ABSTRACTMuch of rural America has unique qualities that, when guided by the Eco‐Municipality model, can strengthen local community and assist in the movement toward sustainability. The Eco‐Municipality model, originating in Sweden and guided by ecological and social justice values and The Natural Step, is sweeping across the United States and has been adopted by many communities, ranging in size from 300 to 80,000. These communities have better positioned themselves for long‐term, economic, social and environmental well‐being by, for example, retaining sense (...) of place, capitalizing on existing assets, diversifying the local economy, minimizing economic leaks—in part by nurturing local entrepreneurs—making improvements to the local inventory of housing and access to health care, and most importantly, establishing a consistent systems approach to community development. (shrink)

Background/purpose: Research from other disciplines demonstrates that ethical position, idealism, or relativism predicts ethical decision-making. Individuals from diverse cultures ascribe to various religious beliefs and studies have found that religiosity and culture affect ethical decision-making. Moreover, little literature exists regarding undergraduate nursing students’ ethical position; no studies have been conducted in the United States on students’ ethical position, their self-identified culture, and intrinsic religiosity despite an increase in the diversity of nursing students across the United States. Participants and Research Context (...) Objectives: The study’s two aims were to determine the relationship of self-identified culture, religiosity, and ethics position of undergraduate nursing student and whether students’ level of education and past ethics courses taken related to idealism. Two hundred and twelve volunteer undergraduate students participated. Research design: A descriptive cross-sectional study was designed for participants who completed the Ethical Position Questionnaire, The intrinsic subscale of the Religious Orientation Scale, and a Demographic, Cultural, Ethnicity Form. To test the five hypotheses, analyses included t-tests, correlations, and ANOVA. Ethical Considerations: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Adelphi University. Results: Idealism and intrinsic religiosity were significantly related. Differences were observed for intrinsic religiosity and idealism for cultural identity and cultural dimensions such as parents’ place of birth, and if participants were US born. Students’ level of education or participation in past courses on ethics did not influence idealism. Conclusions: The study’s findings were similar to most of the research from other disciplines on culture, ethics position, and religiosity. Generic courses on ethics taken prior to clinical work may not assist nursing students in integrating principles into complex ethical dilemmas. Self-identified culture, religion, and intrinsic religiosity related to ethics position; completing ethics courses and level of education, juniors compared with seniors, did not influence idealism. Faculty should consider integrating students’ culture, religious orientation, and ethics position into teaching ethics for all levels of nursing education. (shrink)

This article examines changes in men's attitudes toward the family provider role using data from the National Opinion Research Center, General Social Surveys for 1972 through 1989. Men's attitudes have become more egalitarian over this period; however, men approve more of sharing provider-role enactment than of sharing provider-role responsibility. Cohort succession was a more important source of change than change within cohorts. Differences among men in attitudes toward the provider role were associated with differences in men's provider-role experiences, although there (...) was a time lag between change in actual experience and change in attitudes. The findings suggest that structural change in the economy of the family that has changed men's experience as breadwinners is the major force altering gender expectations about family roles. Attitudes among some groups of men, those not directly affected by these changes and married men who gain privileges from the breadwinner status, however, continue to reflect past ideology. (shrink)

This paper presents an ethical approach to the use of lobbying within the context of the relationships among U.S. organizations, their lobbyists, and government officials. After providing a brief history of modern-day lobbying activities, lobbying is defined and described focusing on its role as a strategic marketing tool. Then ethical frameworks for understanding the impact of these practices on various external constituencies are delineated with an emphasis on the communitarian movement advanced by Etzioni. Consistent with the call for "informed advocacy" (...) by Laczniak (1993), the paper closes with an examination of the ethics of specific lobbying activities. (shrink)

This article identifies several critical problems with the last 30 years of research into hostile communication on the internet and offers suggestions about how scholars might address these problems and better respond to an emergent and increasingly dominant form of online discourse which I call ‘e-bile’. Although e-bile is new in terms of its prevalence, rhetorical noxiousness, and stark misogyny, prototypes of this discourse—most commonly referred to as ‘flaming’—have always circulated on the internet, and, as such, have been discussed by (...) scholars from a range of disciplines. Nevertheless, my review of this vast body of literature reveals that online hostility has historically posed a number of conceptual, methodological, and epistemological challenges due to which scholars have typically underplayed, overlooked, ignored, or otherwise marginalised its prevalence and serious ethical and material ramifications. Fortunately, lessons learned from my analysis suggests promising approaches for future research into this challenging form of new media discourse. (shrink)

