Comer and Schwartz argue that the business ethics course should aim to cultivate moral courage within our students. Essential to their argument is the use of fictional exemplars of moral courage to motivate our students. I argue that the classroom, even when supplemented by good fiction, is not the right context by which to practice moral courage—the habituation of moral courage requires a context of risk. I suggest a virtue that can be practiced in the classroom—intellectual courage. By aiming at (...) this virtue, we will also get the virtue of moral courage. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Psychedelic substances have great promise for the treatment of many conditions, and they are the subject of intensive research. As with other medical treatments, both research and clinical use of psychedelics depend on our ability to ensure informed consent by patients and research participants. However, some have argued that informed consent for psychedelic use may be impossible, because psychedelic experiences can be transformative in the sense articulated by L. A. Paul (2014). For Paul, transformative experiences involve either the acquisition of (...) knowledge that cannot be obtained in any other way or changes in the self. Either of these characteristics may appear to undermine informed consent. This article argues, however, that there is limited evidence that psychedelic experiences are transformative in Paul's sense, and that they may not differ in their transformative features from other common medical experiences for which informed consent is clearly possible. Further, even if psychedelic experiences can be transformative, informed consent is still possible. Because psychedelic experiences are importantly different in several respects from other medical experiences, this article closes with recommendations for how these differences should be reflected in informed consent processes. (shrink)

The Moral Foundations of Trust seeks to explain why people place their faith in strangers, and why doing so matters. Trust is a moral value that does not depend upon personal experience or on interacting with people in civic groups or informal socializing. Instead, we learn to trust from our parents, and trust is stable over long periods of time. Trust depends on an optimistic world view: the world is a good place and we can make it better. Trusting people (...) are more likely to give through charity and volunteering. Trusting societies are more likely to redistribute resources from the rich to the poor. Trust has been in decline in the United States for over 30 years. The roots of this decline are traceable to declining optimism and increasing economic inequality, which Uslaner supports by aggregate time series in the United States and cross-sectional data across market economies. (shrink)

The question of how to handle incidental findings has sparked a heated debate among neuroimaging researchers and medical ethicists, a debate whose urgency stems largely from the recent explosion in the number of imaging studies being conducted and in the sheer volume of scans being acquired. Perhaps the point of greatest controversy within this debate is whether the magnetic resonance imaging scans of all research participants should be reviewed in an active search for pathology and, moreover, whether this search should (...) be performed by a radiologist. Resistance to routine readings performed by radiologists, as opposed to selective review of those scans on which investigators have spotted a possible IF, has been fueled in part by the obvious and enormous cost — financial and logistical — of engaging radiologists to read massive numbers of scans. This cost would be especially burdensome, even prohibitive, to investigators who are not affiliated with a medical center, because of their limited access to radiologists and other medical expertise. (shrink)

I analyzed 298 open-ended responses of undergraduate students who have been reported for cheating to the question, “What, if anything, would have stopped you from committing your act of academic dishonesty?” These responses included a few major themes: students pled ignorance of what constitutes academic dishonesty and the consequences/seriousness associated with violations; students tended to deflect blame, usually by saying that their professor could have done something differently (neutralization); students did not feel they had enough time, resources, and/or skills to (...) get the desired result without taking responsibility for this lack of time, resources, and/or skills (strain); students felt they did not manage their time well with accepting the blame for the poor time management; and that a bad grade was not an option. These data and results are discussed in relation to the extant literature on the topic. (shrink)

Consider manipulation in which one agent, avoiding force, threat, or fraud mobilizes some non-concern motive of another so as to induce this other to behave or move differently than she would otherwise have behaved or moved, given her circumstances and her initial ranking of concerns. As an instance, imagine that I get us to miss the opening of a play that I have grudgingly agreed to attend by engaging your sublimated compulsive tendency to check the stove when we are halfway (...) to the theatre. Such motive manipulation is, I take it, widely regarded as morally worrisome. If it really is morally worrisome, then we should be able to explain adequately why it is so. But existing condemnations of manipulation come up short in this regard. In this paper, I develop and defend a more plausible account of the moral status of this phenomenon. (shrink)

Objective: There are benefits and risks of giving patients more granular control of their personal health information in electronic health record (EHR) systems. When designing EHR systems and policies, informaticists and system developers must balance these benefits and risks. Ethical considerations should be an explicit part of this balancing. Our objective was to develop a structured ethics framework to accomplish this. -/- Methods: We reviewed existing literature on the ethical and policy issues, developed an ethics framework called a “Points to (...) Consider” (P2C) document, and convened a national expert panel to review and critique the P2C. -/- Results: We developed the P2C to aid informaticists designing an advanced query tool for an electronic health record (EHR) system in Indianapolis. The P2C consists of six questions (“Points”) that frame important ethical issues, apply accepted principles of bioethics and Fair Information Practices, comment on how questions might be answered, and address implications for patient care. -/- Discussion: The P2C is intended to clarify whatis at stake when designers try to accommodate potentially competing ethical commitments and logistical realities. The P2C was developed to guide informaticists who were designing a query tool in an existing EHR that would permit patient granular control. While consideration of ethical issues is coming to the forefront of medical informatics design and development practices, more reflection is needed to facilitate optimal collaboration between designers and ethicists. This report contributes to that discussion. (shrink)

