Bracken synthesizes Polanyi’s notion of morphogentic field and Whitehead’s notion of societies of actual occasions. These comments emphasize the implications of the metaphors involved in these notions. The rnetaphor of plants growing in afield lies beyond the concept of a morphogenetic field, and the metaphor of a society of interacting persons lies behind the concept of a society of actual occasions. I suggest that one of the implications of this metaphor is that there is not, as Bracken argues, a problem (...) of continuity in Whitehead’s metaphysics of events. (shrink)

The deeply entrenched, sometimes heated conflict between the disability movement and the profession of bioethics is well known and well documented. Critiques of prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion are probably the most salient and most sophisticated of disability studies scholars’ engagements with bioethics, but there are many other topics over which disability activists and scholars have encountered the field of bioethics in an adversarial way, including health care rationing, growth-attenuation interventions, assisted reproduction technology, and physician-assisted suicide. The tension between the (...) analyses of the disabilities studies scholars and mainstream bioethics is not merely a conflict between two insular political groups, however; it is, rather, also an encounter between those who have experienced disability and those who have not. This paper explores that idea. I maintain that it is a mistake to think of this conflict as arising just from a difference in ideology or political commitments because it represents a much deeper difference—one rooted in variations in how human beings perceive and reason about moral problems. These are what I will refer to as variations of moral psychology. The lived experiences of disability produce variations in moral psychology that are at the heart of the moral conflict between the disability movement and mainstream bioethics. I will illustrate this point by exploring how the disability movement and mainstream bioethics come into conflict when perceiving and analyzing the moral problem of physician-assisted suicide via the lens of the principle of respect for autonomy. To reconcile its contemporary and historical conflict with the disability movement, the field of bioethics must engage with and fully consider the two groups’ differences in moral perception and reasoning, not just the explicit moral and political arguments of the disability movement. (shrink)

Disability activists have sometimes claimed their disability has actually increased their well-being. Some even say they would reject a cure to keep these gains. Yet, these same activists often simultaneously propose improvements to the quality and accessibility of assistive technology. However, for any argument favoring assistive over curative technology to work, there must be a coherent distinction between the two. This line is already vague and will become even less clear with the emergence of novel technologies. This paper asks and (...) tries to answer the question: what is it about the paradigmatic examples of curative and assistive technologies that make them paradigmatic and how can these defining features help us clarify the hard cases? This analysis will begin with an argument that, while the common views of this distinction adequately explain the paradigmatic cases, they fail to accurately pick out the relevant features of those technologies that make them paradigmatic and to provide adequate guidance for parsing the hard cases. Instead, it will be claimed that these categories of curative or assistive technologies are defined by the role the technologies play in establishing a person’s relational narrative identity as a member of one of two social groups: disabled people or non-disabled people. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 44-46.

The essays in this book deal with philosophical issues in the thought of Maimonides. Included are: The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed by Leo Staus, The Purpose of the Law According to Maimonides by Miriam Galston, and Essence and Existence in Maimonides by Alexander Altmann.

In academic philosophy and popular culture alike, pity is often framed as a virtue or the emotional underpinnings of virtue. Yet, people who are the most marginalized and, hence, most often on the receiving end of pity, assert that it is anything but an altruism. How can we explain this disconnect between an understanding of pity as a virtuous emotion versus a social harm? My paper answers this question by showing how pity is not only an emotion, but also a (...) power relation. Using the ideas of Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew, I explain how pity is understood as harmful by the one pitied because he is acutely aware of how it obscures his unequal power relation to the pitier and denies the pitier’s role in creating this domination. This is all done with an eye toward what I see as the quintessential class of people who are harmed by pity: people with disabilities. (shrink)

Management Ethics provides the rationale, conceptual framework and practical tools needed to build and sustain management and organization integrity over time.

Paul's letter to the Philippians, a dense and dynamic piece of rhetoric, is too often overlooked in Pauline interpretation. Careful, critical analysis of the argument in the letter as a whole, as well as its famous hymn, attunes the interpreter to the ethical and political dimensions of this important document.

An introduction to the Yijing (I Ching) 易經 or Classic/Scripture of Change : its nature, its history of interpretation, and its cultural influences. New York: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).

The authors propose the integrity capacity construct with its four dimensions (process, judgment, development and system dimensions) as a framework for analyzing and resolving behavioral, moral and legal complexity in business ethics' issues at the individual and collective levels. They claim that moral progress in business comes about through the increase in stakeholders who regularly handle moral complexity by demonstrating process, judgment, developmental and system integrity capacity domestically and globally.

