Infection by a temperate phage can lead to death of the bacterial cell, but sometimes these phages integrate into the bacterial chromosome, offering the potential for a more long-lasting relationship to be established. Here we define three major ecological and evolutionary benefits of temperate phage for bacteria: as agents of horizontal gene transfer, as sources of genetic variation for evolutionary innovation, and as weapons of bacterial competition. We suggest that a coevolutionary perspective is required to understand the roles of temperate (...) phages in bacterial populations. The dual personality of temperate phages – as infectious lytic phages or prophages integrated within the bacterial genome – creates a complex interaction with bacterial hosts. Although potentially lethal, prophages confer a multitude of benefits for the host, suggesting the potential for both conflict and collaboration which must be viewed from a coevolutionary perspective that considers both host and phage fitness interests. (shrink)

Discussions of sexual ethics often focus on the wrong of treating another as a mere object instead of as a person worthy of respect. On this view, the task of sexual ethics becomes putting the other’s subjectivity above their status as erotic object so as to avoid the harms of objectification. Ward and Anderson argue that such a view disregards the crucial, moral role that erotic objecthood plays in sexual encounters. Important moral features of intimacy are disclosed through the experience (...) of being an erotic object for another, as well as in perceiving another as an erotic object. Drawing on phenomenology, especially the insights of Simone de Beauvoir, Ward and Anderson argue that erotic encounters are shaped by the human condition of ambiguity, where being an object for others is intertwined with bodily agency. Because sexual agency is complex in this way, theories of sexual ethics and responsibility must widen their focus beyond transparent communication and authoritative expressions of will. (shrink)

I argue social and political freedom is not primarily about the absence of constraints, whether those constraints be in the form of interference or domination. Instead, social freedom is centrally about what makes us free. That is, the question of social freedom is first and foremost about determining the positive preconditions of being a free person within society. Social freedom is about what I call the social bases of freedom, or those features of our social world that we have a (...) reason to rely on in making plans or going about our business. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have argued that democratic provenance of law establishes moral requirements to obey it. We argue against this view, claiming that, rather than establishing moral requirements to obey the law, democratic provenance grounds only requirements to respect it. Establishing what we view as this more plausible account makes clear not only exactly what democracy itself contributes to requirements to obey the law but also important difficulties proponents of democratic authority must overcome in order successfully to make their (...) case. To establish our claims, we focus on Thomas Christiano’s book, The Constitution of Equality, and a recent article by Daniel Viehoff. (shrink)

Data platforms represent a new paradigm for carrying out health research. In the platform model, datasets are pooled for remote access and analysis, so novel insights for developing better stratified and/or personalised medicine approaches can be derived from their integration. If the integration of diverse datasets enables development of more accurate risk indicators, prognostic factors, or better treatments and interventions, this obviates the need for the sharing and reuse of data; and a platform-based approach is an appropriate model for facilitating (...) this. Platform-based approaches thus require new thinking about consent. Here we defend an approach to meeting this challenge within the data platform model, grounded in: the notion of ‘reasonable expectations’ for the reuse of data; Waldron’s account of ‘integrity’ as a heuristic for managing disagreement about the ethical permissibility of the approach; and the element of the social contract that emphasises the importance of public engagement in embedding new norms of research consistent with changing technological realities. While a social contract approach may sound appealing, however, it is incoherent in the context at hand. We defend a way forward guided by that part of the social contract which requires public approval for the proposal and argue that we have moral reasons to endorse a wider presumption of data reuse. However, we show that the relationship in question is not recognisably contractual and that the social contract approach is therefore misleading in this context. We conclude stating four requirements on which the legitimacy of our proposal rests. (shrink)

