This paper reviews common advertising claims by egg freezing companies and evaluates the medical evidence behind those claims. It then surveys legal standards for truth in advertising, including FTC and FDA regulations and the First Amendment right to free speech. Professional standards for medical advertising, such as guidelines published by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Medical Association, are also summarized. A number of claims, many of which relate to the (...) targeting of younger women for eOC, are found to breach legal and ethical standards for truth in advertising. The ethical implications of misleading advertising claims are also discussed, and the central narrative woven by OC ads — that egg freezing is empowering to women — is examined. The paper concludes that a more balanced approach to the risks and benefits of OC is necessary to truly respect women's autonomy. Moreover, justice requires us to look beyond a medical procedure accessible only to a minority of women in order to address inequities in the workplace. (shrink)

Kritisiert wird gegenwärtig viel - und auch Kritik wird kritisiert. In dieser Situation sucht dieser Sammelband auszuweisen, wie in einer christlichen Sozialethik Kritik betrieben wird: Sie zielt auf die Kritik der Unvernunft der die Menschen bestimmenden, zugleich von Menschen geschaffenen Ordnungen der Gesellschaft- und dies im Interesse an vernünftigeren Ordnungen ihres Zusammenlebens. Gesellschaftskritik als Vollzug praktischer Rationalität gibt es freilich nicht ohne Herrschaftskritik und nicht ohne Kritik von Ausschluss und Subalternität. Ausdrücklich wird in diesem Band der neutrale Vollzug »der Vernunft« (...) ausgeschlossen; stattdessen wird die in der eigenen Gesellschaftskritik vollzogene praktische Rationalität normativ grundiert.Mit Beiträgen vonMichelle Becka, Bernhard Emunds, Johannes Eurich, Gisela Kubon-Gilke, Torsten Meireis, Matthias Möhring-Hesse. (shrink)

Dispositions are a Teacher's Greatest Strength will fuel and reignite your classroom practice. Focusing on 13 dispositions specific to teaching, this book encourages educators to identify, reflect, and develop their dispositions, attitudes, and self-awareness to flourish in the profession. Emphasizing pedagogical knowledge and skills, this text serves as affirmation of a teacher's commitment to challenging, complex and rewarding work. It invites educators to consider what a unique privilege it is to teach--to dive into reading, creating space, and embracing dispositions as (...) a teacher's greatest strength. Each chapter focuses on one of 13 teaching dispositions--such as curiosity, adaptability, gratitude, resilience, and courage--and offers: Definitions and contexts for the disposition of focus. Concrete applications for teachers to practice and develop dispositions with reader-friendly examples and practical strategies. "Pause and Reflect" sections with questions and space for professional reflection. This book serves as a love letter to educators and administrators in K-12, higher education faculty, and pre-service programs and students by reminding teachers of the significant work they do, and by putting dispositions at the forefront of their daily work. (shrink)

Trust is a fundamental aspect of the moral treatment of stakeholders within the organization–stakeholder relationship. Stakeholders trust the organization to return benefit or protections from harm commensurate with their contributions or stakes. However, in many situations, the firm holds greater power than the stakeholder and therefore cannot necessarily be trusted to return the aforementioned duty to the stakeholder. Stakeholders must therefore rely on the trustworthiness of the organization to fulfill obligations in accordance to Phillips’ principle of fairness (Business Ethics Quarterly7(1), (...) 1997, 51–66), particularly where low-power stakeholders may not be fully consenting (Van Buren III, Business Ethics Quarterly11(3), 2001, 481–499). The construct of organizational trustworthiness developed herewith is presented as a possible solution to the problem of unfairness in organization–stakeholder relations. While organizational trustworthiness does not create an ethical obligation where none existed before, stakeholders who lack power will likely be treated fairly when organizational trustworthiness is present. (shrink)

Building on contemporary research in embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind, this book explores how social institutions in contemporary neoliberal nation-states systematically affect our thoughts, feelings, and agency. Human beings are, necessarily, social animals who create and belong to social institutions. But social institutions take on a life of their own, and literally shape the minds of all those who belong to them, for better or worse, usually without their being self-consciously aware of it. Indeed, in contemporary neoliberal societies, (...) it is generally for the worse. In The Mind-Body Politic, Michelle Maiese and Robert Hanna work out a new critique of contemporary social institutions by deploying the special standpoint of the philosophy of mind—in particular, the special standpoint of the philosophy of what they call essentially embodied minds—and make a set of concrete, positive proposals for radically changing both these social institutions and also our essentially embodied lives for the better. (shrink)

