When shared decision making breaks down and parents and medical providers have developed entrenched and conflicting views, ethical frameworks are needed to find a way forward. This article reviews the evolution of thought about the best interest standard and then discusses the advantages of the harm principle (HP) and the zone of parental discretion (ZPD). Applying these frameworks to parental refusals in situations of complexity and uncertainty presents challenges that necessitate concrete substeps to analyze the big picture and identify key (...) questions. I outline and defend a new decision-making tool that includes three parts: identifying the nature of the disagreement, checklists for key elements of the HP and ZPD, and a “think list” of specific questions designed to enhance use of the HP and ZPD in clinical decision making. These tools together will assist those embroiled in complex disagreements to disentangle the issues to find a path to resolution. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of integrated reporting on the integration of environmental, social, and governance issues into the business model and the related economic and ESG performance changes. To investigate these internal and external transformational effects of IR, important differences between IR and alternative ESG reporting strategies are worked out. Using three matched samples of companies from around the world for the sample period 2002–2011, IR companies are matched with companies applying no ESG reporting, stand-alone ESG reporting, or ESG (...) reporting in the annual report. The results suggest that IR is a superior mechanism only for the integration of ESG issues into the core business model when comparing IR with the ESG reporting strategies of no ESG reporting and ESG reporting in annual reports. In comparison with, stand-alone ESG reporting, the results indicate that IR is negatively associated with the ESG integration level and with the economic and ESG performance. Moreover, this negative impact is lower for companies that have already implemented ESG management tools prior to the initiation of IR and is stronger for companies residing in countries with legal requirements for the disclosure of ESG information. A separate change analysis reveals that companies do not benefit from a switch from stand-alone ESG reporting to IR. Thus, this paper provides empirical evidence that contradicts the general notion of IR as a superior reporting mechanism, as the benefits of IR are driven by several factors. (shrink)

This paper highlights an important distinction underlying the possibility of inquiry, between first _identifying the subject of inquiry and ultimately _explaining it: that the former can be achieved before and without the latter is a presupposition of inquiry. I believe Aristotle is keenly aware of this in _Posterior Analytics, II.8, where he shows how a scientific demonstration can "manifest" a definition. I argue that such a demonstration consists of two sorts of syllogisms, one identifying the definiendum, the other explaining it. (...) Further, this distinction is tied in crucial ways to two others: between existence and essence, and between particular and universal. (shrink)

The dominant theory of elite power, grounded in Weberian bureaucracy, has analyzed elites in terms of stable positions at the top of enduring institutions. Today, many conditions that spawned these stable ‘command posts’ no longer prevail, and elite power thus warrants rethinking. This article advances an argument about contemporary ‘influence elites’. The way they are organized and the modus operandi they employ to wield influence enable them to evade public accountability, a hallmark of a democratic society. Three cases are presented, (...) first to investigate changes in how elites operate and, second, to examine varying configurations in which the new elites are organized. The cases demonstrate that influence elites intermesh hierarchies and networks, serve as connectors, and coordinate influence from multiple, moving perches, inside and outside official structures. Their flexible and multi-positioned organizing modes call for reconsidering elite theory and grappling with the implications of these elites for democratic society. (shrink)

Reports of children participating in hunger strikes while detained in offshore detention centres raise interrelated ethical issues and recognizable challenges for the medical decision-makers at these sites. A composite case study, informed by reports in the public domain, is employed to explore the unique challenges of consent and decision-making in these circumstances and the perennial issues inherent in adolescents’ developing capacity and autonomy. We present an amalgamated case of a fourteen-year-old adolescent who refused to consent to medical reversal of her (...) hunger strike protest. The medical team became the final arbiter when her parents, who were also in detention, could not agree with each other even after mediation. The case explores the complexity of evaluating the adolescent’s capacity to provide informed consent while influenced by the opinions of co-detainees in this extreme setting. We argue that the parents and the child had compromised decisional capacity due to the effects of detention. The challenges to the medical team are recognized and discussed. The team members faced a difficult dilemma and considered the competing values of the multiple cultural and ethical factors. Each team member integrated his or her own roles, duties, and discipline-specific professional guidelines with the primary goal of mitigating potential harms. (shrink)

