The importance of ethical consumerism to many companies worldwide has increased dramatically in recent years. Ethical consumerism encompasses the importance of non-traditional and social components of a company's products and business process to strategic success - such as environmental protectionism, child labor practices and so on. The present paper utilizes a random utility theoretic experimental design to provide estimates of the relative value selected consumers place on the social features of products.

Nearly all studies of consumers’ willingness to engage in ethical or socially responsible purchasing behavior is based on unconstrained survey response methods. In the present article we ask the question of how well does asking consumers the extent to which they care about a specific social or ethical issue relate to how they would behave in a more constrained environment where there is no socially acceptable response. The results of a comparison between traditional survey questions of “intention to purchase” and (...) estimates of individuals willingness-to-pay for social attributes in products reveal that simple survey questions are too “noisy” to provide operationally meaningful information and overstate intentions to a considerable extent. (shrink)

... The purpose of this paper is to try to clarify the extent to which consumers “value” ethical product features when making purchases by utilizing a distinctive methodology – structured choice experiments ( Louviere et al., 2000) – that What Will Consumers Pay ... Jordan J. Louviere ... \n.

This study uses best–worst scaling experiments to examine differences across six countries in the attitudes of consumers towards social and ethical issues that included both product related issues (such as recycled packaging) and general social factors (such as human rights). The experiments were conducted using over 600 respondents from Germany, Spain, Turkey, USA, India, and Korea. The results show that there is indeed some variation in the attitudes towards social and ethical issues across these six countries. However, what is more (...) telling are the similarities seen and the extent to which individual variation dominates observable demographics and country-based variables. (shrink)

This study uses best–worst scaling experiments to examine differences across six countries in the attitudes of consumers towards social and ethical issues that included both product related issues (such as recycled packaging) and general social factors (such as human rights). The experiments were conducted using over 600 respondents from Germany, Spain, Turkey, USA, India, and Korea. The results show that there is indeed some variation in the attitudes towards social and ethical issues across these six countries. However, what is more (...) telling are the similarities seen and the extent to which individual variation dominates observable demographics and country-based variables. (shrink)

The evolution of reciprocal altruism probably involved the evolution of mechanisms to detect cheating and remember cheaters. In a well-known study, Mealey, Daood, and Krage (1996) observed that participants had enhanced memory for faces that had previously been associated with descriptions of acts of cheating. There were, however, problems with the descriptions that were used in that study. We sought to replicate and extend the findings of Mealey and colleagues by using more controlled descriptions and by examining the possibility of (...) enhanced altruist recognition. We also examined whether individual differences in cheating tendencies were related to cheater and altruist recognition. In the first experiment, 164 undergraduates saw 40 faces that were paired with character descriptions representing the categories of cheater, trustworthy, altruist, or neutral, for individuals who had either low or high social status. One week later participants reported which faces they recognized from the previous week (among 80 faces). Overall, the results failed to replicate the findings of Mealey and her colleagues, as there was no enhanced memory for cheaters. In addition, there was no enhanced memory for altruists, and no effect of participants’ cheating tendencies. A second experiment using a slightly different methodology produced similar results, with some evidence for enhanced memory for altruists. (shrink)

Because psychiatry deals specifically with ‘mental’ suffering, its efforts are always centrally involved with the meaningful world of human reality. As such, it sits at the interface of a number of discourses: genetics and neuroscience, psychology and sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and the humanities. Each of these provides frameworks, concepts, and examples that seek to assist our attempts to understand mental distress and how it might be helped. However, these discourses work with different assumptions, methodologies, values, and priorities. Some are in (...) dispute with one another. At various times in the history of psychiatry, a particular form of understanding has become dominant and worked to marginalize .. (shrink)

