To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme The Ethics and Politics of Academic Knowledge Production. Questions of who produces knowledge about what, and how that knowledge is produced, are inherent to editing and publishing academic journals. At the Journal of Business (...) Ethics, we understand the ethical responsibility of academic knowledge production as going far beyond conventions around the integrity of the research content and research processes. We are deeply aware that access to resources, knowledge of the rules of the game, and being able to set those rules, are systematically and unequally distributed. One could ask the question “for whom is knowledge now ethical’”? (See the Burrell commentary.) We have a responsibility to address these inequalities and open up our journal to lesser heard voices, ideas, and ways of being. Our six commentators pursue this through various aspects of the ethics and politics of academic knowledge production. Working with MacIntyre’s scheme of practices and institutions, Andrew West provides commentary on the internal good of business ethics learning and education. Inviting us to step out of the cave, Christopher Michaelson urges a clear-eyed, unblinking focus on the purposes and audiences of business ethics scholarship. As developmental editor, Scott Taylor uncovers some of the politics of peer review with the aim of nurturing of unconventional research. Mike Hyman presents his idiosyncratic view of marketing ethics. In the penultimate commentary, Julie Nelson attributes difficulties in the academic positioning of the Business Ethics field to the hegemony of a masculine-centric model of the firm. And finally, Gibson Burrell provides a powerful provocation to go undercover as researcher-investigators in a parallel ethics of the research process. (shrink)

Power and organizational hierarchies are ubiquitous to social institutions that form the foundation of modern society. Power differentials may act to constrain or enhance people’s ability to make good ethical decisions. However, little scholarly work has examined perceptions of this important topic. The present effort seeks to address this issue by interviewing academics about hypothetical ethical problems that involve power differences among those involved. Academics discussed what they would do in these scenarios, often drawing on their own experiences. Using a (...) think-aloud protocol, participants were prompted to discuss their reasoning and thinking behind their ethical decisions. These interview data were content analyzed using a semantic analysis program that identified a number of distinct ways that academics think about power differences and abuses in ethical situations. Implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

The increasing interconnectedness of academic research and external industry has left research vulnerable to conflicts of interest. These conflicts have the potential to undermine the integrity of scientific research as well as to threaten public trust in scientific findings. The present effort sought to identify themes in the perspectives of faculty researchers regarding conflicts of interest. Think-aloud interview responses were qualitatively analyzed in an effort to provide insights with regard to appropriate ways to address the threat of conflicts of interest (...) in research. Themes in participant responses included disclosure of conflicts of interest, self-removal from situations where conflict exists, accommodation of conflict, denial of the existence of conflict, and recognition of complexity of situations involving conflicts of interest. Moral disengagement operations are suggested to explain the appearance of each identified theme. In addition, suggestions for best practices regarding addressing conflicts of interest given these themes in faculty perspectives are provided. (shrink)

This introduction positions the special issue by highlighting the inherent relationality of place as well as how place is not just an object of analysis but something that shapes thinking, writing and experiences of the world. We reflect on why sociology has found it somewhat more difficult than its social science counterparts to give place the centrality it merits, and discuss whether this reflects a problem with dealing with questions of ‘scale’ and thinking the ‘in-betweenness’ of place. We assess important (...) formulations of place in recent place theories, including non-essentialist framings of place such as ‘progressive’ and as ‘assemblage’. We make a case for seeing the articles in this special issue (and Thesis Eleven’s own long history of publishing writing on the topic of place) as resonating with the themes of place as materiality, atmospheres and spaces of belonging. (shrink)

