Han Fei was a central figure in Chinese Legalism, which was a leading school of thought in the Warring States period of China, and which left a huge imprint on political culture in imperial China. This article examines the complex duality of public and private interests in Han Fei’s political thought, a crucial aspect of his thinking. I argue that Han Fei adopted a sophisticated statist approach to understanding public and private interests. For Han Fei, public interests (...) are embodied in the state while private ones have dual functions. On the one hand, private interests threaten public ones by inviting corrupt material interests, personal morality, and knowledge, as well as human relationships. On the other hand, self-centered human psychology plays a dialectic role in strengthening the state. (shrink)

In the public interest: autonomy and resistance to methods of standardising nurses’ advice and practices from a health call centre in Perth, Western Australia The history of nursing is replete with examples of nurses battling for autonomy over their education, knowledge and work practices. The latest battleground is HealthDirect, Australia's first medial call centre, where nurses are required to meet externally imposed clinical standards while satisfying legal and financial obligations. These objectives are arguably achieved when nurses assess callers’ (...) health problems via computerised algorithms that determine an appropriate plan of action. That way, nurses’ subjective responses to callers are ruled out. To ensure nurses comply with the standard processes, calls are monitored randomly and surreptitiously in formal and informal ways. This paper explores how nurses respond to standard procedures and surveillance, in order to argue that nurses’ input partially drives reform processes. Nurses continue to seek autonomy over the advice they give and how their work is evaluated but are constrained by structural power relations. (shrink)

Justice for children meets specific obstacles when it comes to its realization due not only to the nature of rights and the peculiarities of children as subjects of rights. The conflict of interests between short-term and long-term aims, and the different interpretations a state can do on the question concerning how to materialize social rights policies and how to interpret its commitments on social justice play also a role. Starting by the question on why the affluent states do not seem (...) to be motivated enough to fully assume those duties of justice toward children —derived form recognizing children’s rights—, this article aims to explore and shed light on what psychology of motivation and moral psychology, and positive approaches could offer in relation to political and ethical challenges toward childhood. Hence this article advocates for the modification and enrichment of the philosophical discourse on children’s rights with what psychology has proved to have a more efficient impact in agents’ action and motivation. In doing so, practical philosophy could improve its role helping understand and eventually surpassing some akratic tendencies in the public sphere with respect to children’s rights. (shrink)

Shaw explores the concept of the ego and its role in human psychology and philosophy. He discusses different theories of the ego and its relationship to the self and society. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in psychology or philosophy. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of (...) America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

An historical review of authorship definitions and publication practices that are embedded in directions to authors and in the codes of ethics in the fields of psychology, sociology, and education illuminates reasonable agreement and consistency across the fields with regard to (a) originality of the work submitted, (b) data sharing, (c) human participants’ protection, and (d) conflict of interest disclosure. However, the role of the professional association in addressing violations of research or publication practices varies among these fields. (...) Psychology and sociology provide active oversight with sanction authority. In education, the association assumes a more limited role: to develop and communicate standards to evoke voluntary compliance. With respect to authorship credit, each association’s standards focus on criteria for inclusion as an author, other than on the author’s ability to defend and willingness to take responsibility for the entire work. Discussions across a broad range of research disciplines beyond the social sciences would likely be beneficial. Whether improved standards will reduce either misattribution or perceptions of inappropriate attribution of credit within social science disciplines will likely depend on how well authorship issues are addressed in responsible conduct of research education (RCR), in research practice, and in each association’s ongoing efforts to influence normative practice by specifying and clarifying best practices. (shrink)

Bender, Robert Review of: In the public interest: 150 years of the Victorian Auditor-General's office, by Peter Yule, 2002, VAGO, 304 pages.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Self-Interest and Public Interest m Shaftesbury's Philosophy STANLEY GREAN THE SEV~NTEENTrt-CV.NTVRYproblem of the relationship of self-interest and public interest was carried over by the third Earl of Shaftesbury into the eighteenth century where it became a major issue for generations of British moralists. His own preoccupation with the problem began at an early date in his career, for the lnquiry Concerning Virtue or (...) Merit (1699), the first draft of which he wrote in his twenties, deals with it at length,1 and it is, according to him, the "main problem" of that work. This interest must have been deepened by his knowledge and experience of the bitter and tumultuous factional strife of the seventeenth century. There was also a family tradition of public life, the first Earl having been one of the foremost statesmen in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. The third Earl himself was briefly a figure of some importance on the political scene, serving in Parliament for two sessions? Something of Shaftesbury's character and point of view is revealed in the independent position which he took on certain issues during this time. With the emergence of the Whig and Tory parties a new emphasis was being placed on party organization. The principle of party loyalty "was indeed the only loyalty that was practised by some very important statesmen in the reigns of James, William and Anne.''s Though in general Shaftesbury supported Whig principles and policies, he refused to follow the Whig "party line" on every issue even though sometimes bitterly censured for failing to do so.4 Shaftesbury held that a legislative proposal should be judged on its own merits and not by its source? While recognizing t The first publication of the Inquiry was apparently unauthorized. A revised form appeared as Treatise IV in the 1711 edition of Characteristics. 2In the Commons, 1695-1698, and the Lords, 1700-1701. Ill health forced his retirement from politics. s George M. Trevelyan, History of England (3 vols.; New York: 1952), II, 260. 4Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen, ed. Benjamin Rand (London: 1900), p. 300. Referred to henceforth as LiIe, Letters. See the comment by the fourth Earl in Life, Letters, pp. xxi-xxii; also Thomas Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (New York: 1883), pp. 10-12. [37] 38 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the social value of political parties, it was consistent with Shaftesbury's theory that he insisted that party loyalty must at times be superseded by loyalties to larger interests or to the larger community of which one is a member. In his writings Shaftesbury carried on a continual campaign against the type of reductionism which seeks to explain all human behavior by "that one principle and foundation of a cool and deliberate selfishness.''8 Thus, he attacks Epicurus and Lucretius among the ancients, and Hobbes, Lord Rochester, and La Rochefoucault among the moderns. For these "narrowminded philosophers," "interest, interest comes in ever and anon, and must seem a kind of key to things with which it has nothing to do."' One of Shaftesbury's lines of attack is to point out that psychological egoism, when pressed, proves to be meaningless. If everything one does is attributed to self-interest, he asks, what meaning does the tertn "self-interest" have? If there is no real alternative to egoism, and all actions are equally egoistic, then the very term "egoism" loses significance. It would apparently be impossible to be more or less self-centered. Thus, we would lose an important practical principle of differentiation. The English philosopher pictures the defenders of egoism as saying: "Act as disinterestedly or generously as you please, self still is at the bottom, and nothing else." Now if these gentlemen who delight so much in the play of words, but are cautious how they grapple closely with definitions, would tell us only what self-interest was, and determine happiness and good, there would be an end of this enigmatical wit. For in this we should all agree, that happiness was to be pursued, and in fact was always sought after; but whether found in following Nature, and giving way to... (shrink)