This third of three articles outlining a different approach to science/religion dialogue generally and to engagement between theology and the neurosciences specifically, gives a brief account of the model in practice. It begins by introducing the question to be investigated—whether the experience of relational connection can affect health outcomes by directly moderating immune function. Then, employing the same threefold heuristic of encounter, exchange, and expression used previously, it discusses how the transversal model set out in these articles has been used (...) to investigate this question and to develop a theoretical physiological model for the proposed link between relationality and health. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.1 (2002) 1-21 [Access article in PDF] Turning Kant Against the Priority of Autonomy: Communication Ethics and the Duty to Community Pat J. Gehrke Communication ethics scholars afford Immanuel Kant significantly less attention than one might expect. This may be because, as Robert Dostal notes, Kant argues that rhetoric merits no respect whatsoever (223). This rejection of rhetoric, Dostal writes, is grounded in the significant emphasis (...) given to Kant's concept of autonomy (232). The focus on autonomy and, hence, rhetoricians' relative neglect of Kant's ethical theory are both connected to the separation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (hereinafter CPuR) from his subsequent ethical and moral philosophy. Kenneth Burke writes that Kant's first critique has no ethical implications, "no 'wills,' 'oughts,' 'shoulds,' or 'thou shalt nots'... nothing but an inevitable is, a description of conditions as they necessarily are for human experience" (191; emphasis in original). Such readings lose much of the richness and complexity of Kant's thought and tend instead to produce simple moral duties, such as Mike Markel's assertion that technical communicators must be truthful.Perhaps the most critical element of Kant's work lost in our focus on autonomy is his articulation of a ground for a duty to community. While Kant makes clear the importance of community for his metaphysics in the first critique (CPuR), the importance of community in Kant's moral philosophy often is overlooked. Some scholars claim that an ethical duty to community is either rejected by Kant's emphasis on the autonomy of will or simply ignored. This article combines a reading of Kant's metaphysics of experience with his moral philosophy to articulate a communication ethic grounded in community. This argument is made in three parts: first, the community of objects in experience—the Third Analogy of Experience—is an organizing principle of and a necessary condition for the possibility of all experience; second, this metaphysical principle of community is relevant [End Page 1] to community as developed in Kant's ethical writings; and finally, Kant's own work undermines the primacy of autonomy and better supports a communication ethic grounded in a duty to community.Scholars interested in Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action have special reason to take note of Kant's work. Kant is not only a figure that Habermas sees reflected in his own work, 1 but a constant point of contrast. Craig Calhoun writes that much of Habermas's own philosophy emerges by rejecting Kant's epistemology and elements of his metaphysics while still giving credence to Kantian moral philosophy (2). However, like most communication scholars and philosophers, Habermas believes that autonomy governs Kantian ethics: "Formalistic ethics (Kant) binds the criterion of generality of norms to the further criterion of autonomy, that is, independence from contingent motives" (Habermas, Legitimation 89). Since autonomy excludes or represses the contingent, if our readings of Kant give primacy to autonomy we leave little room for any notion of community as manifest in experience. In no small part, it is the criticism of Kant for privileging autonomy that has given Habermasians their break from Kantian ethics. However, if we turn to the first critique to guide our reading of the moral philosophy, there is another way to understand the role of autonomy and community in Kant's thought. By linking Kant's metaphysics with his moral philosophy, this article turns Kant away from the primacy of autonomy and uses Kant's own works to argue that autonomy is but one half of an antinomy that is organized under the principle of community. Thus, this article recuperates the possibility of deploying Kantian metaphysics and moral philosophy together as grounds for a communication ethic that privileges community and recovers the value of rhetoric.For rhetorical scholars, the resistance to the priority of autonomy may be related to the frequent expression of community through appeal to commonality, sameness, or identification. Today, feminist, race, postmodern, and poststructural communication scholars are questioning the value of commonality as a ground for ethics (e... (shrink)

This article establishes the relevance of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s work for understanding human communication. Tymieniecka’s cosmology, available in her four-volume series Logos and Life (1988–2000) and supplemented by prolific writings across several decades, articulates a ‘third phenomenology’ – a phenomenology of life. Her work fulfils Edmund Husserl’s original phenomenology of consciousness and Roman Ingarden’s second phenomenology of realism/idealism. Tymieniecka’s ontopoietic cosmology, which strenuously resists linear form, is interwoven with the possibilities of human communication. Her works explain life as the expansion of (...) logos: recursively the vital sphere initiates logos, forcing the existential sphere, concurrently prompting the social sphere of the human condition. The human station reveals meaning-bestowing functions: the creative-imaginative origin urges the aesthetic, moral, and intellective senses. Self-individualizing development concurrently desires communicative participation in life. The lived-body and sign/word allow one to re-establish ties to communal life after self-individualization. At the human ‘crown’, life recedes through an individual quest for spiritual development, inspired by a desire for transcendence. (shrink)