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive beverage that is mostly used in ritualized settings (Santo Daime rituals, neo-shamanic rituals, and even do-it-yourself-rituals). It is a common practice in the investigated socio-cultural field to call these settings “healing rituals.” For this study, 15 people who underwent ayahuasca (self-)therapy for a particular disease like chronic pain, cancer, asthma, depression, alcohol abuse, or Hepatitis C were interviewed twice about their subjective concepts and beliefs on ayahuasca and healing. Qualitative data analysis revealed a variety of motivational (...) patterns, subjective effects, and user types. Most participants were convinced that ayahuasca had influenced their illness positively or improved their coping with their illness. More importantly, it had enhanced their well being in general. As a result, we concluded that the effects of ayahuasca should not be reduced to a pharmacological model. The substance should be conceptualized as a psychological catalyst that unfolds within different fields of sociocultural ideas. (shrink)

Moral Philosophy and Moral Education considers the interconnections of ethics, education, and the philosophy of culture as related to the human concern with self-knowledge. The individual self finds its inner life writ large in the forms of culture such as religion, art, and history. Such forms of cultural life represent and embody normative ideals that can provide the necessary content to shape the character and the conduct of civic life. Thora Ilin Bayer draws upon the ancient Greek view of (...) education as paideia and the conception of Bildung of the German idealist philosophers. These two ideas of education aim at the development of the whole person as distinct from training in a particular skill, subject matter, technique, or occupation. The education of the whole person aims at the production in the individual of a broad mental outlook harmoniously joined with a knowledge of the great perspectives and principles of human culture as it takes its various shapes within the history of humanity. Moral philosophy requires both culture and the individual as its terms of inquiry, and moral education requires a vision of how to have these two terms interact to form a whole. (shrink)

Thora Ilin Bayer - Freedom and Tradition in Hegel: Reconsidering Anthropology, Ethics, and Religion - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.2 322-323 Thomas A. Lewis. Freedom and Tradition in Hegel: Reconsidering Anthropology, Ethics, and Religion. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. Pp. xiii + 258. Cloth, $32.50. Central to the purpose of this book is an examination of Hegel's conception of ethics. This examination is most welcome because between (...) Hugh Reyburn's early The Ethical Theory of Hegel and Allen Wood's more recent Hegel's Ethical Thought , there has not been a great amount of attention given directly to the significance of.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 451-453 [Access article in PDF] Ernst Cassirer. The Logic of the Cultural Sciences: Five Studies. Translated by S. G. Lofts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. xliii + 134. Cloth, $30.00. Paper, $15.00. This is a new translation of Cassirer's Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften: Fünf Studien. It replaces the earlier one by Clarence Smith Howe with the title The Logic (...) of the Humanities (Yale University Press, 1961) that has been out of print for many years. Howe's volume includes a translation of Cassirer's essay "Naturalistic and