Comparative ethics raises theoretical and methodological problems important for all ethical studies. Five essays in this focus section provide introductions to the ethics of specific indigenous cultures and suggest implications for further comparative studies. In this introduction, we review these findings and discuss their relevance to the concept of ethical naturalism which we have previously offered as a basis for comparative work.

BackgroundThe merits and drawbacks of moral relevance models of addiction have predominantly been discussed theoretically, without empirical evidence of these potential effects. This study develops and evaluates a novel survey measure for assessing moral evaluations of patient substance misuse (ME-PSM).MethodsThis measure was tested on 524 health professionals (i.e., physicians, nurses, and other health professionals) in California (n = 173), urban France (n = 102), and urban China (n = 249). Demographic factors associated with ME-PSM were investigated using analyses of variance (...) (ANOVAs) and t-tests, with results suggesting that ME-PSM is higher among younger health professionals, nurses (when compared with physicians and other health professionals), and Chinese health professionals (when compared with French and American health professionals).ResultsResults provide preliminary support for the psychometric quality of the survey measure introduced in this study, including the existence of a single latent structure and partial invariance of collected data across countries.ConclusionThe survey measure for ME-PSM which was developed and tested in the current study appears to hold potential utility for use as a measure of moral views of patient substance misuse. With development, this measure may be used to examine moral evaluations, both as factors of stigma and of other clinical factors associated with the treatment of patients with substance use disorders. (shrink)

In this engaging study, the authors put casuistry into its historical context, tracing the origin of moral reasoning in antiquity, its peak during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and its subsequent fall into disrepute from the mid-seventeenth century.

Francisco Ayala and others have argued that recent genetic evidence shows that the origins of the human race cannot be monogenetic, as the Church hastraditionally taught. This paper replies to that objection, developing a distinction between biological and theological species first proposed by Andrew Alexanderin 1964.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to a more robust theory of leadership that shifts the frame of reference from leadership as exclusively facilitated through a single inspired leader to one that includes the view of leadership as an emergent and complex social phenomenon. The article begins with a review of the leader-centric approaches that dominated much of twentieth century leadership studies then moves on to present contemporary critiques of leader-centric approaches leading to an alternative perspective of leadership (...) as an emergent and complex social phenomenon. Viewing leadership as an emergent and complex social phenomenon changes our attitude regarding the roles that leaders and others play in the creation of leadership. A central theme of this article is the impact that the concept of emergence has on leadership theory. In response to this changing attitude, the article then moves to return to and reassess the ontological, epistemological and ethical grounds of leadership and concludes that there is an underlying philosophy that supports viewing leadership as an emergent social phenomenon and further suggests that recent work in virtue epistemology along with Calvin Schrag’s theory of communicative praxis and transversal rationality, can facilitate a better understanding of leadership as an emergent social phenomenon. (shrink)

Catholic evolutionists have proposed to reconcile evolutionary anthropogenesis with Catholic doctrine by suggesting that a created soul could be infused into a body produced by evolution from an animal body. Could such an infusion yield not just a Platonic composite but a being with the unity of substance required by a Thomistic philosophy of nature? How could such a soul be the form of the body into which it was infused? This paper suggests that animals seem to have sense-powers with (...) a level of complexity, if not sufficient to underlie the abstraction of concepts in a being that also has a rational soul, then at least nearly so. The burden of proof lies rather on those who think that evolutionary development of such powers is not possible. In its final section, the paper argues that the existence of Eve as a second, and the only additional, initial rational being does not create special problems for the view here articulated. (shrink)

from my first courses as an undergraduate in African American studies, I have been concerned about the dynamics by which white and Black1 people discuss race. For one, I was troubled in my undergraduate African American studies courses by the ease with which white students would insert themselves into conversations where, it seemed to me, they simply did not belong, for example, conversations concerning visions for the future of the Black community and strategies for achieving such visions. Shannon Sullivan speaks (...) of this phenomenon, accurately I believe, as “ontological expansiveness”: one central feature of privilege is a sense of entitlement to enter every room without first considering whether or not one is .. (shrink)

