Drawing on in-depth interviews, I analyze how teen fathers talk about the responsibility for having a baby at a young age. In addition to negotiating the stigma often associated with teen pregnancy, teen fathers also confront stereotypes that label them as selfish and uncaring. In telling their stories of “what happened,” they utilize three gendered discourses to deny responsibility for the pregnancy: the feminization of birth control, a discourse of uncontrollable male sexual desire, and love. Their narratives also reveal the (...) ways in which gendered norms can solve some problems while creating others. Aligning themselves with certain notions of masculinity can serve as a resource for denying responsibility for the pregnancy while also signifying their manhood, but these same discourses are also constraining in that they reinforce stereotypes of teen fathers as selfish, even predatory. While these approaches may allow teen fathers to claim masculine identities, they also stigmatize them as the wrong kind of men. In short, teen fathers are not only negotiating the potential stigma of teen pregnancy, they are also negotiating their identities as men. (shrink)

Phototoxicity frequently occurs during live fluorescence microscopy, and its consequences are often underestimated. Damage to cellular macromolecules upon excitation light illumination can impair sample physiology, and even lead to sample death. In this review, we explain how phototoxicity influences live samples, and we highlight that, besides the obvious effects of phototoxicity, there are often subtler consequences of illumination that are imperceptible when only the morphology of samples is examined. Such less apparent manifestations of phototoxicity are equally problematic, and can change (...) the conclusions drawn from an experiment. Thus, limiting phototoxicity is a prerequisite for obtaining reproducible quantitative data on biological processes. We present strategies to reduce phototoxicity, e.g. limiting the illumination to the focal plane and suggest controls for phototoxicity effects. Overall, we argue that phototoxicity needs increased attention from researchers when designing experiments, and when evaluating research findings. (shrink)

Based on Davenport’s (1998) social audit, we examined six firms’ corporate social responsibility activities within the beer industry in an effort to identify and compare these firms’ industry social standing. The results have implications in our understanding and assessment of corporate citizenship practices both within and across business industry groups.

ABSTRACT Historically, maternal HIV research has focused on prevention of mother‐to‐child transmission and child outcomes, with little focus on the health outcomes of mothers. Over the course of the HIV epidemic, the approach to including pregnant women in research has shifted. The current landscape lends itself to reviewing the public health ethics of this research. This systematic review aims to identify ethical barriers and considerations for including pregnant and postpartum women living with HIV in treatment adherence and retention research. We (...) completed a systematic literature review following PRISMA guidelines with analysis using a relational ethics perspective. The included studies (n = 7) identified ethical barriers related to (a) women research participants as individuals, (b) partner and family dynamics, (c) community perspectives on research design and conduct, and (d) policy and regulatory implications. These broader contextual factors will yield research responsive to, and respectful of, the needs of pregnant and postpartum women living with HIV. While current regulatory and policy environments may be slow to change, actions can be taken now to foster enabling environments for research. We suggest that a relational approach to public health ethics can best support the needs of pregnant and postpartum women living with HIV; acknowledging this population as systematically disadvantaged and inseparable from their communities will best support the health of this population. (shrink)

Testimony is an invaluable source of knowledge. We rely on the reports of those around us for everything from the ingredients in our food and medicine to the identity of our family members. Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the epistemology of testimony. Despite the multitude of views offered, a single thesis is nearly universally accepted: testimonial knowledge is acquired through the process of transmission from speaker to hearer. In this book, Jennifer Lackey shows that this (...) thesis is false and, hence, that the literature on testimony has been shaped at its core by a view that is fundamentally misguided. She then defends a detailed alternative to this conception of testimony: whereas the views currently dominant focus on the epistemic status of what speakers believe, Lackey advances a theory that instead centers on what speakers say. The upshot is that, strictly speaking, we do not learn from one another's beliefs - we learn from one another's words. Once this shift in focus is in place, Lackey goes on to argue that, though positive reasons are necessary for testimonial knowledge, testimony itself is an irreducible epistemic source. This leads to the development of a theory that gives proper credence to testimony's epistemologically dual nature: both the speaker and the hearer must make a positive epistemic contribution to testimonial knowledge. The resulting view not only reveals that testimony has the capacity to generate knowledge, but it also gives appropriate weight to our nature as both socially indebted and individually rational creatures. The approach found in this book will, then, represent a radical departure from the views currently dominating the epistemology of testimony, and thus is intended to reshape our understanding of the deep and ubiquitous reliance we have on the testimony of those around us. (shrink)