Humanistic Philosophies of Culture" which does not appear in the new volume.Considered as part of his system of symbolic forms, this volume is the counterpart to Cassirer's conception of mathematical and scientific thought of the third volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. The pivotal study in Cassirer's five closely related analyses of the cultural sciences is that concerning "Naturbegriffe und Kulturbegriffe." [End Page 451] Cassirer contrasts the way in which concepts function in natural scientific thought with the way in which concepts function in cultural thought. In the natural sciences all of the individual "properties" of a thing can be reduced to numerical determinations. The particular can be subordinated to the universal. Thus gold as a specific metal is gold if and only if it exhibits specific numerically expressed properties, e.g., possesses a specific weight, electrical conductivity, coefficient of expansion, etc.Cultural concepts do not subordinate the particular to the universal in this determinate manner. Rather, they coordinate the particular with the universal. Thus it is possible to arrange the various figures of the Renaissance such as Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Cesare Borgia under Jakob Burckhardt's conception of "Man of the Renaissance," but each only approximates this standard. Although each is not given a determinate place in relation to the others, they all can be comprehended in a meaningful set of interrelationships.There is a problem of how to render Cassirer's key terms, Naturbegriffe and Kulturbegriffe. Howe expresses them literally as "nature-concepts" and "culture-concepts." Lofts states them as "concepts of nature" and "concepts of culture." Lofts's rendering has the difficulty of suggesting that Cassirer's discussion concerns a comparison or criticism of various concepts of nature and culture rather than a theory of concept-formation showing the type of thinking distinctive to the natural sciences in contrast to the cultural sciences.The last study in the volume concerns "The Tragedy of Culture" in which Cassirer criticizes Georg Simmel's conception of culture as alienation of the human spirit from itself. Against Simmel's negative view, Cassirer advances his view of culture as a positive achievement of the development of spirit (Geist) from life (Leben). Cassirer's position in this study forecasts his view as developed later in An Essay on Man (1944) that human culture as it arises through its various symbolic forms of myth and religion, language, art, history, and science is a process of "progressive self-liberation." Culture for Cassirer is not alienation, but self-knowledge.Central to this last study is Cassirer's discussion of how the "I" does not originally exist in a fixed state of separation between "I" and "world" and between "I" and other human beings. The Ich, Cassirer says, develops itself in relation to the Du in the formation of culture. The difference between the two is not simply given. Lofts follows Howe in translating Ich and Du as "I" and "you" (Howe, 188-90; Lofts, 107-8). Cassirer's use of the second person familiar (Du) is intended to emphasize the "I-thou" relationship, the sense in which the other in this development of the self is originally an alter ego, not an impersonal other (Sie). Cassirer's discussion here echoes his discussion of the "thou" in the chapter on the "Phenomenon of Expression" (Ausdrucksphänomen) in the third volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. The translation of Du as "you" rather than "thou" which reflects the... (shrink)

