Issues in bioethics often turn, at least in part, on the law and regulatory requirements. Consisting of chapters that address particular bioethics topics from the law’s perspective, this fascinating book includes: an introduction to the American legal system papers identifying the principal ways in which the law influences discussions and decisions concerning each of the topics highlighted supplemental papers on certain areas that address the influence and status of the law in countries other than the United States. Covering traditional topics (...) in bioethics, such as determinations of death and health care decisions for vulnerable groups, this study also explores emerging areas such as conflicts of interest in research, genetics, and privacy and confidentiality in the electronic age. Incisive and thought-provoking, this volume provides readers with a rich context for understanding the intersection between the law on bioethics and the central issues in bioethics. (shrink)

In this article, we offer a perspective into how Canadian doctoral nursing students’ writing capacity is mentored and, as a result, we argue is disciplined. We do this by sharing our own disciplinary and interdisciplinary experiences of writing with, for and about nurses. We locate our experiences within a broader discourse that suggests doctoral (nursing) students be prepared as stewards of the (nursing) discipline. We draw attention to tensions and effects of writing within (nursing) disciplinary boundaries. We argue that traditional (...) approaches to developing nurses’ writing capacity in doctoral programs both shepherds and excludes emerging scholarly voices, and we present some examples to illustrate this dual role. We ask our nurse colleagues to consider for whom nurses write, offering an argument that nurses’ writing must ultimately improve patient care and thus would benefit from multiple voices in writing. (shrink)

A model is “any representation or concept that helps us to understand the world whenever common sense or direct observations are inadequate.” Common sense and direct observation often prove inadequate to the complexities of the twenty-first-century cities. Thus, models abound in urban life and governance. However, a model is not only a tool for control but a way of defining a situation. Framing the city so as to render it susceptible to interpretation and intervention is an exercise not merely with (...) scientific or technological value but with rhetorical power. The tradition of comprehensive urban models, beginning with the advent of computers and culminating in the self-analyzing “smart city,” I argue, sidelines this rhetorical power in favor of a tone of scientific authority that, while justifiable in technical domains, does not legitimately scale to the level of a political community. Making good on the civic potential of Big Data thus requires recontextualizing properly scientific enterprises within an adequate political philosophy of the city, allowing for the construction of cultural urban models that set human freedom at the core of its inner workings. (shrink)

Purpose Cybercrime is a prevalent and serious threat to publicly traded companies. Defending company information systems from cybercrime is one of the most important aspects of technology management. Cybercrime often not only results in stolen assets and lost business but also damages a company’s reputation, which in turn may affect the company’s stock market value. This is a serious concern to company managers, financial analysts, investors and creditors. This paper aims to examine the impact of cybercrime on stock prices of (...) a sample of publicly traded companies. Design/methodology/approach Financial data were gathered on companies that were reported in news stories as victims of cybercrime. The market price of the company’s stock was recorded for several days before the news report and several days after. The percentage change in the stock price was compared to the change in the Dow Jones Industrial average to determine whether the stock price increased or decreased along with the rest of the market. Findings Stock prices were negatively affected in all time periods examined, significantly so in one period. Practical implications This paper describes cases concerning cybercrime, thereby bringing attention to the value of cybersecurity in protecting computers, identity and transactions. Cyber security is necessary to avoid becoming a victim of cybercrime. Specific security improvements and preventive measures are provided within the paper. Preventive measures are generally less costly than repairs after a cybercrime. Originality/value This is an original manuscript that adds to the literature regarding cybercrime and preventive measures. (shrink)

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Studies with captive fowl have revealed that they possess greater cognitive capacities than previously thought. We now know that fowl have sophisticated cognitive and communicative skills, which had hitherto been associated only with certain primates. Several theories have been advanced to explain the evolution of such complex behavior. Central to these theories is the enlargement of the brain in species with greater mental capacities. Fowl present us with a conundrum, however, because they show the behaviors anticipated by the theories but (...) do not have the expected changes in the brain. Consequently fowl present two challenges of interest to us here. One is a scientific challenge to explain their remarkable capabilities. The other is an ethical challenge regarding our treatment of animals with higher cognitive skills. (shrink)