Let me begin by repeating my remarks at the close of the annual Business Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, March 17, 2012 :"We call ourselves the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, but one of the hopes of at least Josiah Royce and John Dewey was that great societies might eventually grow into great communities. So I am deeply honored today to assume the position of SAAP's new President because it is an honor that (...) comes not merely from a society of professional colleagues but from a community of friends who have nurtured and supported me for thirty-seven years, both professionally and personally. Initially I came to SAAP in order to share common philosophical .. (shrink)

Negligence is both an important concept and an ambiguous one. Here I concentrate upon the sense of creating an unjustifiable, low-probability risk of future harm. This essay attempts to dispel theprevalent view that only a maximizing, utilitarian approach can render intelligible certain features of negligence analysis—its focus on the marginal advantages and disadvantages of the actor's taking a specific precaution, its consideration and balancing of the short-term effects of different actions, and its sensitivity to a multiplicity of factors. Perhaps certain (...) absolutist deontological perspectives are inconsistent with these features; but other deontological perspectives can easily accommodate them. Careful examination of the concept of negligence helps resolve an important debate about the nature of tort law, supporting the view that fault, rather than corrective justice, is the better interpretation and justification of Anglo-American tort doctrine. (shrink)

This article argues that the Mondragon cooperatives, a network of worker-owned businesses in the Basque region of Spain, offers a concrete example of Deweyan economy, wherein democracy is part of everyday work-life. It first identifies three central features of Deweyan economy: a) its notion of economic growth is rooted in human growth; b) it is organic and evolutionary, not ideological or utopian; and c) it is empirical and experimental. Second, the article sketches some of the important historical and philosophical influences (...) upon and distinct features of the Mondragon cooperatives, and, third, it indicates how the Mondragon cooperatives manifest each of the three central features of Deweyan economy. The article concludes by suggesting that the Mondragon cooperatives have achieved a previously unknown level of economic democracy and that its recent modifications in response to changing economic conditions, far from being retreats from fundamental principles, as some critics maintain, are evidence of Mondragon’s experimental, non-ideological character. Furthermore, it is an economic model that transcends the stale, false capitalist-socialist dichotomy and thereby helps us to imagine creative solutions to current economic problems. (shrink)

One of the largest, oldest, and most interesting challenges in health care is the balancing act in which clinicians have generally uncontroversial duties both to individual patients and to communities. Physicians and nurses must — so we teach them — put patients first, and at the same time recognize that individuals are members of communities. Individuals affect the health of communities, and communities affect the health of individuals. Thus, the moral and professional duties that result are sometimes in conflict.Moreover, the (...) traditional, prosaic clinical encounter is evolving in an environment increasingly shaped by electronic health records, personal health records, pharmacogenomics and vast networks of data collection and storage for public health surveillance, human subjects research, health services evaluation, and comparative effectiveness research. Health information technology is changing everything. It would be perverse otherwise: imagine large amounts of data and information either ignored, missed, or collected and then ignored. (shrink)

This article explores different dimensions of the concept of negligence in the law. The first sections focus on the fundamental distinction between conduct negligence, a conception that dominates tort law; and cognitive negligence, a conception that is much more important in criminal law. The last major section identifies five significant institutional functions served by a legal negligence standard: expressing a legal norm in the form of a standard rather than a rule; personifying fault; empowering the trier of fact to give (...) content to the standard; creating a secondary legal norm parasitic on a primary legal norm; and distinguishing grades of fault. These functions reveal the distinctive significance of negligence, but also disclose numerous problems that the use of such a legal standard can pose. Careful analysis of these different dimensions of negligence clarifies certain misconceptions and has important implications. For example, the question whether "negligence" is an appropriate minimum standard of liability is unanswerable until we identify the type of negligence at issue and its role in norm-definition. Similarly, comparing negligenceto supposedly "more serious" forms of fault, such as recklessness, knowledge, and purpose, is treacherous and sometimes amounts to comparing apples and oranges. A better understanding of the different conceptions of negligence and of the distinctive institutional functions of a legal negligence standard can facilitate the development of more coherent, and more justifiable, fault criteria in criminal law, torts, and other legal domains. (shrink)

In Schools of Thought in International Relations, renowned foreign-affairs scholar Kenneth W. Thompson seeks to clarify the study of international relations theory by succinctly addressing salient issues in its intellectual history.

