This article offers a conceptual clarification of the Aristotelian component in environmental virtue ethics (EVE). It demonstrates that throughout the last four decades, contributors to EVE have favored an Aristotelian foundation (though a Humean base also has been proposed), and it presents six theoretical challenges and two underexplored possibilities premised on such an Aristotelian foundation of EVE. These two possibilities concern: 1) Aristotle’s notion of the city-state (polis), denoting not only a densely populated area, but also agricultural land outside the (...) city-walls, implying agrarian virtues were implicit in the Aristotelian framework; this is valuable to modern agriculture, and the ways in which environmentally friendly virtues are integrated into food production and consumption. 2) Aristotle’s understanding of well-being (eudaimonia) as existing not only at an individual level, but also at a collective level; the latter is relevant to the prospect of upscaling eudaimonia to a structural level, within the limits of an ecologically sustainable citizenship. (shrink)

Existence Value has become an increasingly important concept as the use of cost benefit analysis has spread from traditional applications to attempts to place monetary value on, for instance, a rare wetland habitat. Environmental economists have generally accepted the tensions arising in the existence value concept from the range of recent applications, but it is argued here that their various attempts to resolve the difficulties have largely failed. Critics from outside economics, on the other hand, typically claim that (...) the very notion of existence value as understood in economics is flawed, and urge its abandonment altogether. This paper suggests instead a fundamental redefinition of existence value, which, it is argued, (i) explains a number of diverse problems posed by the usual meaning of the term in economics; (ii) does not strain the intentions of respondents to ' willingness-to-pay' surveys; (iii) is consistent with a more realistic model of rational choice in environmental decision-making; and (iv) is sensitive to criticisms from environmental ethics.2. (shrink)

Every business and organization today needs to impress stakeholders with its ethics policy. Universities, Ethics and Professions examines how this emphasis on ethics by the professional world is impacting universities, institutions that have long been key contributors to ethical reflection and debate, and shapers of ethical discourse. Changing objectives, globalization, and public concerns continue to bring professionalism, and commercialization, into the dialogue about what ethics mean on campus. Universities, Ethics and Professions offers an in-depth examination of the changing landscape of (...) academic ethics, with case-study analysis from sociologists, educationalists, management specialists and philosophers. As professionalism becomes an integral part of university teaching, training, and research, this book considers the impact on the ethical practices of academics, and explores the importance of universities remaining sites of open discourse on ethics in the future. (shrink)

The Science and Religion Forum (SRF) seeks to be the premier organization promoting the discussion between science and religion in the United Kingdom. Each year, the SRF holds a conference tackling a topical issue, and in 2017 focused on mental well‐being, neuroscience, and religion. This article introduces the thematic section which is made up of five papers from that conference. As a new field within the science and religion academy, these articles are both wide‐ranging and detailed. This introductory article locates (...) this section within the academy and argues that its place is not only valid but vital, given the increase of mental health problems and the need for medicine, church, and society to answer this problem and present ways to help. (shrink)

The Science and Religion Forum (SRF) seeks to be the premier organization promoting the discussion between science and religion in the United Kingdom for academics, professionals, and interested lay people. Each year, the SRF holds a conference tackling a topical issue, and in 2019 focused on artificial intelligence and robotics. This article introduces the thematic section which is made up of three papers from that conference and provides a summary of the event.

This paper was originally prepared for oral presentation at the Houston Church of Freethought - April 9, 2006, service. The HCOF members include humanists, atheists, agnostics, and other freethinkers. The paper argues that compassion is consistent with Freethought and supplies some suggestions for bringing it to the fore in everyday life.

Is economic liberty necessary for individuals to lead truly flourishing lives? Whether your immediate answer is yes or no, this question is deceptively simple. What do we mean by liberty? What constitutes the flourishing life? How are these related? How is economic liberty related to other goods that affect human flourishing? To answer these questions—and more—this volume brings to bear some of history’s greatest thinkers, interpreted by some of today’s leading scholars of their thought.

PurposeThe purpose of this viewpoint paper is to provide an overview of three papers included in a Special Issue of the Journal of Information Communication Ethics and Society, entitled Ethics in the Virtual World.Design/methodology/approachThe papers were chosen because they reflect three key themes in computing, ethics and society. These are: the explosion in the number of opportunities for accessing sensitive data in the health sector; the risks inherent in designing information systems through technical procedures that fail to address the human (...) character of the environments they are intended to serve; and the need to teach computing ethics to students of computing. All three articles draw on philosophical approaches to ethics and well as technical aspects of system use, system design and pedagogy, respectively.FindingsThe papers demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of computing ethics and the contested political issues at stake in using and designing information systems.Originality/valueThis editorial viewpoint paper presents the hypothesis that the ethical issues once embodied in socio‐technical systems theory have a particular salience for the contemporary ethical debates concerning computing ethics. (shrink)

Medicine needs our trust. We need to be able to rely on individual clinicians and researchers, and we need to be able to have confidence in hospitals and clinics. Yet the organization of our healthcare institutions is not designed to promote that trust. In fact, the structure of our medical institutions seems to undermine our faith.

