Previous research indicates that the depletion of self-regulatory resources can promote unethical behavior that benefits the self. Extending this literature, we focus on norm-transgressing behavior that is intended to primarily benefit others. In particular, we predicted a differing effect of self-regulatory resource depletion on dishonesty that benefits one’s group, depending on the degree of identification with the group. Following a dual process approach, we argue that if identification with the group is strong, then people may have an automatic inclination to (...) benefit their group even perhaps by lying. In contrast, if identification with the group is weak, then the default, uncontrolled impulse may be to tell the truth. Accordingly, identification with the social group should interact with self-regulatory resource depletion in predicting group-benefiting dishonesty. Focusing on pro-organizational dishonesty, we tested our hypotheses in one field study with 1269 employees and in one experimental study with 71 university students. As predicted, the results revealed a highly significant interaction of organizational identification and self-control strength: Depletion of self-regulatory resources increased the level of pro-organizational dishonesty among those who identify highly with the organization, but decreased the level of such behavior among those who identify less. (shrink)

Due to the pressing environmental and social issues facing the global economic system, the role of organizations in promoting socially responsible behavior among employees warrants attention in research and practice. It has been suggested that the concept of socio-moral climate might be particularly useful for understanding how participative organizational structures and processes shape employees’ prosocial behaviors. While SMC has been shown to be positively related to employees’ prosocial behaviors within the work context, little is known about the potential spillover effects (...) of SMC. The present study aims to address this gap by investigating how and why SMC is related to employees’ socially responsible purchase intention. Drawing on the relational job design framework, we argue that employees’ perceptions of their social impact may explain why SMC is positively related to responsible purchase intentions. We collected data from 492 employees working in various industries at two measurement points with a time lag of 12 months. Hypotheses were tested using path analysis, in which we controlled for the temporal stability of the study variables. The results showed that SMC was positively related to perceived social impact and socially responsible purchase intention and that perceived social impact was positively related to socially responsible purchase intention. In addition, we found a significant indirect relationship between SMC and socially responsible purchase intention through perceived social impact. The findings provide initial support for the spillover of employees’ work-related experiences onto their responsible purchase intentions within the nonwork domain. This study contributes to the literature by extending the traditional focus of SMC research on the development of moral reasoning skills to suggest that perceived social impact is an important mechanism underlying the relationship between SMC and prosocial behaviors. In terms of practical implications, this study suggests that organizational interventions designed to increase SMC may enhance employees’ perceptions of their social impact. (shrink)

Inspired by Voltaire's advice that a text needs to be concise to have real influence, this anthology contains fiery extracts by forty eighteenth-century authors, from the most famous philosophers of the age to those whose brilliant writings are less well-known. These passages are immensely diverse in style and topic, but all have in common a passionate commitment to equality, freedom, and tolerance. Each text resonates powerfully with the issues our world faces today. Tolerance was first published by the Société française (...) d'étude du dix-huitième siècle (the French Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations in January 2015 as an act of solidarity and as a response to the surge of interest in Enlightenment values. With the support of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, it has now been translated by over 100 students and tutors of French at Oxford University."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) is considered a philosopher of the Tradition, both in the sense that his work is rooted in the political, artistic, religious, and philosophical traditions of European culture and in the sense that he takes up the notion of tradition as an object of philosophical investigation. This collection examines Hegel's philosophy as it bears on the meaning and relevance of tradition - historical, legal, aesthetic, religious, and philosophical. The thirteen original essays draw upon and celebrate the (...) work of H.S. Harris, who is considered by many to be the most influential interpreter of Hegel in the English-speaking world. The collection as a whole examines Hegel's rich and nuanced relation to his own traditions, including his creative reworking of the legacies of Greece, Rome, Christianity, the Middle Ages, early modernity, and his immediate predecessors. It also shows how Hegel's thought has direct relevance for us today as we seek to understand ourselves in relation to our inherited traditions. The volume concludes with an afterword by H.S. Harris and a comprehensive bibliography of Harris's published works. This important anthology represents the first rigorous and systematic effort to apply Harris's seminal and innovative style of Hegel scholarship to a wide variety of philosophical and historical issues. It functions both as a study of Hegel's philosophy and as a commentary on Harris's vast contribution to Hegel scholarship. (shrink)

