Newcomers and more experienced feminist theorists will welcome this even-handed survey of the care/justice debate within feminist ethics. Grace Clement clarifies the key terms, examines the arguments and assumptions of all sides to the debate, and explores the broader implications for both practical and applied ethics. Readers will appreciate her generous treatment of the feminine, feminist, and justice-based perspectives that have dominated the debate.Clement also goes well beyond description and criticism, advancing the discussion through the incorporation of a broad (...) range of insights into a new integration of the values of care and justice. Care, Autonomy, and Justice marks a major step forward in our understanding of feminist ethics. It is both direct and helpful enough to work as an introduction for students and insightful and original enough to make it necessary reading for scholars. (shrink)

The great increase of interest in the study of spirituality and mysticism is reflected in the large number of articles that the Encyclopedia of Religion devotes to various aspects of this topic. As one would expect, there are long entries for ‘Mysticism’ and ‘Christian Spirituality’ and ‘Religious Experience’. In addition to these broad categories, attention is given to more specific aspects of spirituality such as ‘Asceticism’, ‘Silence’, ‘Prayer’, ‘Meditation’, and so on. This is complemented by entries on many of the (...) spiritual giants of the Christian tradition, both ancient and modern. I shall begin by discussing these articles on individuals, and go on to examine the more general articles later in the review. I shall suggest that, despite many merits, both sorts of entry display an editorial policy about which serious questions must be raised. (shrink)

"The book’s contribution to feminist philosophy of religion is substantial and original.... It brings the continental and Anglo-American traditions into substantive and productive conversation with each other." —Ellen Armour To what extent has the emergence of the study of religion in Western culture been gendered? In this exciting book, Grace Jantzen proposes a new philosophy of religion from a feminist perspective. Hers is a vital and significant contribution which will be essential reading in the study of religion.

This paper provides an account of anonymous speech treated as anonymized speech. It is argued that anonymous speech acts are best defined by reference to intentional acts of blocking a speaker's identification as opposed to the various epistemic effects that imperfectly correlate with these actions. The account is used to examine two important subclasses of anonymized speech: speech using pseudonyms, and speech anonymized in a specifically communicative manner. Several pragmatic and ethical issues with anonymized speech are considered.

This paper concerns sock puppetry, a practice which involves an individual communicating under multiple pseudonymous identities in a manner that makes it seem as though these personas are distinct conversational participants. I provide a definition of sock puppetry that is more narrow than other definitions, allowing it to be distinguished from related phenomena. I then analyse some of the ways in which sock puppetry can interfere with social tools we use for establishing trust within an online community, evaluating a speaker's (...) credibility, and generally deciding who and what to believe. (shrink)

There is a long-standing discussion on the positive interactions between enterprise value creation and business competitiveness. The corporate value can be seen as being created from three major sources within the cycle - from employees, from processes, and from customers or investors through reinvestment. To achieve competitive advantages, a firm must create more value than its competitors in the industry. Emphasizing that, firms should explore the positive drivers of customer value creation, allowing for a true value creation that will lead (...) to increments in competitiveness. In reality, however, there are also barriers that hinder customer value creation. Targeting the above issues that have not yet been explored or analyzed, we have collected related literature at the first stage. Based on these presumable assumptions, this paper then conducts an empirical study by surveying and analyzing the relevance given by the investigated leading machinery measuring equipment firms in Taiwan, regarding the concerns as drivers and barriers in relation to customer value creation. This paper expecially aims to answer several key questions: What drivers revolving around employees and processes can facilitate the organization to create more value for its customers? Conversely, what barriers block the organization from creating value for customers in examining the same dimensions? Does value creation direct an organization's profitability and competitiveness? Our questionnaire survey results show that the most recognized and agreed drivers of customer value creation in consideration of employees are "distinctive skills", "personal experience", "learning and training", and "team work"; and, in regard to the firm's processes, the key drivers are "innovation and evolution", "R&D capability", and "capability for differentiation". Conversely, the most recognized and agreed barriers to customer value creation in relation to employees are a "distrustful environment" and "inadequate knowledge"; and, in terms of processes, they are "short of core technology", "poor resource support", and "bad services and attitudes". Furthermore, our in-depth interview outcomes reveal that "capital sufficiency" and "mergers and acquisitions" are in practice considered to be other important customer value creation drivers; in contrast, "cultural and structural barriers" and "short of mechanisms to measure customer value creation effectively" are viewed as additional critical barriers to customer value creation. (shrink)

