Ethical thought is articulated around normative concepts. Standard examples of normative concepts are good, reason, right, ought, and obligatory. Theorists often treat the normative as an undifferentiated domain. Even so, it is common to distinguish between two kinds of normative concepts: evaluative or axiological concepts, such as good, and deontic concepts, such as ought. This encyclopedia entry discusses the many differences between the two kinds of concepts.

Most legal systems divide the world into persons and property, treating human beings as persons, and pretty much everything else, including non-human animals, as property. Persons are the subjects of both rights and obligations, including the right to own property, while objects of property, being by their very nature for the use of persons, have no rights at all. I will call this the “legal bifurcation.” We might look to Immanuel Kant’s moral and political philosophy to provide a philosophical vindication (...) of the legal bifurcation, for reasons I will lay out in a moment. But in one way, that would be backwards, because Kant, in constructing the metaphysical categories that he used to talk about rights, was following the tradition of Roman law. (shrink)

Research has shown that a majority of employed women experience sexual harassment and suffer negative repercussions because of it; yet only a minority of these women label their experiences “sexual harassment.” To investigate how people identify sexual harassment, in-depth interviews were conducted with 18 waitpeople in restaurants in Austin, Texas. Most respondents worked in highly sexualized work environments. Respondents labeled sexual advances as sexual harassment only in four specific contexts: when perpetrated by someone who exploited their powerful position for personal (...) sexual gain; when the perpetrator was of a different race/ethnicity than the victim—typically a minority man harassing a white woman; when the perpetrator was of a different sexual orientation than the victim—typically a gay man harassing a straight man; or when violence or the threat of violence was used. The authors argue that the hegemonic norms of acceptable sexual activity privilege heterosexual relationships, legitimize institutionalized forms of sexual exploitation in the workplace, and may protect assailants of the same race and sexual orientation as their victims from charges of sexual harassment. (shrink)

Some are concerned about the possibility that offering money for research participation can constitute coercion or undue influence capable of distorting the judgment of potential research subjects and compromising the voluntariness of their informed consent. The author recognizes that more often than not there are multiple influences leading to decisions, including decisions about research participation. The concept of undue influence is explored, as well as the question of whether or not there is something uniquely distorting about money as opposed to (...) a chance for treatment or medical care. An amount of money that is not excessive and is calculated on the basis of time or contribution may, rather than constitute an undue inducement, be an indication of respect for the time and contribution that research subjects make. (shrink)

1. Being an Animal Human beings are animals: phylum: chordata, class: mammalia, order: primates, family: hominids, species: homo sapiens, subspecies: homo sapiens sapiens. According to current scientific opinion, we evolved approximately 200,000 years ago in Africa from ancestors whom we share with the other great apes. What does it mean that we are animals? Scientifically speaking, an animal is essentially a complex, multicellular organism that feeds on other life forms. But what we share with the other animals is not just (...) a definition: it is a history – that is, it is a story – and a resulting set of attributes and circumstances, and an ecosystem, and a planet. What is the story? Living things are homeostatic systems – they maintain themselves through a process of nutrition that enables them to work constantly at replacing the fragile materials of which they are composed. Living things also work at reproducing, or contributing to the reproduction, of other living things that maintain themselves in essentially the same way. To engage in those activities is essentially what it means to be alive. And in order to engage in those activities, a living thing must be, in some way, responsive to conditions in its environment. Plants, for instance, respond to dryness, by growing deeper roots, or to sunshine, by turning their leaves in its direction. Even a unicellular organism is drawn to some things and recoils from others. (shrink)

Contemporary ethical theorists have sought criteria to identify meaningful lives. A central issue that divides accounts is whether the concept of meaningfulness rests on objective values. My own view is that each side in the controversy is partially right and partially wrong. I believe objective values are needed for the concept of a meaningful life but that no successful account of such values has yet been offered. Lacking such an account, the concept of a meaningful life should be replaced by (...) more useful terminology. I shall contrast my view with that of Susan Wolf though my goal is not primarily critical but, instead, the development of a different and, I believe, more useful approach. (shrink)

