The responses displayed by an injured or diseased nervous system are complex. Some of the responses may effect a functional reorganization of the affected neural circuitry. Strategies aimed at the restoration of function, whether or not these involve transplantation, need to recognize the innate reactive capacity of the nervous system to damage. More successful strategies will probably incorporate, rather than ignore, the adaptive responses of the compromised neural systems.

Biology, during the last decade in particular, is making substantial headway into our social theories of business and behavior. While the social sciences rush to keep up with the advancement of knowledge, we highlight the need for an ethics discussion to also keep pace. Although the implications to theory are important, our focus is on how new knowledge has the capacity to alter the formulation and practice of business policy, which we believe is potentially profound. Furthermore, the ethicality of a (...) set of issues can depend heavily on one’s perspective, and differing views may not always be compatible. With this in mind, we discuss the ways in which one area of emerging biological knowledge—behavioral genetics—invites a rethinking of the nuances of four long-standing topic areas of business ethics surrounding personnel selection; and we do so from two perspectives—that of the employer and of the job seeker. The four ethical topics are the static nature of genetic information that is out of an individual’s control, faking and lying during selection processes, privacy, and stigmatization of minority groups. (shrink)

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in hiring entails vast ethical challenges. As such, using an ethical lens to study this phenomenon is to better understand whether and how AI matters in hiring. In this paper, we examine whether ethical perceptions of using AI in the hiring process influence individuals’ trust in the organizations that use it. Building on the organizational trust model and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, we explore whether ethical perceptions are shaped by (...) individual differences in performance expectancy and social influence and how they, in turn, impact organizational trust. We collected primary data from over 300 individuals who were either active job seekers or who had recent hiring experience to capture perceptions across the full range of hiring methods. Our findings indicate that performance expectancy, but not social influence, impacts the ethical perceptions of AI in hiring, which in turn influence organizational trust. Additional analyses indicate that these findings vary depending on the type of hiring methods AI is used for, as well as on whether participants are job seekers or individuals with hiring experience. Our study offers theoretical and practical implications for ethics in HRM and informs policy implementation about when and how to use AI in hiring methods, especially as it pertains to acting ethically and trustworthily. (shrink)

On February 3, 2010, a “Letter of Concern from Bioethicists,” organized by fetaldex.org, was sent to report suspected violations of the ethics of human subjects research in the off-label use of dexamethasone during pregnancy by Dr. Maria New. Copies of this letter were submitted to the FDA Office of Pediatric Therapeutics, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office for Human Research Protections, and three universities where Dr. New has held or holds appointments. We provide a critical appraisal of (...) the Letter of Concern and show that it makes false claims, misrepresents scientific publications and websites, fails to meet standards of evidence-based reasoning, makes undocumented claims, treats as settled matters what are, instead, ongoing controversies, offers “mere opinion” as a substitute for argument, and makes contradictory claims. The Letter of Concern is a case study in unethical transgressive bioethics. We call on fetaldex.org to withdraw the letter and for co-signatories to withdraw their approval of it. (shrink)

Prior research on engineering students’ understandings of ethics and social responsibility has produced mixed and sometimes conflicting results. Seeking greater clarity in this area of investigation, we conducted an exploratory, longitudinal study at four universities in the United States to better understand how engineering undergraduate students perceive ethics and social responsibility and how those perceptions change over time. Undergraduate engineering students at four U.S. universities were surveyed three times: during their 1st (Fall 2015), 5th (Fall 2017), and 8th semesters (Spring (...) 2019). The students who completed all three surveys (_n_ = 226) comprise the sample that was analyzed in this paper for changes in their scores on five instruments: Fundamentals of Engineering/Situational Judgment, Moral Disengagement, ABET Engineering Work and Practice Considerations, Macroethics, and Political and Social Involvement Scale. We found that students modestly increased their knowledge of ethics and ability to apply that knowledge in situations calling for them to exercise judgment. In addition, they consistently indicated that health and safety considerations in engineering were of highest importance. They also showed steady levels of social consciousness over time, in contrast to other studies which detected a culture of increasing disengagement in engineering students throughout the four years of their undergraduate studies. (shrink)

On February 3, 2010, a “Letter of Concern from Bioethicists,” organized by fetaldex.org, was sent to report suspected violations of the ethics of human subjects research in the off-label use of dexamethasone during pregnancy by Dr. Maria New. Copies of this letter were submitted to the FDA Office of Pediatric Therapeutics, the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Human Research Protections, and three universities where Dr. New has held or holds appointments. We provide a critical appraisal of the (...) Letter of Concern and show that it makes false claims, misrepresents scientific publications and websites, fails to meet standards of evidence-based reasoning, makes undocumented claims, treats as settled matters what are, instead, ongoing controversies, offers “mere opinion” as a substitute for argument, and makes contradictory claims. The Letter of Concern is a case study in unethical transgressive bioethics. We call on fetaldex.org to withdraw the letter and for co-signatories to withdraw their approval of it. (shrink)

