Ethics and Empowerment is aimed atproviding tactical, high-level solutions to today's business and professionalchallenges. Gathering together experts in various fields, this line of titleswill benefit professionals as they face the challenges of the ever-changingbusiness climate. Amid the burgeoning literature on business ethics, this book providesan important lead in taking a well-known everyday management notion such as"empowerment" and using it to make "ethics" more relevantand accessible to the business world. Adding a major contribution to theongoing debate about the role of business (...) in society, the content examines theissues of power, control, and autonomy, addressing such questions asempowerment as a matter of justice, and also provides case studies of theorganizational experiences of empowerment programs. (shrink)

The 14 chapters in _Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments_, all published here for the first time, focus on recent thinking in this important area, helping initiate issues and lines of argument that have not been explored previously. At the same time, a reader can use this volume to become oriented to the established questions and positions in end of life ethics, both because new questions are set in their context, and because most of the (...) chapters—written by a team of experts—survey the field as well as add to it. Each chapter includes initial summaries, final conclusions, and a Related Topics section. TABLE OF CONTENTS John K. Davis, "Introduction" Geoffrey Scarre, "Is it possible to be better off dead?" Taylor W. Cyr, "How Does Death Harm the Deceased?" Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, "The Significance of an Afterlife" Jens Johansson, "The Severity of Death" John K. Davis, "Defining Death" James Stacey Taylor, "Autonomy, Competence, and End of Life" Eric Vogelstein, "Deciding for the Incompetent" Paul T. Menzel, "Change of Mind: An Issue for Advance Directives" Nancy S. Jecker, "Medical Futility and Respect for Patient Autonomy" Paul T. Menzel, "Refusing Lifesaving Medical Treatment and Food and Water by Mouth" Thomas S. Huddle, "Suicide, Physician-Assisted Suicide, the Doing-Allowing Distinction and Double Effect" Michael Cholbi, "Grief and End of Life Surrogate Decision-making" Bruce Jennings, "Solidarity near the End of Life: The Promise of Relational Decision-making in the Care of the Dying" Colin Farrelly, "Justice and the Aging of the Human Species". (shrink)

The 14 chapters in _Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments_, all published here for the first time, focus on recent thinking in this important area, helping initiate issues and lines of argument that have not been explored previously. At the same time, a reader can use this volume to become oriented to the established questions and positions in end of life ethics, both because new questions are set in their context, and because most of the (...) chapters—written by a team of experts—survey the field as well as add to it. Each chapter includes initial summaries, final conclusions, and a Related Topics section. TABLE OF CONTENTS John K. Davis, "Introduction" Geoffrey Scarre, "Is it possible to be better off dead?" Taylor W. Cyr, "How Does Death Harm the Deceased?" Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, "The Significance of an Afterlife" Jens Johansson, "The Severity of Death" John K. Davis, "Defining Death" James Stacey Taylor, "Autonomy, Competence, and End of Life" Eric Vogelstein, "Deciding for the Incompetent" Paul T. Menzel, "Change of Mind: An Issue for Advance Directives" Nancy S. Jecker, "Medical Futility and Respect for Patient Autonomy" Paul T. Menzel, "Refusing Lifesaving Medical Treatment and Food and Water by Mouth" Thomas S. Huddle, "Suicide, Physician-Assisted Suicide, the Doing-Allowing Distinction and Double Effect" Michael Cholbi, "Grief and End of Life Surrogate Decision-making" Bruce Jennings, "Solidarity near the End of Life: The Promise of Relational Decision-making in the Care of the Dying" Colin Farrelly, "Justice and the Aging of the Human Species". (shrink)

The 14 chapters in Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments, all published here for the first time, focus on recent thinking in this important area, helping initiate issues and lines of argument that have not been explored previously. At the same time, a reader can use this volume to become oriented to the established questions and positions in end of life ethics, both because new questions are set in their context, and because most of the (...) chapters--written by a team of experts--survey the field as well as add to it. Each chapter includes initial summaries, final conclusions, and a Related Topics section. TABLE OF CONTENTS John K. Davis, "Introduction" Geoffrey Scarre, "Is it possible to be better off dead?" Taylor W. Cyr, "How Does Death Harm the Deceased?" Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, "The Significance of an Afterlife" Jens Johansson, "The Severity of Death" John K. Davis, "Defining Death" James Stacey Taylor, "Autonomy, Competence, and End of Life" Eric Vogelstein, "Deciding for the Incompetent" Paul T. Menzel, "Change of Mind: An Issue for Advance Directives" Nancy S. Jecker, "Medical Futility and Respect for Patient Autonomy" Paul T. Menzel, "Refusing Lifesaving Medical Treatment and Food and Water by Mouth" Thomas S. Huddle, "Suicide, Physician-Assisted Suicide, the Doing-Allowing Distinction and Double Effect" Michael Cholbi, "Grief and End of Life Surrogate Decision-making" Bruce Jennings, "Solidarity near the End of Life: The Promise of Relational Decision-making in the Care of the Dying" Colin Farrelly, "Justice and the Aging of the Human Species". (shrink)