The article is a study into the advent of the ‘systems approach’ in Soviet psychology in the 1970s. This arose mainly through the theoretical publications of B. F. Lomov, written after he had been appointed director of the newly established Institute of Psychology. These publications are examined as reflections of those interests related to the sociopolitical role of the director of this leading psychology institution, which was officially charged with building a common theoretical and methodological framework for (...) all Soviet psychology. The main goal of these texts, predetermined by the role of their author, was to advance a theoretical scheme that made possible a formal unification of the schools of psychology, and which at the same time promoted an image of psychology as a research field that was both capable of achieving practically applicable results and compatible with the new ‘big science’ trend. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that private associations might be legitimately constrained by a requirement of reasonableness. I present a list of goods that freedom of association protect, and argue that the limits to associational freedom have to be sensitive to the nature of these goods. In defending this claim, I cast doubt on two popular liberal arguments: One is that attitudes cultivated in the private sphere are not likely to spill over into the public arena. The other is (...) that governmental intervention into the inner life of private associations will jeopardise attaining some associational goods. I challenge these assertions in two ways: First, I argue that the value of associations cannot be measured only in terms of the effects it has on their members. We should also pay attention to the long-term effects on society. Second, I argue that imposing some constraints on the sorts of activities associations might pursue does not necessarily threaten any associational good. These challenges are backed up by research coming from social psychology that suggests that an important part of human behaviour is automatic. I focus on the automaticity of social stereotypes and their causal effectiveness in producing behaviour. The upshot of the argument is that spillover effects are likely to happen. I argue that this is problematic for liberalism because citizens have an interest in exercising a sense of justice. The fact that racist or sexist attitudes cultivated in private spills over the public sphere provides weighty reasons to intervene in those associations. (shrink)

The standard of disinterested objectivity embedded within the US Data Quality Act (2001) has been used by corporate and political interests as a way to limit the dissemination of scientific research results that conflict with their goals. This is an issue that philosophers of science can, and should, publicly address because it involves an evaluation of the strength and adequacy of evidence. Analysis of arguments from a philosophical tradition that defended a concept of useful knowledge (later displaced by Logical Empiricism) (...) is used here to suggest how the legitimacy of scientific findings can be supported in the absence of disinterested objectivity. (shrink)

Background Several jurisdictions, including Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and most recently Ireland, have a public interest or public good criterion for granting waivers of consent in biomedical research using secondary health data or tissue. However, the concept of the public interest is not well defined in this context, which creates difficulties for institutions, institutional review boards and regulators trying to implement the criterion. Main text This paper clarifies how the public interest criterion can (...) be defensibly deployed. We first explain the ethical basis for requiring waivers to only be granted to studies meeting the public interest criterion, then explore how further criteria may be set to determine the extent to which a given study can legitimately claim to be in the public interest. We propose an approach that does not attempt to measure magnitude of benefit directly, but rather takes into account metrics that are more straightforward to apply. To ensure consistent and justifiable interpretation, research institutions and IRBs should also incorporate procedural features such as transparency and public engagement in determining which studies satisfy the public interest requirement. Conclusion The requirement of public interest for consent waivers in secondary biomedical research should be guided by well-defined criteria for systematic evaluation. Such a criteria and its application need to be periodically subject to intra-committee and intra-institution review, reflection, deliberation and amendment. (shrink)

This study uses data from Google Trends and Twitter to analyze how public interest and sentiment towards Universal Basic Income (UBI) changed across all 50 states and Washington D.C. between 2018 and 2021. We specifically selected this time period as it includes both Andrew Yang’s UBI campaign during the Democratic primaries in 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when UBI gained attention due to the federal government’s unconditional cash payment to almost all citizens. To overcome the limitations (...) of sporadic opinion polls, we built on a recent development of the rescaling method to generate longitudinal Google Trends and conducted Twitter sentiment analysis. We observed a modest rise in public interest in UBI during Andrew Yang’s campaign, especially in blue states, and a significant increase across all states at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it quickly waned, the level of public attention became elevated compared to the pre-pandemic level. Contrary to previous studies, our analysis also reveals that overall sentiment became less positive after the peak interest during the pandemic, as more people engaged in online discussions. (shrink)