Planned home birth has been considered by some to be consistent with professional responsibility in patient care. This article critically assesses the ethical and scientific justification for this view and shows it to be unjustified. We critically assess recent statements by professional associations of obstetricians, one that sanctions and one that endorses planned home birth. We base our critical appraisal on the professional responsibility model of obstetric ethics, which is based on the ethical concept of medicine from the Scottish and (...) English Enlightenments of the 18th century. Our critical assessment supports the following conclusions. Because of its significantly increased, preventable perinatal risks, planned home birth in the United States is not clinically or ethically benign. Attending planned home birth, no matter one’s training or experience, is not acting in a professional capacity, because this role preventably results in clinically unnecessary and therefore clinically unacceptable perinatal risk. It is therefore not consistent with the ethical concept of medicine as a profession for any attendant to planned home birth to represent himself or herself as a “professional.” Obstetric healthcare associations should neither sanction nor endorse planned home birth. Instead, these associations should recommend against planned home birth. Obstetric healthcare professionals should respond to expressions of interest in planned home birth by pregnant women by informing them that it incurs significantly increased, preventable perinatal risks, by recommending strongly against planned home birth, and by recommending strongly for planned hospital birth. Obstetric healthcare professionals should routinely provide excellent obstetric care to all women transferred to the hospital from a planned home birth. The professional responsibility model of obstetric ethics requires obstetricians to address and remedy legitimate dissatisfaction with some hospital settings and address patients’ concerns about excessive interventions. Creating a sustained culture of comprehensive safety, which cannot be achieved in planned home birth, informed by compassionate and respectful treatment of pregnant women, should be a primary focus of professional obstetric responsibility. (shrink)

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

The numerical representations of measurement, geometry and kinematics are here subsumed under a general theory of representation. The standard theories of meaningfulness of representational propositions in these three areas are shown to be special cases of two theories of meaningfulness for arbitrary representational propositions: the theories based on unstructured and on structured representation respectively. The foundations of the standard theories of meaningfulness are critically analyzed and two basic assumptions are isolated which do not seem to have received adequate justification: the (...) assumption that a proposition invariant under the appropriate group is therefore meaningful, and the assumption that representations should be unique up to a transformation of the appropriate group. A general theory of representational meaningfulness is offered, based on a semantic and syntactic analysis of representational propositions. Two neglected features of representational propositions are formalized and made use of: (a) that such propositions are induced by more general propositions defined for other structures than the one being represented, and (b) that the true purpose of representation is the application of the theory of the representing system to the represented system. On the basis of these developments, justifications are offered for the two problematic assumptions made by the existing theories. (shrink)

Leadership and the Unmasking of Authenticity presents a philosophic treatment of the core concept of authentic leadership theory, with a view toward illuminating how authors in the history of philosophy have understood authenticity as an ideal for humanity. Such an approach requires a broader view of the historical origins of authenticity and the examination of related ideas such as self-knowledge and deception. The chapters of this volume illuminate the conflict between the contemporary understanding of authenticity and traditional philosophy by revisiting (...) the ideas of thinkers who express self-knowledge as a cornerstone of their philosophy. Tracing the origins of our contemporary concern for authenticity to the writings of 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this book explores the key thinkers writing in the wake of Rousseau's emphasis on sincerity, namely Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, to show that their acceptance of authenticity as an ideal for humanity was ambiguous at best. This volume also covers representative authors in the earlier history of philosophy, such as Plato, Niccolò Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, and John Locke. The result is a keen, in-depth analysis of works of philosophy and political philosophy that broach questions of authenticity, self-knowledge, and deception. This critical contribution to authentic leadership theory and the theory of authenticity will be a key resource for both undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of leadership studies, political science and philosophy. Contributors include: J.C. Byham, B.E. Cusher, E.A. Dolgoy, J. Fortier, N.W. Harter, M.A. Menaldo, H. Pedersen, J.M. Warner. (shrink)

More organizations use AI in the hiring process than ever before, yet the perceived ethicality of such processes seems to be mixed. With such variation in our views of AI in hiring, we need to understand how these perceptions impact the organizations that use it. In two studies, we investigate how ethical perceptions of using AI in hiring are related to perceptions of organizational attractiveness and innovativeness. Our findings indicate that ethical perceptions of using AI in hiring are positively related (...) to perceptions of organizational attractiveness, both directly and indirectly via perceptions of organizational innovativeness, with variations depending on the type of hiring method used. For instance, we find that individuals who consider it ethical for organizations to use AI in ways often considered to be intrusive to privacy, such as analyzing social media content for traits and characteristics, view such organizations as both more innovative and attractive. Our findings trigger a timely discussion about the critical role of ethical perceptions of AI in hiring on organizational attractiveness and innovativeness. (shrink)