Ethics should guide the design of electronic health records (EHR), and recognized principles of bioethics can play an important role. This approach was adopted recently by a team of informaticists designing and testing a system where patients exert granular control over who views their personal health information. While this method of building ethics in from the start of the design process has significant benefits, questions remain about how useful the application of bioethics principles can be in this process, especially when (...) principles conflict. For instance, while the ethical principle of respect for autonomy supports a robust system of granular control, the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence counsel restraint due to the danger of patients being harmed by restrictions on provider access to data. Conflict between principles has long been recognized by ethicists and has even motivated attacks on approaches that state and apply principles. In this paper we show how using ethical principles can help in the design of EHRs by first, explaining how ethical principles can and should be used generally, and then by, discuss how attention to details in specific cases can show that the tension between principles is not as bad as it initially appeared. We conclude by suggesting further ways in which the application of these (and other) principles can add value to the ongoing discussion of patient involvement in their health care. This is a new approach to linking principles to informatics design that we expect will stimulate further interest. (shrink)

Only a small proportion of academically dishonest students ever receive an official report of academic dishonesty, and the sociology of deviance literature is ripe with studies illustrating disproportionalities in detecting, policing, and prosecuting crimes. This study addresses the degree to which disproportionalities exist in the application of relatively few official sanctions levied upon students for academic dishonesty. I compared the demographics of those who have been reported for cheating with those of an entire undergraduate student body and of self-reported cheaters (...) in the literature. I found that international students are much more likely than domestic students to get reported. (shrink)

Ecologists are challenged by the need to bridge and synthesize different approaches and theories to obtain a coherent understanding of ecosystems in a changing world. Both food web theory and regime shift theory shine light on mechanisms that confer stability to ecosystems, but from different angles. Empirical food web models are developed to analyze how equilibria in real multi-trophic ecosystems are shaped by species interactions, and often include linear functional response terms for simple estimation of interaction strengths from observations. Models (...) of regime shifts focus on qualitative changes of equilibrium points in a slowly changing environment, and typically include non-linear functional response terms. Currently, it is unclear how the stability of an empirical food web model, expressed as the rate of system recovery after a small perturbation, relates to the vulnerability of the ecosystem to collapse. Here, we conduct structural sensitivity analyses of classical consumer-resource models in equilibrium along an environmental gradient. Specifically, we change non-proportional interaction terms into proportional ones, while maintaining the equilibrium biomass densities and material flux rates, to analyze how alternative model formulations shape the stability properties of the equilibria. The results reveal no consistent relationship between the stability of the original models and the proportionalized versions, even though they describe the same biomass values and material flows. We use these findings to critically discuss whether stability analysis of observed equilibria by empirical food web models can provide insight into regime shift dynamics, and highlight the challenge of bridging alternative modelling approaches in ecology and beyond. (shrink)

This paper examines Charles Peirce's graphical notation for first-order logic with identity. The notation forms a part of his system of "existential graphs," which Peirce considered to be his best work in logic. In this paper a Tarskian semantics is provided for the graphical system.

Academic dishonesty occurs at alarming rates in higher education. In the present study, we examined predictors of academic cheating behaviors, and beliefs in the acceptability of cheating, in disliked courses at two large universities, using structural equation modeling. Perceived mastery and extrinsic goal structures were related to beliefs about cheating but not cheating behaviors. Beliefs in the acceptability of cheating were more likely to be endorsed in math and science courses. College students were more likely to cheat and to believe (...) in the acceptability of cheating when they reported a high need for sensation. (shrink)

This paper explores how image worship was conceptualized and represented by Chinese authors during the first four centuries of Buddhist presence in China. Previous scholarship has argued that image worship was initially seen in China as a distinctively Buddhist practice, so much so that Buddhism was even known to the Chinese as the “Religion of Images”. By examining the history of the interpretation of this term, the evolution of stories about sacred images, and the presentation of image worship in debates (...) about the compatibility of Buddhism with Chinese culture, I will argue that image worship was first seen as a distinctly Buddhist or non-Chinese practice only in the late fifth century. Ironically, image worship came to be seen or represented as “foreign” only long after it had already become part of most forms of Chinese religion. (shrink)

