Researchers working on children's moral understanding maintain that the child's capacity to distinguish morality from convention shows that children regard moral violations as objectively wrong. Education in the moral domain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). However, one traditional way to cast the issue of objectivism is to focus not on conventionality, but on whether moral properties depend on our responses, as with properties like icky and fun. This paper argues that the moral/conventional task is inadequate for assessing whether children regard moral (...) properties as response-dependent. Unfortunately, children's understanding of response-dependent properties has been neglected in recent research. Two experiments are reported showing that children are more likely to treat properties like fun and icky as response-dependent than moral properties like good and bad. Hence, this helps support the claim that children are moral objectivists. (shrink)

Conditional sentences are among the most intriguing and puzzling features of language, and analysis of their meaning and function has important implications for, and uses in, many areas of philosophy. Jonathan Bennett, one of the world's leading experts, distils many years' work and teaching into this Philosophical Guide to Conditionals, the fullest and most authoritative treatment of the subject. An ideal introduction for undergraduates with a philosophical grounding, it also offers a rich source of illumination and stimulation for graduate (...) students and professional philosophers. (shrink)

Professional identity and competent ethical behaviors of nursing students are commonly developed through curricular inclusion of professional nursing values education. Despite the enactment of this approach, nursing students continue to express difficulty in managing ethical conflicts encountered in their practice. This descriptive correlational study explores the relationships between professional nursing values, self-esteem, and ethical decision making among senior baccalaureate nursing students. A convenience sample of 47 senior nursing students from the United States were surveyed for their level of internalized professional (...) nursing values (Revised Professional Nursing Values Scale), level of self-esteem (Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale), and perceived level of confidence in ethical decision making. A significant positive relationship (p < 0.05) was found between nursing students’ professional nursing values and levels of self-esteem. The results of this study can be useful to nursing educators whose efforts are focused on promoting professional identity development and competent ethical behaviors of future nurses. (shrink)

In this study of events and their places in our language and thought, Bennett propounds and defends views about what kind of item an event is, how the language of events works, and about how these two themes are interrelated. He argues that most of the supposedly metaphysical literature is really about the semantics of their names, and that the true metaphysic of events--known by Leibniz and rediscovered by Kim--has not been universally accepted because it has been tarred with (...) the brush of a false semantic theory. (shrink)

Recently much has been made of the grounding relation, and of the idea that it is intimately tied to fundamentality. If A grounds B, then A is more fundamental than B (though not vice versa ), and A is ungrounded if and only if it is fundamental full stop—absolutely fundamental. But here is a puzzle: is grounding itself absolutely fundamental?

Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories.

Challenges, possibilities, and opportunitie for re-founding the tradition of philosophical personalism today.

The book "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience" is an engaging criticism of cognitive neuroscience from the perspective of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of ordinary language. The authors' main claim is that assertions like "the brain sees" and "the left hemisphere thinks" are integral to cognitive neuroscience but that they are meaningless because they commit the mereological fallacy—ascribing to parts of humans, properties that make sense to predicate only of whole humans. The authors claim that this fallacy is at the heart of Cartesian (...) dualism, implying that current cognitive neuroscientists are Cartesian dualists. Against this claim, we argue that the fallacy cannot be committed within Cartesian dualism either, for this doctrine does not allow for an intelligible way of asserting that a soul is part of a human being. Also, the authors' Aristotelian essentialistic outlook is at odds with their Wittgensteinian stance, and we were unconvinced by their case against explanatory reductionism. Finally, although their Wittgensteinian stance is congenial with radical behaviorism, their separation between philosophy and science seems less so because it is based on a view of philosophy as a priori. The authors' emphasis on the a priori, however, does not necessarily commit them to rationalism if it is restricted to conceptual or analytical truths. (shrink)

When healthcare professionals feel constrained from acting in a patient’s best interests, moral distress ensues. The resulting negative sequelae of burnout, poor retention rates, and ultimately poor patient care are well recognized across healthcare providers. Yet an appreciation of how particular disciplines, including physicians, come to be “constrained” in their actions is still lacking. This paper will examine how the application of shared decision-making may contribute to the experience of moral distress for physicians and why such distress may go under-recognized. (...) Appreciation of these dynamics may assist in cross-discipline sensitivity, enabling more constructive dialogue and collaboration. (shrink)