Autistic students are more likely to drop out of university, while facing both challenges and opportunities within university environments. This study compared the experiences of autistic and non-autistic current United Kingdom students, in terms of thoughts about dropping out, burnout, mental health and coping, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Burnout was of particular interest as this is a relatively unexamined phenomenon for autistic students. Seventy autistic and 315 non-autistic students, completed a mixed methods questionnaire with standardized measures of burnout, mental health, (...) and coping styles. We also included qualitative questions about dropping out and COVID-19 experiences. We found autistic participants experienced higher rates of burnout and mental health symptoms and were more likely to have thought about dropping out. Reasons given for thinking about dropping out, for both groups, focused on poor mental well-being, doubts about university, and academic challenges. For autistic participants, further analyses did not identify specific predictors of thinking about dropping out, but for non-autistic participants, this was predicted by maladaptive coping styles and academic burnout. Academic and personal burnout predicted one another for autistic students, and age, maladaptive coping, autistic characteristics, stress, and anxiety additionally predicted burnout for non-autistic students. Similarities in experiences during the pandemic were noted, with both groups experiencing negative social implications, difficulties adjusting to emergency online learning, and poorer psychological well-being. Moving forward from COVID-19, universities must find ways to enhance both academic and social support, to enable equal opportunity within Higher Education for autistic students. (shrink)

This volume consists of papers given to the Royal Institute of Philos ophy Conference on 'Philosophy and the Visual Arts: Seeing and Abstracting' given at the University of Bristol in September 1985. The contributors here come about equally from the disciplines of Philosophy and Art History and for that reason the Conference was hosted jointly by the Bristol University Departments of Philosophy and History of Art. Other conferences sponsored by the Royal Institute of Philosophy have been concerned with links between (...) Philosophy and related disciplines, but here, with the generous support of South West Arts and with the enthusiastic co-operation of the staff of the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol we were able to attempt even more in the way of bridge building; not only were we able to hold some of our meetings in as possible to the general the Gallery, thus making them as accessible public, but we were also privileged in having our discussions supported by two exhibitions of contemporary painting that together presented contrasting aspects of the abstracting enterprise. One, featuring works by Ian McKeever, and drawings and painting by Frank Auerbach, some of which are discussed and illustrated in the present volume, was about the painterly exploration of 'abstracting from' images in nature and in painting itself. The other, curated by Waldemar Januszczak, while showing some figurative works, was concerned with the 'pure' power of colour perceived 'abstractly, in its own right. (shrink)

A prominent position in the scholarly literature is that there is no duty to obey the law or political obligation. This is in contrast with lay opinion, which suggests widespread acceptance of political obligation. When confronted with this tension, skeptics of political obligation sometimes raise the possibility that lay belief is the product of sinister interests. Against this, I argue that, even if such a belief is false, belief in political obligation may operate as a useful fiction that advances people’s (...) interests. Drawing on empirical work in the social sciences, I suggest a belief in political obligation may contribute to effective governance. Even if political obligation skeptics are correct that there is no such duty to obey the law, lay belief in political obligation may play a valuable ideological function in society. (shrink)

Richard Penny argues that Rawls’s commitment to self-respect puts him at odds with his endorsement of unequalizing incentives. Penny draws on G.A. Cohen’s distinction between ‘lax’ and ‘strict’ readings of the difference principle to make this point. Given this, Penny concludes that Rawls faces a dilemma: either Rawls weakens his endorsement of unequalizing incentives or weakens his commitment to self-respect. By taking the difference principle in isolation, Penny creates a false dilemma. I will argue that once we place the difference (...) principle in the context of Rawls’s theory as a whole, we find that unequalizing incentives pose no danger to the self-respect of the least advantaged. Moreover, I will argue that a strict reading of the difference principle is incompatible with the self-respect of all citizens in a well-ordered society given the fact of reasonable pluralism. My arguments reveal the importance of seeing self-respect as a threshold good, rather than a relative one. (shrink)

Nobody in this debate questions the point that neuroeconomics remains full of potential, and little else as yet. If so, that really is progress of sorts. I was getting afraid that we would have to open nominations for the Captain Ahab Award for obsessive work on the promotion of neuroeconomics.