Conscience is the psychological faculty by which we aware of and respond to the moral character of our own actions. It is most commonly thought of as the source of pains we suffer as a result of doing what we believe is wrong --- the pains of guilt, or “pangs of conscience.” It may also be seen, more controversially, as the source of our knowledge of what is right and wrong, or as a motive for moral conduct. Thus a person (...) who is motivated to act on principle is said to act “conscientiously.” These terms come from the Latin “conscientia,” a direct translation of the Greek “syneidesis.” This ranges in meaning from being aware of something to “knowing something in common with” someone. Knowing something in common with someone can mean sharing his secret, and this puts you in a position to serve as a witness against him. Thus the term came to have a judicial use, to describe one who could bear witness. In certain contexts, “syneidesis” came to mean a state of knowing in common with oneself, and so of bearing witness against oneself. Although these terms appear in Stoic and Epicurean works, conscience did not receive extensive philosophical treatment until the Medieval period, when treatises on conscience became standard. Medieval philosophers distinguished two aspects of conscience, “conscientia” and “synderesis.” Roughly, “synderesis” refers to the ineradicable and infallible basis of conscience in human nature, while “conscientia” refers to the more particular judgments we make about our actions. There are various ways of specifying the two ideas further. In Thomas Aquinas’s account, which became standard, synderesis grasps the basic moral principles which are the first premises of practical reasoning, while conscientia is the conclusion, the act of judging that one ought to perform a particular action. (shrink)

What account of evaluative expressions, such as ‘is beautiful’, ‘is generous’ or ‘is good’, should a Fregean adopt? Given Frege’s claim that predicates can have both a sense and a reference in addition to their extension, an interesting range of only partially explored theoretical possibilities opens to Frege and his followers. My intention here is to briefly present these putative possibilities and explore one of them, namely David Wiggins’ claim that evaluative predicates refer to non-natural concepts and have a sense (...) which is sentiment-involving. In order to defend this claim against objections which aim at showing that evaluative concepts do not really exist, I shall suggest that our awareness of evaluative concepts involves affective (or emotive) states. (shrink)

This ground-breaking book considers current perspectives on special education reform in the Asia-Pacific region. It has a major focus on a new era of special education, and how this relates to education reform towards inclusive education. With major changes being proposed under current educational reform and confusion as to how to instigate these measures, this book provides ways to better prepare teachers. It is helpfully divided into three different sections of education reform: "Education Reform in the Asia-Pacific region" reviews broad (...) trends and issues in special education across the region, including Taiwan, Korea, Australia, India, China and Hong Kong. "Preparing Teachers to work in Inclusive Classrooms" focuses on curricula and pedagogical practices for teacher education. This section considers different approaches to preparing teachers such as cross-categorical, collaborative, innovations, and the impact of teachers’ attitudes, perceptions and concerns on inclusion. "Effective Special & Inclusive Practices" draws upon evidence–based research to provide best practice models to assist in developing inclusive school communities. Each section addresses a list of objectives and questions; suggests best practice pedagogy; and concludes with a support section with useful websites and suggested professional development activities. This book will interest teachers, teacher educators, university lecturers in education and post graduate students. (shrink)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic having radically changed the way we now work, many recent studies have focused on employees’ experiences and well-being, their performance and job satisfaction, and ways to ensure the best support for them when working from home. However, less attention has been given to managers’ experiences in adapting to the new role of distance management and supporting them with this transition. This study aims to explore how managers experienced distance management, and the perceived organizational support, and (...) the effect of organizational support has on their JSA during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data from 1,016 line, middle and top managers in Danish workplaces were collected in March 2021, 1 year after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We applied descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and partial least square structural equation modeling to investigate the relation of perceived organizational support and the JSA of distance managers. Control variables were the respondents’ demographic characteristics, specifically gender, age, and management level. The study offers insights into the managerial experiences of becoming a distance manager, helps to understand the relationship between POS and managers’ JSA, and shows a positive relationship similarly for the managers as for employees. The study shows that most managers found their work as distance managers more demanding and worked more hours. The data demonstrate that managers received the most support from their own employees and manager peers, whereas administrative support was largely lacking. The data also show that the majority of the managers prefer to manage from the office, but similarly, they can continue managing from a distance if needed post-pandemic. The study adds to the literature on workplaces’ transitioning to distance management and hybrid work and contributes to understanding the role of POS and managers’ JSA during this transition. Consequently, if an organization aims to offer hybrid work, improving support from top management and in-house support functions would help maintain or increase managers’ JSA. (shrink)

Cohen Kadosh & Walsh (CK&W) present convincing evidence indicating the existence of notation-specific numerical representations in parietal cortex. We suggest that the same conclusions can be drawn for a particular type of numerical representation: the representation of time. Notation-dependent representations need not be limited to number but may also be extended to other magnitude-related contents processed in parietal cortex (Walsh 2003).