Contemplating certain residual mists, the net proceeds of a material world exploded and disintegrated by the relentless penetration of scientific intellect, the more advanced physicist has been led in recent times to co-operate with the philosopher on a common plane. Not so long ago, and not always without reason, the philosopher was regarded somewhat askance. It is the old antithesis between the practical man and the theorist, the scientific man himself having been regarded for long as a dreamer. All depends (...) upon the level of action. Operating in the wilds the black tracker has nothing to gain by pausing for the slow, if sure, dictum of the scientist; and if a Mercator projection of the world, or a sextant, were offered to a primitive navigator of well-known home waters, these important aids to the sailor of longer voyages would probably be thrown in a corner, if not overboard. The launching forth on to wide oceans created the occasion for, and proved the value of, such products of exact thought. Thus, in his highest abstractions, the physicist must perforce become a philosopher. At the very least, the need of review and evaluation from a more general standpoint will be conceded. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 475-477 [Access article in PDF] A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues: The Uses of Philosophy in Everyday Life, by André Comte-Sponville, trans. Catherine Temerson; x & 352 pp. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001. Of two minds, I mirror the two sorts of audience this book's twenty-four translations have sought: "students" and "readers" (p. 5), those for whom the scholarly content and apparatus may (...) be of interest and those hopefully many more who wish to become better, to become virtuous. Although "students" will not find sustained engagement with this book rewarding, its bright virtues will raise "readerly" smiles among them.Reasons for Small's great popularity since its 1995 PUF release derive not from essaying eighteen virtues in its eighteen chapters. Its allure is its dance with love's piquant absences, a dance with virtues as "feeble approximations of love" (p. 98). Indeed, chapter 1 teaches that politeness "is not a virtue but a simulacrum that imitates virtue (in adults) and paves the way for it (in children)" (p. 13). And since love, "the alpha and omega of all virtue" (p. 226), is not itself clearly a virtue, then perhaps at most fifteen virtues are treated. For as all readers will pleasurably discover, purity (chapter 14) is really refractions of love's qualities.The virtues are multiply interconnected, not unified as Socrates thought. This idea finds graceful expression, among other places, at the conclusion of "Generosity" (chapter 7). "Combined with courage, it turns out to be heroism. Joined by justice, it becomes equity. Coupled with compassion, it becomes benevolence. In league with mercy, it becomes leniency" (p. 102). And chap-ter 9's mercy? "Because hatred is a sadness, mercy (like the process of mourning, which it resembles and might even require, since to forgive is to bid farewell to our hatred) is on the side of joy. When it is not yet joyous, it is forgiveness; when it already is, it is love" (p. 131). Simone Weil's meditations on God's absence, or "withdrawal," occasion insights into authentic parental love. [End Page 475] God does not fill the world since "were he to do so, there would be only God and no world"; similarly, "more often than one might think, parents withdraw, step back, cede their space to their children, and refrain from exercising all the power at their disposal. Why? Because they love them" (p. 274).Unfortunately, love's flowers, potted in this garden of Adonis (Phaedrus 276b), must contend with "student" scrutiny from without and a suffocating lack of concision from within. This "student's" efforts failed to disentangle ambivalences about the loving ego in the long, concluding love chapter. Organized into three sections—eros, philia, agape—the first has no patience for subtleties of the Symposium's eros. "Have I begged the question?... So be it," since Plato confuses "love—in all its forms—with [ego's] want" (p. 243). Philia "is a different way of [ego's] possessing, of enjoying" (p. 277). Finally, agape, universal and disinterested love, is simply one's genuine conatus, one's true power of existing (pp. 270f). So ego loves three ways—desire, possession, power—but each is about ego. Eros "usually" (p. 262) intermixes with philia: "we are forever hesitating, oscillating, fluctuating between the two affects [desire and joy] and the two truths (Plato's and Spinoza's), between want and capacity, hope and gratitude, passion and action, religion and wisdom, between the love that desires only what it does not have and wants to possess (ero \ s), and the love [philia] that, since it desires only what is, has everything it desires and finds pleasure and joy in it" (p. 253). Nevertheless, philia without excess Platonic eros is about and for ego, not alter. For the friend per se gives ego joy: ego's joy is the definiens of philia (pp. 249ff). Disconcertingly, there are a few contrary formulations of philia as loving "the other for the other's benefit" (p. 262). If "metaphysics is the... (shrink)