This work aims to contribute to reflection on the epistemological elements present in the philosophy of Hans Jonas. The interpretative key provided by the author with the notion of Homo Pictor and the importance of images, symbols, imagination and memory in the evolution of human freedom within the scope of life, which resulted in the current human being, provide a fruitful field for exploration of the attributes of the epistemic subjects pointed out by the philosopher. In this sense, we propose (...) a reading that considers the possible elements of a theory of knowledge by Jonas based on the texts Image Making and the Freedom of Man (1966), with emphasis on the appendix of the essay, entitled On the Origins of the Experience of Truth and from the text Tool, Image, and Grave (1986). (shrink)

What is given to us in conscious experience? The Given is an attempt to answer this question and in this way contribute to a general theory of mental content. The content of conscious experience is understood to be absolutely everything that is given to one, experientially, in the having of an experience. Michelle Montague focuses on the analysis of conscious perception, conscious emotion, and conscious thought, and deploys three fundamental notions in addition to the fundamental notion of content: the (...) notions of intentionality, phenomenology, and consciousness. She argues that all experience essentially involves all four things, and that the key to an adequate general theory of what is given in experience lies in giving a correct specification of the nature of these four things and the relations between them. (shrink)

Cet article étudie les noms propres de groupes sociaux en français (en particulier les noms de partis politiques) de la forme [les + Npluriel (Adj)], en examinant les spécificités de ces expressions en tant que noms propres, d’un point de vue référentiel et du point de vue de leur forme ; celle-ci présente la particularité de refléter iconiquement la pluralité. En se basant sur l’opposition désignation/dénomination (Kleiber 1984), on les compare à d’autres appellatifs de même forme plurielle, mais dont le (...) lien dénominatif à leur référent n’est pas officialisé sur la scène publique. Enfin, l’article s’intéresse à la désignation au pluriel des membres des partis politiques, en particulier lorsqu’elle est homonyme des noms de partis, et étudie les effets discursifs qui en découlent. (shrink)

In an earlier paper I argued that J.G. Fichte (rather than Kant or Hegel or some amalgam) was the primary historical model for the ethical standpoint described in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or II . There I offered a list of reasons for thinking that Hegel was less important than some believed and that Kierkegaard addressed Kantianism largely in its Fichtean form. In the interim I have discovered another reason to add to that list: as it happens, there was a quite general consensus (...) among philosophers in the 1830s, ’40s and ’50s not just that Fichte’s ethics was Kantian ethics in its most perfect form, but even that it was the best example available of normative ethics on a philosophical (rather than a religious) foundation. So Kierkegaard’s use of Fichte as a foil was the perfectly obvious choice in the context. That is a curious fact, given the complete obscurity of Fichte’s ethics today, and one whose interest should not be confined to Kierkegaard scholars. (shrink)

There is growing concern that decision-making informed by machine learning (ML) algorithms may unfairly discriminate based on personal demographic attributes, such as race and gender. Scholars have responded by introducing numerous mathematical definitions of fairness to test the algorithm, many of which are in conflict with one another. However, these reductionist representations of fairness often bear little resemblance to real-life fairness considerations, which in practice are highly contextual. Moreover, fairness metrics tend to be implemented in narrow and targeted toolkits that (...) are difficult to integrate into an algorithm’s broader ethical assessment. In this paper, we derive lessons from ethical philosophy and welfare economics as they relate to the contextual factors relevant for fairness. In particular we highlight the debate around acceptability of particular inequalities and the inextricable links between fairness, welfare and autonomy. We propose Key Ethics Indicators (KEIs) as a way towards providing a more holistic understanding of whether or not an algorithm is aligned to the decision-maker’s ethical values. (shrink)

Michelle Kosch examines the conceptions of free will and the foundations of ethics in the work of Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard. She seeks to understand the history of German idealism better by looking at it through the lens of these issues, and to understand Kierkegaard better by placing his thought in this context. Kosch argues for a new interpretation of Kierkegaard's theory of agency, that Schelling was a major influence and Kant a major target of criticism, and that both (...) the theory and the criticisms are highly relevant to contemporary debates. (shrink)

International documents on ethical conduct in clinical research have in common the principle that potential harms to research participants must be proportional to anticipated benefits. The anticipated benefits that can justify human research consist of direct benefits to the research participant, and societal benefits, also called social value. In first-in-human research, no direct benefits are expected and the benefit component of the risks-benefit assessment thus merely exists in social value. The concept social value is ambiguous by nature and is used (...) in numerous ways in the research ethics literature. Because social value justifies involving human participants, especially in early human trials, this is problematic. (shrink)

We agree that autistics’ unusual overt behaviors don't necessarily mean reduced social motivation. But Jaswal & Akhtar maintain that, while autistics may appear socially uninterested, their social interest is in fact typical and indeed must be to avoid multiple poor outcomes. This problematic idealization of social typicality deflects attention from important differences in autistic cognition and interests, which should be valued.