BackgroundThe amount of research utilizing health information has increased dramatically over the last ten years. Many institutions have extensive biobank holdings collected over a number of years for clinical and teaching purposes, but are uncertain as to the proper circumstances in which to permit research uses of these samples. Research Ethics Boards (REBs) in Canada and elsewhere in the world are grappling with these issues, but lack clear guidance regarding their role in the creation of and access to registries and (...) biobanks.MethodsChairs of 34 REBS and/or REB Administrators affiliated with Faculties of Medicine in Canadian universities were interviewed. Interviews consisted of structured questions dealing with diabetes-related scenarios, with open-ended responses and probing for rationales. The two scenarios involved the development of a diabetes registry using clinical encounter data across several physicians' practices, and the addition of biological samples to the registry to create a biobank.ResultsThere was a wide range of responses given for the questions raised in the scenarios, indicating a lack of clarity about the role of REBs in registries and biobanks. With respect to the creation of a registry, a minority of sites felt that consent was not required for the information to be entered into the registry. Whether patient consent was required for information to be entered into the registry and the duration for which the consent would be operative differed across sites. With respect to the creation of a biobank linked to the registry, a majority of sites viewed biobank information as qualitatively different from other types of personal health information. All respondents agreed that patient consent was needed for blood samples to be placed in the biobank but the duration of consent again varied.ConclusionParticipants were more attuned to issues surrounding biobanks as compared to registries and demonstrated a higher level of concern regarding biobanks. As registries and biobanks expand, there is a need for critical analysis of suitable roles for REBs and subsequent guidance on these topics. The authors conclude by recommending REB participation in the creation of registries and biobanks and the eventual drafting of comprehensive legislation. (shrink)

Background: In Ontario, Canada, patients who lack decision-making capacity and have no family or friends to act as substitute decision-makers currently rely on the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee to consent to long-term care (nursing home) placement, but they have no legal representative for other placement decisions. Objectives: We highlight the current gap in legislation for difficult transition cases involving unrepresented patients and provide a novel framework for who ought to assist with making these decisions and how these (...) decisions ought to be made. Research design: This paper considers models advanced by Volpe and Steinman with regard to who ought to make placement decisions for unrepresented patients, as well as current ethical models for analyzing how these decisions should be made. Participants and research context: We describe an anonymized healthcare transition case to illustrate the fact that there is no legally recognized decision-maker for placement destinations other than long-term care facilities and to show how this impacts all stakeholders. Ethical considerations: The case provided is an anonymized vignette representing a typical transition case involving an unrepresented patient. Findings: As a result of a gap in provincial legislation, healthcare providers usually determine the appropriate placement destination without a clear framework to guide the process and this can cause significant moral distress. Discussion: We argue for a team decision-making approach in the short term, and a legislative change in the long-term, to respect the patient voice, evaluate benefit and risk, enhance collaboration between healthcare providers and patients, and promote social justice. We believe that our approach, which draws upon the strengths of interprofessional teams, will be of interest to all who are concerned with the welfare and ethical treatment of the patients for whom they care. Conclusions: One of the main strengths of our recommendation is that it provides all members of the healthcare team (including nurses, social workers, therapists, and others) an increased opportunity to advocate on behalf of unrepresented patients. (shrink)

A review of John Gibson´s The Philosophy of Poetry.

Preparing the Next Generation of Oral Historians is an invaluable resource to educators seeking to bring history alive for students at all levels. Filled with insightful reflections on teaching oral history, it offers practical suggestions for educators seeking to create curricula, engage students, gather community support, and meet educational standards. By the close of the book, readers will be able to successfully incorporate oral history projects in their own classrooms.

Reflexivity is a complex phenomenon. In this chapter, we are primarily interested in reflexivity insofar as it is a process of discovering for oneself and one’s audiences the perspectival features (e.g., background assumptions, social positions, and biases) that shape one’s judgments, decisions, and behaviors. So understood, reflexivity isn’t always a good idea. Sometimes thinking can get in the way of doing. (Downhill ski racing springs to mind.) But for some activities, such as action research, reflexivity is critical for doing the (...) activity well. While the value of reflexivity for action research is well understood, we believe that there is a form of reflexivity underappreciated in some research circles – philosophical reflexivity. In this chapter, we outline this form, argue for its importance in sound action research, and offer a technique, the Toolbox approach, for facilitating it. (shrink)

Within the Computer Science community, many ethical issues have emerged as significant and critical concerns. Computer ethics is an academic field in its own right and there are unique ethical issues associated with information technology. It encompasses a range of issues and concerns including privacy and agency around personal information, Artificial Intelligence and pervasive technology, the Internet of Things and surveillance applications. As computing technology impacts society at an ever growing pace, there are growing calls for more computer ethics content (...) to be included in Computer Science curricula. In this paper we present the results of a survey that polled faculty from Computer Science and related disciplines about teaching practices for computer ethics at their institutions. The survey was completed by respondents from 61 universities across 23 European countries. Participants were surveyed on whether or not computer ethics is taught to Computer Science students at each institution, the reasons why computer ethics is or is not taught, how computer ethics is taught, the background of staff who teach computer ethics and the scope of computer ethics curricula. This paper presents and discusses the results of the survey. (shrink)