This article—the first of a linked set of three outlining the development and practice of a different approach to science/religion dialogue—begins with an overview of some persistent tensions in the field. Then, using a threefold heuristic of encounter, engagement, and expression, it explores the routes taken by James Ashbrook and Andrew Newberg to develop a dialogue between theology and neuroscience, discussing some of the problems associated with these and their implications for attempts to further develop neurotheology. Finally, it proposes a (...) different way of thinking about this enterprise and points toward a new methodology for supporting this endeavor. (shrink)

This second of three articles outlining the development and practice of a different approach to neurotheology discusses the construction of a suitable methodology for the project based on the work of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen. It explores the origin and contours of his concept of postfoundational rationality, its potential as a locus for epistemological parity between science and religion and the distinctive and unique transversal space model for interdisciplinary dialogue which he builds on these. It then proposes a further development (...) of the model which has the potential to produce a very different type of additional and original dialogical outcome. While such “transversal” outputs may initially seem counter and strange they not only flow naturally from the models’ own inherent dynamics but also open up the possibility of a distinctively different form of neurotheology. (shrink)

Any panpsychism building complex consciousness out of basic atoms of consciousness needs a theory of ‘mental chemistry’ explaining how this building works. This paper argues that split-brain patients show actual mental chemistry or at least give reasons for thinking it possible. The paper next develops constraints on theories of mental chemistry. It then puts forward models satisfying these constraints. The paper understands mental chemistry as a transformation consistent with conservation of consciousness rather than an aggregation perhaps followed by the creation (...) of something in addition. The paper suggests that this kind of mental chemistry alone yields a workable panpsychism. (shrink)

The most plausible type of panpsychism explains high-level consciousness as a compound of basic conscious properties instantiated by basic bottom-level physical objects. Arguments for panpsychism stand little chance in the absence of an account that makes sense of basic bottom-level experience; and explains how basic bottom-level experiences yield high-level experiences. This paper tackles the first task. It develops a method for investigating basic bottom-level experience: it identifies constraints, motivated by scientific and philosophical considerations, that force a unique account. Then it (...) applies this method, using quarks as stand-ins for basic but conscious physical objects. It concludes that quark-consciousness is maximally simple ; multiple ; and internal. (shrink)

But still I think some account has to be given of the application of CM to tides and cannon balls etc. etc. It seems to me that Einstein's and Bohr's analysis was essentially correct: we make the connection, and thus apply the mathematical statements of CM to macroscopic features of the world about us, by constructing, within the mathematical framework,. macroscopic conglomerates of the elementary particles and fields that should have the general appearance of tides and billiard, looked at from (...) a distance, and that would respond to the probings of mathematical models of measuring devices, whose "pointers" we can see from afar, in the ways that waves and billiard balls do. I think a look at how CM has been used and applied since the time of Newton and Galileo shows that the mathematical theory is linked into our experiences of the world in this nonproblematic way, and that this correspondence at this nonproblematic level is part of classical mechanics in the broad sense in which it is understood by people who use it. (shrink)

While admirable, Guala's discussion of reciprocity suffers from a confusion between proximate causes (psychological mechanisms triggering behaviour) and ultimate causes (evolved function of those psychological mechanisms). Because much work on commits this error, I clarify the difference between proximate and ultimate causes of cooperation and punishment. I also caution against hasty rejections of of experimental evidence.

Critical analysis of the commercialization and malpractice current in the profession of medicine.

This short essay examines the relationship between academic research and policy with particular emphasis on the question of whether a critical criminology can engage in academic critique at the same time as engaging in policy oriented research. Recognising that critical criminology falls between theory and politics criminologists are urged to adopt pragmatic, strategic positions as they negotiate their role in contentious debates and practical minefields. It is concluded that a critical criminology must try not only to think the unthinkable about (...) crime, but also to speak the unspeakable about the conditions in which and by which it is known. (shrink)

This peer commentary opens with setting the context for decisions on the edge of viability through an autoethnographic account (Bochner and Ellis 2016) of the author’s experience of such a situatio...

