Understanding the role of emotion in moral judgment has been an active area of investigation and debate. Here we comment on this topic by examining the interaction between emotion and moral judgment in certain psychopathological groups that are characterized by abnormalities in emotion processing, such as psychopaths and sexual offenders with paraphilic disorders.

While foregrounding the historiography of HIV and AIDS in the South African context, this article analyses AIDS as simultaneously existing in three spheres: first, virtually – as the subject matter of electronically measurable research; second, academically – as a topic of research in the discipline of History; and third, actually – as a complex health concern and signifier that, via the field of Medical and Health Humanities, could allow for new collaborations between historians and others interested in understanding AIDS. Throughout, (...) the central focus is the discipline of History and the global trends that become evident when examining metrics about AIDS research, particularly those that show the hierarchies of knowledge ‘production’, the reinforcement of disciplinary boundaries, and the discrepancy between the amount of research ‘produced’ by scientific and humanities disciplines. Overall, the article suggests that ‘post-AIDS’ is not currently helpful to health historians working on South African and other majority world contexts. More specifically, the article reflects on what AIDS histories still need to be written, and I argue that Medical and Health Humanities could provide a space for historians to work within and across disciplinary boundaries given the ever evolving remit of AIDS histories, temporalities, and narratives. (shrink)

People with mental illness are subjected to stigma and discrimination and constantly face restrictions in the exercise of their political, civil and social rights. Considering this scenario, mental health, ethics and human rights are key approaches to advance the well-being of persons with mental illnesses. The study was conducted to review the scope of the empirical literature available to answer the research question: What evidence is available regarding human rights and ethical issues regarding nursing care to persons with mental illnesses? (...) A scoping review methodology guided by Arksey and O’Malley was used. Studies were identified by conducting electronic searches on CINAHL, PubMed, SCOPUS and Hein databases. Of 312 citations, 26 articles matched the inclusion criteria. The central theme which emerged from the literature was “Ethics and Human Rights Boundaries to Mental Health Nursing practice”. Mental health nurses play a key and valuable role in ensuring that their interventions are based on ethical and human rights principles. Mental health nurses seem to have difficulty engaging with the ethical issues in mental health, and generally are dealing with acts of paternalism and with the common justification for those acts. It is important to open a debate regarding possible solutions for this ethical dilemma, with the purpose to enable nurses to function in a way that is morally acceptable to the profession, patients and members of the public. This review may serve as an instrument for healthcare professionals, especially nurses, to reflect about how to fulfil their ethical responsibilities towards persons with mental illnesses, protecting them from discrimination and safeguarding their human rights, respecting their autonomy, and as a value, keeping the individual at the centre of ethical discourse. (shrink)

Research on children’s ability to attribute false mental states to others has focused exclusively on false beliefs. We developed a novel paradigm that focuses instead on another type of false mental state: false perceptions. From approximately 4 years of age, children begin to recognize that their perception of an illusory object can be at odds with its true properties. Our question was whether they also recognize that another individual viewing the object will similarly experience a false perception. We tested 33 (...) preschool children with a task in which distorting lenses caused a small object to appear large and a large object to appear small. To succeed, children needed to recognize that a naive agent would falsely perceive the relative size of the objects and to correctly anticipate the agent’s actions on that basis. Children performed significantly better than chance in our false perception test, and there was a developmental progression in performance from 4 to 5 years of age similar to that seen in standard false belief tests. Our findings demonstrate that preschool children are capable of understanding that other individuals will be perceptually misled by illusory objects and that these false perceptions will influence their actions in predictable ways. (shrink)