McAllestar (computer science, MIT) describes ONTIC, the interactive system for verifying represents a significant change of direction in the field of mechanical deduction, a key area in computer science and artificial intelligence. Fourteen interrelated essays comprise a multifaceted dialogue about intersubjectivity, reciprocity, and the nature of self and other, especially as these themes are developed in Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the invisible. The question they explore is whether the reversible alterity of sensing and being sensed, a theme at the heart (...) of Merleau-Ponty's thought, is sufficient for understanding the alterity of other persons and of nature. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Business ethics is a body of thought and practice which is of increasing relevance to business and society. This reader analyses the relationship between ethics and behavior, assessing the importance of ethical considerations in all the key function of any business: strategy, marketing, human resources, technological development. It conludes that ethics can play a key role in helping a company successfully deal with the rapid technological and structural change of today's business climate.

A review of the literature on Corporate Codes of Ethics suggests that whilst there exists an informative body of literature concerning the prevalence of such codes, their design, implementation and promulgation, it is also evident that there is a relative lack of consideration of their impact upon members' everyday organizational behaviour. By drawing upon organizational sociology and psychology this paper constructs a contextualist and interpretive model which seeks to enable an analysis and evaluation of their effects upon individual, group and (...) organizational behaviour. (shrink)

A criticism of some research involving Aboriginal people is that it is not equitable in its design or application, further disadvantaging the poor and marginalized. In Australia, much research has been done on Aboriginal people, but Aboriginal people themselves have benefited little, adding to distrust between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people over many years. Is it possible to take “scientific” research practices and transform them into research that can be done with a community rather than on a community? How can research (...) findings benefit Aboriginal people? This chapter shares our study of Aboriginal people’s stories of diabetes care. It is a collaborative story told by four Aboriginal Health Workers and two non-Aboriginal researchers which focuses on methodology rather than findings. We share aspects of our research which we propose values Aboriginal people and invites participation and reciprocity at design, data collection, and research translation stages. We discuss tensions which occur between the “scientific way” and the “culturally appropriate way” and describe how we resolved this. Imposing research designs and practices on Aboriginal people and communities without consideration that each community is unique has the potential to cause further harm and disempowerment. Valuing an Aboriginal way of knowing influenced all aspects of our study design and procedures. We would like to inspire others to challenge methodological norms to develop research methods with their community to allow the unique voice of their community to be heard and for this to facilitate pragmatic change leading to meaningful improvements in health. (shrink)

These essays showcase the value of the narrative arts in investigating complex conflicts of value in moral and political life, and explore the philosophical problem of moral dilemmas as expressed in ancient drama, classic and contemporary novels, television, film, and popular fiction. From Aeschylus to Deadwood, from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Harry Potter, the authors show how the narrative arts provide some of our most valuable instruments for complex and sensitive moral inquiry.

This volume presents fourteen original essays which explore the philosophy of Simon Blackburn, and his lifetime pursuit of a distinctive projectivist and anti-realist research program. The essays document the range and influence of Blackburn's work and reveal, among other things, the resourcefulness of his brand of philosophical pragmatism.

Reviews of business ethics usually differentiate the field in terms of prescription as opposed to description: the application of normative ethical theory verses empirical analysis. Despite recent departures from this dualism, through the elaboration of what has been called postmodern business ethics, the metatheoretical basis of this (increasing) pluralism of business ethics remains opaque. This paper attempts to provide some reflexive clarification and, using codes of ethics as an example, to show that the diversity of business ethics is neither chaotic (...) nor haphazard. It explores how variable metatheoretical assumptions about the epistemic status of ethical and social scientific knowledge systematically lead to the constitution of four distinct modes of engagement in business ethics: prescriptive ethics; descriptive ethics; postmodern ethics; and critical ethics. This diversity is illustrated, with examples from the relevant literatures, in terms of variation in: the aims of business ethics; its organisational focus; the role of the business ethicist; how corporate codes of ethics are construed; the internal contradictions and tensions that arise. We conclude by examining the pre-paradigmatic status of these four modes of engagement and speculating about their future. (shrink)