In patients with pain characterized by a painful focus and allodynia, the painful symptoms arise from altered central processing that is initiated and subsequently maintained by persistent input from nociceptive afferents. Treatments directed at this normal consequence of persistent input are inherently limited. The most efficacious treatments will target the pathology, the various sources of ongoing nociceptor input. [blumberg et al.; coderre & katz; dickenson].

As a doxastic voluntarist, I am of the view that what I believe stems from what I want. This does not mean that I believe what I want when I want. It does not mean that in desiring to believe that p, I can bring about the belief that p—just like that. This is not what doxastic voluntarism is about. It must, however, be noted that this is the very conception opponents of the doctrine hold. Doxastic involuntarists maintain that voluntarism (...) is based on this idea of "belief by fiat," where the relation between desiring and believing is close and unmediated—where a subject S's desire to believe that p directly effects the belief that p in S. It is on this misconception that charges of irrationality and incoherence are based. (shrink)

Providing in-utero treatments to target specific conditions in the fetus is a relatively new approach in perinatal care, with the vast majority of these treatments being used off-label. The high degree of off-label medication use in the perinatal and neonatal settings raises concern for the safety of both the fetuses and expectant mothers. This report presents two examples of intra-amniotic drug administration based on reported clinical cases. From the ethical framework of medical principlism, we examine the competing ethical duties of (...) autonomy, beneficence, and non-maleficence in this setting. We then lay out three fundamental ethical principles for obtaining informed consent and maximizing clinical benefit. (shrink)

My thesis offers a philosophical and psychological examination of our ability to forgive strangers post-atrocity. Forgiveness is often considered impossible because atrocities involve unforgivable violations of moral values. Viewed through the lens of deconstruction, however, it is precisely where forgiveness seems impossible that it becomes possible, and more importantly, necessary in order to curb the desire for vengeance. Granting this radical understanding of the value of forgiveness---the ability to forgive the unforgivable---what hinders our ability to forgive? My work focuses on (...) public vindictiveness towards Karla Homolka, who was released in 2005, having served her 12-year sentence for her role in the rape and murder of 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy and 15-year-old Kristen French. My thesis aims to show how reflective engagement with forgiveness can tell us something about ourselves as ethical persons by demonstrating how and why our ongoing resentment towards others is often morally unjustified. (shrink)

In the last 25 years, several philosophers and scientists have challenged the historical consensus that nonhuman animals cannot be moral agents. In this article, I examine this challenge and the debate it has provoked. Advocates of animal moral agency have supported their claims by appealing to non-rationalist accounts of morality and to observations of animal behavior. Critics have focused on the dangers of anthropomorphism and have argued that we cannot know animals’ states of mind with any certainty. Despite the strengths (...) of the arguments for animal moral agency, the critics’ skeptical counter-challenges seem to bring this debate to a stalemate. However, I suggest that recent philosophical work focusing on personal experiences with animals may reveal a way to dissolve skeptical concerns and offer new insights about the role of animals in morality. (shrink)