This project evaluates the impact of the National Science Foundation's policy to promote education in the responsible conduct of research. To determine whether this policy resulted in meaningful RCR educational experiences, our study examined the instructional plans developed by individual universities in response to the mandate. Using a sample of 108 U.S. institutions classified as Carnegie “very high research activity”, we analyzed all publicly available NSF RCR training plans in light of the consensus best practices in RCR education that were (...) known at the time the policy was implemented. We found that fewer than half of universities developed plans that incorporated at least some of the best practices. More specifically, only 31% of universities had content and requirements that differed by career stage, only 1% of universities had content and requirements that differed by discipline; and only 18% of universities required some face-to-face engagement from all classes of trainees. Indeed, some schools simply provided hand-outs to their undergraduate students. Most universities had plans that could be satisfied with online programs such as the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative's RCR modules. The NSF policy requires universities to develop RCR training plans, but provides no guidelines or requirements for the format, scope, content, duration, or frequency of the training, and does not hold universities accountable for their training plans. Our study shows that this vaguely worded policy, and lack of accountability, has not produced meaningful educational experiences for most of the undergraduate students, graduate students, and post-doctoral trainees funded by the NSF. (shrink)

What reasons can children have for coming to care about particular things so that they can develop into responsible adults? This question raises issues both about the status of such reasons as "internal" or "external" to the child’s subjective motivational set and about the role of adults in guiding children’s choices. In confronting this latter question, Tamar Schapiro argues that adults can adopt what amounts to a two-pronged strategy: of rewarding or punishing the child and of offering explanations and justifications. (...) Such a strategy, however, ignores the special role loving caregivers can play in a child’s life. By developing an account of such paternalistically loving relationships, I show how the caregiver’s conception of the child’s well-being can come to inform the child’s own sense of herself and so to provide her with essentially interpersonal reasons for caring. Indeed, such reasons can be both normatively and motivationally binding on the child even though she may not yet be in a position to understand them. That such reasons are essentially interpersonal seems to make otiose whether they are "internal" or "external," thereby rendering that distinction less important than we might have thought. (shrink)

This paper argues that hate differs from mere disliking in terms of its “depth,” which is understood via a notion of “othering,” whereby one rejects at least some aspect of the identity of the target of hate, identifying oneself as not being what they are. Fleshing this out reveals important differences between personal hate, which targets a particular individual, and impersonal hate, which targets groups of people. Moreover, impersonal hate requires focusing on the place hate has within particular sorts of (...) communities, enabling a further important distinction between “insider” and “outsider” hate in terms of whether the hater includes members of the targeted group within a particular community or rejects them as “beneath” membership in that community. (shrink)

That which constitutes a ‘good death’, or dying well, has long been of interest to philosophers and clinicians alike. While difficult to define due to its deeply personal nature and dependency on spiritual and cultural beliefs and past experiences, Wilkinson1 has drawn parallels from art and music to consider key ethical components. Few in clinical practice would dispute that a ‘good death’ is one that does not rob the person of a valuable life, is aligned with the preferences of the (...) patient and/or their family, where comfort and solace is provided, distress to family and caregivers is minimised or even that dying is not prolonged. However, what is more contentious is how tensions within the principles of a ‘good death’ should be managed or prioritised. In the context of caring for critically ill babies and children, the tension often takes the form of prolonging the dying process through providing life-sustaining interventions to meet the needs of, and to lessen the longer term distress of, the bereaved family, who must live with the decisions that are made. Though often justifiable, such interventions may result in considerable moral distress within caregivers—particularly, as often the case, when interventions are perceived by some clinicians to be of greater benefit to the family than the patient. Some clinicians may have difficulty …. (shrink)

Offering cash payments to research subjects is a common recruiting method but there is significant debate about whether and in what amount such payments are appropriate. This paper is concerned with exploitation and whether there should be a lower limit on the amount researchers can pay their subjects. When subjects participate in research as a way to make money, fairness requires that researchers pay them a fair wage. This call for the establishment of a lower limit meets resistance in two (...) places: (1) denial that the payments offered by researchers are wages for participation; and (2) concern about undue inducement. This paper critically examines these arguments for and against a lower limit. It shows that the need for a lower limit cannot be avoided by adopting a non-wage payment model and that concerns about undue inducement are unjustified in all trials except those that present greater than minimal risk. This analysis suggests the following compromise position: there should be an unconditional lower limit on payment amounts so that researchers cannot offer less than a fair wage, and when researchers cannot satisfy this limit because fairness requires a problematically large payment, then researchers should offer no payment at all. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION In her "Introduction" to Feeling_and Form Susanne K. Langer writes that nothing in this book is exhaustively treated. ...