In this informed and comprehensive assessment of current issues in international policies, Kenneth W. Thompson addresses the role that traditions and values play in shaping change and in helping us to understand its implications. He challenges the idea that the enormous changes in contemporary national and international life have rendered the consideration of traditions and values obsolete. Thompson’s purpose is to illuminate the problems we face and to set forth general principles directed toward an informing theory on traditions and (...) values as they affect politics and diplomacy, while at the same time warning of the pitfalls and limitations of theory. In the first section of this book, Thompson draws on classical and Judaeo-Christian traditions in defining the relationship between philosophy, religion, and politics. He then examines the application of abstract values to such political realities as national interest, and goes on to consider the question of moral values in international diplomacy and politics. In a series of case studies, Thompson reflects on human rights, disarmament and arms control, and human survival. Maintaining that the implementation of traditions and values is sometimes uniquely the task of the American presidency, he studies the administrations of four postwar presidents—Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon—in the light of the executives’ attitudes toward ethics and politics. Finally, Thompson considers the implications of national decline and the breakdown of international order for the future of the United States. The vast knowledge of international affairs and the literature of politics that Kenneth W. Thompson brings to this timely and reflective books makes it exceptionally readable as well as intellectually challenging. (shrink)

What is the proper role of cost-benefit analysis in understanding the tort concept of negligence or reasonable care? A straightforward question, you might think. But it is a question that manages to elicit groans of exasperation from those on both sides of the controversy. For most utilitarians and adherents to law and economics, the answer is obvious: to say that people should not be negligent is to say that they should minimize the sum of the costs of accidents and the (...) costs of preventing accidents. Under the economic formulation of the famous Learned Hand test, they should take a precaution if but only if the marginal costs (or burden, B) of that precaution are less than its marginal benefits (in the form of reduced risks of injury, measured by multiplying the probability (P) of the injury times the magnitude (L) of the injury if it occurs). If B>PxL, it would be absurd to require the greater expenditure, B. For many advocates of a fairness, corrective justice, rights-based, or contractualist perspective, the opposite answer is equally obvious. Permitting a person to impose risks of harm on others merely because he would thereby obtain a benefit (or would otherwise incur a burden) greater than the discounted value of the harm he might inflict, amounts to authorizing him to dump the costs of his risky activities on innocent victims. To permit this type of sacrifice of individuals on the altar of aggregate social welfare is morally abhorrent. Both sets of criticism have important elements of truth. Neither an unqualified cost-benefit analysis nor an unqualified rights-based rejection of tradeoffs is defensible - either as a description of tort doctrine and practice or as a normative prescription. However, a qualified (sensitive) consequentialist approach can accommodate legitimate criticisms of cost-benefit analysis: the consequentialist can launder preferences, and can consider the distribution of risk both in the social welfare calculus and in determining whether to compensate. At the same time, a qualified (tough-minded) deontological approach can accommodate the legitimate need to recognize tradeoffs: the deontologist can permit intrapersonal but not interpersonal aggregation of risks and benefits, can apply the concept of threshold deontology to risky activity, and can consider individual rather than population risk. I conclude that the formulation of the Learned Hand test found in the Restatement Third of Torts is broad enough to encompass each of these qualified approaches. (shrink)

When a plaintiff has been negligent in the sense that he should have acted otherwise, should the same criterion of negligence apply that would apply if he were creating risks only to others? Indeed, are there any persuasive reasons not to apply a radically different criterion of negligence? Moreover, should the plaintiff's recovery be diminished, outside the category of assumption of risk, even when the plaintiff has not been negligent? What are the justifiable criteria and limits of such plaintiff strict (...) responsibility? There are reasons for caution before concluding that a victim's self-regarding conduct is negligent. A victim often deserves special sympathy in the light of his special predicament, choosing between two evils, the immediate costs of which he must personally bear. Indeed, it might appear that the law is unfair or unduly onerous when it places significant demands on a victim with respect to his own self-regarding behavior. On the other hand, we should not forget that the victim's “duty” to use reasonable care is merely conditional: it applies only in case the victim seeks a remedy against the tortfeasor. (shrink)