This paper sets out to examine the place of theory in preschool education, considering the theories to which practitioners and providers have access and which provide a rationale for everyday practices and shape the experiences of young children. The paper reflects the circumstances of preschool provision, practices and thinking in the UK in general and in Scotland in particular. The central argument is that while there may be little obvious recourse to theorising and limited exposure to explicit theory about children’s (...) development, learning and education, practitioners and those responsible for provision have tacit understandings or implicit theories which can be seen to shape their practices. The paper begins by considering the explicit theory which practitioners are exposed to through the development of practice guidance and professional education. This is followed by an examination of the explicit theories adopted from psychology and more recent theoretical developments which have their roots in other disciplines and perspectives. Some influences on practitioners’ implicit theories are discussed before considering two key aspects of the dominate consensus about good practice: that play is the medium through which children learn and that practice should be child-centred. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ‘identity’ of preschool education theory and the benefits of articulating the implicit theory and folk beliefs on which local practices are based. (shrink)

We clarify aspects of our Dynamic Functional Model of Jealousy in response to D’Arms and Stets. Our model proposes that jealousy is an evolved motivational state that arises over threat by a rival to one’s relationship or some aspect of one’s relationship. The formation or loss of relationships rarely occurs instantaneously. Therefore, we argue that jealousy, whose goal is to remove or reduce the rival threat, can occur over a longer time course than is often assumed in theories of specific (...) emotions. We further suggest that other emotions such as grief and fear also can occur over extended periods. This raises challenges for emotion theories that assume that emotions must be short-lived. (shrink)

Einstellung effects designate the phenomenon where established routines can prevent people from finding other, possibly more efficient solutions. Here we investigate the mechanism behi...

The term “Socratic method” is so pervasive in education across the disciplines that it has largely lost its meaning, and it has lost its roots in its originator—the historical Socrates. In this article we draw from the original source, Plato's ancient dialogues, to understand the theory and principles behind the questioning used in Socratic method. A deep understanding of Socratic method is particularly timely now as nursing leaders call for increased use of theory‐based debriefing across the nursing curriculum. Socratic questioning (...) is ideally suited as a method for debriefing in nursing classrooms because of its ability to enhance critical thinking and self‐reflection of the learner and because of its basis in care for the learner through a learner‐centred design. We present an analysis of the Socratic method in Plato's works and provide an overview of the key Socratic principles and techniques. We illustrate these principles and techniques with examples of how Socratic teaching can be applied in the nursing classroom, and we address the challenges and rewards for nursing faculty implementing Socratic method. Learning about Socratic method directly from Plato's dialogues can provide a richer and more robust understanding of this key pedagogical technique and help nurse educators practice more intentional and informed Socratic questioning and debriefing. (shrink)

In this set of contributions to the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal celebrating the significant work and contributions of LeRoy Walters, we aim to bring new perspectives to topics that Dr. Walters helped to pioneer and continue his tradition of bringing moral insights and arguments to bear on the development of practical public and professional policies. Dr. Walters is well known for his invaluable service as member and chair of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee at the National Institutes of Health. (...) He also made major contributions to a variety of other committees responsible for the oversight of research and science, and to the development and implementation of influential... (shrink)

The history and context of the public policy regarding stem cell research in the European Union are complex. The regulations respond to and aim to realize political and economic goals across a large region that is culturally diverse, as well as addressing moral judgments on a contested emerging area of research. This history and context are relevant for the arguments developed here in relation to autologous stem cell research and how it is affected by those regulations.The EU is currently an (...) open market across 28 countries with different languages as well as varied cultural, religious, and political histories. Bridging the diverse traditions and their corresponding local policies and regulations is often a... (shrink)

Several studies have shown that nondisabled people—especially healthcare professionals—tend to judge the quality of life of disabled people to be much lower than disabled people themselves report. In part, this is due to dominant narratives about disability. Teachers of biomedical ethics courses have the opportunity to help students to think critically about disability. This may involve interrogating our own assumptions, given the pervasiveness of ableism. This article is intended to facilitate reflection on narratives about disability. After discussing two readings that (...) illustrate the medical and social models of disability, I share my own approach to teaching on disability in my biomedical ethics course. I include student responses to the readings and ways that they report their thinking about disability changed through engagement with the medical and social models. (shrink)