George Boolos has described an interpretation of a fragment of ZFC in a consistent second-order theory whose only axiom is a modification of Frege's inconsistent Axiom V. We build on Boolos's interpretation and study the models of a variety of such theories obtained by amending Axiom V in the spirit of a limitation of size principle. After providing a complete structural description of all well-founded models, we turn to the non-well-founded ones. We show how to build models in which foundation (...) fails in prescribed ways. In particular, we obtain models in which every relation is isomorphic to the membership relation on some set as well as models of Aczel's anti-foundation axiom (AFA). We suggest that Fregean extensions provide a natural way to envisage non-well-founded membership. (shrink)

In this article we illustrate, and argue for, the importance of researching the social context of health professionals’ ethical agendas and concerns. We draw upon qualitative interview data from 20 nurses working in two occupational health sites, and our discussion focuses mainly upon aspects of the shifting ‘ethical context’ for those nurses with a health promotion remit who are working in the British National Health Service. Within this discussion we also raise a number of potentially substantive issues, including the risks (...) of colluding in ‘double standards’, and the tensions between the practitioner and managerial roles in nursing. Overall, we hope to pose questions about the best ways to understand the ethical agency and responsibilities of health professionals. (shrink)

It is plausible to think, as many developmental psychologists do, that joint attention is important in the development of getting a full grasp on psychological notions. This chapter argues that this role of joint attention is best understood in the context of the simulation theory about the nature of psychological understanding rather than in the context of the theory. Episodes of joint attention can then be seen not as good occasions for learning a theory of mind but rather as good (...) occasions for developing skills of expressing and sharing thoughts. This approach suggests seeing language acquisition as learning how to focus and fine-tune joint attention already present in the normal basic relation of carer and infant. Philosophers in thinking about other minds have concentrated too much on the contrast of first and third person, I vs he/she, and forgotten the centrality of the contrast of first and second person, I vs you, and the related centrality of we. (shrink)

This book introduces the experience and process of gestation into the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Derrida as a feminist project of maternal emancipation.

All professional ethics are dependent on the epistemology of the profession. The possibility of following a code of ethics, whether the official one or an alternative code, is dependent on being able to obtain knowledge and understand the world. Professional knowledge has to be based on inferences from limited information. Statistics provides the optimal methods for making such inferences, and thus ethical professional conduct requires individual or collective understanding of some statistical thcory and practice. This is demonstrated using the medical (...) profession as an example. Statistical methods are essential in all areas of medicine, in routine medical practice, in screening for disease and in research. Evidence from medical journals, textbooks and research bodies shows that the statistical basis for ethical conduct is lacking. However, there are attempts to improve the situation. (shrink)

While we may use the Gospels and Paul’s letters to justify eating with wild abandon and enjoying every bite, we should revisit the greater principle in the New Testament: to feed others to the point of self-sacrifice in order to honor the integrity of the community.

A care deficit is clearly evident in global cities such as London and is attributable to an ageing population, the increased employment of native-born women, prevalent gender ideologies that continue to exempt men from much reproductive work, as well as the failure of the state to provide viable alternatives. However, while it is now acknowledged that migrant women, and to a lesser extent, migrant men, step in to provide care in cities such as London, there is less research on how (...) this shapes the nature, politics and ethics of care. Drawing upon empirical research with low-paid migrant workers employed as domiciliary care providers in London, this paper explores the emergence of a distinct migrant ethic of care that is critically shaped by the caring work that migrant women and men perform. (shrink)

Inspired by Theodore Schatzki’s ‘societist’ approach—in which he advocates a notion of ‘site ontologies’—in this article, we outline our theory of practice architectures and ecologies of practices. Drawing on case studies of four Australian primary schools, we examine how practices of leading relate to other educational practices: professional learning, teaching, student learning, and researching and reflecting. We find ‘leading’ not only in the work of principals and other formal leadership positions, but also in the activities of teachers and students. We (...) show that changing leading practices requires changing more than the professional practice knowledge of individuals; it also requires changing the practice architectures in sites where leading and its interconnected practices are conducted. In order to study practices of leading, we adopt a philosophical-empirical enquiry approach, i.e. we conduct our research as a conversation between practice philosophy and theory and the empirical cases of leading we study. We study practices in the mode of research within practice traditions, sometimes described as ‘practical philosophy’, as a contribution to the self-reflective transformation of the practices we are studying. (shrink)