The potential public and individual health consequences of unequal access to digital technologies have been recognized in the United States for at least a decade. Unequal access to the Internet and related technologies has been characterized as a ; naturalistic trends toward broader access across the population and targeted intervention to increase access are described as progress toward The problem of the digital divide has been characterized as one of healthcare justice. The idea that everyone should have access to the (...) telecommunications gridis a central tenet of the U.S. universal service policy. With the diffusion of broadband technologies, the issue of digital access includes not only access to the Internet but also access to new levels of service, such as broadband, to support a wide range of emerging applications. (shrink)

Kühn, U. Thomas von Aquin und die evangelische Theologie.--Rahner, K. Über die Unbegreiflichkeit Gottes bei Thomas von Aquin.--Pieper, J. Kreatürlichkeit.--Kluxen, W. Metaphysik und praktische Vernunft.--Oeing-Hanhoff, L. Gotteserkenntnis im Licht der Vernunft und des Glaubens nach Thomas von Aquin.--Zimmermann, A. Der Begriff der Freiheit nach Thomas von Aquin.--Baur, J. Fragen eines evangelischen Theologen an Thomas von Aquin.

Engineers encounter difficult ethical problems in their practice and in research. In many ways, these problems are like design problems: they are complex, often ill-defined; resolving them involves an iterative process of analysis and synthesis; and there can be more than one acceptable solution. This book offers a real-world, problem-centered approach to engineering ethics, using a rich collection of open-ended scenarios and case studies to develop skill in recognizing and addressing ethical issues.

Since its origin bioethics has been a specialized, academic discipline, focussing on moral issues, using a vast set of globalized principles and rational techniques to evaluate and guide healthcare practices. With the emergence of a plural society, the loss of faith in experts and authorities and the decline of overarching grand narratives and shared moralities, a new approach to bioethics is needed. This approach implies a shift from an external critique of practices towards embedded ethics and interactive practice improvement, and (...) from a legal defence of rights towards fostering interdependent practices of responsibility. This article describes these transitions within bioethics in relation to the broader societal and cultural dynamics within Western societies, and traces the implications for the methodologies and changing roles of the bioethicist. The bioethicist we foresee is not just a clever expert but also a relationally sensitive person who engages stakeholders in reciprocal dialogues about their practice of responsibility and helps to integrate various sorts of knowledge (embodied, experiential, visual, and cognitive-scientific). In order to illustrate this new approach, we present a case study. It concerns a project focusing on an innovation in elderly care, based on the participation of various stakeholders, especially older people themselves. (shrink)

Caroline New is an energetic activist who has interpolated critical realist ideas into the front-line of political activism. In this wide-ranging interview, she begins by reflecting on her life and how she became a realist and her account is illustrated with personal anecdotes recalling memories of well-known philosophers and activists from the time. She discusses how her position set her apart from other feminists and she examines the interacting threads of longstanding debates on the political left, as well as longstanding (...) debates within critical realist circles, such as the relative importance of quantitative methods in social research and the scope for agency as a source of intentional change. Finally she brings some of her ideas to bear on contemporary issues. This engaging interview notably provides some of the social context in which critical realism developed, while also pointing towards its future potential. (shrink)

Caroline New is an energetic activist who has interpolated critical realist ideas into the front-line of political activism. In this wide-ranging interview, she begins by reflecting on her life and how she became a realist and her account is illustrated with personal anecdotes recalling memories of well-known philosophers and activists from the time. She discusses how her position set her apart from other feminists and she examines the interacting threads of longstanding debates on the political left, as well as longstanding (...) debates within critical realist circles, such as the relative importance of quantitative methods in social research and the scope for agency as a source of intentional change. Finally she brings some of her ideas to bear on contemporary issues. This engaging interview notably provides some of the social context in which critical realism developed, while also pointing towards its future potential. (shrink)