Research on academic pay finds an unexplained gender pay gap that has not fully dissolved over time and that appears to increase with years of experience. In this study, I consider how role congruity bias contributes to this pay gap. Bias is more likely to manifest in a context where there is some ambiguity about performance and where stereotypes are stronger. I predict that bias in the attribution of credit for coauthored research leads to lower returns to research for female (...) professors. To test this prediction, I use a sample of Canadian faculty in accounting, where research is typically coauthored, where females are underrepresented at the most senior ranks, and where many universities evaluate merit in research, teaching, and service to determine salary increases. In regressions of salary on individual and institutional determinants of salary, I find that women earn marginally less than men. However, the pay gap is only evident for women who publish in a selective list of journals; for the subset of faculty with no publications from this list, there are no significant differences in salary. For researching faculty, the pay gap relates specifically to research productivity. While women publish less on average than men, the returns to their research are also lower. In particular, the relation between the individual’s research ranking and salary is significantly lower for women who publish a higher proportion of their work with men, than for all other faculty. Additional analysis of salary and coauthor patterns confirms that women receive significantly less credit for coauthored articles they publish with men than those they publish with other women but that no similar variations in reward are evident for men across publishing patterns. These findings suggest bias in the attribution of credit for coauthored research in the determination of salary, consistent with role congruity theory, and provide an important potential explanation for why salaries for women vary systematically from those of men even after considering productivity. Providing lower rewards for equal work represents a continuing ethical issue in academe and compounds the challenges women already facing in the profession. (shrink)

: Public toilets are a key part of the urban environment. This paper examines and evaluates the pervasive sex segregation, throughout North America, of public toilets. The issue is situated within a larger context—the design and management of the urban environment; larger assumptions about sexuality, reproduction, and privacy that govern that environment; and continuing compulsory sex identification and segregation which still define key areas of "public" space. I examine seven groups of arguments in favor of sex segregation, arguing that all (...) of them are inadequate. I then present reasons showing why ending the sex segregation of public toilets is justified. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the ground of this disagreement is different than philosophers have traditionally supposed. On the surface, the disagreement appears to be a matter of substantive moral judgment: Hume admires the sort of person who rushes to the aid of another from motives of sympathy or humanity, while Kant thinks that a person who helps with the thought that it is his duty is the better character. While a moral disagreement of this kind certainly follows from (...) their views, I will argue that the source of the disagreement lies elsewhere, namely in their different conceptions of action and motivation. This difference leads in turn to a surprisingly deep difference in their conception of our relation to other people, and of what it means to interact with other people. It is his conception of human interaction that leads Hume to think that benevolence is natural while there is something artificial about our motives to act justly and to keep our promises. For Kant, on the other hand, no form of adult human motivation is “natural” in Hume’s sense – all adult human motivation involves the agent’s use of nonnatural concepts such as law or reason. But Kant’s theory of interaction grounds another sense in which it is just as “natural” to be motivated to keep our promises and agreements as it is to be motivated to help each other out when we are in need. (shrink)

In the past few decades, awareness around gender-based violence has expanded on a global scale with increased attention in global treaties, organizations, and conferences. Previously a taboo topic, it is now viewed as a human rights violation in the broader world culture. Drawing on a quantitative analysis of 568 textbooks from 76 countries from across the world, we examine the extent to which this growing global attention to GBV has filtered down into national educational curricula. We find that textbook discussions (...) of GBV are more prevalent in the post-1993 period and are linked to discussions of women’s rights. In addition, discussions of GBV are more common in countries with more linkages to the global women’s movement. Findings from our study underscore the influence of the women’s rights movement and the radical feminist perspective on the reframing of GBV as a human rights issue. (shrink)

Why is there such a thing as value? Those who believe that intrinsic values simply exist – that some things just have the property of being valuable - don’t feel a need to answer that question. But I believe that all value is dependent on the existence of valuing beings. In these lectures, I explore the roots of the good in animal nature and the roots of the right in human nature. I then consider the implications of these accounts for (...) a practical question: if it is human and animal nature that bring value into the world, what if anything does that imply about the way human beings should treat the other animals? (shrink)

The women's silence in response to the message of the “young man” at the tomb is a feature found only in Mark. Its omission by Matthew and Luke suggests that they found this element in the narrative problematic. Yet Mark's text has played a significant role in the Easter liturgy of the ancient church and beyond. The reception history of the narrative reveals both harmonization and discord.

