the justification of those assumptions seems to presuppose the very thesis that is challenged . However, although I think that objection can be met, I argue that there are other problems with the strategy. On the basis of a set of conditions that a successful defense of the pertinent kind plausibly must satisfy, I argue that the prospects of developing such an account are bleak. (shrink)

At the beginning of the series, a dozen young women are introduced as potential mates for the eligible young bachelor. The audience accompanies the couples on their limo-escorted dates, meets the bachelor's family and friends, listens to their evaluation of the bride, and watches expectantly as the smiling Prince Charming singles out a few finalists for his attention. As the weeks pass by, one by one, tearful young women are dismissed from the show as the presentation of the final rose (...) that signifies singular devotion draws near. In the end, only two young women remain, and only one can receive…. (shrink)