In 2010, American sociologist John Levi Martin asserted that in-depth interviews are inadequate for the study of culture. This sparked a debate in the discipline over the legitimacy of interview methods for researchers of culture and others. Here, we contextualize and contribute to this debate. We review the ideas of Martin and argue that in-depth interviews are in fact valid, well-supported in the field, and useful for investigating cultural phenomena. We build this counter-argument on three angles: epistemological, theoretical and methodological. (...) Given this defense, we also explore how social scientists are implementing innovative ways to complement in-depth interview approaches, such as through social network analysis. En el año 2010, John Levi Martin, un reconocido sociólogo estadounidense dedicó una de sus publicaciones para aseverar que las entrevistas en profundidad eran inadecuadas para estudiar fenómenos culturales. Esto desató un debate en la disciplina respecto a la legitimidad de los métodos basados en entrevistas para aquellos investigadores estudiosos de la sociología de la cultura u otras áreas similares. En este trabajo, contextualizamos y contribuimos a este debate. Revisamos las ideas de Martin y defendimos la idea de que las entrevistas en profundidad realmente son válidas y que existen favorables antecedentes en su aplicación. Por lo tanto sí son necesarias al investigar este tipo de fenómenos. Construimos esta contra-respuesta desde tres ángulos: epistemológico, teórico y metodológico. Haciendo nuestra defensa de este tipo de entrevistas, también damos cuenta de la manera en que científicos sociales implementan formas innovadoras para complementar su función, tal como sucede en el análisis de redes sociales. (shrink)

Purpose Computing ethics represents a long established, yet rapidly evolving, discipline that grows in complexity and scope on a near-daily basis. Therefore, to help understand some of that scope it is essential to incorporate a range of perspectives, from a range of stakeholders, on current and emerging ethical challenges associated with computer technology. This study aims to achieve this by using, a three-pronged, stakeholder analysis of Computer Science academics, ICT industry professionals, and citizen groups was undertaken to explore what they (...) consider to be crucial computing ethics concerns. The overlap between these stakeholder groups are explored, as well as whether their concerns are reflected in the existing literature. Design/methodology/approach Data collection was performed using focus groups, and the data was analysed using a thematic analysis. The data was also analysed to determine if there were overlaps between the literature and the stakeholders’ concerns and attitudes towards computing ethics. Findings The results of the focus group analysis show a mixture of overlapping concerns between the different groups, as well as some concerns that are unique to each of the specific groups. All groups stressed the importance of data as a key topic in computing ethics. This includes concerns around the accuracy, completeness and representativeness of data sets used to develop computing applications. Academics were concerned with the best ways to teach computing ethics to university students. Industry professionals believed that a lack of diversity in software teams resulted in important questions not being asked during design and development. Citizens discussed at length the negative and unexpected impacts of social media applications. These are all topics that have gained broad coverage in the literature. Social implications In recent years, the impact of ICT on society and the environment at large has grown tremendously. From this fast-paced growth, a myriad of ethical concerns have arisen. The analysis aims to shed light on what a diverse group of stakeholders consider the most important social impacts of technology and whether these concerns are reflected in the literature on computing ethics. The outcomes of this analysis will form the basis for new teaching content that will be developed in future to help illuminate and address these concerns. Originality/value The multi-stakeholder analysis provides individual and differing perspectives on the issues related to the rapidly evolving discipline of computing ethics. (shrink)

Research misconduct is of growing concern within the scientific community. As a result, organizations must identify effective approaches to training for ethics in research. Previous research has suggested that biases and compensatory strategies may represent important influences on the ethical decision-making process. The present effort investigated a training intervention targeting these variables. The results of the intervention are presented, as well as a description of accompanying exercises tapping self-reflection, sensemaking, and forecasting and their differential effectiveness on transfer to an ethical (...) decision-making task. (shrink)