A cause is proportional to its effect when, roughly speaking, it is at the right level of detail. There is a lively debate about whether proportionality is a necessary condition for causation. One of the main arguments against a proportionality constraint on causation is that many ordinary and seemingly perfectly acceptable causal claims cite causes that are not proportional to their effects. In this paper, I suggest that proponents of a proportionality constraint can respond to this objection by developing an (...) idea that is present in Yablo’s early work on proportionality, but which has strangely been ignored by both Yablo and others in the subsequent debate. My suggestion is that proportionality—and, indeed, causation itself—is relative to a domain of events. At the metaphysical level, this means that the causal relation has an extra relatum—namely, a domain of events. At the level of language, it introduces a new way in which causal claims are context-sensitive: what is expressed by a causal claim depends on the contextually relevant domain of events. As I argue, this suggestion allows us to accommodate the truth of ordinary causal claims while extending the explanatory benefits of a proportionality constraint. (shrink)

Research in the U. S. on fair trade consumption is sparse. Therefore, little is known as to what motivates U. S. consumers to buy fair trade products. This study sought to determine which values are salient to American fair trade consumption. The data were gathered via a Web-based version of the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) and were gleaned from actual consumers who purchase fair trade products from a range of Internet-based fair trade retailers. This study established that indeed there are (...) significant interactions between personal values and fair trade consumption and that demographics proved to be useless in creating a profile of the American fair trade consumer. (shrink)

In the first edition of The Gay Science (GS), Nietzsche proposes that we treat knowledge as unconditionally valuable and life as a tragic quest for truth. In the second edition of GS, he seems to retract this proposal, suggesting that we substitute “incipit parodia” for “incipit tragœdia.” But Nietzsche does not say what he means by “parody,” or what role he believes it should play in our evaluative lives. This article proposes that by introducing parody into GS, Nietzsche intends not (...) only to correct the original text by mocking his earlier treatment of science as tragic, but also to designate parody as a basis for new tasks, duties, and values beyond what science can offer. This article speculates that parodic value creation might consist in the imitation of behaviors and practices associated with preexisting values without the reproduction of the beliefs and feelings corresponding to those practices. (shrink)

This paper builds on existing research investigating CSR and ethical consumption within luxury contexts, and makes several contributions to the literature. First, it addresses existing knowledge gaps by exploring the ways in which consumers perform ethical luxury purchases of fine jewellery through interpretive research. Second, the paper is the first to examine such issues of consumer ethics by extending the application of theories of practice to a luxury product context, and by building on Magaudda’s :15–36, 2011) circuit of practice framework. (...) This is significant in that, to date, consumer research using practice theories has focused mainly on routine and habitual practices. Our findings and discussion provide an analysis of intentional and less intentional ethical consumer performances within the interconnected nexus of activities of consumers’ fine jewellery consumption practice, where meanings, understandings and intelligibility of social phenomena are worked through the various activities that shape such a practice. Finally, the paper concludes with significant managerial and policy-related implications, as our extended circuit of practice analysis conveys that if ethics and sustainability dimensions are to be embedded in fine jewellery consumption practice, they must first be made an intrinsic part of the nexus of the social and material environment of trading and consumption places. (shrink)

Climate change and decarbonization raise complex justice questions that researchers and policymakers must address. The distributions of greenhouse gas emissions rights and mitigation efforts have dominated justice discourses within scenario research, an integrative element of the IPCC. However, the space of justice considerations is much larger. At present, there is no consistent approach to comprehensively incorporate and examine justice considerations. Here we propose a conceptual framework grounded in philosophical theory for this purpose. We apply this framework to climate mitigation scenarios (...) literature as proof of concept, enabling a more holistic and multidimensional investigation of justice. We identify areas of future research, including new metrics of service provisioning essential for human well-being. [Can be freely read by clicking the ReadCube link below.]. (shrink)

Psychologists say a measure has construct validity when it, in fact, measures the construct it is intended to measure. Construct validity is both an important notion in psychological research methods and the source of much confusion and debate among psychologists. I argue that this confusion arises, in part, because of a failure to distinguish between construct validity, a feature of measures relative to a construct, and construct legitimacy, a feature of the construct itself. I propose a prescriptive account of construct (...) validity on the basis of this distinction, then provide evidence for my account through two examples from research psychology. (shrink)