I develop and defend the view that subjects are necessarily psychologically able to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Specifically, subjects can revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence, given their current psychological mechanisms and skills. If a subject lacks this ability, then the mental state in question is not a belief, though it may be some other kind of cognitive attitude, such as a supposition, an entertained thought, or a pretense. The result is a moderately revisionary (...) view of belief: while most mental states we thought were beliefs are beliefs, some mental states which we thought were beliefs are not beliefs. The argument for this view draws on two key claims: First, subjects are rationally obligated to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Second, if some subject is rationally obligated to revise one of her mental states, then that subject can revise that mental state, given her current psychological mechanisms and skills. Along the way to defending these claims, I argue that rational obligations can govern activities which reflect on one’s rational character, whether or not those activities are under one’s voluntary control. I also show how the relevant version of epistemic ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ survives an objection which plagues other variants of the principle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Asymmetry, Essentialism, and Covert Cultural Imperialism: Should Buddhists and Christians Do Theoretical Work Together?Grace G. BurfordMeaningful dialogue among Buddhists and Christians on any topic—theological or otherwise—requires the participation of open-minded and mutually respectful Buddhists and Christians. It is just such Christians and Buddhists who founded the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies (SBCS), and it is this society's ongoing commitment to a balance of Buddhists and Christians, as well as (...) other forms of diversity, in our programs and projects that has kept this dialogue lively. In this supportive context, Christians have done some excellent work in developing their religious thinking by reflecting on Buddhism, as have Buddhists by engaging with Christian theology. Nevertheless, a certain asymmetry has at times emerged in our dialogical endeavors, particularly when it comes to theological issues: it seems there might be more Christians interested in Buddhist thought than Buddhists interested in Christian theology.Asymmetry of InterestThis asymmetry became clear to me when I contributed to two books Rita M. Gross and Terry C. Muck put together in 2000 and 2003. In the introduction to the first of these books, Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha, Gross notes that the Christian authors who contributed to this volume attest to a far greater positive impact of the Buddha and Buddhism on their Christian lives than the Buddhists attribute to Jesus or Christianity. 1 Gross offers two possible explanations for this asymmetry. First, she says Christians may feel free to admire the Buddha without facing any resulting pressure from Buddhists to convert to Buddhism, whereas Buddhists who might be drawn to Jesus could expect to be the targets of Christian proselytization. Related to this first explanation, Gross also implies, if I read her correctly, that these Christians' guilty feelings about Christianity's history of missionizing and proselytization [End Page 147] might lead them to emphasize their appreciation of a non-Christian religion—a sentiment the Buddhists, understandably, would not be inclined to reciprocate. Second, Gross points out that Buddhist claims about the Buddha leave room for Christians to admire the Buddha without compromising their Christian views and commitments, a point I also make in my Buddhist response to the Christians' essays in this book. 2 Gross goes on to note that parallel Christian claims about Jesus leave no such leeway for the Buddhists. She says, "Christians do claim that Jesus is the incarnation of a deity who creates and redeems the world and such claims run counter to essential Buddhist ideas about how the world works." 3 In other words, Christians can venture into Buddhism's teachings about the Buddha (what we might properly call "Buddhology") without compromising their Christian theology, but Christian doctrine about Jesus (i.e., Christology) prevents Buddhists from gaining anything meaningful from this area of Christian theology without forfeiting their Buddhist worldview.The contrast is even more noticeable between the Buddhist and Christian halves of the second book, Christians Talk about Buddhist Meditation, Buddhists Talk about Christian Prayer. In their contributions to this book Christians describe how they have adopted Buddhist meditations as components of their Christian spiritual paths, and Buddhists write about how some Buddhist practices can be seen as resembling what Christians call "prayer." In the conclusion of this book, Gross suggests that this difference occurs because these Christians are incorporating a specific type of meditation (concentration) associated with Buddhism, practice of which does not require that the Christians take Buddhist teachings about the nature of reality seriously. But Christian prayer and other forms of Christian contemplation or meditation "all seem to have as a prerequisite a Christian view of the world." 4In both of these examples of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, it seems that the Christians involved can, and do, happily use Buddhism as a resource for their Christian theology and spiritual practices. But these Buddhists hold back and seem precluded from benefitting similarly from the dialogue. The editors confirm this impression when they describe a practical matter that came up when they were recruiting contributors to the second book. Muck says that "the Christians were more eager to take on this assignment than were [the] Buddhists," 5 and Gross adds that... (shrink)