The article addresses the question of the respect owed to believers and their faiths and states that a demand for respect for the person of the believer does not imply a demand for respect for their faith. However, being 'respect' a complex and ambiguous notion, the article studies some arguments that go in the direction of justifying the move from respect for persons to respect for their beliefs. According to Habermas, there is a respect citizens of a democracy owe each (...) other that requires taking each other's opinions seriously, including their religiously motivated opinions. What is more, Habermas claims that we all have something to learn from each other. The articles argues against this line of thought and states there is no obligation to respect anything about people's moral claims except their right to make them. The article argues against Habermas's approach by showing its epistemological and ontological inconsistency and concludes that respect for persons as moral reason-givers or as fellow-citizens does not lead to any substantial respect for the contents of their claims. (shrink)

Innovative verbs in Japanese are formed from nouns of various sources including loanwords, Sino-Japanese nouns, mimetics, and proper names. Regardless of their different origin, these innovative denominal verbs exhibit a collection of intriguing properties, ranging from phonological, morphological, to semantic and pragmatic. These properties are not strictly predictable from the component parts including the nature of the parent noun and verbal morphology. Such an unpredictable nature is suggestive of a constructional analysis. The form-meaning-function complex takes a templatic representation, which expresses (...) the phonological and morphological characteristics, and associated with it are semantic and pragmatic properties. These phonological, morphological, semantic, and pragmatic properties combine to capture the nature of innovative denominal verbs as a construction. The analysis supports the idea of applying construction grammar to morphology along the lines of the developing field of construction morphology (e.g., Booij, Compounding and derivation: Evidence for construction morphology, John Benjamins, 2005, Construction morphology and the lexicon: 34–44, Cascadilla Press, 2007, Linguistische Berichte 19: 1–14, 2009a, Compounding and construction morphology, Oxford University Press, 2009b). We further show how insights from templatic (or prosodic) morphology (e.g., McCarthy and Prince, Prosodic morphology, University of Massachusetts and Brandeis University, 1986, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8: 209–282, 1990) can be conceptualized in terms of construction grammar. (shrink)

Ankersmit's articulation of a postmodern theory of history takes seriously both the strengths of traditional historicism and the right of historians to decide what makes sense for disciplinary practice. That makes him an exemplary interlocutor. Ankersmit proposes a theory of historical "representation" which radicalizes the narrative approach to historiography along the lines of poststructuralist textualism. Against this postmodernism but invoking some of his own arguments, I defend the traditional historicist position. I formulate criticisms of the theory of reference entailed (...) in his notion of "narrative substance," of his master analogy of historiography with modern painting, and finally of his characterization of historical hermeneutics. In each case I find him guilty of the hyperbole which he himself cautions against. While it is true that historical narratives cannot be taken to be transparent, in taking them to be opaque Ankersmit puts himself in an untenable position. Finally, Ankersmit seeks to buttress his theoretical case by an interpretation of the new cultural historical texts of authors like Davis and Ginzburg. While this is a concreteness heartily to be welcomed in philosophers of history, I cannot find his construction of this new school's work plausible. (shrink)

In a recent study of a patient in a persistent vegetative state, [Owen, A. M., Coleman, M. R., Boly, M., Davis, M. H., Laureys, S., & Pickard, J. D. . Detecting awareness in the vegetative state. Science, 313, 1402] claimed that they had demonstrated the presence of consciousness in this patient. This bold conclusion was based on the isomorphy between brain activity in this patient and a set of conscious control subjects, obtained in various imagery tasks. However, establishing consciousness (...) in unresponsive patients is fraught with methodological and conceptual difficulties. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the current debate surrounding consciousness in VS patients has parallels in the artificial intelligence debate as to whether machines can think. Basically, used a method analogous to the Turing test to reveal the presence of consciousness, whereas their adversaries adopted a line of reasoning akin to Searle’s Chinese room argument. Highlighting the correspondence between these two debates can help to clarify the issues surrounding consciousness in non-communicative agents. (shrink)