Recently, the US has joined many European jurisdictions in extending civil marriage to same sex as well as different sex dyads. Many liberals regard this as a development worth entrenching. But a prominent recent liberal challenge to civil marriage claims otherwise. According to this challenge, by defining and conferring civil marriage, the state privileges some relationships over others that serve equally well the important liberal goal of fostering effective liberal citizenship, in violation of a prominent interpretation of the doctrine of (...) state neutrality. Theorists who press this challenge, such as Elizabeth Brake and Tamara Metz, argue that it can be met effectively only by dismantling civil marriage and replacing it with more inclusive state-maintained arrangements. So far, prominent responses to this neutralist challenge to civil marriage have focused on the special value of either the relationships to which civil marriage currently extends, or the special value of civil marriage itself. In this article, I develop an alternative reply to this neutralist challenge to civil marriage, one focusing instead on the special vulnerabilities of some of the liberally valuable relationships to which civil marriage currently extends, amorous caregiving dyads. (shrink)

Most people do not know there are different kinds of medical studies; some are conducted on people who already have a disease or medical condition, and others are performed on healthy volunteers who want to help science find answers. No matter what sort of research you are invited to participate in, or whether you are a patient when you are asked, it’s entirely up to you whether or not to do it. This decision is important and may have many implications (...) for your health and well-being, as well as those of other patients now and in the future. Making a good decision – the right one for you – requires you to become educated about topics you may not have thought about before, some of which may be quite complicated. This chapter explains the key issues to help you make a good decision. (shrink)

Let the marriage bond be the set of extralegal obligations to one another that individuals acquire in getting married. And let a conception of the marriage bond be an account of the nature and content of these. Here, I argue that the conception of this bond dominant among us is uncongenial to romantic love among individuals of a certain psychological type. Then, after articulating a conception more congenial to romantic love among such individuals, I argue that if we wish to (...) make marriage safer for love, we should make room in our thinking and practice for this conception, embracing a form of marital pluralism. (shrink)

Aggressive medical and surgical interventions have not been clearly demonstrated to improve survival in neonates with trisomy 18; there are no data that demonstrates improved quality of life for these children after these interventions; and these interventions are clearly associated with significant morbidity, resource allocation, and cost.

The problematic Sui-dynasty catalog Lidai sanbao ji 歷代三寶紀 is well known for its many incorrect translator attributions for early canonical Chinese Buddhist texts, attributions that in large measure were accepted by the later tradition and which have remained in place even within modern editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon. The question of how its compiler Fei Changfang 費長房 arrived at his information—and whether he acted in good or bad faith in presenting it—has long been debated. Recent scholarship has argued that (...) patterns in how the Lidai sanbao ji draws from earlier sources demonstrate that Fei Changfang engaged in a deliberate manipulation of his data. This essay, in contrast, introduces manuscripts from Dunhuang of earlier and otherwise lost catalogs of Chinese Buddhist texts to demonstrate that these patterns can be explained in other ways. More broadly, it is suggested that the errors of the Lidai sanbao ji should be understood not as the products of a solitary forger, but as a sign of a wider loss of literary historical consciousness that impacted Chinese Buddhism between ca. 550–650 CE. (shrink)

Philosophy has long struggled to understand the nature of color. The central role color plays in our lives, in visual experience, in art, as a metaphor for emotions, has made it an obvious candidate for philosophical reflection. Understanding the nature of color, however, has proved a daunting task, despite the numerous fields that contribute to the project. Even knowing how to start can be difficult. Is color to be understood as an objective part of reality, a property of objects with (...) a status similar to shape and size? Or is color more like pain, to be found only in experience and so somehow subjective? Or is color more like what some have said about time--that it seems real until we reflect enough, where we come ultimately to dismiss it as mere illusion? If color is more like shape and size, can we give a scientific account of it? Various strategies exist for this option--taking the color of an object to be just a complicated texture of that object, one that reflects certain wavelengths. Or perhaps color is merely a disposition to cause experiences in us, as salt has a disposition to dissolve. On the other hand, if color is more like pain, and found only in subjective experience, what is the nature of color experience? How, for instance, does an experience of red differ from an experience of blue, or from an experience of pain for that matter? Finally, if color is mere illusion, how do we continue to be so taken in by that illusion and how can something unreal seem so real and important to us? (shrink)

abstract: Numerous authors have compared Process thought as articulated by Alfred North Whitehead and Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, owing to the fact that each of these systems is rooted in the notion that relational action, rather than substance, is meta-physically fundamental and that human life is to be understood as fundamentally experiential. However, despite the fact that the foundational philosophical tenets of Mahayana Buddhism are built on axioms established and rooted in early Buddhism, relatively little has been written comparing Process thought (...) with the philosophy of early Buddhism. In this essay, I first offer a brief comparison and discussion of the foundational metaphysical principles of these systems. The purpose of this essay is to extend the dialogue between Process thought and early Buddhism, highlighting both areas of convergence and points of departure. The first task is to establish how key terms in each system may be understood in terms of the other and to point out ways in which these systems converge around questions of ontology, agency, and the nature of the self. I will then discuss the epistemologies that underwrite these meta-physical commitments. Finally, I will conclude with a brief comparison of the role of aesthetics in human experience and the soteriological project within these two schools of thought. (shrink)