Because health care professions exist to provide a good for society, ethical questions are inherently part of them. Such professions and their members can be assessed based on how effective they are in developing knowledge and enacting practices that further the health and well‐being of individuals and society. The complexity of contemporary health care environments makes it important to prepare clinicians who can anticipate, recognize, and address problems that arise in practice or that prevent a profession from fulfilling its service (...) goals and obligations. Different health care professions have evolved distinct perspectives about appropriate goals for, and the purposes of, their clinicians, even when the goal of improving health and well‐being for society is shared across professions. While medicine and nursing goals are shared in principle, they differ in the particulars. Given the centrality to nursing of ethical questions, the profession has a collective responsibility to help clinicians at all levels of practice become ethically savvy and to reinforce their moral agency as needed. Both knowledge of nursing ethics and knowledge of the interdisciplinary field of bioethics are critical to nursing work. (shrink)

How should business deal with society's increasing demands for ethical and social responsibility? In plain language this book considers these and other ethical questions of direct relevance to business in the 1990s. It discusses the nature of ethics, ethical reasoning, the use of stakeholder analysis, and other central concepts used in business ethics. Using mainly, but not exclusively, Australian cases and specific examples, the book covers issues such as fairness in business dealings, advertising ethics, discrimination, and codes of ethics.

This book sets out in plain language ethical questions of direct relevance to business today. This new edition expands the range of issues covered and includes a chapter on international business ethics, drawing extensively from Asian examples.

The trials of life can wear us down. Unexpected events force us to face a new reality and unanswered prayers lead us to a growing frustration about why God doesn't intervene. We wonder if anything good can come out of this painful, dark, winter season. Grace Wabuke Klein knows that there is purpose in our darkest days and seasons of waiting. In Flourish, Grace meets the reader in their heartache, disappointment, and pain and gives encouragement and a fresh (...) perspective on the winter seasons we all go through, as well as practical steps to not just survive but to find purpose in the unknown and unexpected. Drawing insight from her own winter seasons, Grace reveals the divine purpose in each season of our lives. She explains how: -Fall is a time of release-a necessary season of letting go of offenses, unhealthy relationships, hurts, bad habits, toxic friendships, pride, unforgiveness and other heart issues before we can ever move on to the next season -Winter is a time of unexpected challenges and unknown futures-yet lessons learned in life's storms are deep and full of growth to shape us and makes us stronger. -Spring is a time of new things that require us to be open to new experiences, people, ideas, and perspective-stepping out into the unknown and uncomfortable. -Summer is a time when everything is flourishing-we clearly see how each season cultivated a deeper level of faith and spiritual muscles, developing our character and perseverance. Grace discovered there is value and unseen gifts in each season, but only in the hard seasons and storms of life are vital spiritual disciplines developed. Flourish connects with the reader in the tension and storms of life to bring a word of hope. (shrink)

Augustine of Hippo (354–430 A.D.) meditated on the transcendent attributes of numbers that accountants so skillfully employ and on the attributes of moral rules. He thereby achieved a profound awareness of their Source in Truth. Nature is also governed by numbers; it is a “melody” that, again, woos one to its Source in Beauty. Whereas some businessmen meditate to clear their minds of clutter so as to make successful business decisions, Augustine persisted beyond the mere absence of clutter. Within the (...) stream of his own consciousness he found a focal point that led to the experience of the presence of a transcendent God in his own deeper self. The “order of love” enables one to achieve balance and a higher freedom wherein one cannot do wrong and possesses the courage to work toward building an earthly city that is just and beautiful, one that facilitates Everyman’s penetration of his own depth. (shrink)

A major focus of ethical argumentation is determining the relative merits of proposed ethical systems. Nevertheless, even the demonstration that a given ethical system was the one most likely to be correct would not establish that an agent should act in accord with that system. Consider, for example, a situation in which the ethical system most likely to be valid is modestly supportive of a certain action, whereas a less plausible system strongly condemns the same action. Should the agent perform (...) the action, arguing that the most plausible system supports doing so, or avoid the action, being conservative about the strong condemnation of it from a less plausible system? I argue that, in general, different ethical frameworks see the ethical world in fundamentally different ways, rendering the comparison of degrees of support and opposition of actions between systems intrinsically invalid. One should indeed choose to act in accord with the most defensible system. I believe that this important topic needs more attention than it has gotten to date. (shrink)