Professionals in environmental fields engage with complex problems that involve stakeholders with different values, different forms of knowledge, and contentious decisions. There is increasing recognition of the need to train graduate students in interdisciplinary environmental science programs in these issues, which we refer to as “social ethics.” A literature review revealed topics and skills that should be included in such training, as well as potential challenges and barriers. From this review, we developed an online survey, which we administered to faculty (...) from 81 United States colleges and universities offering IESPs. Respondents overwhelmingly agreed that IESPs should address values in applying science to policy and management decisions. They also agreed that programs should engage students with issues related to norms of scientific practice. Agreement was slightly less strong that IESPs should train students in skills related to managing value conflicts among different stakeholders. The primary challenges to incorporating social ethics into the curriculum were related to the lack of materials and expertise for delivery, though challenges such as ethics being marginalized in relation to environmental science content were also prominent. Challenges related to students’ interest in ethics were considered less problematic. Respondents believed that social ethics are most effectively delivered when incorporated into existing courses, and they preferred case studies or problem-based learning for delivery. Student competence is generally not assessed, and respondents recognized a need for both curricular materials and assessment tools. (shrink)

The study of ethical behavior and ethical decision making is of increasing importance in many fields, and there is a growing literature addressing the issue. However, research examining differences in ethical decision making across fields and levels of experience is limited. In the present study, biases that undermine ethical decision making and compensatory strategies that may aid ethical decision making were identified in a series of interviews with 63 faculty members across six academic fields and three levels of rank as (...) well as across gender. The degree to which certain biases and compensatory strategies were used in justifications for responses to ethical situations was compared across fields, level of experience, and gender. Major differences were found across fields for several biases and compensatory strategies, including biases and compensatory strategies related to use of professional field principles and field-specific guidelines. Furthermore, full professors tend to differ greatly from assistant and associate professors on a number of constructs, and there were differences in the consistency with which biases and compensatory strategies were displayed within these various groups. Implications of these findings for ethics training and future research are discussed. (shrink)

Ethical decision making is of concern to researchers across all fields. However, researchers typically focus on the biases that may act to undermine ethical decision making. Taking a new approach, this study focused on identifying the most common compensatory strategies that counteract those biases. These strategies were identified using a series of interviews with university researchers in a variety of areas, including biological, physical, social, and health as well as scholarship and the performing arts. Interview transcripts were assessed with two (...) scoring procedures, an expert rating system and computer-assisted qualitative analysis. Although the expert rating system identified Understanding Guidelines, Recognition of Insufficient Information, and Recognizing Boundaries as the most frequently used compensatory strategies across fields, other strategies, Striving for Transparency, Value/norm Assessment, and Following Appropriate Role Models, were identified as most common by the computer-assisted qualitative analyses. Potential reasons for these findings and implications for training and practice are identified and discussed. (shrink)

The choir of the collegiate church of Saint-Urbain, Troyes, has long been hailed as a masterpiece of Gothic architecture, and the skill of its designer attests to the advanced stage of sophistication that French architecture had attained by the third quarter of the thirteenth century. The supporting structure of the eastern half of the building, composed of an armature of emaciated mullions, sharpened moldings and gables, and spikelike buttresses, is thoroughly incorporated into the rich system of decorative membering, and the (...) glazing is so extensive that the edifice seems to stand only through a feat of architectural legerdemain. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

In this paper I will point to some of the common themes that have emerged when we ask whether engineering ethics is just business ethics I will then reflect on some of the implications of the approaches suggested by Michael Davis, Vivian Weil, and Rachelle Hollander.

Can literature provide moral insight? Or can literary works do nothing more than reflect the moral views that readers bring to them? We argue that literary works can provide genuine moral insight by discussing one that does. Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient challenges two key assumptions about moral evil: that evil necessarily involves active malevolence, and that evil and aesthetic beauty are mutually exclusive. These assumptions play foundational roles both in everyday moral thinking, and in the interpretive practices of (...) many critics and readers. Thus, The English Patient provides genuine insights that are both aesthetic and moral. (shrink)

This article examines the anonymous progymnasmata in John Doxapatres' commentary on Aphthonius' Progymnasmata for evidence about their authorship, origin, and relations to other progymnasmata. These exercises include three chreias, a refutation and confirmation of the myth of Ganymedes, an encomium and invective of Agamemnon, a comparison of the grapevine and olive tree, and an ethopoeia on the deposition of the emperor Michael V Kalaphates. In addition to providing a formal rhetorical analysis of the exercises, the article offers further support (...) for the view of R. F. Hock and E. N. O'Neil that Doxapatres did not compose these exercises and that they all derive from a single collection. In an appendix, it argues that George Pachymeres, in his comparison of the olive tree and grapevine, used the anonymous comparison in Doxapatres and not the four parallel exercises by Ps.-Nicolaus. (shrink)