Viewing animals as a disposable resource is by no means novel, but does milking the cow for all its worth now represent a previously unimaginable level of exploitation? New technology has intensified milk production fourfold over the last 50 years, rendering the cow vulnerable to various and frequent clinical interventions deemed necessary to meet the demands for dairy products. A major question is whether or not the veterinary code of practice fits, or is in ethical tension, with the administration of (...) ‘efficient’ techniques, such as artificial insemination, to enhance reproduction levels among cattle? Vets perform these interventions and their ‘success’ is measured by the maximisation of milk production, requiring perpetually pregnant cows. Our empirical research on 33 farm vets explores how their professional ethical code promising to protect the welfare of the animal ‘above all else’, is increasingly in conflict with, and subordinate to, the financial demands of clients. Since vets cannot stand outside of the productive power–knowledge relations that have intensified the consumption of animal bodily parts and secretions, we argue that a process of adiaphorization’ occurs, whereby humans become morally indifferent to cruel practices deemed necessary to our consumerist ways of life. However, this indifference reflects and reinforces a taken-for-granted anthropocentrism among vets, animal owners and the population generally. We suggest that posthumanist ideas may offer new insights for the study of human–animal relations in organisations that transcend the coercive and negative impact of discourses that deny any alternative to prevailing farm/veterinary practices. Our study has major implications in relation to climate warming and zoonotic diseases, both partly derived from our unethical relationship to animals, that are increasingly threatening our, and their, lives. (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, Fichte's thought marks a crucial transitional stage between Kant and post-Kantian philosophy. Fichte radicalized Kant's thought by arguing that human freedom, not external reality, must be the starting point of all systematic philosophy, and in Foundations of Natural Right, thought by many to be his most important work of political philosophy, he applies his ideas to fundamental issues in political and legal philosophy, covering such topics as civic freedom, rights, private property, contracts, family relations, and (...) the foundations of modern political organization. This volume offers a complete translation of the work into English, by Michael Baur, together with an introduction by Frederick Neuhouser that sets it in its philosophical and historical context. (shrink)

Up Against Foucault offers both a feminist critique of Foucauldian theories as well as an attempt to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable perspectives. Feminists are often "up against Foucault" because he questions key conclusions in feminism regarding the nature of gender relations, and men's possession of power. This book, however, fills the gap in literature about Foucault by showing how his theories of sexuality and power relations are often applicable to the everyday realities of women's lives. Drawing upon their diverse backgrounds (...) in social theory and philosophy, the contributors discuss the ways in which Foucault provokes feminists into questioning their grasp of power relations, and examines the implications of his decision to overlook categories of gender in his discussion of sexuality and power relations. They also show that in spite of his lack of interest in gender, Foucault's ways of understanding the control of women and female sexuality ultimately have much to offer feminism. (shrink)

Research on cross-border reproductive care has shown how the geographical, historical, economic and political contexts in which egg donation takes place shape this transnational practice. As many women offer their oocytes due to their precarious conditions, they become seen as ‘bioavailable bodies’. The presence of these bioavailable bodies is key to the emergence of global egg donation hotspots. We argue that feminist research needs to go beyond the conceptualization of egg donors as bioavailable bodies. We suggest the analysis of ‘reproductive (...) biographies’ as an innovative way to understand the entanglements of the global bioeconomy with intimate experiences of reproduction. We suggest advancing current feminist discussions around clinical labour by studying the entanglements between the global bioeconomy, a neoliberalized healthcare system, systematic feminicide and women’s reproductive biographies, and by revealing how women’s decision to donate results from gendered dependencies, obligations of care and coercive moments in egg donors’ reproductive biographies. (shrink)

Visual research methods like photography and digital storytelling are increasingly used in health and social sciences research as participatory approaches that benefit participants, researchers, and audiences. Visual methods involve a number of additional ethical considerations such as using identifiable content and ownership of creative outputs. As such, ethics committees should use different assessment frameworks to consider research protocols with visual methods. Here, we outline the limitations of ethics committees in assessing projects with a visual focus and highlight the sparse knowledge (...) on how researchers respond when they encounter ethical challenges in the practice of visual research. We propose a situated approach in relation to visual methodologies that encompasses a negotiated, flexible approach, given that ethical issues usually emerge in relation to the specific contexts of individual research projects. Drawing on available literature and two case studies, we identify and reflect on nuanced ethical implications in visual research, like tensions between aesthetics and research validity. The case studies highlight strategies developed in-situ to address the challenges two researchers encountered when using visual research methods, illustrating that some practice implications are not necessarily addressed using established ethical clearance procedures. A situated approach can ensure that visual research remains ethical, engaging, and rigorous. (shrink)