We add to the constructivist approach of Quartz & Sejnowski (Q&S) by outlining a specific classification of sources of constraint on the emergence of representations from Elman et al. (1996). We suggest that it is important to consider behavioral constructivism in addition to neural constructivism.

ABSTRACT:While the literature on psychedelic medicine emphasizes the importance of set and setting alongside the quality of subjective drug effects for therapeutic efficacy, few scholars have explored the therapeutic frameworks that are used alongside psychedelics in the lab or in the clinic. Based on a narrative analysis of the treatment manual and post-session experience reports from a pilot study of psilocybin-assisted treatment for tobacco smoking cessation, this article examines how therapeutic frameworks interact with the psychedelic substance in ways that can (...) rapidly reshape participants' identity and sense of self. We identified multiple domains relating to identity shift that appear to serve as smoking cessation mechanisms during psilocybin sessions, each of which had an identifiable presence in the manualized treatment. As psychedelic medicine becomes mainstream, consensual and evidence-based approaches to psychedelic-assisted identity shift that respect patient autonomy and encourage empowerment should become areas of focus in the emergent field of psychedelic bioethics. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

The nature–nurture controversy has been with us since it was first outlined by Plato and Aristotle. Nobody likes it anymore. All reasonable scholars today agree that genes and environment interact to determine complex cognitive outcomes. So why does the controversy persist? First, it persists because it has practical implications that cannot be postponed (i.e., what can we do to avoid bad outcomes and insure better ones?), a state of emergency that sometimes tempts scholars to stake out claims they cannot defend. (...) Second, the controversy persists because we lack a precise, testable theory of the process by which genes and the environment interact. In the absence of a better theory, innateness is often confused with (1) domain specificity (outcome X is so peculiar that it must be innate), (2) species specificity (we are the only species who do X, so X must lie in the human genome), (3) localization (outcome X is mediated by a particular part of the brain, so X must be innate), and (4) learnability (we cannot figure out how X could be learned, so X must be innate). We believe that an explicit, plausible theory of interaction is now around the corner, and that many of the classic maneuvers to defend or attack innateness will soon disappear. In the interim, some serious errors can be avoided if we keep these confounded issues apart. That is the major goal of this chapter: not to attack innateness but to clarify what claims about innateness are (and are not) about. (shrink)