The theory and practice of ecological reason have consistently suffered various shortcomings, versions of anthropocentrism and holism prominent among them. Even definitions of ecological reason that rely on philosophically informed policy studies and that explicitly take the functional and substantive moments of reason into account have not escaped these problems. An account of interdisciplinarity can shed light on how these intractable problems arise, since many of them fail to build interdisciplinarity as such sufficiently into the definition of ecological reason. Genuine (...) interdisciplinarity, distinguished from both multidisciplinarity and metadisciplinarity, can thus be seen to be necessary (not sufficient) to liberate ecological reason and to illuminate its theory and practice for late moderns. (shrink)

How, in a secular world, should we resolve ethically controversial and troubling issues relating to health care? Should we, as some argue, make a clean sweep, getting rid of the Hippocratic ethic, such vestiges of it as remain? Jennifer Jackson seeks to answer these significant questions, establishing new foundations for a traditional and secular ethic which would not require a radical and problematic overhaul of the old. These new foundations rest on familiar observations of human nature and human needs. (...) Jackson presents morality as a loose anatomy of constituent virtues that are related in different ways to how we fare in life, and suggests that in order to address problems in medical ethics, a virtues-based approach is needed. Throughout, attention is paid to the role of philosophy in medical ethics, and how it can be used to clarify key notions and distinctions that underlie current debates and controversial issues. By reinstating such concepts as justice, cardinal virtue, and moral duty, Jackson lays the groundwork for an ethics of health care that makes headway toward resolving seeming dilemmas in medical ethics today. This penetrating and accessible book will be invaluable to students of sociology and health care, as well as those who are interested in the ethical uncertainties faced by the medical world. (shrink)

The tension between external forces for better ethics in organizations, represented by legislation such as the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), and the call for internal forces represented by increased educational coverage, has never been as apparent. This study examines business school faculty attitudes about recent corporate ethics lapses, including opinions about root causes, potential solutions, and ethics coverage in their courses. In assessing root causes, faculty point to a failure of systems such as legal/professional and management (external) and declining personal values (...) (internal). We also found that faculty recommend external forces as a remedy more often than increased ethics educational coverage; we contextualize this finding with recent ethics education literature. We conclude by proposing that neither legislation nor ethics education alone are complete when addressing widespread unethical corporate acts and offer a multi-faceted approach to ethics educational opportunities. (shrink)

There are several theses in political science that are usually explicitly called ‘laws’. Other theses are generally thought of as laws, but often without being explicitly labelled as such. Still other claims are well-supported and arguably interesting, while no one would be tempted to call them laws. This situation raises philosophical questions: which theses deserve to be called laws and which not? And how should we decide about this? In this paper we develop and motivate a strategy for thinking about (...) laws in political science which integrates two core concepts: spatio-temporal stability and social mechanisms. The proposed strategy is a set of guidelines that political scientists can use to reflect on and argue about specific cases within their discipline, not a clear-cut demarcation criterion. We defend and motivate this strategy and apply it to two cases (one with respect to state repression, one about parliamentary elections). After we have developed and motivated our strategy for political science, we show that our proposal is relevant for other disciplines in the social sciences. We explain how our views fit into critical realism and embed them in the debate on laws in general philosophy of science and in the philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

Why do we find agents less blameworthy when they face mitigating circumstances, and what does this show about philosophical theories of moral responsibility? We present novel evidence that the tendency to mitigate the blameworthiness of agents is driven both by the perception that they are less normatively competent—in particular, less able to know that what they are doing is wrong—and by the perception that their behavior is less attributable to their deep selves. Consequently, we argue that philosophers cannot rely on (...) the case strategy to support the Normative Competence theory of moral responsibility over the Deep Self theory. However, we also outline ways in which further empirical and philosophical work would shift the debate, by showing that there is a significant departure between ordinary concepts and corresponding philosophical concepts, or by focusing on a different type of coherence with ordinary judgments. (shrink)