Some critical philosophers of race have argued that whiteness can be understood as a technology of affect and that white supremacy is comprised partly of unconscious habits that result in racialized perception. In an effort to deepen our understanding of the affective and bodily dimensions of white supremacy and the ways in which affective habits are socially produced, I look to insights from situated affectivity. Theorists in this field maintain that affective experience is not simply a matter of felt inner (...) states, but rather socially and environmentally embedded and fundamentally relational. Jan Slaby presents the concept of an ‘affective arrangement’ as a way to approach affectivity in terms of relational dynamics unfolding within a particular setting. Applying this concept to the societal level, Paul Schuetze introduces the notion of ‘affective milieu.’ I argue that these notions of ‘affective arrangement’ and ‘affective milieu,’ together with an organicist account of habit, can help to illuminate the workings of white supremacy in the United States. My proposed account highlights the extent to which white supremacy is an affective, bodily phenomenon and how racist habits are formed over the course of learning and ongoing affective engagement, in the context of various social settings. Crucially, these affective habits are fully bound up with habits of appraisal, interpretation, and judgment, and therefore inseparable from how subjects come to see and understand their world. (shrink)

Although the testimony of mental health experts in custody cases is supposed to be scientific and objective, the experts' testimony in the Mary Beth Whitehead case was imbued with prevailing middle-class biases about good mothers and good parenting. Close review of the experts' reports fails to substantiate many of their assessments and recommendations and demonstrates instead a consistent bias in favor of the Sterns and against Mary Beth Whitehead.

Many contemporary philosophers have been concerned about whether there is a fundamental distinction between perception and cognition. Although I do not think there is a fundamental distinction between perception and cognition, at least given what I take perception to be, I do think there is a fundamental distinction between sense and cognition, which I will argue is best understood in terms of a distinction between two irreducible kinds of phenomenology: sensory and cognitive.

In this paper I consider the uses to which certain psychological phenomena—e.g. cases of seeing as, and linguistic understanding—are put in the debate about cognitive phenomenology. I argue that we need clear definitions of the terms ‘sensory phenomenology’ and ‘cognitive phenomenology’ in order to understand the import of these phenomena. I make a suggestion about the best way to define these key terms, and, in the light of it, show how one influential argument against cognitive phenomenology fails.

Prenatal genetic testing is becoming available for an increasingly broad set of diseases, and it is only a matter of time before parents can choose to test for hundreds, if not thousands, of genetic conditions in their fetuses. Should access to certain kinds of fetal genetic information be limited, and if so, on what basis? We evaluate a range of considerations including reproductive autonomy, parental rights, disability rights, and the rights and interests of the fetus as a potential future child. (...) We conclude that parents should be able to access information that could be useful during pregnancy, but that testing for non-medical information should be limited. Next, we argue that the government lacks a compelling state interest in regulating prenatal genetic testing and propose that regulation should occur through medical professional organizations. Finally, we present a framework for determining what testing physicians should recommend, offer neutrally, or not offer at all. (shrink)

Are epistemic reasons merely a species of instrumental practical reasons, making epistemic rationality a specialized form of instrumental practical rationality? Or are epistemic reasons importantly different in kind? Despite the attractions of the former view, Kelly (2003) argues quite compellingly that epistemic rationality cannot be merely a matter of taking effective means to one’s epistemic ends. I argue here that Kelly’s objections can be sidestepped if we understand epistemic reasons as instrumental reasons that arise in light of the aims held (...) by social collectives of which we are members, rather than being fixed by our own individual goals. This social version of epistemic instrumentalism would not be subject to counterexamples that point to the failure of individual people to possess desires or goals that would account for all of the epistemic reasons we find it natural to attribute to them. I conclude by comparing the proposed view to the alternative version of instrumentalism defended by Kornblith (1993). I argue that the social view I sketch here has one noteworthy advantage. It better accounts for the intuitive distinctness of our practical and epistemic reasons for belief in cases where flouting epistemic norms would better help us to achieve our own individual goals. (shrink)

This volume is the first to bring together original work by leading philosophers and psychologists in an examination of the moral psychology of contempt.