A theorem of Sierpinski of 1919 characterized the cardinality of the continuum by means of lines in two orthogonal directions in the plane: CH if and only if there is a subset S of the plane such that every horizontal cross-section of S is countable and every vertical cross-section of S is co-countable. A theorem of Sikorski of 1951 characterizes the cardinality of an arbitrary set by means of hyperplanes in orthogonal directions in finite powers of that set. A (...) theorem of Davies of 1962 characterizes the cardinality of the continuum by means of lines in nonorthogonal directions in the plane, which, by another theorem of Davies of 1962, may be generalized to finite-dimensional Euclidean space. The main results of this paper unify these analogous theorems of Sikorski and Davies by characterizing the cardinality of an arbitrary set by means of hyperplanes in nonorthogonal directions in that set. (shrink)

Although successive generations of digital technology have become increasingly powerful in the past 20 years, digital democracy has yet to realize its potential for deliberative transformation. The undemocratic exploitation of massive social media systems continued this trend, but it only worsened an existing problem of modern democracies, which were already struggling to develop deliberative infrastructure independent of digital technologies. There have been many creative conceptions of civic tech, but implementation has lagged behind innovation. This article argues for implementing one such (...) vision of digital democracy through the establishment of a public corporation. Modeled on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the United States, this entity would foster the creation of new digital technology by providing a stable source of funding to nonprofit technologists, interest groups, civic organizations, government, researchers, private companies, and the public. Funded entities would produce and maintain software infrastructure for public benefit. The concluding sections identify what circumstances might create and sustain such an entity. (shrink)

Papers presented at the Conference, Consuming the past held at University of York, 29 November - 1 December 1996.

The controversy over the prescription drug, alosetron, is examined in order to investigate what is permitted to count as ‘therapeutic advance’ and ‘therapeutic breakthrough’ within pharmaceutical innovation and regulation. It is argued that those official accounting categories can mask very modest efficacy of some drugs by reference to the official techno-scientific evidence, thus leading to questionable acceptance of risks to public health. This is explained by: the drug availability options set by the commercial interests of manufacturers; the FDA management's need (...) to demonstrate rapid approval of therapeutic advances to their budgetary masters, especially in the context of patient demands for access to new drugs; and the increasing capacity of patient groups, sometimes in collaboration with pharmaceutical manufacturers, to challenge techno-scientific expertise and evidence with experiential testimony. It is concluded that regulatory policy-makers need much more sophisticated accounting systems for differentiating between drugs defined as significant therapeutic advances, and between drugs (‘therapeutic breakthroughs’ fast-tracked to treat serious or life-threatening conditions. Contrary to some STS analyses, the desirability of an ascendancy of patients’ anecdotal evidence in regulatory decisions for public health is questioned. (shrink)

John Macmurray (1891-1976) was born in Scotland and began his philosophical education in a Scottish university. As an academic philosopher, following in the footsteps of Caird’s Scottish idealism - a reaction against the debate between Hume’s scepticism and Reid’s ‘commonsense’ – Macmurray holds that a university education in moral philosophy is essential for producing virtuous citizens. Consequently, Macmurray’s philosophy of human nature includes a ‘thick’ description of the person, which is more holistic that Cartesianism and emphasizes the relation of (...) persons. Hence, Macmurray focuses on community, but, as this chapter reveals, he is not a communitarian in the contemporary sense; rather, he shares Caird’s focus on philosophy as the means to living well. Thus, he opposes increasing specialization in university education and highlights the limits of science, which, Davie notes, is representative of the Scottish metaphysic of Macmurray’s era. Macmuray is the last in this line of the Scottish philosophical tradition. (shrink)

This paper analyses the activities of five organizations shaping the debate over the global governance of genome editing in order to assess current approaches to public engagement (PE). We compare the recommendations of each group with its own practices. All recommend broad engagement with the general public, but their practices vary from expert-driven models dominated by scientists, experts, and civil society groups to citizen deliberation-driven models that feature bidirectional consultation with local citizens, as well as hybrid models that combine elements (...) of both approaches. Only one group practices PE that seeks community perspectives to advance equity. In most cases, PE does little more than record already well-known views held by the most vocal groups, and thus is unlikely to produce more just or equitable processes or policy outcomes. Our exploration of the strengths, weaknesses, and possibilities of current forms of PE suggests a need to rethink both “public” and “engagement.”. (shrink)

