Public relations is often perceived as unethical, yet professional associations and educators position the industry as an ethical profession. The aim of this paper is to investigate the perceptions of public relations students in a communication school in Australia towards ethics. Research involving a survey and a focus group found that students perceived public relations ethics depended on a negotiation between practitioners’ responsibilities to stakeholders and theirclient or employer organisation, and broader societal expectations. They perceived professional codes of ethics to (...) be of limited value and the development of ethical understanding as incremental over the course of their studies. The findings suggest ethics should be scaffolded in public relations education, the social impact of public relations activity should be emphasised and the limitations of professional codes highlighted. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge’s (2006) framework of global justice can be adapted for individual agents or collective unilateral donations in the same way Peter Singer’s framework has been. I do so by amending Pogge’s institutional principles for international human rights NGOs and by adding two further principles to address challenges that arise when his framework is applied. This adapted framework enjoins donors to make principled philanthropic decisions that prioritize existing and near-term suffering, while also rectifying their part in causing this suffering. It (...) makes Pogge’s negative duty account easier to implement than his previous proposal, and provides well-off individuals with an alternative to Effective Altruism. (shrink)

This paper explores how political theory may help us map algorithmic logics against different visions of the political. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theories of agonistic pluralism, this paper depicts algorithms in public life in ten distinct scenes, in order to ask the question, what kinds of politics do they instantiate? Algorithms are working within highly contested online spaces of public discourse, such as YouTube and Facebook, where incompatible perspectives coexist. Yet algorithms are designed to produce clear “winners” from information contests, (...) often with little visibility or accountability for how those contests are designed. In isolation, many of these algorithms seem the opposite of agonistic: much of the complexity of search, ranking, and recommendation algorithms is nonnegotiable and kept far from view, inside an algorithmic “black box.” But what if we widen our perspective? This paper suggests agonistic pluralism as both a design ideal for engineers and a provocation to understand algorithms in a broader social context: rather than focusing on the calculations in isolation, we need to account for the spaces of contestation where they operate. (shrink)

There is an apparent tension between Immanuel Kant's model of moral agency and his often-neglected philosophy of moral education. On the one hand, Kant's account of moral knowledge and decision-making seems to be one that can be self-taught. Kant's famous categorical imperative and related 'fact of reason' argument suggest that we learn the content and application of the moral law on our own. On the other hand, Kant has a sophisticated and detailed account of moral education that goes well beyond (...) the kind of education a person would receive in the course of ordinary childhood experience. The task of this paper will be to reconcile these seemingly conflicting claims. Ultimately, I argue, Kant's philosophy of education makes sense as a part of his moral theory if we look not only at individual moral decisions, but also at the goals or ends that these moral decisions are intended to achieve. In Kant's case, this end is what he calls the highest good, and, I argue, the most coherent account of the highest good is a kind of ethical community and end of history, similar to the Groundwork 's realm of ends. Seen as a tool to bring about and sustain such a community, Kant's philosophy of moral education exists as a coherent and important part of his moral philosophy. (shrink)

“One is not born a woman, but becomes one”, Simone de Beauvoir A symbol of liberated womanhood, Simone de Beauvoir's unconventional relationships inspired and scandalised her generation. A philosopher, writer, and feminist icon, she won prestigious literary prizes and transformed the way we think about gender with The Second Sex. But despite her successes, she wondered if she had sold herself short. Her liaison with Jean-Paul Sartre has been billed as one of the most legendary love affairs of the twentieth (...) century. But for Beauvoir it came at a cost: for decades she was dismissed as an unoriginal thinker who 'applied' Sartre's ideas. In recent years new material has come to light revealing the ingenuity of Beauvoir's own philosophy and the importance of other lovers in her life. This ground-breaking biography draws on never-before-published diaries and letters to tell the fascinating story of how Simone de Beauvoir became herself. (shrink)