En este artículo sostengo que ciertos principios igualitaristas de justicia distributiva tienen alcance solo local y no también global. Me baso en la teoría de Michael Blake, quien afirma que el contenido y alcance de los principios de justicia dependen del tipo de coerción que se ejerce en determinado ámbito. A esa teoría se le critica que no es capaz de identificar un tipo de coerción que solo exista en el ámbito local y no también en el global. Me (...) propongo responder a esa objeción mediante una analogía que muestra que solo en el ámbito local el control coercitivo es continuo, mientras que el control coercitivo que existe en el ámbito global es intermitente. (shrink)

James J. Gibson is one of the best known and perhaps most controversial visual theorists of the twentieth century. Writing in the vein of the American functionalists, and immersed in their profound sense of pragmatism, Gibson sought to establish a more rigorous foundation for the study of vision by reworking its most fundamental concepts. Over the five decades of his distinguished career, Gibson brought new clarity to the old problems of the tradition. He offered an alternative theory (...) of perception - one that could accommodate the experimental insights of contemporary research programs. He characterized this new theory as a version of direct perception in order to distinguish it from the traditional indirect approach of Rene Descartes. On Descartes' account, our perceptual awareness of reality comes through the representations we have formed of it within ourselves. In contrast, Gibson's theory of direct perception states that the environment contains all of the information needed to specify its properties. Hence, perceiving these properties is a matter of detecting the information available in the environment. This theory avoids the difficulty of explaining how the mind organizes holistic perceptions from atomic sensations. In what follows, I will attempt to make good these claims by situating the concept of "structure" at the heart of the ecological program. I will argue that this concept is significant precisely because it allows Gibson to locate the moving, perceiving body at the heart of meaningful perceptual experience; an experience which emerges in the dynamical structures that cross the body and the world. (shrink)

The increasing use of DNA evidence has revolutionized criminal investigations. Over the past several years, DNA forensics—once thought to be a less reliable identifier than other forensic techniques, such as latent fingerprinting—have now become the evidentiary gold standard in criminal prosecutions. At the same time, non-DNA-based forensic techniques that have incarcerated thousands are coming under fire. The policy implications of this shifting dynamic—what Michael Lynch and colleagues call an “inversion of credibility”1—can be most clearly seen in the National Research (...) Council’s 2009 report, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. Conducted at Congress’s request by a .. (shrink)

This paper revisits the concept of affordance and explores its contribution to an understanding of the use of ICT for teaching and learning. It looks at Gibson‟s original idea of affordance and at some of the difficulties long associated with the use of the word. It goes on to describe the translation of the concept of affordance into the field of design through the work, in particular, of Norman. The concept has since been translated into research concerning ICT and (...) further opportunities and difficulties emerge. The paper locates key points of divergence within the usage of „affordance‟, as involving direct perception, invariant properties and complementarity. It concludes by arguing that affordance offers a distinctive perspective on the use of ICT in education because of its focus on possibilities for action. (shrink)

Troades has often been thought to lack any coherent structure, and this has been variously attributed to its being the last play of the trilogy and to Euripides' overriding concern to impress the horrors of war upon his fellow Athenians. More recently, however, attention has been drawn to how the constant presence of Hecuba gives unity to the play and to how it is articulated by the striking entries of Cassandra, Andromache, and Helen. Cassandra and Andromache enter in mock triumph, (...) Cassandra waving torches in her ironical wedding song and Andromache on a waggon, while Helen is dragged out by force and her scene marked off by Menelaus' second prologue. All three women emerge from the tent, argue with Hecuba but fail to convince her, and depart for marriage in Greece. Andromache's ideal marriage to Hector contrasts with Cassandra's perverted ‘marriage’ to Agamemnon and with Helen's destructive marriage to Paris. The departure of the Trojan women for marriage in Greece balances Helen's earlier departure from Greece for marriage in Troy. (shrink)

