In a world which can be increasingly described as a “society of organizations,” it is incumbent upon organizational researchers to account for the role of organizations in determining the well-being of societies and the individuals that comprise them. Workplace spirituality is a young area of inquiry with potentially strong relevance to the well-being of individuals, organizations, and societies. Previous literature has not examined ethical dilemmas related to workplace spirituality that organizations might expect based upon the co-existence of multiple ethical work (...) climates, nor has previous literature accounted for the relevance of the cosmopolitan source of moral reasoning in the ethical treatment of workplace spirituality. The purpose of this paper is to address these gaps by articulating two such ethical dilemmas related to workplace spirituality: the “quiet desperation” dilemma and the instrumentality dilemma. Moreover, I propose two theoretical contexts that foster “both-and” rather than “either-or” thinking, thereby mitigating the relationships between climate combinations and conflictual aspects of the ethical dilemmas. For the “quiet desperation” dilemma, I propose a person–organization fit perspective to emphasize diversity of individual preferences instead of a managerially prescribed uniformity of spirituality. For the instrumentality dilemma, I propose a multiparadigm approach to workplace spirituality research to avoid the privileging of one research interest over another. I conclude with suggestions for future research. (shrink)

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE! No collection of this sort has yet been conceived of, let alone accomplished, in this field. In part that may well be due to the extraordinarily nascent character of the field of comparative religious ethics, described as that. Yet the aim is not simply to gather together a number of pieces, but -- with the appropriate modesty and tentativeness -- to offer one picture of how the field ought to understand itself: its past, present, and perhaps its (...) future. A critical mass of scholars has now emerged in this area, and the institutional dynamics of religious studies departments, which are increasingly seeing the attractions of classes in "comparative ethics," are favorable as well. By gathering together both "classic" statements, exemplifying paradigmatic approaches in the field, and recent, ground-breaking and innovative works, the ambition is to make this collection the gold standard for anyone working on the field of comparative religious ethics in coming decades. (shrink)

Consequentialism and the moral agent question -- Motivation ethics -- Deontology and the moral agent question -- Moral demandingness and two concepts of evaluation -- The problem of special relationships -- Global duties and the state -- Legitimacy and the good -- Interpersonal comparisons of the good -- On the scope of reason.

This collection offers a sympathetic but critical perspective on contemporary ecological political theory, and gives proposals for a reorientation of some of its key aspects.

God and morality -- Jewish ethics -- Christian ethics -- Islamic ethics -- Friendship -- Sexuality -- Marriage and family -- Lying -- Forgiveness -- Love and justice -- Duty, law, conscience -- Capital punishment -- War (I) : towards war -- War (II) : in war -- Religion and the environment -- Pursuits of happiness : labor, leisure, and life -- Good and evil.

This article connects value-sensitive design to Gibson’s affordance theory: the view that we perceive in terms of the ease or difficulty with which we can negotiate space. Gibson’s ideas offer a nonsubjectivist way of grasping culturally relative values, out of which we develop a concept of political affordances, here understood as openings or closures for social action, often implicit. Political affordances are equally about environments and capacities to act in them. Capacities and hence the severity of affordances vary with age, (...) health, social status and more. This suggests settings are selectively permeable, or what postphenomenologists call multistable. Multistable settings are such that a single physical location shows up differently – as welcoming or hostile – depending on how individuals can act on it. In egregious cases, authoritarian governments redesign politically imbued spaces to psychologically cordon both them and the ideologies they represent. Selective permeability is also orchestrated according to business interests, which is symptomatic of commercial imperatives increasingly dictating what counts as moral and political goods. (shrink)

Learners are able to use 2 different types of knowledge to perform a skill. One type is a conscious mental model, and the other is based on memories of instances. The authors conducted 3 experiments that manipulated training conditions designed to affect the availability of 1 or both types of knowledge about an artificial grammar. Participants were tested for both speed and accuracy of their ability to generate letter sequences. Results indicate that model-based training leads to slow accurate responding. Memorybased (...) training leads to fast, less accurate responding and highest achievement when perfect accuracy was not required. Evidence supports participants’ preference for using the memory-based mode when exposed to both types of training. Finally, the accuracy contributed by model-based training declined over a retention interval. (shrink)