Although unprecedented in scope and beyond all our life experiences, sweeping social distancing measures are not without historical precedent. Historically, racism, stigma, and discrimination resul...

An anthology that provides new translations and makes available much of the relevant historical literature needed for an exploration of the view that morality is very literally created by God. Contains 41 selections representing discussions of divine command morality in Ancient philosophy, scholastic philosophical theology, the Reformation tradition, the British modern period, and contemporary analytic philosophy. This book includes a bibliography of Latin, French, English, German, and Italian sources on divine command morality.

This paper examines whether and to what extent the overall business strategy influences the firm’s mismanagement of sustainability. Specifically, an empirical measure for the mismanagement of sustainability is developed by exploiting the newly available materiality guidelines for US firms to define industry-specific material sustainability issues. Using this measure, this paper shows that mismanagement of sustainability can represent unethical business behavior when firms intentionally perform better on immaterial issues than on material issues by diverting stakeholders’ attention from the firm’s low overall (...) sustainability performance. This paper assumes that the right business strategy can prevent such unethical actions. Based on Miles and Snow’s organizational theory, this paper distinguishes between Prospector and Defender business strategies. By employing multiple firm-level panel regressions, the findings suggest that Prospector-type firms are more likely to mismanage sustainability issues compared to Defender-type firms intentionally. The results give implications for researchers, regulators and standard setters, auditors, sustainability practitioners, and scholars. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.4 (2006) 51-64 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Art as Symbolic Form: Cassirer on the Educational Value of ArtThora Ilin BayerIntroductionAmong the papers that Ernst Cassirer left at his death in 1945 is a fully written out lecture labeled "Seminar of Education, March 10th, 1943," which also bears the title "The Educational Value of Art." It may have been prepared for a session of Cassirer's (...) seminar at Yale for that spring on Aesthetics: Symbolic Forms, the second half of a yearlong course. 1 The text begins with discussion of the Platonic quarrel with the poets and moves through views of various thinkers, especially Croce and Collingwood. Cassirer had planned to have a volume on art included in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, in addition to those on Language,Mythical Thought, and The Phenomenology of Knowledge. 2 In these three volumes he often mentions the triad of language, myth, and art, but he says little of art as such.In May 1942 in a letter to Paul Schilpp, the American philosopher and editor of the volume of critical essays on Cassirer's work in the Library of Living Philosophers series, Cassirer wrote that he had intended to produce a volume on art but the disfavor (Ungunst) of the times caused him to put it off again and again. 3 The principal sources of Cassirer's aesthetics are his chapter on art in An Essay on Man 4 and two lectures on the educational value of art called "Language and Art I & II," 5 which parallel his earlier small study, Language and Myth. 6 Cassirer's conception of art as a symbolic form is derived from his conception of human culture as a systematic structure of symbolic forms that has as its main components myth and religion, language, art, history, and science (the chapter titles of the second part of An Essay on Man). In addition to these forms of culture there is a "metaphysics of symbolic forms," the subject of a fourth volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, left in manuscript at his death. 7 [End Page 51]I wish to raise two questions: (1) How does Cassirer conceive of art as a symbolic form? and (2) What are the implications of his conception for a conception of the ideals of aesthetic education? My aim in pursuing these questions is not to argue for the correctness of Cassirer's views but to attempt to establish what his views in fact are. Little has been written directly on Cassirer's conception of art relative to the frequency with which his name is mentioned in general discussions of aesthetics. 8 Cassirer's conception of education is a nearly unexamined subject. 9The Platonic Quarrel: MimesisCassirer says: "Of all the problems that we have to study in a philosophy of education, the problem of the educational value of art is one of the most difficult ones." 10 He claims that this problem goes back to the beginning of philosophy itself and that at present we are still very far from a generally accepted solution. Plato's famous quarrel with the poets in the tenth book of the Republic is important not simply for an understanding of ancient aesthetics but also for philosophy's conception of itself.The basic tenets of this quarrel are well known. I wish to review them here toward the goal of suggesting an original view of it that is derivable from Cassirer's approach. The issue is whether poetry or philosophy is the means to truth. The works of Homer had scriptural status for the Greeks and were thought to contain all that was necessary for civil wisdom. Poiein is to make and compose poetry. The ancient poet is a maker of truth claims through language. The quarrel rests on the fact that the philosopher is also a maker of truth claims formulated in words. Is the relatively new figure in Plato's time of the philosophos, the friend or lover... (shrink)