Background Ethical decision making in intensive care is a demanding task. The need to proceed to ethical decision is considered to be a stress factor that may lead to burnout. The aim of this study is to explore the ethical problems that may increase burnout levels among physicians and nurses working in Portuguese intensive care units . A quantitative, multicentre, correlational study was conducted among 300 professionals.Results The most crucial ethical decisions made by professionals working in ICU were related to (...) communication, withholding or withdrawing treatments and terminal sedation. A positive relation was found between ethical decision making and burnout in nurses, namely, between burnout and the need to withdraw treatments , to withhold treatments and to proceed to terminal sedation . This did not apply to physicians. Emotional exhaustion was the burnout subdimension most affected by the ethical decision. The nurses' lack of involvement in ethical decision making was identified as a risk factor. Nevertheless, in comparison with nurses , it was the physicians who more keenly felt the need to proceed to ethical decisions in ICU.Conclusions Ethical problems were reported at different levels by physicians and nurses. The type of ethical decisions made by nurses working in Portuguese ICUs had an impact on burnout levels. This did not apply to physicians. This study highlights the need for education in the field of ethics in ICUs and the need to foster inter-disciplinary discussion so as to encourage ethical team deliberation in order to prevent burnout. (shrink)

This paper posits that differences in corporate governance structure partly result from differences in institutional arrangements linked to business systems. We developed a new international triad of business systems: the Anglo-American, the Communitarian and the Emerging system, building on the frameworks of Choi et al. (British Academy of Management (Kynoch Birmingham) 1996, Management International Review 39, 257–279, 1999). A common factor determining the success of a corporate governance structure is the extent to which it is transparent to market forces. Such (...) transparency is more than pure financial transparency; as it can also be based on factors such as governmental, banking and other types of institutional transparency mechanism. There may also be a choice for firms to adopt voluntary corporate disclosure in situations where mandatory disclosure is not established. The Asian financial crisis of 1997–1999 and the more recent corporate governance scandals such as Enron, Andersen and Worldcom in the United States and Ahold and Parmalat in Europe show that corporate governance and business ethics issues exist throughout the world. As an illustration we focus on Asia’s emerging1 markets, as, both in view of the pressure of globalization and taking into account the institutional arrangements peculiar to the emerging business system, these issues are important there. Particularly for those who have to find an accommodation between the corporate governance structures and disclosure standards of the Emerging system and those of the Anglo-American and Communitarian systems. (shrink)

Neoliberal ideology and exclusionary policies based on racialized identities characterize the current contexts in North America and Western Europe. Nursing knowledge cannot be abstracted from social, political and historical contexts; the task of examining the influence of race and racial ideologies on disciplinary knowledge and inquiry therefore remains an important task. Contemporary analyses of the role and responsibility of the discipline in addressing race‐based health and social inequities as a focus of nursing inquiry remain underdeveloped. In this article, we examine (...) nursing's engagement with ideas about race and racism and explore the ways in which nursing knowledge and inquiry have been influenced by race‐based ideological discourses. Drawing on Henry and Tator's framework ofdemocratic racism, we consider how strategic discursive responses—the discourses of individualism, multiculturalism, colour‐blindness, political correctness and denial—have been deployed within nursing knowledge and inquiry to reinforce the belief in an essentially fair and just society while avoiding the need to acknowledge the persistence of racist discourses and ideologies. Greater theoretical, conceptual and methodological clarity regarding race, racialization and related concepts in nursing inquiry is needed to address health and social inequities. (shrink)

Background: Spirituality has always been present in the history of nursing and continues to be a topic of nursing interest. Spirituality has ancient roots. The term ‘spirituality’ is interpreted as spirit and is translated as breath and soul, whereas spirituality (immateriality) is spiritual nature. Historically, the term spirituality is associated with the term religiosity, a definition that persists today, and often the two terms are used interchangeably. In the healthcare context, the construct is still. Objective To clarify the concept of (...) spirituality in nursing. Research design In this article spirituality was explored using Rodgers' evolutionary and inductive method of concept analysis. Participants and research context For this analysis, a sample of 71 articles published in English, from 2008 to 2018 from PubMed/Medline, CINAHL Plus with full text, PsycINFO, SciELO databases were retrieved. It was also accomplished an empirical search of dictionaries and e-books. Ethical considerations This study was conducted according to good scientific practice. Findings It emerged that “spirituality” is a dynamic process and has a range of attributes. The cultural dimensions, the religious and spiritual traditions, the ethnic diversity and the influence of the historical and social contexts represent the societal and historical conditions ingrained in the Western thought that influence the emergence of spirituality as a concept. Antecedents, attributes and onsequences appeared to inform and strengthen one another over time. Spirituality is a significant concept for the discipline of nursing with profound consequences for caring patients and for work organizations. (shrink)