There is much still to learn about the nature of fair trade consumers. In light of the Pope’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate, this article sought to advance the current understanding by investigating the role of religion in fair trade consumption. In this study, fair trade consumers and non-consumers across many religions as well as the non-religious described their consumption of fair trade products as well as the use of their religious beliefs in their purchase behavior. It appears that the non-religious (...) are slightly more inclined toward buying fair trade products. Of the religious observers studied, Buddhists have a greater propensity to buy fair trade. The relationship between religion and fair trade consumption is complex in that religious affiliation – group membership – alone is not enough to encourage members to buy fair trade; rather, it is the use of religious beliefs as a criterion in consumption behavior that linked religion to fair trade consumption. (shrink)

Patientenverfügungen werden häufig als Ausdruck eines Bestrebens verstanden, ausschließlich selbst über die eigene Behandlung am Lebensende oder in anderen medizinisch kritischen Situationen entscheiden zu wollen. Kritische Stimmen wenden sich gegen eine Marginalisierung von Angehörigen oder ein verkürztes Verständnis von Autonomie, welches von der Relationalität als Grundgegebenheit menschlicher Existenz abstrahiert. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird zunächst der rechtliche Rahmen beschrieben, der die Praxis bezüglich Patientenverfügungen und Stellvertretern in der Schweiz bestimmt. Zudem werden in der Schweiz verfügbare Patientenverfügungsformulare hinsichtlich der darin vorgesehenen Rolle (...) von Angehörigen bzw. nahe stehenden Personen analysiert. Abschließend soll gefragt werden, ob Patientenverfügungen, wie sie derzeit im Schweizer Kontext genutzt werden, wirklich als Instrumente rein individualistischer Selbstbestimmung verstanden werden können. (shrink)

Sade's personal fate has too long encouraged critics to concentrate on his personal isolation and personal revolt. Extraordinary as his life was, the light that it throws on his work casts into shade the intellectual context that was much more important to its generation than his actual experience. This book is about how Sade took a pure version of eighteenth-century materialism and rendered it into an even purer form of pornography. The eternal yet unequal clashing of atomic bodies became the (...) endless torture of human ones. It traces the intellectual genealogy that links Sade to his materialist forebears (d'Holbach, Condillac, Buffon, Diderot, La Mettrie, Robinet, Delisle de Sales) and shows how the germs of cruel pleasure were already present in elements of their work, as much in their rhetoric and stylistics as in their arguments. Sade, aided by his grounding in the interpretative techniques of illicit clandestine and libertine literature, read them attentively and developed their presentation as well as their content into a flawlessly logical and self-referential system. Thus the arrogant philosopher (the author / the libertine) did not just mouth his cruel positions but enacted them, proving the behaviour of matter as he/she did so. This reading of Sade's work refers its principal elements - shape, style and contents - back to the hardcore of materialism, offering an account which, while not making it more tolerable, renders it at once more accessible and more comprehensible. (shrink)

We typically judge that hasteners are causes of what they hasten, while delayers are not causes of what they delay. These judgements, I suggest, are sensitive to an underlying metaphysical distinction. To see this, we need to pay attention to a relation that I call positive security-dependence, where an event E security-depends positively on an earlier event C just in case E could more easily have failed to occur if C had not occurred. I suggest that we judge that an (...) event C is a cause of a later event E only if E security-depends positively on C. This explains our causal judgements in typical cases of hastening and delaying as well as in atypical cases, where we judge that hasteners are not causes of what they hasten or that delayers are causes of what they delay. (shrink)

