The responses to the questions of why? when?, how?, where?, and in what ways? business ethics should be taught in the BusinessEthics classroom inundate the scholarly literature. Yet, to date, despite some very interesting ideas, with respect to the answers givento the above question, not only has nothing even close to consensus been reached, but this particular area of pedagogy is instagnation—authors still challenge both the very idea of teaching business ethics as well as the practical value of such courses (...) for ourstudents once they graduate to the corporate world.In this paper I will suggest that the reason for this lack of pedagogical progress is that there has been a serious oversight regarding the most important teaching question of all: Who? I will show that the pedagogical issue of whom should be teaching Business Ethics has been largely ignored, skirted or answered incorrectly. I will then boldly argue that the only necessary condition for successful courses inBusiness Ethics is that they be taught by experts in ethics, i.e., Ph.D.s in philosophy. (shrink)

Much of the legal and social interest in new neuroimaging techniques stems from the belief that they can deliver on the materialist understanding of the relationship between the brain and the mind. This article looks at predictions about the future both of scientific advances and of social reactions to those predictions. It looks at the likely technical limits on neuroscience-based mindreading, then at the likely limits in how the law might use such technologies. It describes three kinds of technical barriers (...) to detailed and useful mindreading: the likely impossibility of making a complete and accurate model of a human brain in light of its incredible complexity, the problems of interpersonal and intrapersonal plasticity, and the problem of trying to read, now, someone's past mental state. The potential changes to the operation of the law, through the use of mindreading as evidence of pain, deception, or bias, among other things, could be extremely important. (shrink)

Limits to Action: The Allocation of Individual Behavior presents the ideas and methods in the study of how individual organisms allocate their limited time and energy and the consequences of such allocation. The book is a survey of individual resource allocation, emphasizing the relationships of the concepts of utility, reinforcement, and Darwinian fitness. The chapters are arranged beginning with plants and general evolutionary considerations, through animal behavior in nature and laboratory, and ending with human behavior in suburb and institution. Topics (...) discussed include operant conditioning; the principle of diminishing returns; and issues in relation to mating strategies. Biologists, sociologists, economists, and psychologists will find the book interesting. (shrink)

Fabienne Peter (2020) recently proposed a taxonomy of accounts of the meta-normative grounds of political legitimacy. In this article, I argue that there is an important distinction left out of that taxonomy that complicates the picture. This is the distinction between attitude-independent and attitude-dependent conceptions of normative truth. Through an examination of these conceptions of normative truth (and correlate interpretations of what counts as a normative reason) I argue that what Peter calls a fact-based conception of legitimacy may collapse into (...) a will-based conception. Further, the distinction has important implications for what Peter calls the belief-based conception. Finally, I defend the will-based conception against Peter's arbitrariness objection through an examination of ideally coherent eccentrics. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion and a criticism of the account of the Philosophy of Resemblances which appears in the first chapter of Professor H. H. Price's Thinking and Experience.

Deep brain stimulation is an experimental procedure for treatment-resistant depression. Some results show promise, but blinded trials had limited success. Ethical questions center on vulnerability: especially on whether depressed patients can weigh the risks and benefits effectively, whether depression causes “desperation,” and whether media portrayals create unrealistic hopes. We interviewed 24 psychiatric inpatients with treatment-resistant depression, qualitatively analyzing their comments. Most had minimal interest in deep brain stimulators. Some might consider them if their depression worsened, if alternatives were exhausted, or (...) if the evidence were stronger. Fears focused on the surgery, adverse effects, and the novelty of the device. Patients felt the depression interfered with their ability to weigh the risks and benefits. Patients seemed highly attuned to the risks, and were skeptical that the treatment would be effective. We conclude that ethical concerns about vulnerability remain, yet patients with treatment-resistant depression were thoughtful and cautious about trying a novel therapy. (shrink)

In the paper “Translational Neuroethics: A Vision for a More Integrated, Inclusive, and Impactful Field,” Wexler and Sullivan provide an insightful analysis of challenges within the field and how t...

In 2014, the editorial board of BMC Medical Ethics came together to devise sections for the journal that would give structure to the journal help ensure that authors’ research is matched to the most appropriate editors and help readers to find the research most relevant to them. The editorial board decided to take a practical approach to devising sections that dealt with the challenges of content management. After that, we started thinking more theoretically about how one could go about classifying (...) the field of medical ethics. This editorial elaborates and reflects on the practical approach that we took at the journal, then considers an alternative theoretically derived approach, and reflects on the possibilities, challenges and value of classifying the field more broadly. (shrink)

In his Treatise on the Astrolabe Chaucer engaged simultaneously in two kinds of translation—translating from one language to another and translating highly specialized knowledge into a form that could be more easily understood by nonspecialists. These two simultaneous translations are linked to one another using the reader persona of Chaucer’s ten-year-old son. Chaucer uses a child as the ideal audience (or reader) to communicate both aspects of his translation. This article demonstrates how Chaucer’s vocabularies, including words adopted from Arabic, allowed (...) him to use English as a language for scientific knowledge and for articulating and creating new communities of scientific readers and practitioners. To do so, Chaucer introduced the concept of experience as a necessary component of acquiring natural knowledge: using the astrolabe is as important as reading about it. I demonstrate that while he maintained the centrality of experiential knowledge to understanding nature, Chaucer also established English as a scientific language, arguing that the concept of experience and the role of the English language in scientific inquiry are linked. (shrink)