Michael Devitt ([2006a], [2006b]) argues that, insofar as linguists possess better theories about language than non-linguists, their linguistic intuitions are more reliable. (Culbertson and Gross [2009]) presented empirical evidence contrary to this claim. Devitt ([2010]) replies that, in part because we overemphasize the distinction between acceptability and grammaticality, we misunderstand linguists' claims, fall into inconsistency, and fail to see how our empirical results can be squared with his position. We reply in this note. Inter alia we argue that Devitt's focus (...) on grammaticality intuitions, rather than acceptability intuitions, distances his discussion from actual linguistic practice. We close by questioning a demand that drives his discussion—viz., that, for linguistic intuitions to supply evidence for linguistic theorizing, a better account of why they are evidence is required. (shrink)

Jennifer Church presents a new account of perception, which shows how imagining alternative perspectives and possibilities plays a key role in creating and validating experiences of self-evident objectivity. She explores the nature of moral perception and aesthetic perception, and argues that perception can be both literal and substantive.

Decision-Making Capacity First published Tue Jan 15, 2008; substantive revision Fri Aug 14, 2020 In many Western jurisdictions the law presumes that adult persons, and sometimes children that meet certain criteria, are capable of making their own medical decisions; for example, consenting to a particular medical treatment, or consenting to participate in a research trial. But what exactly does it mean to say that a subject has or lacks the requisite capacity to decide? This question has to do with what (...) is commonly called “decisional capacity”, a central concept in health care law and ethics, and increasingly an independent topic of philosophical inquiry. -/- Decisional capacity can be defined as the ability of subjects to make their own medical decisions. Somewhat similar questions of capacity arise in other contexts, such as capacity to stand trial in a court of law and the ability to make decisions that relate to personal care and finances. However, the history behind the more general legal notions of capacity to stand trial and capacity to manage one’s life is different and operates somewhat differently in law (Roth, Meisel, & Litz 1977; Zapf & Roesch 2005). For the purposes of this discussion the notion of decisional capacity will be limited to medical contexts only; most notably, those where decisions to consent or to refuse treatment or participation in clinical research are concerned. (shrink)

New standards adopted by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) stress business curriculum-wide learning objectives, of which ethics is a critical part. “Knowledge and skills” in ethical responsibilities are required as part of institutionalaccreditation. An exploratory study offers insight into ethics integration, perceived comfort in teaching ethics, and methods used. The main tension presented balances calls for ethics across business curricula with the assertion that ethics instruction, in the hands of an untrained professor, may do more (...) damage than good. Results suggest that while faculty include ethics in their courses, only slightly more than half have received some kind of ethics training. We also explore ethics pedagogies and found differences between methods respondents used in the classroom and desired learning methods for themselves. We offer insights about and possible explanations for the gaps we found in our study, contextualizing them in new literature. We finish with a brief discussion of how our findings impact accreditation assessment. (shrink)

There is a major transformation taking place in the Arab and Muslim worlds. People in these nations are poised on the edge of a significant new social landscape. Called the Internet, this new frontier not only includes the creation of new forms of private communication, like electronic mail and chat, but also webbased forums, which for the first time enables public discussion between males and females in conservative societies. This paper has been written as a result of an ethnographic study (...) conducted in Saudi Arabia during the period 2001‐2002. The purpose of the study was to understand how online communities in Saudi Arabia are affecting people. The results of the study indicate that while participants to a large extent used online communities in accordance with their cultural values, norms and traditions, the communication medium and the features associated with it, such as the anonymity and lack of social cues, have affected them considerably. For example, many participants became more flexible in their thinking, more aware of the diverse nature of people within their society, less inhibited about the opposite gender, and more self‐confident. On the other hand, participants neglected their family commitments, became less shy and some became confused about some aspects of their culture and religion. These findings and their implications for the Arab and Muslim worlds will be highlighted in this paper. (shrink)

Science and technology policy in the developing world involves special problems since much of the financial support for S&T originates outside the countries where research is done. The development of information for policy and strategic planning decisions is therefore critical for national research policymakers, international organizations, and donors. However, prior attempts have been plagued by serious methodological problems. We describe a multifaceted approach for generating systematic information on scientific and technological institutions in developing countries based on the concept of the (...) research system as a multiorganizational network. By providing an account of how this approach was implemented in a three-country study we hope to shed light on several related problems in developing information for policy. First, how can relevant actors in research systems be identified? Second, how can a national research system be systematically surveyed? Third, how can system-wide estimates of organizational linkages and performance be obtained? (shrink)