The debate around vaccine passports has been polarising and controversial. Although the measure allows businesses to resume in-person operations and enables transitioning out of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some have expressed concerns about liberty violations and discrimination. Understanding the splintered viewpoints can aid businesses in communicating such measures to employees and consumers. We conceptualise the business implementation of vaccine passports as a moral decision rooted in individual values that influence reasoning and emotional reaction. We surveyed support for vaccine (...) passports on a nationally representative sample in the United Kingdom in 2021: April (n = 349), May (n = 328), and July (n = 311). Drawing on the Moral Foundations Theory—binding (loyalty, authority, and sanctity), individualising (fairness and harm), and liberty values—we find that individualising values are a positive predictor and liberty values a negative predictor of support for passports, suggesting adoption hinges on addressing liberty concerns. Longitudinal analysis examining the trajectory of change in support over time finds that individualising foundations positively predict changes in utilitarian and deontological reasoning over time. In contrast, a fall in anger over time predicts increased support towards vaccine passports. Our study can inform business and policy communication strategies of existing vaccine passports, general vaccine mandates, and similar measures in future pandemics. (shrink)

Global supply chains often distribute value inequitably among the Global North and South. This perpetuates poverty and contributes to indecent work in raw material-producing countries, thus creating challenges to sustainable development. For decades, corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, and sustainable business model innovations have aimed to distribute value more equitably across global value chains, for instance via fair trade, alternative trade, and direct trade. This article examines a novel and hitherto understudied innovation for equitable value distribution in global supply chains: (...) “value chain profit sharing.” We draw on interview and archival data from two cases of social entrepreneurs working in the coffee sector to develop a generalized model. One of the model's key features is that the entrepreneur pays suppliers in multiple installments that reflect market conditions (as opposed to a single lump sum based on prediction). We show how this can increase value creation, appropriation, and equitable distribution. Although our research suggests that this model may be highly contingent on leaders' skills, resources, sense of place, and accountability to suppliers, we find no evidence that its applications are limited to specific countries or sectors. Our research further extends extant theory by showing how “value chain profit sharing” may relieve some of the tensions often associated with sustainable business models, including distributing value to suppliers while maintaining financial solvency; creating value while pursuing a social mission; providing benefits to suppliers without curtailing their market opportunities; responding to market conditions while maintaining commitments to suppliers; and scaling without diluting benefits. It thereby contributes to the literatures on sustainable business model innovations, equitable value distribution in global supply chains, novel application of revenue-sharing contracts, and innovative methods of profit sharing. It furthermore provides actionable guidance for social entrepreneurs, corporate social responsibility practitioners, and supplier cooperatives aiming to achieve more equitable value distribution and sustainable supply chains. (shrink)

Offering cash payments to research subjects is a common recruiting method, but this practice continues to be controversial because of its potential to compromise the protection of human subjects. Some critics question whether researchers should be allowed to offer money at all, citing concerns about commodification of the research subject, invalidation of study results, and increased risks to subjects. Other critics are comfortable with the idea of monetary payments but question how much researchers can pay their subjects, citing concerns about (...) undue inducement, crowding out, and monetary exploitation. Focusing only on the amount researchers can pay their subjects, this paper argues that the federal regulations and guidelines should implement a standard payment formula. It argues for a wage payment model, and critically examines three candidates for a base wage: the nonfarm production wage, the FLSA minimum wage, and a living wage. (shrink)

These diary entries from John and Elizabeth Bennett cover the few months before Gurdjieff's death in Paris on October29, 1949. Twice daily the group would go through a series of rituals, the most significant of which was known as "the toast of the idiots". This "science of idiotism" portrayed the human situation and the hazards of attaining liberation.

Foreword to new edition / George Bennett -- Original foreword / Elizabeth Bennett -- The diaries July 23, 1949-November 7,1949 -- Additional entries November 8-22, 1949.

Volume 14 of the Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Series.

