This paper compares the ethical standards reported by consumers and managers with different attachment styles (secure, preoccupied, fearful, or dismissing). We conducted two studies of consumer ethical beliefs and a third managerial survey. In Study 1, we used a questionnaire that we constructed, and in Study 2, we used the Muncy–Vitell Consumer Ethics Scale. The results in both the studies were consistent and showed that men reported a greater indifference to ethical transgressions than women. Based on the two studies, the (...) results indicate that␣among male consumers, the dismissing participants reported the greatest overall indifference to ethical transgressions and the secure participants expressed the most ethical beliefs. The two intermediate groups did not differ significantly from each other. In Study 1, none of the women consumers reported a dismissing attachment style. Women with a secure style reported more ethical beliefs than those in the other two groups. However, the sample in Study 2 included dismissing women. The dismissing women reported the greatest overall indifference to ethical transgressions and the secure women expressed the most ethical beliefs. The illegal profit subscale described the most severe ethical transgressions, and for both men and women, the secure participants were less apt than the other participants to report a willingness to transgress. In Study 3, the Newstrom and Ruch (1975, MSU Business Topics, Winter, 31) Questionnaire was administered to 227 managers. All four attachment patterns were represented among the participants of both genders. In all cases, the participants with a dismissing attachment style showed the greatest readiness to transgress. (shrink)

The theology of John Calvin has deeply affected the American mentality through two streams of thought, Puritanism and Jansenism. These traditions formulate moral problems in terms of absolute, clear principles and avoid casuistic analysis of moral problems. This approach is designated American moralism. This article suggests that the bioethics movement in the United States was stimulated by the moralistic mentality but that the work of the bioethics has departed from this viewpoint. Keywords: bioethics, Calvinism, casuistry, Jansenism, moralism, moral principle, Puritanism (...) CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper contrasts biomedical and epidemiological approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of disease, and uses Collingwoods principle of the relativity of causes to show how different approaches focus on different causal factors reflecting different interests. By distinguishing between the etiology of a disease and an epidemic, the paper argues that, from an epidemiological perspective, poverty is an important causal factor in the African AIDS epidemic and that emphasizing this should not be considered incompatible with recognizing the causal necessity of (...) HIV for the AIDS disease. (shrink)

Many years ago, the esteemed patriarch of bioethics, Joseph Fletcher, spoke loud and clear in favor of rationality in reproduction. By rationality, he meant not merely limiting population growth, which he certainly favored, but bringing to bear human analytic and creative intelligence on the random and instinctive activities of sexual intercourse and procreation that we share with all mammals. In his 1974 book, The Ethics of Genetic Control: Ending Reproductive Roulette, he foresaw most of the issues that we are facing (...) today. He reflected on artificial insemination, prenatal diagnosis, cloning, eugenics, ectogenesis, ovum transfers, and genetic engineering. He examined these innovations to the extent that he felt that each of them represents a way of exercising rational and responsible control over life and reproduction. The subtitle of his book, “Ending Reproductive Roulette,” proclaims his faith. Dr. Fletcher's dedication to rationality led him to make the astonishing statement, “Man is a maker and the more rationally contrived and deliberate anything is, the more human it is. Therefore, laboratory reproduction is radically human compared to conception by ordinary heterosexual intercourse.”. (shrink)

The theory of language that underlies Plotinus’ Enneads is considered in relation to his broader metaphysical vision. For Plotinus, language is neither univocal nor equivocal, but is something in-between, incapable of precisely describing reality, but nonetheless not completely useless. Propositional knowledge expressed discursively represents an imperfect shadow of reality which is defective in relation to the pure apprehension of Intellect. Passages in Plotinus which relate language to the sensible world are examined and it is argued that, although it plays a (...) useful role in relating the sensible world to Intellect, discursive reason is nonetheless intrinsically inferior to both as a mode of representation. Plotinus holds that the inadequacy of language is “global” in character; language cannot describe any aspect of reality precisely, from the mundane to the transcendent. Language as a whole is an inferior image or imitation of the world as a whole. Therefore, the flaws in our linguistic representations cannot all be untangled or conceptually unpacked by means of language. There are passages in the Enneads which hint at an underlying semantic holism. Plotinus’ theory implies that apparent verbal contradictions which occur in different contexts might nonetheless still represent the optimal linguistic description of a reality that strictly speaking is ineffable. Therefore, discursive logical deduction is not always reliable, and needs to be subordinated to a vision of Intellect. True philosophical reasoning (dialectic) represents ostension towards the transcendent. Those who are sufficiently liberated to attain to an apprehension of the Forms, thereby come to inhabit the same “higher world”, involving a shared mystical intersubjectivity, which can be expressed linguistically, but only in an approximate manner. Plotinus’ theory presents a potential way out of the nihilistic impasse into which contemporary philosophy has arguably become enmeshed. (shrink)

The introduction (pp. 7-29) discusses Nazi denigration of "Jewish philosophy, " from Spinoza to Bergson and Husserl, and the elevation of "German" philosophers, particularly Eckhart and Nietzsche, to the role of forerunners of Nazism. The chapters on the work of the four Jewish philosophers mention briefly their murder by the Nazis (in the case of Benjamin, his death while fleeing the Nazis).

Attempts a philosophical and critical investigation of Marx's analysis of value to suggest an ontological basis for a general theory of value.

(2013). A Cigarette is Sometimes Just a Cigarette. World Futures: Vol. 69, The Complexity of Life and Lives of Complexity, pp. 311-331.

Dieser Band enthält eine Auswahl aus dem großen Bestand an Briefen, die Hans Albert zu Religionsfragen und zur Theologiekritik geschrieben hat. Er gibt neue und überraschende Einblicke in seinen Gedankenaustausch mit renommierten Theologen, Religionsphilosophen und dem Religionskritiker Karlheinz Deschner. Diese Korrespondenz gibt auch Auskunft über biographisch-historische Hintergründe, über die Entwicklung von Alberts Denken sowie über die Rezeption seiner Auffassungen und seine lebhafte Beteiligung an theologischen Auseinandersetzungen. Der von Albert vertretene Kritische Rationalismus ist mit der Forderung nach kritisch-rationaler Prüfung (...) von Überzeugungen aller Art, mit der Zurückweisung der verschiedenen Formen von Rechtfertigungszusammenhängen und mit der Kritik an Immunisierungsstrategien nicht nur eine Herausforderung für die Theologie, sondern auch für eine mit dem christlichen Glauben zu vereinbarende Philosophie. (shrink)

Certain problems about the autonomic nervous system — as f.i. those about the development of ortho- and parasympathetic system — have to be seen in the light of synthetic morphologic-functional considerations. As for the origin of the vegetative nervous elements, the phylogenetic dates show, how the theory of ectodermal descent is one-sided from functional synthetic point of view. Every intercellular function has her place. Therefore the principle of “holosynaptic toponomy” conditions the possibilities of morphological development of every tissue conducting stimuli. (...) In the case of the autonomic system this principle stresses the meaning of the importance of the mesoderm as a base of differentiation to certain nervous elements. Histological, comparative anatomical facts as well as the theory of neurobiotaxis are shown to be very well in harmony with the developed conception. (shrink)