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the figure of the adolescent (Jugendlicher) was introduced into public discourse in the German-speaking world. The adolescent soon became an epistemic object for the still loosely defined field of psychology. Actors in the slowly differentiating scientific field of youth psychology were primarily interested in the normal development of adolescent subjects and sought out new materials and methods to research the inner life of young people. In order to access (...) this inner life, they turned to the interpretation of diaries and other self-descriptions. This article takes up the questions of how diaries were used in the scientific context of psychology, and how diary writing was psychologically interpreted and theorized. The theoretical and methodological contexts of psychological knowledge production grouped around the subject of the diary will be examined in keeping with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s concept of historical epistemology. This analysis is carried out by using the example of three central actors who were in conversation with each other during the 1920s and 1930s: the developmental psychologist Charlotte Bühler (1893–1974), the psychologist and founder of personalistic psychology William Stern (1871–1938), and the youth activist Siegfried Bernfeld (1892–1953), who was influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Teaching research methods is especially challenging because we not only wish to convey formal knowledge and encourage critical thinking, as with any course, but also to enable our students dream up meaningful research projects, translate them into logical steps, conduct the research in a professional manner, analyze the data, and write up the project in APA style. We also wish to spark interest in the topics of research papers, and in the intellectual challenge of creating a research report, but (...) we have learned just how difficult these goals can be from teaching undergraduates and from serving as journal reviewers: many submissions contain flaws such as elementary errors of logic (e.g., using a null control condition instead of a placebo or dummy treatment), tangled statistics, a lack of graphs, and ungrammatical, unclear writing that violates APA rules. Yet these manuscripts are written by university faculty, often with doctorates and years of experience. Even published papers may contain egregious faults (Standing & McKelvie, 1986). And although we have both published widely, we still hone our skills. It requires optimism to expect that a typical undergraduate will do better, on the basis of just a year or two of studies in psychology. In this paper, we describe a systematic set of methodology courses and two specific practices that we think can help. Methodology Courses as the Backbone of our Psychology Program How can methodology courses promote undergraduate involvem... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Folk Psychology and the Psychological Background of Scientific ReasoningHarald Walach (bio)Keywordstheory of psychology, theory of science, psychology of science, mind-body problem, folk psychology, scientific world viewSome protagonists of science who are still married to a positivist model of how science functions see science as the pure pursuit of knowledge, free of any preconceptions, free of any personal interest, yielding clear and ideally everlasting truths (...) beckoning humanity over from a superstition ridden dark age of beliefs and would-be knowledge toward the dawn of rational insights that allow for the bettering of mankind’s problems. Scientists have followed such an implicit model since Francis Bacon’s Novum Organon, and the most recent reverberations we hear in popular science books like The God Delusion by Dawkins (2006) or in more scientific ones on how an eliminative materialist account of mental events such as Patricia Churchland’s might work (Churchland 1986). Here, it is explicitly stated that our folk-psychological accounts such as “I love Emma,” or “I have a nasty back ache” is nothing but sloppy speaking and will soon be replaced by a more scientific account, once we know the interior workings of our brains, such as “Neuron assembly xyz in my nucleus abc in brain areas efg is firing” or “Fast A1 fibers are transmitting stimuli from my lumbar region to the brain, where they override endorphin- and enkephalin-mediated inhibiting pathways, enabling the pain network to go crazy.” It has been more than twenty years now since the publication of that somewhat futuristic account, and a whole decade of the brain and countless papers have taught us that we are very far, in fact light years away, from such knowledge as eliminative and even less eliminative materialists would have us gained by now, or in another twenty years from now.Folk psychology is well and alive, and even more vital than ever, it seems. People go about having their beliefs and ideas about God, the mind, the soul, the world, and human beings in general just as well, eliminative materialists and neuroscience notwithstanding. The data presented by Fahrenberg speak a clear language: Students of different disciplines, but most prominently psychology students, adhere mostly to a dualist—ontological or methodological—world view that allows for some substantiality of consciousness. They suppose that some transcendent reality is active and about, they assume that paranormal events such as spiritual and distant healing can [End Page 209] happen, that telepathy is an option, to name but the more prominent statements to be gleaned by Fahrenberg’s tables.Sure, these are students at the beginning of their career, as they come from school, some of them in their second year, some of them mature after having done some other training. They have had contact with the scientific world view mostly through their schooling and private reading, and, of course, through our folk culture. It would be extremely interesting to see a longitudinal study, surveying the same students after four years of studies. Will they then be more conformist with the mainstream scientific notion? Will they then have changed their initial belief systems? Will they have integrated and absorbed the knowledge they were taught into their private lives and worldviews, or will they have kept them apart from each other? We do not have the answer to these questions, and surely, a next step would be to follow a cohort of students, albeit small, through their journey as they progress.Meanwhile, we can all take ourselves as an example to follow this thought along as a gedan-kenexperiment. Did we allow the knowledge we absorbed from studying to permeate our whole private life? How did we deal with any cognitive dissonance arising from information coming out of our studies conflicting with our private belief systems? Did we throw away our personal beliefs or did we organize our lives in two compartments, one for our private life, and one for our scientific knowledge?Fahrenberg’s data are unique in the sense that nobody bothers about folk psychology, and these data are the only ones that actually tap into the belief systems of those that will become scientists, teachers, therapists and trainers... (shrink)

The changes that have affected all spheres of society have also affected the existing stereotypes of gender behaviour, so the issue of the place and role of men and women in society focuses on research on the aspirations, interests and preferences of both sexes. Gender issues are studied in an interdisciplinary aspect, so recently there have been many studies in which the subject of discussion concerns different fields of science - psychology, philosophy, linguistics, journalism, sociology, political science and many (...) others. To study the gender sphere of concept of contemporary periodicals for women and men, the following scientific methods are considered: descriptive method, analysis, content analysis, questionnaire, comparative method and induction. However, an attempt has been made to analyze different approaches to the study of concepts. There are many different definitions of the concept, which indicates the complexity and ambiguity of the “concept” meaning, but there is a limit to the scientific description and understanding of the concept. The gender sphere of concept is a system of interactions of maximum concepts of man and woman, as well as their derivatives, which are called gender and social roles in society performed by man and woman. Concepts, sphere of concept include gender features, which allow a gender approach to study the gender sphere of concept of contemporary periodicals for women and men. The study of the gender sphere of concept within the framework of contemporary gender-labelled publications allows to identify and correlate metagender and gender concepts that appear in society. (shrink)

The central focus of this research is the fast and crucial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its exceptionally serious consequences in terms of healthcare, state intervention and impositions, radical changes in people’s life, on a crucial psychological, relational, and political construct: trust. In this survey, addressed to 4260 Italian citizens, we tried to analyze and measure such impact, focusing on various aspects of trust. This attention to multiple dimensions of trust constitutes the key conceptual advantage of this research, since (...) trust is a complex and layered construct, with its own internal dynamics. In particular, the analysis focuses on how citizens attribute trust to Public Authorities, in relation to the management of the health crisis: with regard to the measures and guidelines adopted, the purposes pursued, the motivations that determine them, their capacity for involvement and their effectiveness for the containment of the virus itself. A pandemic creates a bilateral need for trust, both in Public Authorities (they have to rely on citizens’ compliance, and must try to promote and maintain their trust in order to be effective), and in citizens, since they need to feel that somebody can do something, can (has the power) to protect them, to act at the needed collective level. We are interested to explore how this need for trust affects the attributional process, regarding both attitudes and the corresponding decisions and actions. The most striking result of this survey is the very high level of institutional trust expressed by respondents: 75% of them trust Italian public authorities to be able to deal with the COVID-19 emergency. This is in sharp contrast with the relatively low levels of institutional trust characteristic of Italy, both historically and in recent surveys. Moreover, the survey allowed to discriminate several potential predictors for trust, thus emphasizing factors that, during this crisis, are exhibiting an anomalous impact on trust. (shrink)

