This article is a reply to Marsha Enright's essay “The Problem with Selfishness.” Enright argues that “selfishness” is not the correct designation for living according to the Objectivist ethics. This article defends Rand's use of “selfishness,” on three grounds. First, the self is central to Rand's ethics, because a person must value his self before he can value anything or anyone. Second, immoral people are selfless, because organisms that function at the perceptual level of awareness do not have a self. (...) Third, Rand has identified the exact meaning of “selfishness,” whether or not her definition accords with dictionary definitions. (shrink)

Ethics of care and ethics of justice have been thought to address different spheres of human life; an ethics of care the personal sphere, an ethics of justice the political sphere. Care ethicists do not necessarily consider these ethics to be mutually exclusive . They assume, nonetheless, that if these ethics address different spheres, an ethics of care cannot address the same issues as an ethics of justice. Michael Slote disagrees. He argues that an ethics of care can address the (...) same issues as traditional approaches to justice, and so offer a complete approach to morality. Slote believes his ethics can address issues of justice by providing an account of those obligations correlative of rights. This paper argues that Slote’s ethics of care is unable to sustain such obligations as his ethics is not action-guiding, but is instead concerned with the post-hoc evaluation of motives and actions. (shrink)

We examine the ethical, social, and regulatory barriers that may hinder research on therapeutic potential of certain controversial controlled substances like marijuana, heroin, or ketamine. Hazards for individuals and society and potential adverse effects on communities may be good reasons for limiting access and justify careful monitoring of these substances. Overly strict regulations, fear of legal consequences, stigma associated with abuse and populations using illicit drugs, and lack of funding may, however, limit research on their considerable therapeutic potential. We review (...) the surprisingly sparse literature and address the particular ethical concerns pertinent to research with illicit and addictive substances, such as undue inducement, informed consent, therapeutic misconception, and risk to participants, researchers, and institutions. We consider the perspectives of key research stakeholders and explore whether they may be infected with bias. We conclude by proposing an empirical research agenda to provide an evidentiary basis for ethical reasoning. (shrink)

In Of Other Spaces Foucault coined the term "heterotopias" to signify "all the other real sites that can be found within the culture" which "are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted." For Foucault, heterotopic spaces were first of all spaces of crisis, or transformative spaces, however these have given way to heterotopias of deviation and spaces of discipline, such as psychiatric hospitals or prisons. Foucault's essay provokes us to think through how spaces of crisis and critique function to open up disruptive, (...) subversive or minoritarian fields within philosophical, political, cultural or aesthetic discourses. This book takes this interdisciplinary and international approach to the spatial, challenging existing borders, boundaries, and horizons; from Claire Colebrook's chapter unpacking the heterotopic spaces of America and Mexico that lie beyond reductive ideological spaces of light and darkness, to a Foucauldian reading of the Zapatista resistance. With essays on politics, philosophy, literature, post-colonial studies, and aesthetics from established and emerging academics, this book answers Foucault's call to give us a better understanding of our present cultural epoch."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This article compares Ayn Rand's trader principle with Adam Smith's invisible hand principle. Rand's defense of laissez-faire capitalism is often confused with Smith's defense of the market economy. White argues that Rand and Smith do not share the same ideas on the importance of self-interest or support the same sort of minimalist government, and that these are important and substantial differences between the two thinkers. He examines the antitrust case against Microsoft as one example of the importance of these differences.

This article applies Ayn Rand's insights in metaphysics and epistemology to the question What is a corporation? Historically, there have been three main answers: the fictional entity theory, the aggregate theory, and the real entity theory. Drawing principally upon Rand's discussion of the nature of entities in her epistemology workshops, this article proposes a fourth possibility. The preceding theories assume that if a corporation is an entity it must exist as a separate entity. The theory defended in this article challenges (...) this assumption, and considers the implications for the moral and political status of corporations. (shrink)

A commentary on “Fevered Decisions: Race, Ethics, and Clinical Vulnerability in the Malarial Treatment of Neurosyphilis, 1922–1953,” by Matthew Gambino in the July-August 2015 issue.

One of the grounds on which profit maximization has been morally condemned is the claim that businessmen are led by the logic of profit maximization to prioritize profit above all other values, including human life. Thus, while business critics claim that they object to profit maximization, what, at least some of them, in fact object to is profit prioritization. Drawing upon Ayn Rand's distinction between the intrinsic and objective theories of value, this article unpackages profit maximization and profit prioritization, arguing (...) that businessmen can maximize profit without having to prioritize profit above all other values. (shrink)

White, Robert; Moo, Jonathan In an age when many have begun to consider widespread environmental collapse inevitable, the certain hope held out in the Christian gospel rules out both complacency and despair. Scripture's vision of a future for all of creation that is secure in Christ and given by God's grace challenges Christians to a radical environmental ethos that is marked by wisdom, self-sacrifice, perseverance, love and joy.