Victim compensation now plays a central role in dealing with harm. It can be brought into play by various devices: private or social insurance, the courts or special funds created for specific disasters. With each device, compensation raises complex evaluation issues: is it appropriate to use financial compensation to repair harm? Who should pay and on what basis should the compensation be awarded? What is the nature of the damage? How to evaluate it and how to value the amount of (...) compensation determined? These questions are the subject of intense work of evaluation by both those who create or implement the compensation devices and by those who use them. This article looks more specifically at this work of evaluation by people who have endured a collective disaster and who have had to deal with the devices designed to compensate them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hegelian RhetoricThora Ilin BayerIntroduction: Rhetoric and DialecticAristotle in the famous first line of his Rhetoric defines the relationship between rhetoric and dialectic: "Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic" (1354a). Both rhetoric and dialectic belong to no definitive science. They treat those things that come within the purview of all human beings. As an antistrophes to dialectic, rhetoric concerns particular cases and "may be defined as the faculty [dynamis] of (...) observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" (1355b). Dialectic concerns reasoning on general issues and in its generality it is like deduction. But unlike deductive demonstration, dialectic, as Aristotle says in Topics, "reasons from reputable opinions," rather than from premises that are true and primitive (100a).Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason takes a more extreme view of dialectic than Aristotle. Kant regards dialectic as a logic of illusion (Schein) that occurs when reason takes its powers beyond experience to make claims concerning the nature of the soul, world, and God. When reason attempts to determine the nature of what the soul is in itself, its assertions end in paralogisms; when it does so about the world its claims end in antinomies; and when it does so about God its efforts end in the impossibilities of the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments. Kant regards rhetoric as having no role in the philosophical pursuit of truth. In the Critique of Judgment Kant classifies rhetoric (Beredsamkeit) as belonging [End Page 203] to fine art. He regards ars oratoria as an art of manipulation and deception that achieves its end by a beautiful show (Schein) of speech that plays upon human weaknesses. He says oratory deserves no respect whatsoever—"ist gar keiner Achtung würdig" (1951, 172n50; 1974, 185n).1 Kant's exclusion of rhetoric from Kritik (with which he identifies philosophy) establishes the general exclusion of rhetoric in the development of philosophical idealism.Hegel interpretation for a century and a half presumed that rhetoric was irrelevant to understanding Hegel's thought. It considered Hegel's dialectic as a method independent of any connection to rhetoric. The first book on Hegel in English, James Hutchinson Stirling's The Secret of Hegel, published in 1863, regards the key to Hegel's system as his formulation of the concrete universal (Begriff). He makes no reference to rhetoric as an element in Hegel's thought (1887, xxii). In his preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel mentions Plato's Parmenides as "surely the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic," but he makes no mention of rhetoric (1952, 57; 1977, 44). A ground for ignoring rhetoric as important for Hegel's philosophy is the fact that Hegel himself ignores it. There is no discussion of rhetoric (Redekunst) in his whole corpus beyond a few pages concerning the differences between poetry and prose in his Lectures on Fine Art (1986, 15:257–68; 1998, 2:986–95).All of the approaches to Hegel in nonrhetorical terms changed with the appearance of Donald Phillip Verene's Hegel's Recollection: A Study of Images in the "Phenomenology of Spirit" (1985) followed by John H. Smith's The Spirit and Its Letter: Traces of Rhetoric in Hegel's Philosophy of "Bildung" (1988).2 Verene's work showed that there is a dialectic between image (Bild) and concept (Begriff) within Hegel's mode of expression that provides the reader with a necessary means of access to the work. Smith's study showed not only that Hegel employs rhetorical principles in the composition of the Phenomenology but that Hegel in his early years studied rhetoric closely and was concerned to master it. Smith's work, although developed independently of Verene's, joined with it to present a new reading of Hegel. This poetical and rhetorical grasp of Hegel's thought has been recently restated in Verene's Hegel's Absolute (2007).My views that follow begin where Verene's and Smith's accounts leave off. I wish to consider two questions that extend what has been broached in their readings of Hegel. (1) In what sense does Hegel's Phenomenology embody a transformation of the Aristotelian conception of rhetoric as an antistrophes to dialectic? (2) To... (shrink)

In 2009, in a provocative article in the Lancet , Granich et al . proposed a radical public health intervention to address the vast human toll exacted by the HIV epidemic in regions with generalized epidemics where millions are infected. The proposal, based on modeling, suggested that universal screening for HIV and immediate treatment for all found to be infected, regardless of immune status, could ultimately reverse an epidemiological course that has appeared resistant to efforts at prevention.

Introduction : interpreting The new science -- Synopsis of universal law -- The true and the certain : from On the one principle and one end of universal law -- A new science is essayed : from On the constancy of the jurisprudent -- On Homer and his two poems : from the dissertations -- Vico's address to his readers from a lost manuscript on jurisprudence -- Vico's reply to the false book notice : the Vici vindiciae -- Vico's "ignota (...) latebat" : on the impresa and the dipintura -- Vico's addition to the tree of the poetic sciences and his use of the muses -- Vico's reprehension of the metaphysics of René Descartes, Benedict Spinoza, and John Locke -- Appendix : Vico's writings in English translation. (shrink)

