Curtis W. Freeman; The Catholic Witness in a Post-Christendom Era, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 7, Issue 2, 1 January.

In our paper we will try to connect the dynamics of community decline to individual responses. We will operate on two levels of reality. At the first level we will discuss the circumstances surrounding the recent decline of small communities in North Dakota. At the second level we will discuss how this decline affects small town residents' attitudes toward economic development. In the first level analysis we examine the thesis that the natural environment of community growth is economic exploitation; therefore, (...) the decline of resource-based communities is natural and inevitable. We discuss the circumstances surrounding the recent decline of small communities in North Dakota. At the second level analysis, we operate at the level at which life circumstances and environments are shaped by political-economic institutions that in turn shape the behavior and mentality of communities, families, and individuals. We hypothesize that residents of declining small towns deny their powerlessness and adapt to their situation through intense dedication to economic growth. We develop a series of hypotheses to test this thesis using data from the North Dakota Rural Life Poll. In our conclusion, we discuss implications for rural development practitioners working in declining small towns where this intense dedication to economic development in prevalent. (shrink)

We review both the aspects of values-related research that complicate ideations of what we ought to do, as well as the psychological impediments to forming beliefs about the way things are. We find that more traditional moral theories are without solid empirical footing in the psychology of human values. Consequently, we revise the notion of values to align with their socially symbolic utility in self-affirmation and reformulate our understandings of moral agency to allow for the practicalities of context, circumstance, and (...) connectedness. We close by discussing the research and practical implications for these revisions. (shrink)

Social scientists have a long history of concern with the effects of industrialized farming on communities. Recently, the topic has taken on new importance as corporate farming laws in a number of states are challenged by agribusiness interests. Defense of these laws often requires evidence from social science research that industrialized farming poses risks to communities. A problem is that no recent journal articles or books systematically assess the extent to which research to date provides evidence of these risks. This (...) article addresses the gap in the literature. We evaluate studies investigating the effects of industrialized farming on community well-being from the 1930s to the present. Using a pool of 51 studies, we document the research designs employed, evaluate results as to whether adverse consequences were found, and delineate the aspects of community life that may be affected by industrialized farming. Of these studies, 57% found largely detrimental impacts, 25% were mixed, finding some detrimental impacts, and 18% found no detrimental impacts. Adverse impacts were found across an array of indicators measuring socioeconomic conditions, community social fabric, and environmental conditions. Few positive effects of industrialized farming were found across studies. The results demonstrate that public concern about industrialized farms is warranted. Scholars often debate whether research should be oriented around disciplines’ accumulated body of knowledge or, conversely, provide critical knowledge in the public interest. Social scientists’ long-term engagement in building the body of research on industrialized farming allows for accomplishment of both objectives. (shrink)

Applied ontologies have been used more and more frequently to enhance systems engineering. In this paper, we argue that adopting principles of ontological realism can increase the benefits that ontologies have already been shown to provide to the systems engineering process. Moreover, adopting Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), an ISO standard for top-level ontologies from which more domain specific ontologies are constructed, can lead to benefits in four distinct areas of systems engineering: (1) interoperability, (2) standardization, (3) testing, and (4) data (...) exploitation. Reaping these benefits in a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) context requires utilizing an ontology’s vocabulary when modeling systems and entities within those systems. If the chosen ontology abides by the principles of ontological realism, a semantic standard capable of uniting distinct domains, using BFO as a hub, can be leveraged to promote greater interoperability among systems. As interoperability and standardization increase, so does the ability to collect data during the testing and implementation of systems. These data can then be reasoned over by computational reasoners using the logical axioms within the ontology. This, in turn, generates new data that would have been impossible or too inefficient to generate without the aid of computational reasoners. (shrink)

What am I? And what is my relationship to the thing I call ‘my body’? Thus each of us can pose for himself the philosophical problems of the nature of the self and the relationship between a person and his body. One answer to the question about the relationship between a person and the thing he calls ‘his body’ is that they are two things composed of the same matter at the same time (like a clay statue and the piece (...) of clay which presently constitutes it). This is the ‘constitution view’. In this paper we give a novel overview of the literature on personal identity, the constitution view, and surrounding topics. (shrink)

Can identity itself be vague? Can there be vague objects? Does a positive answer to either question entail a positive answer to the other? In this paper we answer these questions as follows: No, No, and Yes. First, we discuss Evans’s famous 1978 argument and argue that the main lesson that it imparts is that identity itself cannot be vague. We defend the argument from objections and endorse this conclusion. We acknowledge, however, that the argument does not by itself establish (...) either that there cannot be vague objects or that there cannot be identity statements that are indeterminate for ontic reasons. And we further acknowledge that it does not by itself establish that there cannot be identity statements that are indeterminate in virtue of the existence of vague objects. We then go on to argue that, despite this, one who believes in vague objects cannot endorse Evans’s argument. To establish this we offer supplementary arguments that show that if vague objects exist then identity is vague, and that if identity is vague then vague objects exist. Finally we draw attention to an argument parallel to that of Evans’s, but safer, which can be employed against the putative ontic indeterminacy in identity of vague objects which can be differentiated by identity-free properties. (shrink)