Newton, along with a number of other seventeenth-century scientists, is frequently charged with having held an inconsistent view of nature and its operations, believing on the one hand in immutable laws of nature, and on the other in divine interventions into the natural order. In this paper I argue that Newton, William Whiston, and Samuel Clarke, came to understand miracles, not as violations of laws of nature, but rather as beneficent coincidences which were remarkable either because they were unusual, or (...) were beyond current understandings of nature. In this manner the Newtonians managed to reconcile their scientific pursuits with their religious convictions. (shrink)

Explores the historical relations between science and religion and discusses contemporary issues with perspectives from cosmology, evolutionary biology and bioethics.

Recent perspectives on community investments suggest that they are opportunities for firms to create value for shareholders and other stakeholders. However, many corporate managers are still influenced by a widely held belief that such investments erode profits and are therefore unjustifiable from an agency perspective. In this paper, we refine and test theory regarding countervailing forces that influence community-based firm performance. We hypothesize that high levels of available slack will be associated with higher community-based performance, but that this relationship will (...) be moderated by three important governance variables: board independence, investment fund ownership, and CEO ownership. We find support for our hypotheses in longitudinal study of a large sample of U.S. corporations. (shrink)

This article challenges Margaret E. Simons’s claim that Sartre forced himself on Beauvoir on October 15, 1929. We argue that Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 3, 1926–30 depicts the young Beauvoir struggling with conflicting feelings about marriage, sexual desire, and gender roles. Highlighting early reflections on “the woman in love,” we suggest that Beauvoir’s diary discloses gendered harm but not sexual violation. We name this harm erotic ambivalence and find it central to The Second Sex.

In his Experiments in Ethics, Appiah focuses mostly on the dimension of naturalism as a naturalism of deprivation - naturalism’s apparent robbing us of aspects of the world that we had held dear. The aim of this paper is to remind him of that naturalism has a dimension of plenitude as well - its capacity to enrich our conception of the world as well. With regard to character, we argue that scientific psychology can help provide a conception of character as (...) dynamic, in a way that may preserve many key aspects of eudaimonistic ethics from the situationists’ challenge. With regard to intuition, we address Appiah’s worry that naturalistic explanations of the sources of our intuitions may leave us feeling that those intuitions have been thereby debunked. We suggest that it may be that feeling of debunking that should itself be debunked. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

This paper suggests that Bacon offers an Augustinian (rather than a purely Stoic) model of the “culture of the mind.” He applies this conception to natural philosophy in an original way, and his novel application is informed by two related theological concerns. First, the Fall narrative provides a connection between the cultivation of the mind and the cultivation of the earth, both of which are seen as restorative of an original condition. Second, the fruit of the cultivation of the mind (...) is the virtue of charity, which is understood not only as curing the mind of the individual, but as contributing to human welfare and ameliorating some of the material losses that resulted from the Fall. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

This article contributes to the conversation on the implementation of the Principles of Responsible Management Education by reflecting the authors’ specific experiences of being lecturer and student in delivering/engaging with the Principles. It gives voice to these roles, which is largely absent from the extant literature that instead focuses most frequently on macrolevel, institutional motivation and programme development. The work provided outcomes that met institutional performance development requirements, teaching and research outputs. It provided an integrated learning and employment opportunity as (...) an enhancement to the student’s degree. Yet despite these positives, as this article reveals, there is an uncomfortable sense of contradiction between the micro-practice of this teaching and learning experience, and the broader management pressures exerted by UK universities as institutions. The implication is that the possible systemic change that frameworks such as PRME may achieve is constrained by these contradictions. (shrink)

In recent years, legal studies have increased the focus on contemporary social issues involved in law and society. This volume discusses the traditional subjects covered in other law and society texts and eliminates the need for a separate reader by also including chapters on controversial legal topics including affirmative action, education, the death penalty, right to work laws, and abortion. Each chapter builds on the previous ones and includes concrete examples of the issues involved. Supplemented with ample pedagogical features, the (...) book is designed to encourage students in the development of new insights on the relationships between law and society. (shrink)