This study develops and tests an integrated model that explains how Schwartz’s higher order personal values of Openness to Change, Conservation, Self-Transcendence and Self-Enhancement influence the ethical behavior of accountants. The study further explores the influence of ethics training, gender and religiosity on ethical behavior. A survey instrument was administered to 252 accounting students and the findings reveal that some of the higher order personal values are significant in explaining the ethical behavior of accounting students. The findings also reveal that (...) gender and ethical training influence ethical behavior, and that effect of the personal value Self-Transcendence differs depending on participant gender and also religiosity. The implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

We develop the theory of Cκ, λi, a strongly normal filter over [MATHEMATICAL SCRIPT CAPITAL P]κλ for Mahlo κ. We prove a minimality result, showing that any strongly normal filter containing {x ∈ [MATHEMATICAL SCRIPT CAPITAL P]κλ: |x | = |x ∩ κ | and |x | is inaccessible} also contains Cκ, λi. We also show that functions can be used to obtain a basis for Cκ, λi.

Recently, several theorists have proposed that we can perceive a range of high-level features, including natural kind features (e.g., being a lemur), artifactual features (e.g., being a mandolin), and the emotional features of others (e.g., being surprised). I clarify the claim that we perceive high-level features and suggest one overlooked reason this claim matters: it would dramatically expand the range of actions perception-based theories of action might explain. I then describe the influential phenomenal contrast method of arguing for high-level perception (...) and discuss some of the objections that have been raised against this strategy. Finally, I describe two emerging defenses of high-level perception, one of which appeals to a certain class of perceptual deficits and one of which appeals to adaptation effects. I sketch a challenge for the latter approach. (shrink)

I argue that we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others. Just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the left, so too can we see someone as intending to evade detection or as aiming to traverse a physical obstacle. I consider the typical subject presented with the Heider and Simmel movie, a widely studied ‘animacy’ stimulus, and I argue that this subject mentally attributes proximal intentions to some of the objects in the movie. I further (...) argue that these attributions are unrevisable in a certain sense and that this result can be used to as part of an argument that these attributions are not post-perceptual thoughts. Finally, I suggest that if these attributions are visual experiences, and more particularly visual illusions, their unrevisability can be satisfyingly explained, by appealing to the mechanisms which underlie visual illusions more generally. (shrink)

Confusion remains about the concept “nursing science.” Definitions vary, depending on country, context and setting. Even among nurse scholars and scientists there is disagreement about the content and boundaries of nursing science. There is an urgent need for an acceptable definition that can guide nursing knowledge development, education, and practice. In this article, we highlight the problems for the profession of this sort of conceptual ambiguity, arguing that it is an ethical responsibility for the profession to gain clarity about the (...) meaning and apt focus of our knowledge development initiatives. We parse out nursing and science as separate concepts and synthesize from this analysis a simple yet comprehensive definition of nursing science. We propose that this definition is capable of unifying ongoing nursing endeavors and should serve as the basis for evaluating nursing's knowledge development and educational initiatives. (shrink)

1. My entry point for Hordern’s argument on knowledgeable practice was an earlier theorisation of the relationship between knowledge and practice as published in the Journal of Curriculum Studies (...

One of the most complex areas of Foucault's work is his relationship to Freudian psychoanalysis. Foucault consistently argued for the historical specificities of the two principal human objects of psychoanalysis – madness and sexuality. He now stands starkly removed from Freudian thought, which cannot countenance ethnographic or cultural versions of madness or sexuality. Foucault welcomed the extra‐psychoanalytic potentials of the Freudian unconscious for undermining existentialist and phenomenological accounts of the subject and knowledge. Foucault in fact celebrated the political divergences of (...) psychoanalysis as one of its strengths. The critique of desire is really the climax of Foucault's efforts to develop an alternative Nietzschean genealogy of the modern subject as a historical and cultural reality – a domain that had hitherto excluded sexual identity, while the Freudian and feminist traditions had perhaps seen only sexuality and not the wider political domains. (shrink)