Between 1924 and 1937, the Jesuit Curia in Rome repeatedly placed restrictions on what Jesuit priest‐paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was allowed to write on those aspects of human origins that, in the view of the Curia, had theological as well as scientific aspects. In 2018, David Grumett and Paul Bentley published an account of the first of those restrictions, together with a previously undiscovered document associated with that restriction. This article corrects a relatively important error in their historical narrative, (...) offers an alternative to their comments about the case, and concludes by embedding the events of 1924–1925 in a slightly larger history of Teilhard's relations with the Jesuit Curia and with the Holy Office. That larger narrative shows that, while Grumett and Bentley's account was mistaken about the involvement of the Holy Office in the case they discuss, it was not wrong about the concerns of that Congregation in questions of human origins. (shrink)

The responsible corporate officer doctrine is, as a formal matter, an instance of strict criminal liability: the government need not prove the defendant’s mens rea in order to obtain a conviction, and the defendant may not escape conviction by proving lack of mens rea. Formal strict liability is sometimes consistent with retributive principles, especially when the strict liability pertains to the grading of an offense. But is strict liability consistent with retributive principles when it pertains, not to grading, but to (...) whether the defendant has crossed the threshold from noncriminal to criminal conduct? In this essay, I review the two most plausible arguments supporting an affirmative answer in the context of the RCO doctrine. First, perhaps this doctrine reflects a rule-like form of negligence, akin to a rule that prohibits selling alcohol to a minor. Second, perhaps this doctrine expresses a duty to use extraordinary care to prevent a harm. Neither argument is persuasive. The first argument, although valid in some circumstances, fails to explain and justify the RCO doctrine. The second argument, a duty to use extraordinary care, is also inadequate. If “extraordinary care” simply means a flexibly applied negligence standard that considers the burdens and benefits of taking a precaution, it is problematic in premising criminal liability on ordinary negligence. If instead it refers to a higher duty or standard of care, it has many possible forms, such as requiring only a very slight deviation from a permissible or justifiable standard of conduct, placing a “thumb” on the scale of the Learned Hand test, identifying an epistemic standard more demanding than a reasonable person test, or recognizing a standard that is insensitive to individual capacities. However, some of these variations present a gratuitous or incoherent understanding of “negligence,” and none of them sufficiently explain and justify the RCO doctrine. (shrink)

Doug Husak suggests that sometimes an actor should be deemed reckless, and not merely negligent, with respect to the risks that she knowingly created but has forgotten at the moment of action. The validity of this conclusion, he points out, depends crucially on what it means to be aware of a risk. Husak’s neutral prompt and counterfactual actual belief criteria are problematic, however. More persuasive is his suggestion that we understand belief, in this moral and criminal law context, as a (...) concept whose meaning is determined by its function as a culpability standard. Husak concludes that inadvertent actors are often less culpable than knowing-but-later-forgetful actors; this is plausible, but there are also numerous counterexamples. Holly Smith focuses on negligence cases in which an agent’s failure to notice a risk stems, not from a prior culpable choice, but from an objectionable attitude or set of attitudes. She is right to emphasize that genuine moral culpability does not depend on conscious choice. However, Smith also asserts that decisions that flow from an actor’s objectionable attitudes are only rarely culpable, because they often do not arise from a reasonably full configuration of the actor’s motives. This last requirement is, I fear, an unrealistic and unnecessarily demanding criterion of culpability. Even when many of the actor’s evaluative attitudes are inactive in Smith’s sense, the actor might deserve blame for not bringing them to bear on his decision. Michael Moore and Heidi Hurd thoroughly explore, and find deficient, H.L.A. Hart’s unexercised capacity theory of negligence. They are correct that that theory requires a further judgment: an actor’s inadvertence is culpable only if he had the capacity to have adverted if X where X is the source of the actor’s moral desert. They overstate, however, in suggesting that the capacity issue falls out of the picture once we identify that underlying desert basis. The authors also worry that if desert is grounded on an underlying vice, we lack a reliable way of ranking the different vices that might explain the actor’s inadvertence; this is not a fatal objection, however, because negligence determinations are quite feasible even in the absence of clear rankings. Moore and Hurd conclude by identifying eight distinct categories in which criminal liability for negligence is justifiable. Negligence is indeed a surprisingly complex and pluralist concept. The three articles in this symposium brightly illuminate some of the most fundamental conceptual and normative issues in the debate over whether it is just to blame and punish the negligently inadvertent. (shrink)