Religious and Ethical Perspectives on Global Migration examines the complicated social ethics of migration in today's world. Editors Elizabeth W. Collier and Charles R. Strain bring the perspectives of an international group of scholars toward a theory of justice and ethical understanding for the nearly two hundred million migrants who have left their homes seeking asylum from political persecution, greater freedom and safety, economic opportunity, or reunion with family members.

Through a number of studies recently published in the psychology literature, T.D. Wilson, D.T. Gilbert, and others have demonstrated that our judgments about what our future mental states will be are contaminated by various distortions. Their studies distinguish a variety of different distortions, but they refer to them all with the generic term “affective forecasting.” The findings of their studies on normal volunteers are remarkably robust and, therefore, demonstrate that we are all vulnerable to the distortions of affective forecasting. a.

As early as 1981 Gorlin and Zucker produced a film, AComplicatingFactor:Doctors'FeelingsasaFactorinMedicalCare and in a 1983 paper on the subject they described one of the important epiphenomena of the encounter between doctor and patient—namely, the reaction of the physician to the patient and how this affects both the physician and the quality of the relationship. At that time they were concerned with the physicians' ability to reckon with their own reactions to patients who presented with problems or personality traits that complicated (...) the doctor-patient relationship. Some patients were hateful or unlikable, some denied their disease state, some became unusually dependent on the physician, some were intimidating to the doctor. Their behavior evoked responses that tended to complicate the doctor-patient relationship with distancing, unusual identification, or hostility. That publication recognized and explained the problem and went on to suggest a process of achieving emotional awareness and mastery to help physicians maintain their appropriate role. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this research paper is to examine the early stages of a research project aimed at evaluating the pedagogic effectiveness of a teaching module in computing ethics.Design/methodology/approachScores of students' cognitive capabilities to make moral judgements were measured before and after they had taken the module by means of the “Defining Issues Test”. This is a standard test of students' capability to make moral judgement based on the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. Interviews were then used to help understand the (...) results of the test.FindingsResults revealed low mean scores of post‐conventional thinking skills and wide variation in overall scores of capability for moral judgement. Interviews with the students about the course and the test revealed the importance of understanding students' beliefs about the importance of ethics in interpreting the results.Research limitations/implicationsDifficulties in matching “before and after” results for each subject limited the sample size in what was an early step in the overall research project.Practical implicationsThe results point towards the importance of addressing students' own understanding of the importance of ethics when teaching computing ethics.Originality/valueThe paper reveals some of the limitations of tests of capabilities for moral judgement which rely on strongly individualistic notions of ethics. It enables a new appreciation to be made of the strengths and weaknesses of assessing student moral development in higher education in terms of cognitive factors. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While interest in philosophy and medicine has burgeoned in the past two decades, there remains a need for an analysis of the intellectual activity embodied in good medical practice. In this setting, ethical and scientific decision‐making are complexly interrelated. The following paper, collaboratively written by physicians and philosophers, presents a view of applied (clinical) science and applied ethics. Making extensive use of illustrations drawn from routine case material, we seek to indicate a variety of philosophic issues to be found (...) in daily practice, elucidate various levels of critical reasoning within the medical setting, and demonstrate a remarkable similarity between medical and ethical decision‐making. (shrink)

Abstract:The moral and political implications of new forms of organisation and resource allocation in education are explored. Markets, even when heavily regulated and administered, induce effects contrary to the values of individual and social freedom upon which public education is understood to be founded. Their ‘efficiency’ as allocative and distributive mechanisms is questioned and examined specifically in relation to the formative and constitutive role of community life in conferring identity and autonomy upon individuals. Competition, it is claimed, leads to stratification (...) of opportunities and outcomes. Putative efficiency gains may be outweighed by equity losses. (shrink)

The following article is a response to the position paper of the Hastings Center, "Ethical Challenges of Chronic Illness", a product of their three year project on Ethics and Chronic Care. The authors of this paper, three prominent bioethicists, Daniel Callahan, Arthur Caplan, and Bruce Jennings, argue that there should be a different ethic for acute and chronic care. In pressing this distinction they provide philosophical grounds for limiting medical care for the elderly and chronically ill. We give a critical (...) survey of their position and reject it as well as any attempt to characterize the physician-patient relationship as a commercial contract. We emphasize, as central features of good medical practice, a commitment to be the patient's agent and a determination to acquire and be guided by knowledge. These commitments may sometimes conflict with efforts to have the physician serve as an instrument of social and economic policies limiting medical care. Keywords: acute, agent, autonomy, chronic, knowledge, obligations, rights CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Lifelong learning should embrace more than instrumental purposes. Some late modern social formations threaten individual autonomy, subordinating the needs of 'agent' in a 'locality' to universalising rationality, necessary for growth in a globalized and virtualised economy. These phenomena are discussed and illustrated. Learning, now an 'economic' activity, could bind individuals in heteronymously defined lifeworlds. Prerequisites of an alternative conceptualisation are examined.