Understanding what makes governance 'good' or 'bad' has been impeded by construct ambiguity. Contemporary governance research has struggled to define 'governance' and related constructs such as 'ownership', 'agency', and 'management' in a way that clearly separates and distinguishes them. Often, the line between governance and management is so blurred that it is impossible to say what is good or bad 'governance' versus 'management'. Here we provide a systematic classification of key governance concepts in terms of their distinct economic functions. 'Governance', (...) for instance, is the economic function of behavioural constraint. This allows us to state what 'good' governance is and how it might be assessed. We conclude that goodness of governance is idiosyncratic to each organisation, or even to each owner. Thus, while objective measures of good governance are possible, broadly utilised criteria for measuring governance are unlikely to capture whether governance is actually good or bad. (shrink)

Relationist theories of space or space-time based on embedding of a physical relational system A into a corresponding geometrical system B raise problems associated with the degree of uniqueness of the embedding. Such uniqueness problems are familiar in the representational theory of measurement (RTM), and are dealt with by imposing a condition of uniqueness of embeddings up to composition with an "admissible transformation" of the space B. Friedman (1983) presents an alternative treatment of the uniqueness problem for embedding relationist theories, (...) developed independently of RTM. Friedman's approach differs from that of RTM in securing uniqueness by adding new primitives to the physical system A in contrast to the RTM approach which adds new axioms. Friedman's proposal has recently been developed and defended by Catton and Solomon (1988). This method of solving the uniqueness problem is here argued to be substantially inferior to the RTM method, both in practice and in principle. In practice we find that in none of the concrete examples offered to illustrate the method is the uniqueness problem actually solved in general. Moreover we find that in the most interesting case (addition to the system A of a finite number of relations of finite degree) the method is in principle incapable of success for mathematical reasons. In addition to these technical difficulties there are compelling methodological reasons for preferring the RTM method to the method of adding primitives. (shrink)

Political liberalism has increasingly come under fire from both the right and the left, in politics as well as in philosophy. In this new study, G.B. Madison offers a systematic rebuttal to these contemporary critics, attempting to demonstrate that the basic principles of classical liberal philosophy are not only internally valid and coherent but also directly relevant to the problems faced by society in the post-industrial age. Building on the theory of Frank H. Knight and other liberal tinkers, Madison outlines (...) the postmodern theory of reason that is presupposed within classical liberal theory and makes the case that as a political philosophy liberalism can be justified entirely within its own terms, without reference to arbitrary or absolute values. (shrink)

Comments that B. D. Slife , M. Gergen , R. N. Williams , and M. S. Richardson all seem to suggest that the contextless nature of the traditional conception of free will is problematic. Although each author attempts to contextualize this traditional conception, many of their explanations reveal that the underlying problem remains. It is suggested that a radically new assumption of time, such as Heidegger's temporality, is necessary. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

To read Working through Derrida is to plunge into the midst of a lively debate on the place of Jacques Derrida and the thought associated with him in today's literary and philosophical consciousness. With essays by major philosophers such as Richard Rorty, John R. Searle, and John D. Caputo, the volume focuses on the ethical, legal, and political dimensions of Derrida's production and on his more recent concerns. It addresses the key themes of law and justice, the law of exemplarity, (...) phenomenological critique, semiology, ethics and the other, Rorty on Derrida, and Habermas vs. Derrida. Gary B. Madison's critical introduction caps this major appraisal of Derrida and deconstruction. (shrink)

S. Geniusas: Although Gadamer’s hermeneutics has suffered attacks from a number of philosophical perspectives, the profusion of criticisms seldom constitutes new challenges and for the most part is a reiteration of two seemingly opposite claims. On the one hand, we often hear that Gadamer’s hermeneutics is merely a disguised brand of the “philosophy of the subject” which under the pretext of openness reduces the Other to the self. On the other hand, it is just as often claimed that Gadamer’s writings (...) fall into the category of the “hermeneutics of the fundamental questions” and therefore they cannot account for the selfhood of the self. Taking as its focus the theme of the oneness of the hermeneutical horizon(s), this paper argues that this theme carries no hegemonic or essentialist connotations. Rather, a careful analysis, which accentuates the negative and the dialectical elements of the oneness of horizons and the fact that this theme is for Gadamer both a presupposition and an achievement, reveals the shortcomings of both critiques. In the final analysis, the oneness of the horizon(s) is the dialogue that we ourselves are. Special attention is granted to Richard Kearney’s critique of Gadamer, to Gadamer’s critique of the incommensurabilist stance, and to the relevance of Gadamer’s hermeneutics in the context of today’s socio-political concerns. G. B. Madison: This essay is a companion piece to S. Geniusas’ “On the Oneness of the Hermeneutical Horizon(s)” and seeks to correct some of the serious misunderstandings of the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer that one often encounters in the literature. It seeks above all to show how Gadamer’s commitment to philosophical universalism is ideally suited to enabling philosophy to confront the ethical challenges posed by the phenomenon of globalization. (shrink)