The emergence of environmental governance practices raises a fundamental question as to whether they are substantive or symbolic. Toward that end, we analyze the relationship between a firm’s environmental governance and its environmental management as reflected in its ultimate outcome, environmental performance. We posit that substantive practices would bring changes in organizations, most notably in terms of improved environmental performance, whereas symbolic practices would portray organizations as environmentally committed without making meaningful changes to their operations. Focusing on a sample of (...) environmentally sensitive firms, results are consistent with environmental governance mechanisms being predominantly part of a symbolic approach to manage stakeholder perceptions on environmental management, having little substantial impact on organizations. Statistical analyses show mostly that there is no relation between environmental governance mechanisms and environmental performance, measured in terms of regulatory compliance, pollution prevention, and environmental capital expenditures. However, there is some indication that environmental incentives are associated with pollution prevention. Interviews with corporate directors shed further light on these results by underlining that environmental governance mechanisms are employed at the board level to protect the organization from reputational and/or regulatory harm, but are not necessarily intended to proactively improve environmental performance. (shrink)

Lee emphasizes the need to better understand the moral relationship between researchers and participants connoted by precision medicine, with the framework of “the gift” offering bioethics a...

How does mental content feature in conscious thought? I first argue that for a thought to be conscious the content of that thought must conscious, and that one has to appeal to cognitive phenomenology to give an adequate account of what it is for the content of a thought to be conscious. Sensory phenomenology cannot do the job. If one claims that the content of a conscious thought is unconscious, one is really claiming that there is no such thing as (...) conscious thought. So one must either accept that there is such a thing as cognitive phenomenology, or deny the existence of conscious thought. Once it is clear that conscious thought requires cognitive phenomenology, there is a pressing question about the exact relationship between a thought’s cognitive phenomenological properties and its content. I conclude with a discussion of the nature of this relationship. (shrink)

This major study of Kant provides a detailed examination of the development and function of the doctrine of transcendental illusion in his theoretical philosophy. The author shows that a theory of 'illusion' plays a central role in Kant's arguments about metaphysical speculation and scientific theory. Indeed, she argues that we cannot understand Kant unless we take seriously his claim that the mind inevitably acts in accordance with ideas and principles that are 'illusory'. Taking this claim seriously, we can make much (...) better sense of Kant's arguments and reach a deeper understanding of the role he allots human reason in science. (shrink)

BackgroundThe annual number of retracted publications in the scientific literature is rapidly increasing. The objective of this study was to determine the frequency and reason for retraction of cancer publications and to determine how journals in the cancer field handle retracted articles.MethodsWe searched three online databases (MEDLINE, Embase, The Cochrane Library) from database inception until 2015 for retracted journal publications related to cancer research. For each article, the reason for retraction was categorized as plagiarism, duplicate publication, fraud, error, authorship issues, (...) or ethical issues. Accessibility of the retracted article was defined as intact, removed, or available but with a watermark over each page. Descriptive data was collected on each retracted article including number of citations, journal name and impact factor, study design, and time between publication and retraction. The publications were screened in duplicated and two reviewers extracted and categorized data.ResultsFollowing database search and article screening, we identified 571 retracted cancer publications. The majority (76.4%) of cancer retractions were issued in the most recent decade, with 16.6 and 6.7% of the retractions in the prior two decades respectively. Retractions were issued by journals with impact factors ranging from 0 (discontinued) to 55.8. The average impact factor was 5.4 (median 3.54, IQR 1.8–5.5). On average, a retracted article was cited 45 times (median 18, IQR 6–51), with a range of 0–742. Reasons for retraction include plagiarism (14.4%), fraud (28.4%), duplicate publication (18.2%), error (24.2%), authorship issues (3.9%), and ethical issues (2.1%). The reason for retraction was not stated in 9.8% of cases. Twenty-nine percent of retracted articles remain available online in their original form.ConclusionsRetractions in cancer research are increasing in frequency at a similar rate to all biomedical research retractions. Cancer retractions are largely due to academic misconduct. Consequences to cancer patients, the public at large, and the research community can be substantial and should be addressed with future research. Despite the implications of this important issue, some cancer journals currently fall short of the current guidelines for clearly stating the reason for retraction and identifying the publication as retracted. (shrink)