Against the standard reading of Isaiah Berlin's thought that drives a wedge between his early and subsequent work, this article suggests that his late normative anti-reductionism has roots in the early writings on meaning, semantics and truth. Berlin's anti-reductionist objection to logical positivists in the realm of semantics evince a sensitivity to reductionism, a recognition of the irreducibility of propositional meaning, a plea for the embededness of language in a temporal continuum, an anti-dualist call, and a celebration of the plural (...) and open-ended character of propositions, all of which keep broad affinity with his mature value pluralism in ethics and politics. The unity of concerns in Berlin's work brings about two implications. First, it sheds light on the fact that Berlin's ethical and political pluralism rests on views about semantics and ontology as well. Second, it offers a basis on which to deflect some current moral realist readings of his value pluralism, offering instead a history-laden understanding of his pluralism that provides more compelling grounds to understand the relationship between the latter and liberalism in Berlin's work. (shrink)

It is largely agreed that if constructivism contributes anything to meta-ethics it is by proposing that we understand ethical objectivity “in terms of a suitably constructed point of view that all can accept” (Rawls 1980/1999: 307). Constructivists defend this “practical” conception of objectivity in contrast to the realist or “ontological” conception of objectivity, understood as an accurate representation of an independent metaphysical order. Because of their objectivist but not realist commitments, Kantian constructivists place their theory “somewhere in the space between (...) realist and relativist accounts of ethics” (O’Neill 1988: 1). Furthermore, they argue that their practical conception of objectivity succeeds in making sense of certain features of morality, such as its categorical authority and its relation to rational agency, which escape rival theories (Korsgaard 1996b, Korsgaard 2003b). To this extent, constructivism claims a privileged place in meta-ethics. The legitimacy of this claim is widely challenged. Precisely because of its practical conception of objectivity, many – including some constructivists — regard constructivism as a first-order normative theory, rather than as a meta-ethical position, hence not on a par with realism. Some critics object that constructivism fails to offer a distinct meta-ethics because it is structurally incomplete and thus must be combined with a fully-fledged meta-ethics (Hussain and Shah 2006); others argue that it tacitly relies on realism (Timmons 2003; Shafer-Landau 2003; Larmore 2008). Thus far, the debate about the prospects of constructivism as a meta-ethical theory has been driven by the conviction that the case for or against constructivism depends on its ontological commitments. In this chapter, I propose a change in perspective. My aim is to defend constructivism as an objectivist account of practical knowledge. Its defining feature is the claim that practical knowledge is knowledge by principles. Its task is to establish a constitutive relation between knowledge of oneself as a practical subject and knowledge about what one ought to do. By focusing on the issue of practical knowledge I hope to show that the difficulty in situating Kantian constructivism firmly on the meta-ethical map, along with other meta-ethical theories, reflects ambiguities and oscillations about the practical significance of ethics. Even though the term is ambiguous, I retain the qualification “Kantian” for the constructivist theory I outline, and for two reasons. First, while the theory I outline differs from current agnostic or anti-realist variants, it is closer to its origins, since Kant treats practical reason as a cognitive capacity and takes moral judgments to be objective