This paper empirically re(dis)covers a moment of conjuncture within Leicester when an opportunity opened up through multicultural/anti-racist education for schools and colleges to develop their ‘multicultural capital’. It does this through the thematic analysis of the key proximate document Report of the Working Party on Multicultural Education as well as drawing on interview data provided by two important agents who helped to implement Leicester’s/Leicestershire’s moment of multicultural education. This moment generated a symbolic, ideational, and conceptual shift within Leicester’s education provision (...) toward a more culturally inclusive position that began to recognise the cultural capital of non-white students. However, this moment was to be lost in the ‘neoliberal epoch’. It is argued in this paper that neoliberal education policy/practice has become an enabling mechanism for renascent colonial ideology. By re(dis)covering this vision for the official recognition of non-white cultural capital, this paper demonstrates the possibilities for alternative directions within Leicester’s schools and colleges that can challenge neoliberal and colonial conceptions of education. It suggests that there are still spaces and structures that can be re(dis)covered in order for this vision to be enabled. (shrink)

Over the last several decades many abortion advocates have attempted to spread confusion and doubt concerning the beginnings of human life. A particularly cynical strategy has involved invoking the authority historical thinkers, especially Doctors of the Church, to support the claim that (at least) early abortion does not constitute homicide because the early embryo is not yet fully human. Anyone familiar with context of these historical thinkers should realize that their specific judgments regarding abortion are now obsolete in virtue of (...) their primitive scientific understanding of embryology. In what follows, I summarize the Aristotelian embryology that explains why these historical thinkers held the views that they did. I then explore how we should best understand their broader ethical views in light of our vastly superior contemporary knowledge of human embryology. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that if we apply the contemporary empirical findings of embryology the very same metaphysical and ethical principles informing the thinking of the historical figures supports the prolife position. (shrink)

Recent studies indicate that mammalian chromosomes contain discretecis‐acting loci that control replication timing, mitotic condensation, and stability of entire chromosomes. Disruption of the large non‐coding RNA gene ASAR6 results in late replication, an under‐condensed appearance during mitosis, and structural instability of human chromosome 6. Similarly, disruption of the mouse Xist gene in adult somatic cells results in a late replication and instability phenotype on the X chromosome. ASAR6 shares many characteristics with Xist, including random mono‐allelic expression and asynchronous replication timing. (...) Additional “chromosome engineering” studies indicate that certain chromosome rearrangements affecting many different chromosomes display this abnormal replication and instability phenotype. These observations suggest that all mammalian chromosomes contain “inactivation/stability centers” that control proper replication, condensation, and stability of individual chromosomes. Therefore, mammalian chromosomes contain four types ofcis‐acting elements, origins, telomeres, centromeres, and “inactivation/stability centers”, all functioning to ensure proper replication, condensation, segregation, and stability of individual chromosomes. (shrink)

Fairness of Artificial Intelligence decisions has become a big challenge for governments, companies, and societies. We offer a theoretical contribution to consider AI ethics outside of high-level and top-down approaches, based on the distinction between “reality” and “world” from Luc Boltanski. To do so, we provide a new perspective on the debate on AI fairness and show that criticism of ML unfairness is “realist”, in other words, grounded in an already instituted reality based on demographic categories produced by institutions. Second, (...) we show that the limits of “realist” fairness corrections lead to the elaboration of “radical responses” to fairness, that is, responses that radically change the format of data. Third, we show that fairness correction is shifting to a “domination regime” that absorbs criticism, and we provide some theoretical and practical avenues for further development in AI ethics. Using an ad hoc critical space stabilized by reality tests alongside the algorithm, we build a shared responsibility model which is compatible with the radical response to fairness issues. Finally, this paper shows the fundamental contribution of pragmatic sociology theories, insofar as they afford a social and political perspective on AI ethics by giving an active role to material actors such as database formats on ethical debates. In a context where data are increasingly numerous, granular, and behavioral, it is essential to renew our conception of AI ethics on algorithms in order to establish new models of responsibility for companies that take into account changes in the computing paradigm. (shrink)

Taking the work of Amartya Sen as a point of departure, a case is made that there may be no single policy with as many potential benefits as a guaranteed job at a living wage–benefits package for every person ready and willing to work. The case is outlined in 4 arguments. Along the way, numerous social and economic costs of unemployment and underemployment and benefits of full employment are catalogued. Reference is also made to how the right to employment is (...) supported by a variety of arguments for social justice, an area in which Sen has made important contributions. (shrink)