In the section of the Critique of Pure Reason entitled The Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection Kant writes:Suppose that an object is exhibited to us repeatedly but always with the same intrinsic determinations . In that case, if the object counts as object of pure understanding then it is always the same object, and is not many but only one thing . But if the object is appearance, then comparison of concepts does not matter at all; rather, however much everything (...) regarding these concepts may be the same, yet the difference of locations of these appearances at the same time is a sufficient basis for the numerical difference of the object itself. Thus in the case of two drops of water we can abstract completely from all intrinsic difference , and their being intuited simultaneously in different locations is enough for considering them to be numerically different. (shrink)

Since the birth of bioethics, a persistent refrain has been that advances in science, technology, and health are occurring so quickly that they threaten to outpace society’s ability to understand and react to them. Genomics, big data, and synthetic biology preoccupy current scholarly and policy debates, just as organ transplantation, in vitro fertilization, human subjects research, and gene therapy did over the past forty years. But the history of bioethics is more than the topics it has addressed. It is also (...) the story of the people whose voices shaped its debates and built society’s capacity to manage the escalating pace of technological change.LeRoy Walters is one of those contributors who made a difference. He... (shrink)

Among human beings, sexual pursuit takes many forms. Some forms, like courtship, are morally innocuous. Other forms, like rape, are categorically immoral. Still other forms are provisionally immoral. Such forms of sexual pursuit involve a wrongful element sufficient to render them wrongful on balance provided that this wrongful element is not counterbalanced by even more important competing moral considerations. Here my focus is a particular form of provisionally immoral sexual pursuit, unsavory sexual seduction , or unsavory seduction for short.

RésuméUne «situation de choix paradoxal» est une situation dans laquelle un agent connaîtrait davantage de succès en regard des préférences qu'il a effectivement, si ces préférences étaient différentes de ce qu'elles sont. Supposons que les agents rationnels ne choisissent pas à l'encontre de leurs préférences, que leur choix n'est déterminé que par ces préférences, et que leurs préférences intrinsèques ne changent pas de façon spontanée, automatique et directe sous l'influence de la critique rationnelle. Même dans de telles hypothèses, les agents (...) rationnels peuvent résoudre optimalement un éventail de situations de choix paradoxal au moyen de mécanismes qui les amènent à réviser leurs préférences. Dans cet article, je présente et défends un tel modèle de révision rationnelle des préférences. (shrink)

There are entitlements, opportunities, and rights presently reserved to married couples by the basic structure of society, its major social institutions. Some claim that this is as it should be. But given the abiding effects of the basic structure on the prospects of individuals living within it, restrictions on liberty built into the basic structure require justification. One might think that we could justify reserving the benefits of marriage to married couples by appealing to harm prevention. In this paper, I (...) argue that the prospects of doing so successfully are dim. (shrink)

According to sexual liberals, sexual activity is an activity like any other, properly governed by rules drawn from the set of justified moral rules governing all human activities, sexual and non-sexual alike. There are sexual liberals who claim that all sexual activity involving none of force, fraud, or taking advantage of the desperate circumstances of another is morally unproblematic. Here I shall argue that sexual liberalism ought not to be so permissive. Appealing to considerations of autonomy and consistency, I shall (...) argue that that sexual liberals ought to regard some sexual seduction involving none of force, fraud, or taking advantage of the desperate circumstances of another as prima facie immoral always, and as on-balance immoral at least sometimes. (shrink)

For nearly two decades, the process of reviewing the ethical merit of research involving human subjects has been based on the application of principles initially described in the U.S. National Commission's Belmont Report, and later articulated more fully by Beauchamp and Childress in their Principles of Biomedical Ethics. Recently, the use of ethical principles for deliberating about moral problems in medicine and research, referred to in the pejorative sense as “principlism”, has come under scrutiny. In this paper we argue that (...) these principles can provide a foundation for the source of ethical appraisal of human research, but are not themselves wholly adequate for this purpose. Therefore, we further propose that principles should be understood as heuristics that can be “specified” as described by DeGrazia , and that the principle‐based approach should be supplemented by formally incorporating “sensitivity to context” into the evaluation of clinical trials. (shrink)