Bernard Williams is one of the most influential figures in ethical theory, where he has set a considerable part of the current agenda. In this collection a distinguished international team of philosophers who have been stimulated by Williams's work give responses to it. The topics covered include equality; consistency; comparisons between science and ethics; integrity; moral reasons; the moral system; and moral knowledge. Williams himself provides a substantial reply, which shows both the directions of his own thought and also his (...) present view of earlier work of his which has been extensively discussed for twenty years. This volume will be indispensable reading for all those interested in ethical theory. (shrink)

Philosophy of film without theory is a methodology that aims to motivate and legitimise the current and future development of a range of a-, non-, and anti-theoretical ways of working at the intersection of film and philosophy. We contrast philosophy of film without theory with the main traditions of theoretically orientated philosophy of film, as well as philosophically inflected film Theory and film-philosophy. We also draw attention to the range of philosophical practices and pursuits that distinguish philosophy (in general) without (...) theory and contemporary philosophy (in general) with its near ubiquitous theoretical presumption. The paper finishes with a brief introduction to the various contributions to this Special Issue of Aesthetic Investigations on Philosophy of Film Without Theory. (shrink)

This essay endorses the argument of Donald Lopez's Buddhism and Science and shows how the general thesis of the book is consonant with other historical work on the “discovery” of Buddhism and on the emergence of Western conceptions of religion. It asks whether one of the key claims of Buddhism and Science—that Buddhism pays a price for its flirtation with the modern sciences—might be applicable to science-and-religion discussions more generally.

I shall define a free action as one a man is able to do. Various things limit a man's freedom. The most unpopular is the government, or other people who have the power of preventing us from doing what we want. But our freedom is also circumscribed by lack of physical and mental strength or skill, including that of knowing how to manage other human beings. Other factors limiting our freedom are our ignorance, our passions and our habits. Some men (...) say they value their freedom from these things, especially their freedom from passion, so much that they would prefer to be in prison or on the rack rather than be a slave to them, but one suspects they exaggerate. (shrink)

Agrifood scholars have long investigated the relationship between farm size and a wide variety of social and ecological outcomes. Yet neither this scholarship nor the extensive research on farmworkers has addressed the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired workers. Moreover, although this question has not been systematically investigated, many advocates, popular food writers, and documentaries appear to have the answer—portraying precarious work as common on large farms and nonexistent on small farms. In this paper, we take on (...) this question by describing and explaining the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired farm workers. To do so, we draw on data from two independently conducted, mixed-methods case studies—organic fruit and vegetable production in California, and dairy farming in Wisconsin—each of which offers a different set of insights into the farm size-job quality relationship. In both cases, larger farms fared better than or no worse than their smaller-scale counterparts for most job quality metrics investigated, though many of the advantages of working on large farms accrue disproportionately to white, U.S.-born workers. We explain that these patterns stem from economies of scale, industrialization, firm size itself, the dominant class identities and aspirations of farmers and their peers, as well as farmers’ and immigrant workers’ fears of immigration enforcement. (shrink)