Religion, environment, tradition, needs, and character determine the framework of people's eating habits. In this context, a special area is reserved for nutrition in the Qur'an. One of the prominent words in the relevant field is “rizq,” referring to things that Allah gives to all creatures for their own benefit. Broadly, children, spouse, action, knowledge, and wisdom can also be evaluated in this context. This study aims to reach detailed data on the subject by examining the verses where the word (...) rizq is mentioned in Surah al-Baqara in terms of language and rhetoric. In every language, but especially in the Arabic language, the words that make up the sentences, the forms of the words, the syntax of the sentence, the forms of expression, and the style are important while determining the meaning. First, the comparison method was applied in the determination of the eloquence subtleties that were taken as a basis in the study. By this method, we compared verses, sentences, and words with other related verses and possible/fictional sentences in different linguistic dimensions; determined the differences between them, and tested the results by applying them to the relevant text. Considering every linguistic structure in the Qur'anic style and investigating its meaning is essential for understanding the Qur'an. In such a reading, the presence as well as the absence of language elements should be taken into consideration and used effectively in determining the meaning. The words used in the Qur'an are fundamental because their presence or absence, the structure of words that they are used together, and the whole text constitute an important and different aspect of the conveyed message. In this paper, ten verses where the word rizq is mentioned in Surah al-Baqara are examined within the framework of the study method. Their application provides examples to a certain extent for the understanding of the specified method. Various data has been obtained about the concept of rizq as reflected in general social life. As rizq, the foods must be healthy and tasty as well as halal in terms of their ingredients and acquisition. The desire for foods of human body may vary according to various factors. However, prohibitions on food are based on reasonable, scientific, or religious reasons. The moral and philosophical dimensions of the subject are always present in the background of these justifications. One of the duties assigned to human beings is to obtain rizq within the framework of the possibilities and capabilities given to them in the world and to distribute it, if any, to those they are responsible for, creatures, and other needy people. It is a requirement of faith to utilize the rizq by considering its raison for existence and to ensure that the way of acquisition is legal and ethical. Legitimate acquisition, sharing, and distribution of what is acquired is primarily related to the sense of conscience. Therefore, it is not in the nature of faith to interfere with what is given to animals, plants, and other people as rizq. From this point of view, infaq plays an important role in understanding the concept of rizq. The Qur'an strongly expresses the desire of man to be fair and generous in the sharing of rizq. (shrink)

This article unfolds in three stages. First, it locates the emergence of modern conceptions of social justice in industrializing Europe, and especially in the discovery of the “social,” which provided a particular idiom for the liberal democratic politics for most of the twentieth century. Second, the article links this particular conception of the social to the political rationalities of the postwar welfare state and the identity of the social citizen. Finally, the article discusses the myriad ways in which this legacy (...) of the social and social justice has been disrupted, although not yet fully displaced, by the economic orthodoxies and individualization that inform the contemporary neoliberal governing project in Canada. The result, the article concludes, has been the institutionalization of insecurity, which demands the renewal of a social way of seeing and a politics of social justice on local and global scales. (shrink)

Any worlds semantics for intentionality has to provide a plenitudinous theory of impossibility: For any impossible proposition, it should provide a world where it is true. Hence, also any semantics for impossibility statements that extends Lewis’s concretism about possible worlds should be plenitudinous. However, several such proposals for impossibilist semantics fail to accommodate two kinds of impossibility that, albeit not unheard of, have been largely neglected in the literature on impossible worlds, but that are bound to arise in the Lewisian (...) context. The proposals discussed here stop short of plenitude because they adhere to what Lewis occasionally referred to as ‘ontological truth’, as they lack the semantic ability to misrepresent ontological facts. The paper develops a framework for systematic misrepresentations on the basis of Mares’s situation-based account of impossible ‘worlds’, and which confines ‘ontological truth’ to possibility. It thus illustrates how a plenitude of impossibilities can be achieved. (shrink)

This paper argues that the idea of inclusion is linked to the democratic tradition rather than to the republican one. By analyzing the origins and meaning of these two concepts, the author holds that democracy is rather linked to desire and republic to will (and to the expression of desire), and concludes that, since North Atlantic political tradition has not given a key role to desire, democracy, in order to overcome the difficulties it has been encountering in all parts of (...) the world, should take more account of desire and of the social struggles it brings to the fore. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish three senses of could turn out/couldhave turned out in an attempt to elucidate how each is connected tothe notion of discovery and how each determines that a statement ofthe form `X could turn out P' (`X could have turned out P') is true.I argue that the actuality-oriented sense of could turn outbest captures what we ordinarily mean when we use could turnout or could have turned out in a nonevidential sense.