This new volume explores terrorism and strategic terror, examining how the public responds to terrorist attacks, and what authorities can do in such situations. The book uses a unique interdisciplinary approach, which combines the behavioural sciences and international relations, in order to further the understanding of the 'terror' generated by strategic terror. The work examines five contemporary case studies of the psychological and behavioural effects of strategic terror, from either terrorist attacks or aerial bombardment. It also looks at how (...) risk-communication and public-health strategies can amplify or reduce psychological and behavioural responses, and considers whether behavioural effects translate into political effects, and what governments can do to relieve this. Ultimately, the study argues that the public is not prone to panic, but can change their behaviours to reduce their perceived risk of being exposed to a terrorist attack. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, homeland security, social psychology and politics in general. (shrink)

The public interest in the administration of justice requires access to justice for all. But access to justice must be “meaningful” access. Meaningful access requires procedures, processes, and institutional structures that facilitate communication among participants and decision-makers and ensure that judges and other decision-makers have the resources they need to render fully informed and sound decisions. Working from that premise, which is based on a reconceptualization of the objectives and methods of the justice process, the author proposes numerous (...) specific changes in decision-making processes and practices. These changes are required to achieve a standard of decision-making that is consistent with the public interest in the administration of justice within a constitutional framework under the social and political conditions of the early 21st century. The essay illustrates the application of the principles and methods of legitecture to analysis of problems of institutional design in law. (shrink)

1. A new wave of subjectivism in the theory of pictorial art began around forty years ago; and since then it has gathered pace in tandem with changing fashions in the philosophy of mind. The initial impetus was provided by the publication of Ernst Gombrich’s 1956 Mellon Lectures, Art and Illusion.1 In this book, and in many subsequent articles and lectures which elaborate its theme, Gombrich argues that the development of Western art – essentially the art of ancient Greece and (...) the art of Western Europe from Giotto to Cezanne – consists in a series of discoveries about the nature of visual perception, and the means by which the effect of visible objects on our senses can be simulated. ‘What may make a painting like a distant view through a window’ he writes, ‘is not the fact that the two can be as indistinguishable as is a facsimile from the original: it is the similarity between the mental activities both can arouse.’ And in another place: ‘The goal which the artist seeks with such self-critical persistence is … a psychological effect.’2 These remarks are concerned with a specific artistic tradition, and with specific pictorial devices, such as foreshortening and shading, which I shall not write about here. But Gombrich’s work launched a search for a general theory of depiction based on the same approach. The search intensified in the wake of Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art, which persuaded most of its readers that the resemblance theory of depiction could not be made to work, but did not provide a plausible alternative to it. Today there is broad agreement among philosophers that the nature of pictorial art cannot be explained by analysing the relationship between the marks on the surface of a picture and the kinds of objects that they represent. The consensus is that it can only be explained by defining the psychological effect that these marks produce.3 Today, the two most influential theories of depiction that are guided by this general idea are Richard Wollheim’s and Christopher Peacocke’s.. (shrink)

How can we effectively promote the public’s prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 infection? Jordan et al. found with United States samples that emphasizing either self-interest or collective-interest of prevention behaviors could promote the public’s prevention intention. Moreover, prosocially framed messaging was more effective in motivating prevention intention than self-interested messaging. A dual consideration of both cultural psychology and the literature on personalized matching suggests the findings of Jordan et al. are counterintuitive, because persuasion is most (...) effective when the frame of the message delivered and the recipient of the message are culturally congruent. In order to better understand the potential influence of culture, the current research aimed to replicate and extend Jordan et al. findings in the Japanese context. Specifically, we examined the question whether the relative effectiveness of the prosocial appeal is culturally universal and robust, which types of ‘others’ especially promote prevention intention, and which psychological mechanisms can explain the impact of messaging on prevention intention. In Study 1, we confirmed that self-interested framed, prosocially framed, and the combination of both types of messaging were equally effective in motivating prevention intention. In Study 2, we found that family-framed messaging also had a promoting effect similar to that from self-interested and prosocial appeals. However, the relative advantage of prosocial appeals was not observed. Further, a psychological propensity relevant to sensitivity to social rejection did not moderate the impact of messaging on prevention intention in both studies. These results suggest that since engaging in the infection control itself was regarded as critical by citizens after public awareness of COVID-19 prevention has been sufficiently heightened, for whom we should act might not have mattered. Further, concerns for social rejection might have had less impact on the prevention intentions under these circumstances. These results suggest that the relative advantage of a prosocial appeal might not be either culturally universal or prominent in a collectivistic culture. Instead, they suggest that the advantages of such an appeal depends on the more dynamic influence of COVID-19 infection. (shrink)

How Propaganda Became Public Relations pulls back the curtain on propaganda: how it was born, how it works, and how it has masked the bulk of its operations by rebranding itself as public relations. Cory Wimberly uses archival materials and wide variety of sources — Foucault’s work on governmentality, political economy, liberalism, mass psychology, and history — to mount a genealogical challenge to two commonplaces about propaganda. First, modern propaganda did not originate in the state and was (...) never primarily located in the state; instead, it began and flourished as a for-profit service for businesses. Further, propaganda is not focused on public beliefs and does not operate mainly through lies and deceit; propaganda is an apparatus of government that aims to create the publics that will freely undertake the conduct its clients’ desire. Businesses have used propaganda since the early twentieth century to construct the laboring, consuming, and voting publics that they needed to secure and grow their operations. Over that time, corporations have become the most numerous and well-funded apparatuses of government in the West, operating privately and without democratic accountability. Wimberly explains why liberal strategies of resistance have failed and a new focus on creating mass subjectivity through democratic means is essential to countering propaganda. This book offers a sophisticated analysis that will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in social and political philosophy, Continental philosophy, political communication, the history of capitalism, and the history of public relations. (shrink)