This article examines the criteria for determining when a local authority owes a duty of care at Common Law, concurrent with statutory obligations, in light of the decisions of the House of Lords in X (Minors) v Bedfordshire County Council and M (A Minor) v Newham Borough Council. The various policy arguments employed by their Lordships are analysed and located within current debate regarding the purpose and scope of the tort of negligence. It is argued that, in relevant circumstances, English (...) courts should have regard to the European Convention on Human Rights in order to conclude whether it is ‘just and reasonable’ to impose a duty of care. The cases under discussion raised issues under several Articles of the Convention (Article 6 and Article 8, in particular), and their impact upon the decision of the House of Lords, as well as the facts themselves, is assessed. (shrink)

This article examines the principle of state immunity from the civil jurisdiction of national courts as it has been applied to officials. In Jones v Saudi Arabia the House of Lords held that individual officials should have the benefit of immunity, notwithstanding the possibility of criminal prosecution as agreed by states parties to the United Nations Convention Against Torture. It is incontrovertible as a matter of international and English law that the state itself is immune from suit in torture claims (...) but there was scant authority prior to Jones requiring the extension of immunity to individual officials. There are two key hurdles for the torture victim to surmount: first, it must be demonstrated that the forum state has jurisdiction to make and adjudicate rules regarding the relevant conduct and, secondly, that any claim to immunity should be denied. It is argued that the assertion of civil jurisdiction over torture which has taken place in another country is permissible under English rules on conflict of laws and would not be excessive in view of the recognition of criminal jurisdiction by states parties to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and under customary international law. It is further argued that to allow civil suit against the torturer (but not the state) would not offend the principles of public international law that relate to immunity, nor should it breach the State Immunity Act 1978. (shrink)

In this book, Lucy Jane Ward argues that although contemporary scholarship tends to divide Agnes Heller's work chronologically in terms of her “Marxist” and subsequent “post-Marxist” periods, a closer reading reveals her work as a continuing engagement both with and against Marx's idea of the human being rich in need.

There are curios for sale in a vacant lot: an armless mannequin next to a gramophone, bedsprings lie before a group of children who, playing, hold hands. There is a lamp suspended from a tree and a man sitting at a Louis Quinze table that stands in the open air. Clothes flap from a clothesline aboard a barge like flapping sails or even like discarded skins. In Georges Franju’s film Le Sang des bêtes/Blood of the Beasts, the violence of “displacement” (...) is seen in the juxtaposition of out-of-place curios in the vacant lot and the dismemberment of bodies in the slaughterhouse. In the slaughterhouse, a horse’s head is cleaved with a mallet. The shock of the blow, like a burst or surge of energy, gives way to the... (shrink)

In this analysis Jane Blanken-Webb extends Elliot Eisner's account of how learning in the arts contributes to the creation of mind. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of D. W. Winnicott, Blanken-Webb argues that the acts of meaning making to which Eisner attends rely on a prior developmental achievement — namely, the establishment of self-in-relation-to-world. This prior development is important to recognize in order to appreciate all that is at stake and at play within acts of meaning making. To demonstrate (...) this, Blanken-Webb points to reverberations of an earlier process of psychological differentiation embedded within such acts that are crucial for aesthetic experience and that carry on a continual process of refinement of self-in-relation-to-world. While Eisner has a great deal to offer regarding the importance of providing students access to multiple forms of representation, this perspective adds that in doing so we are expanding on a foundation of self-in-relation-to-world, thus facilitating an educational unfolding that is much deeper than we typically recognize. (shrink)

First published in 1918, this volume was partly based on lectures delivered by Dorothea Jane Stephen at and near Bangalore and was intended to illustrate the considerable influence exercised by the early literature of India on later Indian philosophy and culture. Examining themes of divinity and religion together with morality and human nature, the essays in this book combine to offer a fitting introduction to the importance and far-reaching effects of early Indian thought.

This paper seeks to highlight the benefits of prioritizing moderate African communitarian principles as partly demonstrated in the HIV prevention strategies implemented in Uganda in the late 1980s. Pertinent lessons could be drawn so as to achieve the HIV prevention targets envisioned in the post-2015 development era. Communitarianism emphasizes the importance of communities as part of healthy human existence. Its core ethical values include the virtues of generosity, compassion, and solidarity. Persuasion through communication, consensus through dialogue, and the awareness and (...) commitment to responsibilities towards other members of the community, are chief practices relied upon to achieve appropriate social behaviour. All these elements signify individual rootedness in communities and contribute to the healthy existence of its members. Communitarianism is usually classified as either authoritarian/radical or responsive/moderate, depending on the primacy given to either community interests or the individual will and rights. Moderate communitarianism recognizes the individual's capacity for moral reasoning, virtue and free choice. The ensuing form of society is deemed more ethical as it relies on education in the virtues, moral persuasion and informal social controls, without stifling individual identity, agency, and capacity for self-determination. If moderate African communitarianism, in particular, can to a certain extent be associated with the significant aspects of Uganda's HIV prevention strategies in the stated period, then its present-day relevance for HIV prevention and other public health interventions may be emphasized accordingly. This applies especially in view of the ongoing efforts to achieve a balance between individual and collective interests in bioethics. (shrink)

In this volume we will focus on how educators in high schools (grades 9-12) can incorporate the teaching of ethics effectively across all disciplines.