An account of analogical characterization is developed in which the following things are claimed.(1) Analogical predications are irreflexive, asymmetrical, atransitive and non-inversive. (2) Analogies A and B share role-similarity descriptions sufficiently abstract to overcome the differences between A and B. Analogies pivot on the point of limited similarity and substantial, even radical, difference. (3) The semantical theory for sentences making analogical attributions requires a distinction between (sentential) meaning as truth conditions and (sentential) meaning as a functional compound of the meanings (...) of contained lexical items. Analogical sentences possess both kinds of meaning. They are true via their truth conditions and would be false via their lexical meanings. The distinctive feature of the lexical meaning of analogical sentences is the tightness of constraints on closure. The implications of analogical sentences, given their lexical meanings, though there, aren't drawn. It is in this sense that analogies are made and not found. (shrink)

Bringing together Deleuze, Blanchot, and Foucault, this book provides a detailed and original exploration of the ideas that influenced Deleuze's thought leading up to and throughout his cinema volumes and, as a result, proposes a new definition of art. Examining Blanchot's suggestion that art and dream are "outside" of power, as imagination has neither reality nor truth, and Foucault's theory that power forms knowledge by valuing life, Eugene Brent Young relates these to both Deleuze's philosophy of time and his (...) work with Guattari on art. In doing so, he uses case studies from literature and popular film, including Kafka's Castle, Villeneuve's Arrival, and Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Providing important new insights for those working in literary and cinematic studies, this book advances a new definition of art as that which reverses the realities and truths of power to express obscure ideas and values beyond both our exterior and interior worlds. (shrink)

Madison, G. B. Avant-propos.--Gadamer, H.-G. La mort comme question.--Lévinas, E. L'être et l'autre.--Dufrenne, M. L'esthétique de Paul Valéry.--Eliade, M. Orphée et l'orphisme.--Décarie, V. Vertu totale, vertu parfaite et kalokagathie dans l'Éthique à Eudème.--Strasser, S. Réflexions sur la proposition phénoménologique.--Peursen, C. van. L'existence fait-elle sens?--Edie, J. E. La pertinence actuelle de la conception husserlienne de l'idéalité du langage.--Taylor, C. Force et sens, les deux dimensions irréductibles d'une science de l'homme.--Henry, M. Phénoménologie de la conscience, phénoménologie de la vie.--Philibert, M. Marx, la (...) machine et la manufacture.--Dumas, A. Savoir objectif, croyance projective, foi interpellée.--Maqdici, A. L'ontologie kérygmatique de Paul Ricœur, approche arabe.--Kemp, P. Le rôle du mythe et de la poésie dans l'orientation sociale. (shrink)

In light of rapid globalization, there has been an increase in U.S. psychologists conducting international cross-cultural research. Such researchers face unique ethical dilemmas. Although the American Psychological Association has its own Code of Ethics with guidelines regarding research, these guidelines do not specifically address international and cross-cultural research. The purposes of this article are to (a) provide a review of current ethical guidelines for research on human subjects, (b) provide a review of major ethical challenges and dilemmas in conducting cross-cultural (...) research, (c) highlight several existing frameworks that maybe useful for increasing cross-cultural understanding of these ethical challenges for U.S. psychologists, and (d) issue a call to the American Psychological Association to begin to assess and evaluate the nature and extent of ethical problems in conducting cross-cultural research among its members. (shrink)

Why has fiction been so successful over time? We make the case that fiction may have properties that enhance both individual and group-level fitness by (a) allowing risk-free simulation of important scenarios, (b) effectively transmitting solutions to common problems, and (c) enhancing group cohesion through shared consumption of fictive worlds.

This paper is organised in three interconnected parts. First, contemporary political economic approaches to understanding the structure of the global economic system are outlined and synthesised. Specifically, it is suggested that the current structural configuration of the globe is a transitional phase between the spatially-bounded configuration hypothesised by world-system theory and the configuration hypothesised by globalisation theorists. Second, the contemporary problem of environmental degradation is situated in a global structural context. Third, an outline and critique of Ulrich Beck 's theory (...) of the ' Risk Society ' is presented to illustrate the increasing inadequacy of nation-state-centric theories in explaining the dynamic linkage between global capitalism and local environmental degradation. (shrink)

In this book, David B. Wong defends an ambitious and important new version of moral relativism. He does not espouse the type of relativism that says anything goes, but he does start with a relativist stance against alternative theories such that there need not be only one universal truth. Wong proposes that there can be a plurality of true moralities existing across different traditions and cultures, all with one core human question as to how we can all live together.