Academia is a competitive environment. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are limited in experience and resources and especially need achievements to secure and expand their careers. To help with these issues, this book offers a new approach for conducting research using the combination of mindsponge innovative thinking and Bayesian analytics. This is not just another analytics book. 1. A new perspective on psychological processes: Mindsponge is a novel approach for examining the human mind’s information processing mechanism. This conceptual framework is used (...) to construct models in studies. The framework is highly flexible and widely applicable for many different types of information processes. The mindsponge approach can help researchers discover interesting ideas or even formulate their very own theories when investigating psychosocial phenomena. This approach brings a fresh wind to the current landscape of social sciences and humanities (SSH). 2. Easy-to-follow analysis protocol: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF analytics) is useful in terms of computing and visualizing power but also easy to learn and apply. Contrary to being intimidating, the Bayesian analytics section of this book is presented in a reader-friendly manner with a detailed yet clear step-by-step procedure. Examples are from published BMF articles, allowing readers to immediately practice the method and quickly create their own applications. With educational purposes in mind, the book is very suitable for ECRs who are looking to innovate their research methods. 3. Advocating for low-cost, high-quality research: Doing science can be very costly. Mindsponge innovative thinking and BMF analytics help produce impactful studies using openly available data on online repositories. This is based on the authors’ previous works and experiences. The book presents examples of employing the open R package bayesvl on secondary data from different sources. With less financial constraints, researchers can have more freedom of thought to pursue their curiosity and creativity. ECRs in low- and middle-income countries may find this aspect crucial in their careers. 4. Support and collaboration: The authors share their insights from experiences in the academic publishing system to help readers get through the processes of manuscript writing and peer-reviewing more easily. The authors are also ready to support other researchers with further inquiries and collaboration opportunities at the following website, mindsponge(dot)info. This book is for: a) ECRs whose only abundant resources are their innovation capacity and strength of will; b) Researchers in SSH who want to explore a novel approach to thinking and study conducting; c) Low- and middle-income countries’ researchers looking for a cost-effective research protocol; and, d) Innovative thinkers who want to turn their interesting thoughts into good publications. (shrink)

A growing interest in and concern about the adequacy and fairness of modern peer-review practices in publication and funding are apparent across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Although questions about reliability, accountability, reviewer bias, and competence have been raised, there has been very little direct research on these variables.The present investigation was an attempt to study the peer-review process directly, in the natural setting of actual journal referee evaluations of submitted manuscripts. As test materials we selected 12 already (...) published research articles by investigators from prestigious and highly productive American psychology departments, one article from each of 12 highly regarded and widely read American psychology journals with high rejection rates (80%) and nonblind refereeing practices.With fictitious names and institutions substituted for the original ones (e.g., Tri-Valley Center for Human Potential), the altered manuscripts were formally resubmitted to the journals that had originally refereed and published them 18 to 32 months earlier. Of the sample of 38 editors and reviewers, only three (8%) detected the resubmissions. This result allowed nine of the 12 articles to continue through the review process to receive an actual evaluation: eight of the nine were rejected. Sixteen of the 18 referees (89%) recommended against publication and the editors concurred. The grounds for rejection were in many cases described as “serious methodological flaws.” A number of possible interpretations of these data are reviewed and evaluated. (shrink)

The study presents the Russian historical-philosophical process in the context of the discovery of a new object, themes, personae, set of reactions and formation of a product for the intellectual community. The author's reliance on philosophical empirical material and appropriate hermeneutics in its processing allows the author to highlight those factors that influenced individual and collective reception. The author sees as a convenient case study the “discovery” by the Russian philosophical community of the early 20th century of both American philosophy (...) in general and C.S. Peirce in particular. Since the beginning of the 19th century, Russian thinkers have turned their attention to American philosophy in all the diversity of its manifestations. Russian intellectuals paid special attention to American pragmatism and everything associated with it. In Russia, in addition to translations, numerous reviews of foreign publications on this topic are appearing. Of particular interest to us in the Russian “collective reflection” of American ideas is the system of preferences for ideas, texts, events, and names. The point is that what might have been a priority for a European thinker, for a Russian one turned out to be on the “periphery” of his consciousness, as well as vice versa. While James appeared among the priority figures for Russian thinkers, Peirce was in his “shadow”. Using rich empirical material, the author shows all the stages of Peirce’s image formation in the Russian intellectual community. The research shows that “image” of Peirce, which represents not so much the thinker himself, but characterizes the intellectual community that turned to him. The results of the study may be useful both for contemporary foreign and Russian interpreters of Peirce and for historians of philosophy who are rethinking the past and forming in the present new objects of reception and reflection. (shrink)

This paper defends a new norm of assertion: Assert that p only if you are in a position to know that p. We test the norm by judging its performance in explaining three phenomena that appear jointly inexplicable at first: Moorean paradoxes, lottery propositions, and selfless assertions. The norm succeeds by tethering unassertability to unknowability while untethering belief from assertion. The PtK‐norm foregrounds the public nature of assertion as a practice that can be other‐regarding, allowing asserters to act in (...) the best interests of their audience when psychological pressures would otherwise prevent them from communicating the knowable truth. (shrink)

In recent years, artificial intelligence has been deployed by online platforms to prevent the upload of allegedly illegal content or to remove unwarranted expressions. These systems are trained to spot objectionable content and to remove it, block it, or filter it out before it is even uploaded. Artificial intelligence filters offer a robust approach to content moderation which is shaping the public sphere. This dramatic shift in norm setting and law enforcement is potentially game-changing for democracy. Artificial intelligence filters (...) carry censorial power, which could bypass traditional checks and balances secured by law. Their opaque and dynamic nature creates barriers to oversight, and conceals critical value choices and tradeoffs. Currently, we lack adequate tools to hold them accountable. This paper seeks to address this gap by introducing an adversarial procedure— – Contesting Algorithms. It proposes to deliberately introduce friction into the dominant removal systems governed by artificial intelligence. Algorithmic content moderation often seeks to optimize a single goal, such as removing copyright-infringing materials or blocking hate speech, while other values in the public interest, such as fair use or free speech, are often neglected. Contesting algorithms introduce an adversarial design which reflects conflicting values, and thereby may offer a check on dominant removal systems. Facilitating an adversarial intervention may promote democratic principles by keeping society in the loop. An adversarial public artificial intelligence system could enhance dynamic transparency, facilitate an alternative public articulation of social values using machine learning systems, and restore societal power to deliberate and determine social tradeoffs. (shrink)

In 2007, the Ethics and Governance Council of the UK Biobank commissioned a Report on ‘Concepts of Public Good and Pubic Interest in Access Policies’. This study considered the Biobank’s role as a ‘public good’ in respect to supporting and promoting health throughout society. However, the conditions under which access by third parties to UK Biobank are justified in the public interest have not been well considered. In this article, I propose to analyse the conditions (...) that should allow such access. My argument develops UK Biobank’s function as a ‘public good’ and in terms of its responsibilities as a public health institution; both to protect the rights of the participants and in having a role in reinforcing public goals. Although these two tasks may conflict, it is possible that resolute opposition to some third-party access demands—if properly justified in terms of a public interest—will be damaging to, rather than protective of, participants’ rights. To illustrate my argument, I consider the appropriate response to an extraordinary public emergency , such as a serious criminal investigation or disaster response, in terms of an ethical access policy. (shrink)