moral cognitions, which importantly differ from other sorts of rational cognitions because they bind us in the first person. Practical cognitions are common knowledge because they are such that all subjects endowed with rationality can arrive at them by reasoning and find them authoritative. Thus understood, Kantian constructivism carves a distinct logical space in the meta-ethical debate that other sorts of constructivism fail to identify. This is the second reason for keeping the qualification “Kantian”. On this formulation, constructivism is antagonistic to non-cognitivist theories denying that moral judgments have cognitive contents, because they deny that there is something to be known; but it is also a rival to cognitivist theories denying that knowledge can be practical in itself. How constructivism differs over the realist theories of practical reason is the least understood aspect of this debate. This essay aims to make the case that practical reason is both discursive and emotional. In contrast to foundational and anti-realist accounts of practical reasoning, it attempts to show that the moral feeling of respect plays a cognitive but non-evidential role in the account of the cognitive and practical powers of reason. The argument proceeds as follows. In section 1, I consider some prominent constructivist arguments against the model of applied knowledge and show that they are driven by non-cognitivist assumptions about the practicality of ethics and the legitimacy of epistemological claims. In section 2, I argue that these arguments do not succeed in disposing of the idea of practical knowledge as incoherent, because they trade on an ambiguity regarding the proper object of practical knowledge. To solve this ambiguity, I turn to Anscombe’s contrast between “practical” and “speculative” knowledge as models for understanding action. I thus suggest that Anscombe’s account of practical knowledge as knowledge of oneself as an agent is an important resource for Kantian constructivism. This finding prompts us to reset the current dispute about the ontological and epistemological commitments of Kantian constructivism, as illustrated in section 3. While constructivism does not postulate any moral ontology prior to reasoning, it attributes to reasoning the cognitive powers to establish a distinctive relation between the agent and her action. The task of sections 4-7 is to account for the distinctive features of Kantian constructivism understood as an objectivist account of practical knowledge. In section 4, I argue that in order for reasoning to accomplish its normative tasks, it should be conceived as a self-legislating activity. I respond to some objections to the idea of self-legislation as the form of rational willing by offering a dialogical view of practical reason. In section 5, I propose a non-standard interpretation of Kant’s argument of “the fact of reason” to show that the constructivist account of self-legislation does not build on realism about value, as its detractors claim. The “basis of construction” is the subjective experience of respect for the self-legislative capacity itself. This moral feeling conveys our awareness of rational agency and shows our responsiveness to the demands of practical reason. It is an emotional mode of practical knowledge of oneself as an agent (in the sense specified in section 2), but not as a mode of moral discernment. In section 6, I show how practical knowledge of oneself as an agent relates to practical knowledge about what one ought to do. I thus account for the relation between respect as emotional moral consciousness and respect as a deliberative constraint. Finally, in section 7, I reply to the objection of subjectivism. I explain how the complex sort of objectivity that Kantian constructivism affords is at the same time more ambitious and more modest than is generally assumed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:...