In this paper I consider whether traditional behaviors of animals, like traditions of humans, are transmitted by imitation learning. Review of the literature on problem solving by captive primates, and detailed consideration of two widely cited instances of purported learning by imitation and of culture in free-living primates (sweet-potato washing by Japanese macaques and termite fishing by chimpanzees), suggests that nonhuman primates do not learn to solve problems by imitation. It may, therefore, be misleading to treat animal traditions and human (...) culture as homologous (rather than analogous) and to refer to animal traditions as cultural. (shrink)

Lighten up about mathematics! Have fun. If you read this book, you will have to endure bad math puns and jokes and out-of-date pop culture references. You'll learn some really cool mathematics to boot. In the process, you will immerse yourself in living, thinking, and breathing logical reasoning. We like to call this proofs, which to some is a bogey word, but to us it is a boogie word. You will learn how to solve problems, real and imagined. After all, (...) math is a game where, although the rules are pretty much set, we are left to our imaginations to create. Think of this book as blueprints, but you are the architect of what structures you want to build. Make sure you lay a good foundation, for otherwise your buildings might fall down. To help you through this, we guide you to think and plan carefully. Our playground consists of basic math, with a loving emphasis on number theory. We will encounter the known and the unknown. Ancient and modern inquirers left us with elementary-sounding mathematical puzzles that are unsolved to this day. You will learn induction, logic, set theory, arithmetic, and algebra, and you may one day solve one of these puzzles. (shrink)

Moral distress is prevalent within the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and can negatively affect clinicians. Studies have evaluated the causes of moral distress and interventions to mitigate it...

All research tools have limitations. Not all tools will be suited to every purpose. Understanding the limitations and accurately interpreting the output from any tool is essential to conducting mea...

How can we motivate ourselves to do what we think we ought? How can we deliberate about personal values and priorities? Bennett Helm argues that standard philosophical answers to these questions presuppose a sharp distinction between cognition and conation that undermines an adequate understanding of values and their connection to motivation and deliberation. Rejecting this distinction, Helm argues that emotions are fundamental to any account of value and motivation, and he develops a detailed alternative theory both of emotions, desires (...) and evaluative judgements and of their rational interconnections. The result is an innovative theory of practical rationality and of how we can control not only what we do but also what we value and who we are as persons. (shrink)

There is now a general consensus amongst philosophers in the values in science literature that values necessarily play a role in core areas of scientific inquiry. We argue that attention should now be turned from debating the value-free ideal to delineating legitimate from illegitimate influences of values in science, a project we dub “The New Demarcation Problem.” First, we review past attempts to demarcate the uses of values and propose a categorization of the strategies by where they seek to draw (...) legitimacy from. Next, we propose a set of desiderata for what we take to be a satisfactory solution and present a case study where conflicting sets of values clearly impinge on science, but where the legitimacy of their influence is ambiguous. We use these desiderata and the case study to illustrate what we take to be the strengths and weaknesses of current strategies. To be clear, our goal is not to answer the question we pose, but to articulate a framework within which a solution can be judged. (shrink)

A category of enhancement technologies target neural systems as a means of improving physical performance. The author calls these as neurophysical enhancements. This chapter demonstrates why neurophysical enhancements deserve an ethical assessment which is independent of those relating to physical and cognitive enhancements. It focuses almost exclusively on the use of neurophysical enhancements in the sporting arena, where they are for the most part prohibited. World Anti‐Doping Agency (WADA) does permit some drugs which are effective enhancements. Caffeine is permitted on (...) the rationale that it is ineffective at unsafe doses (and hence safe at an effective dose). It makes little sense to ban every performance enhancer from sporting competition, no matter what it is used for, and what the risks are, since sport is essentially a project of performance enhancement. If every form of enhancement is to be considered unethical, competitive sport must be abandoned. (shrink)

A brief introduction to and commentary on the life of the Chinese philosopher Laozi is followed by an interpretative text of his teachings.

One argument which is frequently levelled against the enhancement of human biology is that we do not understand the evolved function of our bodies well enough to meddle in our biology without producing unintended and potentially catastrophic effects. In particular, this argument is levelled against attempts to slow or eliminate the processes of human ageing, or ‘senescence’, which cause us to grow decrepit before we die. In this article, I claim that even if this argument could usefully be applied against (...) attempts to enhance other human traits, it cannot be valid in the case of attempts to enhance the various processes that constitute senescence. I begin by reviewing the biology of ageing to show how it consists of a number of unrelated traits. Then, following the arguments of a number of evolutionary biologists, I explain that every one of these traits is a product of evolutionary ‘neglect’ rather than ‘intent’. Finally, I consider the strongest version of the argument against enhancing senescence, which acknowledges these facts about the evolution of ageing but insists that we have nevertheless have prudential reasons to avoid enhancement wherever there is some uncertainty about the genetics or evolutionary function of a trait. I provide two reasons for rejecting this version of the argument as well, even in the case of human senescence, where such uncertainty is currently significant. (shrink)