The intersection of ethics, computing, and genetics plots a space not yet adequately mapped, despite its importance, indeed, its rapidly growing importance. Its subdomains are well-enough known: or the study of ethical issues in genetics and genomics, is part of core curricula everywhere. Ethics and computing is an established subfield. Computing and geneticshas in little more than a decade progressed from subsubspecialty to the sine qua non of contemporary biomedical research, and it bids fair to transform clinical practice. We must (...) prepare for the complete digitization of the genomes of individual patients and the storage of millions of these genomes in very large databases. (shrink)

Although Charles Peirce is generally not interpreted primarily as a social-political philosopher, several commentators on Peirce have contended, along with Lara Trout, that his philosophy “provides significant resources to add to contemporary discussions of social criticism” (11). Trout’s bold, creative, and lively volume, however, is perhaps the first to develop that point systematically and in depth. By reading Peirce as a social critic, Trout argues, we allow the various strands of his thought to come together more fully and, at the (...) same time, see more clearly the blind spots in his thinking: “social criticism helps Peirce be more Peircean” (15). Trout makes a very compelling case (although this .. (shrink)

1. Comparing the weight of different evils is highly problematic; neither a positivist, interpretive account nor an exclusively aspirational account is satisfactory. 2. Alexander is correct that choosing a lesser evil is sometimes a mandate, not a mere permission, but the point has wider application than he indicates. 3. Is a choice of lesser but not least evil justifiable? Alexander’s affirmative answer is only partially convincing. 4. Alexander endorses a striking claim: the very notion of a reckless belief or reckless (...) mistake (as to the factual grounds for a justification) is incoherent. This claim is insupportable, but the flaws in his argument demonstrate the complexity of the concept of reckless belief, especially in the context of justification defenses, where the probabilistic aspect of the distinction between permissible and impermissible risk-taking is especially salient. 5. Alexander aptly notes that the legislatively preclusion doctrine (which denies application of the lesser evils defense) creates a fundamental tension between legal actors’ power to articulate the content of the defense and the democratic pedigree of the criminal law. I conclude that genuinely democratic principles can be served by permitting juries considerable latitude to recognize a defense when the legislature has not yet had occasion to formulate an exception, or even, in some cases, by authorizing de facto civil disobedience. (shrink)

despite the fact that pragmatism spawned a whole school of economics, namely, Institutionalism, relatively little work has been done by pragmatists in philosophy to apply pragmatism to contemporary economic issues or to the rethinking of economic theory, which seems to be unraveling in the current state of economic crisis. There are notable exceptions, of course, and I mention here especially the work of Judith Green, in applying pragmatism in the furtherance of economic democracy; Larry Hickman’s fine essays in deepening our (...) understanding of the pragmatist sources of Institutionalist thinkers such as Thorstein Veblen ; and Ron Nahser, a marketing executive who also wrote and published.. (shrink)

If validated, diet‐derived foreign microRNA absorption and function in consuming vertebrates would drastically alter our understanding of nutrition and ecology. RNA interference (RNAi) mechanisms of Caenorhabditis elegans are enhanced by uptake of environmental RNA and amplification and systemic distribution of RNAi effectors. Therapeutic exploitation of RNAi in treating human disease is difficult because these accessory processes are absent or diminished in most animals. A recent report challenged multiple paradigms, suggesting that ingested microRNAs (miRNAs) are transferred to blood, accumulate in tissues, (...) and exert canonical regulation of endogenous transcripts. Independent replication of these findings has been elusive, and multiple disconfirmatory findings have been published. In the face of mounting negative results, any additional positive reports must provide the proverbial “extraordinary proof” to support such claims. In this article, we review the evidence for and against a significant role for dietary miRNAs in influencing gene expression, and make recommendations for future studies.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

The opening of the archives for the pontificate of Pius XII makes it possible to see the history of the drafting of the encyclical _Humani generis_, the first document in which the universal magisterium of the Catholic Church addressed the question of evolution. Although its acknowledgment that the question of the evolutionary origin of the human body was, provisionally, theologically open generated no controversy at the drafting commission, the definitiveness of its reservations about monophyletic polygenism generated a disagreement resolved only (...) by Pope Pius. An incident in 1955 reinforces these conclusions about the proper interpretation of the encyclical. (shrink)

We are accustomed to the idea that emotions need to be controlled, but the Chinese text "Xing zi mingchu" (300 B.C.E) argues that setting them free allows us to develop our qing. Although the development is completed with the help of the classics, the result is a personal connection to the Dao.