Buildings are meaningful parts of the environment; and when they are architecture, they aspire to greater meaning. Several accounts of architectural semiosis have been offered based on analogies to biology and language. These are critiqued. Critiqued, too, are accounts of semiosis generally that use systems-theoretical concepts and language. The essay goes on to outline what could be a contribution to biosemiotics from the work of perception psychologist, J. J. Gibson, as brought through architecture in the form of isovist field (...) theory. This theory is not treated as an example of systems thinking as it usually is, but, with the help of philosopher Martin Buber as well as Jesper Hoffmeyer, as a way out of it—able to describe the meaning of objects and space phenomenologically and ecologically at once. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 181 reason that it provides the best arguments available to date against nuclear deterrence, but ultimately the arguments fail because the author takes as an apodictic premise what is actually a prudential judgment that no nuclear weapons could ever be used in a moral and ethical way. Professor Kenny is not only an Absolutist, but also a Determinist. The present reviewers are neither. University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign-Urbana, (...) Illinois Public Affairs Officer ROBERT BARRY, O.P. MATTHEW M. MURPHY United States At·ms Control and Disarmament Agency Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. By UMBERTO Eco. Translated by Hugh Bredin. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986. Pp. 131. $12.95. This is not a new work. As Umberto Eco himself states in the Preface of this book, the text was written in 1958 and published in 1959 as a single chapter of a four volume handbook on the history of aesthetics, written by various authors (Momenti e problemi di storia dell' estetica, Milano, Marzorati, 1959, vol. 1: 'Dall'antichita classica al barocco, pp. 115-230). No doubt it was due to the recent popularity in Europe and America of Mr. Eco's novel, The Name of the Rose (which subsequently inspired the film of the same title) that Yale University Press saw fit to translate and reissue this seminal work of the author. He wrote it when he was 26 years old and serving in the Italian army. Hugh Bredin, a senior lecturer in scholastic philosophy at Queen's University, Belfast, has simplified in the translation what the author claims was the "tortured syntax" of his impressionable youth. Nevertheless, one suspects that the style and context of this slim volume will appeal primarily to philosophers and not art historians, despite its ubiquitous presence in art bookstores and museum giftshops. The scope of Mr. Eco's work enables the reader to gain an overview of aesthetic problems which developed in Europe in the period between the sixth to the :fifteenth centuries, when the classical tradition inherited by the medieval world no longer provided adequate solutions. A thousand years of artistic and philosophical history are barely penetrated in so few pages, but Mr. Eco forthrightly proceeds to catalogue ideas and thinkers in chapters devoted to such topics as Transcendental Beauty, Symbol and Allegory, and the Aesthetics of Proportion and Light. As 18~ BOOK REVIEWS was evident in The Name of the Rose, the author has an encyclopedic knowledge of both classical and medieval sources (he gently chides Maritain for his ignorance of one of Bonaventure's definitions of beauty, p. 24). As professor of semiotics his understanding of words and images is impressive (he takes a whole page to explain the visual applications of Vitruvius's use of the word euritmia, pp. 65-66). But after repeated eitings of relevant quotations from various medieval works-some in outright conflict with one another-the reader has no satisfying sense of what was the "medieval " view of art and beauty. Rather a mosaic of interesting and diverse facts emerges in the thematic structure of the book which cuts across chronological, geographical, and cultural boundaries. Thus, for instance, one learns in the chapter on the Aesthetics of Light that St. Augustine preferred equilateral to scalene triangles, Hugh of St. Victor considered green to be the most beautiful of colors, the Limbourg brothers in painting miniatures had no use for sfiirnatura just as Chretien de Troyes had no use for it in literature, and the Christian image of God as Light traced its pedigree to the Semitic Baal and the Egyptian Ra with heavy doses of Plato and Arab pantheism thrown in as contributing influences. This dizzying effect of so much intelligent trivia, forcibly pieced together in an effort to arrive at a persuasive conclusion, backfires and ultimately works ag:iinst Art and Beaiity in the Middle Ages in much the same way that the plot in The Name of the Rose suffered from a surfeit of scholastic argumentation. Mr. Eco, in an attempt to bedazzle his readers with facts, merely blinds them to the point. Other authors have written about art in the Middle Ages, and they were successful... (shrink)