Morality can help guide behavior and facilitate relationships. Although moral judgments by autistic people are similar to neurotypical individuals, many researchers argue that subtle differences signify deficits in autistic individuals. Moral foundation theory describes moral judgments in terms of differences rather than deficits. The current research, aimed at assessing autistic individuals’ moral inclinations using Haidt’s framework, was co-designed with autistic community members. Our aim was to describe autistic moral thinking from a strengths-based perspective while acknowledging differences that may pose interpersonal (...) challenges among autistic youth. We assessed 25 autistic and 23 neurotypical children’s moral judgments using the Moral Foundations Questionnaire for Kids. We used semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis with a subset of participants to describe children’s moral reasoning. Analyses suggested that autistic and neurotypical children make similar judgments about moral transgressions across all five moral foundations. General linear mixed modeling showed that the greatest predictor of recommending punishment was how bad children deemed moral transgressions to be. We also found a trend that autistic children were more likely to recommend punishment for harmless norms violations than were neurotypical children. Future research could use longitudinal methods to understand the development of moral judgments among autistic and neurotypical children. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Last year, Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelson published a brief, bold book on a topic from which historians of political thought have tended to shy away, curiously enough—the relations between republicanism and liberalism as political ideologies in the age of the American and French Revolutions. Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns is relentlessly polemical, blaming this neglect on the historians and theorists responsible for resurrecting the early modern republican tradition over the last few decades. Pocock, Skinner, Wood, Petit, (...) and more are assailed for having indulged in what Kalyvas and Katznelson call “republican nostalgia”—that is, for having wrongly presented republicanism as an alternative to modern liberalism, rather than its parent and precursor. Instead, the authors of Liberal Beginnings set out to show the ways in which republicanism evolved into liberalism, in and through the works of a set of leading thinkers—Smith, Ferguson, Paine, Madison, Staël, and Constant. Their story has a happy ending. Whatever was valuable and actual in republicanism was smoothly incorporated into early liberalism, for which they turn the dictionary inside out in search of approbative adjectives—“situated,” “thick,” “sturdy,” “confident,” “open,” “immanent,” “heterogeneous,” and “syncretic.” How persuasive is their account? Not a few readers will detect a hint of protesting too much in this kind of cheerleading. “Thick,” “sturdy,” and “confident” are surely not the first terms to spring to mind in regard to this gallery of thinkers, Staël and Constant least of all. It also seems clear that Kalyvas's and Katznelson's coverage of French thought, confined almost entirely to that pair, is too cursory to sustain their case. At one end, Montesquieu and Rousseau, the titans who together defined republicanism for the revolutionary generation, make only the most fleeting of appearances in Liberal Beginnings . At the other, Tocqueville, acknowledged on all sides as the master thinker of French liberalism, is missing altogether. Nevertheless, the attempt at treating anglophone and French thinkers within a single interpretative framework is in itself a virtually unprecedented feat, for which Kalyvas and Katznelson should be congratulated. For who could doubt that they are on exactly the right path in chasing their prey onto French soil? (shrink)

This book explores the influence of Foucault's later writings on basic theoretical and research concerns in the social sciences. The introduction contextualizes the development of Foucault's writings within a biographical frame and leads into Foucault's College de France lecture, Kant on Enlightenment and Revolution which, along with Colin Gordon's commentary, raises the issues crucial to Foucault's latter project - the relationship between reason and liberty. The answer suggested - involving a reformulation of the relationship between the subject and power - (...) connects with the issues raised in subsequent chapters, including Pasquino's focus on the relationship between the governmentality of the modern state and the self-governing individual and Meuret's analysis of the link between Adam Smith's novel conception of political economy and the emergent political structures of modern capitalist states. The following four chapters all extend Foucault's insights into new domains of social analysis, namely the role of language in constructing and governing the econmomy (Miller and Rose), and the shifting relations between sovereignty and responsibility in the welfare state (Donzelot). (shrink)

Abstract:Peirce's "Lesson in Elocution" (written ca. 1892) provides insight into his ideas on continuity and community through his knowledge of performance cultures such as theatre, elocution, rhetoric, and declamation. This unpublished manuscript constitutes the extant part of an application Peirce drafted to the Episcopal Church's General Theological Seminary for the position of elocution instructor. Continuing Henry C. Johnson, Jr.'s account (published in Transactions [2006] vol. 42, no. 4) of the Lesson as evidence of Peirce's religious practices, this article explores (...) the Lesson as demonstration of his performance knowledge and experience. What would Peirce have brought as philosopher and scientist to the teaching of elocution? Conversely, what did his performance knowledge bring to his work on continuity and community? Outlining significant differences between Peirce's semiotic approach and that of the Seminary's then-current instructor, Francis Thayer Russell, the article argues, employing selected performance theory concepts, that performance often operates in semiosis itself, as Peirce defined it. (shrink)