The ability to explain the occurrence of errors in children's speech is an essential component of successful theories of language acquisition. The present study tested some generativist and constructivist predictions about error on the questions produced by ten English-learning children between 2 and 5 years of age. The analyses demonstrated that, as predicted by some generativist theories [e.g. Santelmann, L., Berk, S., Austin, J., Somashekar, S. & Lust. B. (2002). Continuity and development in the acquisition of inversion in yes/no questions: (...) dissociating movement and inflection, Journal of Child Language, 29, 813-842], questions with auxiliary DO attracted higher error rates than those with modal auxiliaries. However, in wh-questions, questions with modals and DO attracted equally high error rates, and these findings could not be explained in terms of problems forming questions with why or negated auxiliaries. It was concluded that the data might be better explained in terms of a constructivist account that suggests that entrenched item-based constructions may be protected from error in children's speech, and that errors occur when children resort to other operations to produce questions [e.g. Dabrowska, E. (2000). From formula to schema: the acquisition of English questions. Cognitive Liguistics, 11, 83-102; Rowland, C. F. & Pine, J. M. (2000). Subject-auxiliary inversion errors and wh-question acquisition: What children do know? Journal of Child Language, 27, 157-181; Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press]. However, further work on constructivist theory development is required to allow researchers to make predictions about the nature of these operations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 134-135 [Access article in PDF] Allen Speight. Hegel, Literature and the Problem of Agency. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 154. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $18.95. Hegel's notorious use of literary references in his Phenomenology of Spirit has been a source of numerous interpretive difficulties, sparking disagreements not only about the actual referents of Hegel's literary allusions, but also—and (...) more importantly—about the meaning and purpose of such allusions. In this insightful, highly readable new book, Allen Speight challenges the stale orthodoxies that have pitted the Phenomenology's systematic/philosophical readers against its literary/historical ones, and offers an innovative interpretation that takes seriously the work's literary structure and allusions, while also giving due consideration to its systematic philosophical aims. Combining the rich sensibility of a literary mind with the careful rigor of a philosophical mind, Speight deftly shows how Hegel's Phenomenology is a work whose very aim, in part, is to transcend the traditional, but often limiting, dichotomy between philosophy and literature.As Speight explains it, the general purpose of this book is to make "a contribution to understanding the philosophical project of the Phenomenology and why that project requires Hegel's appropriation of literary works and forms as it does" (9-10). The book's philosophical point of departure is the critical mass of recent scholarship that sees Hegel's epistemological task in the Phenomenology as essentially Sellarsian in its critique of the "Myth of the Given." For Speight, the Hegelian critique of the myth of the given implies that all knowledge claims are essentially corrigible and socially mediated, and this implies—in turn—that any attempt to draw rigid lines of demarcation between a purely "systematic" and a purely "historical" or "anthropological" approach to philosophy and its problems must ultimately fail. From this interpretive vantage point, Speight holds, a strong case can be made for the essentially literary character of Hegel's Phenomenology, and the essentially philosophical purpose of his literary allusions. As Speight is careful to acknowledge, his own distinctive approach to the Phenomenology is not meant to rule out other, divergent emphases or interpretations, but only to provide "a way of better understanding the role that literature plays within the philosophical enterprise of the work as a whole" (18).Speight begins to deliver the details of his promised "better way" by investigating what he calls the "literary turn" or the seemingly sudden "eruption of the literary" that starts to motivate the Phenomenology's transition from the section on "Reason" to the section on "Spirit." For Speight, the shapes of Active Reason that are crucial in this transition begin to raise a new set of problems concerning human agency. Furthermore, it is not at all a coincidence that Hegel's heightened concern with agency at this juncture of the Phenomenology [End Page 134] is accompanied by an unmistakable burst of literary references. Rather, it is an indicator of Hegel's careful, deliberate, and self-conscious strategy of using literature to make a philosophical point about agency, since it is literature—according to Speight's Hegel—that gives us privileged access to the philosophical problems of agency and their potential resolution.For Speight, Hegel's use of tragedy gives us special insight into the retrospectivity of all human action; his use of comedy points to the theatricality (or what we might call the socially mediated expressivity) of all human action; and his use of the romantic novel points to the necessity (and eventually opens up the possibility) of the forgiveness implied by all human action. While Hegel had already made use of both tragedy and comedy in the Reason section of the Phenomenology, it is only in the Spirit section, Speight argues, that these literary-philosophical shapes are taken up (e.g., in Antigone and Rameau's Nephew) in a historically self-conscious way that can lead (via the "beautiful soul" novel) to the possibility of forgiveness and thereby instigate the transition to the Religion section.Speight's "better way... (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used in disaster risk management applications to predict the effect of upcoming disasters, plan for mitigation strategies, and determine who needs how much aid after a disaster strikes. The media is filled with unintended ethical concerns of AI algorithms, such as image recognition algorithms not recognizing persons of color or racist algorithmic predictions of whether offenders will recidivate. We know such unintended ethical consequences must play a role in DRM as well, yet there is (...) surprisingly little research on exactly what the unintended consequences are and what we can do to mitigate them. The aim of this perspective is to call researchers working on fairness, accountability, and transparency to work with DRM and local experts—so we can ensure that disaster mitigation and relief is accountable, considers local values, and is not unintentionally biased. (shrink)