O presente trabalho pretende demonstrar o papel da mulher no contexto da acumulação primitiva, com ênfase na transição do sistema feudal para o sistema capitalista, situando a vida sexual e reprodutiva da mulher como objetos do mecanismo de controle do Estado e da Igreja para alcance de seus interesses e perpetuação de seu poder. Analisamos o fenômeno da caça às bruxas dentro da obra Calibã e a Bruxa (2004), de Silvia Federici, pautando a questão da criminalização do aborto na legislação (...) brasileira como resultante da biopolítica e do biopoder.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Criminalização; Aborto; Inquisição; Biopolítica; Biopoder. (shrink)

There is a widespread assumption in Construction Grammar (but also before and elsewhere) that the meanings of verbs correlate with or even determine their complementation forms and patterns. There is much less research on noun complementation, however, although this category is even more interesting for a number of reasons such as the potential for valency reduction, nominal topicalization constructions, and additional complementation options, e.g.of-PPs and existential constructions.In this paper we focus on the class of nouns reporting commissive illocutionary acts (promise, (...) offer, pledge, refusal, bet, threat, etc.), and address the question of whether there is a correlation (i) between the meaning of these nouns and their preferred complementation patterns, and (ii) between their semantic similarity and their similarity in the distribution of complementation patterns.We report the results of a study of a set of 17 commissive nouns chosen from a wider collection of illocutionary nouns. Two types of analysis were carried out in order to compare the semantic and grammatical characteristics of these nouns. The semantic analysis was based on insights from speech act theory and the philosophy of language. We developed a framework for a systematic comparative description of the nouns in our word field. The results were tallied with a corpus-based grammatical analysis. Two hundred tokens of each noun type were randomly sampled from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Using these data, the 17 nouns were subjected to an analysis of the relative frequencies of their complementation patterns.Results indicate a general match between noun meanings and complementation patterns. More specifically, however, they indicate that the closeness of this match depends on the prototypicality of nouns as members of the class of commissives.The study, then, contributes to our understanding of the relation between lexis and syntax. At the same time, it confirms the need for a close semantic analysis to account for the great extent to which item-specific information, i.e. properties of individual nouns, have to be taken into consideration at the expense of large-scale generalizations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT As we strive for a more polyvocal history of science, historians have placed increasing emphasis on local case studies as a way to globalize the field. This tension between the local and the global extends to the practice as well as the content of the history of science, as the field has begun to pay more attention not just to local case studies, but also to local cultures of historiography. Many historians of science want multiple historiographical voices that take (...) seriously the concerns and literatures in different linguistic and national contexts. As more journals urge translation into what are perceived as the dominant languages in “global” humanities discourses and scholars are encouraged to facilitate the Englishing of their historical research, many questions remain: In what ways does it make sense to nationalize or culturally locate individual cultures of the history of science? Is translation a democratic and positive force in the discipline, and/or does it kill local difference? Will it continue to be meaningful to talk about the history of science? A collective dialogue within the field depends on finding a way to take local diversity in historiography and epistemology seriously while translating that local difference into a meaningful common conversation. This essay considers the challenges of embracing multiple ways of knowing that might fall under the purview of the history of science, while wondering what that means for the coherence of the field as we move forward into the next century of work in Isis. (shrink)

Constructivism in ethics is the view that insofar as there are normative truths, for example, truths about what we ought to do, they are in some sense determined by an idealized process of rational deliberation, choice, or agreement. As a “first-order moral account”--an account of which moral principles are correct-- constructivism is the view that the moral principles we ought to accept or follow are the ones that agents would agree to or endorse were they to engage in a hypothetical (...) or idealized process of rational deliberation. As a “metaethical account” – an account of whether there are any normative truths and, if so, what they are like – constructivism holds that there are normative truths. These truths are not fixed by facts that are independent of the practical standpoint, however characterized; rather, they are constituted by what agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice. In working to provide a more precise definition of constructivism in metaethics, the focus of this entry, one faces two main difficulties. The first difficulty is that constructivism comes in several varieties, each of which claims a different niche within metaethics, and some claim no space at all. The second difficulty concerns where to place constructivism on the metaethical map in relation to realism and anti-realism. These are terms of art, and it is highly contested which views count as realist and which as antirealist. These two difficulties will be addressed in what follows by focusing on the distinctive questions that constructivist theories are designed to answer. Section §1 defines the scope of constructivism in ethics, in contrast to constructivism in political theory. Sections §§2-5 illustrate the main varieties of metaethical constructivism, which are designed to account for the nature of normative truths and practical reasons. Section §6 presents the main varieties of constructivist accounts of the justification of moral judgments of right and wrong. Section §7 discusses the metaethical status of constructivism, and its distinctive import. (shrink)

In this study I focus on the complementation patterns of commissive shell nouns in Ghanaian English (GhE). Commissive shell nouns are a type of illocutionary shell noun, i.e. a noun that encapsulates a content that is usually expressed in a complement or even separate clause or sentence thereby ascribing it an illocutionary force. I use the usage-based approach to the study of language and investigate the behavioral profile of these nouns in GhE. I apply descriptive statistics to data that have (...) been collected from theCorpus of Global Web-based English(GloWbE). The study provides evidence for the characterization of GhE usage norms, and thus contributes to the scholarly knowledge on this variety of English. It also sheds light on the contribution that the meaning-related and ultimately cognitive perspective can offer in describing the complementation patterns of illocutionary nouns in Postcolonial Englishes (PCEs). (shrink)