Data fraud and selective reporting both present serious threats to the credibility of science. However, there remains considerable disagreement among scientists about how best to sanction data fraud, and about the ethicality of selective reporting. The public is arguably the largest stakeholder in the reproducibility of science; research is primarily paid for with public funds, and flawed science threatens the public’s welfare. Members of the public are able to make meaningful judgments about the morality of different behaviors using moral intuitions. (...) Legal scholars emphasize that to maintain legitimacy, social control policies must be developed with some consideration given to the public’s moral intuitions. Although there is a large literature on popular attitudes toward science, there is no existing evidence about public opinion on data fraud or selective reporting. We conducted two studies—a survey experiment with a nationwide convenience sample, and a follow-up survey with a representative sample of US adults —to explore community members’ judgments about the morality of data fraud and selective reporting in science. The findings show that community members make a moral distinction between data fraud and selective reporting, but overwhelmingly judge both behaviors to be immoral and deserving of punishment. Community members believe that scientists who commit data fraud or selective reporting should be fired and banned from receiving funding. For data fraud, most Americans support criminal penalties. Results from an ordered logistic regression analysis reveal few demographic and no significant partisan differences in punitiveness toward data fraud. (shrink)

Using touch as a medium for exploring the ways in which it is constructed by nurses, the body is here characterized by a plethora of competing and co‐existing terms: disobedient, obedient, mirroring, stigmatized, sinful, post‐mortem, sanitized, angelic, desexualized, dangerous, dominant, dominating, deceitful, submissive, disciplined, postmodern and communicative. We have tried to be provocative by juxtaposing contradictory messages and evoking conflicting emotions, and we hope that the reader will not assume that we believe everything we write, or that everything may be (...) taken only at face value. There are as many messages and meanings in the paper as each reader thinks there are. (shrink)

The “fearful ape hypothesis” is interesting but is currently underspecified. We need more research on whether it is specific to fear, specific to humans (or even cooperative breeders in general), what is included in “fear,” and whether these patterns would indeed evolve despite arms races to extract help from audiences. Specifying these will result in a more testable hypothesis.

The target article's important point is easily misunderstood to claim that all revenge is adaptive. Revenge and forgiveness can overstretch the bounds of utility due to misperceptions, minimization of costly errors, a breakdown within our evolved revenge systems, or natural genetic and developmental variation. Together, these factors can compound to produce highly abnormal instances of revenge and forgiveness.

"...{The first edition of Professor Cryer's book was} absolutely outstanding, in four main respects. First, it is comprehensive in its scope, covering everything from applying to undertaking a research degree. Second, it is applicable to PhDs across the board. Third, the book is exceptionally well written and highly readable. Finally, at each stage Pat Cryer has included questions and exercises to enable readers to reflect on their practice, check out whether they are on track and, if not, discover how they (...) might return themselves to it. Overall, Pat Cryer has made a major contribution to the field and produced a quite exceptional book. It ought to be compulsory reading for intending or actual postgraduates and for academic staff teaching research training programmes." - Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education The second edition of this Open University set book is, like the first edition, for postgraduate research students wherever the language of instruction is English. Irrespective of their field of study, it will make their research programmes and day-to-day lives more productive and enjoyable. The book is easy to dip into and is in conversational style. Interest and realism are added through anecdotes, extracts from the literature and pithy quotations. The second edition is a complete revision of the original. New emphases include: the needs of the growing number of part time postgraduates; a wider understanding of the term 'research student' to embrace all postgraduate students undertaking research, whether for traditional PhDs and MPhils or within programmes such as professional doctorates, 'taught' masters degrees, diplomas and certificates; information technology as a day-to-day tool. There are also two new chapters: one on options for postgraduate study and research and the other on skills development and employment issues. There is a foreword by Professor Sir Martin Harris, Chair of the National UK Review of Postgraduate Education. (shrink)