In Pregnant Embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation, Iris Marion Young describes the lived bodily experience of women who have “chosen” their pregnancies. In this essay, Lundquist underscores the need for a more inclusive phenomenology of pregnancy. Drawing on sources in literature, psychology, and phenomenology, she offers descriptions of the cryptic phenomena of rejected and denied pregnancy, indicating the vast range of pregnancy experience and illustrating substantial phenomenological differences between “chosen” and unwanted pregnancies.

This paper presents a report on the first Swiss Master Class in Corporate Social Responsibility, which was held between the 8th and 9th December 2006 at HEC Lausanne in Switzerland. The first section of the report introduces the topic of the master class – ‚Corporations as Political Actors – Facing the Postnational Challenge’ – as well as the concept of the master class. The second section gives an overview of papers written by nine young scholars that were selected to present (...) their research. The brief summary of each paper also includes a summary of comments from the masters, practitioners, and NGO representatives at the event. The third section brings in the perspectives of one master and one NGO representative on the discussed issues. The final section offers a brief wrap-up of the discussed topics and outlines ways to structure future conceptual and empirical research. (shrink)

Since it is desirable to be able to talk about rational agents forming attitudes toward their concrete agency, we suggest an introduction of doxastic, volitional, and intentional modalities into the multi-agent logic of deliberatively seeing to it that, dstit logic. These modalities are borrowed from the well-known BDI (belief-desire-intention) logic. We change the semantics of the belief and desire operators from a relational one to a monotonic neighbourhood semantic in order to handle ascriptions of conflicting but not inconsistent beliefs and (...) desires as being satisfiable. The proposed bdi-stit logic is defined with respect to branching time frames, and it is shown that this logic is a generalization of a bdi logic based on branching time possible worlds frames (but without temporal operators) and dstit logic. The new bdi-stit logic generalizes bdi and dstit logic in the sense that for any model of bdi or dstit logic, there is an equivalent bdi-stit model. (shrink)

This clearly presented study examines the nature of religious experiences, and asks whether they can be used as evidence for religious beliefs. The author discusses important philosophical issues raised by religious experience, such as the role of models and metaphors in their description, and the way experiences in general are used as evidence for claims about the world. Using contemporary and classic sources from the world's religions, the author gives an account of different types of religious experience. She also draws (...) extensively on psychological, sociological, and philosophical literature to meet sceptical challenges, and concludes that, like most experiences, they are most effective as evidence within an argument which combines evidence from a wide range of sources. (shrink)

This paper presents a report on the first Swiss Master Class in Corporate Social Responsibility, which was held between the 8th and 9th December 2006 at HEC Lausanne in Switzerland. The first section of the report introduces the topic of the master class – ‚Corporations as Political Actors – Facing the Postnational Challenge’ – as well as the concept of the master class. The second section gives an overview of papers written by nine young scholars that were selected to present (...) their research. The brief summary of each paper also includes a summary of comments from the masters, practitioners, and NGO representatives at the event. The third section brings in the perspectives of one master and one NGO representative on the discussed issues. The final section offers a brief wrap-up of the discussed topics and outlines ways to structure future conceptual and empirical research. (shrink)