Current technology and surveillance practices make behaviors traceable to persons in unprecedented ways. This causes a loss of anonymity and of many privacy measures relied on in the past. These de facto privacy losses are by many seen as problematic for individual psychology, intimate relations and democratic practices such as free speech and free assembly. I share most of these concerns but propose that an even more fundamental problem might be that our very ability to act as autonomous and (...) purposive agents relies on some degree of privacy, perhaps particularly as we act in public and semi-public spaces. I suggest that basic issues concerning action choices have been left largely unexplored, due to a series of problematic theoretical assumptions at the heart of privacy debates. One such assumption has to do with the influential conceptualization of privacy as pertaining to personal intimate facts belonging to a private sphere as opposed to a public sphere of public facts. As Helen Nissenbaum has pointed out, the notion of privacy in public sounds almost like an oxymoron given this traditional private-public dichotomy. I discuss her important attempt to defend privacy in public through her concept of ‘contextual integrity.’ Context is crucial, but Nissenbaum’s descriptive notion of existing norms seems to fall short of a solution. I here agree with Joel Reidenberg’s recent worries regarding any approach that relies on ‘reasonable expectations’ . The problem is that in many current contexts we have no such expectations. Our contexts have already lost their integrity, so to speak. By way of a functional and more biologically inspired account, I analyze the relational and contextual dynamics of both privacy needs and harms. Through an understanding of action choice as situated and options and capabilities as relational, a more consequence-oriented notion of privacy begins to appear. I suggest that privacy needs, harms and protections are relational. Privacy might have less to do with seclusion and absolute transactional control than hitherto thought. It might instead hinge on capacities to limit the social consequences of our actions through knowing and shaping our perceptible agency and social contexts of action. To act with intent we generally need the ability to conceal during exposure. If this analysis is correct then relational privacy is an important condition for autonomic purposive and responsible agency—particularly in public space. Overall, this chapter offers a first stab at a reconceptualization of our privacy needs as relational to contexts of action. In terms of ‘rights to privacy’ this means that we should expand our view from the regulation and protection of the information of individuals to questions of the kind of contexts we are creating. I am here particularly interested in what I call ‘unbounded contexts’, i.e. cases of context collapses, hidden audiences and even unknowable future agents. (shrink)

The impending missions to exploit natural resources of celestial bodies may at some point start interfering with the scientific interests, including those of astrobiology, in these bodies. While the legal status of celestial bodies at the highest level is clear, uncertainty has arisen as to the extent private property rights over such objects or over their resources are legally acceptable, legally impossible, or potentially legal. This also provides for a considerable amount of uncertainty regarding how the legal framework could or (...) may need to be changed to accommodate private interests. The article analyzes the two main international treaties relevant from this perspective, as well as their backgrounds, in order to outline the current legal status of celestial bodies and the resulting legal rights and obligations pertinent to both private exploitation and exploration. Based on such an analysis, it concludes by highlighting an approach that could actually incentivize the private sector and the science community to work together in a manner conducive to their interests in exploitation and exploration respectively. (shrink)

There is a rapidly growing public interest in nanotechnology such that people increasingly buy various books to inform themselves about nanotechnology. This paper tries to measure the public interest focus on nanotechnology and its relation to the public interest in other fields of knowledge by applying a new method. I combine formal network analysis of co-purchase book data with traditional content analysis. The method is successful in identifying the books that the public reads (...) to be informed about nanotechnology, in distinguishing between different kinds and classes of books and thereby between different interest foci and readerships and their relations. The results suggest that nanotechnology is for many the first intense contact with science and technology and that they read a great variety of different kinds of books. Rather than on general introductions to current research written by scientists or science journalists, readers focus on forecasting and visionary literature including business guides, written by software entrepreneurs and business consultants. Unlike expert readers, who connect nanotechnology to other fields of science and engineering, the broader public connects it to visions about dissolving the human/machine distinction. Although the distinction between non-fiction and science fiction is still important for readers, border-crossing authors increasingly blur it. (shrink)

This collection explores the subject of conflicts of interest. It investigates how to manage conflicts of interest, how they can affect well-meaning professionals, and how they can limit the effectiveness of corporate boards, undermine professional ethics, and corrupt expert opinion. Legal and policy responses are considered, some of which (e.g., disclosure) are shown to backfire and even fail. The results offer a sobering prognosis for professional ethics and for anyone who relies on professionals who have conflicts of (...) class='Hi'>interest. The contributors are leading authorities on the subject in the fields of law, medicine, management, public policy, and psychology. The nuances of the problems posedby conflicts of interest will be highlighted for readers in an effort to demonstrate the manyways that structuring incentives can affect decision making and organizations' financial well-being. (shrink)

In this book, Steve Gronert Ellerhoff explores short stories by Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut, written between 1943 and 1968, with a post-Jungian approach. Drawing upon archetypal theories of myth from Joseph Campbell, James Hillman and their forbearer C. G. Jung, Ellerhoff demonstrates how short fiction follows archetypal patterns that can illuminate our understanding of the authors, their times, and their culture. In practice, a post-Jungian ‘mythodology’ is shown to yield great insights for the literary criticism of short fiction. Chapters (...) in this volume carefully contextualise and historicize each story, including Bradbury and Vonnegut’s earliest and most imaginatively fantastic works. The archetypal constellations shaping Vonnegut’s early works are shown to be war and fragmentation, while those in Bradbury’s are family and the wholeness of the sun. Analysis is complemented by the explored significance of illustrations that featured alongside the stories in their first publications. By uncovering the ways these popular writers redressed old myths in new tropes—and coined new narrative elements for hopes and fears born of their era—the book reveals a fresh method which can be applied to all imaginative short stories, increasing understanding and critical engagement. Post-Jungian Psychology and the Short Stories of Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut is an important text for a number of fields, from Jungian and Post-Jungian studies to short story theoriesand American studies to Bradbury and Vonnegut studies. Scholars and students of literature will come away with a renewed appreciation for an archetypal approach to criticism, while the book will also be of great interest to practising depth psychologists seeking to incorporate short stories into therapy. (shrink)