Climate change activists sometimes engage in protests that exert coercion on governments, businesses, and citizens, instead of protests that just attempt to persuade them. I argue that these coercive protests are sometimes undemocratic, despite recent attempts in the literature to describe them as democratic. Coercive climate protests do not always improve deliberative decision-making, and they are a means of exerting control over official decisions that is not available to all affected. I then claim that the fact that some of these (...) protests are undemocratic is not a decisive objection against them. Climate change poses such an extremely serious threat to basic rights worldwide – risking hundreds of millions of lives – that people's right to democracy is outweighed when infringing it is a necessary means for achieving climate change mitigation. (shrink)

Since the 1970s, Michael Turvey, Robert Shaw, and William Mace have worked on the formulation of a philosophically-sound and empirically-tractable version of James Gibson.

RESUMEN Este artículo sostiene que la desobediencia coercitiva motivada por el cambio climático a veces es antidemocrática, pero no por eso es impermisible. El cambio climático representa un peligro tan grave para los derechos básicos de millones de personas en todo el mundo, que incluso el derecho básico a la democracia puede verse justificadamente desplazado como medio para disminuir el riesgo de una catástrofe climática. El articulo responde también a quienes afirman que la desobediencia coercitiva climática es siempre democrática porque (...) sirve para igualar la influencia informal sobre las decisiones públicas o protege las precondiciones de la democracia. Estos argumentos solo rescatan algunos actos de desobediencia climática coercitiva. Los demás son antidemocráticos, pero no por eso impermisibles. ABSTRACT This article argues that when coercive disobedience is motivated by climate change, it is sometimes permissible, even if it is undemocratic. Climate change poses such a serious danger to the basic rights of millions of people worldwide that even the basic right to democracy can be justifiably displaced as a means to reduce the risks posed by a climate catastrophe. The article also replies to the claim that coercive climate disobedience is always democratic because it equalizes informal influence over public decisions, or protects the preconditions of democracy; these arguments only rescue some acts of coercive climate disobedience. The rest are still undemocratic, but they are not for this reason impermissible. (shrink)

Results from two self-paced reading experiments in English are reported in which subject- and object-extracted relative clauses (SRCs and ORCs, respectively) were presented in contexts that support both types of relative clauses (RCs). Object-extracted versions were read more slowly than subject-extracted versions across both experiments. These results are not consistent with a decay-based working memory account of dependency formation where the amount of decay is a function of the number of new discourse referents that intervene between the dependents (Gibson, (...) 1998; Warren & Gibson, 2002). Rather, these results support interference-based accounts and decay-based accounts where the amount of decay depends on the number of words or on the type of noun phrases that intervene between the dependents. In Experiment 2, presentation in supportive contexts was directly contrasted with presentation in null contexts. Whereas in the null context the extraction effect was only observed during the RC region, in a supportive context the extraction effect was numerically larger and persisted into the following region, thus showing that extraction effects are enhanced in supportive contexts. A sentence completion study demonstrated that the rate of SRCs versus ORCs was similar across null and supportive contexts (with most completions being subject-extractions), ruling out the possibility that an enhanced extraction effect in supportive contexts is due to ORCs being less expected in such contexts. However, the content of the RCs differed between contexts in the completions, such that the RCs produced in supportive contexts were more constrained, reflecting the lexical and semantic content of the preceding context. This effect, which we discuss in terms of expectations/lexico-syntactic priming, suggests that the enhancement of the extraction effect in supportive contexts is due to the facilitation of the subject-extracted condition. (shrink)

We make choices all the time - about trivial matters, about how to spend our money, about how to spend our time, about what to do with our lives. And we are also constantly judging the decisions other people make as rational or irrational. But what kind of criteria are we applying when we say that a choice is rational? What guides our own choices, especially in cases where we don't have complete information about the outcomes? What strategies should be (...) applied in making decisions which affect a lot of people, as in the case of government policy? This book explores what it means to be rational in all these contexts. It introduces ideas from economics, philosophy, and other areas, showing how the theory applies to decisions in everyday life, and to particular situations such as gambling and the allocation of resources. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. (shrink)

The doctrine of double effect has a firm, respected position within Roman Catholic medical ethics. Neil M. Gorsuch, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, believes that this doctrine also enjoys a central place within U.S. law. This essay examines and assesses Gorsuch’s thesis. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.1 (Spring 2011): 31–40.