What form does power take in situations of retaliation against whistleblowers? In this article, we move away from dominant perspectives that see power as a resource. In place, we propose a theory of normative power and violence in whistleblower retaliation, drawing on an in-depth empirical study. This enables a deeper understanding of power as it circulates in complex processes of whistleblowing. We offer the following contributions. First, supported by empirical findings we propose a novel theoretical framing of whistleblower retaliation and (...) the role of mental health, which draws upon poststructuralist psychoanalytic thinking. Specifically, we highlight how intra- and inter-psychic affective and ambivalent attachments to organizations influence the use of normative violence in cases of whistleblower retaliation. The second contribution is empirical and builds upon the existing literature on whistleblower retaliation by highlighting how organizations position whistleblower subjects as mentally unstable and unreliable individuals, to undermine their claims. We conclude by highlighting the implications of normative power for the outcomes of whistleblower struggles. (shrink)

We read with great interest the commentaries submitted in response to our paper about clinical scientists and the role of ethical preparedness1. The responses raised some important themes that intersect with those discussed in our paper, and we are grateful for the opportunity to expand on them. Pruski2 highlights the importance of ethics education for clinical scientists, noting insufficient provision of such teaching within the clinical science profession. This gap means that scientists completing higher specialist training, who now encounter more (...) complex ethical challenges, are not benefitting from equivalent ethics education standards enjoyed by their counterparts in medical professions. We agree that clinical scientists deserve access to quality education in ethics in order to develop their skills in this area. Alongside a formal element to education, we see ethical preparedness (EP) as advocating for more informal education opportunities. This can be facilitated through the encouragement and creation of space (both physical and metaphorical) to discuss ethical issues as they arise in practice and explore potential scenarios in a supportive and judgement-free environment. Cultivating such an environment plays is crucial to develop professional skills in navigating ethical challenges, promoting a greater sense of collective responsibility and capability to do justice to ethical issues encountered. Van Steijvoort et al 3 draw …. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 41-79.

analiticamente para a produção de conhecimento sobre linguagens e literacias em educação matemática. Isto é motivado por duas preocupações que estão relacionadas: aquela em que a busca da certeza, estabilidade e permanência dos significados dos conceitos analíticos trazem para algumas existências do ser, e não outras; e aquela em que aos conceitos são atribuídos significados em lugares geopolíticos e relacionais, nos quais passados, presentes e futuros estão entrelaçados. Eu escrevo do e para meu contexto geopolítico e relacional do Sul, um (...) contexto permeado por questões de quais conhecimentos e práticas, e para quem, usam quais linguagens e literacias. Logo, proponho uma imaginação dos mundos como um arquipélago de contextos geopolíticos. Este é um mundo complexo no qual aberturas e fechamentos, movimentações e permanências, continuidades e descontinuidades, enredamentos e separações e, incompletudes das linguagens e literacias e seus significados são a norma, e não um problema. Argumento, então, para uma mudança no pensamento; do aluno como um migrante linguístico, para fluxos e fraturas de significados no espaço e tempo. Pois nessas (i)mobilidades, desigualdades emergem e, também, uma potência para redesenhar linhas. Assim, ofereço esse pensamento situado para promover conversações a respeito dos conceitos-em-uso em outros contextos sem universalizá-los, para reforçar uma produção de conhecimento em educação matemática. (shrink)

The main aim of the book is to provide a good understanding of a range of semantic phenomena and issues in semantics, adopting a truth-conditional account of meaning, but without using a compositional formalism. The book assumes no particular background in linguistics of philosophy, and all the technical tools used are explained as they are introduced. They style is accessible, with numerous examples.

Saul Kripke is one of the most original and creative philosophers writing today. His work has had a tremendous impact on the direction that philosophy has taken in the last thirty years and continues to dominate some of its most fundamental aspects. Given Kripke's importance it is perhaps surprising that there is no introduction to his philosophy available to the general student. This book fills that gap. As much of Kripke's work is highly technical, the book's central aim is to (...) provide clear exposition of Kripke's ideas in a form that is understandable to a beginning readership as well as a commentary on them that more advanced students will find useful. The book begins with a discussion of Kripke's early work on modal logic, which provides the foundation for many of his later philosophical contributions, before examining in detail Kripke's central ideas and arguments contained in Naming and Necessity. In further chapters, Kripke's work on semantic paradoxes and his theory of truth are outlined as well as his controversial interpretation of Wittgenstein's famous private language argument. Kripke's ideas are situated alongside those of his precursors and some of the most important and interesting responses to them are explored. The reader is thus able to appreciate the path-breaking nature of Kripke's contributions, how they have challenged fundamentally traditional interpretations, and how they have sparked some of the most important philosophical debates of recent years. (shrink)