In this interview, professor Davis discusses the evolution of his career and research interests as a philosopher-economist and gives his perspective on a number of important issues in the field. He argues that historians and methodologists of economics should be engaged in the practice of economics, and that historians should be more open to philosophical analysis of the content of economic ideas. He suggests that the history of recent economics is a particularly fruitful and important area for research exactly (...) because it is an open-ended story that is very relevant to understanding the underlying concerns and concepts of contemporary economics. He discusses his engagement with heterodox economics schools, and their engagement with a rapidly changing mainstream economics. He argues that the theory of the individual is “the central philosophical issue in economics” and discusses his extensive contributions to the issue. (shrink)

A question that recent research on the global pandemic raises is: how do the assumptions underlying epidemiological models and economic models differ? Epidemiological models we now know have become quite sophisticated (see Avery et al., 2020). Debate among economic methodologists regarding the nature of modeling has generated a considerable literature as well (Reiss, 2012; Hands, 2013). Yet these two literatures are largely non-communicating. Perhaps this is because economics has produced relatively little research on pandemics (though see Boianovsky and Erreygers, 2021). (...) Yet it might still be asked, what might economic models be missing that epidemiological models capture? And might there be some sort of methodological bias in mainstream economics that plays a role in this? One way, then, one might begin to answer these questions is by identifying the main phenomenon in question, namely, in the case of the pandemic, a particular type of process, and ask what the nature of this type of process is. Then we may ask whether there is something about this type of phenomenon that places it out of bounds for current economic methodology. Thus, what sort of phenomenon is a pandemic? (shrink)

pt. I. The world of reality.--pt. II. The world of make-believe.

The current ethical norms of genomic biobanking creating and maintaining large repositories of human DNA and/or associated data for biomedical research have generated criticism from every angle, at both the practical and theoretical levels. The traditional research model has involved investigators seeking biospecimens for specific purposes that they can describe and disclose to prospective subjects, from whom they can then seek informed consent. In the case of many biobanks, however, the institution that collects and maintains the biospecimens may not itself (...) be directly involved in research, instead banking the biospecimens and associated data for other researchers. Moreover, the future uses of biospecimens may be unknown, if not unknowable, at the time of collection. Biobanking may thus stretch the meanings of inform and consent to their breaking point: if you cannot inform subjects about what their biospecimens will be used for, what can they consent to? Given that informed consent by individual subjects is the ethical gold standard, the seeming dilution of the concept in the context of biobanking is a profound problem. (shrink)

Background: A growing literature has raised—skeptically—the question of whether cutting-edge scientific research can identify and address broader ethical and policy considerations in real time. In genomics, the question is: Can ELSI contribute to genomics in real time, or will it be relegated to its historical role of after-the-fact outsider critique? We address this question against the background of a genomic screening project where we participated as embedded, real-time ELSI researchers and observers, from its initial design through its conclusion.Methods: As part (...) of the ELSI study design, the project included an ongoing reflexive ethnography in which the authors studied the process of its design and implementation. The authors were true participant observers, serving as members of various task-oriented groups while recording meetings and other events for ongoing qualitative analysis. We also conducted and analyzed interviews of multiple participants at the conclusion of the project.Results: Our real-time ELSI initiative had a mixed record of successes and challenges. If we define success as ELSI researchers having had an opportunity to participate fully in the project and to make the ELSI perspective heard, then our assessment is largely positive. If, however, we define successes as instances where real-time ELSI contributions changed the direction of the genomic or public health aspects of the GeneScreen project or, after careful deliberation, confirmed the appropriateness of the status quo, then we can identify only a few examples. While we had a seat at the table, we were, for the most part, tolerated guests.Conclusions: We conclude that there are significant barriers to real-time ELSI influence. The difficulty does not reside in any intended exclusion of an ELSI perspective, but in factors endemic to genomic research, including knowledge disparities, epistemological biases, and the pressures of time and money. (shrink)