This study expands the application of deonance theory into organizations’ upper echelons by examining how CEOs imprinted with a sense of duty can influence managerial decision-making. We hypothesize an imprint of bounded autonomy, an ought-force that constrains their decision-making and understanding of behavioral freedom, influences duty-bound CEOs to self-report errors in past financial reporting. We test deonance theory propositions of instrumentality for behavioral expansion, namely loss avoidance and gain attainment, related to institutional ownership concentration and CEO equity ownership. We use (...) CEOs that are graduates of U.S. service academies as a proxy for duty-bound executives and find firms they lead are more likely to issue a financial restatement to correct a previous reporting error. This finding is robust to alternate explanations such as being error-prone, earnings management, auditor oversight, and risk behaviors. We also find evidence that deonance may be subject to behavioral expansion. The likelihood of issuing a restatement decreases as institutional ownership concentration and CEO equity ownership increases. This study shows imprinted deonance within the C-suite influences important organizational outcomes. (shrink)

The confounding effects of heterogeneity in biological psychiatry and psychiatric genetics have been widely discussed in the literature. We suggest an approach in which heterogeneity may be put to use in hypothesis testing, and may find application in evaluation of the Crespi & Badcock (C&B) imprinting hypothesis. Here we consider three potential sources of etiologic subtypes for analysis.

In his book Modal Logic as Metaphysics, Williamson argues that the traditional actualist‐possibilist debate should be abandoned as hopelessly unclear and that we should get on with the clearer contingentism‐necessitism debate. We think that Williamson’s pessimism is not warranted by the brief arguments he gives. In this paper, we explain why and provide a clear formulation of the traditional actualist‐possibilist debate.

This book celebrates the work of Patricia Werhane, an iconic figure in business ethics. This festschrift is a collection of articles that build on Werhane’s contributions to business ethics in such areas as Employee Rights, the Legacy of Adam Smith, Moral Imagination, Women in Business, the development of the field of business ethics, and her contributions to such fields as Health Care, Education, Teaching, and Philosophy. All papers are new contributions to the management literature written by well-known business ethicists, such (...) as Norman Bowie, Richard De George, Ronald Duska, Edwin Hartman, Michael Hoffman, Mollie Painter-Morland, Mark Schwartz, Andrew Wicks, and others. The volume is comprised of articles that reflect on Werhane’s work as well as build on it as a way to advance further research. At the end of the festschrift, Pat Werhane provides responses to each chapter. The first chapter of the book also includes the overview of Patricia Werhane’s work and her academic career. The book is written to appeal to management scholars and graduate students interested in the areas of Business Ethics, Modern Capitalism, and Human Rights. Patricia Werhane is one of the most distinguished figures in the field of business ethics. She was a founder of the field, she is one of its leading scholars, and she has had a profound impact on the world of business practice. Among her many accomplishments, Pat is known for her original work on moral imagination, she is an acclaimed authority on employee rights in the workplace, and she is one of the leading scholars on Adam Smith. Having been active in Academia for over 50 years, Werhane is a prolific author of over a hundred articles and book chapters, and the author or editor of twenty-seven books, including Adam Smith and his Legacy for Modern Capitalism, Moral Imagination and Management Decision-Making, and co-authored books Organization Ethics in Health Care, Alleviating Poverty Through Profitable Partnerships, Obstacles to Ethical Decision-Making, Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience, and Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility. (shrink)

We were a group of Christian friends searching for affirmations that lay at the heart of our faith and reached to the limits of our existence and moral authority. As we have reflected on our role in deciding whether and to what extent we could assist in allowing our terminally ill friend, seventy-nine-year-old, Norman to die, we were deeply troubled by the moral ambiguity of our involvement. Through a careful process of authority through communal discernment, our responsibility for Norman became (...) clear: we were to assist him in living the life he embraced in baptism — a life which included a destiny that was conformed to the crucified and risen one. That was not the destiny we chose for Norman; it was the destiny he owned. We recognized with Norman that our lives are not our own to be guided by autonomy and liberty, but rather to be lived for the glory of Jesus the Christ. (shrink)

BackgroundThe merits and drawbacks of moral relevance models of addiction have predominantly been discussed theoretically, without empirical evidence of these potential effects. This study develops and evaluates a novel survey measure for assessing moral evaluations of patient substance misuse (ME-PSM).MethodsThis measure was tested on 524 health professionals (i.e., physicians, nurses, and other health professionals) in California (n = 173), urban France (n = 102), and urban China (n = 249). Demographic factors associated with ME-PSM were investigated using analyses of variance (...) (ANOVAs) and t-tests, with results suggesting that ME-PSM is higher among younger health professionals, nurses (when compared with physicians and other health professionals), and Chinese health professionals (when compared with French and American health professionals).ResultsResults provide preliminary support for the psychometric quality of the survey measure introduced in this study, including the existence of a single latent structure and partial invariance of collected data across countries.ConclusionThe survey measure for ME-PSM which was developed and tested in the current study appears to hold potential utility for use as a measure of moral views of patient substance misuse. With development, this measure may be used to examine moral evaluations, both as factors of stigma and of other clinical factors associated with the treatment of patients with substance use disorders. (shrink)