Are normative reasons based in our desires, or are they instead grounded in our rational faculties? A familiar way of approaching this question focuses on the fact that individuals are often motivated by very different concerns. Our desires seem to provide us with operative or motivating reasons that are not shared by others, and the question is whether desires can also provide us with different good or normative reasons. Reasons internalism is the view that an agent’s normative reasons for action (...) must be within the reach of his or her interest and understanding. Many contemporary followers of Hume as well as Kant endorse this view, but their versions of internalism differ in one key respect. The Humean view is that reasons are relative to the particular motivations of individuals and thus not universally shared. In contrast, the Kantian view is that being fully rational involves converging on reasons that all agents share as such. But what is common to both of these versions of reasons internalism is a focus on the relative powers of the faculties of reason and desire. Hegel, however, introduces an interesting and distinctive way of approaching the question of the source or grounding of normative reasons. Instead of focusing exclusively on the relative powers of inner faculties, Hegel proposes that what we have reasons to do depends largely upon how we understand ourselves within an actual social space. We will consider three different versions of this claim, the most plausible of which sheds new light on reasons internalism. We need not think that there are only two possibilities: either reasons are universal or they are relative to subjective motivations. Instead, what distinguishes a Hegelian approach is the contention that what counts as normative depends in part upon fundamental self-conceptions that we share as participants in a complex social world. (shrink)

Although primary source work is a major component of undergraduate history degrees in many countries, the topic of how best to support this work has been relatively unexplored. This article addresses the pedagogical support of primary source work by reviewing relevant literature to identify the challenges undergraduates face in interpreting sources, and examining how in two courses carefully articulated course design and supportive teaching activities assisted students to meet these challenges. This fine-grained examination of the courses is framed within a (...) socio-cultural account of learning. The findings show how a skilful drawing of students into the interpretive/discursive practices of source analysis was associated with an epistemological reframing of historical knowledge and dialogical forms of teaching that helped the students to take forward a dialectical engagement with sources. The benefits of an ‘integrated’ approach to source work that fosters students’ affective and intellectual engagement with historical interpretive practices are highlighted. (shrink)

At several key moments in his works, Hume draws our attention to the differences between two conceptions of philosophy. Deploying what were already then well‐worn metaphors, he calls these two “species” of philosophy “anatomy” and “painting.” Hume’s remarks about philosophical anatomy and painting have recently given rise to a number of scholarly debates. I focus here on just one of these debates: did Hume intend to combine anatomy and painting in some of his later works? Through an examination of the (...) evidence that has to date been adduced, I argue that we have at least one very good reason to think that such were Hume’s intentions, and no good reason to suppose otherwise. (shrink)

This study extends on work investigating the increased application of mixed methods research in prehospital care. The complexity and diversity of the prehospital environment warrants flexibility and applicability to guide the research process, yet little attention has focused on the theoretical lens used in prehospital research when using mixed methods research. Pragmatism’s characteristics of human inquiry, problem solving, and action align with a clinical reasoning approach, supporting the prehospital researchers epistemological understanding of the world. Through further exploration of this alignment, (...) this article proposes pragmatism as a compatible theoretical lens for mixed methods in prehospital research. (shrink)

Although disgust is recognized as a common and prominent emotion in healthcare, little is known about how healthcare professionals understand, experience and conceptualize disgust. The aim of the study was to gain an in‐depth understanding of how nursing and midwifery students experience, understand and cope with disgust in their clinical work. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Six participants (all women: two nursing students, four midwifery students) from a university in the South of England were (...) interviewed. Four superordinate themes with eight subthemes were identified. Overall, findings suggest that participants experience both moral and physical disgust; however, they find it difficult to talk about and use other terms to describe their experience. Findings are discussed through the lens of social identity theory, to understand the relevance of professional identity and how this might further maintain the disgust taboo. The strategies participants have developed in order to cope with disgust are explored and understood within the current healthcare climate. Future research should focus on ways of addressing the experience of disgust by healthcare professionals in order to improve the quality of care provided, especially in the climate of the COVID‐19 crisis. (shrink)