This article explores twelve short narrative films created by women and trans people living with disabilities and embodied differences. Produced through Project Re•Vision, these micro documentaries uncover the cultures and temporalities of bodies of difference by foregrounding themes of multiple histories: body, disability, maternal, medical, and/or scientific histories; and divergent futurities: contradictory, surprising, unpredictable, opaque, and/or generative futures. We engage with Alison Kafer's call to theorize disability futurity by wrestling with the ways in which “the future” is normatively deployed in (...) the service of able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, a deployment used to render bodies of difference as sites of “no future”. By re-storying embodied difference, the storytellers illuminate ongoing processes of remaking their bodily selves in ways that respond to the past and provide possibilities for different futures; these orientations may be configured as “dis-topias” based not on progress, but on new pathways for living, uncovered not through evoking the familiar imaginaries of curing, eliminating, or overcoming disability, but through incorporating experiences of embodied difference into time. These temporalities gesture toward new kinds of futures, giving us glimpses of ways of cripping time, of cripping ways of being/becoming in time, and of radically re-presencing disability in futurity. (shrink)

Prolepses: Queer/early/modern -- Always already queer (French) theory -- Undoing the histories of homosexuality -- Queer nation : early/modern France -- Queer spectrality.

The diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders is embedded in a matrix of biological, social and ethical processes, making it an important topic for crossdisciplinary social and ethical research. This article reviews different branches of research relevant to understanding how FASD is identified and defined and outlines a framework for future social and ethical research in this area. We outline the character of scientific research into FASD, epidemiological discrepancies between reported patterns of maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy and the incidence (...) of FASD, and the social and ethical considerations that may impact on who is, and is not, diagnosed. We highlight what further research investigating FASD diagnostic processes, as well as the multi-generational impacts of FASD, is needed. Important research priorities are to: 1) enumerate the variety of stakeholders involved in seeking FASD diagnoses; 2) understand the experiences and perspectives of mothers from different backgrounds who have consumed alcohol during pregnancy and their affected children; and 3) collect health histories of maternal alcohol consumption in families to determine the effect of FASD at sub-cultural and cultural levels. (shrink)

Besonders in politisch unruhigen Zeiten stellt sich in wiederkehrenden Abständen die Frage nach der Verantwortung für unterschiedliche Geschehnisse. Der französisch-jüdische Phänomenologe Emmanuel Lévinas eröffnet einen alternativen Horizont, welcher Verantwortung von einer neuen Seite beleuchtet. Sein Ausgangspunkt ist der Andere: Ein anderer Mensch, der durch seine Ansprache die subjektive Weltordnung aus den Angeln hebt, der fordert und zur Verantwortung ruft. Ein Ruf, dem auf ethischer Grundlage entsprochen werden muss. Es bleibt ein vergeblicher, der auf dem Mittelmeer verhallt. Die Ethik von Emmanuel (...) Lévinas ist heute so aktuell wie selten zuvor. Erweitert um die Theorien Jacques Derridas und Judith Butlers stellt Carla Schrievers Studie eine spannende Suche nach Anwendungsmöglichkeiten einer Ethik dar, die nicht Subjektivität, sondern Alterität ins Zentrum der Diskussion stellt. (shrink)