A principal source of interest in behavioral economics has been its advertised contributions to policies aimed at ‘nudging’ people away from allegedly natural but self-defeating behavior toward patterns of response thought more likely to improve their welfare. This has occasioned controversies among economists and philosophers around the normative limits of paternalism, especially by technical policy advisors. One recent suggestion has been that ‘boosting,’ in which interventions aim to enhance people’s general cognitive skills and representational repertoires instead of manipulating their choice (...) environments behind their backs, avoids the main normative challenges. A limitation in most of this literature is that it has focused on relatively sweeping policy recommendations and consequently on strong polar alternatives of general paternalism and strict laissez faire. We review a real instance, drawn from a consulting project we conducted for an investment bank, of a proposed intervention that is more typical of the kind that economists are more often actually called upon to offer. In this example, the sophistication of current tools for preference attribution, combined with philosophical externalism about the semantics of preferences that makes it less plausible to attribute their literal self-conscious representation to people as propositional attitude content becomes more tightly refined, blocks applicability of the distinction between nudging and boosting. This seems to call for irreducible, context-specific ethical judgment in assessing the appropriateness of the forms of paternalism that economists must actually wrestle with in going about their everyday business. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to evaluate auditors’ perceived responsibility for fraud detection. Auditors play a critical role in managing fraud risk within organizations. Although professional standards and guidance prescribe responsibility in the area, little is known about auditors’ sense of responsibility for fraud detection, the factors affecting perceived responsibility, and how responsibility affects auditor performance. We use the triangle model of responsibility as a theoretical basis for examining responsibility and the effects of accountability, fraud type, and auditor type (...) on auditors’ perceived fraud detection responsibility. We also test how perceived responsibility affects auditor brainstorming performance given the importance of brainstorming in audits. A sample of 878 auditors participated in an experiment with accountability pressure and fraud type manipulated randomly between subjects. As predicted, accountable auditors report higher detection responsibility than anonymous auditors. We also find a significant fraud type × auditor type interaction with external auditors perceiving the most detection responsibility for financial statement fraud, while internal auditors report similar detection responsibility for all fraud types. Analysis of the triangle model’s formative links reveals that professional obligation and personal control are significantly related to responsibility, while task clarity is not. Finally, the results indicate that perceived responsibility positively affects the number of detection procedures brainstormed and partially mediates the significant accountability–brainstorming relation. (shrink)

Background and aim Nursing students form a professional identity from their core values, role models, and past experiences, and these factors contribute to the development of their professional identity. The hidden curriculum, a set of ethics and values learned within a clinical setting, may be part of developing a professional identity. Nursing students will develop a professional identity throughout school; however, their identity might be challenged as they attempt to balance their core values with behaviors learned through the hidden curriculum. (...) The purpose of this project was to educate students on the hidden curriculum in the development of their professional identity. Materials and methods A sample of 112 senior nursing students was recruited from a northeastern university in the United States for this study. Pre–post survey design was used, and an educational session was administered prior to the post-survey. Descriptive statistics and a valid percentage were used to describe the data within the surveys. Ethical consideration Study was approved by the author’s University Institutional Review Board. Findings A significant finding was for advocacy as students would speak up if witnessing inappropriate behavior toward patients or families with a mean score increase from 2.50 (pre-survey) to 1.45 (post-survey). Also, over 95% ( n = 106) found the educational session beneficial as they learned they had the ability to advocate and speak up for their patients. Conclusion Students were able to use their core values and advocate for their patients and families which allows for safer patient care. (shrink)

This work suggests how much human sciences can learn from a booklet almost all cultures know, The Little Prince. It stimulates to read them in their anthropological aspects of behavior facing alterity, highlighting its value without proposing it as educational element to homogenize the different. The reflection is thus focused on the demolishing and lasting effects of European culture during its colonization of American and African people. The contribution ends with Ferraioli and De Vitoria's considerations on a society based on (...) the axiom of the free circulation of men and goods, and the legitimization of thinking given by natural law. (shrink)

BackgroundTrial registration helps minimize publication and reporting bias. In leading medical journals, 96% of published trials are registered. The aim of this study was to determine the proportion of randomized controlled trials published in key nursing journals that met criteria for timely registration.MethodsWe reviewed all RCTs published in three (two general, one mental health) nursing journals between August 2011 and September 2016. We classified the included trials as: 1. Not registered, 2. Registered but not reported in manuscript, 3. Registered retrospectively, (...) 4. Registered prospectively (before the recruitment of the first subject into the trial). 5. Timely registration (as 4 but the trial identification number is reported in abstract).ResultsWe identified 135 trials published in the three included journals. The majority (n = 78, 58%) were not registered. Thirty-three (24%) were retrospectively registered. Of the 24 (18%) trials that were prospectively registered, 11 (8%) met the criteria for timely registration.ConclusionsThere is an unacceptable difference in rates of trial registration between leading medical and nursing journals. Concerted effort is required by nurse researchers, reviewers and journal editors to ensure that all trials are registered in a timely way. (shrink)