More and more companies are publicly taking a stand on social and political issues such as gay marriage legislation. This paper argues that this type of engagement, which can be called “corporate political advocacy,” raises new conceptual and normative challenges especially for theories of corporate responsibility. Furthermore, it poses practical challenges for managers who are confronted with it. This paper addresses all three challenges: first, it defines and conceptualizes corporate political advocacy and distinguishes it from other forms of corporate political (...) involvement. Second, it makes normative sense of corporate advocacy as an element of corporate responsibility. Third, it reflects on the practical implications for managers dealing with this issue. (shrink)

This papers attempts to bridge business ethics to corporate social responsibility including the social and environmental dimensions. The objective of the paper is to suggest an improvement of the most commonly used corporate environmental management tool, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The method includes two stages. First, more phases are added to the life-cycle of a product. Second, social criteria that measure the social performance of a product are introduced. An application of this “extended” LCA tool is given.

Classic and modern emotion theories suggest that the perception of bodily sensations, or interoception, is foundational to emotion processing. The present research examined whether interoception is...

In his critique of the extended mind hypothesis, Robert Rupert suggests that we have no reason to move from the claim that cognition is deeply embedded in the environment to the more radical claim that, in some cases, cognition itself extends into the environment. In this paper, I argue that we have strong normative reasons to prefer the more radical extended mind hypothesis to Rupert’s modest embedded mind hypothesis. I take an agnostic position on the metaphysical debate about the ultimate (...) nature and location of the mind, and instead argue in favor of the extended mind framework on the basis of its ability to better capture normative concerns about the way we evaluate the cognitive capacities of learning disabled individuals. In light of the commitments of the embedded and extended mind frameworks, defenders of the embedded mind framework are committed to conclusions about learning-disabled individuals that we have good normative reason to reject, whereas the extended mind framework avoids such problematic conclusions. Thus, if we find these normative concerns persuasive, we have good reason to prefer the extended mind position. (shrink)

In Pregnant Embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation, Iris Marion Young describes the lived bodily experience of women who have “chosen” their pregnancies. In this essay, Lundquist underscores the need for a more inclusive phenomenology of pregnancy. Drawing on sources in literature, psychology, and phenomenology, she offers descriptions of the cryptic phenomena of rejected and denied pregnancy, indicating the vast range of pregnancy experience and illustrating substantial phenomenological differences between “chosen” and unwanted pregnancies.

Background: Family members and healthcare providers play an integral role in a person’s assisted dying journey. Their own needs during the assisted dying journey are often, however, unrecognized and underrepresented in policies and guidelines. Circumstances under which people choose assisted dying, and relational contexts such as the sociopolitical environment, may influence the experiences of family members and healthcare providers. Ethical considerations: Ethics approval was not required to conduct this review. Aim: This scoping review aims to identify the relational influences on (...) the experiences of family members and healthcare providers of adults who underwent assisted dying and of those unable to access assisted dying due to the loss of capacity to consent. Methods: A literature search was conducted in four databases, including MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature and PsycINFO. The search retrieved 12,074 articles, a number narrowed down to 172 articles for full-text screening. Thirty-six articles met the established inclusion criteria. A feminist relational framework guided the data analysis. Results: Five key themes on the influences of family members’ and healthcare providers’ experiences throughout the assisted dying process were synthesized from the data. They include relationships as central to beginning the process, social and political influences on decision making, complex roles and responsibilities of family members and healthcare providers, a unique experience of death, and varying experiences following death. Conclusion: The feminist relational lens, used to guide analysis, shed light on the effect of the sociopolitical influences and the relationships among patients, families, and healthcare providers on each other’s experiences. Addressing the needs of the family members and healthcare providers is vital to improving the assisted dying process. Including families’ and healthcare providers’ needs within institutional policies and enhancing collaboration and communication among those involved could improve the overall experience. (shrink)

Social robots and their interactions with children are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with the emergence of child-robot relationships as a likely result. However, adequate measurement instruments that tap into concepts associated with child-robot relationship formation are scarce. We aimed to develop three measures that can be used to assess children’s closeness to, trust in, and perceived social support from, a social robot. We established the validity and reliability of these measures among 87 Dutch children aged 7 to 11 years old. Because (...) of their shortness, the measures can efficiently be applied by scholars aiming to gain insight into the general process of child-robot relationship formation and its specific sub-processes, that is, the emergence of closeness, trust, and perceived social support. (shrink)