Networks and the World Wide Web seem to provide an answer to efficiently creating and disseminating knowledge resources. Knowledge, however, is ambiguous in character, and contains both explicit (information) and tacit dimensions - the latter being difficult to value as well as to transfer. Participant identity, commitment and behaviour within the network also affect the sharing of knowledge. Hence, existing laws and norms (including property rights) which have been established on the basis of discrete transactions and monetary value-oriented exchange may (...) not be adequate to deal with the whole spectrum of knowledge transfer. A model is needed to address transfer across a large heterogeneous network. We introduce the concept of sub-networks where tacit knowledge resides and argue that considering social norms underlying trust and other informal mechanisms provides a more suitable basis for understanding the exchange of tacit knowledge. Norm establishment is complicated by the fact that values differ across cultures; however, the social norms that underpin sub-networks can sustain knowledge transfer within them. The purpose of this conceptual article is to introduce the concept of sub-networks and to identify the sub-network/network relationship as an area in which it is necessary to look beyond property rights and raise the issue of norms. We believe that an analysis of the role of social norms in knowledge sub-networks and their interaction with global networks points to a key element in understanding networks and any emerging theory of network ethics in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Dans cet article, après avoir souligné l’heureuse ambiguïté du terme d’utopie, dont nous avons de bonnes raisons de penser qu’elle a été remarquée par Thomas More, nous rendons d’abord compte de la large diffusion de l’utopisme au niveau historique et géographique. Nous examinons ensuite quelques-unes des critiques les plus importantes qui lui ont été adressées, soulevées notamment par Karl Popper et Hans Jonas. Examiner les différentes problématisations de l’utopisme permet de mettre en lumière ses différents aspects afin de différencier l’intentionnalité (...) utopique des configurations utopiques. Ce qui précède nous permet, en dernier lieu, d’esquisser quelques lignes directrices pour une “critique de la raison utopique”. (shrink)

Based on a non-cognitivist meta-ethical position and an anti-subjectivist concept of “reality”, Hägerström questioned the pretension of traditional legal theory, especially legal positivism, to be a science of law, because the entities to which it refers are not real. Olivecrona succeeded in pursuing such a thesis while he tempered it. Taking a socio-psychological approach, he offered a realistic theory of law which is able to emphasize psychical and linguistic phenomena lying at the root of our ideas of rights and duties, (...) which determine what functions they serve in society and how they affect our conduct. (shrink)

The theory of evolution is supported by the theory of genetics, which provides a single causal mechanism to explain the activities of replicators and interactors. A common misrepresentation of the theory of evolution, however, is that interaction (involving interactors), and transmission (involving replicators), are distinct causal processes. Sandra Mitchell (1987) is misled by this. I discuss why only a single causal mechanism is working in evolution and why it is sufficient. Further, I argue that Mitchell's mistaken view of the causal (...) mechanism in evolution prevents her from resolving the conflict between Dawkins and Brandon. I conclude that the unit-of-selection question remains very much alive. (shrink)

This article analyses MNCs, worker identity and the ethical vulnerability caused by over-reliance on expatriate managers and under-reliance on local managers, who are often undervalued. It is argued that MNCs not only need but also have an obligation to assess local managers’ knowledge and contributions as having not only operational and market values, but also institutional value. Local managers both give access to and form part of local social capital and the treatment they receive is an element in the CSR (...) performance of the MNCs. Recognition of the value of equal treatment creates an ethical imperative that the barriers of cultural difference be overcome. We see such an approach towards local managers as more fully taking into account the human rights of these local managers. Such a holistic approach is increasingly relevant for MNCs in the 21st century, as MNCs increasing globalize into new large emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China. (shrink)

In this article, the right to health is discussed as a social right and an essential requisite in the construction and guarantee of human rights, more precisely human dignity, considering this right as a complex but effective process in the transformation of the social reality. In the first place, the activities of the public power and its difficulties to guarantee universal access to health are highlighted. This scenario ends up inhibiting the practice of the right to health and prevents users (...) from enjoying and using it. In that sense, this article challenges and explores some alternatives to solidify and put in practice the right to health in Brazil. Departing from the analysis of the Unified Health System (SUS) and social participation in Brazil, this article discusses the judicialization of health in the country, highlighting the difficulties the State faces to equitably offer universal healthcare to society. This context offers an opportunity for reflection and a paradigm change, from the “judicialization of health” to the “judicialization of health policies.” Finally, the public health policies adopted by other countries are emphasized, in the attempt to construct the empowerment of human beings in the practice of their rights, particularly social participation and the discussion about the States’ responsibility to put their citizens’ right to health in practice. In conclusion, the political and collective construction of the right to health needs to be encouraged, distinguishing the legitimate interests of the different interlocutors involved. (shrink)