The Current Legal Problems lecture series and annual volume was established around sixty years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and has long been recognized as a major reference point for legal scholarship. The continuing strength of Current Legal Problems is its representation of a broad range of legal scholarship opinion, theory, methodology, and subject matter, with an emphasis upon contemporary developments of law. Contributions to the 61st volume in the series include an analysis of war as (...) crime by Professor Gerry Simpson, an assessment of the problems in building a realistic climate change regime by Professor Daniel Cole, and an exploration of the problems of character evidence by Dr Mike Redmayne. (shrink)

Values -- Tolerance -- Tolerant people -- Being tolerant of family -- Being tolerant of friends -- Being tolerant of neighbours -- Ways to be tolerant -- Being aware of others -- Respecting different kinds of families -- Accepting other cultures -- Including others -- Learning from others -- Being patient -- Personal set of values.

Background The world is threatened by future pandemics. Vaccines can play a key role in preventing harm, but there will inevitably be shortages because there is no possibility of advance stockpiling. We therefore need some method of prioritising access. Main text This paper reports a critical interpretative review of the published literature that discusses ethical arguments used to justify how we could prioritise vaccine during an influenza pandemic. We found that the focus of the literature was often on proposing different (...) groups as priorities. Different reasons were often suggested as a means of justifying such priority groupings. We suggest that much of the literature, wrongly, assumes that we are able to plan priority groups prior to the time of a particular pandemic and development of a particular vaccine. We also point out the surprising absence of various issues from the literature. Conclusions The literature proposes a wide range of ways to prioritise vaccines, focusing on different groups and ‘principles’. Any plan to use pandemic vaccine must provide justifications for its prioritisation. The focus of this review was influenza pandemic vaccines, but lessons can be learnt for future allocations of coronavirus vaccine, if one becomes available. (shrink)

lydia maria child was one of the best-known women intellectuals of the nineteenth century on the American scene, and yet her name is not often heard today.1 Although it might seem gratuitous to attempt to label a thinker—and, in some cases, not only unnecessary, but demeaning—there is ample reason to think that Child can be called a transcendentalist, as well as an early abolitionist and feminist. In any case, the independent and very forward-looking work of this woman thinker of her (...) time, it can be argued, deserves further consideration and is not without philosophical import.Child’s name comes up now because there is renewed interest in a number of circles in the efforts of abolitionists, both black.. (shrink)

The status of polygamy as a cultural artifact is investigated across a number of societies, and it is concluded that polygamy is extremely violative of the rights of a number of individuals in the societies in which it occurs, and not simply women. Extensive citation is made to the work of Elissa Wall on American polygamous groups in the Southwest.

Sheldrake’s work on canine cognition is examined from more than one standpoint. His use of the terms “social field” and “morphic field” is delineated, and in addition recent work on ethology and cognition, done by Allen and Bekoff, is set out and contrasted with Sheldrake’s theorizing. The importance of the allusion to a number of comparatively unexamined concepts, including some borrowed from research on extrasensory perception, is analyzed and it is concluded that Sheldrake has yet to establish his case in (...) acceptable terms. (shrink)

In this paper I describe a shift in Russell’s views on names from the time of “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” to An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. It is the burden of the paper that the shift arose because Russell saw an ontological and epistemological problem created by his previous account of names, and because he then tried to correct it, while simultaneously endeavoring to establish an account consistent with science. Two lines of argument are employed to support this (...) conclusion. In the first I cite the “Occam’s Razor” ontology of “Logical Atomism” and contrast it with the more fully developed ontology of the later work, incidentally citing the remarks of commentators such as Ayer. In the second line of argument I specifically adduce material designed to show the metaphysical and epistemic import of the change in view on the status of names, noting that the significance of the change goes far beyond mere usage of terms. Finally, in a subsidiary line of argument, I sketch Russell’s generally foundationalist approach to epistemology. (shrink)