A recent critique by Hughes and Tight argued that the 'Learning Society 'and related notions of productivity and change are 'myths'. In response, it is argued here that myth should not be confused with ideological distortion. The rhetorical dimension of current initiatives is a necessary feature of theoretical formulation, intended to influence public discussion and policy-making. The concepts of productivity and change are reconsidered in a wider historical dimension and the communitarian aspects of the project are shown to have a (...) more positive significance in the light of, for example, recent work by Beck and Giddens on 'reflexivity 'and 'risk'. It is acknowledged that faith in the application of technological solutions to societal learning challenges is frequently misplaced. But fear that the project's aims might be subverted by interests hostile to humane educational values is insufficient reason for such scepticism, which is too narrowly grounded and is misdirected. (shrink)

The present study was designed to investigate the relationships between role strains following the transition to secondary school and academic achievement. Academic engagement was hypothesized to mediate between role strain and achievement. The sample consisted of 749 students in their first year of secondary school. Four types of role strain were investigated: parent, teacher, school and peer. Parent and teacher role strains appeared to be negatively associated with academic achievement, as mediated through academic engagement. Parent and school role (...) strain were directly and negatively associated with achievement. Results are discussed in the light of parenting practices and the developmental mismatch hypothesis. (shrink)

1. Kierkegaard on saying and showing. The paper explores certain parallels between Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Wittgenstein's Tractatus. The following five parallels appear to exist between these two works: both draw a distinction between sense and nonsense; both distinguish between what can be said and what can only be shown; both aspire to show what cannot be said by drawing limits to what can be said; both end by retracting themselves; both imply that silence is the only correct form (...) of answer to certain questions they pose. I argue that the standard interpretation of each of these works has them inside out: a proper understanding of parallels and reveals both works to be concerned with undermining a doctrine of ineffability. I try to show that although parallels , , and depend upon a misreading of these works they, too, are nevertheless connected to deep and interesting genuine parallels in the respective philosophical undertakings of these two authors. ;2. Nietzsche's perfectionism. Nietzsche has been read as advancing a form of perfectionism in both moral and political philosophy. I argue against the standard reading of Nietzsche as defending some form of moral or political elitism. The argument is based on a careful examination of Nietzsche's third Untimely Meditation--a text frequently drawn upon to support an extreme elitist interpretation of Nietzsche. I go on to suggest that Nietzsche's views are, nonetheless, aptly characterized as perfectionist in certain respects and that they represent a striking development of certain strains of perfectionist thought that have been either widely neglected or prematurely dismissed in contemporary moral and political philosophy. ;3. The James/Royce Debate on the theory of truth. The paper argues that to understand William James' mature views one needs to situate his writing within the polemical context of the period in which he wrote and, in particular, to view his development against the background of his ongoing dialogue with Josiah Royce. I outline three successive arguments Royce deploys in an attempt to show that James' pragmatic theory of truth is self-refuting. I argue that the pressure these arguments exert on James leads him to develop a more nuanced and original form of pragmatism than has hitherto generally been appreciated. (shrink)

일찍이 Kahn은 『분석론 후서』의 einai를 거론하며, 이곳 einai의 존재 용법이 아리스토텔레스의 형이상학적 사유와 동떨어져 있다고 지적한 바 있다. 그런데 이 지적은 첫째로 아리스토텔레스가 학문의 토대로서의 존재에 부여했던 중요성을 과소평가한 결과일 수 있고, 둘째로 분과 학문들과 형이상학이 맡는 일에 차이가 있음을 진지하게 고려하지 않은 평가일 수 있다고 여겨진다. 이에 본고는 위와 같은 지적에 일부 수정이 필요함을 보이고자 한다. 이를 위해 먼저 필자는, Kahn도 인정했듯, 『분석론 후서』 2권에서 학적 물음의 종류 구분에 언급된 einai가 ‘존재’ 용법으로 쓰인 것이 맞다는 점을 분명히 한다(2장). 그런 (...) 다음, 『분석론 후서』 1권에 언급된 ‘존재 가정’을 살펴보면서 다음을 설명한다. 즉, 『분석론 후서』가 개별 학문의 존재 가정을 포착하여 논증의 ‘원리’에 포함시킨 이유 중 하나는, 해당 학문 분야에서 원초적 대상의 존재가 그 학문이 탐구하는 대상들 전체의 질서를 지탱하는 토대임을 강조하고자 했기 때문이다(3장). 이어서 필자는 개별 학문의 과제는 자신의 분야 내에서 원초적 대상의 존재에 대한 가정을 바탕으로 파생적 대상의 존재와 속성을 논증하는 일이지, 각종 분야의 탐구 대상들의 존재 방식을 포괄적으로 탐구하거나 그것들의 존재론적 지위를 논하는 일이 아니라는 점, 그리고 후자는 보편적 존재론으로서 형이상학이 수행하는 일이라는 점을 보인다(4장). 이상의 논의를 통해 본고는 만일 『분석론 후서』의 존재 용법이 특이하다면, 이는 학문의 존립 기반을 강조하고자 했던 아리스토텔레스의 의중, 그리고 보편적 존재론을 분과 학문들이 아닌 형이상학의 과제로 할당겠다는 그의 취지가 이 존재 용법에서 드러나기 때문일 것이라고 해석한다. (shrink)