Several contemporary scholars have embraced the aesthetic resources in the Black Radical Tradition for the purpose of revitalizing the democratic project. Ironically, however, many drawn to the radical potential of fugitive escape are concerned about flight or exodus from the democratic project itself resulting in a defense of politics that constricts the possible benefits of fugitive aesthetics for democratic life. This article draws on the work of Alain Locke, a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, to suggest another way in (...) which we might follow Black fugitive aesthetics. Through an engagement with Locke, I theorize the notion of a fugitive bearing associated with a set of sensibilities that we might cultivate in order to approach the task of democratic transformation as a “reverent vandalism.” This article also challenges dismissive readings of Locke’s aestheticism by closely reexamining his commitment to expressive autonomy in connection with his theory of democracy. His “New Negro” avant-garde, like the fugitive, remains tethered to political life even while seeking a freedom that is unavailable within the strictures of the standing normative order. (shrink)

Street’s “Darwinian Dilemma” is a well-known epistemological objection to moral realism. In this paper, I argue that “third-factor” replies to this argument on behalf of the moral realist, as popularized by Enoch :413–438, 2010, Taking morality seriously: a defense of robust realism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011), Skarsaune :229–243, 2011) and Wielenberg :441–464, 2010, Robust ethics: the metaphysics and epistemology of godless normative realism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014), cannot succeed. This is because they are instances of the illegitimate form (...) of reasoning known as “bootstrapping.” The phenomenon of bootstrapping has been discussed in detail, most notably by Vogel :602–623, 2000) and Cohen :309–329, 2002), in a different context as an objection to reliabilism and related theories of knowledge. I introduce four different characterizations of the error of bootstrapping from the epistemic literature in order to argue that the form of reasoning exemplified by third-factor replies would be deemed illegitimate by every one of them. I conclude that the moral realist should abandon third-factor replies, or else suggest a novel diagnosis for what goes wrong in bootstrapping cases that does not apply equally to the realist’s form of argument. However, I am not optimistic about the prospects for this latter strategy. (shrink)

The human species is more reliant on cultural adaptation than any other species, but it is unclear how observational learning can give rise to the faithful transmission of cultural adaptations. One possibility is that teaching facilitates accurate social transmission by narrowing the range of inferences that learners make. However, there is wide disagreement about how to define teaching, and how to interpret the empirical evidence for teaching across cultures and species. In this article I argue that disputes about the nature (...) and prevalence of teaching across human societies and nonhuman animals are based on a number of deep-rooted theoretical differences between fields, as well as on important differences in how teaching is defined. To reconcile these disparate bodies of research, I review the three major approaches to the study of teaching – mentalistic, culture-based, and functionalist – and outline the research questions about teaching that each addresses. I then argue for a new, integrated framework that differentiates between teaching types according to the specific adaptive problems that each type solves, and apply this framework to restructure current empirical evidence on teaching in humans and nonhuman animals. This integrative framework generates novel insights, with broad implications for the study of the evolution of teaching, including the roles of cognitive constraints and cooperative dilemmas in how and when teaching evolves. Finally, I propose an explanation for why some types of teaching are uniquely human, and discuss new directions for research motivated by this framework. (shrink)

To address the rising concern that algorithmic decision-making may reinforce discriminatory biases, researchers have proposed many notions of fairness and corresponding mathematical formalizations. Each of these notions is often presented as a one-size-fits-all, absolute condition; however, in reality, the practical and ethical trade-offs are unavoidable and more complex. We introduce a new approach that considers fairness—not as a binary, absolute mathematical condition—but rather, as a relational notion in comparison to alternative decisionmaking processes. Using US mortgage lending as an example use (...) case, we discuss the ethical foundations of each definition of fairness and demonstrate that our proposed methodology more closely captures the ethical trade-offs of the decision-maker, as well as forcing a more explicit representation of which values and objectives are prioritised. (shrink)

When a physician employment relationship terminates, the physician–patient relationship may also be terminated by enforcement of a covenant not to compete, which typically forces the physician to leave the geographic area for a period of time. This gives rise to several ethical dilemmas. The public interest is compromised when enforcement of these covenants contributes to the shortage of physicians in the community, and individual patients are harmed when their physicians are no longer available. The authors undertook a unique study to (...) explore physician perspectives concerning the ethics of banning a physician from practice and the impact of the ban on both the physician and the physician’s patients. The results identified harmful effects that have not been raised in prior scholarly articles or reported court opinions. After reviewing the legal background of covenants not to compete, this paper presents the results of that study and concludes that resorting to the legal system for enforcement of covenants not to compete is not always the ethical course of action. (shrink)