The Second Vatican Council called for a fundamental renewal of Catholic theological ethics. That project, however, has not been realized primarily because of the strong defence of a normative, act-centred understanding of morality defended by Pope Paul VI and his successor, Pope John Paul II. Reframing Theological Ethics aims to overcome that impasse by arguing for a change in the method of ethical reasoning, emphasizing the replacement of the norm of natural law with that of the human person, integrally and (...) adequately considered, and elaborating an innovative theory of virtue. The paradigm of complementary virtues presented in this book is developed for the first time and allows the ethicist to flesh out the meaning and contours of the ends or goals of ethical living and decision-making. The study concludes with suggestions about how this approach may converge with the insights of normative ethics and achieve the renewal called for fifty years ago. (shrink)

The authors delineate the nature and neglect of integrity capacity and global business citizenship by world business leaders. They discuss how the philosophical analysis of moral and economic complexity enhances judgment integrity capacity and global business citizenship. Finally, the authors recommend positive action steps to improve global business citizenship and leadership integrity capacity through a balanced and inclusive pluralistic economic philosophy.

We question Baumard's underlying assumption that humans have a propensity to innovate. Affordable transportation and energy underpinned the Industrial Revolution, making mass production/consumption possible. Although we cannot accept Baumard's thesis on the Industrial Revolution, it may help explain why complexity and innovation increase rapidly in the context of abundant energy.

Polanyi’s vision of the cosmic process as undergirded by a logic of emergence common to both the mental life of human beings and the processes of non-human nature can be vindicated if one is prepared to make certain adjustments in the notion of morphogenetic fields with an active center or organizing principle. Given the author’s field-oriented interpretation of Whiteheadian societies, it should be possible to think of entelechies or final causes in developmental rather than strictly Aristotelian terms. That is, the (...) “common element of form” or organizing principle of a Whiteheadian society depends for its own existence on the spontaneous activity of previous sets of actual occasions and yet serves as the ongoing principle of formal and final causality for the present set of actual occasions and still others to follow it. In Aristotelian language, matter and form thus dialectically condition one another and neither is ontologically superior to the other. (shrink)

One line of argument commonly lodged against religion is that it is usually or always harmful, individually and socially, and for that reason should be abolished from our cultural landscape. I consider two variations of the argument: one that appeals to direct harm caused by religion and another that appeals to indirect harm on the basis of attitudes instilled by religion. Both versions, I contend, are seriously flawed. Hence, this so-called harm argument fails, both as a critique of theism and (...) as a defense of atheism. (shrink)

A translation of Zhu Xi's 朱熹 Zhouyi benyi 周易本義 (1188).

The author argues that, while logical rigor requires Whiteheadians to emphasize the ontological priority of the notion of actual entity as a self-constituting subject of experience for the proper understanding of physical reality. Whitehead's understanding of the key category of society in his metaphysics, especially the way that societies and their constituent actual entities reciprocally "constrain " one another's existence and activity and the way that societies are hierarchically ordered to one another within the evolutionary process will presumably have more (...) empirical resonance with natural scientists in their own efforts to understand the emergence of life from non-life, the progressive growth of self-awareness among higher-order animal species, etc. So, in dialogue with natural scientists, why not start with what is psychologically more interesting to the listener? (shrink)

Members of the Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs Standing Committee of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities present a collection of insights and recommendations developed from their collective experience, intended for those engaged in the work of healthcare ethics consultation.

This essay has three main goals: to introduce and somewhat contextualize the papers that follow; to bring out some implicit dialogues among them; and, in order to encourage further discussion in future issues of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, to introduce some new perspectives, including the historical development of Western art, cognitive linguistics, and the sacred. The remarks pertaining to the third goal are necessarily personal, and should not be confused with Journal of Consciousness Studies editorial policy, except insofar as (...) their goal is to promote debate across the gap that separates the sciences and the humanities -- the ‘two cultures'. This gap was perhaps first pointed out in the late 1950s by C.P. Snow, who was noted as both a novelist and scientist. (shrink)

Reconciliation is a theologically-charged word with politically-charged implications. The work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) raised questions about reconciliation in a political context including the “parts” or “partners” of reconciliation: truth-telling, repentance, amnesty, reparations, and ultimately forgiveness and justice. This paper explores two questions. First, are theologians ready to give up an exclusive claim on reconciliation as a theological term or, at the very least, be agreeable to the fact that reconciliation might have political as well (...) as theological meanings? Second, if reconciliation is granted unhindered access across the borders of theology and politics, what wisdom from the theological tradition has informed the political praxis of reconciliation, and has political praxis in any way challenged our theological understanding of reconciliation? As responses to these questions, the paper looks at the theological development of reconciliation, with particular attention to the New Testament and subsequent historical praxis. It then discusses points of connection where the theological development has informed political praxis. (shrink)