This article argues that immoralists do not fully enjoy autonomous agency because they are not capable of engaging in the proper form of practical reflection, which requires relating to others as having equal standing. An adequate diagnosis of the immoralist’s failure of agential authority requires a relational account of reflexivity and autonomy. This account has the distinctive merit of identifying the cost of disregarding moral obligations and of showing how immoralists may become susceptible to practical reason. The compelling quality of (...) reason should not be represented as the capacity to force them to abide by morality on pain of incoherence. Rather, its authority (and objectivity) is shown when it presents them with the prospect of a transition that makes sense for them to undertake. (shrink)

Este artículo sostiene que Iris Murdoch se opone al no-cognitivismo porque este no tiene en cuenta los fenómenos morales dinámicos que son clave en cualquier exploración filosófica de la vida moral adecuada, es decir, la experiencia subjetiva de la moralidad, la diferencia y el cambio. El argumento de Murdoch pone en cuestión la dicotomía hecho/valor y cognitivo/emotivo, y propone un modelo de la mente complejo, sensible al tiempo y dinámico que se centra en el cambioy la transición. En este modelo (...) dinámico, la objetividad ética es un logro personal. (shrink)

Background: Publication of ethically uncertain research occurs despite well-published guidelines set forth in documents such as the Declaration of Helsinki. Such guidelines exist to aide editorial staff in making decisions regarding ethical acceptability of manuscripts submitted for publication, yet examples of ethically suspect and uncertain publication exist. Our objective was to survey journal editors regarding practices and attitudes surrounding such dilemmas. Methods: The Editor-in-chief of each of the 103 English-language journals from the 2005 Abridged Index Medicus list publishing original research (...) were asked to complete a survey sent to them by email between September-December 2007. Results: A response rate of 33% (n = 34) was obtained from the survey. 18% (n = 6) of respondents had published ethically uncertain or suspect research within the last 10 years. 85% (n = 29) of respondents stated they would always reject ethically uncertain articles submitted for publication on ethical grounds alone. 12% (n = 4) of respondents stated they would approach each submission on a case-by-case basis. 3% (n = 1) stated they would be likely to publish such research, but only with accompanying editorial. Only 38% (n = 13) give reviewers explicit instruction to reject submissions on ethical grounds if found wanting. Conclusions: Editorial compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki in rejecting research that is conducted unethically was difficult to ascertain because of a poor response rate despite multiple attempts using different modalities. Of those who did respond, the majority do reject ethically suspect research but few explicitly advise reviewers to do so. In this study editors did not take advantage of the opportunity to describe their support for the rejection of the publication of unethical research. (shrink)

In ‘Parental Virtues: A New Way of Thinking about the Morality of Reproductive Actions’ Rosalind McDougall proposes a virtue-based framework to assess the morality of child selection. Applying the virtue-based account to the selection of children with impairments does not lead, according to McDougall, to an unequivocal answer to the morality of selecting impaired children. In ‘Impairment, Flourishing, and the Moral Nature of Parenthood,’ she also applies the virtue-based account to the discussion of child selection, and claims that couples with (...) an impairment are morally justified in selecting a child with the same impairment. This claim, she maintains, reveals that the flourishing of a child should be understood as requiring environment-specific characteristics. I argue that McDougall's argument begs the question. More importantly, it does not do justice to virtue ethics. I also question to what extent a virtue ethics framework can be successfully applied to discussions about the moral permissibility of reproductive actions. (shrink)

In this paper, I ask feminist philosophers and science studies scholars to consider the goals of developing critical analyses of evolutionary psychology. These goals can include development of scholarship in feminist philosophy and science studies, mediation of the uptake of evolutionary psychology by other academic and lay communities, and improvement of the practices and products of evolutionary psychology itself. I evaluate ways that some practices of feminist philosophy and science studies facilitate or hinder meeting these goals, and consider the merits (...) of critical engagement with some of the scientists themselves. Finally, I describe a community of feminist evolutionary psychologists with whom it might be both fruitful and interesting to engage, and identify ways that these interactions may benefit the science and the study of the science. (shrink)