This volume argues that educational problems have their basis in an ideology of binary opposites often referred to as dualism, and that it is partly because mainstream schooling incorporates dualism that it is unable to facilitate the thinking skills, dispositions and understandings necessary for autonomy, democratic citizenship and leading a meaningful life. Bleazby proposes an approach to schooling termed social reconstruction learning, in which students engage in philosophical inquiries with members of their community in order to reconstruct real social problems, (...) arguing that this pedagogy can better facilitate independent thinking, imaginativeness, emotional intelligence, autonomy, and active citizenship. (shrink)

John Rawls has recently shifted to a "freestanding" or "political" liberalism from his earlier "comprehensive" and "moral" liberalism. I argue that this move is based on several key features that make Rawlsian liberal pluralism indelibly postmodern. Two of the more obvious features are the denial of foundationalism and the rejection of a truth status for public-sphere justifications of the basic political structure. In conclusion, I suggest that a late-modern postliberalism is a viable alternative.

Does rationality require imprecise credences? Many hold that it does: imprecise evidence requires correspondingly imprecise credences. I argue that this is false. The imprecise view faces the same arbitrariness worries that were meant to motivate it in the first place. It faces these worries because it incorporates a certain idealization. But doing away with this idealization effectively collapses the imprecise view into a particular kind of precise view. On this alternative, our attitudes should reflect a kind of normative uncertainty: uncertainty (...) about what to believe. This view refutes the claim that precise credences are inappropriately informative or committal. Some argue that indeterminate evidential support requires imprecise credences; but I argue that indeterminate evidential support instead places indeterminate requirements on credences, and is compatible with the claim that rational credences may always be precise. (shrink)

Earlier, we have studied computations possible by physical systems and by algorithms combined with physical systems. In particular, we have analysed the idea of using an experiment as an oracle to an abstract computational device, such as the Turing machine. The theory of composite machines of this kind can be used to understand (a) a Turing machine receiving extra computational power from a physical process, or (b) an experimenter modelled as a Turing machine performing a test of a known physical (...) theory T.Our earlier work was based upon experiments in Newtonian mechanics. Here we extend the scope of the theory of experimental oracles beyond Newtonian mechanics to electrical theory. First, we specify an experiment that measures resistance using a Wheatstone bridge and start to classify the computational power of this experimental oracle using non-uniform complexity classes. Secondly, we show that modelling an experimenter and experimental procedure algorithmically imposes a limit on our ability to measure resistance by the Wheatstone bridge.The connection between the algorithm and physical test is mediated by a protocol controlling each query, especially the physical time taken by the experimenter. In our studies we find that physical experiments have an exponential time protocol; this we formulate as a general conjecture. Our theory proposes that measurability in Physics is subject to laws which are co-lateral effects of the limits of computability and computational complexity. (shrink)

Earlier, we have studied computations possible by physical systems and by algorithms combined with physical systems. In particular, we have analysed the idea of using an experiment as an oracle to an abstract computational device, such as the Turing machine. The theory of composite machines of this kind can be used to understand (a) a Turing machine receiving extra computational power from a physical process, or (b) an experimenter modelled as a Turing machine performing a test of a known physical (...) theory T. Our earlier work was based upon experiments in Newtonian mechanics. Here we extend the scope of the theory of experimental oracles beyond Newtonian mechanics to electrical theory. First, we specify an experiment that measures resistance using a Wheatstone bridge and start to classify the computational power of this experimental oracle using non-uniform complexity classes. Secondly, we show that modelling an experimenter and experimental procedure algorithmically imposes a limit on our ability to measure resistance by the Wheatstone bridge. The connection between the algorithm and physical test is mediated by a protocol controlling each query, especially the physical time taken by the experimenter. In our studies we find that physical experiments have an exponential time protocol, this we formulate as a general conjecture. Our theory proposes that measurability in Physics is subject to laws which are co-lateral effects of the limits of computability and computational complexity. (shrink)

... PREFACE Paul Gochet (Liege) "[...] une entite physique ne peut etre envisagee que comme une sorte de concretisation, de consolidation locale dans un ...