Public health emergencies can trigger individual death anxiety. Most previous studies focus on the negative effects of death anxiety via the Western materialistic view, neglecting both the positive aspects of death anxiety within the Chinese cultural background and the positive effects of death anxiety upon environmental consumption. By implementing the unique Chinese cultural background for the concepts of justice and interests, this study explores the positive influence of individual death anxiety on altruistic environmental consumption during the COVID-19 crisis by (...) analyzing personal life reviews and other sources. The results show that under the guidance of the correct concept of justice and benefit, individuals with high death anxiety during the epidemic period not only enhance their self-esteem through positive self-perception and social evaluation, but they are more inclined to benefit from other environmental consumption behaviors and attain a symbolic self-survival; and during the epidemic period, mental resilience, as a transformation mechanism of external defense and the internal growth of death psychology, can directly affect altruistic environmental consumption by consumers without relying on external standards. In the context of the Chinese culture’s concept of justice and interests, this study enriches the knowledge of fear management theory and the positive impact of death anxiety on environmental consumption. The introduction of mental resilience as a boundary condition has important theoretical and practical significance within the study of consumer behavior in public health emergencies and post-epidemic economic recovery. (shrink)

This article examines how facial recognition technology reshapes the philosophical debate over the ethics of video surveillance. When video surveillance is augmented with facial recognition, the data collected is no longer anonymous, and the data can be aggregated to produce detailed psychological profiles. I argue that – as this non-anonymous data of people’s mundane activities is collected – unjust risks of harm are imposed upon individuals. In addition, this technology can be used to catalogue all who publicly participate in political, (...) religious, and socially stigmatised activities, and I argue that this would undermine central interests of liberal democracies. I examine the degree to which the interests of individuals and the societal interests of liberal democracies to maintain people’s obscurity while in public coincide with privacy interests, as popularly understood, and conclude that there is a practical need to articulate a novel right to obscurity to protect the interests of liberal democratic societies. (shrink)

This book examines the concept of public interest against the background of English politics from the Civil War to the coming of the Hanoverians. These years witnessed both the rise of the modern notion of the public interest as a part of ordinary political language and the growth of a social philosophy of individualism. The new ideas challenged the _status quo_, based on order, reason of state and national power, in the name of legitimate self-interest (...) and respect for the rights of the private person. In presenting a complex set of ideas in their historical context, the author examines both abstract philosophies and the issues of the day as recorded in press, pulpit and law courts. A chapter devoted to economic thought includes a re-assessment of the social assumptions of mercantilism. (shrink)

Are the disciplines of education ghosts of a productive past or creative and useful forms of inquiry? Are they in a demographic and organisational crisis today? The contribution of the ‘foundation disciplines’ of sociology, psychology, philosophy, history and economics to the study of education has always been contested in the UK and in much of the English-speaking world. But such debates are now being brought to a head in education by the demographic crisis. Recent research has shown that with (...) the an ageing population of education academics, in ten years' time, there could be very few disciplinary specialists left working within faculties of education in UK universities. But does that matter and is the UK no more than a special case? How does this ‘crisis’ look from Europe where the disciplines of education are more embedded, and from the USA with its more diverse higher education system? In this book, leading scholars – including A.H. Halsey, David Bridges, John Furlong, Hugh Lauder, Martin Lawn and Sheldon Rothblatt – consider the changing fortunes of each discipline as education moved away from the dominance of psychology in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s as a result of the growing importance of the other disciplines and new social questions, and how the changing epistemological and political debates of the last twenty years haves resulted in their progressive demise. Finally, the book confronts the question as to whether the disciplines have a place in education in the twenty-first century. The book brings the coming crisis into the public view and explores the issue of the past, current and future relevance of the disciplines to the study of education. It will be of interest to all international academics and researchers in the field of education and the contributory disciplines as well as to students on educational research methods courses. (shrink)

The purpose. Critical social philosophy of education strives to provide a radical critique of existing models of education in the so-called Western models of democracy, creating progressive alternative models. In this context, the proposed integrative metatheory, which is based on classical and modern sources, concepts, aims for a comprehensive understanding and reconstruction of the phenomenon of education. One of the main tasks in the sphere of education’s democratization today, therefore, is to bring to education the results of restructuring and democratization (...) of the society, to reflect changes in conditions of life and thinking, experience and transformation of subjectivity in the context of the technological revolution and globalization. Methodology. The critical social theory, which developed in the framework of contemporary neo-Marxism, indicates the need for a thorough analysis of society, however, unlike other theoretical concepts and research programs in order to analyze not a fixation and a statement of the existing social givens. On the contrary, critical analysis of society involves the identification of existing antagonistic, alienating factors that distort public communication.The subject of social analysis is the whole sphere of human and non-human nature, which interacts a person depend on it, the whole system of relations between society and nature, society and man, which is covered by the historical practice of conscious – "praxis". The representative of "pure science" isn't the learning, research subject. He is a public a person, which is the totality of all social definitions included in society and its constituent individuals. For such a "total subject" Object of interest is not something external; on the contrary, the latter appears as a product of his own activity. The scientific novelty examines trends in educational institutions and models of globalizing society in the context of our particular relationship of education and society, man and the state, and processes. The research and systematic analysis of neoliberal reforms at the level of society in general and education in particular are conducted. It examines substantive, structural and functional characteristics of the concept of «critical social philosophy of education» in the context of institutional tendencies of social life, as well as forms and possibilities of its methodological application. It consider a model of «critical social philosophy of education», as embodied in the programs of social development and learning, which are primarily designed to teach people how to lead an independent and original research themselves, society and knowledge systems. However, it is proved that the models and programs should not be cut off from any individual and the collective system of moral and social values, theoretical and applied training, nor from further use of the acquired values, norms and skills in everyday life, science, or in production, sphere of all social institutions. Conclusions. Critical philosophical, educational, pedagogical-psychological surprisingly theory, its models and concepts seek to redefine public and private and the public mind. Based on these grounds, in the future, it allows philosophy of education to develop a more inclusive philosophical vision of education, to apply directly to the problems of democratization and changes in social relations in the direction of equality and social justice in the field of education. The point of view of socio-philosophical and philosophical-еducational, pedagogical-psychological, normative understanding and social critics also requires the use of active efforts in the reconstruuction of education and society, the social vision of what education and human life can be and what their specific limitations in existing societies. (shrink)