The pioneering anthology Home Girls features writings by Black feminist and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and writings. This edition features an updated list of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides a fresh assessment of how Black women's lives have changed-or not-since the book was first published. Contributors are Tania Abdulahad, Donna Allegra, Barbara A. Banks, Becky Birtha, Julie Carter, (...) Cenen, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Cliff, Michelle T. Clinton, Willie M. Coleman, Toi Derricotte, Alexis De Veaux, Jewelle L. Gomez, Akasha (Gloria) Hull, Patricia Jones, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Raymina Y. Mays, Deidre McCalla, Chirlane McCray, Pat Parker, Linda C. Powell, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Spring Redd, Gwendolyn Rogers, Kate Rushin, Ann Allen Shockley, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Shirley O. Steele, Luisah Teish, Jameelah Waheed, Alice Walker, and Renita Weems. (shrink)

This paper defends a model of the internalism requirement against Michael Smith's recent criticisms of it. On this "example model", what we have reason to do is what we would be motivated to do were we rational. After criticizing the example model, Smith argues that his "advice model", that what we have reason to do is what we would advise ourselves to do were we rational, is obviously preferable. The author argues that Smith's criticisms can quite easily (...) be accommodated by the example model. Moreover, to the extent that his model connects reasons to advice, it is not a model of the internalism requirement at all. Yet, to the extent that it connects reasons to motivation, his model collapses into the example model. The author ends by arguing that Smith's view simply proposes an unambitious conception of practical rationality, not an alternative construal of the internalism requirement. (shrink)

This book is the English translation of Alain Badiou’s seminar on Nicolas Malebranche, part of a series of seminars on Being, the One, and the Infinite. In this extraordinary seminar, originally ta...

To Aaron Pacitti and Michael Cauvel–whose journal article, “Rent-Seeking Behavior and Economic Justice: A Classroom Exercise” broadly argues that “understanding the [complexities] of rent-seeking behavior helps fill the gap between economics and politics”–the varieties of rent are wide and, therefore, can only be described in their category-specific positions. I will discuss three of these categories in more detail below, but for now, I propose that a useful working grasp of economic rent involves “the amount paid to the owner of a (...) factor of production over the cost that is to be necessarily incurred on utilizing such elements in the production process.” In math terms, ‘economic rent’ equals the agreed-upon-amount paid by the consumer (when that amount far exceeds the market value of the product) minus the cost spent by the producer to make the product (when that cost is far below the typical amount to produce the product). Originally, the concept of economic rent concerned land ownership and the production of natural goods. Two major economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, offered insights into the general makeup and logic of what they called, the rent of land and simply rent, respectively. (shrink)

This paper defends a model of the internalism requirement against Michael Smith’s recent criticisms of it. On this “example model”, what we have reason to do is what we would be motivated to do were we rational. After criticizing the example model, Smith argues that his “advice model”, that what we have reason to do is what we would advise ourselves to do were we rational, is obviously preferable. The author argues that Smith’s criticisms can quite easily (...) be accommodated by the example model. Moreover, to the extent that his model connects reasons to advice, it is not a model of the internalism requirement at all. Yet, to the extent that it connects reasons to motivation, his model collapses into the example model. The author ends by arguing that Smith’s view simply proposes an unambitious conception of practical rationality, not an alternative construal of the internalism requirement. (shrink)

The article provides an analysis of Georg Ludwig Schmid's ‘Reflexions sur l’Agriculture’, which was published as the first essay in the first issue of the publications of the Oeconomical Society of Berne, founded in 1759. Schmid connected the agricultural improvement movement of the time to the logic of international power competition that caused the 7 Years’ War and wished to preserve political economy as agronomy for the cause of peace and virtuous economic progress. In his essay on commerce and luxury, (...) he devised a patriotic political economy based on the notion of a marche naturelle, or a natural progress of opulence, which enabled statesmen and political economists to separate the productive from the pathological features of economic development, healthy and necessary growth from luxury. Adam Smith deployed a similar model in the Wealth of Nations but argued that Europe's retrograde development was so fundamental and comprehensive that it made it impossible to use this kind of natural progress model on its own as a meaningful guide for comprehensive economic and political reform. (shrink)