The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science has a long history of delivering conferences addressing topics of interest in the field of science and religion. The following papers from the 2013 summer conference on “The Scientific, Spiritual, and Moral Challenges in Solving the World Food Crisis” are, in keeping with the eclectic nature of these conferences, very different in content and approach. Such differences underline the challenges of synergistically combining scientific and religious insights to increase understanding of global (...) problems and their possible solutions. This in turn reflects deeper questions about the purpose and nature of the science/religion dialogue. These papers suggest various ways in which the two perspectives can be combined in the pursuit of building better understandings of food-related issues, as well as highlighting difficulties and limitations which need to be addressed if the fruits of such dialogue are to make a wider impact. As such they serve as useful pointers for how this type of science/religion interaction might be further developed and deployed. (shrink)

Physical attractiveness affects how one gets treated, but it is just a single component of one's overall “market value.” One's treatment depends on other markers of market value, including social status, competence, warmth, and any other cues of one's ability or willingness to confer benefits on partners. To completely understand biased treatment, we must also incorporate these other factors.

One reason why humans don't behave according to standard game theoretical rationality is because it's not realistic to assume that everyone else is behaving rationally. An individual is expected to have psychological mechanisms that function to maximize his/her long-term payoffs in a world of potentially “irrational” individuals. Psychological decision theory has to be individualistic because individuals make decisions, not groups.

We are very grateful to both Matthew Ratcliffe and Thomas Szasz for taking the time to read and respond to our paper. Ratcliffe is broadly sympathetic to our efforts and provides a very convincing argument against mind–body dualisms by drawing on work from the phenomenological tradition. His comments extend rather than challenge our central thesis. Szasz, however, is dismissive of our position. As a result, most of our response is directed to his commentary. Ratcliffe uses the work of van der (...) Berg to make the case that any easy distinction between bodily and mental illness or suffering is false to our lived reality as human beings. Of course, in the day-to- day world of contemporary medical practice .. (shrink)

Providing an overview of the historical and social background of the Reggio Approach, this book encourages practitioners to look at their individual settings and existing practice in relation to the approach.

This paper argues that emergent conscious properties can't bestow emergent causal powers. It supports this conclusion by way of a dilemma. Necessarily, an emergent conscious property brings about its effects actively or other than actively. If actively, then, the paper argues, the emergent conscious property can't have causal powers at all. And if other than actively, then, the paper argues, the emergentist finds himself committed to incompatible accounts of causation.

We are living in a time of unprecedented challenges: human activity is now the primary driver shaping the planet and we are perilously close to breaching a variety of critical planetary boundaries—a prelude to the possible extinction of our species. How should we be thinking and acting—as persons, communities, institutions and societies—so as to best understand and respond to these challenges? What contribution can the field of science and religion make to develop the knowledge needed to negotiate the civilizational transition (...) we face? Such questions were addressed through a series of dialogues at the 62nd annual conference of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science in June of 2016—“How Can We Know? Co-Creating Knowledge in Perilous Times.” This essay sets the background to these challenges and introduces the set of articles in this themed section. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the modernist agenda, currently dominant in mainstream psychiatry, serves as a disempowering force for service users. By structuring the world of mental health according to a technological logic, this agenda is usually seen as promoting a liberation from "myths" about mental illness that led to stigma and oppression in the past. However, it is argued that this approach systematically separates mental distress from background contextual issues and sidelines non-technological aspects of mental health such as relationships, values, (...) and meanings. This move privileges the gaze of the expert doctor who is trained to understand distress in terms of psychopathology. But, as this move empowers the doctor, it disempowers the service user. In part this is because the priorities of modernist psychiatry are generally at odds with the interests and concerns of services users, particularly those who see themselves as survivors of the mental health system. The chapter examines the implications of this for the psychiatrist's role in working with survivors towards recovery. (shrink)

Martin Barker, with Thomas Austin _From Ants to Titanic: Reinventing Film Analysis_ London: Pluto Press, 2000 ISBN: 0-7453-1579-8 (pb); 0-7453-1584-4 (hb) v + 222 pp.