The purpose. Critical social philosophy of education strives to provide a radical critique of existing models of education in the so-called Western models of democracy, creating progressive alternative models. In this context, the proposed integrative metatheory, which is based on classical and modern sources, concepts, aims for a comprehensive understanding and reconstruction of the phenomenon of education. One of the main tasks in the sphere of education’s democratization today, therefore, is to bring to education the results of restructuring and democratization (...) of the society, to reflect changes in conditions of life and thinking, experience and transformation of subjectivity in the context of the technological revolution and globalization. Methodology. The critical social theory, which developed in the framework of contemporary neo-Marxism, indicates the need for a thorough analysis of society, however, unlike other theoretical concepts and research programs in order to analyze not a fixation and a statement of the existing social givens. On the contrary, critical analysis of society involves the identification of existing antagonistic, alienating factors that distort public communication.The subject of social analysis is the whole sphere of human and non-human nature, which interacts a person depend on it, the whole system of relations between society and nature, society and man, which is covered by the historical practice of conscious – "praxis". The representative of "pure science" isn't the learning, research subject. He is a public a person, which is the totality of all social definitions included in society and its constituent individuals. For such a "total subject" Object of interest is not something external; on the contrary, the latter appears as a product of his own activity. The scientific novelty examines trends in educational institutions and models of globalizing society in the context of our particular relationship of education and society, man and the state, and processes. The research and systematic analysis of neoliberal reforms at the level of society in general and education in particular are conducted. It examines substantive, structural and functional characteristics of the concept of «critical social philosophy of education» in the context of institutional tendencies of social life, as well as forms and possibilities of its methodological application. It consider a model of «critical social philosophy of education», as embodied in the programs of social development and learning, which are primarily designed to teach people how to lead an independent and original research themselves, society and knowledge systems. However, it is proved that the models and programs should not be cut off from any individual and the collective system of moral and social values, theoretical and applied training, nor from further use of the acquired values, norms and skills in everyday life, science, or in production, sphere of all social institutions. Conclusions. Critical philosophical, educational, pedagogical-psychological surprisingly theory, its models and concepts seek to redefine public and private and the public mind. Based on these grounds, in the future, it allows philosophy of education to develop a more inclusive philosophical vision of education, to apply directly to the problems of democratization and changes in social relations in the direction of equality and social justice in the field of education. The point of view of socio-philosophical and philosophical-еducational, pedagogical-psychological, normative understanding and social critics also requires the use of active efforts in the reconstruuction of education and society, the social vision of what education and human life can be and what their specific limitations in existing societies. (shrink)

Although the idea of the public interest features prominently in many accounts of deliberative democracy, the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest is rarely spelt out with any degree of precision. In this article, I identify and defend one particular way of framing this relationship. I begin by arguing that people can deliberate about the public interest only if the public interest is, in principle, identifiable independently of their deliberations. Of (...) course, some pluralists claim that the public interest is an implausible idea, which casts doubt on the idea that there might be something for people to deliberate about. Yet while, following Brian Barry, we can get around this problem by defining the public interest as an interest in which everyone shares qua member of the public, what still needs to be explained is why people should be prepared to privilege this particular capacity. I argue that the account of political equality with which deliberative democracy is bound up offers a compelling explanation of this sort, even if it also gives rise to some difficult questions of feasibility. I conclude by considering the charge that any political scheme that framed the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest in this way would be undesirable. (shrink)

Motivation in schizophrenia has been a key research aim for several decades. Motivation is a very complex process underlying negative symptoms that has been assessed and identified using very different instruments and terminologies. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the growing literature production and highlights an extensive set of variables to better understand the study of motivation. Electronic databases were searched in order to compile relevant studies of motivation in individuals with schizophrenia. The initial search identified 3,248 potentially interesting (...) records, and of these, 161 articles published between 1956 and 2017 were finally included. Information such as year of publication, journal, country, and number of authors was codified. Variables related to sample characteristics, methodological aspects, and motivational terms were also extracted. The results revealed a significant growth trend in literature production, especially since the 2000s, with reward as the main term studied. In addition, questionnaires were identified as the preferred instrument to assess motivation in patients with schizophrenia. Other aspects such as country of publication, authors, journals of publication, and co-citation network analysis were also examined. The discussion offers recommendations for future research. (shrink)

The future of health research will be characterised by three continuing trends: rising demand for health data; increasing impracticability of obtaining specific consent for secondary research; and decreasing capacity to effectively anonymise data. In this context, governments, clinicians and the research community must demonstrate that they can be responsible stewards of health data. IRBs and RECs sit at heart of this process because in many jurisdictions they have the capacity to grant consent waivers when research is judged to be of (...) particular value. However, several different terms are used to refer to this value, indicating a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the appropriate test for access to health data for research without consent. In this paper we do three things. First we describe the current confusion and instability in terminology relating to public interest in the context of consent waivers. Second we argue for harmonisation of terminology on the grounds of clarity, transparency and consistency. Third we argue that the term ‘public interest’ best reflects the normative work required to justify consent waivers because it is the broadest of the competing terms. ‘Public interest’ contains within its scope positive and negative implications of a study, as well as welfare, justice and rights considerations. In making this argument, we explain the normative basis for consent waivers, and provide a starting place for further discussion about the precise conditions in which a given study can be said to advance the public interest. Ipsos MORI study found that: … the public would be broadly happy with administrative data linking for research projects provided Those projects have social value, broadly defined. Data are de-identified. Data are kept secure. Businesses are not able to access the data for profit. (shrink)

This volume explores the opportunities and challenges facing the accounting profession in an increasingly globalized business and financial reporting environment. It looks back at past experiences of the profession in attempting to meet its public interest obligation. It examines the role and responsibilities of accounting to society including regulatory requirements, increased emphasis on corporate social responsibility, accounting fraud and whistle-blowing implications, internationalization of public interest obligations, and providing the education needed to be successful. The book incorporates (...) an ethical dimension in making these assessments. Its focus is a conceptual, theoretical one drawing on classical philosophy, the sociology of professions, economic theory, and the public interest dimension of accountants as professionals. The authors of papers are long-time contributors to the annual symposium on Research in Accounting Ethics sponsored by the Public Interest Section of the AAA.. (shrink)

Appeals to the public interest in law are commonplace, but typically made without clarifying what the public interest is and how it can be determined. In law, this has led to ad hoc applications of the public interest and, consequently, to “judicial idiosyncrasy,” posing a threat to legal certainty. This paper aims to remedy these problems by providing much‐needed conceptual clarification. It proposes that something is in the public interest if it increases (...) the opportunities of the members of the public to pursue and realize the (permissible) ends they all share qua equal members of the public. (shrink)