Many parents and child-rearing experts prefer that children exhibit gender-normative behavior, a preference that is linked to the belief that children are, or should be, heterosexual. But how do LGBTQ parents—who may not hold these preferences—approach the gender socialization of their children? Drawing on in-depth interviews with both members in 18 LGBTQ couples, I find that these parents attempt to provide their children with a variety of gendered options for clothing, toys, and activities—a strategy that I call the “gender buffet.” (...) However, the social location of the parents influences the degree to which they feel they can pursue this strategy of resistance. Factors such as race, social class, gender of parents and children, and level of support of family and community members contribute to the degree to which LGBTQ parents feel they can allow or encourage their children to disrupt gender norms. (shrink)

Despite recommendations from the Cartwright Report ethical review by health ethics committees has continued in New Zealand without health practitioners ever having to acknowledge their dual roles as health practitioners researching their own patients. On the other hand, universities explicitly identify doctor/research-patient relations as potentially raising conflict of role issues. This stems from the acknowledgement within the university sector itself that lecturer/research-student relations are fraught with such conflicts. Although similar unequal relationships are seen to exist between health researchers and their (...) patients, the patient/subjects are not afforded the levels of protection that are afforded student/subjects. In this paper we argue that the difference between universities and health research is a result of the failure of the Operational Standard Code for Ethics Committees to explicitly acknowledge the vulnerability of the patient and conflict of interests in the dual roles of health practitioner/researcher. We end the paper recommending the Ministry of Health consider the rewriting of the Operational Standard Code for Ethics Committees, in particular in the rewriting of section 26 of the Operational Standard Code for Ethics Committees. We also identify the value of comparative ethical review and suggest the New Zealand's Health Research Council's trilateral relationship with Australia's NHMRC (National Health and Medical Research Council) and Canada's CIHR (Canadian Institute of Health Research) as a useful starting point for such a process. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the twentieth century's most prominent atheists. But his philosophy was informed by theological writers and themes in ways that have not previously been acknowledged. In Sartre and Theology, Kirkpatrick examines Sartre's philosophical formation and rarely discussed early work, demonstrating how, and which, theology shaped Sartre's thinking. She also shows that Sartre's philosophy - especially Being and Nothingness and Existentialism is A Humanism - contributed to several prominent twentieth-century theologies, examining Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and Liberation theologians (...) rebuttals and appropriations of Sartre. -/- For philosophers, this work opens up an unmined vein of influence on Sartre's work which illuminates his conceptual divergences from the German phenomenological tradition. And for theologians, it offers insights into a theologically informed atheism which provoked responses from some of the twentieth-century's greatest theologians - an atheism from which we can still learn much today. (shrink)

As digital technology advances at a truly exponential rate, documentary filmmakers may be tempted to bypass standards of ethical conduct – like subject consent and disclosure of contrived reenactments to audiences – in favor of dramatic impact. Some may also seek to replace missing archival or historical material and manufacture seemingly authentic content with the assistance of “digital performers.” This commentary examines the use of artificial intelligence in Morgan Neville’s film, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain and places it within (...) an historical context. Comparisons to Flaherty’s Nanook of the North and Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick highlight the importance of managing and negotiating traditional audience expectations in order to preserve the unspoken agreement between viewers and makers. (shrink)

If pragmatism, hitherto, has been content with elaborating theories of meaning and of truth, but has neglected epistemology, there are good reasons for that neglect. For one thing, much of the accepted vocabulary of epistemological discussion begs the questions under discussion. Again, much epistemology is simply an oblique metaphysics, and not an empirical investigation of knowledge, and hence throws no light on knowing as we practice it. But another reason for this neglect lies in the very simplicity of an experimental (...) theory of knowing. Its charms are not enhanced by undulating draperies of dialectic,' nor warded by the numerological incantations of a symbolic logic, nor made elusive by recondite reference to relativity physics. Nevertheless, it is to the exposition of this elementary doctrine that I mean now to proceed. And I shall do so simply, and with seeming dogmatism, by taking the categories of field, focus, and perspective, and working them for all they are worth in an experimental epistemology... (shrink)