Genomic biobanks present ethical challenges that are qualitatively unique and quantitatively unprecedented. Many critics have questioned whether the current system of informed consent can be meaningfully applied to genomic biobanking. Proposals for reform have come from many directions, but have tended to involve incremental change in current informed consent practice. This paper reports on our efforts to seek new ideas and approaches from those whom informed consent is designed to protect: research subjects. Our model emerged from semi-structured interviews with healthy (...) volunteers who had been recruited to join either of two biobanks , and whom we encouraged to explain their concerns and how they understood the relationship between specimen contributors and biobanks. These subjects spoke about their DNA and the information it contains in ways that were strikingly evocative of the legal concept of the trade secret. They then described the terms and conditions under which they might let others study their DNA, and there was a compelling analogy to the commonplace practice of trade secret licensing. We propose a novel biobanking model based on this trade secret concept, and argue that it would be a practical, legal, and ethical improvement on the status quo. (shrink)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1752 edition. Excerpt:... to which the original Exclusion had been owing, the Points of two short and slender Hairs appear'd protruding themselves from its oval Surface. The thicker butoblong Bodies, from whose Extremities these grew, next forc'd themselves out, and it was evident to a-'n accustom'd Eye, that they were (...) the Antennze of a two wing'd Fly; next presented themselves the anterior Surfaces of two chequeffd Orbs, which were plainly the complex Eyes of anlnsect' of the same Species, separated by a plain Portion of a Forehead; and soon after the whole Head. This was no sooner all in View, than it swell'd to a Diameter equal to twice the Measure of that of the Breast. lt might have appear'd from the first, that the Head was growing under the Eye of the Observer, from the Extremity of the Thorax, but tho' a more rational Enquiry could not but produce for its Answer, that it was only now thrust forth out of the Cavity of the Breast in which it had before been lodg'd; it yet appear'd singular after this sudden Change in Size to conceive how a Thing should have been till that Moment lodg'd in a Cavityz not equal to half its own Diameter. P a The The Head was now entire and in its Place, and the Legs were firm, and supported the Body well, but the Wings did not yet appear. On examining the Place where they were to be expacted, I discover'd two irregular Protuberances of a wrinkled Surface, and considerably large, and under them the two oblong Pedicies which we see supporting the Balls under the Wings of all the two wing'd Flies. It was evident from this, that the Protuberances at the two Sides of the Base of the Thorax were the very Wings in their folded State, and this was soon prov'd by their expanding. The Wings in all this Race of Creatures are the last Part... (shrink)

This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books.".

Among industrialized nations the United States is relatively unique in relying on a mix of public and private financing and delivery of healthcare: federal and federal-state programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid; employment-based health insurance ; and state-subsidized insurance pools for high-risk individuals. In recent years, however, there have been efforts to apply the principles of private employment-based health insurance to the other forms of healthcare, and there is speculation that rising healthcare costs can only be addressed by further extending (...) capitated payment plans. This suggests that U.S. healthcare may increasingly be organized according to market principles. For some, this represents a historic departure from an emphasis on public responsibility for healthcare and a sacrifice of the value principles embodied in health relationships between patient and provider. But defenders of HMOs and a larger role for markets argue that managed care allows for a more rational allocation of scarce healthcare resources by minimizing inefficient low-benefit–high-cost care. More individuals receive essential care if inessential care is eliminated. HMOs are also said to encourage non-HMOs to provide lower priced healthcare. (shrink)

This paper addresses objectivity in economics. It criticizes a closed science, ‘view from nowhere’ conception of economics and defends an open science, ‘view from somewhere’ conception of objective science. It ascribes the first conception to mainstream economics, associates it with its principle practices – reductionist modeling, formalization, limited interdisciplinarity, and value neutrality – and argues their foundation is the Homo economicus individual conception. Two problematic consequences of adopting this stance are: (i) value blindness regarding the range and complexity of human (...) values; (ii) fatalism regarding human behavior associated with employing a tenseless representation of time. The paper contrasts the principle practices of an open science, view from science conception – complexity modeling, mixed methods, strong relationships to other disciplines, and value diversity – and argues their foundation is a socially and historically embedded economics individual conception that avoids the value blindness and fatalism problems. (shrink)

Judith Thomson argues that a fetus may have a right to life yet lack the right to use its mother's body to stay alive. According to Kenneth Einar Himma, Thomson's argument applies only to cases where the parties meet two conditions. First, they must and, second, they must be Himma devises a case involving conjoined twins to show why the mother–fetus case does not meet these conditions.