One area of the East–West comparative philosophy that has received a good deal of attention in recent years is the relationship between Confucianism and American Pragmatism. Scholars engaging these traditions have argued that they are mutually elucidating and mutually reinforcing. Often, upon locating resonance between a Confucian philosopher and an American Pragmatist philosopher, scholars combine the conceptual resources of the two, developing a Confucian–Pragmatist hybrid concept or theory. Some critics have been skeptical of the alleged compatibility between Confucian and American (...) Pragmatism, holding that proper understanding of Confucian and American Pragmatist traditions reveals an unbridgeable incommensurability between the two. This article describes the state of the comparative scholarship on Confucianism and American Pragmatism, identifying thematic trends and areas of debate. In addition, some lines of scholarship that might augment this area of comparative philosophy are suggested. (shrink)

The killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and others have instigated widespread debate concerning the ethics and politics of police behavior toward young black men in America. This article shows how Josiah Royce’s philosophy of loyalty provides a useful theoretical framework for diagnosing and working to overcome strained relations between police and black citizens in the United States. The author begins by establishing the relevance of Royce’s thought to the realm of police (...) ethics. Then, it is argued that Royce’s notion of loyalty to loyalty is a useful and powerful lens through which the practice of police discretion may be examined, particularly as it comes to bear on racial profiling and use of force. The author concludes by offering Roycean recommendations aimed at ameliorating the fractured relationship between police and blacks in America today. (shrink)

In The Problem of Christianity, Josiah Royce describes the case of the traitor as embodying "the exemplary type of moral tragedy" which he will use toward the adumbration of a theory of atonement. Royce describes the redemptive process of the traitor as a "tragic reconciliation, " for his sinful deed can never be undone. Still, the traitor can, with regard to his treason, "bring out of the realm of death a new life that only this very death rendered possible." In (...) this article, it is argued that Royce's use of "death" here is no mere metaphorical flourish. Drawing from The World and the Individual and The Problem of Christianity, it is proposed that for Royce, sin and death are different instances of the same evil. Moreover, it is suggested that Royce's novel and perceptive understanding of the limits of human nature leads him to valuable ways of coping with our finitude, both as individuals and communities. (shrink)

The Obama administration’s HHS mandate to force Catholic and other religious organizations to provide insurance coverage for morally objectionable practices has been the source of a great deal of controversy. While the religious liberty question has received the most attention, the mandate reveals a yet deeper problem in the mainstream acceptance of contraception and even abortion as a normal part of medical practice. The author argues that these practices constitute a deep corruption of medicine itself, away from its original meaning (...) as a kind of restorative justice grounded in a substantive understanding of the human good and towards a formalist emphasis on preference satisfaction and patient autonomy. (shrink)

Food insecurity in the United States is a profound public health challenge that hospitals are uniquely situated to address. Through the enactment of the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, the Affordable Care Act provides a strong economic incentive for hospitals to actively confront food insecurity within the communities they serve. While there is a spectrum of nutrition interventions that hospitals can look to when engaging in these efforts, healthy food prescriptions and medically tailored meals are two particularly innovative and promising approaches (...) that could help hospitals reduce readmissions by addressing the nutritional needs of vulnerable patients. (shrink)

The proposed paper wishes to reflect on the conception of non-self and Shunyta and how these ideas are discerned in the process of remaking of Man as it is understood in the classical Indian philosophy. The concept of non-self is very carefully elaborated in such a way that it could define the unique relationship that thehuman being have with the world of existence where remaking of man is an absolute necessity to transact with the uncertain and indescribable phenomenal world. The (...) paper would prefer to review this aspect based on the method employed by the Madhyamika Buddhist philosophy, using the idea of shnyata where allphenomenal experiences are delineated based on selflessness of the phenomenal world and of the subjective self (dharmanairatmya and pudgalanairatmya). It is argued here that the conception of self is understandable only contextually where a notional subjective self is in contact with phenomenal happenings of the world, but a proper understanding of either of the entities would reveal the conception of selflessness and the notional self. The procedure of “remaking ofman” is explained as the proper discernment of essencelessness of subjective self. The notion of a real self (pudgala) is clearly understood by reconstructing the psychophysical personality of man that the notion of selflessness is revealed by explaining the function of his dispositions and feelings. A proper conception of sunyata and the procedure remaking of man are intrinsically connected. (shrink)

This is the first book-length treatment of the metaphysical foundations of ecological ethics. The author seeks to provide a metaphysical illumination of the fundamental ecological intuitions that we are in some sense `one with' nature and that everything is connected with everything else. Drawing on contemporary cosmology, systems theory and the history of philosophy, Freya Mathews elaborates a new metaphysics of `interconnectedness'. She offers an inspiring vision of the spiritual implications of ecology, which leads to a deepening of our conception (...) of conservation. (shrink)