As the Panama Canal approached its fiftieth anniversary in the mid-1960s, U.S. officials concerned about the costs of modernization welcomed the technology of peaceful nuclear excavation to create a new waterway at sea level. Biologists seeking a share of the funds slated for radiological-safety studies called attention to another potential effect which they deemed of far greater ecological and evolutionary magnitude – marine species exchange, an obscure environmental issue that required the expertise of underresourced life scientists. An enterprising endeavor to (...) support Smithsonian naturalists, especially marine biologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, wound up sparking heated debates – between biologists and engineers about the oceans’ biological integrity and among scientists about whether the megaproject represented a research opportunity or environmental threat. A National Academy of Sciences panel chaired by Ernst Mayr failed to attract congressional funding for its 10-year baseline research program, but did create a stir in the scientific and mainstream press about the ecological threats that the sea-level canal might unleash upon the Atlantic and Pacific. This paper examines how the proposed megaproject sparked a scientific and political conversation about the risks of mixing the oceans at a time when many members of the scientific and engineering communities still viewed the seas as impervious to human-facilitated change. (shrink)

When I prepared the edition of Mary Gregor's translation of the Groundwork for Cambridge's "Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy" series, I did an index that included both the pages of that edition and the pages of the Academy edition. Cambridge, however, declined to publish the Academy page numbers in their edition. Rather than let the effort go to waste, I am posting a version of the index with the Academy edition page numbers here. If you have corrections or (...) suggestions for improving the index, please send me a message: [email protected].. (shrink)

Le syntagme « philosophie de la danse » fait surgir une tension aporétique : soit le philosophe esthéticien évince le _danser_ pour réduire la danse à la réception de son spectacle, soit il assimile la danse à une pensée ou un langage – ce qui est bien mal connaître l’absentement du concept en danse, supplanté par autant d’intuitions locomotrices. À titre alternatif, je soutiendrai que la pratique de la danse est révélatrice des dimensions non conceptuelles de la vérité, qualifiables d’ (...) « intuitions claires et évidentes » et posées comme condition même de toute connaissance par Descartes ; ou « vérités du cœur » de même valeur que les connaissances rationnelles selon Pascal. (shrink)

The aim of this research was to examine the mediatization on the level of social relationships, and to figure out which impact media has on the everyday life of couples. A theoretical framework is gathered which is based on the concept of mediatization as background and is applying theoretical approaches on everyday life and close relationships. The empirical study was carried out with 10 couples in order to gain a contextualized description of partners' everyday life communication. The results picture media (...) communication as an integrative part of couples' communicative repertoires and the mediatization of partners' sharing everyday life conduct. Furthermore, the findings show processes of intensification of partners' mental representations related to communicative practices established via digital media. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 94-115, March 2022.

In recent years, an increasingly assertive People’s Republic of China (PRC) leadership has sought to extend the PRC’s influence globally. To this end, it has developed diverse strategies ranging from soft power to more coercive means. The more visible strategies include the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese Dream, and ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy. At the soft power end of the spectrum, Chinese overseas students are at the nexus between two strategies of soft power – the Chinese diaspora and the internationalisation (...) of higher education. While there is an established literature analysing China’s soft power worldwide, relatively little has been done on the role of higher education, particularly where this concerns overseas Chinese students. The article will examine China’s use of overseas students to project its soft power. It then identifies the strategies that support this, viz. ideological and political education to prepare young people for this role and, once overseas, an appeal to a conception of the Chinese diaspora, as well as the organisations (e.g. embassies and student associations) that form potential channels to students and monitor and support them in their role. (shrink)

Danielle Wenner has crafted novel arguments in defense of republican accounts of freedom. I learned a lot from her discussion of how Philip Pettit's neorepublican account of freedom as nondomination does a better job than standard accounts of freedom as noninterference of explaining how power over an agent can restrict their freedom to act autonomously. The real crux of Wenner's argument, however, is that freedom as nondomination can do this work in a way that those who defend an account of (...) relational autonomy cannot. I will start with Wenner's defense of freedom as nondomination and of what it can do as the background for assessing her critique of relational autonomy. The upshot of my comments will be that Wenner... (shrink)

We are, as of May 2019, witnessing yet another “caravan” of people fleeing violence in Latin America, bonding together to reach the territory of safer states in the North. Similarly, in the fall of 2015, Europe experienced the movement of many refugees fleeing war, persecution, and grave human rights violations in Syria. These new waves of people on the move have raised anew important questions about asylum and refuge: who should be able to claim asylum? Should the fear of persecution (...) be sufficient, or do asylum seekers need to show that they have actually suffered it? And maybe most controversially, how should asylum‐granting states respond to the plight of those asking for asylum on their territory?The moral principles guiding asylum and refuge are different from the rules usually regulating immigration, which are based on the principle of territorial sovereignty that allows nation‐states to discriminate and select among those who hope to immigrate. Asylum and refuge instead call upon nation‐states to provide refugees with a new home, protect human rights, and over time, provide access to the social, political and civic rights that characterize membership. Included in the list of human rights, I will argue, is the provision of the means for individual physical and psychological well‐being. (shrink)